Scripture

Author(s):  
William J. Abraham

This chapter discusses the epochal shift in scriptural interpretation in the nineteenth century. Applying historical investigation to accounts of divine inspiration and revelation resulted in a call for a radical reconstruction of Christian theology, especially as developed in liberal Protestantism. There were a number of responses to such reconstruction of Christian faith. One option was to resist the logic of liberal Protestantism’s normative apologetic while retaining an existential appropriation of biblical heroes and narratives. A second option was to develop a whole new apologetic for the traditional position on inspiration and inerrancy. A third option was to shore up the appeal to biblical authority by a theory of development culminating in a doctrine of papal infallibility. Fourth, there was the populist option of focusing on personal piety and working from a deflationary soteriological vision of Scripture. All five options, if we include liberal Protestantism, continue to flourish.

Author(s):  
Donovan O. Schaefer

This chapter examines broad transformations in Christian thought that came to pass over the course of the nineteenth century through exposure to new developments in the life sciences. Taking William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) as a starting point, it shows how a conception of an unchanging God that could be demonstrated through rational proof was affected by the new emphasis on change in the biological sciences, especially in the aftermath of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. Rather than suggesting that these new themes weakened Christian faith, however, a close examination of Christian thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century shows that encounters with science energized Christian theology, philosophy, and practice. This trajectory culminated with the development of the psychology of religion, as exhibited by the American pragmatists William James and Charles S. Peirce. George Eliot’s Middlemarch serves as a guide to the complexity of these transformations.


Author(s):  
Madhuri M. Yadlapati

This chapter takes a closer look at three figures whose discussions of faith are among the most influential in twentieth-century Christian theology. Two, Paul Tillich and Karl Barth, are twentieth-century Christian theologians and one, Søren Kierkegaard, is a nineteenth-century philosopher, but all three determine directions taken by existentialist Christian theology in the late twentieth century. All three figures happen to be Protestant, not simply by denominational identification, but more importantly, each is guided by the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone to emphasize the priority of God's saving grace over any human works and human understanding. All three adhere to the Protestant Principle (an individual's right and responsibility to radically question and reinterpret questions of faith), albeit in different ways.


1995 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus J. Borg

Perceptions of the relationship between the historical study of Jesus and Christian theology have swung like a pendulum between two extremes. In the nineteenth century, there was a widespread assumption that the historical Jesus mattered significantly; for much of the twentieth century, the dominant claim has been that the historical Jesus has little or no theological significance. In recent scholarship, there are tentative steps toward affirming a 'both-and' position: though Christian faith is to some extent independent of historical research, it is also true that images of Jesus do very much affect images of the Christian life.


2019 ◽  
Vol 131 (6) ◽  
pp. 247-256
Author(s):  
Alexander J. D. Irving

Robert Brown has argued that any defence of the authority of Scripture based on its divine inspiration must take account of the reality of the form of Scripture. He points to two facts regarding the Bible’s form (the history of textual error and a variety of beliefs regarding the biblical canon) that, he believes, compromises such a foundation for biblical authority. Exactly which words, he asks, are we to think were inspired? Brown operates with an understanding of revelation which is exhausted by the category of the biblical proposition (i.e., he equates revelation with Scripture, understanding inspiration to be the mode of that revelation). Accordingly, any error within the constituent parts of the propositions found in the Bible undermines the validity of its claim to be revelation in the first place, thus, in Brown’s view, compromising the entire edifice of Christian theology. In what follows, I suggest that a personalist approach is a more suitable way to understand revelation and that the propositional mode of revelation (Scripture) participates in God’s personal revelation in Jesus Christ through the inspiration of the Spirit. By broadening the theological context of Scripture (i.e., understanding it in its Christological and Pneumatological dimension of depth), its authority is not found in its inerrancy but in its reference beyond itself to God’s actual self-revelation in Jesus which God employs as the permanent mode of his revelation by the agency of the Spirit.


2020 ◽  
pp. 009164712097498
Author(s):  
John M. McConnell ◽  
Vincent Bacote ◽  
Edward B. Davis ◽  
Eric M. Brown ◽  
Christin J. Fort ◽  
...  

Multiculturalism, social justice, and peace are important aspects of the Christian faith. However, scholars in the literature seeking to integrate psychology and Christian theology have underrepresented them. In this present article, we review barriers to including them in our psychology–theology integration literature. Thereafter, we provide a trinitarian theology of multiculturalism, social justice, and peace with a hope that theological knowledge will help Christian psychologists begin to overcome barriers and to move this body of literature forward. We also offer implications for scholarship/research, education/training, and clinical work.


1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waldemar Gurian

The history of the Catholic Church includes men who, after brilliant services to the Church, died outside her fold. Best known among them is Tertullian, the apologetic writer of the Early Church; less known is Ochino, the third vicar-general of the Capuchins, whose flight to Calvin's Geneva almost destroyed his order. In the nineteenth century there were two famous representatives of this group. Johann von Doellinger refused, when more than seventy years old, to accept the decision of the Vatican Council about papal infallibility. He passed away in 1890 unreconciled, though he had been distinguished for years as the outstanding German Catholic theologian. Félicité de la Mennais was celebrated as the new Pascal and Bossuet of his time before he became the modern Tertullian by breaking with the Church because Pope Gregory XVI rejected his views on the relations between the Church and die world. As he lay deathly ill, his niece, “Madame de Kertanguy asked him: ‘Féli, do you want a priest? Surely, you want a priest?’ Lamennais answered: ‘No.’ The niece repeated: ‘I beg of you.’ But he said with a stronger voice: ‘No, no, no.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Scott-Blakely

Abstract This article explores the Israelology of the prolific Dutch pastor, politician, and prime minister Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), the architect of the nineteenth-century Neo-Calvinist movement. His thought still reverberates in Neo-Calvinist circles in North America, Europe, and beyond, providing inspiration to those seeking to articulate how contemporary churches can be both authentically confessional and also socially and politically engaged. Less known about Kuyper is his anti-Judaism and supersessionism: he regarded biblical Israel as instrumental to Christian theology, a pawn that God used and then discarded for the sake of more significant purposes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-311
Author(s):  
Tony Moon

AbstractJ.H. King's From Passover to Pentecost 'essential Christ'/'historic Christ' terminological distinction was probably derived from literature produced and conversation generated by the late nineteenth-century American Congregationalist 'future probation' controversy. An examination of the use of this language in that debate confirms that King's From Passover to Pentecost 'essential Christ'/'historic Christ' paragraph is simply an expression of hope for the salvific status and afterlife fate of at least some of the unevangelized, and in continuity with the rest of his writings, is not a positive, optimistic assessment of the value of non-Christian religions.


MELINTAS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Joko Umbara

An experience of the cross of Jesus Christ in Christian theology brings the sense of paradox. Christ’s death on the cross reflects the fate of humanity within the context of Christian faith. The cross is also seen as a mystery that tells the tragic story of humans who accept their punishment. However, the cross of Jesus Christ also reveals meanings that challenge Christians to find answers in their contemplation of the cross. The cross becomes a stage for human tragic drama, which might also reveal the beauty of death and life. It is the phatos of humanity, for every human being will die, but it is also seen as the tree of life hoped for by every faithful. On the cross is visible God’s self-giving through the love shown by the crucified Christ. God speaks God’s love not only through words, that is, in the teachings of Jesus Christ, but also through Christ’s loving gesture on the cross. The cross of Christ is the culmination of God’s glory and through it, God’s glory is shown in the beauty of divine love.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (115) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer

Diante do panorama extremamente complexo do campo religioso hoje o documento de Aparecida declara estar o ser humano do século XXI em meio a uma “mudança de época”. Ao lado do processo de secularização, que leva o ser humano a não temer declarar sua ausência de crença em Deus e sua não pertença a qualquer sistema religioso, está igualmente o revival” religioso anárquico e selvagem que fez eclodir seitas e novas propostas “espirituais” dos mais variados perfis, questionando em profundidade a decantada supremacia do monoteísmo cristão no Ocidente. A proposta neste artigo é, depois de uma breve análise da situação da religião no mundo e especialmente no Brasil hoje, refletir sobre a diferença entre fé e religião e como esta reflexão, tomada em sua radicalidade, leva a uma compreensão renovada do que seja a fé cristã e sua identidade no mundo atual. Para chegar a isto, são analisados três elementos constitutivos da fé cristã: a historicidade, a experiência e o testemunho, no desejo de traçar um perfil aproximado de uma tendência importante na teologia cristã hoje, que prefere definir o Cristianismo mais como uma revelação do que como uma religião.ABSTRACT: Before the extremely complex panorama of the religious field today the document of Aparecida declares the human being of the XXI century to be in the mist of an “epoch change”. On the side of the secularização process, that leads the human being not to fear in declaring his lack of belief in God and his not belonging to any religious system, there is also the religious anarchical and wild “revival” that brought out sects and new “spiritual” proposals of the most varied profiles, questioning in depth the decanted supremacy of Christian monotheism in the Occident. The proposal of this article is, after a brief analysis of the situation of religion in the world and especially in Brazil today, to reflect on the difference between faith and religion and how this reflection, taken in its radicality, leads to a renewed understanding of what Christian faith is and its identity in the current world. To arrive at this, three constituent elements of the Christian faith are analyzed: the historicity, the experience and the witness, in the desire to trace a profile that approaches an important trend in the Christian theology, which prefers to define Christianity more as a revelation than as a religion.


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