Anthropology

2020 ◽  
pp. 548-568
Author(s):  
Philip Sheldrake
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Cloud Of Unknowing ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
Meister Eckhart ◽  
Political Forces

Theological anthropology explores Christian understandings of human identity. In mystical theology, this broadly takes three forms. First, ‘positive’ or kataphatic anthropology focuses on what we may affirm about the various dimensions of human identity. In this chapter, this is illustrated with reference to Julian of Norwich. Second, ‘negative’ or apophatic anthropology emphasizes that the human ‘self’, like the God with whom it is united, is ultimately beyond our capacity to define. Alongside further references to Julian, mention is made of Meister Eckhart and The Cloud of Unknowing. Finally, liberationist anthropology is a dimension of liberation theology which emerged during the last part of the twentieth century. Several exponents such as Segundo Galilea and Gustavo Gutiérrez draw upon Christian mysticism. Liberationist anthropology involves an essentially collective understanding of human identity as well as a socially critical approach to how human existence is shaped by dominant cultural or political forces.

scholarly journals The Solved Conflict: Pope Francis and Liberation Theology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Jakob Løland
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
Global Church

AbstractThe battle for meaning and influence between Latin American liberations theologians and the Vatican was one of the most significant conflicts in the global Catholic church of the twentieth century. With the election of the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio as head of the global church in 2013, the question about the legacy of liberation theology was actualized. The canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the pope’s approximation to the public figure of Gustavo Gutiérrez signaled a new approach to the liberation theology movement in the Vatican. This article argues that Pope Francis shares some of the main theological concerns as pontiff with liberation theology. Although the pope remains an outsider to liberation theology, he has in a sense solved the conflict between the Vatican and the Latin American social movement. Through an analysis of ecclesial documents and theological literature, his can be discerned on three levels. First, Pope Francis’ use of certain theological ideas from liberation theology has been made possible and less controversial by post-cold war contexts. Second, Pope Francis has contributed to the solution of this conflict through significant symbolic gestures rather than through a shift of official positions. Third, as Pope Francis, the Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio has appropriated certain elements that are specific to liberation theology without acknowledging his intellectual debt to it.

‘Where Two are to Become One’: Mysticism and Monism

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Grace Jantzen
Keyword(s):  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Meister Eckhart ◽  
The Trinity

(1) If you would know God, you must not merely be like the Son, you must be the Son yourself.With these words Meister Eckhart encapsulates the aim of Christian mysticism as he understood it: to know God, and to know God in such a way that the knower is not merely like Christ but actually becomes Christ, taken into the Trinity itself. Eckhart speaks frequently of this in his sermons.

Theology in the twentieth century

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowan Williams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Academic Theology

This chapter discusses theology in the twentieth century, which was largely dominated by a set of issues that were generated ultimately by the diffusion of the critical approach to the Bible. The survey presented in the chapter determines that the ‘dogmatic’ or ‘systematic’ theology in England and Wales has both benefitted and suffered from its slightly tangential relation to mainstream academic theology.

A Brief History of Theosemiotic

Theosemiotic ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 15-42
Author(s):  
Michael L. Raposa
Keyword(s):  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Latin American ◽  
William James ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
Book Of Nature ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
History Of

This chapter supplies a historical survey of theosemiotic, focused less on demonstrating actual lines of causal influence than on exposing the resonance of certain ideas articulated by thinkers sometimes far removed from each other in space and time. It links Peirce’s thought to that of earlier figures (like Augustine, Duns Scotus, John Poinsot, Jonathan Edwards, and Ralph Waldo Emerson), certain contemporaries (especially William James and Josiah Royce), and later thinkers and developments (most notably, H. Richard Niebuhr, Simone Weil, and Gustavo Gutierrez). The chapter begins with an examination of the religious significance of talk about the “book of nature” and concludes with the observation of a certain natural affinity between a theosemiotic inspired by Peirce’s pragmatism and Latin American liberation theology.

Scottish Conservatism and Northern Ireland: Mapping an Ambivalent Relationship

2020 ◽  
pp. 154-168
Author(s):  
Jonathan Evershed
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores shifting and often contradictory dynamics which have manifested themselves in the relationship between Scottish Conservatism and Ulster Unionism. It provides a brief historical overview of this relationship which, it argues, has been highly salient in the consolidation of Conservatism as a political force in Scotland during the twentieth century, but which has become more ambiguous as understandings of ‘Union’, processes of secularisation, patterns of integration and differentiation, as well as the nature of centre-periphery relations in Northern Ireland and Scotland have increasingly diverged. The chapter also looks at how this relationship has continued to be reshaped into the twenty-first century by a potent mix of political forces which has included the Irish peace process, the Scottish independence referendum and Brexit.

Athens and Jerusalem

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Vincent P. Pecora
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Stephane Mallarme ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Meister Eckhart ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
Greek Thought ◽  
Medieval Europe

Autochthony is fundamental to ancient Greek notions of belonging to the land. While the motif had a negligible presence in the literature of European Christendom, it returns with some force in modern productions by Stéphane Mallarmé, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and James Joyce. Martin Heidegger too draws on pre-Socratic Greek thought on the theme of autochthony. But there is a parallel tradition of belonging to the land that begins in the Pentateuch. In Exodus, God speaks to Moses about a Promised Land. In medieval Europe, Meister Eckhart reads Exodus as providing a special, mystical understanding of God’s soul, one that intertwines promised land with the human soul’s creative capacities, and lays the foundation for theologically infused politics in the German tradition. In Alexander Baumgarten, Immanuel Kant, and J. G. Fichte, nationalism is linked to Eckhart. In the twentieth century, Heidegger phenomenologically reinscribes earth, divinities, and dwelling poetically.

Brunner, Emil (1889–1966)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Loup Seban
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Human Essence ◽  
Single Dimension ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Usa ◽  
University Of Zurich ◽  
The University

Emil Brunner was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. He was a minister of the Swiss Reformed Church, a professor at the University of Zurich, and held distinguished lectureships in England, the USA and Japan. He joined the ‘dialectical school’ early in his career, but tried to rehabilitate natural theology, which led to a rift with Barth. His works were widely read and often served as basic texts in Reformed and Presbyterian seminaries. He rejected the historicist reduction of Christ to a wise teacher figure that was characteristic of neo-Protestantism. He was also critical of modern philosophical anthropologies – as propounded by Marx or Nietzsche, for example – because he felt that they reduced human essence to a single dimension. Only theological anthropology can fully interpret human essence; and of central importance here is the ‘I–Thou encounter’, whereby the fulfilment of the human ‘I’ is achieved through a relationship with the divine ‘Thou’. Brunner also unfolded an original view on the relation of theology to philosophy. Reason, he argued, is essential for the elucidation and communication of faith. Philosophy, in so far as it indicates the limitations of reason, can serve to prepare us for the revelation of the Absolute.

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