scholarly journals Clarifying the Task of the Church in a Secular Age

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-51
Author(s):  
Grace Mariette Agolia
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Critical Task ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Church

This paper argues that a proper theological understanding of the church-world relationship must avoid the tendency to dichotomize the two. Instead of regarding the world as a godless place, Christians must affirm in faith that the world is fundamentally graced, since it is the product of God’s desire to communicate Godself. First, this paper draws upon the work of philosopher Charles Taylor to elucidate the meaning of “secularity” in the Western context. Then, the paper appeals to Karl Rahner’s theology in exploring the prophetic and dialogical functions of the church with respect to society, which entails the church’s own self-critical task as a listening, discerning, and synodal church. Rather than privatizing faith, the minority status of the church in society allows it to fulfill its mission more authentically as servant and sacrament of God’s kingdom. Finally, this paper proposes that any impingement of the ostensible sacred-secular divide starts with the works of mercy because these directly confront the contingencies and vagaries of human life, touching upon our innate need for one another.

Religion and Secularity

2019 ◽  
pp. 320-330
Author(s):  
Ralf K. Wüstenberg
Keyword(s):  
Charles Taylor ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Biblical Concepts

What did Bonhoeffer mean by the term ‘religion’ when writing about a ‘nonreligious form of interpretation’ of biblical concepts? How should we understand this term and its interpretation today? Has the world of the twenty-first century really become ‘religionless’? More broadly, how does Bonhoeffer’s interpretation relate to more recent accounts of secularity and our secular age? This chapter argues that Bonhoeffer’s theological analysis in his own time, in which he deployed this concept of ‘religionlessness’, resonates with a more recent analysis of secularity offered by Charles Taylor. Specifically, this chapter claims that Bonhoeffer and Taylor identify some similar causes of secularization, and also share a critique of ‘religious individualism’. Drawing Bonhoeffer into dialogue with Taylor, then, can help to clarify his understanding of secularity.

scholarly journals Public Theology in the Secular Age: Editor’s Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Milton, PhD
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Subject Matter Experts ◽  
Business Law ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Kennedy Institute ◽  
The Church

Discipleship and the Front Page: Public Theology in the Secular Age is an anthology of monographs offered to the general public as a contribution of distinctively Christian thinking about the personal and public implications for following Jesus Christ in “A Secular Age” (Charles Taylor, 2009). The monographs are written by subject matter experts—clergy, and laity; academics and practitioners; theologians representing a variety of traditions within the Church, as well as professionals from business, law, and medicine— with a common mission to leverage their expertise in the service of Christ and His Church. The work is a public theology initiative of the D. James Kennedy Institute of Reformed Leadership, a ministry and program of Faith for Living, Inc., a North Carolina nonprofit corporation. The collection address four areas of public life: Ideas, Daily Life, the Nation, and Triggers. Each area constitutes a division of the collection. Each of the four divisions contains three issues. The twelve issues represent the twelve chapter chapters in the book.

scholarly journals Perjumpaan Adat dan Teologi HKBP dalam Konteks Bergereja di Tengah-tengah Masyarakat Batak Toba

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurits Junard Pollatu
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Contextual Theology ◽  
The World ◽  
Toba Batak ◽  
The Church

The Church in carrying out its mission must present the sign of Shalom to mankind. In carrying out its vocation, the church must interact with all aspects of human life, namely social economy, culture, politics and so on; so that the role of the Church can be seen and impacted on every creature in the world. HKBP is one of the Churches who made their vocation in Batak land. HKBP was greatly influenced by zending who preached the gospel to the Batak people. However, HKBP in carrying out its Theology, it is also included in cultural values, especially the culture of the Batak marriage as a form of contextual theology carried out. Therefore, HKBP can declare the sign of Shalom to the congregation through Church rules that must be followed by all members of the HKBP church. This is an effort to contextualize theology carried out by HKBP on the kinship culture of the Batak Society.Keywords: custom, theology of HKBP, Toba Batak society

scholarly journals The church’s witness in a secular age: A Hauerwasian response to privatized and individualized religion

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Aaron Wessman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
The Church ◽  
Contemporary Western Society

Stanley Hauerwas has been noted for his theology of missionary “witness.” However, his theology is not uncontroversial. Of late, it is argued that his theology of witness does not often, or sufficiently, attend to the nature and complexity of belief for those people who live in contemporary, Western society. Part of this complexity, as highlighted by various sociologists and theologians, is that religion has become individualized and privatized. These are serious challenges to the church’s engagement with contemporary society, which Hauerwas does not always seem to adequately address. It will be the purpose of this article, however, to attempt to overcome this lacuna in Hauerwas’s theology, and explore if, and how, his theology might serve as a response to some of the specific challenges arising out of the growing trend towards “privatized religion” in the United States. This will be accomplished by bringing into dialogue Hauerwas’s later work on witness, with some of the sociological insights provided by Charles Taylor and Robert Wuthnow. It will be argued that Hauerwas’s theology of witness, though incomplete, does provide insights that might be helpful to the church in her missionary efforts in the United States.

scholarly journals Żyć mocą Ducha Bożego w Kościele

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 56-86
Author(s):  
Jacek Neumann ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Human World ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

Our life as the Christen in the community ecclesial is the announcement about God, which gives the people the gifts of love, freedom, friendship and truth. Through the forgiveness and the activity of the salvation of God, love and friendship in man’s life makes the human world more divine. This Jesus accents in His proclamation about the kingdom divine, specially in the parables, where He presents the model of the world based on love, hope, faith and freedom as the world of deeds based on God. Therefore, with the power of God’s Spirit, man has to make his life based on the norm of divine, because only in God, with God and through God exists for man the possibility to life now on earth, and afterwards in the future in heaven. In this situation, the answer of the man of faith has to be the motivation to take up the “deed” of the renovation of self-life and the imitation of God. This constitutes as the Christian thought that the central point of the theological interpretation of the value of salvation is realized – hic et nun – as the historical and existential value of the human life in the right of the kingdom divine. The proclamation of Jesus about the “new life”, presents to man the values of the divine existence in the spiritual of the Church. On one hand, it is the gift of freedom and the liberation from sin, where the love of God is absolutely necessary. On the other hand, the “new life” opens for man the space of liberty of life, where God forgives the human offences and the sins, both past and present. Well now the resume of the call to imitate God is the acceptance of the divine gift, which changes the man himself, and all the people, who seek the help and good councils to live the norm divine. These witnesses in the human mentality the consciousness of the existence based on the divine laws, which have in themselves the dimension eschatological.

scholarly journals The Salvific Dimension of Time in the Christian Liturgy

Verbum Vitae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Brzeziński
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Special Property ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This paper discusses the relationship between time and salvation that exists in the Christian liturgy, in which time possesses two characteristics. One is its sacredness, and the other is a special property that does not exist outside the liturgy but derives directly from its anamnetic dimension: it is a “medium” and an “existential context” of the real salvation delivered and still being delivered by Christ. The author begins with a reflection on time in cultural anthropology and the history of religion, demonstrating unambiguously that, since the earliest of days, disparate cultures and religions have shared the conviction that time is sacred. He then goes on to address the biblical concept of time which has fundamentally contributed to a fuller understanding of the essence and nature of liturgical time as the καιρός of salvation. It is in the liturgy of the Church—the final earthly stage in the history of salvation—that the salvific, effective and real encounter between God’s eternity and human life takes place. The Christian liturgy is an otherworldly act of salvation in worldly space and time, a manifestation of the “fullness of time.” The paper also attempts to offer a preliminary juxtaposition of the theological understanding of liturgical time with the findings of modern physics concerning the understanding and description of time. This may serve to stimulate further, more in-depth biblical and theological (and in particular theologico-liturgical) reflection on the phenomenon of time, and perhaps even a new look at the phenomenon of time on the part of modern physicists.

Spiritual Discernment in a Secular Age

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-158
Author(s):  
Stanislaw Grygiel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Symbolic Thought ◽  
Spiritual Discernment ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
False Prophets

This essay explores the predicament of a secular age marked by atheism and calculative reason. In a time that has been cut loose from eternity, the politics of calculation and of force separate words from the events and things to which they belong. The confusion that arises permits the masters of empty words to rule everything with impunity. Through the recollection of truth, which reveals itself in a moment that cannot be grasped, Beauty continually invites man to change his life. The false prophets, negating this recollection of truth, create a new world that rejects God and is, thus, confined to its own immanence. Symbolic thought and, therefore, poetic thought, is prohibited in this world and, because of this, one cannot pose the question about the meaning of human life. Entrusting ourselves to the Beauty of the living God and the discernment of spirits are indispensable for bringing justice to ourselves and to the world.

The Eastern Orthodox Tradition

2018 ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
Andrew Louth
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
Church In The World ◽  
The Church

This chapter on Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology consists of three parts. The first section discusses the fundamental theological understanding of the church as the Body of Christ, the Bride of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The second section looks at the four notes of the church, which characterize the church as it exists in the world: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. The third section, ‘The Church in the World’, is concerned with practical issues of ecclesiology: the relation of church and society, Eucharistic ecclesiology, and modern problems.

scholarly journals KEY REASONS FOR THE ABSENCE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING IN STUDENTS OF PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-79
Author(s):  
Andrii Khodorchuk
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Teaching ◽  
Student Training ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
The Church

This issue is unique and characteristic for this category of students, and today it requires a thorough study and development of effective educational scenarios to solve the existing problem. The emphasis is placed on theology as a complex area of student training that includes various aspects of religious teaching and requires adherence to established church norms in the perception of religious issues. It is stated that theology is meant to be a tool to criticize the existing private traditions within the framework of church life from the point of view of general church or catholic traditions. It manifests itself in the form of orthodoxy, i.e., the religious norm. Due to the fact that orthodoxy does not cover the whole field of possible specific “cases” that require theological understanding, theology remains a living thought that operates on the border of the Church and the world. It is stated that theology creatively and critically comprehends any problem or topic based on the spiritual experience of life in the Church, which remains unchanged because it is the experience of meeting the eternal Divine reality.

A SECULAR AGE: OPEN TOWARD THE TRANSCENDENT

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-152
Author(s):  
Gerrit J. Benschop
Keyword(s):  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Modern World ◽  
General Overview ◽  
The World ◽  
Secular Age

In his book A secular age, Charles Taylor rejects the view that modernity must lead to a steady decline of religion and argues that although the conditions of belief changed, causing a destabilization and recomposition of religious forms, our modern world still can and should be open to the transcendent. I attempt to give a general overview of A secular age by describing shifts in worldview with respect to nature, self, society and God. Finally, I discuss how Taylor’s message relates to that of Reformational thinking. Taylor’s description of motivations to regard the world as closed to the transcendent corresponds well with the Reformational analysis of the humanistic ground motives of freedom and nature. Taylor, however, seems to consider our current worldview as a neutral basis and religion as an optional add-on.

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