bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Peasant Wisdom, the “Our Father” and the Origins of Christianity
Authors: Kirk Alan Kenneth
Published: March 2013

Text producers and text recipients are embedded in concrete social relations, . and text production, as communicative activity, is also social activity. As such, texts engage with a given set of social and cultural conditions, details of which, with varying degrees of clarity, are inscribed within the texts themselves.

The "religious" texts which are the focus of Synoptic Gospels scholarship are no exception, for in ancient agrarian societies religious patterns of life were interwoven with social, political and economic relations[…]Therefore attention to the matrix of concrete social relations in which texts have their genesis can aid in interpretation of texts usually analyzed primarily from a theological perspective and/or assigned a restricted ecclesial Sitz im Leben. Conversely, careful location of a religious text within its generative socio-cultural context can aid theological interpretation while simultaneously protecting the latter from anachronism.
Gustavo Gutiérrez and Women's Issues
Authors: Murray Joyce
Published: March 2013

As a North American feminist theologian, I am increasingly concerned about the divisive effects on human communities of widespread social injustices exacerbated by the "new world disorder") of the late twentieth century. In reflecting on what is fundamentally a soteriological question, I have been inspired and challenged by Latin American liberation theology, and by the work of Gustavo Gutierrez in particular. While North American and Latin American realities differ in significant ways, and one cannot import the whole of Latin American liberation theology, in my view there continue to be important continuities and connections. A soteriology of communion provides a relevant framework for addressing them.
Postmodern Eschatology?
Authors: Webster Karl
Published: March 2013

The question mark in my title is very deliberate. It is meant to qualify both terms: "postmodern" and "eschatology." There is a question mark against "postmodern" because, as I shall try to show, I am unconvinced that postmodernity is the determining factor in responsible Christian theology; and, accordingly, there is a question mark against "eschatology" because I am also unconvinced that a postmodern eschatology is either necessary or possible. Christian eschatology, I want to suggest, will only be worthy of the title if it allows itself to be led all along the line by the witness of Holy Scripture and if it modestly and humbly, and yet also with courage and astonishment, tries to indicate what it finds there. Its essential task, whether in postmodernity, modernity or premodernity is one of patient, respectful attentiveness to the biblical testimony allowing itself to be shaped by the hope which is there expressed, and quietly letting that hope disturb, shatter and remake human thought and action.
Installation Address: Wycliffe College, October 1999
Authors: Sumner George
Published: March 2013

In the year of our Lord 1577, Mateo Ricci sailed from Italy on his way to Goa on the Indian shore and eventually on to China. Imagine Ricci watching the familiar hills disappear and looking out toward the vast and turbulent sea as he faced a long and dangerous journey to a land about which he in fact knew relatively little. Who could have foreseen that a few years later he would be passing through walls of separation and defence to the very precincts near the Forbidden City of Beijing, a Jesuit priest offering counsel on geography and clockmaking to the imperial court itself? Imagine him in your mind's eye, with the silken robes and the customs and manners of a Confucian scholati magistrate. Ricci had adapted himself at the deeper level as well, speaking and writing elegant Mandarin, worrying over the finer points for translating the "Lord of Heaven," T'ien, into Latin words for "God." A good four hundred years before all our academic talk about "context," Ricci proved so appreciative, so creative, so flexible as to worry rival Catholic orders — was he watering the faith down, giving away the inheritance for a bowl of contextual pottage? But the truth is more interesting than that: Ricci, surrounded by a culture so different, older and in many ways more sophisticated and technologically advanced, maintained an iron faith in the doctrines of his Mother Church. Unshakeably committed within, so genuinely adaptable without — if only we could know how that compound is possible?
Christ as Cosmic Tree
Authors: Kuikman Jacoba
Published: March 2013

In this article I will put forward the image of Christ as Cosmic Tree, an image that has the propensity to nurture positive attitudes to the environment from within the Christian tradition. This is a "road less travelled" in Christian theology. Therefore I will begin with a brief overview of the issues in question and some of the approaches already taken in response. Some comments on trees in general and the idea of Cosmic Tree in world religions will illuminate what the significance might be for Christianity if Jesus were to be viewed as such. I will focus on the image of Cosmic Tree in Judaism as a kind of prefiguring of Jesus as Cosmic Tree in Christian literature and art.
Friends, What Have You Done to Me? The Crucified Woman Challenges the Gold-Crowned Jesus
Authors: McEnroy Carmel
Published: March 2013

In the course of history, artists' depictions of the crucified redeemer reflected the various philosophies and theologies of their particular eras. He suffered with Stoic resignation. The docetic Christ only appeared to suffer as God masqueraded in human form. The excesses of realism and rococcoism depicted the crucified Jesus contorted in pain and crying out. In the final quarter of the twentieth century, under the influence of liberation theologies, grotesque images of the crucified have surfaced among the suffering poor of Latin America. Jesus' Asian heritage is retrieved in Asian faces. Africans claim a black Messiah. Celtic spirituality resurrects Jesus' Druidic connection. The cosmic Christ is hailed as the ecological saviour, and Jesus of Montreal gets killed again. To top it off, artists have, in the minds of some viewers, gone beyond the limits of human decency by producing a crucified woman.
Vatican II and the Ecclesial Ministry of Women: Ongoing Challenges in the Roman catholic Church
Authors: Sheehan Mary Ellen
Published: March 2013

In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council called us to a new way of being church. Concurrently, Pope John XXIII identified the shift in women's consciousness occurring in society as one of the signs of our times. In the last thirty-five years, these two horizons have fused and the resulting fresh perspective has given rise to new theological reflection, new pastoral practice, and new challenges, especially concerning women and the exercise of ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.
Christ the Living Stone
Authors: Fahey Michael
Published: March 2013

One of the few English-language hymns still used by both Reformation and Roman Catholic congregations since the displacement of the "standard" repertory by the new wave of liturgical hymns is the moving praise "The Church's One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord" composed by Samuel John Stone (1839-1900). The hymn draws upon a metaphor taken from the activity of building. In this vision Christians are seen as a community of believers, a house with many mansions or rooms built on a solid base or "foundation" as a protection against destabilization or destruction. In the geological setting of Palestine where earthquakes, windstorms, sandy soil and seasonal rains and floods are not unknown, it has been especially important for builders to secure a house on a solid foundation.
New Perspectives on Mary: Voices of Women
Authors: Hines Mary
Published: March 2013

It is a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to contribute this article to a collection in honour of my friend and colleague Ellen M. Leonard, CSJ. Ellen's theological work has been wide ranging — work on the Roman Catholic modernists, Vatican II ecclesiology, Christology and religious life — but throughout her work there is a concern to lift up and include the voices of women. Reflection about Mary reverberates with both Christology and ecclesiology; it has been used to address the relation of the human and the divine and to investigate the exemplary Christian life. Mary likewise has been subject to aggiornamento and, not surprisingly, has also been re-examined by feminists.
Chalcedon's Apprentice: Karl Barth and the Twentieth-Century Critique of Classical Christology
Authors: Patterson Patrick
Published: March 2013

In recent years it has become almost commonplace to raise serious doubts regarding classical, Cha1cedonian Christology. To continue to uphold it as it stands, at least without significant qualifications, has, for the first time in history, become for both Protestants and Roman Catholics more the exception than the rule. There is much variety in twentieth-century christologies. But underlying their often radical differences in method, emphasis, argument and conclusion are three basic kinds of criticism of the traditional formulation.
Revelation Theology and Theological Anthropology: Are they Incommensurable?
Authors: Lavin Margaret
Published: March 2013

Revelation theology is generated by an intense endeavour to place the transcendent, triune and incarnate God at the centre of theological inquiry. It challenges any tendency to identify God with human experience through personal desires and thoughts, and any temptation to identify God with varieties of ideological expression.

Theological anthropology, on the other hand, is generated by a transcendental phenomenology that is more concerned with the conditions of our human knowledge of revelation, through an analysis of the human experience of knowledge and freedom. In this approach, centrality of place is given to the historical nature of the human person as radically open toward the transcendent. Are these two means of theological inquiry incommensurable?
What I learned Teaching new Testament 101
Authors: Donaldson Terence
Published: March 2013

For seventeen years, at 1:00 p.m. on the first Thursday after Labour Day, I walked into the main lecture room at the College of Emmanuel & St. Chad in Saskatoon, to find waiting for me the thirty or so students who had enroled in my two-semester course, "Introduction to the New Testament and Its World." Invariably, it was a mixed group. Usually the class was evenly split between theological students, registered through the Anglican or the United Church Seminary, and university students, registered through the Department of Religious Studies. For some of them the New Testament was familiar territory; others were hard put to tell the difference between an epistle and an apostle. Included in the latter group were students such as the one who, early in the semester, made some comment about the Pharisees and the "Seducees" (the accent fell on the second syllable!), and another who made reference in a paper to that less well-known disciple of Jesus, Judas Escargot. That these howlers were both produced by seminary students should serve to indicate that there was no necessary correlation between the degree for which a student was studying and his or her degree of biblical literacy. (Of course, the students present here this evening are not the kind to produce such blunderful wonders.)
Revisiting Cosmology
Authors: Farris James
Published: March 2013

Two decades ago, Stephen Toulmin issued an appeal to scientists, philosophers and theologians to return to their traditional interest in cosmology, and to discuss the standing of "nature" in the general scheme of things. The appeal, which should be regarded as still outstanding, was echoed by Roman Catholic theologians David Tracy and Nicholas Lash, who stated in a joint essay their conviction that the destiny of humanity, and of history itself, raises the "demand that cosmological concerns reenter all contemporary theology." Considering that cosmology has been a first-order preoccupation of natural theology, one might protest that the subject has never fallen into neglect. The prestigious series of Gifford Lectures, mandated to uphold that tradition, continue to yield important publications and attention even though they were endowed more than a century after Hume and Kant declared their aim to be fruitless. Neo-Thomists, too, have maintained vigorous scholarship in what their tradition may term fundamental theology.
Church, Theology and Society in Postwar Mozambique
Authors: Chamango Simão
Published: March 2013

This paper focuses on two terms that require specific definitions for a correct understanding of the relationship between them-church and society. According to Vocabulary of the Bible by Von Allmen, the word church comes from the Greek term ekklesia, a term with no religious significance in its original Hellenistic context. The Hellenistic world understood ekklesia to be the regularly convened assemblies of determined social groups and even of the entire population (Acts 19:39-40). The fact that this term was used to refer to the Christian community is a result of word roots drawn from the Jewish tradition. In Hebrew, qiihtil means "assembly" and in the hiphil it means "to call together for the assembly." For the Israelites, this calling is related to God. It is God who convokes his assembly. In Greek translation, this term became associated with the verb kaleo (to call). In using this term, the Christian community expressed its consciousness that it is God who calls, through his Son Jesus Christ, all those who belong. In the Christian community, ekklesia, meaning those who are called together, ceased to be a purely secular term and became a religious term. Ekklesia expresses exactly that which the church ought to be in the world. As its mission the church is called to be present in the world in order to communicate to it the calling of God. It cannot withdraw from the world.
Rudolf Bultmann for the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Newlands George
Published: March 2013

Rudolf Bultmann, perhaps the greatest New Testament scholar of the twentieth century, was born in Oldenburg in Germany in 1884. He studied in Marburg and was a professor in Marburg from 1921 to 1951. A member of the Confessing Church during the Nazi period, he lectured after the war in America (Yale) and in Britain (Gifford lectures, Edinburgh).

For a period in the mid-twentieth century, Bultmann was the centre of discussion in New Testament studies. Systematic theology became for many writers largely a matter of New Testament hermeneutics, with the relation of faith to history as its focus. In philosophy, the tum to existentialism (around the work of Bultmann's friend and colleague Martin Heidegger) and issues in the philosophy of history were prominent.

In writing his Ph.D. thesis on Faith and History in the work of Rudolf Bultmann, lain Nicol was researching at the heart of the contemporary problematic, in a school of theology-Glasgow-whose senior members were then at the cutting edge of Bultmann scholarship: John Macquarrie, Ian Henderson and Ronald Gregor Smith. I note with some embarrassment, however, that Zeit und Geschichte, the seminal Bultmann Festschrift of 1964, has been borrowed only three times in the thirty-seven years since publication-a sign of the times. Dr. Nicol took due note of the major criticisms which have been made of Bultmann. But he also found him a constructive dialogue partner for a contemporary theology.
Iain G. Nicol: Celebrating a Faithful Doctor of the Church
Authors: McCarroll-Butler Pamela , Jorgenson Allen
Published: March 2013

The articles contained in this special issue of the Toronto Journal of Theology honour lain G. Nicol. This Festschrift is occasioned by his retirement from Knox College after more than twenty-five years of ministry in the church and academy. When lain came to Canada from Scotland, he brought with him, among many other things, a commitment to the importance of education for a life of faith lived in fullness. We thank the Scots for giving us one of their own. He has been and continues to be a blessing to the church and academy in Canada. Though it is with sadness that we bid farewell to lain in his professional teaching ministry, we are delighted that retirement will afford him greater freedom to pursue his research interests and his congregational ministries in Canada and Scotland.
The Residential Schools and Narrative Identity: A Pastoral Analysis
Authors: Redcliffe Gary
Published: March 2013

This article is about identity. What I am describing and analysing is the role and response of my people in relation to a troubling piece of history. The article is intensely personal, as history often is. Personal pronouns and personal reflection are therefore not self-indulgence on the pages that follow, but an acknowledgment of social and cultural location within the still unfolding story of the residential schools that The United Church of Canada, my church and other churches administered. This article is a modest attempt to do the work that my aboriginal sisters and brothers are asking us non-aboriginal Canadian church members to do as we seek to restore right relations between our peoples.
“The Ecological Bishop: John Zizioulas' Theology of Creation”
Authors: Skira Jaroslav
Published: March 2013

My study presents Metropolitan John Zizioulas' theology of creation as a response to what he terms the "ecological crisis" of our times, ''perhaps the number one problem facing the world-wide human community." He is very explicit in stating that the "ecological crisis is, at root, a spiritual issue .... [Both] historically and from the practical point of view it is impossible to address it without reference to religion and ethics?' His call for a renewed vision of the sacredness of creation is built upon the theological notion of communion, and is intrinsically related to the Church's mission and liturgicallife.4 In this respect, communion not only involves communion with the Trinity, other persons and churches, but it also involves being in communion with the rest of creation. He speaks of each person needing to become, in a liturgical way, a "priest of creation?' Zizioulas' call for a change in cultural consciousness is ultimately expressed in his promotion of what he terms an "ecological asceticism."
Book Reviews
Authors: Forrest Robert , Dewart Joanne , Dourley John , Brown Schuyler , McKellar Hugh , Turner David , Wiebe Don , Kloppenborg John , Khan Abarahim
Published: March 2013

Stefan Heym, The King David Report, reviewed by Robert W.E. Forrest

C. T. McIntire and Ronald A. Wells, eds., History and Historical Understanding, reviewed by Joanne McWilliam Dewart

John P. Dourley, The Psyche as Sacrament: A Comparative Study of C.G. Jung and Paul Tillich, reviewed by Schuyler Brown

John P. Dourley, The Illness That We Are: A Jungian Critique of Christianity, reviewed by Schuyler Brown

Antonio R. Gualtieri, Christianity and Native Traditions; Indigenization and syncretism among the Inuit and Dene of the Western Arctic, reviewed by Hugh D. McKellar

Joan E. O'Donovan, George Grant and the Twilight of Justice, reviewed by David Turner

John Kirby and William M. Thompson, ed., Voegelin and the Theologian: Ten Studies in Interpretation, reviewed by Don Wiebe

Werner H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel. The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul and Q, reviewed by John S. Kloppenborg

Jeremy Walker, Kierkegaard: The Descent Into God, reviewed by Abrahim H. Khan
The End (of What?) Is At Hand
Authors: Walters Stanley
Published: March 2013

The book of Daniel has always exercised a powerful and sometimes occult. attraction upon students of the Bible. For many centuries interpreters, some reputable, some otherwise, have sought to use it as a calendar of events to come, including the end of the age. This is true today, when it can be shown to contain predictions identifying, to the very day, Jesus's triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem on the Sunday before his crucifixion. Not only that, it can be made to predict the emergence of a major coalition of nations (the European Economic Community) as well as a seven-year countdown to the end of the world which can be subdivided into successive events involving the resumption of traditional Jewish sacrificial worship in Jerusalem and the appearance of a political leader who appears friendly but later turns vicious.
Ordination in The United Church of Canada: An Essay in Liturgical Theology
Authors: Newman David
Published: March 2013

For nearly two decades 'ministry' and 'ordination' have been subjects of intense study in the United Church by a series of commissions, committees and taskforces. Their reports have been accepted as a whole or in part, accepted in principle, affirmed for further study, sent back for revision and simply laid to rest. It is hard to assess the outcome of this long and rather tangled process. Peace and quiet seems to have set in after all the turmoil. This may be interpreted as a sign of some accomplishment or as the result of exhaustion with the whole enterprise. Given the inconclusive results the latter interpretation is probably nearer the truth.
Creating a Canadian Religious Tradition: Conceiving the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada
Authors: Tataryn Myroslaw
Published: March 2013

The first settlers of Ukrainian origin on the Canadian Prairies were Ivan Pylypiv and Wasyl Eleniak, arriving in the fall of 1891. They and the subsequent tens of thousands were, in the main, from the western portion of contemporary Ukraine known as Halychyna (oftentimes termed Galicia). This territory, which until the end of World War II was dominated by Polish cultural and political influences, was overwhelmingly Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic. By 1911, of the approximately 120,000 Ukrainians in Canada, only somewhere around 25,000 were Orthodox, primarily Bukovinians and under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan of North America. Although the immigration was predominantly Ukrainian Catholic, that very community in 1918 gave birth to a uniquely Canadian Prairie creation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada.
Reception and Elemental Meaning: An Expansion of the Notion of Psychic Conversion
Authors: Doran Robert
Published: March 2013

I must emphasize that this paper is exploratory, representative of a work in progress. For many, no doubt, it will raise more questions than it answers. Some perhaps will find it too irenic. I seek peace, from a Lonergan standpoint, with Heidegger, with Wittgenstein and with von Balthasar. I think this peace is desirable. I think it is necessary. I think it is possible. Some will disagree. I speak in the title of expanding the notion of psychic conversion. The notion is in need of an expansion in two directions, an expansion into the organic, and an expansion into the hermeneutical. This paper does not attempt the first, except by suggestion in a quotation from Max Scheler that will appear later. What I am about here is an expansion of the notion of psychic conversion into the realm of the hermeneutical.
The Common Good: Choosing Alternative Values, Narratives and Consciousness
Authors: Wilson Suzanne
Published: March 2013

The notion of the common good has never been more necessary or more problematic. It is necessary as a means to resist current unjust eco-social and economic patterns at the heart of neo-liberal globalized capitalism or, as I tend to refer to it, corporate-led globalization. One such pattern is privatization which, as I argue later in this paper, tends to exclude those who face economic barriers to full access to basic services such as education and health care. On the other hand, the concept of the common good is problematic in a postmodern world where people are quite aware of cultural pluralism and historical particularity. Is a value, that is recognized as satisfying human needs and desires, always culturally relative, or do some values cut across cultures by addressing basic human needs and fundamental human desires? What are the elements of a good society, and is it even possible to identify these elements without engaging in an oppressive type of universalism? Is there such a thing as a proper relationship between individuals and their local, regional or global communities? If so, is it possible to outline this relationship while still respecting and valuing individual and cultural diversity?
Toward a Christology for Korean Immigrants in North America: A Critical Interaction of James Cone and J.Y. Lee
Authors: Heo Chun Hoi
Published: March 2013

The catalyst for this essay is my own experience as a first-generation Korean Christian immigrant in the North American context. Although no one "experience" can become theologically normative for the Christian community, the experiences and voices of the oppressed and the marginalized have too long been ignored, or interpreted from the perspective of those who are culturally and politically dominant.! When we speak of "experience" as a factor in theological method, we acknowledge cultural, racial or gender specificities, and also we recognize the differences between the rich and the poor, the dominator and the dominated, those at the "center" and those at the margins. Experiences of the poor, oppressed and marginalized will provide hermeneutical insights, which may not only contribute to developing theologies for ethnic minorities in North America in particular, but also open windows for overcoming the limits of traditional theology.
Paul Tillich' Encounter with the World Religions and the Emergence of a Cross-cultural Discourse Ethic (1954-1965)
Authors: Kline Scott
Published: March 2013

During the 1960s and 1970s, amidst the struggle for civil rights, anti-war protests and liberation movements, few theologians and scholars of religion looked to Paul Tillich as someone who had something important to offer moral debates centred on race relations, gender equality, nuclear proliferation or grassroots revolutions. With a few exceptions, theologians and religious studies scholars since the 1980s have likewise tended to be reluctant to bring Tillich's sometimes abstract thought to bear on current social and political questions. In line with those who think that Tillich should be reread for his subtle and yet substantial contributions to ethics, and even to global politics, I contend that Tillich has much to offer thinkers of all stripes concerned with a world in which the global North has embraced economic globalization, prominent liberal academics such as Robert D. Kaplan, Michael Ignatieff and Samuel P. Huntington have promoted the theory that post-Cold-War conflicts will be primarily between ethnic groups and civilizations, a geopolitical situation in which the world's remaining superpower has developed a post-9/11 foreign policy of empire building, and, perhaps most seriously, a world in which ecological crises loom ever larger.
Walking The Land: Inculturation And Footprints in the Western Desert of Australia
Authors: Konig Robin
Published: March 2013

Father Carl Starkloffbegan teaching at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology in 1981. He arrived with experience in teaching, as associate professor at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, and in cross-cultural ministry, having served in Wyoming at the Wind River Reservation and St Stephen's Mission, where he was Director from 1975-1981. These twin foci of academic work and hands-on experience continued during his time at Regis. Once each month, he would set out on the long drive to the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre in northern Ontario to spend the weekend with Native peoples who wished to engage in ongoing reflection on Gospel-Culture issues. During this time, he continued to build up an impressive bibliography of academic writings on issues of inculturation and missiology.l This dual concern for theory and praxis is captured in the title of a course he taught for many years, "Inculturation: Theory and Practice." Not, for him, a theoretical formulation with no bearing on actual cross-cultural experience. Nor, at the other extreme, was he interested in a praxis which failed to be critically reflective. Rather, Starkloff sensed that discussion of inculturation can too easily get caught up in motherhood statements with which no one could disagree but which say very little, and that the real questions arose when people sought to do inculturation. Thus, while he certainly brought to cross-cultural experience a wealth of theological knowledge and astute critical skill, he aimed to give flesh to theoretical reflections on inculturation by grounding them in experience-his own, that of the Native peoples with whom he maintained regular contact, and that of culturally-diverse groups of students.
Origen Reconsidered as an Exegete of Scripture
Authors: Dunn Matthew
Published: March 2013

A reader sitting down for the first time to the writings of Origen (ca. 185- 253 CE) might be tempted to accuse him of making arbitrary interpretations of the scriptural text. Though possibly admiring the explanations given, he or she might reproach the ancient commentator for having taken advantage of scripture by setting out his own ideas instead of truly attending to the written word of God.! This has been a common reaction to Origen's interpretive practice. Indeed, the Alexandrian scholar's efforts at biblical exegesis have been viewed as hermeneutical artifacts to be examined and catalogued by modem exegetes but almost always placed in a mental "drawer": curios from a bygone era in the study of sacred scripture. Attempts to recover the strengths of Origen's exegesis and make it speak: to contemporary scholars have garnered few supporters. Consequently, his writings are largely dismissed by members of the biblical guild. I myself have shared this pessimism toward Origen's methodology and the results it can provide for the critical study of the sacred text. Yet, I would like to consider some examples from Origen's scriptural interpretation with the hope of opening a dialogue between the writings of the famed exegete and myself— and, perhaps, others as well.
Passion, Prophecy and Perseverance—the Leitmotif of Carmel
Authors: Goulding, IBVM Gill
Published: March 2013

If a spiritual tradition is to have any relevance in the twenty-first century, it needs to be both tough and resilient. The image of 9/11 haunts this new millennium, and our waking hours seem fraught with stories of violence. Terrorism at the international level is breeding a climate of fear in all nations. Alongside this reality, in the West we continue to move ever more insidiously into new cultural art forms centred on the shopping mall. We experience ourselves as people under stress. This is due not just to increased security measures, but to the daily grind of living. Job security, economic stability, family and health matters top the list of stress inducers. Fragmentation appears the order of the day at all levels of society.
Rahner, Romans and Suffering Hope
Authors: Jorgenson Allen
Published: March 2013

Karl Rahner spoke often of the interrelationship between dogmatic theology and the transcendental method he famously espoused. This method was proposed both as a means to explicate theology and as an apologetic bridge. Rahner's use of the transcendental method, however, did not hinder an interest in traditional treatment of theological themes. In an article entitled "On the Theology of Hope," he turns his attention to hope as understood from the scholastic tradition's treatment of 1 Corinthians 13: 13 and explicates the character of such a hope in terms of practical engagement. In this paper, I will consider the character of hope by revisiting the theological treatment of hope in Rahner's article in light of his transcendental method and by engaging the theme of hope as present in Paul's epistle to the Romans.
Mackie and Multiple Universes
Authors: Bowen James
Published: March 2013

In his 1955 article "Evil and Omnipotence" J.L. Mackie argues that all the main solutions to the problem of evil involve logical contradictions. His objection to the free will defence has been particularly influential. The free will defence maintains that all evil is due to the immoral, free choices made either by human beings or by other fallen beings, such as fallen angels, which are necessary to explain the existence of natural evil. According to this defence, it is good that God creates free beings, but immoral of them to misuse their freedom; therefore, God is not responsible for the evils that result. Mackie contends that this defence discounts the logical possibility of God creating free beings who would use their freedom always to choose the good. After all, if some people can manage to do this at least some of the time, why should not God have created a world in which people managed to do this all the time? In other words, God should have created this logically possible world of freedom and perfect goodness, instead of our world of freedom and evil.
Evangelism in Augustine's Confessions: Ancient Light on a Contemporary Subject
Authors: Bowen John
Published: March 2013

Evangelism has been a preoccupation in many mainline denominations over the past twenty years or so. On one level, this may simply have been a panic reaction to declining numbers and the feeling that evangelism is one way to "get people back to church." My own church, the Anglican Church, was not untypical in proclaiming the 1990s a Decade of Evangelism.
Hermeneutics and the Differentiated Consensus of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificaton
Authors: Andersen Ryan
Published: March 2013

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JD), signed on October 31, 1999, introduced what appeared to be a novel form of agreement. While it makes statements to which both the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and Lutherans can agree, it also states their differences and the diverse ways in which each party understands and expresses the consensus. After the JD was drawn up, the Roman Catholic Church went on to produce a list of issues needing further clarification and study. This led many to wonder how the document could even be called an agreement. Adopting the language used in paragraph 14 of the JD, this form of agreement, which contains differences, is called a differentiated consensus. I will examine this particular form of agreement through the hermeneutical approach first developed by Heidegger and Gadamer so as to provide an account of "differentiated consensus." This approach, I will argue, not only allows us to understand both the nature and the possibility of such an agreement; its implications also show us the tasks and promises the document holds for both ecumenism and our understanding of justification.
The Future of Liberation Theologies: Rumours of Their Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Authors: Medina Néstor
Published: March 2013

An expatriate returning to Latin America after two decades abroad would be struck by the dramatic changes in many aspects of life there, including religion. Many of these changes stem from the development of "free" market capitalism, the ambiguous nature and uneven character of which have become obvious.
The Challenges of a Theology of Religious Pluralism for Traditional Fundamentalist Faith
Authors: Vigil José Marí , Cormie Lee
Published: March 2013

The theological currents of liberation theology in Latin America and interfaith dialogues in Asia are widely perceived to have developed along separate tracks, with Asian Christians, comprising tiny islands in great seas of Asian religions, focusing dialogue across faith traditions, and the Latin Americans focusing on political and economic issues. Some commentators have claimed that early Latin American liberation theology (LALT) was primarily focused on economic and political issues, only turning in a subsequent paradigm shift to questions of cultures, spiritualities and cosmovisions.
Acts of Impropriety: The Imbalance of History and Theology in Luke-Acts
Authors: Lüdemann Gerd
Published: March 2013

Jews and Christians both have Scripture. Likewise, they both have a number of different traditions of interpretation for these texts. And, unfortunately, they also use and have used their Bibles as history books so as to establish the historical foundations of their respective faith communities. Even more upsetting is the fact that these biblical histories of faith communities continue to be taken more or less literally — even after the recent revolution in our understanding of historiography has enabled us to develop a new historical consciousness.

We know that written histories contain both truth and falsehood, that history can be distorted or even falsified, and that such manipulations are capable of being discovered. Eyewitnesses most easily distinguish truth and falsehood, of course. As we go further back in time and the number of perspectives from which events are perceived increases, it becomes more difficult to distinguish between objective reporting and wilful or even unconscious "management" of the facts. In more than a few cases it may be impossible to know precisely what happened. Since no one can write entirely objective history, we must be ever alert to identify ideology when it plays a recognizable role.

Since we are aware that history is manipulated even now in a world teeming with information, it seems to me entirely legitimate to begin with the assumption that in times when sources were few and less easily tested, history must have been even more commonly manipulated—and more thoroughly.
The Whole as Love: Geoge Grant's Theological Vision
Authors: McCarroll Pam
Published: March 2013

George Grant was a formidable Canadian philosopher whose faith constituted the ground of his thought. Though Grant himself did not write much about his faith, much has been written about how his faith, rooted in Christianity, shaped his thought in fundamental ways. In this essay I build on previous work and show how Grant's faith in "the Whole" can be discerned as the background scenery and landscape within which his thought is situated. It is his faith in the Whole that provides him with a critical location for his political philosophy and cultural critique. Grant began to use the term ''the Whole" as early as Philosophy in the Mass Age, and more widely after his reading of Leo Strauss. However, it is through his fundamental relationship with the thought of Simone Weil and her reading of Plato that the content of the Whole takes shape for Grant and ever more deeply integrates and clarifies his faith and thought upon all things.
The Public Church,Civil Society and the Private Sphere
Authors: Addis Timothy
Published: March 2013

Secularization theory is most often discussed in the context of church membership statistics, but it is of interest as well for its thesis that the public or political activity of the church declines with modernization. This thesis has been questioned in recent decades in light of evidence of an increasing public profile of the church in both developing and Western societies. One problem with the thesis is its reliance on the classical liberal model of society, which recognizes only a public sphere of the state apparatus and a private one of discrete individuals. The classical liberal model suggests that political action will take the form of attempting to control state institutions. Since modernization entails social or functional differentiation, including the differentiation of church and state, the model also makes the decline of the political church appear inevitable. l For the most part, however, the church no longer seeks to impose doctrines on society . by means of legislation, but rather influences government indirectly, by forming or simply appealing to associational groups. The public role of the church today is best portrayed with the concept of civil society, which acknowledges that many associational groups, such as workplace organizations, colleges, hospitals and the church, are neither strictly public nor strictly private. They are not part of institutionalized politics, yet their values are germane to the public interest and they contribute to public policy-making.
A Different Tenor: Glimpses and Critical Reflections: Kawuki Mukasa's Human Sexuality and Religion: Reframing the Problem
Authors: Galabuzi Grace-Edward , McCance Heather , Lazerte Darcey
Published: March 2013

Different from the tenor of academic essays, the three expositions that follow offer glimpses of and reflections on "a book that stirs ideas about how the relationship between culture and religion shapes our identities, our understanding of the nature of truth and our interpersonal relationships on matters of sexuality. Discussants were invited to submit in writing what they presented at the launch of the book. Originally four, two discussants were scholars outside the study of religion and theology, one taking a Freudian perspective. Missing here only because of the time constraints of the Journal, that perspective is mentioned to suggest the rich interdisciplinary context in which the exchanges occurred at the book launch. Mukasa holds a doctorate degree from the University of st. Michael's College, Toronto. He is the author of Belonging: Constructing a Canadian Theology of Inclusion, Sojourner and In God's Presence. He currently holds the position of Coordinator for Dialogue in Ethics and Interfaith Relations for the Anglican Church of Canada.
Theologian ofthe Radical Middle: Harold Wells, A Personal and Academic Profile
Authors: McTavish John
Published: March 2013

I write this profile of Professor Harold Wells not as a detached observer but as a personal friend. I have known Harold for more than forty years as a fellow student at both basic and advanced degree levels, as a colleague in ministry, and as an appreciative reader of his published work. Interviews with former students as well as conversations with Wells over the years on the subject of his career also lie behind this essay.
Renewing the Social Gospel through the Doctrine of Passibility
Authors: Fennell Robert
Published: March 2013

The doctrine of passibility provides fertile ground for renewed commitment to a Christ-centred passion for the social gospel. This paper explores some of the history of the doctrine of divine impassibility and outlines the ways in which Moltmann, in contrast, presents passibility as constitutive of his theological understandings. The God of vulnerable love, who risks engagement with the world, suffers redemptively—especially upon the cross—and draws human beings into mutual solidarity, into commitment to emancipation and, ultimately, into the very life of the triune God, whose desire is the fullness and goodness of the consummation of God's Realm.
Sacrament and Sacrifice: Attending to Some Neglected Biblical Threads
Authors: Watts A.M.
Published: March 2013

Whereas we can connect with the story of the giving of the Commandments, it is very difficult for us to do so with this incident. It reflects the age when the places of worship were noisy and bloody and smelly. The bawling of animals and the cooing of turtledoves were an integral part of life around an altar. When contemporary Christians hear or read the "cleansing of the temple" scene in the gospels, we tend to see it as an effort by Jesus to clean the Temple up and get rid not only of the commercialism but also of all the ugly sacrificial elements. That is an interpretation not justified by the text. When Jesus quoted the words about the Temple being a house of prayer for all nations, he was not referring to quiet prayer murmured in a quiet place. It is true that when Jesus began to throw things around in the Temple that day, he drove out the animals along with the money changers. But he was not trying to get rid of the noise and the smell in order to secure the hushed, hygienic conditions we now require in our churches. He was trying to get rid of the profiteering that had developed around the money changing. And if people like N.T. Wright are correct in saying that Jesus was in part signalling the end of the Temple, it was not on the ground that sacrifice had always been a pointless exercise but that the significance of what had been taking place in the temple was now to be gathered up in Christ..
Pontiflex: A Brief Biographical Note on Some of the Contributions of Canon Eugene Fairweather to the Canadian Church
Authors: Baycroft John
Published: March 2013

How does theology serve the Church? What is the bridge between the institutional Church and the theological academy? For decades the Anglican Church of Canada has relied upon Canon Eugene Rathbone Fairweather of Trinity College to answer these questions, and to be himself the most distinguished example of the integration of the theological enterprise into the life of the faith community.
Fairweather at Trinity
Authors: Buchner Howard
Published: March 2013

There is a copy of a letter on file from Provost Cosgrave of Trinity College dated May 15th, 1941 and addressed to Eugene R. Fairweather. It contains almost a promise of admission to the two year divinity course and residence. 'There should be no problem', the Provost wrote. In September 1941 Eugene moved into what was to be his place of residence (with few interruptions) down to the present time. He had been born in Ottawa (but with Nova Scotia roots) and educated in Montreal — high school followed by a B.A. from McGill. In his first two years at Trinity he completed the two year Divinity course and also an M.A. degree from the University of Toronto in Philosophy. He was part of a small but distinguished Divinity Class of four — unlike this year's divinity enrolment of a hundred and thirty five. Indeed, the University of Trinity College was very small- three hundred in Arts and, until after the war usually less than a dozen altogether in Divinity. There was little interaction with the other colleges — certainly not Wycliffe! Liturgy happened in the Chapel — now Seeley Hall — in well-done middle of the way Anglicanism. Ordination to the diaconate and priesthood followed in 1943—44.
The Concept of Power in Ecclesiology
Authors: Cawley Janet
Published: March 2013

Historical critical approaches to scripture and tradition have thrown ecclesiology into disarray: once, ecclesiology began with a clear distinction between 'order' and 'organization'; the essential structure of the visible Church was a matter of revelation; the rest of it was not theologically significant. Modem thought cannot make sense of the idea of a revealed institutional structure; at the same time, what used to be called non-theological factors tum out to have a great deal of theological significance. The order-organization distinction served to provide a theological base for institutional structure, since organization followed logically from order: the death of this distinction tends to split ecclesiology into two unrelated disciplines; on the one hand, speculative ecclesiology has no clear structural implications, on the other hand, church administration has no clear theological base.