Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Latest Issue of Ecclesiology
Notification has just arrived from SAGE. Articles include:
Communion, Unity and Primacy: An Anglican Response to Ut Unum Sint
Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, published in 1995, was immediately recognized as a document of fundamental importance for ecumenism. John Paul II clearly and unequivocally renewed the Roman Catholic Church’s commitment to the ecumenical movement and invited leaders and theologians of other churches to engage with the Roman Catholic Church in patient and fraternal dialogue on the issue of the Petrine offices. A decade later this lecture reviews official Anglican responses to the Pope’s initiative and sets out issues which Anglicans need to address and explore.
Authority to Teach in Classical Anglicanism
Anglicanism currently finds itself embroiled in a variety of ‘controversies of Faith’ that individually and together threaten to split the Communion - and most of these concern questions of teaching and authority: who within Anglicanism has authority to teach what, and why? In this situation one naturally looks back on the tradition to seek how an understanding of the past may inform the present. The following paper does so by considering the concept of authority in the foundational period of ‘Anglicanism’, namely from the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England to the denominational ‘invention’ of Anglicanism after 1829. It discovers there three interrelated principles of an Anglican understanding of authority, which are briefly summarized after some remarks about how to use conclusions of papers such as this - and how not to.
The Praxis of Inculturation for Mission: Roberto de Nobili’s Example and Legacy
This article investigates inculturation in the twentieth century in relation to the example and practice of the seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary Roberto de Nobili. Monastic and liturgical attempts at inculturation in South India are examined as well as the critique offered by Dalit Theology. There are four sections: (1) Outline and analysis of the practice of de Nobili, and its theological basis in the seventeenth century. (2) Analysis of the parallels between the praxis of de Nobili and various Christian sannyasi in the twentieth century, e.g. Savarirayan Jesudason, Ernest Forrester-Paton, Jack Winslow, Abhishiktananda, Bede Griffiths and Francis Acharya. (3) Evaluation of the practice, and its theological basis, of these sannyasi and other religious leaders in South India. (4) Investigation of the critique of Dalit Theology of these practices, and possible outcomes for future practice e.g. in relation to inter-religious dialogue.
A Practical Church Unity within Secular Hospitals
Ecclesial unity among Christian physicians is jeopardized by the culture of secular medicine. The medical context, rather than being a neutral sphere, has increasingly become a context that cuts loose and reshapes church members into a secular ecclesia. This thesis is demonstrated through focus groups composed of Christian physician-residents within Harvard Medical School residency programs. The interviews describe how many Christian physicians are psychologically isolated and spiritually endangered because of compliance to secular expectations within academic teaching hospitals. In contrast, the key to undoing secular atomization stems from the nature of the church as a people gathered in the presence of Christ. Thus, the essay develops an ecclesiology that focuses on the manifestation of unity in its local relationships and embodied practices. Despite severe time constraints, Christian physicians have the opportunity to reconstitute a unified church within the secular by pursuing one another in love and offering tangible signs of solidarity.
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Thursday, 18 January 2007
Ecclesiology: Latest Issue
The latest issue of Ecclesiology revolves around the question 'What is the Church?'. Articles include:
Oliver O'Donovan, 'What Kind of Community is the Church? The Richard Hooker Lectures 2005'
Richard Bourne, 'Democracy and Civil Society: Reflections on John Howard Yoder's Exilic Ecclesiology'
Carolina Armenteros, 'Communio Ecclesiology and the World: Ecumenical Intimations of Joseph de Maistre's Du Pape'
Frederick W. Guyette, 'Sacramentality in the Fourth Gospel: Conflicting Interpretations'
Thomas Seville CR, 'Article Review: The Origins of the Eucharist in Early Christian Worship'
Unfortunately, abstracts are not yet up on the Sage site, nor downloads for those who have access. But go here in due course and you should be able to locate them.
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