Yet the rise of neo-orthodoxy only reasserted the unresolved tension between the assumptions of historical criticism and the neoevangelical affirmations
of dogmatic theology.
To take an illustration which is particularly apt, as it does not involve any of the central problems
of dogmatic theology, in Matt.
This initially occurs in Descartes and Spinoza, but it becomes far more comprehensive in Schelling and Hegel, and so much so that the whole body
of dogmatic theology undergoes a metamorphosis into pure philosophical thinking in Hegel's system.
Father Edward T. Oakes, S.J., professor
of dogmatic theology at Mundelein Seminary and University of St. Mary of the Lake, has gone to God, dying on December 6, 2013.
Sister Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., is professor emerita
of dogmatic theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois.
He published the original version of The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases
of Dogmatic Theology in a Presbyterian adult education magazine called Crossroads in 1967, but it did not appear in book form until 1975 (Fortress), the year after he published The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth - and Nineteenth - Century Hermeneutics (Yale University Press, 1974).
Roland Faber is Professor of Systematic Theology at the University ofVienna, Institute
of Dogmatic Theology, Schottenring 21, A - 1010 Vienna, Austria.
What is the relevance
of dogmatic theology inherited from our benefactors in Europe?
In my review, I argued that the needs of apologetics ought not drive the development
of dogmatic theology.
Not exact matches
Those
of us who continue to fight for orthodoxy, in
dogmatic as well as moral
theology, miss those days when there was a clear beacon shining from across the Tiber.
That would seem to imply that
theology for a person
of faith is more speculative than
dogmatic, certainly not the
dogmatic absolutism that closes minds and often hearts that we see in so many who profess faith.
In fact,
dogmatic theology can make us more resistent to Grace, «knowledge, when it is not transformed by love, «puffs up», feeds instead
of challenging the narcissistic ego.
It was recognized that the Church needed to develop a
dogmatic theology of itself, a real ecclesiology, which would express all the truths about the Church in their correct proportions, apart from this or that controversy of the moment — a project that bore fruit in Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the
dogmatic theology of itself, a real ecclesiology, which would express all the truths about the Church in their correct proportions, apart from this or that controversy
of the moment — a project that bore fruit in Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council's
Dogmatic Constitution on the
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.
There is a sense in which the intention
of early biblical criticism was an effort to restore a «biblical
theology» in which the Scriptures were freed from their
dogmatic imprisonment.
Alex — my view is that male - centred
dogmatic theology sets up a dualistic and paternal way
of perceiving ourselves that is maintained to keep control.
Of course, we are both engaging in speculative interpretation / theology, not dogmatic theology; so neither of our opinions should pose a challenge to anyone's fait
Of course, we are both engaging in speculative interpretation /
theology, not
dogmatic theology; so neither
of our opinions should pose a challenge to anyone's fait
of our opinions should pose a challenge to anyone's faith.
Yet their methods are partially dialectical, and we may hope that their dialectical methods have saved
theology from the temptation
of the «positivism
of revelation» (Bonhoeffer's words)
of the Barth
of the Church
Dogmatics.
Dogmatic theology is dogmatic precisely insofar as it's not dialectical, or not in response to the pressing or fashionable questions of
Dogmatic theology is
dogmatic precisely insofar as it's not dialectical, or not in response to the pressing or fashionable questions of
dogmatic precisely insofar as it's not dialectical, or not in response to the pressing or fashionable questions
of the day.
Apologetics should change and adapt in response to the questions
of the audience and the particular themes
of the age, but
dogmatic theology is deliberately distinguished from apologetics in its concern for timeless truths.
The document is not a dissertation in
dogmatic or moral
theology on marriage and the family, although it reflects the thought
of the Church on the subject.
For life within the Catholic Church, the stumbling - block as regards change in the Church's doctrine is not so much the question
of defined dogmas as other doctrines
of the Church in
dogmatic and moral
theology which are taught authoritatively but which in principle can not count as defined doctrines
of faith or as irreformable dogma.
Of course, there are new questions in dogmatic and moral theology, which have been discussed more openly at and after the Council and which have not yet been solved, among them questions of great importance also for the practical lif
Of course, there are new questions in
dogmatic and moral
theology, which have been discussed more openly at and after the Council and which have not yet been solved, among them questions
of great importance also for the practical lif
of great importance also for the practical life.
Mozart's music does not merely inform Barth's
theology; Mozart, says von Balthasar, shapes the style
of the Church
Dogmatics overall.
Ultimately, then, God would be conceived as Other and as Holy; perhaps as the «normative» Judeo - Christian - Islamic tradition has asserted all along in its much maligned
dogmatic theology; while leaving mystical assertions
of identity and oneness suspect.
Isaak August Dorner, «On the Proper Version
of the
Dogmatic Concept
of the Immutability
of God,» in God and Incarnation in Mid-Nineteenth Century German
Theology, edited and translated by Claude Welce (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).
Thus, for example, the quasi-homiletical rhetoric
of Barth's Church
Dogmatics is not «mere style» but a sign
of the inseparability
of theology from witness and proclamation.
Dogmatics are for the sake
of Scripture study, not vice versa, and so with all technical branches
of theology.
Inevitably such a dialectical
theology falls back upon a
dogmatic and non-dialectical form
of faith or belief, thereby foreclosing the possibility
of reaching a coincidentia oppositorum.
This
theology was «church
dogmatics» - it had to do with the reiteration
of the self - understanding
of ecclesial existence.
That being said, the renewal
of interest ought not to be overstated: much doctrinal
theology in English remains preoccupied with keeping up a conversation with other fields
of inquiry (often literary and cultural theory) and is so eager to do so that it often neglects the descriptive or
dogmatic tasks
of systematics.
Diamond's philosophical
theology following the rejection
of Barthian
dogmatics and logical positivism.
Judgment as to whether Barth's
theology adequately interprets the moral demand in the Christian life must await the completion
of his Church
Dogmatics.
Emotionally, then,
dogmatic theology is worth something to minds
of the type
of Newman's.
It calls its conclusions
dogmatic theology, or philosophy
of the absolute, as the case may be; it does not call them science
of religions.
For all his warnings about the hubris
of theological systems, his
dogmatic theology looked like a massive new scholasticism.
In the wake
of the earlier volumes
of Karl Barth's Church
Dogmatics and a 1967 article by Karl Rahner, serious Western
theology has rediscovered — at least momentarily — the centrality
of the doctrine
of Trinity.
• Reviewing a batch
of evangelical books on
dogmatic theology (May), Carl Braaten, a Lutheran, didn't like at all Wayne Grudem's Systematic T
theology (May), Carl Braaten, a Lutheran, didn't like at all Wayne Grudem's Systematic
TheologyTheology.
If, as I recently argued in the Century («The Suffering God: The Rise
of a New Orthodoxy,» April 16), belief in the suffering
of God is the most basic revolutionary development
of 20th - century
theology, then Paul Tillich and others were wrong in contending that, in his movement from Romans to the
Dogmatics, Barth went from a revolutionary to a conservative stance.
Andrew Dickson White, founding president
of Cornell, for instance, published A History
of the Warfare
of Science with
Theology in Christendom (1896) in which he projected into the past a supposed opposition
of dogmatic Christianity to scientific progress.
While insisting that he was not tempted by biblical literalism, Karl Barth began his
dogmatics by describing the liberal tradition
of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Adolf von Harnack as «the plain destruction
of Protestant
theology and the Protestant church.»
It maintains that New Testament exegesis is important for
dogmatic theology, and does not shirk from the tensions created by such exegesis for the proclaimed faith
of the church.
In times past, various ecumenical seminars have been held, growing mostly out
of Kung's ecumenical interests — his seminar with Jürgen Moltmann on «Contemporary Christology,» one with Heiko Oberman on «The Concept
of Justification in Luther and the Council
of Trent,» and another with Eberhard Jungel on «Natural
Theology in Barth's Church
Dogmatics.»
Perhaps American religion's recent conservative shift has so affected the mood
of the schools that denominational seminaries must now battle just to hold on to the gains made in the 1950s and «60s (such as commitments to practical
theology, to historical - critical hermeneutics and to revisioning traditional
dogmatics).
Kelly's summary
of the trends in the curriculum
of Oberlin Seminary applies to many others as well: «The program
of study was changing from the
dogmatic to the practical, from the ecclesiocentric to the socio - centric... «34 More recent examinations show the continuation
of these emphases in our time though they also show a revival
of interest in systematic and exegetical
theology and in the Biblical languages.
Daily meditation became essential; he saw that
dogmatic theology needs never to be viewed in isolation from the moral and spiritual; radical Christian life and witness is the interpenetration
of ex opere operato and ex opere operantis; effective expressions
of faith and liturgical rites call for fervent inner spiritual life.
The recent
dogmatic theology of Stange, Althaus, and Holmstrom, has followed up the suggestions
of Luther and worked out an eschatology on genuine New Testament lines.
First
of all, there is very little
theology in America today:
dogmatic theology has virtually disappeared, biblical scholarship is largely archeological and philological, church history barely maintains its existence as a discipline; and, in terms
of German influences, Bultmann has replaced Barth as the guiding light
of the younger theologians.
Its metaphysics is equally compatible and equally incompatible with the sensibilities
of any number
of faiths, and
of any number
of schools within individual faiths; but, if it has anything resembling a
theology, it is
of the mystical, rather than the
dogmatic, kind, and so its doctrinal content is nebulous.
If we accept these strictures for
theology, then it follows that contemporary
theology must be alienated from the Church, that it can be neither kerygmatic,
dogmatic nor apologetic, and thus its deepest immediate task is the discovery
of its own ground.
To address the norms
of congregational faithfulness is to do constructive
dogmatic theology and moral
theology.