The Freedom of a Christian: Grace, Vocation, and the Meaning of Our HumanityBy Gilbert Meilaender (original) (raw)
Related papers
Undergoing God: Dispatches from the Scene of a Break-in - By James Alison
Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2008
ISBN 0-232-52676-1), 246 pp., pb £12.95 James Alison, a British Roman Catholic priest and theologian, is known primarily for two preoccupations. First, he appropriates theologically the insights of René Girard on violence and mimetic rivalry, making them available to a broader, nonspecialist audience. Second, he is gay and has worked for full inclusion of gays and lesbians in Catholicism, a move which has been rather costly for him, relegating him to 'the long-term unemployed' as he puts it (p. 13). He returns to these two concerns in this, his most recent work.
Theology: The Basics - By Alister E. McGrath
Religious Studies Review, 2009
sophical questions of evidence, the individuation of persons, and idolatry. Throughout these analyses there is also a tenor of cultural critique as Steinbock criticises the modern conception of the self and diagnoses the rejection of vertical relations, which he calls idolatry, as the root of much evil in late capitalist societies. So while the book displays academic rigor it is at the same time a plea for a restored cultural sense of the vertical. Phenomenology and Mysticism stands out as an original work in a genre too often reduced to commentaries on classical figures. Steinbock is an acute phenomenologist in his own right, and this work sets a new standard for the interaction between phenomenology and theology/religious studies. While free of obscurantist jargon, the book nonetheless requires some background in philosophy and religious studies. Still, its fresh approach and its original analyses should make it the necessary point of reference for postgraduate students and established scholars alike. Press, 2007. Pp. vii +146. $26.99. In this text, which appears in SCM Press's Controversies in Contextual Theology Series, the authors insist that controversy demonstrates the inherently democratic nature of feminist theology and continually pushes it toward new ways of transgressing and transforming oppressive structures. Each chapter examines various feminist positions with regard to a particular methodological or doctrinal issue: gender and sexuality, feminist theological hermeneutics, the Virgin Mary, Christology, life after death, and the future of feminist theologies. While providing an overview of significant feminist theological positions, the authors emphasize approaches, like postcolonial and queer theologies, that more radically challenge the sexual, metaphysical, and capitalist assumptions of Western theology. Both authors have written extensively elsewhere on the need for Christian theology to take seriously transgressive sexualities, and this is the freshest insight that they bring to the discussions in this text (see especially the chapters on gender and sexuality and on Christology). It remains unclear, however, what audience is best served by this text. There is little new here for the reader who is well acquainted with feminist theologies, yet the discussions of various thinkers assume this acquaintance, and are too brief to serve well as introductory summaries. Moreover, the text would have embodied its argument more fully, and demonstrated the stated aims of the series more successfully, if the authors' voices were more distinct, thus performing the dialogically constructive nature of controversy.
Theology at the Eucharistic Table - By Jeremy Driscoll O.S.B
Religious Studies Review, 2009
sophical questions of evidence, the individuation of persons, and idolatry. Throughout these analyses there is also a tenor of cultural critique as Steinbock criticises the modern conception of the self and diagnoses the rejection of vertical relations, which he calls idolatry, as the root of much evil in late capitalist societies. So while the book displays academic rigor it is at the same time a plea for a restored cultural sense of the vertical. Phenomenology and Mysticism stands out as an original work in a genre too often reduced to commentaries on classical figures. Steinbock is an acute phenomenologist in his own right, and this work sets a new standard for the interaction between phenomenology and theology/religious studies. While free of obscurantist jargon, the book nonetheless requires some background in philosophy and religious studies. Still, its fresh approach and its original analyses should make it the necessary point of reference for postgraduate students and established scholars alike. Press, 2007. Pp. vii +146. $26.99. In this text, which appears in SCM Press's Controversies in Contextual Theology Series, the authors insist that controversy demonstrates the inherently democratic nature of feminist theology and continually pushes it toward new ways of transgressing and transforming oppressive structures. Each chapter examines various feminist positions with regard to a particular methodological or doctrinal issue: gender and sexuality, feminist theological hermeneutics, the Virgin Mary, Christology, life after death, and the future of feminist theologies. While providing an overview of significant feminist theological positions, the authors emphasize approaches, like postcolonial and queer theologies, that more radically challenge the sexual, metaphysical, and capitalist assumptions of Western theology. Both authors have written extensively elsewhere on the need for Christian theology to take seriously transgressive sexualities, and this is the freshest insight that they bring to the discussions in this text (see especially the chapters on gender and sexuality and on Christology). It remains unclear, however, what audience is best served by this text. There is little new here for the reader who is well acquainted with feminist theologies, yet the discussions of various thinkers assume this acquaintance, and are too brief to serve well as introductory summaries. Moreover, the text would have embodied its argument more fully, and demonstrated the stated aims of the series more successfully, if the authors' voices were more distinct, thus performing the dialogically constructive nature of controversy.
Hapág, 2016
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people are often subjected to suspicion, condemnation and exclusion by mainstream churches based on the perception that they are deviant, pathological and sinful. Consequently, they are treated as objects of unfamiliarity, derision and pity rather than subjects of experiential wisdom who can inform the theological enterprise. Through a detailed analysis and interpretation of the narratives of gay and transgender Malaysian Christians on their interweavings of gender, sexuality and faith, and navigating the postsynodal apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia and the thoughts of various scholars, I argue that LGBTQ people can contribute to the augmentation of Christian theologising – a sort of tutelage from those whose voices are ordinarily marginalised and dismissed due to their non-normative genders and sexualities. Specifically, I propose that LGBTQ theological tutelage can galvanise the processes of (i) recognising and respecting personal theological agency; (ii) challenging gender and sexuality injustices; and (iii) interrogating and rethinking biblical interpretation.