Kenotic Ecclesiology: Context, Orientations, Secularity (original) (raw)

The Kenotic Dimension of the Church in Interreligious Dialogue

Although one would argue for its eternal existence, the kenotic theme was explicitly developed by the English and German theologians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, influenced by the Hegelian philosophy. It aroused many commentaries among scholars and it is far from finishing. In this article, we will try to understand the kenotic dimension of the Church in interreligious dialogue. Such a study requires starting with Biblical understanding of kenosis. We recognise in advance that the theme is complex and complicated, it will not be explicitly dealt here, not only because of space, but because it can be resolved satisfactory only when considered in a wider context.

Kenosis as a Spirituality and an Ethic: The Church and Secularity

2018

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the kenotic conversation made a pronounced shift from ontological speculation about the Incarnation of Christ to discussion of kenosis as a metaphor for God's self-emptying or self-giving existence. God's kenosis is manifest through creation and, most perfectly, through the crucified Christ who is the standard for authentic human, Spirit-enlivened life. In Western secular culture, where a primary question centres on what it means to be the most genuine version of oneself, kenosis offers an optimal way for the church to experience, articulate and embody a faithful and relevant response. David Tracy's hermeneutic of mutually critical correlation offers a method for a church-secular dialogue which assumes everybody is asking questions and seeking answers. Secular people must listen to each other, not to the end of achieving a fictitious sociological neutrality, rather with the goal of intelligently upholding distinct points of view. To the question of genuine humanity, contemporary people, religious and otherwise, have come up with some answers. In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor describes key ways that Western secular people understand genuine humanity in an "immanent" situation. Because the contemporary Western church is grounded in the same philosophical and historical milieu as secular culture, the church and culture are likely to view the situation and solutions in similar categories providing common ground for conversation. Kenosis as a Christian spirituality and ethic is explored through Jürgen Moltmann's The Crucified God, W.H. Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense, and Lucien Richard's Christ: The Self-Emptying of God. This offers a way for Christians to raise the conversation about genuine humanity in a way that correlates with, expands on and even transforms common understandings. 1

Towards a Phenomenology of Kenosis: Thinking after the Theological Turn

Open Theology, 2022

What could it mean to think "after the theological turn"? This article proposes one possible answer by reframing the theological turn in light of the way in which Paul's kenosis serves as a metaphor for deconstruction in a variety of continental philosophers who are all nevertheless hostile to overt theologising. Tracking this notion through the history of theology and philosophy, the article argues that it has been philosophically appropriated so as to indicate the point within the Christian theological complex that constitutes its fatal agent by setting in motion Christianity's own self-deconstruction or de-theologisation. This dynamic, which implies that every engagement with theology ultimately carries itself outside of theology proper, will then allow the article to reconceive the gesture operated by phenomenology's theological turn: in their right turn towards theology, the philosopher must be careful not to simply remain stuck there, for it only serves their investigation insofar as this engagement is precisely what allows them to turn away from "the theological," or for phenomenology de-theologise itself. By drawing out the kenotic motif in contemporary continental philosophy and connecting it to phenomenology's theological turn, the article thus argues that what is needed now is a deconstruction of the theological turn. This can be accomplished by way of what the article proposes to call a "phenomenology of kenosis": namely, a phenomenology that starts from theology (Paul's notion of kenosis), precisely so as to move beyond it (to de-theologise itself).

'A Critical Consideration of the Strengths and Weaknesses of Contemporary Kenotic Christology'

In contemporary theology kenotic Christology has become a popular way of making sense of the incarnation. At the same time, many have argued against kenotic Christology in a number of different ways. It is the aim of this study to assess the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary kenotic Christology. It is argued that kenotic Christology is motivated by a variety of factors. It is also argued that kenotic Christology does provide a coherent account of the incarnation. Despite this it is demonstrated that the kenotic account isn’t necessitated by scripture, and that since it makes fundamental modifications to the traditional divine attributes it shouldn’t be held to unless it is the only coherent understanding of the incarnation. That it is the only coherent understanding of the incarnation is challenged in the final section which points out a number of problems with kenotic methodology as well as arguing that a divine subconscious model is the best way to make sense of the incarnation.

Reality and Form in Catholicity

Journal of Anglican Studies, 2012

The word 'catholic' has had a varied and often controversial history in Anglicanism. Its ordinary English sense is that of general and universal. One sees this historically in the growing medical literature of the seventeenth century in relation to cures or treatments that are said to be generally or universally applicable. Of course it had a specific application to Western Christianity after the Great Schism in 1054 when the Eastern churches generally became known as Orthodox and the Western as Catholic. At the time of the Reformation in England catholic was somewhat self-consciously used to mean all Christians in distinction from those churches under the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome. Elizabeth's injunctions in 1559 stated: 'You shall pray for Christes Holy Catholique church, that is, for the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the whole worlde, and especially for the Church of England and Ireland.' Similar usage is retained in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. More convoluted usages appear in the nineteenth century in the context of the Oxford movement and the ritualist controversies. This phase has influenced current usage. It is not a word that generally carries popular weight among Anglicans as part of an active understanding of church life. This is a loss since catholicity belongs as a vital element in the life of the church. Two elements are worth recovering; the idea that the local church belongs to a wider fellowship as part of its vital life of faith. The second element is that the wider church, whether within a specific tradition like Anglicanism or more generally, represents the reality of catholicity through a variety of institutional arrangements. A brief narrative of these themes might help us to see how the reality to which catholicity refers relates to the infinitely varied form of organizations by which it has been facilitated. The word 'catholic' does not occur in the New Testament at all yet it was a word commonly available at the time of the writing of the