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ListTank: Theological Trends to Watch

In response to last week's posting of "Rusty Reno's Thoroughly Modern List of Top Theology Programs," I suggested that ThinkTank should have a weekly "Controversial List" feature.  Well, for this week at least, I mean it.  In consultation with Keith Johnson, I've identified five theological trends that I think will be increasingly important in the next few years.  We welcome additional nominations, of course.

Five Theological Trends to Watch:

1. The resurgence of the analogia entis.  The analogia entis or “analogy of being” has started getting a lot of attention, mainly from theologians who are interested in recovering a Catholic/Orthodox way of seeing the world (read: RO and its sympathizers). This trend corresponds with a not-to-be-missed AAR session: David Bentley Hart and George Hunsinger are scheduled to talk about this issue at the Barth Society meeting.
2. The spike of interest in aesthetics.  Everywhere one looks these days, there’s either a job opening for, a new book about, or conference on “Theology and Aesthetics.”  I suppose this trend is related to the first one, but it’s also related to a flood of interest in von Balthasar.  I’m guessing that, over the next few years, von Balthasar is going to become the most-studied dead theologian.
3. The “Grace and Being” controversy.  This controversy is basically about the relation between God’s triune being and God’s election to be God-with-us:  Is it proper to say that God is triune for the sake of being with us?  Or should we say, instead, that God’s being-in-Godself is irreducible to being-with-us?  These questions might sound a bit obscure, but they’re at the heart of a heated controversy—IJST has already run a handful of articles on the subject, and next year SJT is devoting an issue to it.
4. Missional theology.  It’s generally recognized that the church is missional by its very nature, and some of our brighter lights understand that God, too, is missional by nature.  The time is ripe, however, for systematic-theological reflection that takes “mission” as the lens which brings all doctrine into focus (much the way some Catholics have taken the Eucharist as such a lens, some Reformed theologians have taken the election of grace, some Lutherans “justification by faith,” and so on).
5. The theological leadership of women.  Several of today’s most creative, rigorous theologians are women (think of Sarah Coakley, Kathryn Tanner, and Kate Sonderegger, for example, each of whom is currently working on a systematics).  I expect that, in the next few years, women’s theological contributions will (finally) be recognized in mainstream theology as, frankly, some of the best thinking on the subject, period.  If that happens, it could lead to one of the most fruitful periods in the history of theology.

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 9/11/2006 7:57:00 AM (GMT-5)

http://www.orlapubs.com/AR/R184.html

QUESTION:   If there is no analogy of being between God and mortals, then
there is no such thing as divine relatedness to the world since God would be  wholly Other and like Aristotle's God, He would be pure thought thinking  itself.  If we posit and have faith in a unipersonal God, we thereby solve the  problem raised by the ANALOGIA ENTIS, and most importantly, our thought more  closely aligns with Scripture when it plainly tells us that there is one God:  He is the God and Father over all (1 Cor. 8:5, 6; Eph. 4:4-6). He is the One  that Jesus called : "My God." Cf. Rev. 3:12.

REPLY:  This is an important issue and succinctly stated above.  Replying requires a discussion of the assumptions underlying the question and those of the reply.  The reply begins by observing that a paradigm, ideology, worldview/viewpoint, or axiomatic framework, is a set of cognitive assumptions.      Instead of saying "You are wrong, and I am right," I think it more correct as well as more polite to say: "In your paradigm, analogia entis is the only way to related uncreated Deity and created cosmos; in my paradigm, that is not true--the only way the LOGOS Creator (YHWH, as inscribed above the Savior on Eastern Icons; cf. Luke 1:43 in Aramaic or Hebrew) could relate to His created cosmos is through the uncreated Energies or in His Person--certainly not in terms of uniting an imparticipable divine Essence with a created finite essence or nature.  The uncreated  Energies are revelatory and participable in a way that God's Essence beyond being is not. Of the latter, all we can hope to know through revelation is what IT is not.

nd of course more...

Both Latin and Protestant theological methods stem from Augustine and are therefore founded on so-called natural revelation, i.e. analogia entis and on so-called supernatural revelation, i.e. analogia fidei. Luther, as an individual, had his suspicions about analigia entis but this never became a fixed Lutheran position.

 

The first is based on a supposed similarity between God and creation, i.e. that created reality is supposed to be a copy of God's uncreated ideas. ...

... for the Orthodox Fathers of the Church there exists neither analogia entis nor analogia fidei. ...

 

http://www.romanity.org/data/floren.rtf.

 

 

http://www.orlapubs.com/AR/R140.html

IS THE AUGUSTINIAN PARALLELISM BETWEEN CREATED AND UNCREATED CONSONANT WITH THE ORTHODOX TRADITION?

    First, there is in Orthodoxy no analogia entis "analogy of being" or parallelism between created finite being and the infinite "Being beyond being," at least the (for a finite intellect) unknowable and altogether imparticipable divine Essence.  It should be recalled that the Persons of the all-holy Trinity are defined strictly by their relations in the West (Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, etc.); nevertheless, the Persons are psychologically characterized  from creative reason (the Son), and will or love (the Paraclete).     Thomists view the divine Essence as "consisting" of intellect and the actus purus of existence--both being operative--the Latin understanding of what the East would more properly conceptualize as uncreated Energies.  The Franciscan tradition from Duns Scotus (from Richard of Middleton, Scotus's earlier contemporary) onward steadfastly maintained that "will is the noblest power in the soul" and that "will is simply nobler than the intellect."  This was due not least to the causal efficacy of will.    All Latins, following Augustine, have held the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son in the divine Trinitarian Essence (His Essential ekpórefsis or procession) to be parallel with the Paraclete's being "sent" (His energetic ékpempsis by Jesus Christ) in the economy of creation.   But John 15:26--the definitive text on the subject, from which the Greek technical terminology derives--provides no such warrant for the Latin cacodoxy; it makes no sense in the traditional Orthodox framework.  The very Revd. Protopresvyter Georges Florovsky has pointed out that if the created paralleled the uncreated, God must never have not been creating and upholding an eternal universe--as the early Alexandrian theologian, Origen, maintained.  It is quite foreign to Orthodoxy to infer that what our finite intellects can know in the temporal world might necessarily or even likely parallel the Being beyond being of the divine Essence.  

Thomas Torrance ... It was especially Barth that made a lasting impression on his theology, particularly in Torrance's appropriation of his epistemology, Christocentrism, and Trinitarian/soteriological framework. However, Torrance has gone beyond Barth in many ways. The most significant is Torrance's restoration of a qualified natural theology, expanding God's revelatory power back to creation, a breadth that had been lost by Barth's harsh critique against the analogia entis. Torrance's work on Religion and Science continues to inspire a new generation of Protestant theologians to write cross-disciplinary theology, while remaining true to the distinctives of the Protestant tradition.

http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_785_torrance.htm

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 9/11/2006 8:03:28 AM (GMT-5)

MephEternal said...
POW,

1) I think that you remember that there was a Process/Orthodox dialogue

I REMEMBER IT.

.

3) The Romanity paper was interesting.

YES, IT IS TRULY INTERESTING. FEELS ODD, THOUGH, WHAT HE WRITES about NEUROLOGY. BUT I KNOW WHAT HE'S SAYING, AND THAT PART IS ADDED ONTO HIS THESIS.

.

At any rate, POW, we are going to be on other sides of the issue on this one. But,hey, I can definitely respect your perspective here.

THANKS.

In November, Alan and I went to the EPS/ETS conference. We met two Biola students. One was really interested in talking about some subject (I forgot what it was) with Alan, but it was a subject I knew a bit about too because of the talks Alan and I often have. And when I tried joining in the conversation , again I got the clear, "yeah, uh huh. Let's get back to talking with Alan" message. It was so, so obvious. This time I went to the EPS/ETS meeting expecting it though... so it didn't get to me. Maybe it's the blond hair!  

I do have to say, I am very thankful of being involved in our church's youth group. When I first joined the team, the youth pastor had already decided to start having us give sermons to the youth on Sunday morning and some of the more mature kids who also want to give a sermon are encouraged to do so. Yay! Also at youth camp, the main leaders decided to have a leadership class for kids who were interested and they specifically asked the adults to make sure to encourage some of the girls to get into leadership, noting that it was a bit ironic that the 4-Square churches were originally founded by a woman, but now only somewhere around 10% of the 4-Square pastors are women.

So, yeah, I think in some circles women won't be as ignored as in years past. But for a full balance, perhaps that will happen in the next generation after me. But also comparing the 1800's to now, it seems that we haven't really made a whole lot of progress, have we? As far as I know, some of the modern-day church denominations (and cult groups) were founded by women back then, right?

Post Edited (Violin for God) : 9/12/2006 6:39:04 PM (GMT-5)

IN WHAT REALLY MATTERS WOMEN HAVE BEEN VERY "LOUD." THE REST DEPENDS ON "HE WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR."

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 9/13/2006 4:30:55 PM (GMT-5)