........................................................................................................................................................ ii Declaration .................................................................................................................................................. iii Table of

Triune God and the hermeneutics of community: church, gender and mission in Stanley J. Grenz with reference to Paul Ricoeur

7262397890599 ISBN 978-90-5972-623-9 Churches in many Western countries are faced with an adaptive challenge. Adaptive challenges arise when deeply held beliefs are challenged, when the solutions that once worked well become less appropriate, and when legitimate, yet competing, perspectives emerge. Adaptive problems will not go away by ignoring them, or by making technical adjustments. Many churches in the West need to change their vision and practices thoroughly, in order not to become contextually obsolete and irrelevant. Since this has to do with innovation and change, it will require leadership.

/pdf/crossroads-an-exploration-of-the-emerging-missional-1g154zqjzh.pdf

Crossroads: An Exploration of the Emerging-Missional Conversation with a Special Focus on 'Missional Leadership' and Its Challenges for Theological Education

This dissertation argues that Eastern Orthodox theology is a framework for multidimensional social change or improvement and can inform, and be informed by the multi-disciplinary social science field of development studies. This claim will be examined by analyzing the Trinitarian theology of the Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae in relation to the writings of Nobel Economist Amartya Sen and his ‘capability approach’. The argument begins by justifying EO’s interaction with development studies based on her anthropological optimism. Critical is that supernatural revelation stands very close to and builds on natural revelation. A Trinitarian theological anthropology then provides a rationale for, and integration of, three key concepts in the social sciences: agency, solidarity, and structures. This analytical framework is then used to assess the challenges of post-Communist contexts, where most Orthodox live. The Communist downfall, it is argued, involved a failure to incorporate each of these dimensions in human development. This analysis then serves to test the adequacy of, and reveal weaknesses in, Amartya Sen’s freedom-focused social evaluation framework known as the capability approach. The dissertation proceeds with examining Orthodox salvation as movement from Being, to Well-being, to Eternal-being where Well-being is, notably, the exercise of agency to develop the potentials given in Being. Agency is not individualistic, but is structured into the virtues of solidarity and incorporates the related notion of phronesis (practical reason). The virtue tradition is then postulated as a promising link between theology and development studies. The virtue tradition is analyzed in its classical background, modern human development, as well as both Protestantism and Catholicism to facilitate a comparison with Eastern Orthodoxy. This analysis shows that Orthodoxy offers a theological framework for human development in that she gives priority of practical reason to contemplation, makes virtually no separation between grace and nature, and provides a relevant method for synergizing salvation history with action on behalf of human development.

The glory of God is humanity fully alive: exploring Eastern Orthodoxy as a resource for human development in conversation with the capability approach

hovering above lived realities, passive, waiting for God to accomplish things, or repressive, denying the realities of present suffering, but calls Christians to practice ‘pathic’ hope-in-action imbued with the Source of all Life. It is in this third movement forwards that the ‘church’ practices public, participatory witness-in-action. 5.3.1 Created for freedom reforming our understanding. Moltmann demonstrates a consistent concern with freedom. He points specifically to the need for “freedom from: systems of oppression but he is also concerned about “freedoms for” as 463 He suggests that oppressors are also trapped in these deformed relations as inhumane oppressors, exploiters, alienators, apathetic and godless alongside the oppressed, exploited, alienated, godforsaken and dehumanised.(1974/2001:343-344, 1979b:24). 464 Moltmann has engaged with Pentecostal movements, seeing their openness to the Spirit as a place for church renewal as well as being critical of the ways in which many strands promote individualised understandings of the person and distorted utopias of affluence. 465 Moltmann contrasts the ‘utopias of the status quo’ of success, power and happiness that can lead to forms of apathy in relation to change, with ‘utopias of justice’ with its ‘Sitz im Leben’ in the suffering of the present and which hopes instead for change. (1976c:24).

Reimagining the human : the role of the churches in building a liberatory human rights culture in South Africa today.

Reconsidering otherness in the shadow of the Holocaust : some proposals for post-Holocaust ecclesiology

After our likeness: the church as the image of the Trinity

The Church, Community of Salvation: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology

L'A. s'interesse a la question des genres en theologie en prenant l'exemple d'une Encyclique du Pape Jean-Paul II sur la femme et sa dignite, Mulieris Dignitatem. La theologie feministe a donne, en effet, une importance nouvelle a cette question. Le document pontifical contient une analyse phenomenologique des differences entre les sexes et rejoint certaines analyses feministes. L'A. en profite pour soulever le probleme de l'ordination des femmes au ministere presbyteral, et pour resoudre exhaustivement ce probleme avec la substance de l'Encyclique

Gender in Theology : The Example of John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem.

L'article retrace l'histoire de l'image du peuple de Dieu comme brebis et pasteur dans l'Ecriture, dans deux figures representatives de l'epoque patristique, Augustin d'Hyppone et Gregoire de Nazianze, ainsi que dans la Constitution Dogmatique sur l'Eglise dans le Second Concile du Vatican. L'article fait une application precise de cette image au phenomene contemporain d'un changement culturel rapide dans le monde et dans l'Eglise. L'article soutient que l'image biblique des brebis et du pasteur ne doit pas etre abandonnee comme un pur artifice culturel qui reflete une structure sociale primitive desormais entierement desuete. Plutot, cette image est une affirmation vitale et importante, tant anthropologique que ecclesiologique, sur la nature humaine, le besoin humain de communaute, d'autorite, de direction et d'attention.

Lawrence B. Porter

Papers

After our likeness: the church as the image of the Trinity

The Church, Community of Salvation: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology

Gender in Theology : The Example of John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem.

Sheep and shepherd: an ancient image of the church and a contemporary challenge

The Theologian of "Humanae Vitae"