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Volume 17, Number 1, February 2004

Contents, Abstracts, Notes on Contributors

Articles 

JAMES GODFREY
Kierkegaard's 'Anti-Rationalism' in the Service of Reason and Faith 1

Abstract: This article explores the prevailing understanding that Kierkegaard's criticism of the Hegelian system constitutes an attack against reason as such. As paradox is encountered through reason, I look to Hegel in order to discover Kierkegaard. In this way the inadequacies of Hegel's idealism, revealed in his philosophical formulation of the incarnation, demonstrate the necessity of Kierkegaard's existentialism, expressed in terms of 'faith'. By this means one may begin to revise any dualistic notions of faith and reason as competing alternatives for articulating the Christian vision.

Abstract: Theology is an ineluctable challenge with its compelling yet impossible testimony to Infinity in thought and language. Levinas' metaphor insomnia, in its vigilance without intentionality in which the subject is hostage to thinking Infinity without circumscribing this thought, is useful for interpreting this theological challenge. The image of insomnia suggests the other's (transcendent) claim upon us. If we are wakened and vigilant without being the source of this wakefulness, it is the other who generates this vigilance in the self-same, yet we can never be certain who this other is - "God" or otherwise. In this insomnia, the subject is hostage to a vigilance of risk - questioning and uncertain as to the source of the other's alterity or transcendence. This is the challenge of faith and ethical responsibility to an other as a visage of this assignation to infinity.

Abstract: This essay examines current mind-body theories and argues that "emergentist monism" is preferable to "nonreductive physicalism" in the search for an adequate model of personhood. It demonstrates the compatibility of the emergentist account of evolving nature with Karl Rahner's notion of "active self-transcendence", and the need to appreciate the "integral" character of final salvation understood as participation, through the Spirit, in the divine identity of the risen Christ who is the new definitive "emergent whole" in person. The essay concludes with the proposition that integral salvation in Christ is fully actualised in the privileged event of death as the gift of "admirable exchange" of natures in the person of the risen One.

Abstract: This article discusses what Segundo means by "the liberation of theology" and considers his emphasis on the importance of the social sciences in the theological enterprise. It then reviews the four stages of Segundo's hermeneutical circle, using one of his examples, the work of James Cone. The model of a four-stage hermeneutical circle is then applied to four works by Aboriginal authors: Kevin Gilbert, Anne Pattel-Gray, Aileen Moreton Robinson and the Rainbow Spirit Elders. In each case a liberating process is seen as taking place; and in each case, at least to some extent, the stages of Segundo's circle can be discerned.

Abstract: Dorothee Soelle grew up under Hitler's state terror and later lived in a climate of remilitarisation and consumerism. Through an increasing rejection of social coercion, violence and dehumanising social structures, her earlier systematic theology embraced a narrative, praxis-orientated methodology that sought to make present fragments of God's gospel of love and justice in the midst of oppression and brokenness. In the light of her theological reflection on experiences in Vietnam, Europe, the U.S.A., and Latin America she attracted a wide international audience. For theologians in Australasia Soelle's legacy continues to hold open the question, if oppression is the primary sin, of how theological endeavour can advance interdependence and wholeness in life?

Notes on Contributors

JAMES GODFREY is pursuing research under an Australian Post-graduate Award at the United Faculty of Theology within the Melbourne College of Divinity. His area of research is an examination of the relationship between existentialism and Christian notions of truth as subjective.

STEPHEN CURKPATRICK lectures in Systematic Theology and selected areas of New Testament at the Churches of Christ Theological College, within the Melbourne College of Divinity. He is also an Honorary Research Associate, School of Historical Studies (Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology), Monash University. His has a specific research interest in hermeneutics and the interface between theology and philosophy.

HENRY L. NOVELLO, B.Sc., B.TH., S.T.L. (Greg), Ph.D, is currently Research Associate of the School of Theology, Flinders University of South Australia. He has published articles in Gregorianum and Colloquium and is currently working on a manuscript which explores the saving character of death as a dying into the risen Lord. As well as christology and eschatology, his interests include Jewish apocalyptic literature, Christian mysticism, and the theology-science dialogue.

JOHN WILCKEN, SJ has taught Systematic Theology at the United Faculty of Theology for thirty years, and is superior of a community of Jesuits living with homeless alcoholic and emotionally disturbed men on the outskirts of Melbourne. In recent years his theological work has reflected upon Australian society, especially in regard to relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, in the light of the writings of Juan Luis Segundo.

ANN-MARIE HARVEY R.S.M., a New Zealander, was awarded her Ph.D. in Theology from the Australian Catholic University, in 2003. Her thesis researched the gospel call for "serving love" and an "ethic of social responsibility" in Christian life today via the thought of Edward Schillebeeckx and Dorothee Soelle. In recent years she taught courses in B.A., B. Ed., and B. Nursing at the McAuley (Queensland) Campus of the Australian Catholic University.