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| AUSTRALASIAN THEOLOGICAL STUDIES |
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| AUSTRALASIAN THEOLOGICAL STUDIES |
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Volume 16, Number 2, June 2003 Contents, Abstracts, Notes on Contributors
Abstract: The issue addressed in this essay is that of the Christian character or identity of Christian theology. Its "arguing partner" is that range of theological endeavours in which the particular context of a theological production is accentuated at the cost of under-valuing its necessary correlate, its Christian or "catholic" character. The essay offers a justification for a concern about "orthodoxy" - though not as an alternative to "orthopraxis" - for it still matters in all theology that God be spoken of rightly, which is to say faithfully. Christian theology should therefore not abandon its connection with Christian doctrine, even though the boundaries of theology may extend further than the boundaries of doctrine. There is, of course, no easy move from the universality of the Gospel to the universal validity of any particular articulation of this Gospel. However, it is argued that a modest claim for universality is both permitted and required by the double premise that all theology is in some sense church theology and that the church confesses itself to be "catholic". Support for such a position is found in the work of Robert Schreiter, a strong proponent of "local" theologies, who in recent work has also argued for a necessary engagement with the "tradition" and has identified new kinds of universal theology. Appeal is made also to the ancient idea of a regula fidei. None of this conflicts with the contextual nature and responsibility of theology, but "contextual" should never be equated with "narrow", let alone "isolationist".
Abstract: The article examines the historical origins of the notion of Christ's threefold office as priest, prophet and king as applied to the church, highlighting the seminal contribution of John Calvin. After an initial reception into Catholic theology in the nineteenth century, it is Vatican II's document Lumen gentium which first receives the trilogy into official Catholic teaching in a significant way. The author examines issues that need addressing in any reconstructed theology of, in particular, the "prophetic office" and proposes that future ecumenical dialogue with Protestants on the three offices may provide opportunities for further Catholic reception of this Protestant framework.
Abstract: Feminist theologian Catherine Keller claims that embedded in Christian theology is a vast fear of the deep - or tehom - that leads to eschatologies of final endings rather than edges of open possibilities. This article draws on Keller's "green" hermeneutic, yet deepens and extends her eco-eschatological analysis by questioning the way humans live in relation to the sea. The oceans cover 71% of the world's surface and make up 97% of the world's water. Yet we treat the sea as a vast mare nullius. How can we live toward "a new heaven and new earth" (Rev 21:1) without hope for the sea as well? The Spirit of the vulnerable God "gives life" in even the deepest, darkest and most remote of places. Through an "archipelagic imagination", we can "sea" and "fathom" our faith towards hopeful possibilities for the whole of God's creation.
Abstract: This submission to the Australian Health Ethics Committee considers issues of "respect" and "potential" and argues that the embryo is to be respected because it is nascent and developing human life. Destructive experimentation, even for the purposes of stem cell research, should therefore not be permitted on embryos originally intended for implantation but now surplus to IVF needs. The goals for which they are being destroyed in experimentation are distant and uncertain, and professional practice in IVF now requires that no more than one or at most two embryos should be generated.
Abstract: The book of Lamentations depicts the historical event of the destruction of Jerusalem in emotive and graphic terms. Both the woman metaphor and the first-person account of a man of sorrows are charged with pathos. God, meanwhile, the perpetrator of violence, emerges as brutal and unforgiving. Here this disturbing contrast is examined from the background of South Africa's truth and reconciliation process. The essay interrogates the nature of forgiveness from a theological and contextual perspective, examines whether forgiveness ought to be conditional and if the God of Lamentations is eligible for amnesty.
CHRISTIAAN MOSTERT is Professor of Systematic Theology in the Uniting
Church of Australia Theological Hall, Melbourne, and teaches in the United Faculty of
Theology. He has recently had published a major book on the theology of Wolfhart
Pannenberg entitled God and the Future. |