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A reassessment of the theology of the German Protestant theologian, Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) and of his significance for contemporary theology. The six papers here presented were originally delivered at an international colloquium on Troeltsch held at the University of Lancaster. The contributors focus on the fundamental issues raised by Troeltsch which remain central to theology today and seek to engage him as a discussion partner in a continuing debate. Troeltsch has been unduly neglected as a theologian, a fact which is due partly to the dominance of the 'dialectical' theology of Barth and Bultmann in Germany after the First World War. This book seeks to remedy this state of affairs by dealing critically with Troeltsch's theology as well as constructively with the issues. The papers fall into three groups: in the first Troeltsch is considered as a Christian theologian; in the second are studied the possibilities of systematic and historical theology along Troeltschian lines; in the third the questions of what makes Christianity Christian and of Christian claims to exclusive truth are examined in the light of Troeltsch's work. Each of the contributors is a noted Troeltsch scholar and the book contains an extensive bibliography, which adds to its usefulness to students and scholars alike.
This volume brings together diverse voices from various fields within religious and theological studies for a conversation about the proper objects, goals, and methods for the study of religion in the twenty-first century. It approaches these questions by way of the most recent contemporary challenges, debates, and developments in the field, and provides a forum in which contending perspectives are tested and contested by their proponents and opponents. Contributors address topics such as: the connection between the ‘normative’ and the ‘scientific’ approaches to the study of religion, the meaning of religion in a context of globalization, the relation between religious studies and religious traditions, the viability of comparative and cultural studies of religious phenomena, and the future of gender studies in religion.
Ernst Troeltsch and Comparative Theology examines the methodological attempts of Ernst Troeltsch and Robert Neville for discerning Christian normativity. The investigation of Troeltsch focuses on his treatment of the absoluteness of Christianity and highlights the crisis brought upon absolute religious claims by the study of the history of religions. By rejecting both the supernatural-exclusive apologetic of orthodox Protestantism and the evolutionary apologetic of liberal Protestantism, Troeltsch insists that theology's method should be the history of religions' method (die religionsgeschichtliche Methode). Like Troeltsch, Neville agrees with historical inquiries, but, contrary to Troeltsch, Neville advances an axiological hypothesis to thinking, which is founded in valuation. Neville explains the role of valuation at the imaginative level of thinking and relates it to his theory of normative truth in religious symbols. This study shows that Neville begins with Troeltsch's methodological presuppositions but achieves more normative theology than Troeltsch, especially on ways in which God is engaged in symbolically shaped thinking and practice. Both thinkers offer creative insights for theology that make possible a critical comparison of truth claims regarding the validity of Christianity in and for a historically conscious age.
William J. Meyer engages in critical and illuminating conversation with major figures in contemporary philosophy and theology in order to explain why theology has been marginalized in modern culture and why modernity has had such difficulty integrating religion and public life. Wrestling with notable philosophers like MacIntyre and Stout, and theologians such as Gustafson, Hauerwas, Porter, Milbank, and Reinhold Niebuhr, Meyer argues that theology must embrace modernity's formal commitments to public and democratic discourse while simultaneously challenging its substantive postmetaphysical outlook. Drawing on the philosophical perspectives of Whitehead and Hartshorne and the theologies of Ogden and Gamwell, he concludes that a process metaphysical theology offers the most promising path for theology to regain a vital public voice in the world of the twenty-first century.
"This volume documents a significant meeting in the history of Schleiermacher studies at which leading scholars from Europe and North America gathered to probe key features of Schleiermacher's theological and philosophical program in light of its contested place in the study of religion. Offering fresh interpretations of Schleiermacher's theory of religion, revisionary dogmatics, and hermeneutics of culture, the book critically re-examines Schleiermacher's thought with an eye on the contemporary divide between theology and religious studies."--Publisher's website.
Ernst Troeltsch is widely recognized as having played an important role in the development of modern Protestant theology, but his contribution is usually understood as largely critical of traditional modes of theological inquiry. He is best known for his historicist critique of dogmatic theology, and seen either as the closing chapter of nineteenth-century liberalism, or as a proto-postmodernist. Central to this pivotal period in modern theology stands the problem: how can we articulate a doctrine of ultimate reality such that a meaningful and coherent account of the world is available without our understanding of God thereby becoming conditioned by the world itself? Evan Kuehn demonstrates that historiographical assumptions about twentieth-century religious thought have obscured the coherence and relevance of Troeltsch's understanding of God, history, and eschatology. An eschatological understanding of the Absolute, Kuehn contends, stands at the heart of Troeltsch's theology and the problem of historicism with which it is faced. Troeltsch's eschatological Absolute must be understood in the context of questions that were being raised at the turn of the twentieth century both by research on New Testament apocalypticism, and by modern critical methodologies in the historical sciences. His theory of the Absolute is central to his views on religion and religious ethics and provides practitioners of constructive studies in religion with important resources for engaging with sociological and historical studies, where Troeltsch's status as a classical figure is widely recognized.
Among the greatest challenges facing religious thinkers today is that created by historicism, the notion that human beings and their myriad understandings of reality are utterly historical, conditioned by contingent circumstances and tied to particular contexts. In this book, Demian Wheeler confronts the historicist challenge by delineating and defending a particular trajectory of historicist thought known as pragmatic historicism. Rooted in the German Enlightenment and fully developed within the early Chicago school of theology, pragmatic historicism is a predominantly American tradition that was philosophically nurtured by classical pragmatism and its intellectual siblings, naturalism and radical empiricism. Religion within the Limits of History Alone not only undertakes a detailed genealogy of this pragmatic historicist lineage but also sets forth a constructive program for contemporary theology by charting a path for its future development. Wheeler shows that pragmatic historicism is an underdeveloped resource for contemporary theology since it offers a model for normative religious thought that is theologically compelling yet wholly nonsupernaturalistic, deeply pluralistic, unflinchingly liberal, and radically historicist.
Japanese Christian leader Takakura Tokutaro, 1885-1934, is the focus of this exhaustive historical and theological study. Takakura's life spanned a critical period in developing Japan, a new member of the "modern family of nations." At the age of 21, through the preaching of the immensely influential church leader Uemura Masahisa, Takakura converted to the Christian faith. He later spent over two years in the West, reading extensively in British and German theology. Takakura thus faced the challenge of absorbing numerous lines of influence and re-articulating the Christian faith within his own generation's distinctly Japanese linguistic and religio-cultural context. His personal religious experience was a microcosm of the universalization of Christian theology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite having played important leadership roles within the Protestant Church in Japan during the 1920s and early 1930s, Takakura's name is scarcely known outside limited Japanese theological circles. This study lends recognition to his influential role in the Christian Church. It also utilizes Takakura's example to provide further insight into the universalizing trend in Christian thought that continues even today.
This book is a reconsideration of Paul Tillich's (1886-1965) project of a theology of culture and art. Concentrating on Tillich's widely neglected pre-emigration writings (1910-1933), Re Manning reconstructs and defends Tillich's proposals for theology of culture as a philosophically sophisticated programme of theological engagement with culture and art. 'On the boundary' between the extremes of liberal Christian humanism and neo-orthodox isolationism, Tillich's project is shown to be a powerful continuation of the mediatory intentions of the 'Schleiermacher-Troeltsch line' of modern Protestant theology to overcome the 'intolerable gap' between religion and culture. Drawing heavily on Tillich's incorporation of Schelling's positive philosophy into the deep structure of this theology, Re Manning argues that Tillich's 'Idealistic/Romantic theology of mediation' provides a way through the entrenched oppositions of the 'divided mind' of twentieth century theology to a constructive theology of cultural engagement. Further, this book offers an assessment of the continued relevance of Tillich's project in the situation of contemporary philosophical theology. Beyond the dominant antithetical types of postmodern theology - Mark C. Taylor's a/theology and the 'radical orthodoxy' of John Milbank - Re Manning argues for the possibility of a 'Tillichian postmodern theology of culture' able to engage with the spiritual situation 'at the end of culture.'