Journal articles on the topic 'Revisionist Theology'

AbstractJohann Baptist Metz has exhorted Christian theologians to discard “system concepts” in favor of “subject concepts” in their theologizing. This revisioning of Christian theology recovers the primacy of the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the individual from totalizing doctrinal formulations and systems that function, for Metz, without reference to the subject. In short, a revisionist Christian theology in light of the Holocaust recovers the preeminence of the inviolability of individual human life.How can such a revisioning be accomplished in the realm of Christian spirituality? This article will utilize the thought of Emmanuel Levinas to assert the primacy of ethics as “first philosophy” replacing ontology, and by implication the ontological foundations undergirding Christian spirituality, with the ethical relation. Such a relation is the basis for a new Christian spirituality that posits the primacy of merciful and compasionate action in the face of conditions of life in extremity.

Public theology is a phrase that has been used both descriptively (like Bellah's civil religion ) and prescriptively (so that public theology is an attempt to recommend policy prescriptions seen through the narrative of faith). After a survey of the evolution of the phrase, I concede that most contemporary theologians use the phrase in a prescriptive way. Many using public theology in a prescriptivist way do so out of a revisionist theological framework. This is problematic because the majority of Christians are much more traditional in their theology. Building on a distinction between “process” and “content” in Christian ethics, the article argues for a particularist account of public theology that is shaped by liberation theology and yet still committed to conversation in a pluralist society.

AbstractMost maps of theology in the twentieth century, particularly theology in North America, would include the delineation of revisionist theology and postliberal theology as mutually exclusive, opposed options in theological method. This article begins to challenge the contours of this received map through a comparison of David Tracy and Hans Frei, pre-eminent figures in revisionist and postliberal theology, respectively. I show that, for all their differences, both Tracy and Frei posit the reader–text relationship as the site and even in some sense the source of revelation. Their turn to reading is motivated by the perception of a certain loss or estrangement characterising contemporary religiosity. Though the scope and details of their description of the problem differ, there is a similarity in the vision of Christian life which stands in contrast to the contemporary situation. For both, their visions of Christian life can be articulated through the notion of orthodoxy, understood in its full sense as referring to a coherent, vibrant and all-encompassing immersion in Christian doctrine and practice. Engagement in proper reading practice becomes for each the entrance into and sign of full participation in religious life, analogous to the role of belief in traditional notions of orthodoxy. I suggest that Tracy and Frei represent two forms of ‘theology of ortholexis’ or ‘right reading’. The turn to reading is most obvious in Frei, who explicitly links the modern difficulty in attaining a sense of the coherence of Christian history, doctrine and lived life to a misconstrual of the nature of the biblical text which leads to a misguided reading practice. Yet Tracy also places the model of reading as conversation at the centre of his revisionist account of the possibility of a contemporary experience of the authority of the Bible and the power of the Christian tradition more generally. In these ‘theologies of ortholexis’, a constellation of modern anxieties concerning the limits and possibilities of our knowledge and experience of the divine are addressed through positing the reader–text relationship forged through proper reading practice as the place of and way to authentic revelation.

Analysis of the Israel–Palestine conflict tends to focus on politics and history. But other forces are at work, related to beliefs and feelings deeply embedded in Judeo-Christian tradition. The revisionist Christian theology that emerged following the Nazi Holocaust attempted to correct the legacy of Christian anti-Semitism. In the process it has fostered an unquestioning support of the State of Israel that undermines efforts to achieve peace in the region. The conflict in Christian thought between a commitment to universal justice and the granting to Jews a superior right to historic Palestine permeates the current discourse and is evidenced in the work of even the most politically progressive thinkers. The article reviews the work of four contemporary Christian theologians and discusses the implications of this issue for interfaith dialogue, the political process, and the achievement of peace in the Holy Land.

This article articulates a revisionist homiletical theology of Word and Sacrament for a disestablished church in a disenchanted, post-secular world. Its understanding of the post-secular context, an age of religious resurgence nonetheless impacted by the secular, is grounded in Charles Taylor’s analysis of the Reformation as an engine of cultural change even today: disenchantment, shared vocation, and the “affirmation of the ordinary.” In this context, it seeks to revise Protestant notions of the gospel as promise in the direction of Richard Kearney’s onto-eschatological vision in The God Who May Be. Such a notion of promise, connected to Kearney’s “traversing presence” yet embracing its possibilizing force, pushes against attempts to re-trench and reenchant, as in some postliberal and radical orthodox theologies, in favor of a more apologetic public theology of Word and Sacrament.

Augustine's assimilation of Christ to wisdom in the philosophical tradition established a paradigm for method in theology. If in the beginning was the Word, and that primordial Word was analogous to intellectual concept rather than oral discourse, then in ideal imitation the theologian was a dialectician rather than a rhetorician. Yet if Christ is wisdom and the language of wisdom is dialectic, why did he speak rhetorically? Why the simile rather than the syllogism? Augustine proposed that scripture is divine baby talk. The academic business of theology became its education into human mature language by translating its images into ideas. Yet a hermeneutical and exegetical revolution since the late nineteenth century has, through historical and literary criticisms, restored scripture as rhetoric to its legitimate religious status. The conventional apologetics of pabulum is now intolerable. This alteration in norm is influencing, in the history of theology, an evaluation of the tradition as rhetoric. The research, although belated, may prove as revisionist as in scriptural studies. As the master rhetorician of anti-rhetoric was Augustine, a critical examination of the rationale for his methodological displacement of the scriptural norm with the contemplative ideal is cogent.

In The Theological Project of Modernism, Kevin Hector of the University of Chicago Divinity School offers a nuanced and timely defense of what he sees as an unjustifiably maligned tradition in modern Christian theology. He focuses on what is commonly labeled the liberal or revisionist tradition, centered in its early stages on figures such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, G. W. F. Hegel, Albrecht Ritschl, Ernst Troeltsch, and, more recently, Paul Tillich. By carefully reconstructing key arguments from these thinkers, Hector shows not only how this trajectory hangs together as a tradition, but also how its animating impulse differs from what many critics have assumed. Hector's central claim is that this tradition is fundamentally concerned with a distinctive problem, namely, how to relate religious faith to a sense of one's life as one's own—or, put differently, how one's faith can be self-expressive. Hector labels this the problem of “mineness,” or the problem of “how persons could identify with their lives or experience them as ‘mine,’ especially given their vulnerability to tragedy, injustice, luck, guilt, and other ‘oppositions’” (viii). Hector argues that for his chosen thinkers in this tradition, faith—more specifically, faith in a God who is able to reconcile such oppositions—plays a crucial role in resolving this problem.

Ryan Patrick Hanley makes two original claims about François Fénelon: (1) that he is best regarded as a political philosopher, and (2) that his political philosophy is best understood as “moderate and modern.” In what follows, I raise two concerns about Hanley’s revisionist turn. First, I argue that the role of philosophy in Fénelon’s account is rather as a handmaiden of theology than as an autonomous area of inquiry—with implications for both the theory and practice of politics. Second, I use Fénelon’s writings on the education of women as an illustration of the more radical and reactionary aspects of his thought. Despite these limits, the book makes a compelling case for recovering Fénelon and opens up new conversations about education, religion, political economy, and international relations in early modern political thought.

The storm centre of John Wyclif’s quarrel with the Church was his doctrine of the Eucharist. The critic of clerical dominion over secular things and of the authority of the pope had passed through ecclesiastical censure almost unscathed; but the proponent of a revisionist theology of the eucharistic sacrament would at once lose the countenance of academic colleagues and public opinion alike, and would suffer the consequences. The crisis of Wyclif’s career came with striking rapidity after he broadcast, in his Confessio or public statement in the Oxford schools on 10 May 1381, his opinion that the presence of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist was figurative, ‘sacramental’, or in some sense, to anyone not acquainted with the terms of his own mental world, less than real.

It is a recurring critical topos that John Milton’s Paradise Regain’d (1671) is a revisionist poem, one that works towards reframing and redefining the epic tradition; what has certainly been less noticed is the central function played by the character of Mary, the mother of Christ, in this revisionist process. This article will try to prove that Mary’s appearances in the poem are, though limited, essential to its content and to its perspective on the interrelated subjects of the revelation of God in history and the individual confrontation with historical forces; and it will try to do so by bringing together theological discussion and a gender-oriented approach. There have certainly been approaches to Paradise Regain’d that have explored some of the gender issues brought about by the poem’s modification of the heroic function: almost unanimously, these approaches have concentrated on the character of the Son. My intention here, however, is another: I will try to show how the function and voice of Mary in the poem set in motion a complex, rich network of implications (both ethical and theological) which are at the core of the poem’s discourse and ideology. This focus on the maternal in Paradise Regain’d will not be carried out from a psychoanalytical perspective (though it is by no means incompatible with such an approach), but rather through reading the text via literary and theological categories that are recurrent throughout Milton’s work. It should thus be possible to start working seriously towards establishing the presence of a serious and original Mariology (clearly not a Mariolatry) in Milton’s last epic poem. Overall, this will lead us to a reconsideration of Paradise Regain’d as an essentially innovative text, and one which is strongly heterodox in terms of its theology and gender discourse.

AbstractIn this extended review I first describe Wright's complex account of the doctrine of justification in Paul, which combines emphases on the covenant, the lawcourt, Christ and eschatology and includes, further, important translation claims concerning ‘the righteousness of God’ as God's covenant faithfulness, ‘justification’ as vindication in a lawcourt setting, ‘works of law’ as sociological boundary markers, and ‘faith’ as speaking not infrequently of Christ's fidelity rather than the generic Christian's (although these last two things are not separate; the former grounds the latter making it a badge of Christian membership). I then suggest, second, that Wright needs to recognise more clearly a particular danger in the traditional approach to justification that he is trying to move beyond – ‘foundationalist individualism’, or ‘forward thinking’. That is, the traditional reading of justification in Paul understands him to be arguing and thinking forward, from a nasty, legalistic, and essentially Jewish, plight, to a solution which is a gospel generously grasped by faith alone. This narrative, rooted in a certain reading of Romans 1–4, creates a large number of difficulties. (It begins with natural theology. It characterises Judaism unfairly. It asks a lot of sinful individuals unenlightened by grace. And so on.) And I am not convinced that Wright's complex revisionist account of justification has avoided them all. In particular, (1) he continues to emphasise a particular notion of the lawcourt in Paul's argument and thereby unleashes an account of God's character primarily in terms of retributive justice and hence in terms of Western politics. (2) He tends to define the covenant before he has taken full account of christology. The covenant should be defined by christology, rather than the other way around. One sign that things have not been tied together here as they ought to be is the number of different definitions of Israel that Wright supplies – as many as four. Moreover (3) even his revisionist sociological account of ‘works of law’ reproduces a key difficulty in the older approach, i.e. a jaundiced description of Judaism. And (4) his account of faith in Abraham does not explicitly link Paul's controversial reification of Genesis 15:6 to a christological hermeneutic, as it needs to in order to avoid crass reductionism. But Wright's definitive account of Paul is not yet fully articulated, so suitable adjustments might well allay my concerns here, with various aspects of foundationalism presently appearing within his theological description.

Abstract: This article deals with the contemporary task of Christian public theology in constructing a contextual model that is able to maintain the dialectic of commonality and particularity. Such a model must pay attention to the search for common ground among many cultural-religious identities, while at the same time it must respect those identities in their own paticularities. The sensitivity to and solidarity with the victims of the New Order’s’ regime must also be fundamental elements of such a model. To do so, this article discusses two competing theories in social philosophy (liberalism and communitarianism), and their parallel theories in theology (revisionism and post-liberalism). The necessity to construct a more balanced third way between those theories is needed, if Indonesian Christians want to be open to their social and political call and faithful to their Christian distinctiveness. Keywords: Public theology, liberalism, communitarianism, revisionism, post-liberalism, commonality, particularity. Abstrak: Artikel ini membahas tugas kontemporer teologi publik Kristen dalam mengkonstruksi sebuah model kontekstual yang mampu mempertahankan dialektika kesamaan dan kekhususan. Model semacam ini haruslah memperhatikan usaha menemukan dasar bersama di antara banyak identitas kultural-religius, sekaligus pada saat bersamaan menghargai identitas-identitas tersebut di dalam keunikan mereka masing-masing. Kepekaan dan solidaritas pada para korban di bawah rejim Order Baru di masa silam harus menjadi unsur-unsur mendasar bagi model semacam itu. Artikel ini mendiskusikan dua teori yang saling bersaing di dalam filsafat sosial (liberalisme dan komunitarianisme), dan teori-teori sejajar di dalam teologi (revisionisme dan pascaliberalisme). Tuntutan untuk mengkonstruksi sebuah jalan ketiga yang lebih seimbang antara teori-teori tersebut sungguh dibutuhkan, jika orang-orang Kristen Indonesia ingin berbuka pada panggilan sosial dan politis mereka sembari tetap setia pada keunikan Kristiani mereka. Kata-kata Kunci: Teologi publik, liberalisme, komunitarianisme, revisionisme, pascaliberalisme, komunalitas, partikularitas.

This article argues that critical thinking and theology belong together. Noting the need for such a combination in the breakdown of conversation between seminary students, the article justifies such a move in a theological anthropology. The author then describes several years of revisions to a Theology 1 course as he attempted to bring together the two goals of teaching theology and teaching critical thinking. The result was a syllabus that demonstrated two central transformations. The first is a “flip” of the classroom, or using the class time entirely for active learning. The second change is the creation of an assignment that walks students from theological conviction to theological argument. The author gives anecdotal and evaluative (grades, student evaluations) evidence to demonstrate the success of these revisions.

This article argues that critical thinking and theology belong together. Noting the need for such a combination in the breakdown of conversation between seminary students, the article justifies such a move in a theological anthropology. The author then describes several years of revisions to a Theology 1 course as he attempted to bring together the two goals of teaching theology and teaching critical thinking. The result was a syllabus that demonstrated two central transformations. The first is a “flip” of the classroom, or using the class time entirely for active learning. The second change is the creation of an assignment that walks students from theological conviction to theological argument. The author gives anecdotal and evaluative (grades, student evaluations) evidence to demonstrate the success of these revisions.

Anglican moralist Kenneth Kirk is an early twentieth-century forerunner of Catholic revisionism. Kirk critiques the moral manuals and defends a historicist, biblically grounded virtue ethic forty years prior to Catholic figures like Bernard Häring. Kirk also utilizes inductive casuistry in analyzing concrete cases to the end of promoting Christian freedom and mature Christlike character. For these reasons his moral theology has historical and ecumenical importance.

This article presents the results of research in the area of spiritual development of students of theology as part of their more general personal and professional life. Based on the qualitative analysis of written spiritual autobiographies, patterns and characteristics were discovered and are presented here. After presenting the outcome of the project, results are connected to a major theoretical perspective of Marcia’s (1966) identity statuses and its revisions. Finally, it is contended that theological curricula should invest more in spiritual guidance and formation of students, and some suggestions are given in order to achieve this goal.

Enriching Our Worship 1 (1998) provides official supplemental liturgical texts for the Rite II services of Morning and Evening Prayer, the Litany, and the Holy Eucharist in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The materials can be used either as a substitution for as much or as little of the Prayer Book services as one desires, or as a complete rite. One of the guiding principles of Enriching Our Worship 1 is to use only non-gendered language for God. This essay considers the eucharistic portions of Enriching Our Worship 1 from the perspective of trinitarian theology and proceeds in three stages: I begin with an outline of the specific revisions of Enriching Our Worship 1 to the 1979 BCP Rite II for the Holy Eucharist; second, I ask what sort of trinitarian theology Enriching Our Worship 1 expresses; finally, I consider the principles that guide these revisions and offer a critical assessment of the sources used to buttress these principles.

AbstractThis reply to Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen further affirms the importance of work in the theology of religions for Pentecostals and Charismatics today that first prompted the author’s original inquiry into the views of a major early Pentecostal leader, Bishop J.H. King, concerning interfaith encounter and understanding. This dialogue with Kärkkäinen supports suggestions that an overall program of rediscovering, reclaiming, restoring, and revisioning our Pentecostal theology of religions heritage seems advisable. King’s obviously optimistic theology of religions, however, must be carefully distinguished from pluralism and set in the context of its Wesleyan roots and Evangelical emphases. Further development of what King provides in embryonic form is demanded. King represents an optimistic but still Christocentric strain shared by other Pentecostals within early stages of the movement. Not at all amounting to an uncritical approbation of world religions, this revolutionary discovery does decidedly enlarge understandings of Christ’s lordship beyond the pale of any particular religion. Careful terminology in order to avoid misunderstanding is called for and conceded. Pentecostal hypersensitivity regarding theology of religions highlights the need for constant clarification of contrariness to liberal religious pluralism. King’s legacy invalidates any assumption that earlier (older) Pentecostal resources on religions are exclusively pessimistic. Implications are immense for Christian mission and interreligious relations.

In occasional addresses late in his life Paul Tillich confesses to a lingering provincialism in his theology during the same period in which he was completing the third volume of his systematic theology where many of these same provincialisms appear. The article identifies such provincialisms in his ecclesiology, missiology, christology, history of religion and eschatology. The article then argues that his final position, embodied in his understanding of the Religion of the Concrete Spirit, endorses a universal sacramentalism in interplay with mystical and prophetic elements that would appreciate all religions but deny any an absolute claim while able to compensate religious needs specific to each cultural moment. The revisioning of humanity's religious propensity as supporting a mutually relative relation among religions remains valuable in an historical period when the human future may be threatened by competing unqualified religious claims and their secular equivalents.

The General Convention, meeting in July 2018, called for the inclusion of Latino liturgical resources in new BCP translations and revisions. Consequently, it seems right to reassess how we think about liturgy by, with, and among Latinos. In this article, the author proposes that liturgy entails, above all, signifying actions involving the whole congregation. Latinos are the people to whom these actions must signify, and worship must be incarnated or inculturated in Latino cultures in imitation of the incarnation, a theological foundation of liturgical theology and practice. The author concludes by pointing to the challenges in both practice and spirituality facing Anglicanism in the development of Latino Anglican liturgy.

This essay analyzes the theological changes which are reflected in successive revisions of Southern Africa's Anglican liturgy from 1900 to 1989. The following liturgies are examined: A Book of Common Prayer—South Africa (1954); Proposals for the Revision of the Rites of Baptism and Confirmation (1967); the Church Unity Commission's ecumenical liturgies in the 1970s; Birth and Growth in Christ (1984); and An Anglican Prayer Book 1989. The article also includes valuable source material which influenced the revised liturgies, including two official reports on the theology of baptism and confirmation. The author finds that theological uncertainty surrounding the underpinning of current rites brings into question whether full church membership is actually granted during baptism.

This article examines the trend of Islamic Feminist interpretation by analysing the thought of two leading Muslim feminists i.e. Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas. The selection of Wadud and Barlas is based on the fact that their works articulate a full-blown theory of Islamic feminist hermeneutics, with bearings on theology, philosophy, experience, and more importantly, language. Additionally, both feminists have produced significant revisions of their earlier works on Qur'ānic hermeneutics. Their revisions feature evolutions of their earlier ideas, as well as responses to critiques of their feminist readings of the Qur'ān. This article explores Wadud's and Barlas's reformulation of the hermeneutic binary of 'the universal and the particular' and the extent to which this binary is part of the formation of the two authors' hermeneutics. In this regard, the article aims to investigate their intellectual efforts in developing a hermeneutic theory centered on the Qur’an as God’s speech. By studying the universal-particular binary in the works of both authors, this article argues that Wadud's and Barlas's ambivalent position on the sacredness of the Qur’ān has inhibited their hermeneutic enterprise from developing a sensitive approach to mainstream Muslim belief regarding the Qur’ān as God’s unchanging word, hence carrying the stigma of an un-authoritative discourse among lay Muslims.

AbstractTheologians seeking to respond to the ecological crisis seldom turn to the theology of Karl Barth as a resource. In fact, some suggest that his doctrine of God is too monarchical and leads to unnecessary hierarchies between God and humans, or between humans and the rest of nature. This article counters this trend and begins a dialogue with Barth, especially on the place of non-human nature in his thought. While agreeing with the substance of Barth's theology, it is argued a number of critical additions and revisions are appropriate, especially concerning his doctrine of election. The article first briefly outlines Barth's doctrine of election and then, second, examines various New Testament passages on election and non-human nature. This second section will examine the prologue of John's Gospel, Colossians 1:15–20 and Romans 8:18–23. As key texts in Barth's exposition, it will be noted how he passes over important connections between election and nature found in them. Guided by the green exegesis of Richard Bauckham, it will be argued that nature is not merely the stage for the drama between God and humanity but that it is also an object of God's election and thereby participates in reconciliation and redemption. The third part of the article suggests various points of commensurability, correction and addition to Barth's theology arising from the biblical material examined. This includes points concerning theological epistemology, the atonement, anthropology and the theology of nature. For example, Romans 8 suggests that creation groans in anticipation of redemption. Barth's view of the cross, especially the Son's taking up of human suffering, is extended to suggest that the cross is God's way of identifying with the suffering of nature and its anticipation of redemption, and not just human sin and salvation. The most important revision, however, is to be made to Barth's doctrine of election. It may be summarised as follows: in Jesus Christ, God elects the Christian community and individuals for salvation within the community of creation. The article concludes by suggesting areas of dialogue with other types of ecotheology, especially ecofeminist forms.

Abstract Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Thoth makes four substantive changes to the traditional titles of the tarot trumps. Three of these relate to the cardinal virtues which had remained in the deck despite the almost complete esoteric revisioning of the tarot that had taken place over the preceding two centuries; the fourth is an integral part of the same topic. This article focuses on why Crowley felt impelled to make these changes as well as the significance of the new names (and associated iconography). The discussion centres around Crowley’s rejection of the cardinal virtues that underly Christian ethics in favour of the new system of morality laid out in The Book of the Law and subsequently encapsulated in Thelema. Consequently, the article first examines the development of the cardinal virtues in patristic and medieval theology and then shows how Crowley sought to overturn these values in his agenda of cultural reprogramming of which The Book of Thoth arguably constitutes the high-water mark.

AbstractThis study advances a fresh approach to the doctrine that physical healing is provided in the atonement of Jesus—a belief common among Pentecostals around the world, but often supported by a small number of proof-texts (esp. Mt. 8.16-17 and 2 Pet. 2.24). Specifically, the study explores the ways in which the Fourth Gospel affirms the connection between healing and salvation and suggests additional ways to reflect upon this issue, thereby making a small contribution to the revisioning of this doctrine. This study includes the following components. First, it offers a reading of the accounts of healing found within the Fourth Gospel in order to ascertain the level of explicit connection between healing and salvation within these stories. Second, it explores the significance of the narrative location of the signs of healing and their relationship to explicit textual referents to Jesus’ exaltation upon the cross. Third, it offers a couple of observations on other portions of the Fourth Gospel that might be of some relevance to this topic. Fourth, it explores this topic further by listening to readings (‘testimonies’) from early Pentecostalism that see some connection between healing in the atonement and the Fourth Gospel. Finally, this study attempts to make explicit the modest implications of this discussion for a Pentecostal theology of healing in the atonement.

Several highly critical theological responses to political liberalism have appeared in recent years. John Milbank, continuing his onslaught on all things modern, complains that political liberalism's “empty heart” suffers from a “totalitarian drift” toward “an increasingly joyless and puritanical world.” For Oliver O'Donovan, liberalism is “a false posture of transcendence” and modernity is “conceived as Antichrist, a parodie and corrupt development of Christian social order.” Robert Song warns against “the partial and limited character” of liberalism's freedoms and proclaims that “a responsible theology will learn to articulate its ‘No’” to liberal political society. Other commentators offer critiques of particular aspects of political liberalism, often suggesting revisions based on their own theological perspectives. These critical voices join others such as Stanley Hauerwas, one of liberalism's most outspoken theological critics for more than a quarter century, and they continue a line of critique that extends back through Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth.Not all the theological voices are critical. Christophe Insole, for example, finds that “politically liberal principles are compatible with a full-blooded and theologically main-stream Christian commitment.” Several Roman Catholic theologians have commented on the increasing mutuality between liberal democracy and Roman Catholic political and social teachings. Paul Sigmund notes that “the relation between Catholicism and liberal democracy has now become a positive and, one would hope, a mutually reinforcing one, even if there are a number of continuing tensions between them.” And Daniel Dombrowski offers a general defense of Rawlsian liberalism against claims that it is hostile to religion.

The book reviewed here is a welcome addition to the library of works seek- ing to construct a richer picture of the early Islamic landscape after the wane of radical revisionist theories of Islamic origins of Islam. Salem has presented a thoughtful study of the scholar-ascetic-warrior ‘Abdallāh ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), and what the outlines of his life reveal about the proto-Sunnī milieu of the second Islamic century. Whereas early academic explorations of the development of Sunnī orthodoxy focused on theology and law, with Scott Lucas later highlighting the crucial role of ḥadīth, Salem has focused on the hitherto neglected dimension of ethics. The book is well laid out with an introduction, then a chapter outlining Ibn al-Mubārak’s life, followed by chapters analyzing his activities in the fields of ḥadīth, ji- hād, and zuhd respectively, wrapped up with a brief concluding chapter. Chapter 1 begins with a succinct overview of the ‘descriptive’ and ‘skeptical’ approaches among scholars of early Islamic history, followed by the relevant observation that interpretation of source material almost in- evitably reflects some of the assumptions of the scholar interpreting them. Salem makes the (unobjectionable) assertion that the contents of historical reports in early sources are indicative of attitudes and conceptions that ex- isted among Muslims at the time of authorship, regardless of whether they are historically genuine in all their details. She then presents a representa- tive selection of biographical details that paint Ibn al-Mubārak as a devout worshipper with high moral character, a scholar of ḥadīth and fiqh, yet also a wealthy and philanthropic trader and a brave man who spent much time guarding the frontiers. Nathan Hofer, in his review of the book, has cor- rectly pointed out that the historical sources Salem draws on span eight centuries, and criticizes her for failing to distinguish between material from different time periods. This criticism could have been avoided had Salem included an acknowledgment of this fact, along with a brief exposition of her assumptions about the nature of the sources and transmission into later biographies of materials not found in extant earlier chronicles. It is likely that excluding later biographical sources would not radically alter Salem’s central arguments—but the historiographically curious reader might won- der about some of the details, such as (for example) the genuineness of attribution of certain theological positions to Ibn al-Mubārak, given the highly-charged sectarian tensions that emerged in subsequent centuries, and the rather diverse early milieu that makes it difficult—as hadith master al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348) observed—for adherents of later orthodoxy to find pure ideologues from that early period. Chapter 2 details Ibn al-Mubārak’s prowess in hadith. The sourc- es seem to be in agreement that he amassed a large number of hadiths, a feat that Salem traces to a combination of his wide travels in search of knowledge and his readiness to write down hadiths at a time when such re- cording was still controversial. (Chapter 3 brings up a third relevant factor: his interactions with other scholars while guarding the frontiers.) We are also given a useful overview of Ibn al-Mubārak’s works, both unpublished (including lost) and published. The absence of mention of one edited ver- sion of the Kitāb al-Zuhd (Sa‘īd al-Asmarī’s 824-page MA dissertation at Umm al-Qurā University from 2012) is understandable given it was not yet available at the time Salem finished her initial manuscript. This survey is followed by a sketch of Ibn al-Mubārak’s scholarly network, including both his major teachers and prominent students. Salem asserts that these net- works show the importance of both direct teacher-to-student transmission of knowledge, a mutual awareness among its members, and acknowledged (theological and ethical) criteria amongst them for legitimation of scholar- ly authority through acceptance in this network. Salem has made reference to Lucas’ important work on this, but does not reference William Graham’s essay on Traditionalism, a source that I think deserves mention regarding the continuity of the Islamic scholarly tradition. Chapter 2 also contains some important historiographical observa- tions. Salem finds that the biographical sources show an internal consis- tency and coherence that strongly suggest their overall reliability, and make it difficult to accept revisionist theories that dismiss them entirely as later inventions that were back-projected. For example, the critique of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī as a hadith narrator, in spite of the near-unanimous praise for his piety, suggests the hadith biographers were resistant to the natural tenden- cy to “aggrandize” popular persons. Salem also rightly observes that the in- formation from biographical dictionaries can undermine some of Schacht’s assumptions, but I would have liked to have seen more engagement with the academic debates (involving Schneider, Berg, Motzki and others) over whether the biographical dictionaries are actually independent sources of information. In Chapter 3, Salem argues that although the concept of martial valor as a form of piety was well known in the Late Antique Near East, it is a mistake to assume that post-expansion Muslims simply adopted it from the Christians they came in contact with. She cites Qur’ānic references to these concepts as well as numerous narrations in Ibn al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād that chronologically mention battles in which the Prophet Muhammad was involved, as evidence that early pietist-martial men like Ibn al-Mubārak saw their activity as a continuation of indigenous Islamic teaching and practice regarding noble and ethical combat (granted of course that their understanding may have continued to evolve under other influences). For Islamic scholars to participate in guarding the frontiers, she adduces, was considered a superior form of piety than for them to live a luxurious city life. The existence of ‘religious scholars’ and ‘Qur’ānic reciters’ as a distinct class of people during this time ties in well with Salem’s assertions in the previous chapter about the transmission of religious knowledge. It might have been useful for her to cite here the work of Mustafa Shah and oth- ers who have discussed the early qurrā’ communities. A significant part of Chapter 3 discusses selected hadiths from the Kitab al-Jihād with regard to how Ibn al-Mubārak (and the community at that time) perceived jihād. In Chapter 4, Salem shows, through a comparative analysis of the early zuhd literature, that the virtuous ideal of zuhd was interpreted in diverse ways in the early community. Ibn al-Mubārak, in his own Kitāb al-Zuhd as well as in what biographical sources coherently tell us about his personal life, was a proponent of a “sober and moderate” form of zuhd as detachment of the heart from material things, along with an overarching attitude of piety, so that there is no contradiction between being wealthy and practic- ing zuhd. This stands in sharp contrast to more austere interpretations of zuhd (such as that of his contemporary, Mu‘āfā ibn Ibrāhīm) who advocat- ed a renunciation of the things of this world. While this latter group might well have been influenced by Christian ascetic practices, Salem credibly argues that a major sector of the community (typified by Ibn al-Mubārak) viewed zuhd as a broad ethical framework taken from the teachings of the Qur’ān and the Prophet Muhammad. This normative early zuhd literature, she proffers, formed the kernel of what later became Sufism, although later Sufism (and in particular the ṭarīqas) came to differ in sometimes signif- icant (and potentially problematic) ways from the earlier zuhd tradition. Hence, Salem makes a case for a “primitive” Sufism that represents a primal ethical core of Islam, in contrast to later Sufism that probably did syncreti- cally incorporate beliefs and practices from other (non-Islamic) religious traditions. Even though the book is geared towards bigger-picture arguments more than details, there could have been more precision in translation in some cases. I understand the pressures of completing a dissertation and the impossibility of perfection, and hence these critiques should not be taken to undermine the book’s worth. I found rather jarring the anachronism of translating ṣannafa/taṣnīf as “printing” (rather than the expected “author- ing” or “compilation”) when attributed to figures in the early centuries of Islam. A description of the famous Egyptian judge Ibn Lahī‘ah (d. 174/790) as muḍṭarib...yuktabu ḥadithuhū ʻalā al-iʻtibār (59), is correctly identified by Salem as a critique of his accuracy in hadith transmission, but is rather opaquely translated as “problematic....wrote hadiths for recognition.” I per- sonally would have preferred that titles like “al-Ḥāfiẓ”, “al-Imām”, and “al- ‘Alam” (at 10, for example) be translated, or at least placed before the actual name of the person in question, rather than risk non-specialists assuming these to be part of the name (though I understand that the book is directed towards specialists). Vocalizations of uncommon Arabic names are some- times inaccurate (e.g. “Sammāk” should be “Simāk”), but Salem has been exceptionally meticulous in marking in diacritics. She demonstrates a solid grasp of the overall framework of hadith-sciences and of the Arabic lan- guage, and so there are no imprecisions so egregious as to undermine her broad arguments and conclusions. Grammatical errors are extremely few. I understand that Salem’s more recent work focuses on later time pe- riods, but I would welcome further articles from her that leverage her ex- perience with the figure of Ibn al-Mubārak and her familiarity with the source materials. One possible area of further exploration for which the constraints of the dissertation did not allow but which would be useful, is some quantitative prosopographical data analysis. This could include stud- ies of the narrators of ḥadīths in Ibn al-Mubārak’s books as well as a thematic classification of all the narrations therein, which might show more clearly that the data she has cited in support of her assertions is indeed representative of the overall contents. Salem’s conclusion reads extremely well, and she has adeptly summa- rized her major findings and observations. In my estimation, the major contribution of her book has been to articulate a two-pronged centrality of ethics and morals in Sunnī orthodoxy: first, that the early zuhd genre of literature was the carrier of ethics before being subsumed later by the field of taṣawwuf; and second, that the living practice of morality and eth- ics by identified individuals in early society was central to the processes of legitimation, authority, and formation of orthodoxy (as shown by the importance of moral accreditation for being an acceptable transmitter of knowledge). Suheil LaherDean of Academics and Senior InstructorFawakih Institute for Classical Arabic

The book reviewed here is a welcome addition to the library of works seek- ing to construct a richer picture of the early Islamic landscape after the wane of radical revisionist theories of Islamic origins of Islam. Salem has presented a thoughtful study of the scholar-ascetic-warrior ‘Abdallāh ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), and what the outlines of his life reveal about the proto-Sunnī milieu of the second Islamic century. Whereas early academic explorations of the development of Sunnī orthodoxy focused on theology and law, with Scott Lucas later highlighting the crucial role of ḥadīth, Salem has focused on the hitherto neglected dimension of ethics. The book is well laid out with an introduction, then a chapter outlining Ibn al-Mubārak’s life, followed by chapters analyzing his activities in the fields of ḥadīth, ji- hād, and zuhd respectively, wrapped up with a brief concluding chapter. Chapter 1 begins with a succinct overview of the ‘descriptive’ and ‘skeptical’ approaches among scholars of early Islamic history, followed by the relevant observation that interpretation of source material almost in- evitably reflects some of the assumptions of the scholar interpreting them. Salem makes the (unobjectionable) assertion that the contents of historical reports in early sources are indicative of attitudes and conceptions that ex- isted among Muslims at the time of authorship, regardless of whether they are historically genuine in all their details. She then presents a representa- tive selection of biographical details that paint Ibn al-Mubārak as a devout worshipper with high moral character, a scholar of ḥadīth and fiqh, yet also a wealthy and philanthropic trader and a brave man who spent much time guarding the frontiers. Nathan Hofer, in his review of the book, has cor- rectly pointed out that the historical sources Salem draws on span eight centuries, and criticizes her for failing to distinguish between material from different time periods. This criticism could have been avoided had Salem included an acknowledgment of this fact, along with a brief exposition of her assumptions about the nature of the sources and transmission into later biographies of materials not found in extant earlier chronicles. It is likely that excluding later biographical sources would not radically alter Salem’s central arguments—but the historiographically curious reader might won- der about some of the details, such as (for example) the genuineness of attribution of certain theological positions to Ibn al-Mubārak, given the highly-charged sectarian tensions that emerged in subsequent centuries, and the rather diverse early milieu that makes it difficult—as hadith master al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348) observed—for adherents of later orthodoxy to find pure ideologues from that early period. Chapter 2 details Ibn al-Mubārak’s prowess in hadith. The sourc- es seem to be in agreement that he amassed a large number of hadiths, a feat that Salem traces to a combination of his wide travels in search of knowledge and his readiness to write down hadiths at a time when such re- cording was still controversial. (Chapter 3 brings up a third relevant factor: his interactions with other scholars while guarding the frontiers.) We are also given a useful overview of Ibn al-Mubārak’s works, both unpublished (including lost) and published. The absence of mention of one edited ver- sion of the Kitāb al-Zuhd (Sa‘īd al-Asmarī’s 824-page MA dissertation at Umm al-Qurā University from 2012) is understandable given it was not yet available at the time Salem finished her initial manuscript. This survey is followed by a sketch of Ibn al-Mubārak’s scholarly network, including both his major teachers and prominent students. Salem asserts that these net- works show the importance of both direct teacher-to-student transmission of knowledge, a mutual awareness among its members, and acknowledged (theological and ethical) criteria amongst them for legitimation of scholar- ly authority through acceptance in this network. Salem has made reference to Lucas’ important work on this, but does not reference William Graham’s essay on Traditionalism, a source that I think deserves mention regarding the continuity of the Islamic scholarly tradition. Chapter 2 also contains some important historiographical observa- tions. Salem finds that the biographical sources show an internal consis- tency and coherence that strongly suggest their overall reliability, and make it difficult to accept revisionist theories that dismiss them entirely as later inventions that were back-projected. For example, the critique of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī as a hadith narrator, in spite of the near-unanimous praise for his piety, suggests the hadith biographers were resistant to the natural tenden- cy to “aggrandize” popular persons. Salem also rightly observes that the in- formation from biographical dictionaries can undermine some of Schacht’s assumptions, but I would have liked to have seen more engagement with the academic debates (involving Schneider, Berg, Motzki and others) over whether the biographical dictionaries are actually independent sources of information. In Chapter 3, Salem argues that although the concept of martial valor as a form of piety was well known in the Late Antique Near East, it is a mistake to assume that post-expansion Muslims simply adopted it from the Christians they came in contact with. She cites Qur’ānic references to these concepts as well as numerous narrations in Ibn al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād that chronologically mention battles in which the Prophet Muhammad was involved, as evidence that early pietist-martial men like Ibn al-Mubārak saw their activity as a continuation of indigenous Islamic teaching and practice regarding noble and ethical combat (granted of course that their understanding may have continued to evolve under other influences). For Islamic scholars to participate in guarding the frontiers, she adduces, was considered a superior form of piety than for them to live a luxurious city life. The existence of ‘religious scholars’ and ‘Qur’ānic reciters’ as a distinct class of people during this time ties in well with Salem’s assertions in the previous chapter about the transmission of religious knowledge. It might have been useful for her to cite here the work of Mustafa Shah and oth- ers who have discussed the early qurrā’ communities. A significant part of Chapter 3 discusses selected hadiths from the Kitab al-Jihād with regard to how Ibn al-Mubārak (and the community at that time) perceived jihād. In Chapter 4, Salem shows, through a comparative analysis of the early zuhd literature, that the virtuous ideal of zuhd was interpreted in diverse ways in the early community. Ibn al-Mubārak, in his own Kitāb al-Zuhd as well as in what biographical sources coherently tell us about his personal life, was a proponent of a “sober and moderate” form of zuhd as detachment of the heart from material things, along with an overarching attitude of piety, so that there is no contradiction between being wealthy and practic- ing zuhd. This stands in sharp contrast to more austere interpretations of zuhd (such as that of his contemporary, Mu‘āfā ibn Ibrāhīm) who advocat- ed a renunciation of the things of this world. While this latter group might well have been influenced by Christian ascetic practices, Salem credibly argues that a major sector of the community (typified by Ibn al-Mubārak) viewed zuhd as a broad ethical framework taken from the teachings of the Qur’ān and the Prophet Muhammad. This normative early zuhd literature, she proffers, formed the kernel of what later became Sufism, although later Sufism (and in particular the ṭarīqas) came to differ in sometimes signif- icant (and potentially problematic) ways from the earlier zuhd tradition. Hence, Salem makes a case for a “primitive” Sufism that represents a primal ethical core of Islam, in contrast to later Sufism that probably did syncreti- cally incorporate beliefs and practices from other (non-Islamic) religious traditions. Even though the book is geared towards bigger-picture arguments more than details, there could have been more precision in translation in some cases. I understand the pressures of completing a dissertation and the impossibility of perfection, and hence these critiques should not be taken to undermine the book’s worth. I found rather jarring the anachronism of translating ṣannafa/taṣnīf as “printing” (rather than the expected “author- ing” or “compilation”) when attributed to figures in the early centuries of Islam. A description of the famous Egyptian judge Ibn Lahī‘ah (d. 174/790) as muḍṭarib...yuktabu ḥadithuhū ʻalā al-iʻtibār (59), is correctly identified by Salem as a critique of his accuracy in hadith transmission, but is rather opaquely translated as “problematic....wrote hadiths for recognition.” I per- sonally would have preferred that titles like “al-Ḥāfiẓ”, “al-Imām”, and “al- ‘Alam” (at 10, for example) be translated, or at least placed before the actual name of the person in question, rather than risk non-specialists assuming these to be part of the name (though I understand that the book is directed towards specialists). Vocalizations of uncommon Arabic names are some- times inaccurate (e.g. “Sammāk” should be “Simāk”), but Salem has been exceptionally meticulous in marking in diacritics. She demonstrates a solid grasp of the overall framework of hadith-sciences and of the Arabic lan- guage, and so there are no imprecisions so egregious as to undermine her broad arguments and conclusions. Grammatical errors are extremely few. I understand that Salem’s more recent work focuses on later time pe- riods, but I would welcome further articles from her that leverage her ex- perience with the figure of Ibn al-Mubārak and her familiarity with the source materials. One possible area of further exploration for which the constraints of the dissertation did not allow but which would be useful, is some quantitative prosopographical data analysis. This could include stud- ies of the narrators of ḥadīths in Ibn al-Mubārak’s books as well as a thematic classification of all the narrations therein, which might show more clearly that the data she has cited in support of her assertions is indeed representative of the overall contents. Salem’s conclusion reads extremely well, and she has adeptly summa- rized her major findings and observations. In my estimation, the major contribution of her book has been to articulate a two-pronged centrality of ethics and morals in Sunnī orthodoxy: first, that the early zuhd genre of literature was the carrier of ethics before being subsumed later by the field of taṣawwuf; and second, that the living practice of morality and eth- ics by identified individuals in early society was central to the processes of legitimation, authority, and formation of orthodoxy (as shown by the importance of moral accreditation for being an acceptable transmitter of knowledge). Suheil LaherDean of Academics and Senior InstructorFawakih Institute for Classical Arabic

Abstract In this article the nature of Bruno Latour’s relation to Carl Schmitt is discussed, considering the point by point revisions of Schmitt offered by Latour and his references to Schmitt. These turn out to be plentiful and illuminating. Yet the nature of Latour’s revision and its implications are obscure. The implications of his notion of cosmopolitics for political theory are minimal, and in other respects the Schmittian picture is unchanged. Unlike Schmitt, who embeds political theory in political theology, and presents a political theology in order to problematize political theory, but provides a meta-theology, Latour presents an alternative political theology, and not a meta-theology.

In this article, I analyse C.S. Lewis’s attitude towards the theology and the theologians of his time. Lewis often emphasised that he was not a theologian. Sometimes he does so out of modesty, to excuse minor errors that a specialist in the field would not have made. More often than not, however, something else plays a role: Lewis’s dislike of the theology and the theologians of his time. Although he intended not to become a party in theological controversies, Lewis occasionally took sides. He expressed himself in extremely negative terms about the liberal ... movement, which in his experience... dominated the theology of his time. By assuming them to be in error, and showing how they had arrived there, he participates in the practice he elsewhere rejected as ‘Bulverism’. Moreover, he employed pejorative, sexually tinged metaphors. Only on one occasion did Lewis provide arguments for his rejection of liberal theology, and on that occasion he limited himself to New Testament exegesis. On another occasion, Lewis states that he allows only marginal, religiously irrelevant revisions of Christian doctrine. Ironically, his own revisions sometimes went beyond this – for example, in the case of the traditional doctrine of hell. In this article I suggested that for Lewis, the practice of faith implicitly is the ultimate criterion.

The article argues that the doing theology in multi-cultural and multi-religious society expects a close collaboration of multi-disciplines. Such interdisciplinary approach makes theology possible to look at the problems of the people in a comprehensive way. The church in Indonesia has been struggling quite a lot in this theological endeavour. The International Joint Conference held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (March 2019), was an important event of this kind. And responding the discussions at the conference, this article attempts to deal with the importance of doing theology in context and its impacts on theological educations in the country. The article then suggests everyone to revisit our traditional theological programmes and to make necessary revisions needed in responding the contemporary world. In this way the church could claim the relevance of its existence and its public theology for the goodness of the country and the betterment of the society at large.

In his book, Review of “Dangerous Affirmations: The Threat of ‘Gay Christianity’” M. D. Perkins analyzes the movement of what he terms “gay Christianity.” In his forward to the book, Stephen Black notes that revisionists’ expressions of “gay Christianity” include: -A person who identifies as “gay” is simply part of God’s plan for a diverse church. - Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT)-identified persons are free to serve in any capacity within the church without restriction. - Sexual orientation is innate and immutable. - To truly “love our neighbours,” Christians must fight for LGBT causes, including allowing LGBT persons to serve openly within the church, marry, and adopt children. According to Black, these expressions reject and revise traditional biblical sexual ethics. While admitting nuances, Perkins broadly summarizes “gay Christian” theology into separate categories: gay Christian theology, affirming theology, queer theology, and gay celibate theology (side B theology). These categories ultimately contrast what Perkins refers to as a “legitimate biblical interpretation” (p.29) (See “Legitimate biblical interpretation” section below). According to Perkins, other than a “legitimate biblical interpretation," any of these would be a “threat” to the church. In addition to being an elder at the Lawndale Presbyterian Church (PCA), Perkins identifies as a research fellow for the American Family Association (AFA), the book's publisher. The AFA is an American conservative protestant non-profit organization that focuses on traditional pro-family agenda and media activism. The AFA is not without scrutiny and disdain by some LGBT advocacy groups, notably the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has accused AFA of being an anti-gay hate group. In a sense, this book puts iron into an existing cultural war.

The Himyarite invasion of 525 CE by Kaleb of Aksum was a definitive war in the narrative of global religion and politics. The accounts surrounding the war corroborate the notion of an impressed Constantinian modus of establishing religious statecraft. Whereas there has been much anthropological and archaeological work on the South Arabian–Aksumite relations from the 4th to the 6th centuries, revisionism in perspective of literary sources and respective evidence retains significance given the dynamism of Ethiopianism as a concept. Implicative document analysis, cultural historiography and archaeology of religion are relevant methods used in this study. There are parallels between Kaleb’s new Zion agenda and Constantine’s nova Roma persona, both resembling an emergent Christian-religious state. It is from this religious (Christian) state that a geopolitical policy that defined the trajectory of their respective nations emerged. The replete epigraphy and literary evidence on Ethiopia and its Byzantine connection aggregately affirms the explicit existence of a Christianised foreign policy.Contribution: The research revises the narrative of Ethiopian Christianity with a lens of political-religious dynamics thereby contributing to the field of theology and history.