Month: February 2007

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Thomas International

The Thomas International is the first stage in the establishment of a new Christian/Catholic university. It is offering conferences, courses, teaching material, links – inspiration and aspiration aplenty.

So far it has set up the Ralph McInerny Center for Thomistic Studies

The purpose of the Ralph McInerny Center for Thomistic Studies is to foster a renewal of Thomistic studies in the contemporary world. Today, in a culture that has lost unity of knowledge and faces new challenges of relativism and nihilism, on the one hand, and of globalization, on the other, Thomas Aquinasâ??s life and thought set the right direction for a revival of truth in ethics and metaphysics. The Ralph McInerny Center aims at promoting a strong and accurate rereading of Aquinasâ?? philosophy and theology but, at the same time, it aims at making Aquinasâ?? thought fruitfully converse with contemporary culture, especially in the areas of bioethics, legal theory, economics, political theory, literature, science, and sociology.

Why Aquinas?

Aquinas is the cornerstone of Catholic thought, not just for his doctrine, but for his fidelity and prayer; for his constant and humble attitude of inclusion instead of exclusionâ??always open both to the truths coming from the faith and to those coming from every other thinker and tradition. He did not create a philosophical or theological systemâ??from which eventually some truth, either natural or supernatural, would have been ruled out; rather, he was always ready to welcome new philosophical insights, and to see the constant need for finding harmony between them and the depositum fidei. Thomism is not just one out of many Christian traditions of thought; it is the only safe home where every sincere Christian intellectual can find comfortable refuge and establish the constructive dialogue with other thinkers which leads to the truth.

Aquinas is the model of Catholic thinkers also because he was an authentic citizen of his time: the Medieval Renaissance. He traveled all around the XIII-century world [Europe] more than most of his contemporaries. He gave refined and remarkable answers to the most difficult political, legal and ethical issues debated in his culture. Due to his exceptional problem-solving capacity, he was asked to accomplish (or give advise for) difficult political missions and legal tasks; he was even executor of a will. Indeed, his knowledge of law and politics matched his knowledge of theology and philosophy. Today, in a culture that has lost unity of knowledge and is far from being universal; in a society that has to face the new challenges of relativism and nihilism, on the one hand, and of globalization, on the other, Aquinasâ??s life and thought set the right direction for a revival of truth in ethics and metaphysics.

After Aquinas, his spirit has lived over the centuries through other exceptional people who not only studied what he wrote, but incarnated his same love for God and for â??the world and its values;â?? people with the same â??courage of the truth,â?? â??freedom of spirit in confronting new problems,â?? and â??the intellectual honesty of those who allow Christianity to be contaminated neither by secular philosophy nor by a prejudiced rejection of it;â?? people who pass as well â??into the history of Christian thoughtâ?? as pioneers of the new paths of â??philosophy and universal cultureâ?? (Fides et Ratio, 43) and who keep Aquinas alive for the generations to come. These people connect the past to the future by leaving behind them, not just their priceless writings, but also many good students and young scholars trained in fidelity to the Church, intellectual freedom, open mindedness, and respect for diversity: â??by their fruits you will know themâ?? (Matthew 7:20). In our recent history, we can think of Cornelio Fabro, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Ralph McInerny. These â??Thomistsâ?? have always had greater love for the tradition than for themselves: they have looked to each other, respected each other, worked with each other. Thomistic tradition cannot do without these authentic Thomists, and should stick to them if it wants to go on steadily through the centuries.

McInerny Center for Thomistic Studies

Thomas International makes a substantial contribution to the list of institutions in this blog’s ‘Theology and the university’ category. Now if we could reproduce just a fraction of this effort in London, even just a little colony of TI, CUA, Notre Dame… Anybody?

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The education for me

I have just had a look around the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family in Melbourne

Here is the curriculum for the Masters in Sacred Theology

The Human Person
Being, Knowing and Choosing
Philosophical Foundations of Bioethics
St Thomas for the 21st Century
Nature and Method of Theology
Biblical Theology of Marriage and the Family
Marriage in the Catholic Tradition
Theology of the Family as the Domestic Church
Theology of the Body
Theological Anthropology
Vatican II, John Paul II and Recent Catholic Thought
New Evangelization in Post-Modern Culture
Themes in Systematic Theology
Foundations of Christian Moral Life
Virtues, Norms and Happiness
Theology and Practice of Natural Family Planning
Social Science of Marriage and the Family
Psychology and Pastoral Care of the Family
Politics of Marriage, Family and Life
Educating in Sexuality, Marriage, Family and Life
Authority and Freedom

Being, Knowing, Choosing? Authority and Freedom? Redemption of Sexuality? Happiness?

Wow. I’m off to Oz to get my education started at last.

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A device to rebuke the Church

The Church isnâ??t arguing that gay parents shouldnâ??t be allowed to adopt, or even that the state shouldnâ??t place children with gay couples. As Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett points out, the Church is merely asking for an exemptionâ??an exemption allowing it the freedom to continue to place children; an exemption that wouldnâ??t force it into the dilemma of either violating its own conscience or having to close its adoption programs.

In this case, the religious believers are clearly on the side of conscience and freedom, while secular liberals are promoting a state-imposed moralism that coerces everyone, at least everyone who desires to cooperate with the state for the common good. Thus, the Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York, in solidarity with their Catholic brethren, wrote to Blair: â??The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning.â??…

From the Churchâ??s perspective, it would not be unjust for the state to prohibit the adoption of children by gay parentsâ??a child has a natural right to a mom and a dad. Itâ??s simply that in this case the governmentâ??s view is on the other side of the issue. And so the best the Church can hope for is a compromise of live and let live.

But this compromise will not be madeâ??for those on the side of gay rights, convinced of the truth of their argument, will not settle for it. Nor should they. The law doesnâ??t really imagine that Catholic adoption agencies are somehow preventing gay and lesbian couples from adopting elsewhere. The proposed law is, instead, a device to rebuke the Church, to tell the Church that its teachings about homosexuality and marriage are false, a way for gay-rights activists to attack Christianity under the mantel of nondiscrimination…

The stance that the government takes toward same-sex marriage will have implications not only for state marriage law but much elseâ??including religious liberty. Legal moralists on the left wonâ??t have it any other way.

Ryan T. Anderson Moralism and the UK Adoption Laws

And then read Maggie Gallagher on the coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty

Just how serious are the coming conflicts over religious liberty stemming from gay marriage?

“The impact will be severe and pervasive,” Picarello says flatly. “This is going to affect every aspect of church-state relations.” Recent years, he predicts, will be looked back on as a time of relative peace between church and state, one where people had the luxury of litigating cases about things like the Ten Commandments in courthouses. In times of relative peace, says Picarello, people don’t even notice that “the church is surrounded on all sides by the state; that church and state butt up against each other. The boundaries are usually peaceful, so it’s easy sometimes to forget they are there. But because marriage affects just about every area of the law, gay marriage is going to create a point of conflict at every point around the perimeter.

How much of the coming threat to religious liberty actually stems from same-sex marriage? These experts’ comments make clear that it is not only gay marriage, but also the set of ideas that leads to gay marriage–the insistence on one specific vision of gay rights–that has placed church and state on a collision course. Once sexual orientation is conceptualized as a protected status on a par with race, traditional religions that condemn homosexual conduct will face increasing legal pressures regardless of what courts and Congress do about marriage itself.

Nevertheless, marriage is a particularly potent legal “bright line.” Support for marriage is firmly established in our legal tradition and in our public policy. After it became apparent that no religious exemption would be available for Catholic Charities in Massachusetts, the church looked hard for legal avenues to continue helping kids without violating Catholic principles. If the stumbling block had been Catholic Charities’ unwillingness to place children with single people–or with gay singles–marriage might have provided a legal “safe harbor”: Catholic Charities might have been able to specialize in placing children with married couples and thus avoid collision with state laws banning orientation discrimination. After Goodridge, however, “marriage” includes gay marriage, so no such haven would have been available in Massachusetts.

Precisely because support for marriage is public policy, once marriage includes gay couples, groups who oppose gay marriage are likely to be judged in violation of public policy, triggering a host of negative consequences, including the loss of tax-exempt status. Because marriage is not a private act, but a protected public status, the legalization of gay marriage sends a strong signal that orientation is now on a par with race in the nondiscrimination game.

Maggie Gallagher Banned in Boston: The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty and see Marriage Debate for Marriage and the Law: A Statement of Principles

What if marriage really is an essential core institution of American society, a close kin in importance to private property, free speech and free enterprise, public education, equal protection of the law, and a democratic form of government? How then should law and society treat marriage?

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Oakes on Catholics, Protestants and heresy

Doctrinal clarity is lost when Catholics call Protestant hereticsâ?¦

First of all, I wish to stress that I am not trying to ban the word heresy by Catholics when speaking of Protestants out of some wishy-washy ecumenical latitudinarianism, as if dogmas are merely matters of opinion without objective truth value of their own. Nor I am denying that there are genuine doctrinal disputes that have become church-dividing. I have no doubt that the prospect of eventual ecclesial unity can only be achieved when, among other milestones, consensus is reached about the dogmas that separate Christians.

When the Western Church fissiparated in the sixteen century, the Reformers took a portion of the essential patrimony of the Church with them, and they thereby left both the Roman Church and themselves the poorer for it.

I wish I could come up with a term that Catholics could use when they want to speak of the church-dividing doctrines of classical Protestantism without having to be either insulting or falling to the trap of â??anything goesâ?? latitudinarianism. But I canâ??t. Canon law unfortunately only recognizes schism and heresy, the former being a refusal to recognize duly constituted church authority without any attendant doctrinal deviation (like the Donatists in Augustineâ??s time), while the latter term is applied to those who explicitly deny key doctrines of the faith, however conceived, and whether theyâ??ve abjured their membership in the Church or not.

All I can say is this: We live in strange times when I find greater doctrinal fellowship among many Protestants than I do among far too many Catholic theologians!

Edward T. Oakes, S.J. Are Protestants Heretics?, in which Oakes takes apart Roger Haight (whose ‘Jesus: Symbol of God’ was the doctrine textbook at one London Anglican ordination course). Oakes followed this by:

I meant my reflections merely to serve as a trial balloon in my search for a better word than heresy to describe the doctrinal differences that are still outstanding between Catholics and Protestants; and given my own confusion on the matter I am neither surprised nor dismayed that reaction was heated. At the very least, the controversy will give me a chance to try to get my own mind clear on the exact meaning of such terms as heresy, dissent, schism, ecumenical dialogue, and so forthâ?¦.

I fear that unless we get clear about what heresy is and is not, then either doctrinal rigor will be lost or the prospect of ecumenical progress will be scuppered by a too-sweeping and too-univocal application of the word heresy.

Edward T. Oakes, S.J. On Heresy: A Final Word

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The Vocation and Formation of Theologians and the Teaching Office of the Bishop

Recent months have seen renewed interest by the British Government in developing a long-term policy for Universities, especially in England and Wales. The proposed changes to the structures of the universities, although recognising the need for diversity of provision and for a striving for excellence in academic achievement at all levels, nevertheless do not open the question of the role of the universities in the shaping of national life, in the formation and understanding of what it is to be human, and in the preservation and study of what is most precious in our history. If there is a strong emphasis on what it means to strive to extend the frontiers and boundaries of knowledge, nowhere to be found is the asking of the questions â?? what is knowledge, what is wisdom, what is truth, and how are we to live in truth?

In 1997 the Bishops of England and Wales reminded us that â??the basic understanding of education [is] human development . . . at the heart of it is a human being within whom as far as human willfulness allows, the creator will perfect the image of his divine Sonâ??

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The Bishops have already noted that the radical dissolution of a sense of the human person as standing at the centre of the practices of formation in pedagogy is co-extensive with the â??development of postmodernist thoughtâ??. The intellectual tendencies named by this term all in different but related ways represent, as the Bishops acknowledge, a dissolution of an understanding of the truth, and by this very fact, indicate (albeit negatively) the fundamental relation between an understanding of truth and the enquiry into the human person. In bringing to light the very shape of the human person not only in his or her capacity for economic and technical success but also to live a moral life, concerned with and for what it means to dwell with and seek the good of others, the question of the origin and final end of this person who emerges as the holder of human wisdom is posed. Here it is that theology engages with all the turmoil and questioning of human life and enquiry, and here even more that theology is shown to have a place â?? a central one at that â?? in the home of the sciences, the university itself.

The Society of St. Catherine of Siena – The Vocation and Formation of Theologians and the Teaching Office of the Bishop in the British Context

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No lack of love – the Fulcrum sermons of Oliver O'Donovan

Many months ago I promised you a series on Oliver O’Donovan. At last, here it is. This piece discusses O’Donovan’s Fulcrum sermons and offers a little theological context. It starts below, and is linked to the rest of the paper on ‘Resources for Christian theology’, with links to the sermons themselves. Next is a piece on O’Donovan’s ‘The Ways of Judgment’.

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Oliver O’Donovan is one of the most exciting theologians in the UK. He writes on current issues, like bioethics, just war, sexuality and the church. But his great strength, and the source of his evangelical authority, is his ability to show us how Christians in different periods of history have dealt with the very same problems that face us now. He is able to summarise the hard-won experience of Christians of different centuries, so we can see the intellectual resources available to us. He has just published a series of seven ‘Sermons on the issues of the day’ on Fulcrum. They are master-classes in Christian discernment. Sexuality and the unity of the church are the issues of the day, and the whole package of Christian wisdom will enable us to tackle these issues together and grow in truth and love as we do so.

O’Donovan tells us that it is an extraordinary privilege to be a Christian disciple, and so to be witnesses of God for the world. All of us are learning what this discipleship means. Discipleship is never likely to be easy, so we will get no glib answers here. What O’Donovan wants us to know is that Christians have met such tough issues many times before, and have developed good practices for thinking them through. To do so we have to explore the whole back catalogue of Christian discipleship. We will have to listen to alternative views, and this demands patience, but confidence in the Christian tradition will give us the patience we need. O’Donovan himself listens very seriously to what the other side is saying. He is a strong advocate of the traditions of the public square which allow a real exchange of views to take place.

Momentous issues of Christian truth and church unity have merged around the single issue of sexuality. In these sermons O’Donovan shows us from the history of ideas of nature on one hand, and of creation and redemption on the other, why this has happened. But these are not the sermons of a heterosexual telling homosexuals what to think: we are not being told that homosexuals are wrong – or right. O’Donovan is inviting us all, regardless of what side of the issue we believe ourselves to be on, to ask what is the distinctive thing about Christians who are also homosexual. What is the particular contribution to the Christian life, and witness to the world, of the struggle of the homosexual Christian? We all have something to learn about being Christian here.

One other thing before we begin. O’Donovan is an evangelical theologian. He says that we have to offer the whole gospel to our contemporaries through preaching and teaching Jesus Christ. Life with Christ and in the communion of his church is better than life without. So Christians do not need to construct their identity from scratch, so there is no reason why they should sound desperate. Christian emphasis on talking straight, in truth and love, is also good for society, because it makes for an open, we could even say, a more reasonable, society. This short-term and medium-term offering of the gospel in word and act results in a healthier society and increased opportunity to discover the huge definition of human being that the gospel sets out. Christian reasoning is evangelical. Disciplined by the gospel, the Church takes responsibility for the society to which it is sent. This witness is not always welcome, of course, but when society seems determined to close down on itself, it is the graciousness of God to a whole society.

No lack of love – the Fulcrum sermons of Oliver O’Donovan

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Deep Church – New Series

Professor Paul Bradshaw has very kindly offered to host a new series of three Deep Church ecclesiology seminars. These will continue to explore the resources of the whole Christian tradition for contemporary church worship and life

Friday 16 February, Friday 30 March, and Friday 11 May, 3-5pm
at Notre Dame’s London Centre

16 February Alan Brown – ‘Orthodox and Evangelical?’
Alan is on the management team of the Cambridge Orthodox Institute. He is author of ‘The Intellectual Debate between Pagans and Christians in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries’ (Cambridge Histories) and is presently writing on the relationship between Christian theology and Christian spirituality.

30 March Bernd Wannenwetsch – ‘Worship as public and political act’
Bernd is lecturer in Christian ethics at Harris Manchester College Oxford, and is author of ‘Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens’ and ‘Liturgy as Politics – Politics as Liturgy’.

11 May David Hilborn – ‘Why should evangelicals be Anglican?’
David is Director of Studies and acting Principal of the North Thames Ministerial Training Course. Previously he was the Evangelical Alliance’s Theologian, convenor of the Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals, and editor of ‘Evangelicalism and the Orthodox Church’.

These seminars are open to anyone in Christian ministry or theological study in London.
If you would like to come to any one of these please email using the address in ‘About Us’

The Book of the Series –
We hope to launch ‘Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep Church’, edited by Luke Bretherton and Andrew Walker, the collected papers from the last Deep Church series, at one of these seminars.

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Being Disciples

Fulcrum Conference Islington London
Friday 27 April 2007, 2:00pm to 9:00pm

Being Disciples

Conference Speakers:

Dr Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury

Dr Elaine Storkey
Senior Research Fellow, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, Chair of Fulcrum and President of Tearfund

I wonder who gave them that title? Disciples and discipleship is just what is required when attempting a little Christian theology in London

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New theology titles from London

There is still a fair flow of publications from those who studied under Colin Gunton at Kings College London. I have been meaning to introduce each of these to you properly, but the months slip by, so here is a short list.

Justyn Terry‘s The Justifying Judgement of God: A Reassessment of the Place of Judgement in the Saving Work of Christ, in which Karl Barth plays a fair role, has just appeared from Paternoster.

Peter S. Oh‘s Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Karl Barth’s Analogical Use of the Trinitarian Relation examines Barth on analogy, and suggests that another look at Kierkegaard, from whom Barth learned his antipathy to analogy, would show that analogy is intrinsic to a theology of persons, and then goes on to develop this insight into a whole ecclesiology. It has an introduction by Christoph Schwöbel. Tough conceptual stuff, but the theological gain is real enough.

Then coming from T&T Clark in May 2007 is Iain Taylor‘s Pannenberg on the Triune God.

Colin Gunton‘s own The Barth Lectures edited by Paul Brazier, and also introduced by Christoph Schwöbel, is out from T&TClark in July, as is Alan Spence‘s Incarnation and Inspiration: John Owen and the Coherence of Christology.

(Have you Gunton readers seen Hans Schaeffer Createdness and Ethics: The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Ethics in the Theology of Colin E. Gunton and Oswald Bayer ?)

Then two very important books from two friends of mine who studied Christian Ethics under Michael Banner

Brian Brock‘s Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics is now out from Eerdmanns. Christian Scripture and the Christian community are in some kind of constitutive relationship (yes, apparently this is still news for the ethics crowd) then comes a good review of the best of recent theological-hermeneutical literature (Webster, Watson…), then finally Augustine, Luther and Brian Brock himself guide us the psalms, and in the hands of these masters our education really begins. Theology comes from worship and serves worship.

Very soon we will see Christopher Roberts‘ Creation & Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in and for the Moral Theology of Marriage. I used to wonder why Chris was so concerned to show that marriage unites two people of different gender. Well I now I see why. In the last week in the UK I have heard just one or two Roman Catholic spokesmen quietly inform the British government and people that marriage – this man-woman covenant thing – is not a creation of the state, and may not be be re-defined on the whim of a government. Marriage – the union of two people of different gender is not only the foundation of all human society (and therefore of the state) but is the very premise of human being as such.

Brock and Roberts. I have been pilfering ideas from these two for years. For instance, I had no idea about the totus Christus until Brian pointed it out to me in Augustine. Nothing has been the same since.

And Michael Banner himself (now Dean of Chapel at Trinity, Cambridge) is one of the best kept secrets of British theological ethics. His Brief History of Ethics, unlikely to be brief, and might just be major, is out from Blackwells in the autumn.

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Constantly receiving one another as sister Churches

In the last century especially, Anglicans have become more and more aware of the theological and spiritual resources of their brothers and sisters in the East; it is not too much to say that both the thinking and the piety of Anglicans would have been unrecognizably different without this growing and thankful awareness; and many of the ways in which we as Anglicans now seek a way forward for the unity and coherence of our own Communion have been shaped by the inspiration of the Christian East.

But in the last seventeen years, this instinct of common emphasis and purpose has been probed and tested at a new depth in the work of our International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue. The Commission has not sought to negotiate an agreed position between rival views; it has begun from first principles, reflecting at length on the foundations of the Church in the triune life of God and the interpenetration of divine and human nature in the incarnate Son, and has advanced from there to offer a fresh perspective on the challenges that we face today – within the Church itself and in relation to the world that is hungry for words of life from us. It is a document that seeks unashamedly to lay out the foundation for proclaiming good news to our world: a bold and inviting vision of God’s will for his Church that is more than just the record of an ecumenical encounter.

It reflects many dimensions of our indebtedness to the Orthodox theological perspective; and you, Your All-Holiness, have yourself been a powerful spokesman in East and West for many of the themes that come into focus here. You have taught us, as no other global church leader has, the imperative significance of a moral and spiritual understanding of our material environment as the natural outworking of our faith and participation in the communion of the divine persons. You have witnessed to the difficult task of holding diverse Christian communities together in charity and right doctrine without the sanctions of centralised control. And in this connection we are all sharply aware of how your leadership and witness is exercised in local circumstances of real difficulty and constraint. We wish to assure you of our strong support for you and your fellow – Christians in Istanbul and our continuing gratitude for your courage and clarity as a voice in the Orthodox world and in the Christian world in general.

Archbishop Rowan Williams Address at Evensong 30 January in the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarch, His All-Holiness Bartholomew I, and the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox for Theological Dialogue

The reason for all this ecumenical malarcky?

The Church, although one, exists as Churches (in the plural), and these Churches exist as One Church in and through constantly receiving one another as sister Churches

John Zizioulas The Theological Problem of Reception