EDITORIAL
ON THE FRONTIERS OF THEOLOGY Theology—once known in a time of greater metaphysical homogeneity as the "queen of the sciences"— has not always been popularly understood in terms of...
...sainthood was no longer a category in dogmatics...
...Finally we grapple with the idea of the church as teacher, an institution trying to protect permanent values while it faces up to change—particularly in the areas which will forever remain the most complex and most personal: the use of our sexuality...
...It is not a fad or the burning concern of a burning few but an in-season, out-of-season bandwagon, the always-relevant, ever-fascinating me...
...our mastery of the universe through technology and the life sciences...
...After brief but intense affairs with secularity, play and revolution, theology has found a new partner...
...Moral theology soon separated from dogmatics, asceticism and mysticism were assigned minor roles in priestly training...
...Rationalism, ideas without discernible existential import, still plagues theology...
...If so, how...
...With this in mind we asked nine American theologians to lead us to the frontiers of their knowledge and to confront a series of specific questions that are likely to remain unresolved for some time: on our understanding of Jesus and God...
...His most recent book is Stories of God (Thomas More...
...Yet, in the American imagination, the frontier has always been part challenge, part temptation—whether the Great Plains, the exploding cities, the moon, the depths of the personal unconscious or outer space, it is a shifting threshold of the unknown beyond which beckon wealth, mystery, risk and death...
...but he also knows that if he does not cross the imaginary boundary line he will wither up and die...
...This time the choice has been shrewd...
...Any frontiersman, literal or intellectual, knows well the fragility of his own courage...
...The God with whom we seek to relate may remain as elusive—yet dazzling— as the rainbow beyond the mountain range or as threatening as the storm at sea which frightens one man into belief and another into despair...
...Hence moderns think of Christianity as a shallow and unbeneficial pursuit . . . ("Theology and Christian Existence," Theology Digest, Summer, 1977, pp...
...and our poetic powers—in literature, art and film—to once again glimpse God...
...Mary of the Lake Seminary...
...In a philosophical climate that sees God as process and in a political climate that recognizes the power of the critique of religion mounted by Marx and bis more thoughtful descendants, we must ask how the word "God" might be understood if we are to confront the problem of evil in a more convincing way...
...A more moderate and more accurate appraisal would be: linking theology and autobiography is the latest and most promising form of the general enterprise of relating theology to lived experience...
...Here, briefly, are some of the issues they discuss...
...Despite a clear understanding of this problem and a firm resolve to do something about it, the gap between Christian existence and Christian theology remains...
...on the proper use of our human creative powers...
...We begin with theology and autobiography not because this subject may have become, like the "Death of God" in the 1960s, the 1970s fad of the "me generation," but because it helps return us to one of theology's fundamental activities—a reflective analysis of human experience...
...Commonweal: 357 A cynical appraisal of linking theology with autobiography would be: here we go again...
...on the relevance of the sacraments and the religious life...
...This leads us inevitably to the stories Jesus told to reveal his own identity, and to an encounter with the "shock waves undulating from a thorough revision of our perception of Jesus" and with the persistent Gospel question of his identity, "Who do you say that I am...
...Great theologians were no longer saints and saints were no longer great theologians...
...ON THE FRONTIERS OF THEOLOGY Theology—once known in a time of greater metaphysical homogeneity as the "queen of the sciences"— has not always been popularly understood in terms of its "frontiers," unless the frontier has been a barrier, the boundary line with the guard post keeping the aliens out and the citizens in...
...We ask whether feminism and other liberation theologies help us in our search for a new God-talk and whether, in an effort to bring God into our struggle for justice in the world, we might disprove the accusation that the God who represents our liberation is not a power in our history...
...Wolfgang Beinert situates the problem historically...
...The drive to make theological reflection an integral component of the life process is more than a bid for father JOHN shea is a Chicago priest, author and member of the faculty of St...
...Theology, once unified, divided into disciplines, and exegesis and dogmatics separated...
...American theology is no more dead than God, and the intellectual adventure of the American church has just begun...
...Meanwhile we struggle to find God in worship and in the sacraments and, by digging for our contemplative roots, to see if our religious orders can take greater risks to lead us through the inescapable stages of spiritual death and rebirth...
...The practical and unavoidable question of all theological activity is: "Does it make a difference...
...Theology degenerated into a mere school subject and Christian piety became a wilderness of indigestible fancies...
...105-106...
...As the image of the frontier has been central to America's self-understanding, so it should be central to the American theologian's self-understanding as well...
...A contemporary tour along the frontiers of theology— the quasi-scientific study of man's relationship with God—particularly since Vatican II described the church as a people on pilgrimage, is bound to raise almost as many questions as it answers...
...Contemporary theological activity is keenly aware that it is easier to run from rationalism than it is to actually arrive at life...
Vol. 105 • June 1978 • No. 12
