Beliefs into words: language & the religious
Gerhart, Mary
Beliefs into words: language & the religious Mary Gerhart IN ENGLAND, I'm told, one philosopher opens her first lecture of a university class typically with a jest: "People everywhere say that God...
...He provides an interesting analysis of religious language (.which he calls '"eventful") and contrasts it with an example of secular language (which he calls "uneventful...
...T. & T. Clark Ltd...
...for example, with his equating the abstraction of meaning from utterance with the "fall from divine presence," to be persuaded that the issue he raises deserves sustained attention and public discussion...
...As a sequel to Speaking in Jesus, San of God ? by Edward Schil-lebeeckx and Johannes-Baptist Men...
...In Human Rights in Religious Traditions, edited by Arlene Swidler, representatives of the world's major religions examine a relatively new-term which has become prominent in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, Arlene Swidler, ed...
...79 pp...
...Fenn's first book was Toward a Theory of Secularization (1978...
...The projected definition of "human rights" in each tradition, its theoretical basis and area of application, its success or need for further development, and the possibility of consensus on the evaluation of situations referred to by the term- consideration of these questions reveals unexpected points of contrast among the traditions...
...Maurice Friedman, reflecting on Hasidic stories and statements of Martin Bubor...
...Kort's analysis is helpful for understanding individual texts and recent American fiction as a whole...
...J. B. Libanio takes Ignatius Loyola's general intention "to seek God in everything" to mean that a dynamic, critical sense of justice is intrinsic to the act of discernment...
...The inclusion of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and a select bibliography makes this small book a valuable reference tool as well as a critical study...
...In Spiritual Discernment and Politics...
...15.95, 215 pp...
...The jest introduces the elusive distinction between language and real-ity...
...Moral Fiber: Character and Belief in Recent American Fiction, Wesley A. Kort orchestrates a religious and literary context Moral Fiber: Character and Belief in Recent American Fiction, by Wesley A. Kort, Fortress, 1982...
...Buddhism, and Hinduism, are responded to by a social historian, an ethicist, an economist, and a psychiatrist...
...A number of recent books examine a wide repertoire of linguistic and other forms whieh embody theistic belief...
...1982...
...Kesey, Vonnegut, Barth, and Pynehon...
...Jesus, Son of Go?, a collection of invited essays fur Concilium, is a daring examination of the meaning of christology...
...is alien to Marxist vocabulary...
...Jon Sobrino limits himself to "the reality and meaning of faith from the standpoint of oppression"-a standpoint which, he argues, is by right most apt and in fact most scripturalty accurate...
...The editor states the questions which are central to all of the invited essays...
...Verbal difference, it would seem, is often more than a quibble...
...and a schematic essay on the relation of ehristology to non-Christian religions make this slim Spiritual Discernment and Politics: Guidelines for Religious Communities, by J.B...
...Parables...
...Maria Cueto and Raisa Nemikin...
...In "Son of God": Reflections on a Metaphor," Nicholas Lash argues that a metaphoric understanding of both statements-"God exists" and "Jesus is the Son of God"-is a true understanding of God and of Jesus Christ...
...In the end...
...Beliefs into words: language & the religious Mary Gerhart IN ENGLAND, I'm told, one philosopher opens her first lecture of a university class typically with a jest: "People everywhere say that God is dead-but in England, it's true...
...Yet he places a premium on the unmediated as distinctive of the experience of the divine...
...Fortress...
...pears as religious metaphor...
...Two essays on the Hebrew and Christian testamental meanings of the title "Son of God" by Herbert Haag and Bas van Iersel...
...Although this book does not address the issue of the involvement of professed religious in politics, it makes an important contribution to that issue, as well as to a contemporary understanding of discernment and Ignatian spirituality...
...Libanio notices that the word "justice," frequently used in the documents of Vatican II...
...after Catholicism in France, and caution that the traditional meanings of christology can no longer be taken for granted...
...the trial of the Catonsville Nine, and the case Re...
...131 pp...
...an historical essay "Chalce-don: Then and Now" by Tarsicius van Bavei...
...McFague studies models in science and models in theology to show how their similarities and differences demonstrate that scientists and theologians share a common epis-temology...
...the State of New Jersey...
...Here McFague draws, upon two kinds of feminist criticism to examine the power of the model in the Christian tradition: upon revolutionary feminists, who take women's liberation and the permanent ascendancy of the female principle as a primary value, and upon reformist feminists, who take human liberation and full equality between the sexes as a major objective...
...and Seabury...
...The Human Way: A Dialogic Approach to Religion and Human Experience, by-Maurice Friedman...
...attempts to overcome the abstractions which he claims flaw most theologies, in particular those of Tillich and the process theologians...
...the book represents a major contribution to current theological discussion...
...A major attempt to develop a conceptual language which would preserve, rather than replace, the tension intrinsic to all authentic religious language is to be found in Sullie McFague's Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language...
...volume an insightful key to the state of the question today...
...At issue in Richard Fenn's Liturgies and Trials: The Secularization of Religious Language is the tension between individual and corporate rights...
...God the Father: Model or Idol...
...The essays on human rights in Protestantism...
...for understanding the works of several contemporary American novelists: Mailer, Oatcs, Gardner...
...Not all readers may be aware that Concilium is a quarterly international theological journal which is published in this country in book form only...
...The result is a multi-faceted, it necessarily brief, treatment of a part of American literature which often seems intransigent to religious reflection...
...Kort proposes that Wisdom literature may be the scriptural and theological tradition which best illuminates this fiction...
...The Pilgrim Press...
...Touchstones of Reality, is frequently quoted here as a touchstone for contrasting the best of two diverse traditions on what he calls the paradox of religious leadership...
...8.95, 114 pp...
...McFague's argument for an alternati\e model, God as Friend, places her centrally in the reformist tradition...
...6.95...
...In their foreword, editors l-dward Sehillebeeckx and Johann Metz remark on Islam's becoming the second strongest religious affiliation...
...The Pilgrim Press, 1982...
...Fenn charges churches with failing to define the extent of religious claims before the law, and the judicial system with reducing religious language to literal and idiosyncratic opinions...
...Liturgies and Trials: The Secularization of Religious language, by Richard K. Fenn...
...Whether one takes the "high view" that both scientific and religious models reflect reality or the "low view" of the henneneutic of suspicion, according to McFague...
...1982, S11.95, 225 pp...
...He maintains that justice involves "concrete mediation" on three levels of action, all of which have political connotations...
...Orbis, $6.95...
...both views evaluate models on the basis of their explanatory power...
...1982...
...As an example of the risk to be taken in concrete mediation, he offers the life of Francis of Assisi who, he says, "moved very close to condemned heretics...
...Anima Hooks, 1982, $13.95...
...contemporary political and ethical discussion...
...160 pp...
...Ubanio...
...McFague studies the dominant model for God in Christianity in her last chapter...
...Belief is disguised and enigmatic in contemporary American fiction, ostensive - even ostentatious - in court trials, subversive in Hasidic texts, and unconventional when it apMetaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language, by Sallie McFague...
...Three recent court trials provide evidence for his thesis that religious language has lost its effectiveness in defending the individual's right to act on certain principles which challenge existing laws: the case of Karen Ann Quinlan vs...
...One need not always agree with Fenn...
...195 pp...
...Explicating their work under one of three themes-explorers of the territory ahead, marginal people, and priests of the possible- Kort also recalls theological and literary predecessors of each group of new novelists...
...In his third book...
...eds., Concilium 153...
...Although not ail of these books have theistic language as their central focus, together they ply the extent to which religious language informs human thought and action...
...The Human Way: A Dialogic Approach to Religion and Human Experience does not, however, oppose abstraction with immediacy: Instead of immediacy, Friedman proposes an "indirect knowledge" which is capable of objectifying and categorizing and at the same time of returning to dialogieal knowing...
...One of his previous books...
...On this basis also...
...Hast-ern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Islam...
...Kerouac, Bellow...
...is often more than a quibble...
...9.95...
Vol. 110 • May 1983 • No. 10
