Klug - Fragility of language

The Heythrop Journal, 2009

Dogmatics After Babel: Beyond the Theologies of Word and Culture, 2018

Within the Western Christian tradition two distinct methodological approaches dominate the contemporary theological landscape: (1) the anthropological approach embodied in Paul Tillich’s theology of culture, and (2) the revelational approach originating in Karl Barth’s critical retrieval of orthodoxy. The proposed monograph will articulate a pneumatological approach that seeks to ground knowledge of God in human participation in the divine act of self-communication, thereby overcoming the dichotomy between revelation and experience characterizing the methodological divide separating Tillich and Barth and their respective intellectual progeny. The “theologian of culture” (examples include David Tracy, Sallie McFague, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Gordon Kaufman) begins with an examination of the historical and social context of the believing community, then seeks to ascertain the meaning of God’s message for the present human situation through a method of correlation by which the universal concerns of the human condition find expression in the particular symbols of the Christian faith. By contrast, the “church theologian” (figures like Hans W. Frei, George Lindbeck, Stanley Haurwaus, and John Milbank) eschews the particularities of human culture, focusing primarily on God’s message as revealed in Scripture (and to a lesser extent, the Christian tradition), before addressing the culture in which the church is located. The critique raised by the anthropological model about the revelational approach is that it perpetuates a “supranaturalist” theology in which Scripture stands outside of culture, thus shielded from criticism by culture, while the critique of the anthropological approach by more church-centered theologians is that, in its efforts to make the Christian faith relevant to culture, theologies of culture undermine the uniqueness of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This monograph argues that, despite methodological differences, both anthropological and revelational schools of thought are located within the Western, primarily European and North American, intellectual tradition, and both are responding to the post-Enlightenment atheistic rejection of Christianity manifested in the works of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Appealing to the work of liberationist, feminist, and other contextual theologians, the proposed book moves systematic/constructive theology beyond the anthropological and revelational impasse by articulating a doctrine of revelation grounded in pneumatology that overcomes the perceived divides between scripture and tradition, Christ and culture, revelation and reason. However, since the forces of globalization have made interaction between the world’s major religions an inescapable fact of life, dogmatic reflection also demands clarity on the relationship of Christianity to other faiths. Consequently, the monograph also undertakes theological reflection on the doctrine of revelation by means of a comparative analysis of Christian, Jewish and Muslim beliefs. Avoiding the dichotomy between anthropological and revelational approaches is possible when revelation—understood as God’s self-disclosure—is not limited to the written Word or to one particular interpretive tradition, but is understood as a divine act mediated by and experienced through the work of the Spirit. In other words, revelation understood as (sacramental) encounter. This avenue of exploration (1) challenges the notion that revelation is an event in the past that ended with the closing of the biblical canon, (2) engages the Pentecostal movement’s affirmation that the infinite grace of the self-revealing God is made manifest in new works of the Spirit, and (3) demonstrates how an emphasis on the work of the Spirit makes doctrinal conversation possible among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In all three Abrahamic religions some variance of the doctrine of the hiddenness of God leads to the conclusion that the full mystery of God cannot be contained by human theological formulations. Complementarily, affirming that there is one God, that this God is known primarily through God’s own action, and that even in God’s self-disclosure God is not fully known but remains mystery, demands a conception of theology as an imperfect human endeavor. However, while the claims of theology are viewed as limited, open-ended, and subject to continual revision, this in no way undermines the ontological ground (God) that gives rise to the human hermeneutical enterprise in the first place.

The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought, 2013

The Heythrop Journal, 2010

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 1990

This article deals with the essence of religion proposed by Schleiermacher, namely ‘the feeling of absolute dependence upon the Infinite’. In his theory of religious experience, and the language he used to express it, he claimed his work to be independent of concepts and beliefs. Epistemologically this is incompatible. In our century, where Christianity needs to be reinterpreted in the light of modern science, Schleiermacher has left us with a hermeneutical challenge to communicate the dynamic experience of a relationship with God in an intelligible way. The author argues that systematic theology’s obligation to rationality must at least include a dialectic interplay of interpretative schemes, events and experience.

In Praise of Mortality, Appel, Guanzini, Deibl: InPrasie of Mortality: Christianity as a New HumanimJournal for Cultural and Religious Theory(Spring 2021) 20:2, 2021

Thank you very much for the invitation to write a reply to your inaugural lecture "Christianity as a New Humanism" 54 I was very happy about it and would like to accept your invitation in form of a letter. PRELIMINARY NOTE The basic scheme of the lecture is a distinctive three-part structure based on three reference texts: the biblical primeval history (Gen 1-11), Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Musil's Man without Qualities. At the beginning there is an interpretation of the two inextricably entangled biblical stories of creation (Gen 1-3). Both texts refer to an element of pure excess that cannot be located, to an open space whose indisposability [Unverfügbarkeit] represents a barrier to a totalizing, appropriating view and thus the opening of a spiritual element, namely the seventh day and the tree of knowledge. However, the accounts lead to the failure in dealing with this elusive element, which disappears in the face of an attitude shaped by a boundless desire to possess. The dislocation from paradise, which constitutes God's answer to this, represents the restoration of distance and the "decentration" of the ego's desire for a total view. The ambivalent gift of mortality that accompanies this equals man's protection from the phantasm of having himself as well as the Other entirely at his disposal. At this point the lecture proceeds to its second reference text, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and presents a sequence of different attempts by the ego to achieve the aforementioned total view by projecting itself into the world it encounters, which involves particular conceptions of history. Each of the ego's attempts to find itself completely in the world, however, must fail and ends, so to speak, with the figure of a farewell, just like at the end of the paradise story. What takes place in connection with this is the breaking up of the corresponding conceptions of history, the driving force of which is the desire to overcome the contingency of history and which consequently do not represent a free way of dealing with it. This (ambivalent) path of desperation (Hegel) ultimately leads to a new perspective on religion. Instead of fixed regulations, it lets the category of transition (Übergang) increasingly emerge. Instead of the constant attempts of the ego to find itself in certain projections and to hide its own finitude, a new form of human tangibility is found, a second body of pure tangibility and exposure. The category of transition does not imply a transition from one fixed determination to another but rather means an event (Ereignis) in which relationships and their meaning are constituted in the first place. This again opens up a spiritual view, which had been prevented by the appropriating desire in the paradise story. Which representation of history could still correspond to this newly arisen perspective? The third section of the lecture is dedicated to the Book of Revelation and Musil's Man without Qualities and seeks to interpret the time after the end of certain conceptions of history as the "epilogue to history" 55. The epilogue does not stand in for an arbitrary self-contained conception of history but is merely an afterword that has ceased 54 Inaugural lecture at the University of Vienna on June 21, 2012, slightly modified in this volume under the title "Christianity as a New Humanism. Reflections in the Theology and Philosophy of History in light of the Bible, Hegel and Musil". 55 K. Appel, Christianity as a New Humanism, Preliminary remarks. 56 K. Appel, Christianity as a New Humanism, Preliminary remarks. 57 The form of the letter of this text is not intended to imply an explicit discussion of Heidegger's famous Letter on Humanism. References could, however, be established on the basis of the opening to a new language as well as Heidegger's reference to Hölderlin: "Hölderlin, on the other hand, does not belong to 'humanism'"-one must keep in mind that in this text Heidegger equates humanism with a dispositive understanding of man, in contrast to which he would like to prepare an original thinking of man-"precisely because he thought the destiny of man's essence in a more original way than 'humanism' could ." (M.

in La langue, la linguistique et le texte religieux. Actes du colloque "Aspects linguistiques du texte religieux" (5èmes journées de l'ERLA), Université. de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest (20-21 Novembre 2004), Paris : L’Harmattan, 2008, pp. 293-307., 2008

1-Hermeneutics and the Linguisticality of the Christian Word James Risser Seattle University As the title indicates I want to discuss the relation between hermeneutics and the Christian Word. In particular I want to show how contemporary hermeneutics makes use of the Christian notion of the inner word (verbum internum) to explain the operation of language-a operation that amounts to the operation of hermeneutical reason. Now, I am obviously not the first to take up a consideration of the importance of the inner word for an account of language and reason in contemporary hermeneutics. 1 For my part I want to focus on the peculiar character of the "circularity" within this account whereby language, in effect, makes a return to itself in order to accomplish the act of meaning in language. For this I want to divide my remarks into three parts: 1) the problem of language as the problem of the need for a living logos; 2) the problem of the living logos in the hermeneutics of facticity; 3) the fulfillment of the word in Gadamer's hermeneutics.

God in Question. Religious language and secular languages. With a Foreword by Peter Hünermann, Brixen 2014., 2014

Today’s Europe is often portrayed as a secular conti-nent. In many ways secularization and religious indif-ference characterise public life. At the same time we also observe signs of a “return to religion”. Many people set out on a deliberate search for spiritual meaning and engage seriously with religious tradi-tions. This book focuses on the dialogue between believers, searchers, and unbelievers. The authors from various European countries are mostly theologians but also representatives from the fields of religious studies, philosophy, modern art, literature, architecture, journalism, and politics. They bring different areas together in conversation and face the challenge on how the Christian message can be made intelligible and attractive to people today, and so play a positive part in the social, cultural and political shape of Europe. The quite large number of contributions is due to the aim to offer especially to emerging scholars the possibility to make themselves known to a wider public at an international level. The volume uses four languages: the original English, German, French and Italian. Each contribution is preceded by an abstract in the other languages. Foreword by Peter Hünermann

2005

IN WHAT FOLLOWS, I WILL BE PROPOSING A VIEW of religious language which, so far as I know, has not been advocated in any of the recent discussions of that topic. The view I shall be defending is that talk about God as exemplified in Scripture, the traditional confessions, and even theology, should be regarded as quite ordinary language. It should not, in my view, be seen as requiring some sort of extended analogy, or special symbolism unique to itself, in order to understand the possibility of its truth. This should not be taken to mean that religious language is always to be taken literally so far as its meaning is concerned. Like all other ordinary language, it employs many styles and figures of speech, and occurs in many literary forms and types. Determining the intent of its author on linguistic and historical grounds is paramount for ascertaining the correct interpretation of , such talk. But I will contend that neither its meaning nor the possibility of its truth require that ...