Catholicity and the Church


Book Description

Fr Meyendorff affirms that one cannot "claim to be a Christian except through concrete membership in the catholic Church and through a continuous effort at manifesting the catholicity of the Church."




The Catholicity of the Church


Book Description

Avery Dulles, well-known for several previous works in ecclesiology, including Models of the Church, here surveys a theme that demands new treatment in the present global and ecumenical context. He deals with questions that are vital for the identity of churches that designate themselves Catholic, and for the relationship between these churches and Protestant forms of Christianity. The prospects of Catholicism are realistically appraised. The Catholicity of the Church reproduces, in slightly revised form, the Martin D'Arcy Lectures delivered by Fr Dulles at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. 'In theology such as this the seeds of real unity between divided Christendom are being sown.' B.L. Horne, 'This is a fine book, providing a framework for fruitful dialogues among Christians of all traditions.' Journal of Theological Studies Expository Times 'This is a refreshing and challenging book, and is of considerable ecumenical importance.' Oliver Rafferty, The Month 'At the heart of ecclesiology is the concept of catholicity, and in tackling the nature of the Church's catholicity Fr Dulles has courageously addressed himself to the crucial ecumenical question.' Roger Greenacre, Theology 'doing honour to the memory of Martin D'Arcy both for its realism and for its renewal of our sense of Catholicism.' Fergus Kerr, The Tablet




Reformed Catholicity


Book Description

Can Christians and churches be both catholic and Reformed? In this volume, two accomplished young theologians argue that to be Reformed means to go deeper into true catholicity rather than away from it. Their manifesto for a catholic and Reformed approach to dogmatics seeks theological renewal through retrieval of the rich resources of the historic Christian tradition. The book provides a survey of recent approaches toward theological retrieval and offers a renewed exploration of the doctrine of sola scriptura. It includes a substantive afterword by J. Todd Billings.




Contesting Catholicity


Book Description

In Contesting Catholicity, Curtis W. Freeman offers an alternative Baptist identity, an "Other" kind of Baptist, one that stands between the liberal and fundamentalist options. By discerning an elegant analogy among some late modern Baptist preachers, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Baptist founders, and early patristic theologians, Freeman narrates the Baptist story as a community that grapples with the convictions of the church catholic.




Making All Things New


Book Description

Ilia Delio introduces a new word, catholicity, which is destined to become as discussed and familiar in this century as the word Catholic was in the 2nd century. As Delio demonstrates, catholicity is a conscious awareness of how everything - sun and stars, maple trees and muddy rivers and all organisms from the single-celled to homo sapiens - forms one thing. It is a dynamic, spiritual quality that quite literally means "becoming whole." Catholicity is an inner principle which first burst forth in the life of Jesus, and has the power to reconnect all the dimensions of life: spirituality, religion, the new sciences, culture, and society."--Back cover




The Catholicity of Reason


Book Description

The Catholicity of Reason explains the "grandeur of reason," the recollection of which Benedict XVI has presented as one of the primary tasks in Christian engagement with the contemporary world. While postmodern thinkers -- religious and secular alike -- have generally sought to respond to the hubris of Western thought by humbling our presumptuous claims to knowledge, D. C. Schindler shows in this book that only a robust confidence in reason can allow us to remain genuinely open both to God and to the deep mystery of things. Drawing from both contemporary and classical theologians and philosophers, Schindler explores the basic philosophical questions concerning truth, knowledge, and being -- and proposes a new model for thinking about the relationship between faith and reason. The reflections brought together in this book bring forth a dramatic conception of human knowing that both strengthens our trust in reason and opens our mind in faith.




The Catholicity of the Reformation


Book Description

As the title of this engaging book suggests, "catholicity" was the true intent of the Reformation. The Reformers did not set out to create what later came to be known as Protestant Christianity. Theirs was a quest for reformation and renewal in continuity with the "one holy catholic and apostolic church" of ancient times. The authors of the essays collected here demonstrate this catholicity of the Reformers and stress the importance of recovering the church's catholic tradition today. Robert W. Jenson examines communio ecclesiology, describing ecumenical thought on this ecclesiology and developing it in a number of areas. David S. Yeago proposes a new way of reading Luther, suggesting that the shift in Luther's thought actually brought him closer to the church's catholic tradition. Frank C. Senn discusses the Reformers' changes to the order of the mass, which restored the people's participation and regular preaching on biblical texts. Carl E. Braaten explores the problems that arise from the lack of an office of teaching authority in Protestant churches. James R. Crumley examines various perspectives on the office of pastor, seeking to clarify the notion of ministry in the catholic tradition. Robert L. Wilken looks at Pietism, showing that this movement sought to recover lost aspects of medieval spirituality and called for a deepening of personal piety. Finally, Gunther Gassmann discusses the ways in which the church universal is and should be a communion of churches.




Towards Baptist Catholicity


Book Description

'Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision' contends that the reconstruction of the Baptist vision in the wake of modernity's dissolution requires a retrieval of the ancient ecumenical tradition that forms Christian identity through liturgical rehearsal and ecclesial practice. Themes explored include catholic identity as an emerging trend in Baptist theology, tradition as a theological category in Baptist perspective, the relationship between Baptist confessions of faith and the patristic tradition, the importance of Trinitarian catholicity for Baptist faith and practice, catholicity in biblical interpretation, Karl Barth as a paradigm for a Baptist and evangelical retrieval of the patristic theological tradition, worship as a principal bearer of tradition, and the role of Baptist higher education in shaping the Christian vision. This book submits that the proposed movement towards catholicity is neither a betrayal of cherished Baptist principles nor the introduction of alien elements into the Baptist tradition. Rather, the envisioned retrieval of catholicity in the liturgy, theology, and catechesis of Baptist churches is rooted in a recovery of the surprisingly catholic ecclesial outlook of the earliest Baptists, an outlook that has become obscured by more recent modern reinterpretations of the Baptist vision and that provides Baptist precedent of a more intentional movement towards Baptist catholicity today.




Catholicity and Heresy in the Early Church


Book Description

While it has often been recognised that the development of Christian orthodoxy was stimulated by the speculations of those who are now called heretics, it is still widely assumed that their contribution was merely catalytic, that they called forth the exposition of what the main church already believed but had not yet been required to formulate. This book maintains that scholars have underrated the constructive role of these "heretical" speculations in the evolution of dogma, showing that salient elements in the doctrines of the fall, the Trinity and the union of God and man in Christ derive from teachings that were initially rejected by the main church. Mark Edwards also reveals how authors who epitomised orthodoxy in their own day sometimes favoured teachings which were later considered heterodox, and that their doctrines underwent radical revision before they became a fixed element of orthodoxy. The first half of the volume discusses the role of Gnostic theologians in the formation of catholic thought; the second half will offer an unfashionable view of the controversies which gave rise to the councils of Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon . Many of the theories advanced here have not been broached elsewhere, and no synthesis on this scale had been attempted by other scholars. While this book proposes a revision in the scholarly perception of early Christendom, it also demonstrates the essential unity of the tradition.




Umstrittene Katholizität: Von der zwiespältigen Beziehung zwischen Vielfalt und Einheit – Catholicity under Pressure: The Ambiguous Relationship between Diversity and Unity


Book Description

Das Attribut "katholisch" wird in vielen Kontexten als Konfessionsbezeichnung einer bestimmten Kirche missverstanden. Die in diesem Band vorgelegten Vorträge der 18. Wissenschaftlichen Konsultation der Societas Oecumenica beleuchten die ökumenische Bedeutung der "Katholizität" die alle Kirchen im Glaubenbekenntnis bekennen. Dabei werden auch die Spannungen zwischen Einheit und Viefalt sowie die Herausforderungen durch neuere Entwicklungen in der weltweiten Christenheit in den Blick genommen. In many contexts the attribute "catholic" is misunderstood as a confessional term describing one specific church. The papers of the 18th Academic Consultation of Societas Oecumenica presented in this book give insights to the ecumenical significance of the "catholicity", which all churches confess in the Creed. They also take into consideration the tensions between unity and diversity as well as the challenges by new developments in worldwide Christianity.