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The «Elihu Speeches» (Jb 32-37) break into the book of Job like an apparently unknown and unexpected voice, in order to take up the principal lines of a debate begun by Job and his friends. The surprise element and the philological complexity of the speeches have elicited uncountable critical reactions, expressed in this article as dominant questions made to Job 32-37. It is in the range and opportunity of these questions that the project and the response of Biblical Rhetorical Analysis achieves a peculiar importance, remarkably set out in new horizons of understanding and of inquiry, that are guaranteed to be close to the biblical text and of its author. The decisive step is the study of the composition of the text, as the unequivocal ground for an objective and coherent understanding and interpretation. The interpretation is validated by critical observation, where the convincing unity of the Elihu Speeches and the vigour of the wisdom language are affirmed. These are the foundations of an author’s configuration and of the focus of his message, producing a fecundity that goes hand in hand with the opportunity for new debate.

The Bari document (1987) of the mixed international Commission for Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue, which is looking into the connection between faith, the sacraments and Church unity, is a convergence document that outlines the differences of the Churches on the matter of baptism. The question of the value of baptism for the partners in this dialogue, crucial in all its implications, is an area that is open and promising in its demands for a new logic of understanding of ecclesial relations. Working on a systematic basis, dialogue around the value of baptism and its recognition in relations between the two Churches requires of them a reinvention of methods, seen in terms of ‘differentiated consensus’ and models founded on the model of ‘sister Churches’. This article seeks to contribute to this reinvention.

“Baptism in children: new readings of an eternal reality” is a brief summary of the doctoral dissertation of João Pedro Brito, defended on 18/03/2004 at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome. This work seeks new forms of expression on a classic theme of sacramental theology: paedobaptism. With the help of the Humanities and of new exegetic approaches, it attempts to make explicit certain affirmations from theological tradition in relation to this theme, reclothing them with new, more dynamic elements, with a view to returning to them their original riches, and to help to manifest new virtualities that may be contained within them.

The title of this article relates to the present author’s doctoral thesis. This study is theological and liturgical in nature and is articulated in the manner of a triptych, centred on the concepts sacramentum-mysterium and ministerium. The first section is made up of an analysis of certain texts by six Church Fathers: Ignatius of Antioch, Tertullian, Ciprian, John Chrysostom, Augustine and Isidore of Seville. In the second part, eight liturgical documents are examined: Traditio Apostolica, Veronese, Old Gelasian, Gregorian Adrian, Gelonian, Ordines Romani, Liber Ordinum Episcopal of Silos and the Roman-Germanic Pontifical. The final chapter is dedicated to three theologians of the first Scholastic: Ivo of Chartres, Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard. The theological turning of the ecclesial sources to the sacramentality and the ministeriality of the first millennium enables us to conclude that these patristic, liturgical and theological testimonies find their natural environment in the liturgical celebration.In actual fact, the sacrament and the ministry of the liturgy are anything but an enigma. It is the mystery of God that is made real in Jesus Christ. The idea that leaps forth from this triptych is the concept that the liturgy is the sacrament of mystery and that the ministry of the Church is the diacony of mystery, the visible sign of the only and same mystery of Christ.

The present text affirms ‘primacy of relation’, questioning some of the lines of Western thinking which underrate it as a ‘minimal’ category, a ‘charitable case’, almost a ‘non-entity’. The doctrine of the Trinity, demanding a grammar that synthetically unites ‘substance’ and ‘relation’, finds in the notion of ‘Person’ an ‘ontological novelty’ which, in triple measure, expresses the ad se (for itself ) of the substance and the ad aliud (for the other) of the relation. “In God it is exactly the same thing (omnino idem) to be and to be a person. If being is an absolute term, the person is the relation.” (Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, VII, VI, 11). That is why «le jeu trinitaire» makes real «par excès et par avance» (J.-L. Marion) the ‘lost paradise’ of thought: reconciling the ‘in-itself ’ and the ‘for-itself ’.And the reciprocity of the Trinity, the paradigm of perfect relationship, is increasingly the place to which various lines of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics return.

Christian faith becomes a matter more of decision than of inheritance in our modern societies. Its practice is strongly conditioned by the cultural tendency to an intense individual assertiveness widespread in those societies. Pastoral work shows how diverse and irregular the itineraries of Christian believers can be. Church communities must verify their authenticity. They need not only to deepen the identity of Christian faith, but also to study the cultural tendency to a more independent use of freedom. In fact, Christian faith acquires a new appearance through its encounter with this tendency: it comes out as an event more informed by the individual’s experience and sensitivity. By paying attention to this, Church communities will be more able to discern the multiple ways people decide to believe today.

Der bioethische Diskurs vollzieht sich gegenwärtig im Kontext gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhänge, die immer mehr die Interaktion mehrerer Fachdisziplinen postulieren. Die Genese und Entwicklung der Bioethik wäre unverständlich, wenn der Beitrag der Theologie unbeleuchtet bleiben würde. Der Aufsatz behandelt die vielschichtigen Beziehungen zwischen der Bioethik und der Theologie. Es wird dargestellt, wie und unter welchen Bedingungen eine theologische Beteiligung in der bioethischen Arbeit möglich ist, wobei eine Definition des interdisziplinären Charakters der Bioethik erforderlich ist.

This text analyses documents published after the Conciliar Reform, from an ‘architecturological’ perspective, in order to establish fundamental principles for the ‘construction’ of a true liturgical space. The new ecclesiology, like the new living conditions (habitat) of modern mankind, demand a génie du lieu chrétien where a set of immediately perceptible meanings tell of Him who brings the community of all believers together around the altar. The model of the ‘church-home’ is the model where a dimension of welcome and hospitality, proper to our own homes, tells of meeting “through Christ, with Christ and in Christ”.

The author begins by presenting the three great steps in exegetic research on the relationship between Jesus and the Judaism of his time, defined as follows: a first perspective which would be the discontinuity between the preaching of Jesus and that of the Apostles (Reimarus), Paul being attributed with the founding of Christianity as a systemin opposition to Judaism; a second phase, being the theory of confrontation between Jesus and the Judaism of his time (Käsemann); and lastly, for several decades, there has been reinforcement of the perspective of the ‘placing of Jesus within the Judaism of his time’, an approach that has found adhesion among innumerable scholars, both Jews and Christians. Shifting from a context of opposition between Jesus and Judaism, it has now become consensual to talk of Judaism as the frame of reference for an understanding of the message of Jesus.To illustrate this perspective,Manns presents two texts fromthe NT: one alluding to the resurrection, “the stone removed from the tomb”, and the title given by Jesus to Peter, “Simon, son of John” (Jn 1,43 and 21,15-17).The author interprets these passages, by contextualising them in a long Jewish tradition, well illustrated with a great many texts drawn from Judaism: Targumim, Midrashim and other writings.

The theologian is not primarily concerned with historical facts in themselves when treating the figure of Jesus. His reflexion works on the level of Christian faith. The story of Jesus gains greater breadth for him: it is born of the factual past, only to go beyond it and spread through the proclamation and life of the Church over the course of time. The theologian portrays Jesus without being limited to his human behaviour. He also looks for what emerges from this as traits of divinity.He sees in Him who so humanly struggled with God someone who freed himself from his historical specificity through the paschal mystery, to become the universal means of access to God. He understands how, by disappearing through the heavens of ascension, Jesus became the Lord who anonymously crosses with peoples’ lives. He believes that Jesus keeps on discreetly disquieting people everywhere, while all does not live in accordance with God.

The Bellum Iudaicum by Flavius Josephus is a complex literary project, which, at least in part, seeks to link the causes and consequences of the fall of Jerusalem. This study began through an interest in revisiting the basis for the classical literature which other scholars had already detected in the work. Josephus’ debt to Tacitus and Greek historians has been noted and debated for centuries. However, the present study brings the reader not only certain echoes of Tacitus not previously mentioned, but also marks of other exponents of Greek literature who had remained unnoticed.The language of the tragic poets provided Flavius Josephus with a means as much to seduce a non-Jewish audience, as to guide Jewish readers collectively towards a deeper understanding of the tragic nature of the story.

The heterogeneous character of the texts that circulated among monks in Upper Egypt, in the 4th and 5th centuries, may be appreciated from the make up of the earth en ware jar that contained the library of Nag Hammadi.The second work in the second codex of Nag Hammadi is the self-styled “Gospel according to Thomas”. Thomas moves within a wide spectrum of parallels and allusions, which include all of the synoptic tradition (Q,Mk,Mt,Lk,M, L) and John (Paul and the Old Testament should be excluded).Thus there are records of contacts of all of the channels of the Evangelical tradition. But, on the other hand,Thomas contains a good number of statements with a clear or relative Gnostic flavour, which lack any parallel in the original Jesus tradition. How, then, riddled as it is with this conflict, can Thomas’ text form part of and illuminate what we know of the historical Jesus?

Taking as a starting point an analysis of hermeneutic aspects of access to Jesus, through the interaction of the past (of His history) with the present (interpretations of the figure of Christ), this article leads to an analysis of various elements characteristic of the presentday “dissemination of belief”. It assesses in depth the situation of the context of interpretation of Jesus in contemporary culture, exploiting challenges that demand a discernment that is both wise and prophetic: wise, to the extent that the new hermeneutic context leads to a reinterpretation of actual belief, taking into account new pragmatic and linguistic codes; prophetic, to the extent that this reinterpretation can never set aside critical discernment and the proper denunciation of elements that conflict, more or less clearly, with faith in Jesus Christ. The challenges perceived are met with concrete proposals for Christian approximation and prophecy, based on the permanent reference of the figure of Jesus.

Only three Sabbaths are found in Mark’s Gospel. But they include stories of teaching and healing, dispute and even the telling of a failure on the part of the Son of God. In this diversity, the theme of the Sabbath emerges as significant in the theological purpose of the 2nd Gospel, contributing to the characterisation of Jesus.This article describes some of the processes that come into play within Mark’s text. It stands as an exegetical exercise but it can also be useful for a theological study, above all because it places the theme of Sabbath in the context of the Evangelist’s presentation of Jesus, who acts in accordance with who He is.

This article studies the process of instituting belief, taking as a starting point the concepts put forward by Michel de Certeau. Linking Certeau to his followers – M. Foucault, P. Legendre and P. Bourdieu – this text seeks to build up an anthropological and semiotic framework that aims to comprehend the social functioning of belief and the role of institutions in regulating the networks of confidence that make up human social life. Making use of this enables us also to put together an interpretative reading of the phenomena of dissemination of belief and the way those dedicated to the religious life became part of folk culture in societies that underwent the historical experience of Christianity.

The figure of the eyewitness guarantees a connection between the historical reality of Jesus and the knowledge of Him that is transmitted to us. There is something juridical about the witness, as a guarantee of the veracity of what has been witnessed. The witness (martyria), who may be sealed with his/her own blood, is a fundamental figure in the NT, as an ultimate raison d’être of the scriptures that it comprises. In this way, there is a profound sense in the NT texts that constitutes his/her ultimate raison d’être. The interpretation that discloses the sense of the facts may not be that of the “masters of suspicion”, but that of believers who see there the very essence of the witness as a guarantee of the veracity of events. It is this essence of the witness that is made explicit in confessions of faith. Thesemay only be understood in the light of their own historicity and the historicity of the facts to which they testify.

This study presents the sanctity of the Church as viewed by J.-A. Möhler (†1838). To this end it brings together elements from two of his principal works, “The Unity of the Church” (1825) and “Symbolism” (1838). This article is divided into five principal themes which enable us to build up a picture of Möhler’s view of the sanctity of the Church: its christological and pneumatological structure, its communitarian nature, the action of the Church in heaven (distinct from the Church in patria) on behalf of the pilgrim Church, its dynamism, and lastly the assumption of sinful members in a framework different from the discussion on belonging to the Church. In order to see the novelty of the author’s position – which relates primarily to his point of view – this study makes certain comparisons with the worship books of the time.

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This article aims to consider the relationship of mankind to God as a fundament of Christian humanism, in the thinking of the Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac (1896-1991).Taking a theocentric humanism as his perspective, he opines that the opposition between Man and God, characteristic of modern thinking, fails to respect the Biblical idea of a God who approaches Man and confers upon him, in Christ, a new humanity. All of mankind, preoccupied by the desire for the absolute, in the dynamism of the search for the divine Other, finds fullness of his humanity. Taking this as his starting point, H. de Lubac analyses various atheistic humanisms to show how, by contrast, Christian humanism opens up to mankind a path of dignity and full realisation. Enlightened by the revelation of Christ, he discovers the mystery and the paradox that preoccupies him.