RCAAP Repository

The ethical dimension is revealed in living our lives with others: I recognise myself as a person before the personal ‘you’ of others. From this interpersonal encounter, we may seek to understand the regular appeal to ‘human dignity’. More than an argument, it is a matter of exhortation. Recalling the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10, 29-37) the opening question is inverted – it is not a question of knowing who has a right to our help or our love; it is one of understanding ‘how’ and ‘for whom’ we are in a position to do some good – we discover that it is love that makes us creators of proximity.

The theme of reform entered discussion of the sanctity of the Church as the vision of the Church became enriched and attempts were made to resolve the hypothetical incompatibility between Church sanctity and Church reform. The fermentation of these ideas reached the 2nd Vatican Council and continued afterwards. In this study we examine the presence of the idea of reform in relation to the sanctity of the Church in the texts of the 2nd Vatican Council. The Council documents allow for various readings on the relationship between sanctity and reform in the Church, but do not take on board all of the possibilities to be found in earlier theological debate. After the Council we find three different ways of including reform in discussions of the sanctity of the Church: the first sees reform as a consequence of the dynamism of sanctity within the Church, the second affirms that it is not possible to speak of form without admitting the presence of sin in the Church, and, lastly, the third relates reform to the historical condition of the Church, which follows a path on earth towards its plenitude. The majority of theologians use one or, more rarely a number of these solutions. We cannot yet state that a consensus has been reached.

The God invoked with the proper noun Yahweh is the same personal Being as that which the patriarchs invoked as ‘God the Father’. But the name in itself was only attributed to the God of Israel during the passing of the Hebrew nation through the human and religious experience of the exodus, led by Moses. It is with the memory of the exodus that the name of God of the Yahwist faith is inextricably associated. It was only centuries after this founding historical event that the faith of the people of the Bible gave an explanation to the holy tetragram, placing it in the context of the theophany that set off the exodus and making a hermeneutic of it. It did so by means of the assonance closest to it, with a verbal form hayah. Thus the name of God was understood in terms of ‘Being, Existing’, as ‘the truly Existing’ for the people, liberating it from slavery to be reconnected to Him by means of an alliance of friendship.

Na obra de Joseph Ratzinger as dimensões existencial e sacramental da fé e teologia estão indissoluvelmente ligadas. A teologia dá precedência à fé e, por conseguinte, à conversão: caminhada catecumenal dos seguidores e auto-doação a Jesus Cristo. Ser baptizado significa ser acolhido no sujeito da transmissão da fé, isto é, o Corpo de Cristo, a Igreja. A eucaristia oferece um toque do amor de Deus, que transforma o homem, bem como uma possibilidade de união que pode ganhar uma profundidade mística. Numa vida marcada pela eucaristia, a fé torna-se «evidência interior» e dinâmica missionária, segundo a razão da fé. Aos santos é oferecida uma real experiência de Deus, eles participam na visão de Cristo. Assim, a exegese do evangelho, que eles elaboram com a sua vida, precede a teologia.

When we examine the history of the theology of the sacraments in Western Christianity, we discover the importance of the Donatist crisis and of the controversy concerning the reiterability of baptism for a definition of sacramental action and of its effects in Christocentric terms. The figure of Optatus of Milevis, prior to Augustine of Hippo, is fundamental for an understanding of the conceptual shift made by Western Christianity, in particular by the affirmation of the Christological centrality of baptism.

This article seeks to show how the problem of the divine Name constitutes a primordial nucleus of language and theological gnoseology. In actual fact, classical theologia brought to maturity the common conviction that any name or concept accommodates itself to the essentially anonymous divine nature. Taking this presupposition as its starting point, Helenic theism (medioplatonic, gnostic and hermetic) emerged in the dogma of the ontological impossibility of knowing God (agnostos Theos). Though not immune to the influence of this gnoseological rigorousness, the Fathers of the Church substantially reworked the semantics of the mystery of God, opening two avenues of theological enquiry, through the ‘revelation of the Name’: the affirmative (oikonomica), and the negative (apofática) which safegards transcendence and enables a personal relationship with a God who reveals himself (Nomen).

This article seeks to compare the Christ of Peter with the Jesus of Simon through the actual historical personage of Simon Peter. These constitute four important concepts throughout the text to demonstrate the theological evolution between the period of Jesus’ public ministry and that of the post-Easter faith of the primitive community. With this anti-Bultmannian distinction, the classic critique that opposed Paul and Peter, as if the first were a theologian and the other not because he never had been, is taken into account. Without avoiding a Biblical analysis (especially of the passage of the entry into Jerusalem in Mark’s Gospel), the author tries to show how the question of God in Peter, or in Simon, is posed.

The Christian faith of the Trinity of God is not in any sense an addition to a conception of the universal God achieved through philosophical speculation or through religious.mystic experience. Rather, in the faith in the Trinity there is an expression of the original experience of God manifested to mankind in the happening of Christ. This also has direct consequences for mankind’s understanding of his origins and quest for God. All of the discussion about the mystery of the Trinity is therefore a debate about the true essence of the Christian faith.

The theology of the ‘Creation – new Creation’ is one of the richest fields in all of Biblical theology. It concerns a debate that permeates the whole of Biblical history, both ad-intra, in other words Biblical thought in dialogue with itself, as well as that which unfurls itself ad-extra, in comparison with the cultures and mythologies of the surrounding peoples. The implications of this debate are not limited to the Pentateuch nor are they restricted to cult literature (for example, Psalm 8). They move out, to a striking extent, to the groups and movements that represent intertestamentary Judaism, where the question, in the face of Greek culture, assumes a new relevance. The source that inspires and feeds the theology of the (new) creation is in the prophetic thinking, namely of Deutero-Isaiah, in the post-exile period and in the theology of the ‘New Alliance’ of Jeremiah and of Ezequiel and also in the real-political ideology that was developed in the exaltation of the Temple at Jerusalem as the dwelling of Yahweh, through the mediation of the Davidian dynasty, whose mission was to establish a new social order. There is a wealth of texts on this theme, namely in the apocaliptic literature and that of Qumran. I allude to just a few of these: 1 Enoch 91, 15-16; 1 Enoch 45, 5-6; Jubilees 1, 23-25; 23, 26-32; 1 Qumran Hebrew 3, 28-35; 13,1.11-12; 15, 13-17; Joseph and Asenath 8,11; 15,3-4.

The exercise of yearning marks the rhythm of the Christian life, which we can call a life of prayer, that is to say a life in relation to God, who, having brought Himself close to mankind in the liberality of Trinitarian love, is always an infinite liberty of love inviting the finite human liberty to participate freely in the divine life. Reflecting on the yearning of God brings us to touch humbly upon the Trinitarian mystery and to seek to delineate its relationship with history. A relationship that inolves the Incarnation of the Word of God, but which comes before it and is lost in the eternal design of the Trinity, just as it comes later in the action of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the world in the community of holiness.

The author follows a path divided into three moments. In the first moment, and starting from a more anthropological thinking, he seeks to show how the opening to the Transcendence (to Christians the opening to the Personal Mystery of God) makes integrant part of the human condition, in such a way that the concreteness of that opening allows to live the existence assuming all its possibilities. In the second moment, he seeks to reflect how the opening to human makes part of God’s own project. In this context, he looks to Jesus Christ to show how in Him both previous movements are simultaneously formed. In the third and last moment, and from the answers to four questions (What can I know? What can I expect? What do I have to do? What can I celebrate?) he seeks to take out consequences to the living in faith, searching in that living for evidence of the ‘sign’ of Jesus’ resurrection in the history of mankind.

This article presents the manner in which some of the principal contemporary theologians have regarded the possibility and the consequences of a presence of God in the midst of human history (history of salvation) and, in particular, the consequences for history of the proclamation of the end of time in Christ. Beginning with R. Bultmann (the human decision in the faith as an eschatological decision), the article then refers to the theologies of history of O. Cullmann (the truth of contemporary history lived in the light of the definitive victory of Christ but waiting for the final victory), W. Pannenberg (in Christ, the end of history is given to us in anticipation), K. Rahner (Christ is the absolute bearer of salvation which, in spite of the fragility of the historical event, demands absolute commitment) and H. U. von Balthasar (Jesus opens a path to redemption accessible to all, transforming the time of sin into a time of the redeemed and giving a definitive sense to human existence).

This article seeks to consider the meaning of the (Christian) concept of God for Fundamental Theology. If it is usual for the (Trinitarian) concept of God to be stud ied in the context of Dogmatics, the perspective presented here is a different one. At the same time, this results in a slight broadening of and indeed alteration to certain perspectives of Fundamental Theology. In fact, the latter cannot be reduced to the study of the (rational) conditions of understanding and even of validity of a concept of God given in an absolutely dogmatic and positive form. Even if this approach, in the style of the traditional praeambula fidei, continues to be essential, it is best not to lose sight of the fact that Fundamental Theology, in being fully theological, parts straight away from the impact that is brought to bear by a (determined) concept of God revealed and transmitted through the ecclesial tradition, and hence not deducible a priori through categories that pretend to be rational. This article considers this impact from the perspective of the possibility of thinking God, of the truth of the concept of Him, of the historical origin of His constitution-revelation and of His Trinitarian content.

In the context, whether of a transcendental-semiotic model (religions as systems of signs that are created by a fundamental religious experience and that create the experiences of its members), or of the fundamental structure of the Trinitarian credo, arises the question of the reciprocal determination of the image of God and of mankind. The answer will be as follows: there is a certain anthropocentricity in Christianity to the extent that Jesus Christ is the decisive sign of the manifestation and salvation of God. But since the mystery of God and the mystery of mankind are only reciprocally accessible, what corresponds to the Trinitarian understanding of God is a complex image of mankind and vice-versa.

With the concept of agnostos theos Irenaeus of Lyons illumines the core of the gnostic conception of God. He seeks out the issues, with the fundamental conviction that God is agnostos, unknown with regard to his greatness, but not with regard to his love. Thus the Christian conviction about God knows that God becomes visible and palpable in His Son. In this article all of the texts of the Adversus Haereses related to this matter are analysed. This analysis yields a picture of the theology of Irenaeus that remains relevant to this day.

The focus of this study is to present the composition of Job 28, according to the procedures of Rhetorical Biblical Analysis as a concrete way to approach the biblical text using methodological reading and an attentive listening. Some recent attempts of classical rhetoric constitute a first step, but the results are not always very convincing, mainly in what respects the relation between the text and its interpretation. A brief looking to the results of the study of the composition of Job 28 will permit not only to emphasize the philological richness of the poem as to re-launch a greater understanding of this text (the context of) the Book of Job, and to reveal the pertinence of its thought in the singular field of Biblical Wisdom Literature, which is always woven of poetry and enigma.

Despite the differences that exist in conceptions of the exercise of power and of the narrative of successes, it is agreed that for the Egyptians, Hittites and Assyrians wars were won through divine support. The Assyrians are well known for being the first and bloodiest to practice ‘holy war’, with the gods as principal actors and beneficiaries of the wars of conquest. In innumerable passages in the so-called ‘annals’, it seems that war is this exclusive task of the gods. But the same expressions occur with the king as subject. The ‘terror of the splendour of Assur’ co-exists with the terror of the king; Assur’s arms shine in the arms of the king. With all this symbiosis of causalities and divine-human values, one must speak of a synergism between the gods and the king. The function of the annals for legitimisation and propaganda did not quash the evident intervention of human will. It is impossible to prove the existence of ‘holy war’ as distinct from ‘secular war’ and the same must be true for Israel and all of the Ancient East, if not indeed for the whole of antiquity. To distinguish between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ in the social life of those days constitutes an unsustainable anachronism.

This article is a reflection on the present-day issue of God, more precisely concerning access to God. First there is an examination of a number of reasons for a certain current agnosticism, especially in academic circles. This is followed by a discussion of the fragmentation of classical reason in a plurality of ‘reasonings’ which end up by conditioning human knowledge (horizons of comprehension) and consequently its access to the transcendent. The third part of this article argues for a greater unity between faith and reason, between theology and philosophy and seeks to recover the truth of classical negative or apophatic theology. Finally, through a Trinitarian theology of the creation and from an Augustinian perspective, the author defends an existential access to God, to which greater importance ought to be attached in theology and in pastoral work.

This study aims to further reflection on the theological and philosophical perspectives of a theme that since St. Paul has been characterised by the scientia crucis, in the context of mysticism and of St. John of the Cross. After establishing the methodological perspectives at issue, as regards the inteligibility of the spiritual experience and the indispensible mediation of Christ in a theology of perfection, which remain stimulating for the radicality of philosophical enquiry, the contributions of relational language and of its performance in terms of intelligentia fidei are considered. Then the author examines in St. John of the Cross the framework of the via mistica and of Christocentricity, comparing two almost contemporary perspectives [those of the Bergsonian philosopher Jean Baruzi in Saint Jean de la Croix et le problème de l’expérience mystique (19241;19312…) and in Jewish philosophy, the disciple of Husserl and later Carmelite, martyr and saint, Edith Stein, in Kreuzeswissenschaft (1941-42)]. This analysis parodoxically reveals that to the Carmelite spiritual figure there is a preference for an intellectual reading as knowledge of the Cross, while to the philosopher, almost agnostic in his method, what predominates is a transcendency of the mystical experience in a reading of anthropological metamorphosis. To conclude, this paradox is brought back to the indispensable incarnational dimension of Christian spirituality, further demanded by the crucial meditation of Edith Stein, not forgetting the character of apophatic mysticism and the differential prominence of an encounter with another radicality of Christian experience.

F.-X. Durrwell wrote an important work on the mystery of God the Father. In it he takes up, expands on and gives a finished form to ideas that are often present in his earlier works. It would be unthinkable to attempt to present in a few pages the wealth of ‘Durrwellian’ thinking on the subject. In this article of homage, certain key ideas from the work mentioned are examined, such as the sense of the expression “essential Father”, the manner in which the Father exercises His paternity in the world, certain reflections on the place of the Father in the Trinitarian taxis, and lastly a description of two particularly significant features in the Father’s ‘visage’ that shine in the face of the incarnate Son.