Bryan Hollon, Ph.D.

It is well known that Henri de Lubac's groundbreaking and highly controversial work on nature and grace had important implications for the Church's relationship to culture and was intended to remove a philosophical obstacle hindering Catholicism's faithful engagement with the secular world. This book addresses a too-often neglected dimension of de Lubac's theological renewal by examining the centrality and indispensability of spiritual exegesis in his oeuvre and making explicit its social and political significance for the Church's worship and witness. In addition to exploring the historical and ecclesial context within which he worked, the current work brings de Lubac into a critical engagement with the more recent theological movements of postliberalism and radical orthodoxy in order to demonstrate the enduring significance of his theological vision.

For centuries, Baptists have regarded the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper, as "merely symbolic" rather than as sacramental. Historically speaking, Baptists have also participated in the practice of the Supper less frequently than other Christian groups, all the while lodging complaints about a lack of ecclesial unity. In response to these trends, this book argues for a sacramental understanding of the Eucharist and focuses on the way in which the Eucharist conveys grace by drawing the church together as the body of Christ. It focuses especially on the theology of James Wm. McClendon Jr., who was Baptist but nonetheless illustrated that through the Eucharist God "re-members" the church as the body of Christ. Together with Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson and Catholic theologian Cardinal Henri de Lubac, McClendon's work has had an enormous impact on contemporary free church discussions about the Supper and ecclesial unity. In a final chapter, therefore, the study examines a number of contemporary Baptists dubbed the "new Baptist sacramentalists". These men and women are influenced by McClendon, Jenson, and de Lubac, and they offer a fresh approach to the ongoing puzzle of the church's disunity through the Eucharist.

Those within the free church tradition have often appealed to the notion of the invisible church to account for the unity of the Body of Christ. A growing number of free church theologians, however, are giving increased attention to the importance of visible ecclesial unity, which immediately raises the perennial problem of the authorities by which unity is maintained. There is also a growing recognition among free church theologians of the need to recognize the authority of tradition in tandem with the authority of Scripture. In this book, Cary affirms these recent developments but then inquires whether a turn toward visible unity, together with an embrace of the authority of tradition, can eventually be coherent without also embracing the authority of an extra-congregational teaching office. To guide his study, Cary engages the work of two theologians from outside the free church tradition: Robert Jenson and Rowan Williams. He then brings them into contact with the prominent free church theologian James McClendon in order to supplement some of the deficiencies Cary perceives in McClendon's groundbreaking work. Once these deficiencies are addressed, however, the question intensifies whether the free church tradition, as such, can remain a coherent ecclesial option over time.

Over the centuries, Baptists have labored to follow Christ in faithful devotion and service. More recently, they have occasionally partnered with fellow Christians from other traditions in these efforts while learning from each other along the way. In Thinking With the Church, Derek Hatch argues that Baptists need to follow the same pattern when it comes to their theological reflection, engaging the wisdom of all Christian pilgrims across time. This will require a new theological method--ressourcement--that embraces Baptists' place within the Great Tradition of the Christian faith. Such work will not abandon long-held Baptist convictions but offers resources for renewing Baptists' theological vision as they participate in the fullness of the mystical body of Christ.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 232-245).This dissertation examines the continuity between Henri de Lubac's retrieval of patristic and medieval exegesis and his treatment of the ontological relationship between nature and grace. I argue that, for de Lubac, the spiritual exegesis of Scripture, which is best exemplified in the work of patristic and medieval theologians, is constitutive for the church in its engagement with secular culture and in the ultimate extension of, what John Milbank calls, a "Christianised ontology." While embracing many of Milbank's insights on the relationship between Christology and ecclesiology, I argue that his relative silence concerning the role of biblical exegesis in the church's engagement with culture stems from an insufficient consideration of Scripture's function in mediating Christ to the church and through the Church to a fallen world. This dissertation argues that de Lubac's theological appropriation of the philosophy of history and participatory ontology of ancient Christian exegesis can advance and offer a correction to the work of recent postliberal theologians such as Hans Frei and George Lindbeck as well as radical orthodoxy theologians such as Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward.by Bryan C. Hollon.Ph.D

The doctrine of the Trinity makes any attempt to formulate a Christian epistemology problematic. This is because, from a Trinitarian perspective, God is not a solitary being – set apart from other, lesser beings and communicating knowledge of Himself as one being would to another. Rather, the Triune God is, to quote the apostle Paul, the being in which ―we live and move and have our being‖ (Acts 17:28). 1 The Triune God of grace has come to dwell in the flesh among us, and His Holy Spirit makes us ―participants of the divine nature‖ (2 Pet 1:4). From a Trinitarian perspective, acquiring the knowledge of God necessarily entails cognitive and volitional participation in the life of God. The word that Christians have long used to describe the content, reception, clarification, preservation, and dissemination of this participatory knowledge of God is theologia. In the classical sense, theology is no mere academic discipline. Rather, it refers both to the content of divine knowledge (kno...