Volume 8, Issue 2, June 1995

Paul asserts the universal need of the entire human race for the saving work of Jesus Christ as a counter to the universal ravages of sin upon the entire race, summed up in the figure of Adam.  For Paul, human salvation is to take place in the wider context of a renewed and transformed world.  In Romans, Paul claims the wide-ranging, boundary-breaking scope of the grace of God that comes in Christ.  What God has done has – contrary to all expectation – broken the bounds of the community defined by the law of Moses.  The “Gentile” stance of receptivity has become the norm – even if the original “insiders”, Israel, are still, as such, held within the plan of God.  A special discussion of Rom 11:26, the salvation of “All Israel”, is included.

This discussion of fatherhood in John’s Gospel shows the importance of a hermeneutic of suspicion in reinterpreting the text within new hermeneutical frameworks.  Suspicion, unlike alienation, is part of an ongoing dialogue between text and reader.  It does not foreclose on future possibilities for affirmation in creative re-readings of the text.  While it cannot of itself deliver new interpretations, its challenging questioning can open frontiers within the text, exposing horizons of meaning that only a creative hermeneutic of affirmation can grasp.  In this sense, suspicion and affirmation belong together as two sides of the same interpretative coin.  The same dynamic is operative in grasping the anti-patriarchal nature of fatherhood in the Fourth Gospel.

The Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order took place in August 1993 at Santiago de Compostela, Spain, against the background of growing disillusionment within the ecumenical movement and disagreement about its direction for the future.  Many in the churches believed that unity was unattainable and that we should be content to do together whatever we could to promote the gospel.  By exploring the notion of koinonia the church delegates to the Conference have paved a new direction for ecumenical study and action.  The notion of koinonia highlights the close link between the unity of the church and the proclamation of the gospel.

In place of Modernism’s timeless self-sufficiency, Postmodernism maintains an openness to multiple viewpoints and pays close attention to what has been excluded from traditional authoritative positions.  This paper argues that this new phase in Western culture allows for new initiatives in Christian ecumenism.  A new awareness of the linguistic and social conditions of thought allows the possibility of overcoming the Cartesian dualism embodied in the antithetical ”sacrament” versus “proclamation” positions of classic Catholic and Protestant theologies.

In this article the author argues that, by its very nature, the church is called to be the sign and the agent of interpersonal relations.  The argument begins with a reflection on the modern view of the person as individualistic at the expense of relationships.  The tradition of a relational theology of God is then explored.  Finally, an outline is given of six implications of this relational view of God for life in the church.

This review is a revised form of a paper given to the Medieval and Renaissance Seminar at Catholic Theological College, Melbourne.  The author wishes to thank the members of the seminar, and in particular Peter Howard, for their comments.

Glenn Tinder is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.  His book, The Political Meaning of Christianity, may well be the most effective discussion of political theory from the perspective of Christian realism since Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932).  It is an impressive application of the Christian moral and political imagination.