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Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2010
This issue of Pacifica is dedicated to the centenary of the Melbourne College of Divinity (1910-2010), the major sponsor of the journal. It contains articles composed by a representative selection of teachers and scholars from across the College, headed by a selective overview of the history of the College composed by the current Dean, Professor Paul Beirne. As a tribute to the MCD from a fellow institution, the Adelaide College of Divinity, Pacifica is also happy to include an article by a leading scholar of that institution, Dr Denis Edwards.
Articles
The Melbourne College of Divinity: A Selective Historical Overview
Paul Beirne, pp.123-136
The Melbourne College of Divinity was forged in the cauldron of a century of world events and changes in the churches, and while affected by them, cast its gaze beyond them. True to its motto, Qui est ex Deo verba Dei audit (“The one who is of God, hears the words of God”), the College, swept along by the winds of change, stayed faithful to its purpose, that is, to challenge each person who came within its ambit not only to hear the words of God, but to follow the Word of God, and live consistently with this reality.
Feeling for Country: Interpreting the Old Testament in the Australian Context
Mark G. Brett, pp.137-156
The secularized use of biblical imagery in Australian history provokes significant questions for theological hermeneutics, not least in cases where the Bible has been used against Indigenous interests. This paper analyses: (1) doctrines of discovery derived from Genesis; (2) the “peaceable kingdom” vision arising from Isaiah 11 and its historic connection with ideas of treaty making; (3) exodus narratives and the human rights tradition; and (4) the theme of exile. With a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of the task of biblical hermeneutics, the Bible can be read afresh as a challenge to the Christian churches to support Aboriginal rights and to re-engage with prophetic contributions to our national conversation.
The Good News of Restoration: Reading Luke-Acts Then and Now
Merrill Kitchen, pp.157-172
After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE many religious groups in the Judeo-Christian community engaged in processes of reform. A two-volume New Testament document, the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, is a voice that echoes through the ages in its appeal for a restoration of Israel’s story. In calling for a restoration of Israel’s creation ethic, it proclaims the creator God, as the parent of all humanity; God’s Son, Jesus Messiah, as the harbinger for a new beginning; and God’s Holy Spirit as the agent who has always dwelled indiscriminately amongst people of faith, actively stimulating a quest for global harmony and mutual respect in the midst of political, social and religious disorder.
Rethinking Eucharistic Origins
Andrew McGowan, pp.173-191
Accounts of Eucharistic origins have usually been driven by concern to establish the genealogy of later liturgical practices, and reflect broader narratives of early Christian history as either smooth transition or radical fall from primitive ideals. A more comprehensive account of early Eucharistic practice must give attention to Greco-Roman meal conventions, acknowledge the diversity of form and meaning in early Christian meals, and be more cautious about grand narratives. It would allow for consideration not only of the explicit theologies of prayer texts, but of implicit meanings involved in ritual, foods and other elements of meals. Such an emerging new paradigm may provide both a more adequate narrative of the development of the Christian Eucharist in classical historical terms, and richer interpretations of meals as a key aspect of early Christian practice.
Reconciliation and the Church
Christiaan Mostert, pp.192-211
This article explores the Christian doctrine of reconciliation with a particular focus upon reconciliation between the indigenous people of Australia and those whose ancestry lies in other continents. The Christian rhetoric of reconciliation, derived from its biblical roots, has to confront a tension between the theological truth and the historical reality of reconciliation. This leads to the question concerning the extent to which the church may claim to be a reconciled and reconciling community. While all claims about reconciliation are subject to the eschatological proviso, and hence to nuance, the church is nonetheless obliged and entitled to claim something for the power of the gospel of reconciliation, including the power to create a new, redeemed sociality. The biblical claim that Christ has brought Jews and Gentiles together in one body raises questions about the relationship between Christians and Jews today, as well as the relationship between Christians of different ethnicity. Though first a gift received, reconciliation confronts the church with many challenges.
“Consider, Take Counsel, and Speak Out” (Judges 19:30): Contemplative, Dialogical and Prophetic Dimensions of Christian Ministry
Maryanne Confoy, pp.212-232
This article proposes that the Objects of the College listed in the Act of Parliament are as pertinent for church and society today as they were in 1910 when the Melbourne College of Divinity was established. Economic, ecological, and fiducial failures of previously respected institutions confront contemporary humanity with a new urgency in responding to the reconstruction of relationships. The disintegrating situation of the Israelites in Judges 19 is analogous to that presently facing the human community. The mandate in following the appalling story of the dismembering of the concubine, to “consider, take counsel and speak out” offers an approach to Christian ministry that is contemplative in its foundations, dialogical in its processes and prophetic in its consequences.
Teilhard’s Vision as Agenda for Rahner’s Christology
Denis Edwards, pp.233-245
To what extent does Teilhard’s vision set an agenda for Rahner’s Christology? In response to this question, this article sketches Teilhard’s vision of the relationship between the Omega of evolution and the Christ of Christian faith based upon his late works. Then it explores some of Rahner’s explicit comments on Teilhard’s work, and proposes that Rahner set himself an agenda with regard to Teilhard’s vision. After noting the different methodological approaches of Teilhard and Rahner, it takes up three aspects of Rahner’s Christology that develop Teilhard’s vision: Rahner’s view of the unity of creation and redemption in a theo¬logy of divine self-bestowal; his evolutionary Christology with its theology of creation’s self-transcendence; and his view of the resurrection as the beginning of the deifying transformation of the whole creation.
Book Reviews
There are no Book Reviews in this special issue
Contributors
PAUL BEIRNE, Dean of the Melbourne College of Divinity since April 2001 and Professor of Comparative Religion, has an MA in East Asian Studies from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, a Masters in Divinity from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, a Doctor of Ministry from Chicago Theological Seminary, and a PhD from the University of Queensland. He is the author of Su-un and His World of Symbols: Korea's First Indigenous Religion (Ashgate: 2009). His interests relate to religions and new religious movements in East Asia, and in particular, the symbols immanent in these religious traditions.
MARK BRETT has been Professor of Hebrew Bible at Whitley College since 1992 and was the Policy Officer at Native Title Services Victoria 2005-2008. His most recent books are Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire (Phoenix, 2008) and Genesis: Procreation and the Politics of Identity (Routledge, 2000). His research interests have been in the areas of biblical hermeneutics, ethics, ethnicity and postcolonial studies.
MERRILL KITCHEN OAM initially trained as a Medical Scientist and worked in hospitals in Melbourne and Israel/Palestine. Her post¬graduate theological studies have been in the areas of social, political and cultural readings of the New Testament. She was for 10 years Principal of the Churches of Christ Theological College, Melbourne, and first woman President of the MCD (2004-2005). Over the past twenty years, along with her surgeon husband, Paul, she has led short-term work/study groups to the Galilee region where they contributed as volunteers to a hospital, a school and an archeological reconstruction project, all of which employ Jews, Christians and Muslims in a spirit of mutuality and interdependence.
ANDREW MCGOWAN, an Anglican priest, is Warden of Trinity College within the University of Melbourne. Following undergraduate studies at the University of Western Australia and theology at Trinity, he received a doctorate in the area of Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity at the University of Notre Dame, USA. He has lectured at Harvard and Yale, at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle, and was Associate Professor of Early Christian History at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. His scholarly work on the social and intellectual life of early Christian communities has been published in leading journals and in his book Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999).
CHRISTIAAN MOSTERT, ordained in 1968 as a Presbyterian minister, served in parishes in Tasmania before becoming a minister of the Uniting Church in 1977. Following missionary service teaching theology in South Korea (1982-86), he taught at United Theological College, Sydney (1987-1995). Since 1996 he has been Professor of Systematic Theology in the Uniting Church Theological College, Melbourne. Author of God and the Future: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s eschatological doctrine of God (Edinburgh, 2002), he has particular interest in the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, the doctrine of the Church, eschatology, the Trinity, and justification.
MARYANNE CONFOY RSC (PhD Boston College, USA) is lecturer in practical theology at the Jesuit Theological College within the United Faculty of Theology, Parkville, Australia, and since 1996 Visiting Professor at Boston College. Her areas of interest are Christian Ministry and Spirituality. She has a chapter, “Communities Visible and Invisible in Oceania” in Mary Jo Iozzio (ed.), Calling for Justice throughout the World: Catholic Women Theologians on the HIV/AIDS Pandemic (Continuum, 2009). Her most recent book is Rediscovering Vatican II: Religious Life and Priesthood (Paulist, 2008). She is presently writing a book on Mysticism and Christian Ministry.
DENIS EDWARDS lectures in systematic and historical theology in the School of Theology of Flinders University. He is a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, involved in Catholic Theological College and, as priest in residence, in Tranmere parish. Recent publications include Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit (Orbis), Ecology at the Heart of Faith (Orbis) and How God Acts: Creation, Redemption and Special Divine Action (Fortress/ATF).
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