Search results for ""Author Lieven Boeve""

Not so long ago it would have been fair to say that the Catholic Church and the Catholic faith determined human life and social existence, more or less unquestioned, in Flanders and in a large part of Western Europe. The Catholic faith community in Flanders today, however, is struggling with the fact that the transmission of the Christian tradition has been flagging in recent years. This has not only led to diminished faith engagement and a massive decline in church attendance, it has also had its effects in the cultural domain: culture has become de-traditionalised; 'traditional' Christian culture is worn out. Even convinced Christians are having problems reflecting on the plausibility of their faith, precisely because of the chasm that has opened up between faith and culture. The author of the present study argues that every new context challenges the Christian tradition to recontextualise its presentation of meaning and purpose in a cogent and credible fashion. Christians today do themselves a disservice when they withdraw into a world of absolute self-justification. At the same time, however, the author avoids any form of appeal for an extensive adaptation to the postmodern context. Only a new dialogue between tradition and culture, respectful of (and indeed thanks to) the growing division between both, can claim to offer a future. In the first part of the book the author provides a pithy description of the vicissitudes of the Christian tradition in modernity and postmodernity. Against this background, he attempts to clarify the situation in which the Christian tradition finds itself today. The second part of the book is devoted to an analysis of the actual context with a view to establishing points of intersection on the basis of which the dialogue between faith and culture may be revivified. The third part of the book endeavours to provide this dialogue with concrete form. The reader is introduced to a challenging image of Jesus, an image that is contextual and theologically motivated, prior to being invited by the author into a reopened reflection on God. The volume concludes by drawing renewed attention to the place of the Christian faith in relation to the other world religions. The results of Boeve's study reveal that Christians do indeed have the capacity to reflect on their faith in a credible and relevant manner in relation to the actual context in which they find themselves and without relapsing into the extremes of traditionalism or relativism. Lieven Boeve is professor of Fundamental Theology at the Faculty of Theology, K.U.Leuven (Belgium). He is also co-ordinator of the research group Theology in a postmodern context.

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The second biannual congress of the Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST II, Nov. 3-6, 1999) was dedicated to a fundamental theological reflection on the question of how to conceive of 'sacramental presence in a postmodern context'. This volume contains the main lectures presented at the conference, as well as the formal responses to those lectures and a selection of supplementary papers. These papers examine the Christian claim that God is present in human history, in the light of the contemporary rethinking of the relationship between transcendence and immanence. In addition to an extensive introductory paper by L. Boeve, contributions include, among others, M.-C. Bingemer, L.-M. Chauvet, G. De Schrijver, K. Hart, W. Jeanrond, F. Kerr, J.-Y. Lacoste, T. Merrigan, P. Moyaert, D. Power, I. Verhack and G. Ward.

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From 2002-2008, three research groups from the departments of systematic theology and church history at the Faculty of Theology, K.U.Leuven, joined forces in an interdisciplinary project, entitled "Orthodoxy: Process and Product". The aim of the project was a "church-historical and systematic-theological study of the determination of truth in church and theology". The present volume contains contributions from all senior members of the project research group. The contributions are the result of a research conference in 2006, in which both the question of the nature of truth as such, and the process of determination of theological truth was approached from many different angles. Thus, questions from philosophy, systematic theology and history of church and theology are discussed, including such themes as the implications of various philosophical theories of truth for theology, the question of religious pluralism and its ramifications for theological truth-claims, theological truth claims in the thought of Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, John Driedo, and at the Second Vatican Council. In addition, the meta-question of the relationship between the historical and the systematic aspects of theological truth and the way in which the historical and systematic theological disciplines interact play an important role in this volume.

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There is hardly a category more prominent in modern and postmodern reflection on religion than that of religious experience. In "Divinising Experience", scholars gathered in the Research Group 'Theology in a Postmodern Context' (K.U.Leuven), have sought to investigate from quite different perspectives the theological approaches of twelve key authors in the history of religious experience. Organised chronologically, they present studies on Origen, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Ignatius of Loyola, Friedrich Schleiermacher, William James, Wolfhard Pannenberg, Paul Tillich, John Henry Newman, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Paul Ricoeur. Not surprisingly, each of the investigations in itself suggests a different approach to and an analysis of 'experience' as a category. This volume therefore presents almost a 'double movement' on the one hand as enquiries into specific thinkers, and on the other to discover who we are as readers, when we take up the category of religious experience as a reading key. In their own way, the twelve essays of "Divinising Experience" provide a kind of introductory reader in the question of religious experience.

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This volume consists of several contributions to a refined understanding of religious experience in view of contemporary theological epistemology. Diverse sample studies taken from the extensive field of religion, theology and religious studies reveal that 'religious experience' is today clearly a pivotal issue. More specifically, this is made evident in modern theological hermeneutics and in the anti-modern and/or post-modern reactions thereto, the theology of world religions and inter-religious dialogue, the contemporary resurgence of religiosity in Western society and culture, and the so-called turn to religion in contemporary continental philosophy. It would appear from such studies that the category of 'religious experience' is frequently called upon to clarify or explain the phenomenon of religion and religiosity on the one hand and to support and legitimise religious positions or the critique thereof on the other. Because of the loss of plausibility of tradition-bound religiosity and of foundational, so-called onto-theological schemes, 'religious experience' has come to constitute, for many, the last (or latest) point of departure and anchor for religion and religious thinking. This is certainly the case with respect to tendencies within contemporary Christian traditions and theological reflection. In a multitude of ways and from a variety of different perspectives, 'religious experience' and 'experience of transcendence' or 'of the divine' have gained a prominent place in philosophical and fundamental-theological conceptual schemes. In reaction to this, other authors have denied the very primacy given to religious experience in reflecting upon faith, pointing to the constitutive role of tradition and narrative without which there is no religious experience. From all this follows that the category of religious experience is in great need of reconceptualisation, not least from a theological point of view. On the one hand, religious experience is all too easily called upon to legitimise religious claims (often against 'tradition') and on the other hand, the category has become misleading in so far as it is tainted by the modern scientific understanding of experience - in reaction to which 'tradition' is then easily invoked to protect the core of religion. Both young scholars at the preceding junior conference and senior scholars during the conference's paper sessions presented from diverse perspectives new ways to conceive of religious experience in view of today's challenges of secularisation, religious plurality, the aestheticisation of religion, etc. The selected contributions have been arranged in four thematically oriented parts: 'Approaching Religious Experience in a Postmodern Age', 'Modern (re)Thinking of Religious Experience', 'Liberating Religious Experience', and 'Challenges for Spirituality'.

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In the postmodern age the question of the way in which we 'think sacrament' has acquired particular prominence, not least because it touches the core of all theology. Sacrament cannot be reduced to metaphysical concepts. It is, instead, 'enfleshment', the incarnation of transcendence in a way that moves us in an unparalleled way. The problem of 'sacramental presence', and what it reveals about the Christian understanding of God, the world, and the believing subject, is the subject of this volume. The book is divided into four parts: (1) 'Approaching Sacrament in a Postmodern Age: Questions of Method', (2) 'Yesterday Revisited: Recovering the Past in the Face of the Challenges of the Postmodern Age', (3) 'Today's Imperative: Uncovering the Transformative Power of Sacrament in a Postmodern Age', and (4) 'Tomorrow's Possibilities: Discovering New Loci of Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Age'.

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Theological anthropology is being put to the test: in the face of contemporary developments in the spheres of culture, politics, and science, traditional perspectives on the human person are no longer adequate. Yet can theological anthropology move beyond its previously established categories and renew itself in relation to contemporary insights? The present collection of essays sets out to answer this question. Uniting Roman Catholic theologians from across the globe, it tackles from a theological perspective challenges related to the classical natural law tradition (part 1), to the modern conception of the subject (part 2), and to the postmodern awareness of diversity in a globalizing context (part 3). Its contributors share a fundamental methodological choice of a critical-constructive dialogue with contemporary culture, science, and philosophy. This collection integrates a wider range of approaches than one usually finds in theological volumes, bringing together experts in systematic theology and in theological ethics. Authors come from different American contexts, including Black and Latino, and from a European context that include both French and German. Moreover, the interdisciplinary insights upon which the different contributions draw stem from both the natural sciences (such as neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and ethology) and the humanities (such as cultural studies, philosophy, and hermeneutics). This volume will be essential reading for anyone seeking a state-of-the-art account of theological anthropology, of the uncertainties it is facing, and of the responses it is in the process of formulating. The shared Roman Catholic background of the authors of this collection makes this volume a helpful complement to recent publications that predominantly represent views from other theological traditions.

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In 2001, three research groups from the field of systematic theology and church history at the Faculty of Theology, K.U.Leuven, decided to join forces in an interdisciplinary project, entitled: "Orthodoxy: Process and Product". The main aim of this project consists of a "church-historical and systematic-theological study of the determination of truth in church and theology". Senior and junior scholars from the three groups agreed to take this theme as the starting point and leading question from which the many research projects they are engaged in, could be brought into relationship and - as far as possible - integrated. Although the question for theological truth already structured the research being conducted in the three groups to a significant degree, joining forces promised the realisation of a surplus-value, and this both through the gathering of a considerable critical mass (in total more than thirty junior and senior researchers) and the interdisciplinary design of the project. In this volume a first collection of contributions to this project, from a diversity of angles and research subjects, is presented. In these contributions scholars from the participating research groups investigate the implications of the overall research question for their particular line of research and research methodologies, and suggest how from this specific research the overall question may be refined and elements of answering it can be provided.

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On November 9-11, 2006, the Research Group 'Theology in a Postmodern Context' (K.U.Leuven) organised an expert symposium on the return of Augustine in current postmodern philosophical-theological debates. The North-African Church Father, or at least the thinking patterns or intuitions borrowed from him, are often invoked in discussions on the relation between Christian faith and the contemporary postmodern context. On the one hand, one observes the retrieval of rather premodern approaches in order to remedy the so-called (post-)modern crisis, which is said to result in nihilism, relativism, etc. For what seems to attract some theologians in Augustinian thinking is the (apparent) marriage between Greek (neo-Platonic) philosophy and Christian faith. Such a combination of premodern metaphysics and Christian faith would serve as a necessary presupposition for every legitimate theological epistemology. On the other hand, there are theologians and philosophers who are increasingly trying to reread Augustine from a postmodern stance, stressing the role of particularity, narrativity, historicity, and the decentring of subjectivity, which they see present in Augustine's approach, or from which they deconstruct Augustine's thinking. Central questions discussed during the symposium were: Are the analyses, offered by authors who are re-introducing Augustine with respect to the contemporary context, correct? To what diagnosed problems, and on what basis, do they propose Augustine as a remedy? Are their presentations of other theological and philosophical responses to the present situation correct and which 'Augustine' do they claim to represent? More fundamentally: what would a genuine Augustinian epistemology look like, and what can we gain from it? In what way can it be normative for a theological epistemology in our day? In answering these questions, the symposium focused explicitly on contemporary philosophical and theological evaluations of both modernity and postmodernity, and theological responses to them.

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During the long and impressive career of prof. Lambert Leijssen interesting ideas about sacraments, liturgy, pastoral theology, and spirituality were crystallized. It would be sad if the generations after prof. Leijssen would not be concerned anymore about these ideas. Therefore, the contributions in this book in one way or another reflect prof. Leijssen's major theological concerns. They have been taken up in three parts. In the first part, Louis-Marie Chauvet, Jean-Yves Lacoste, George S. Wogul, and Paul Post engage themselves in thoroughgoing fundamental reflections on the sacraments and the liturgy. The second part consists of four contributions dealing with individual sacraments. Jozef Lamberts, Joris Geldhof, Stijn Van den Bossche, and Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi respectively dwell on the sacraments of initiation, the Eucharist, and marriage. The third part contains reflections on the crossroads of sacramental theology, moral theology, and pastoral theology. Andre Haquin, Susan K. Roll, Annemie Dillen, and Marcel Broesterhuizen show in a very leijssenian way that sacraments always point to concrete life situations. By way of introduction to this volume, Matthijs Lamberigts' laudatio pronounced at the solemn celebration of prof. Leijssen's retirement has also been included.

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In this volume we present the proceedings from the fourth international Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST IV, November 5-8, 2003), which focussed on a critical investigation of the place and role of religious experience in the legitimation structures of contemporary theological thinking patterns. In the first part, the keynote lectures, including the responses, are gathered (among others from L. Boeve, F. Fiorenza, L. Hemming, G. Jantzen, S. Painadath, S. Robert, R. Schaeffler, and S. Van den Bossche). In the second part, a selection of the contributions offered in the thematic seminars is presented.

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