Theology

If it is to allow for the transformation of memory, then Miroslav Volf’s theory of non-remembrance stands in need of Christological qualification.

Christian theology has said much about existence and being – whether God’s being is the same as that of creatures, whether existence is good or morally neutral, and whether we can say anything meaningful about how God relates to things that do not exist. This article sketches an outline of some of these difficult concepts with an eye to understanding them better, where the possible tensions lie, and why they matter. In particular, it looks to theologians such as Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas and others who not only push the question of whether God’s transcendence of being has implications for the things that God has created, but even dare to ask about non-beings.

This essay attempts to reconceptualize prophecy in the wake of the recent theological turn in phenomenology. It stresses how prophecy continues and intensifies the process of actualizing revelation in present acts of interpretation that mythic and historical imagination in their different ways inaugurate in biblical tradition. Revelation in this sense turns on the present dimension of the interpreters’ lived experience, in which the event of revelation occurs – or rather recurs – as fully actual in new cultural contexts and existential situations. The role of poetic language turns out to be key for this paradoxically original experience of revelation as prophecy.

Modern Christian architecture has stood largely in isolation from movements in contemporary art, driven primarily by the demands of the liturgy, especially after the Second Vatican Council. But Rudolf Schwarz regarded ecclesiastical architecture as a dynamic space for the human experience of the divine presence. In the work of Le Corbusier, the church building is theology enacted in stone. Rather than dictated by the form of the liturgy, church architecture should make the celebration of the liturgy possible, a sacred space consonant also with the spirit of contemporary art.

This article reviews five recent books from Pentecostal scholars: William K. Kay, Frank D. Macchia, James K. A. Smith, Wolfgang Vondey and Amos Yong. Each book is briefly reviewed in turn and placed within the broader context of Pentecostal and Charismatic theology. It could now be said that Pentecostal and Charismatic theology has come of age because these texts represent important contributions not only to Pentecostal and Charismatic scholarship but also to the wider Christian tradition. They are part of a much greater and exciting development in the field.