Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology The Twentieth Century Sojourn of Samuel Stefan Osusky

by Hinlicky, Paul R.

• ISBN13: 9780567660183
• ISBN10: 0567660184
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-06-16
• Publisher: Bloomsbury T&T Clark

Summary

Samuel Stefan Osusky was a leading intellectual in Slovak Lutheranism and a bishop in his church. In 1937 he delivered a prescient lecture to the assembled clergy, "The Philosophy of Fascism, Bolshevism and Hitlerism", that clearly foretold the dark days ahead. As wartime bishop, he co-authored a "Pastoral Letter on the Jewish Question", which publicly decried the deportation of Jews to Poland in 1942; in 1944 he was imprisoned by the Gestapo for giving moral support to the Slovak National Uprising against the fascist puppet regime.

Paul R. Hinlicky traces the intellectual journey with ethical idealism's faith in the progressive theology of history that ended in dismay and disillusionment at the revolutionary pretensions of Marxism-Leninism. Hinlicky shows Osusky's dramatic rediscovery of the apocalyptic "the mother of Christian theology", and his input into the discussion of the dialectic of faith and reason after rationalism and fundamentalism.

Author Biography

Paul R. Hinlicky is Tise Professor at Roanoke College in Virginia, USA, Docent of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Professor of Systematic Theology at the Institute of Lutheran Theology, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: From Dissent under Imperialism to Nation Building
Chapter Two: Resistance to Fascism and the Turn to the Bible
Chapter Three: Speaking from the Scriptures to a World at War
Chapter Four: Biblical Theology in Samizdat
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index