Great Christian Thinkers Paul, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher, Barth

by Küng, Hans

• ISBN13: 9780826408488
• ISBN10: 0826408486
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-05-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

"[S]olidly researched, informative description and evaluation of seven monumental Christian thinkers groupedand related incisively by a brilliant contemporary theological mind. A treat not to be missed." -National Catholic Reporter"[A]s insightful as it is penetrating. The essays can indeed serve as introductions in and of themselves, each with a short biigraphy, a delineation of the theological positions held, and a concluding assessment of what lies ahead." -Anglican Theological Review>

Table of Contents

A Brief Introduction to Theology	11	(4)
Christianity becomes a World Religion	15	(26)
Paul
The most controversial figure for Christians and Jews	17	(2)
A change in life at the end of an age	19	(3)
Uninterested in Jesus?	22	(2)
The connection between Paul and Jesus	24	(2)
The same cause	26	(2)
Paul against the Jewish law?	28	(2)
The Torah is still valid	30	(1)
The most famous dispute in the earliest church	31	(3)
A man of his time	34	(1)
The abiding stimuli for the individual, the people, the community	35	(6)
The Great Synthesis of Antiquity and the Christian Spirit	41	(28)
Origen
The new challenge	43	(2)
The thwarted martyr	45	(3)
The first model of a scientific theology	48	(2)
Reconciliation between Christianity and Greek culture: A vision of the whole	50	(3)
How Origen read scripture	53	(2)
Christian universalism	55	(1)
New persecutions and the success of Christianity	56	(3)
Development or apostasy from the gospel?	59	(2)
A problematic shifting of the centre	61	(3)
The battle over orthodoxy	64	(1)
Christian self-criticism in the light of the future	65	(4)
The Father of All Western Latin Theology	69	(30)
Augustine
The father of a new paradigm	71	(1)
Origen and Augustine - differences and common features	72	(2)
A life in crisis	74	(1)
The move to Christianity	75	(2)
The dispute over the true church: Donatus and the consequences	77	(3)
The justification of violence in religious matters	80	(2)
The dispute over grace: Pelagius and the consequences	82	(3)
The theology of original sin and predestination	85	(2)
Critical questions to Augustine	87	(5)
The great threat to the empire	92	(3)
What is the meaning of history?	95	(4)
University Science and Papal Court Theology	99	(28)
Thomas Aquinas
Another form of life in another world	101	(3)
Aristotle - the danger	104	(3)
Theology - now a rational university science	107	(1)
The discovery of the power of reason	108	(2)
Two Summas - a formal principle	110	(2)
A new theology - at first regarded as heresy	112	(3)
A problematical dependence on Augustine	115	(1)
An ancient world-view: a test case - the place of women	116	(4)
Despite everything, a court theology: the papacy safeguarded	120	(2)
Dialogue with Islam and Judaism?	122	(2)
The mysterious breaking off of the Summa	124	(3)
Return to the Gospel as the Classical Instance of a Paradigm Shift	127	(28)
Martin Luther
Why there was a Lutheran Reformation	129	(1)
The basic question: how is one justified before God?	130	(2)
The Catholic Luther	132	(2)
The spark of Reformation	134	(4)
The programme for Reformation	138	(2)
The basic impulse of Reformation	140	(2)
The Reformation paradigm	142	(2)
The criterion of theology	144	(2)
Where Luther can be said to be right	146	(2)
The problematical results of the Lutheran Reformation	148	(2)
The split in the Reformation	150	(1)
The freedom of the church?	151	(4)
Theology at the Dawn of Modernity	155	(30)
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Beyond pietism and rationalism	157	(3)
A modern man	160	(2)
Belief in a new age	162	(3)
Can one be modern and religious?	165	(1)
What is religion?	166	(2)
The significance of `positive religion'	168	(2)
The essence of Christianity	170	(1)
A modern faith	171	(4)
Christ - truly human	175	(1)
Christ - also truly God?	176	(4)
Critical questions	180	(2)
Nevertheless: the paradigmatic theologian of modernity	182	(3)
Theology in the Transition to Postmodernity	185	(28)
Karl Barth
A controversial Protestant in the World Council of Churches	187	(1)
A critic of Roman Catholicism	188	(2)
Catholic attempts at understanding	190	(3)
Ecumenical understanding	193	(2)
The Second Vatican Council	195	(2)
Why the paradigm of modernity has to be criticized	197	(2)
Initiator of the postmodern paradigm of theology	199	(3)
Not the perfecter of the postmodern paradigm	202	(3)
The abiding challenge of `natural theology'	205	(3)
The abiding challenge of Rudolf Bultmann	208	(2)
Towards a critical and sympathetic re-reading against the postmodern horizon	210	(3)
Epilogue: Guidelines for a Contemporary Theology	213	(4)
Bibliography and Notes	217