Interventions

The enormously prolific Swiss Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) was marginalized during much of his life, but his reputation over time has only continued to grow. He was said to be the favorite theologian of John Paul II and is held in high esteem by Benedict XVI. It is not uncommon to hear him referred to as the great Catholic theologian of the twentieth century. In Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction Karen Kilby argues that although the low regard in which Balthasar was held from the 1950s to 1960s was not justified, neither is the current tendency to lionize him. Instead, she advocates a more balanced approach, particularly in light of a fundamental problem in his writing, namely, his characteristic authorial voice -an over-reaching "God's eye" point of view that contradicts the content of his theology.

Stanley Hauerwas is one of the most important and robustly creative theologians of our time, and his work is well known and much admired. But Nicholas Healy -- himself an admirer of Hauerwas's thought -- believes that it has not yet been subjected to the kind of sustained critical analysis that is warranted by such a significant and influential Christian thinker. As someone interested in the broader systematic-theological implications of Hauerwas's work, Healy fills that gap in Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction. After a general introduction to Hauerwas's work, Healy examines three main areas of his thought: his method, his social theory, and his theology. According to Healy, Hauerwas's overriding concern for ethics and church-based apologetics so dominates his thinking that he systematically distorts Christian doctrine. Healy illustrates what he sees as the deficiencies of Hauerwas's theology and argues that it needs substantial revision.

Recovers a 15th-century thinker's original insights for theology and philosophy today Societies today, says Johannes Hoff, are characterized by their inability to reconcile seemingly black-and-white scientific rationality with the ambiguity of postmodern pop culture. In the face of this crisis, his book The Analogical Turn recovers the fifteenth-century thinker Nicholas of Cusa's alternative vision of modernity to develop a fresh perspective on the challenges of our time. In contrast to his mainstream contemporaries, Cusa's appreciation of individuality, creativity, and scientific precision was deeply rooted in the analogical rationality of the Middle Ages. He revived and transformed the tradition of scientific realism in a manner that now, retrospectively, offers new insights into the "completely ordinary chaos" of postmodern everyday life. Hoff's original study offers a new vision of the history of modernity and the related secularization narrative, a deconstruction of the basic assumptions of postmodernism, and an unfolding of a liturgically grounded concept of common-sense realism.

Few topics in theology are as complex and multifaceted as grace: over the course of centuries, many seemingly arbitrary distinctions and arcane debates have arisen around it. Edward Oakes, however, argues that all of these distinctions and debates are ultimately motivated by one central question: What are God's intentions for the world? In A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies Oakes examines issues relating to grace and points them back to that central question, illuminating and explaining what is really at stake in these debates. Maintaining that controversies clarify issues, especially those as convoluted as that of grace, Oakes works through six central debates on the topic, including sin and justification, evolution and original sin, and free will and predestination.