The Collected Works Of Edward Schillebeeckx Volume 7

Christ. The Christian Experience in the Modern World focuses on the question of salvation for all people. Using seven 'anthropological constants', Schillebeeckx innovatively shows the social and political relevance of faith. Inspired by liberation and feminist theologies, he puts strong emphasis on human experience and on the importance of examining church teaching in its historical context. This volume is a testimony of Schillebeeckx' ground breaking attempt to rethink doctrine in the light of the research on the historical Jesus. Instead of starting with Christianity's great creedal statements about Christ and the Trinity, he focuses on the subjective experience of the first generations of believers as expressed in the New Testament. This choice stirred considerable controversy and a Vatican investigation but inspired and still keeps to inspire readers in their personal approach to Christian faith.

Christ. The Christian Experience in the Modern World focuses on the question of salvation for all people. Using seven 'anthropological constants', Schillebeeckx innovatively shows the social and political relevance of faith. Inspired by liberation and feminist theologies, he puts strong emphasis on human experience and on the importance of examining church teaching in its historical context. This volume is a testimony of Schillebeeckx' ground breaking attempt to rethink doctrine in the light of the research on the historical Jesus. Instead of starting with Christianity's great creedal statements about Christ and the Trinity, he focuses on the subjective experience of the first generations of believers as expressed in the New Testament. This choice stirred considerable controversy and a Vatican investigation but inspired and still keeps to inspire readers in their personal approach to Christian faith.

This is a unique selection of Edward Schillebeeckx' collection, translated into English here for the first time. This is a collection of essays from one of the most eminent Catholic theologians of the late 20th century. Edward Schillebeeckx Collected Works bring together the most important and influential works of the Dutch Dominican and theologian Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) in a reliable edition. All translations have been carefully checked or revised, some texts are presented in English for the first time. The page numbers of earlier editions are included. Each volume carries a foreword by an internationally renowned Schillebeeckx expert. This edition makes Schillebeeckx available for a new generation of scholars and students.

This is a new edition of the 1963 classic which gave Christological thought a new direction. As far back as his first major book Schillebeeckx propounded an anthropological approach to the sacraments. In Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God , he draws on theologically fruitful work by phenomenological anthropologists like Merleau-Ponty, Buytendijk and Binswanger. That makes Schillebeeckx's distinctive idiom and modern approach appealing even today. He rediscovers, as it were from within, the notions forged by scholastic theology, and thus restores to us a theology of the sacraments rooted in the biblical and patristic soil from which they first sprang. Schillebeeckx's speculative synthesis of this quest still has a fresh ring to it. He describes Christ as the primordial sacrament in a reflection on his public ministry, death and resurrection inspired by the universal human search for such a 'sacrament'. He concludes that the church's sacraments have to be an earthly extension of the liberation brought by Christ's story. Schillebeeckx ends by describing sacraments as grace made visible that gives crowning moments in Christian life a mystical quality. Edward Schillebeeckx Collected Works bring together the most important and influential works of the Dutch Dominican and theologian Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) in a reliable edition. All translations have been carefully checked or revised, some texts are presented in English for the first time. The page numbers of earlier editions are included. Each volume carries a foreword by an internationally renowned Schillebeeckx expert. This edition makes Schillebeeckx available for a new generation of scholars and students.

As a result of the publication of Jesus. An Experiment in Christology (volume 6) and Christ. The Christian Experience in the Modern World (volume 7), Schillebeeckx was accused of denying the divinity of Jesus and the resurrection as objective reality. In this 'interim report' he responds to these criticisms. Schillebeeckx argues that the interpretation of his publications depends to a large extent on what the reader takes as a starting point. This book, therefore, is about presuppositions and methods of interpretation. Schillebeeckx begins by looking once again at the nature of revelation, at the ways in which religious faith is experienced and expressed in the modern world, and at sources of authority. He then discusses specific criticisms. Can he be called a neo-liberal? Does he devalue the church's tradition? Is his Christology inadequate? What does he really believe concerning the resurrection? Then, towards the end, in some poetically powerful passages, he turns once again to the nature of the Kingdom of God, creation and salvation.

In effect Revelation and Theology is Schillebeeckx's general introduction to theology. Its fifteen chapters were originally published separately between 1954 and 1962, but the thematic collection offers a vivid picture of the theological renewal in the wake of World War II. Schillebeeckx's erudition and broad scholarly orientation are clearly demonstrated in this volume. Throughout there are pointers to the (at that time new) ecumenical approach to Scripture and tradition. The problem concerning the function of the scholastic tradition is highlighted. Although Schillebeeckx draws extensively on Thomas Aquinas's thinking, this early work already shows that he is not a (neo)Thomist in the narrow sense of the word. Unlike the single Dutch volume, the English version was published in two volumes. In the Collected works of Edward Schillebeeckx, however, here they are published together in the sequence that the author envisaged.

World and Church deals with the conflict between religiosity and life in the world. Deliberately, Schillebeeckx turns around the order of the words in the idiom 'church and world', thereby stressing the embedding of faith and church life in particular contexts. In the first three chapters he reflects on this tension as he experienced it in burgeoning existentialism and debates between Catholics and Marxists in those turbulent years in Paris, where he was living immediately after World War II. It includes thoughts on pastoral work among the working class and the then popular pretres-ouvriers movement. He looks at some social problems and the mutual interrogation of believers and non-believers, also in light of the ideological compartmentalisation ('pillarization') evident in diverse spheres of European society: education, social work and health care. Schillebeeckx concludes by considering the responsibility of Catholic intellectuals and academics for the future of the world and the church, including the possible significance of a Catholic university

God, the Future of Man focuses on religion and secularisation, viewed from various vantage points: secularisation and God-talk; secularisation and the church's liturgy; secularisation and the church's new self-understanding; and, finally, secularisation and the future of humankind on earth in light of the eschaton (church and social politics). These thought-provoking reflections are presented against the backdrop of Schillebeeckx's hermeneutic premises. In the concluding chapter his reflections on secularisation culminate in a God concept that can function fruitfully in a modern culture that assigns the future pride of place: God as the future of humankind. Written in a period pregnant with Cultural Revolution and religious change, the book foregrounds the pivotal issue of secularisation in a thought-provoking way. With feverish urgency he reflects on various forms of religiosity in the modern world. His contribution to the debate could just as well have been written today.