Article Title, Author, and Abstract for Theology Today January 2010 (66.4)
Framing the Global Ethos
Max L. StackhouseAbstract: This article summarizes the major themes and perspectives developed in dialogue with scholars and clergy from Asia, Africa, and the North Atlantic region and treated in detail in the four-volume series God and Globalization (2000–2007). Here specific attention is given to the tasks of theology and the implicit roles of the church in view of the pervasive dynamics of globalization in every sphere of social life. The article concludes with a proposal regarding the changing vocation of theology amid the new social ecumenicity now taking shape around the world.
James Luther Adams as Biblical Theologian
Patrick D. MillerAbstract:James Luther Adams’s famed focus on voluntary associations is rooted in a deeply biblical and theological conviction that “we live in a cosmos that is social.” All of our actions and thinking are set in the context of community-manifesting diversity but always with a center that holds things together. This article explores aspects of Adams’s thinking that are rooted in Scripture, particularly his interest in the image of the divine council and the political character of divinity to which it points, the significance of covenant as the context of social life, and the prophethood of all believers as a mode of faithful critique of the present as well as articulation of new possibilities for the future.
Ministry in the Subjunctive Mood
Cynthia A. JarvisAbstract: In language the indicative mood is for facts and absolutes; the subjunctive mood is for hope and possibility, for faith held together with astonishment. The argument of this article is that women may be more likely to do their believing, their preaching, and their ministry in the subjunctive mood, a mood that would seem to correspond to the kind of truth both revealed and hidden in the Incarnation, a mood that refuses brute inevitability and the despotism of the fact. To consider this thesis, we turn not to statistics but to Scripture and to three key women: Eve, whose fall is a fall into the indicative; Mary, whose subjunctive mood in response to the Annunciation sets our salvation in motion; and Mary Magdalene, whose encounter with the risen Lord is an encounter with the one whom words cannot hold.
Catholicity and Globality
Kam Ming WongAbstract: The term “global church” is prevalent in contemporary Christian literature. For those who see the catholic church, more or less spatially, as the universal church, it would seem entirely proper to compare and contrast a geography of globalization with a geography of the church as manifested in its catholicity. This article grounds “catholicity” in its proper perspective, in the attributes of God, thus linking it to God’s omnipresence. In order to highlight the distinctness and uniqueness of “catholicity,” I also juxtapose and compare it to “globality.” I then discuss the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ by way of indicating the intricate relationship between catholicity and particularity.