Virginia Theological Seminary

Gothic Revival architecture has had an outsized impact on churches since the nineteenth century. While it originated in the Church of England, it has spread to many other parts of the globe and among other ecclesial traditions, including those without prescribed liturgical forms. Theories for the popularity of this architectural style include its appeal to romanticism, nationalism/colonialism, and the desire for Christian unity. These theories offer sociological factors involved in its perdurance but fail to explain its more profound influence. Ritual theory, with its understanding of sacred space, liminality, and ritualization, offers insights into these more profound influences.

Like a love affair that has grown cold, Bruce Marshall has lost his affection and loyalty to Karl Barth. The reasons are complex, intellectual, and personal, and certainly, exceed the reasons proposed in this essay. Several are proposed all the same: that Marshall considers proper Nicene theology to consist in answers; that the reading of Holy Scripture that inspired Barth is not plausible or consistent with Marshall's doctrinal commitments; and that the Doctrines of God and of Salvation do not readily cohere with Catholic magisterial teaching. Barth can however be defended against these charges, drawing on his Doctrine of Justification as an epistemic as well as Soteriological teaching, and his strong notion of corporate existence in the redeeming work of Christ.

Abstract Since its first Protestant translation by Robert Morrison in 1823, the Chinese Bible has been earnestly used for devotional and apologetical purposes by Chinese Christians. This essay discusses why it is necessary to construct a history of biblical interpretation in China now and suggests how best to conceive it and what to include. A history of biblical interpretation has historical and hermeneutical value and it may help clarify three elements of “Chinese biblical interpretation.” It can be divided into four stages of development in correlation to the radical changes in national history and the main challenges in church history, to provide proper socio-historical contexts. For basic content, it should assess major interpreters and influential approaches in four settings, i.e. translation, church, society, and universities and discuss four inquiries regarding its reception, interpretation, appropriation, and consequence in China.

Abstract Studying the history of syncretism’s use indicates wider interpretative problems in religious studies and theology regarding race and revelation. It also indicates the importance of seeing “tradition” as adaptive and amalgamating rather than static. In theology and religious studies alike, discourses of syncretism are positioned within racialized perceptions which construct a center and periphery based upon white European knowledge. In Christian theology more specifically, syncretism’s use also shows ways that theologians try to protect the category of divine revelation from human interference, leading to interpretative problems that sidestep material history. The book makes this case through an intellectual history of the word syncretism, tracking its changing associations and especially its pejorative turn in Christianity in the early twentieth century. After diagnosing challenges related to syncretism, the book makes two constructive arguments. First, it defends the concept of “tradition”—for religious studies and theology alike—as a means of understanding cultural continuity amid the perpetual flux of syncretism. Second, in Christian theology specifically, it offers a constructive response to syncretism drawing from theologians Jean-Marc Éla and Rowan Williams. The Holy Spirit, through tradition, builds knowledge of the divine Logos across history often by way of contested religious mixtures with culture. The book concludes by examining positive examples of syncretism in Christianity like the incorporation of ancestor reverencing.

In this splendid volume, Rowan Williams offers a modern Christology re-presenting and interpreting the Cyrillian theology as expressed in the councils of Constantinople II and III. A “single Subject” Christology is built up from Scriptural, Patristic, and Scholastic sources, drawing heavily on Maximus the Confessor, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas Cusanus. The conceptual framework for the whole is provided by Austin Farrer, especially in his early essay, Infinite and Finite, and in his later Bampton Lectures, The Glass of Vision. Whether a Christology adhering closely to axioms of incommensurability and non-competition between Creator and creature can undergird a fully Chalcedonian Christology is the demanding query posed at the heart of Christ the Heart of Creation.

Abstract What were the socio-religious functions of worship and ritual within ancient Israel? How did worship affect and form Israelite society, and vice versa? To ask this question is not to reduce worship to a mere social phenomenon, lacking, for example, theological witness or spiritual efficacy. Rather, it is to recognize that Israelite worship had a social context and, among its several other roles, had significant social effects. It expressed and buttressed the shared values and convictions of the community of YHWH, or, better, of specific Yahwistic groups. It publicly embodied religious orientations and habits. It enacted the traditions and teachings of the societal authority or segment that authorized and choreographed it. Participants in Israelite worship publicly acknowledged the worldview and attendant lifestyle communicated as social meaning by the proceedings.