If greater intelligibility is to be achieved in the study of religious figures, the work of symbol in the life of individuals should be probed. Method grounded in sociological and psychological theory holds this possibility. Three considerations center this approach to understanding: (a) the religious figure is formed as he intersects with a symbol system, a process of creative resymbolization; (b) the religious figure is differentiated from others and understood within one of many distinct fields of experience, each field having significant psychological effects on spiritual development; (c) the understanding one achieves is contained by the questions brought to the datum. When more personalistic questions are raised of the religious figure within his symbol system, important differences in meaning result. Taken together, these meanings may approach integral understanding.

This essay argues that the reformed epistemologists (William Alston, Alvin Plantinga) have not (yet) sustained claims in religious epistemology significantly more extensive than William James did in the Varieties. It argues that even if reformed epistemologists show that religious belief can have a positive epistemic status, their approach may finally lead to relativism (given that religious traditions generate contradictory religious beliefs) because it offers no method for finding which, if any, concrete religious beliefs might be preferable to hold or in which religious practices one should engage, if any, and because it fails to distinguish between original and derived religious belief. I suggest that more attention must be paid to “social epistemology” if religious epistemology is to go significantly beyond James's accomplishments.

This article describes the experience of a man teaching feminist theology to an undergraduate class. It offers insights into the encounters between a male teacher and a class of students comprised mostly of females. It examines how the students react to the issues raised by feminist theology and what corrections, criticisms, and contributions they make toward the subject and the teacher. While the article indicates a number of the difficulties involved in teaching this area of theological inquiry in general, and in particular for a man, it argues that there are important pedagogical and theological reasons for men to teach the subject.

The sacraments represent some of the ordinary activities involved in sustaining daily life, activities which are understood to contain meaning and therefore power. These activities are for the most part the province of women in human societies, probably because of the biological role of women in procreation. One of the ways that men have responded to the connection between women and life sustaining activities is to claim the sacramental reenactments of those activities for themselves, and to maintain that the sacramental reenactments, not the ordinary activities, contain meaning and power. The task for the church is to reconnect sacraments with ordinary life by involving men in direct nurture of life and involving women in sacramental administration, so as to demonstrate the reality of divine meaning and power in life.

This article engages the on-going debate over the interpretation of Vatican II's documents. It argues that a careful examination of this dispute reveals that it is not primarily concerned with the existence of “rupture” or “continuity” in the council's texts, but instead is driven by fundamental questions regarding the nature of reception and the character of ecclesial authority. The article outlines the distinctive notions of reception operative in the debate over Vatican II and the way in which such views shape their proponents' hermeneutics of interpretation. To that end, it illumines a determinative link between larger paradigms of ecclesiological structure and related approaches to reception. The final section explores Vatican II's own documents for the ways that they address the authentic nature of reception and the character of legitimate authority. Ultimately, this study argues that Vatican II's affirmation of a dynamic notion of reception points a way forward for its own interpretation and, more broadly, for advancing the Church's overall self-understanding.

How different from each other are transcendental method and reconstructive hermeneutics as approaches to foundational theology? Not so different that there is no room for dialogue between Bernard Lonergan and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza. Some parallel areas of concern which Lonergan and Schüssler Fiorenza develop idiosyncratically include the self-correcting process of learning, the role of faith in foundational theology, the relationship between experience and interpretation, and the specific connection within Christian foundational theology of inferiority with the data on Christianity. Imagining how the authors could be open to each other's theory yields points of complementarity.

This article evaluates the adequacy of Orthodox ethics by examining Orthodoxy's response to questions of social justice as they have been raised by the churches of the third world.

The Eastern tradition is skeptical of such phrases as “structures of injustice” because it is improper to speak of sin with regard to structures. This does not mean that Orthodoxy is insensitive to questions of social justice, but rather that such questions can only be properly addressed by a personalist ethic grounded in trinitarian theology. It is trinitarian theology that provides the foundation for an understanding of love, community, and human relationship which demands relationships of mutuality and reciprocity and rejects all forms of human domination. This ethic is arrived at by an examination of the mode of being of the triune God in which all Christians participate, a mode of being that is both personal and communal. Orthodox ethics, while still in need of development with regard to the problems of concrete moral decision-making, offers a rich theological foundation often lacking in the more philosophical-ethical tradition of the West.

An important critique of a “public” model of theological discourse has appeared in the work of a group of thinkers in the analytic tradition sometimes called “Wittgensteinian Fideists.” This paper explores the model of theology representative of the Wittgensteinian Fideists, particularly that found in the work of D. Z. Phillips and Paul Holmer. Three themes are examined: the relationship between theology and ordinary language, the role of faith in theology, and the justification of theological claims. Each theme is then summarized and critically assessed in an effort to show the limitations in the Wittgensteinian model of theology and some of the ways in which an understanding of theological method can be carried beyond the point where the Wittgensteinian Fideists leave it.