Feminist theology and the Roman Catholic sacramental tradition share a common concern for the integrity of the body and the goodness of the natural world. Yet traditional sacramental theology has used its understanding of body and nature to define women as ontologically distinct from and inferior to men. This article argues that recent feminist theological writing on the body offers a corrective to the ahistorical and dualistic understanding of the body prevalent in Roman Catholic theology. By including women's interpretation of their own bodily experience, situating this experience in a social and historical context, and celebrating the variety of human embodiment, feminist theology offers a truly “sacramental” understanding of the body as it also criticizes the sexist assumptions of the tradition.

Recent interest in the study of hermeneutics has called for a reexamination of many Christian classics. This has initiated a retrieval of many valuable insights found in the classics that are extremely important for contemporary theology. Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine is such a classic. From the time of its publication in 1845, the Essay has been an important and influential work in the life of Catholic thought. By reexamining Newman's work, we are assisted along the unfolding hermeneutical path known as Catholic theology. This article examines Newman's theory of development, three major objections to that theory, and a review of the relevance of Newman's theory for contemporary hermeneutics.

A number of religious thinkers have uncritically made use of psychoanalytic object relations theory. I argue that this uncritical appropriation is dangerous to religious thought because object relations theorists tend, implicitly, if not explicitly, to deny the reality of the object of religious faith or Mystery. I analyze the defenses against Mystery in object relations theory in order to uncover what is denied by them. This critical analysis allows object relations theory to be reappropriated by religious thinkers as a valuable source of insights into the ways Mystery manifests itself in human life.

This paper looks back over the eight books of John S. Dunne as forming a unified theological project in two phases, each comprising four books. Dunne's first phase is a “journey of the mind,” in which Dunne is concerned with knowing and unknowing, with understanding and insight, and his basic epistemological stance is developed. His second phase is a “journey of the heart,” in which he moves from the basic loneliness of the human condition, to the “heart's desire” for God, to the presence of God in the desiring. Several changes in Dunne's understanding of the human relationships with God, others, and self are traced here. Dunne's most recent book adds a “pilgrimage of the soul” to those of mind and heart, so this paper moves to a discussion of the meaning and development of Dunne's idea of “soul.” It concludes by considering Dunne's work as spiritual writing and as theology.

This essay considers the contribution which spirituality makes to theology and vice versa, using examples from Karl Rahner's work. His spirituality in the sense of lived religious experience is the point of departure for his theological anthropology. Conversely, his theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart critiques and informs a spirituality of the heart of Christ. After discussing the mutual benefits which spirituality and theology provide one another, this paper points out the contemporary relevance of a spirituality of Christ's heart.

This essay adopts Penelhum's analysis of parity arguments to show that Christian theistic faith and atheistic secular humanism are on an epistemic par with each other. It argues that Swinburne's attempt to show that theism is more probable than atheism fails because his ultimate canon of rationality is essentially contested and cannot render theism more probable than atheism. It proposes a way out of the epistemic stalemate by evaluating the prudence of religious commitment. It adapts some of Mavrodes' recent arguments and Swinburne's levels of rationality to analyze the dimensions of prudence. It finally extends this “prudential calculus” to indicate how a theologian could show a religious commitment prudent, and argues that if religious authorities silence theologians, the authorities may also show that commitment to and in their tradition cannot be comprehensively prudent.

Love for God as an actual concrete activity of a human being is sometimes obscured in contemporary American Christian culture. This essay studies the role of maternal affection for the divine child Kṛṣṇa, humanly embodied as a male child, in order to serve as a cross-cultural catalyst for the traditions of Christian love for Christ. The focus is the tenth-century Hindu Vaiṣṇava text, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Vaiṣṇavas promote the experience of loving God through imaginative participation in narratives of Kṛṣṇa's loves and by identification with human women who loved him, particularly his mothers. They are the exemplars of a maternal love for a divine child. This imaginative participation and identification is open to both men and women. This study illustrates the roles of gender, narrative, and imagination in the experience of loving God with one's whole heart, soul, and might.

The interdependence of mind and heart forms the basic dynamism in human consciousness. In modernity, however, this vital duality has often been obscured by the infamous dualism between reason and emotion, whereby reason is reduced to an abstract rationalism and emotion is identified with irrational passions—a view that has ancient roots. Given this confused state of affairs, the recovery of an authentic emotional life is not only essential for the preservation of human integrity but also for the possibility of authentic religious knowledge. This essay considers the work of John Macmurray, a rather neglected contemporary philosopher whose reflections on this matter remain worthy of study. Relating his personalist thought to Plato's preeminent myth of the erotic soul will serve to construct on solid footing a philosophy of consciousness that pays due respect to the Pascalian “reasons of the heart.” A wholistic understanding of human personality emerges, one based on an “emotional rationality” that is the condition for authentic human love and the incarnate medium for divine revelation.

My assignment is to set the question for our teaching workshop on integrating feminist perspectives into the religious studies curriculum. In reflecting on this assignment in light of the full program sketched in the brochure for the workshop, I found three journalistic questions coming to mind. The six specialized sub-workshops seemed to deal quite comprehensively with the question of how to effect the integration of feminist perspectives into the religious studies curriculum. Mary Jo Weaver's plenary address promised to treat from the perspective of American religious history where American women now are and may hope to arrive tomorrow. That left the matter of why we should be assembled here this evening, and though I'm sure that many of the other presenters will address it substantially, I have taken it as the proper focus for this kick-off presentation. Inevitably, speaking about why it is important to represent women's voices will imply how we may best accomplish this, but let us begin by reminding ourselves of the telos of our workshop—the prospective good that brings us together. My ruminations on this topic will have three sub-topics; students' needs, intellectual justice, and fidelity to God.

This past semester I taught two typical courses: “Women and World Religions” and “The New Testament and Literature.” Both courses are part of the Tulsa Curriculum, our general education sequence. Each course had about thirty students, but only two of those in “Women and World Religion” were men, while “The New Testament and Literature” had about fifteen men. It is hard to say, though, which sex was more in need of feminist perspectives.

This paper describes and compares two imageries for “peace” found in contemporary North America. Both arise within a context of “expressive individualism” as depicted by Bellah et al. and both attempt to ground values beyond subjective preferences. Popular psychology, especially represented by Maslow and self-help writings, relies primarily on the image of organic growth for a vision of peace and fulfillment. Language of unresolvable conflict and warfare is entirely avoided. In contrast, Charismatic Christianity, although it too employs the language of “health” and “growth” also advocates an imagery of peace focused on the triumphant Christ enthroned in heaven, after his defeat of spiritual enemies. The author suggests that the vigorous use of this language is best understood as a corrective and supplement to the “growth” themes more fully congruent with expressive individualism.

This past February I spent a bracing weekend with two feminist pioneers in their own fields. Joan Huber is an old friend and early mentor, Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Ohio State, and a well-published feminist sociologist. Susan Gubar, my best friend at Indiana University for more than a decade, is a distinguished literary critic and co-author of landmark books like The Madwoman in the Attic, and The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Both have changed the shape of their respective disciplines with their work on women and so carry impeccable feminist credentials. Susan and I went to Columbus to help Joan prepare for her March debate with Carol Gilligan.

Since I grew up next to Joan as a teenager, weekends with her are always wonderful for me because they combine all the comforts of home with all the things I could never do while growing up. When I go to Joan's house I eat wonderful meals, drink too much, abandon all my resolutions about smoking, stay up too late, and engage in fabulous conversation. Adding Susan to this cluster of stimulants tripled the pleasure, and the fact that it took us hours to get there and forced us to reread Gilligan did not dampen the occasion. I looked forward to the visit and secretly hoped that the conversation would do something to renew my flagging feminist spirit.

The transcendental and hermeneutical are two significant approaches to theology within contemporary Catholic thought. Peter Drilling suggests a complementary relationship between these theological perspectives in his proposed dialogue between Bernard Lonergan and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza. Fiorenza's reconstructive hermeneutic, with its emphasis on the outer dimensions of foundational theology, ought to be balanced with Lonergan's emphasis on the inner, the transcendental. In contrast, this essay argues that the transcendental and hermeneutical are alternative rather than complementary theological approaches. They are rooted in contradictory anthropological starting points and cannot be united in an inclusive hybrid. The essay concludes with some comments on the consequent pluralism of contemporary theology.

Jack Bonsor's essay as well as his interpretation of Karl Rahner and especially of Rahner's appropriation of Martin Heidegger's philosophy raises a central issue of theology today. His essay raises the issue of the relation between transcendental and hermeneutical approaches. Are they radically opposed? Or can they be synthesized into a unity?

This issue has become particularly acute within contemporary theology influenced by the contemporary philosophical scene. The American philosophical debates on relativity, realism, and pragmatism have challenged traditional transcendental approaches to philosophy. In addition, hermeneutics has taken a new turn. Previously hermeneutical theory underscored the authority and binding claims of classics. Now literary critical theory and post-structuralist French philosophy emphasize instead the deconstruction of classical texts. This shift entails a further turn away from metaphysics and transcendental philosophy to relativism—a turn exemplified in Richard Rorty's critique of transcendental and metaphysical philosophy. His critique appeals to the hermeneutical tradition of Heidegger and Gadamer, to the pragmatic philosophy of James and Dewey (neglecting Peirce), to the deconstructivism of Derrida, and to a literary theory influenced by Nietzsche.

Another move toward relativism is the emerging debate about modernity that contrasts post-modernity with what modernity represents. The critics of modernity argue that the universalism of transcendental philosophy is a relic of modernity. They label transcendental universality a false universality of a dominating and oppressive reason. They label it a repressive reason for it suppresses the particularities of ethnic, gender, social, and economic groups. Their criticisms of traditional metaphysics and transcendental rationality are often so trenchant that the title of a Richard Bernstein's recent essay seems deserved: “The Rage against Reason.”