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Chapter 1 - David Tracy’s Theology-in-Culture

from Part I - Theology and Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2023

Barnabas Palfrey
Affiliation:
Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge
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Summary

David Tracy’s theological formation and work stretch across more than five decades of his emergent ‘theology-in-culture’. Diachronically, this essay highlights: (1) the influence of Bernard Lonergan; (2) how Blessed Rage for Order (1975) articulated a ‘critical not dogmatic’ theology turned towards a ‘twofold crisis’ of Christian meaning in post-Christian times and modern meaning in post-modern times; (3) how The Analogical Imagination (1981) clarified this ‘mutually critical’ reading-together of historical tradition and contemporary situation, opening it to radical problematisings of interpretation and culture; and (4) how this then has led Tracy to identify cultural and religious classics as ‘fragments’ and ‘frag-events’. Taken as a whole, Tracy’s theology-in-culture follows ‘an analogical paradigm’ that regards the human creature as having a transcendentally driven grace-informed nature, in spite of tragedy and sin. Hence, art and conversation remain theological hopes for Tracy, and when the noble endeavours of modernity yield to post-modern fragmentation even this remains hopeful for Tracy, because humans inhabit an invisible infinity which exceeds the visible world.

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Beyond the Analogical Imagination
The Theological and Cultural Vision of David Tracy
, pp. 21 - 40
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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