SummaryI offer reflections on the doctrine of justification by faith alone in the light of the many challenges of globalization. I briefly characterize globalization as the new context of contemporary theology in the first part, and go on in the second part to defend its relevance as a radical and total critique of life today in its nihilistic pursuit of creaturely arrogance, greed, and pleasure, and argue for the particular urgency of promoting the love and solidarity of Others beyond the (...) conventional boundaries of identity in a world increasingly suffering from unreconciled pluralism of all sorts, ethnic, religious, cultural, and economic. In the third, longest part I offer a new perspective on the soterioriological significance of „good works“ on the basis of a new relationship between creator and creature, a concrete anthropology of action as mediation between subjectivity and objectivity, and the irreducible involvement of the free and responsible subject in the very believing relationship to God. I try to reinstate „good works“ as the human way, as a free and responsible being, of „participating“ in God’s own redemptive work, not as „cooperating with“ divine grace or as „contributing to“ God’s redeeming work, or as „causing“ one’s own redemption. (shrink)

In this essay dedicated to the memory of D. Z. Phillips, I propose to do two things. In the first part I present his position on the grammar of God and the language game in some detail, discussing the confusion of "subliming" the logic of our language, the contextual genesis of sense and meaning, the idea of a world view, language game, logic, and grammar internal to each context, the constitution of the religious context, and the grammar of God proper (...) to that context. In the second part I present my appreciative critical reflection by arguing that the conception of context and language game must be made more dialectical, that the grammar of God needs more systematic metaphysical analysis, and that a greater sense of the radical transcendence of God over a language game is necessary in order to avoid reductionism always inherent in any contextual approach. (shrink)

In recent years postmodernism has been increasingly emphasizing difference to the point of rejecting anything resembling nature and essence out of fear of oppression and exclusion and for the sake of justice and liberation. In this article I argue that precisely for the sake of justice and liberation difference must be ‘sublated’ – in the Hegelian sense – into the solidarity of the different or others and that such solidarity requires a basis more enduring and more universal than the contingent (...) coincidence of interests shared by members of temporary coalitions. I make this argument by criticizing Derrida and such feminists as Iris Marion Young and Linda Nicholson on philosophical, historical, and strategic grounds. Philosophically, we need solidarity as much as we need difference. Historically, our contemporary challenge is not so much how to appreciate difference as how to find ways of living together for all our differences. Strategically, no group can effect its own liberation without solidarity with other groups. I also reconstitute a concept of human nature on the basis of a synthesis of classical objectivity and modern historicity and disclose solidarity as an essential characteristic of human nature itself that only needs activation, not invention, in the united struggle for justice and liberation.1. (shrink)

This edited collection is an ecumenical exploration of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love by eight distinguished theologians. It deepens the theological virtues for today by integrating them into the context of the urgency of justice while also discussing justice in the context of faith, hope, and love.

Christology and Pneumatology face many challenges today, such as fundamentalism and spiritualism, oppression and pluralism, rampant materialism and anthropocentrism. Four European and four Asian theologians respond to these challenges in various ways, and make substantial and insightful contributions to the renewal of Christology and Pneumatology in the context of the many issues raised by globalization, especially the need for serious East/West dialogue.

In this essay I present the postmodern phenomenological approach of Levinas, Derrida, and Marion to the problem of naming the unnameable God. For Levinas, God is never experienced directly but only as a third person whose infinity is testified to in the infinity of responsibility to the hungry. For Derrida, God remains the unnameable "wholly other" accessible only as the indeterminate term of pure reference in prayer. For Marion, God remains the object of "de-nomination" through praise. In all three, the (...) problem of naming the unnameable God is necessarily linked to how we relate to fellow human beings, to the hungry in Levinas, justice in Derrida, and charity in Marion. I also reflect on the merits and adequacy of phenomenology as such for speaking of divine transcendence. (shrink)

Raimon Panikkar is one of the most sophisticated and most profound among contemporary pluralists of religion. His pluralism is radical because it is rooted in the very nature of things, in the pluralism of being itself, beyond all perspectivalism and indeed beyond truth and falsity taken as intellectual categories. I discuss several issues regarding his position. Is he indeed a pluralist or a monist in disguise? Does he do justice to the uniqueness of each religion? Is he not prematurely introducing (...) the eschatological ideal of the harmony of opposites into the historical world where opposites often produce bloody conflicts? (shrink)