In the search for a feminist christology, Rosemary R. Ruether has proposed the vision of Jesus as prophet and the tradition of spirit christologies as sources. This essay proposes combining prophetic and spirit christologies, re-membering Jesus as a prophet within a prophetic movement, as a sharer in the spirit with its women and men prophets. It asks the reader to make two major shifts in envisaging Jesus' career: first, to shift the locus of the spirit from the person of Jesus to the reign-of-God movement within which he acted; second, to see the preaching of God's reign as alternative not to the teaching of the “scribes and Pharisees” but to the imperial rule. These two shifts can help us to revise the question, “Can a male savior save women?” asking instead whether, in the spirit, [we who are] women can liberate ourselves from but also with our memories of Jesus.

Juan Luis Segundo is widely known as a liberation theologian but his use of evolutionary categories to develop a theology of grace is little appreciated. Challenging the pessimistic logic of the second law of thermodynamics, Segundo defines evolution as an ecological project which results in the creation of what is new. Displaying a logic that is dialectical but not linear, the evolutionary project has as its telos the continual manifestation of freedom (or whatever is analogous to it) in a universe which, because of the high visibility of suffering, appears tragic and seemingly futile. In the human sphere, freedom is manifested wherever action integrates random elements like suffering and negativity to function efficaciously as love. The sign or mark of evolutionary change which accompanies creation of what is new, freedom is not the cause of love but is manifested gratuitously within it. Love is essential to God's eschatological will to create a world that is good. Wherever it is found, love enjoys ontological causality in the eyes of God and contributes to realization of the eschaton. There, definitively manifested in glory, the blossoming of freedom that accompanies love will be revealed for what it has been all along: substance of a new creation that is the eschatological materialization of grace.

Wedged in between interpretations of brief passages from Aquinas' introduction to his commentary on the Psalms and Johann Georg Hamann's Entkleidung und Verklärung, this essay argues that Israel's conception of God (which North American culture is poorly equipped to appreciate) must determine the fundamental form of prayer. This basic form is: the offering up to God, in praise and entreaty, of the whole world as well as of ourselves, along with all of our historic experience.

The growing national crisis of Peru in which death seems to triumph over life, especially for the poor, has not dimmed the hope of Gustavo Gutiérrez and others for the ultimate success of the poor to achieve liberation from poverty and injustice. Hope, for Gutiérrez, is far from wishful thinking. The case for hope results from the application of a complex epistemology which includes social scientific analysis, the “utopian imagination,” and faith in the God of Jesus Christ to the present socio-ecclesial reality of Peru. Among the reasons for hope are the fact of the church's evangelization of the poor, the new spirituality coming to birth among the poor, the rejection of fear in the face of the mounting persecution and martyrdom of Christian believers, and the universal church's adoption of a preferential option for the poor.

In recent years, American theologians have debated the outer limits of the church's competence to deliver specific ethical directives on issues of such sociopolitical import as the arms race or the structure of the American economy. In the American Catholic theological community, this discussion has focused on the two pastoral letters of the U.S. bishops written in the 1980s, The Challenge of Peace and Economic Justice for All. Ethicists critical of the public theology of these letters, including Dennis McCann and George Weigel, have expressed concern that the documents overidentify the American bishops with the political agenda of the American left. McCann and Weigel speculate that the process of wide consultation the bishops innovated as they composed these pastorals invited contributions of marginal groups who were allowed to dominate the conversation about the nuclear question and the economy and thus to skew the pastorals' conclusions in a radical direction not characteristic of the thinking of the majority of American Catholics. McCann and Weigel propose that public theology (and the consultative process underlying pastoral letters) employ “civil discourse” as the norm—that is, that all participants in the conversation speak the language of natural law, and that this language be taught by experts. The article critiques this proposal and argues that it envisages an ostensible pluralism which will, in fact, mute the voices of the marginal and protect the interests of the assumed center.

Mary O'Brien has inspired a vigorous reexamination of the concept and practices of reproduction. Her philosophy of birth reclaims this central female experience from the existentialist category of unconscious immanence. This article sketches O'Brien's theory and suggests how her reappraisal of reproductive process sheds light on the contradictions in traditional messages about biological difference, the nature of women, and the meaning of motherhood. It illustrates its claim by reading one such message, John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem, in light of O'Brien's work, and argues that using the bio-social process of reproduction as an analytic tool helps overcome dualisms and can further feminist insights into incarnation as a dynamic principle of creation. It invites further reflection on embodiment, birth, and motherhood as theological concepts.

The dominant practice among scholars in Religious Studies has been to exclude committed religious belief from the teaching of religion. Theology was once the center of the academic study of religion, but its present-day exclusion has deprived Religious Studies of a methodological center characteristic of a true academic discipline, and thus Religious Studies appears to be merely a marginal interdisciplinary program rather than a discipline in its own right. Theology was once taught in a denominational way that is inappropriate to the pluralism of a secular university. Another understanding of theology, however, is as a distinctive worldview offering a unifying perspective on life, a worldview which has the same rights on the campus as any other contemporary worldview. The presence of theology so understood would restore the methodological center to the discipline of Religious Studies and would enhance that intellectual pluralism to which the modern university is committed.

This paper attempts to elicit a certain sympathy for Nietzsche's view of Christianity by arguing that his critical attitude toward it must be considered more broadly within his quest to diagnose the illness pervading modern culture. Thus, while it has often been believed that Christianity contributes to the decline of modern culture, it is equally plausible that the institutions and language of modernity have become inadequate for the proper expression of the Christian message. The ostensibly “anti-Christian” sentiment in Nietzsche's thought, then, stems from an “anti-modern” stance, or, put more positively, from a vision that points ahead toward “post-modernity.” What becomes decisive for Christianity is not the formulation of any doctrine, but instead the implementation of a kind of “practice” or “style” that seeks as much an affirmation of life (even in view of life's suffering) as an escapist flight to the “other world.”

In defending this thesis, this paper counters a simple association of Nietzsche with atheism that still remains prominent in some theological circles.

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.

One does not read far or engage in a discussion about the complexity of the modern world without sensing an evolutionary vision which reflects the thought of Teilhard de Chardin. College students who are introduced to the Teilhardian vision respond in positive and creative ways. Teaching such a course reveals insights into young people's reaction to the present and future implications of a high-tech society. In an age of increasing control over the forces of nature by human-kind, crucial questions emerge. Two concerns attract students to Teilhard: fear of the future in terms of the direction and quality of human life; and an interest in the relationship between religion and science, which indicates substantive attitudes of a younger generation toward faith in God. Whether there is agreement with Teilhard is not the question, but the fact that he has pressed us to face the issues.