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This chapter illustrates how, during the final decades of his life, evangelization became a primary focus of Avery Dulles's theological labors, one to which he dedicated his last days of work. However, his work on evangelization can seem out of place — an incongruous add-on to his massive and sophisticated theological oeuvre, a pious hobby in which he engaged alongside his academically rigorous work in ecclesiology and fundamental theology. Such a view would be mistaken. Dulles's explicit interest in evangelization late in his life was the flowering of a long-active impulse. As the chapter demonstrates, evangelization stands at the center of Dulles's theology. It begins by tracing the course of Dulles's life in light of his interest in evangelization, suggesting that this reading helps frame the continuity and discontinuity present in his long career. The chapter then shows how evangelization links together key aspects of Dulles's theology, particularly his ecclesiology and fundamental theology.

This chapter examines the theological role of the most famous twentieth-century Catholic theologian in the United States, Avery Dulles, in shaping the current divisions within the Catholic community between liberals and conservatives. Central to the Dulles story was his famous 1974 book, Models of the Church, A Landmark Study in Catholic Ecclesiology and Theological Pluralism. Catholic conservatives claim that Dulles was a liberal who saw the light, repented of his ways, and joined the right (political and correct) side. Catholic liberals, on the other hand, claim that Dulles abandoned the progressive cause for conservatism, in the process gaining a cardinal’s hat for his efforts. This chapter argues that both of these positions are wrong, that Dulles really didn’t change very much theologically over the course of his forty-year career and that the current use made of his arguments by all sides in the argument have more to do with the unintended consequences of his thought.

This chapter assesses how Avery Dulles both inherited and contributed to an emerging appreciation within the Roman Catholic tradition for Martin Luther as a theologian and a reformer by critically evaluating Luther's historical context and ongoing influence. Though direct references to Luther are rare in Dulles's writings, his reflections on Luther and Lutheranism reveal a direct engagement with Luther research throughout his career. Moreover, Lutherans and Roman Catholics began to appreciate what their respective traditions share in common and to see a recovery of Luther's theological insights as a living voice for the future of both traditions and the possibility of a fellowship between them. The chapter first describes the development of Roman Catholic Luther research in the twentieth century. It then examines the direct comments on Luther and the Lutheran tradition by Dulles in light of this context.

This chapter presents a brief background of Avery Dulles before looking at two experiences of his senior year at Harvard College which can provide some insight into the scholar and the human being he eventually became. His years in Rome prepared Dulles to start his career teaching theology. Through all those years, he worked within Catholic circles and also ecumenically to reconcile opposing ideas and work out new syntheses, especially of theological thought. The source of the Latin inscription on the coat of arms of Cardinal Dulles, Scio cui credidi, is the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy: “I know the one in whom I have put my trust” (2 Tm 1:12). Another way of translating that phrase is “I know the one in whom I have placed my faith.” There is a quantum jump between deistic intuition and living faith in the Lord Jesus, and Dulles spent his life making that quantum jump.

This chapter examines how Avery Dulles's life and career are, in many ways, a microcosm of the history and development of Catholic theology in the twentieth century. It has two parts: history, the events and institutions that Dulles was, in some way, part of, and theology, his own thought, as it developed in parallel with the history. The history can be divided into three eras. The first extends from the middle of the nineteenth century (even though Dulles was born in 1918) up to about 1960; Dulles was active toward the end of that era. The second is the era marked by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and its aftermath. The third, the least clearly defined, began — for Dulles, at least — about twenty-five years after the Council. The era roughly from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth has been called the Pian century. The characteristics of that century are easy to enumerate: neo-scholastic theology, taught in Latin in Rome and in most seminaries; resistance to, and anxiety about, modern culture, exemplified in the condemnation of rationalism and modernism; and fear of post-Kantian historicism, especially when applied to the Bible.

This chapter evaluates four themes: Avery Dulles's theological legacy, contemporary ecclesiology, global migration, and Asian Christianities. It explores how these four issues impact each other. At first glance, they seem to be remote from each other, especially given the fact that global migration and Asian Christianity were barely on Dulles's theological radar. However, in spite — perhaps because — of this lack of prima facie connections among these four themes, bringing them together may yield novel and surprising insights into ways to meet some of the challenges facing the Church today. The chapter begins with a brief summary of the key elements of Dulles's model ecclesiology. It then discusses how mass migrations have constituted the American Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole. Finally, the chapter outlines a model of the Church as the People of God on the Move, as a Migrant Church, as a Church of, by, and for migrants, and proposes it as a complement to Dullesian models of the Church.

This chapter describes how hope and activism form an important part of the Christian faith commitment, and as Avery Dulles's work shows, such hope and activism entails a dynamic conversion in one's faith commitment. Looking at Dulles's work, it draws out a message of hope that can speak to the situation today, bringing together Dulles's method and work on faith, Church, and society. In response to the hope and despair of the youth for today's socioeconomic and political realities, the chapter highlights three points from Dulles's work. First, Dulles emphasizes that hope is rooted in the Christian faith commitment in Jesus Christ that entails conversion; second, that such a faith commitment supports and is supported by a vision of hope in the Kingdom of God; and third, that such a faith commitment is developed and strengthened within the context of community — that of the Church. The chapter then applies this in particular to the Philippine setting, where hope and despair are particularly felt by the majority Catholic country amid grinding poverty, extrajudicial killings, and worsening living conditions.

This chapter highlights one of the virtues so evident in Avery Dulles, which was his capacity to leave room for respectful debate over positions that he himself rejected. Dulles never reversed himself in supporting the mission of Christian unity. However, the tone and substance of his Oberlin keynote indicated how much he believed the ground had shifted from those early years just prior to and after the council. For such a changed landscape, a new method was needed. The chapter then considers Dulles's concept of “mutual enrichment by means of testimony.” By that he meant not a dialogue aimed at producing agreements on doctrine as a means of advancing toward full communion in faith, sacraments, and ministries. It is something more modest: a sharing of one's gifts, including the theological convictions that are germane to one's confessional identity.

This chapter discusses Avery Dulles's journey of faith. Dulles's early childhood was spent within the confines of his religious family environment. After graduation from Choate Preparatory School in Connecticut, his desire to study history and literature led him to Harvard College. It was while an undergraduate student at Harvard that Dulles began the search, which would eventually lead him to rediscover faith. On November 26, 1940, he was conditionally baptized in the Catholic Church, which was the practice at the time. In the late 1950s, Dulles spent his tertianship in Germany, where he was introduced to various theologians who were working in ecumenism. Once he accepted the Catholic faith, he never wavered in his commitment to it, and it sustained him throughout his life, especially in the many physical deprivations he endured in the months before he died.

This chapter focuses on Avery Dulles's practice of theology. Dulles was a careful, complex, and critical thinker. His body of published works gives evidence that over his lifetime he considered an amazingly broad expanse of subjects in fundamental and systematic theology. Given this diversity of topic, genre, and circumstance, Dulles's work cannot be pinned down to any one method or stance. Upon reflection, however, a distinctive trait emerges, one that not only gives a basic unity to his own approach but also has influenced later generations. This characteristic can be called, put forward in the Tuohy lecture, as a consciously chosen fluency in theological interpretation. Such fluency enabled Dulles's thought to avoid fundamentalism not only of scripture but also of doctrine on the one hand, while generating a powerful impetus for fidelity to tradition on the other. It enabled him to navigate between the heart of the gospel mystery and pressing historical changes that affect how it is expressed and practiced.

This chapter places Avery Dulles's work in conversation with the burgeoning field of digital theology. It may appear at first glance that Dulles was at best disinterested in digital culture and at worst, thought it a hindrance to the work of the Church in the world. However, the chapter sees a natural relationship between digital theology and Dulles's work. The primary context for both Dulles's ecclesiology and considerations of digital culture in its light is the American Catholic Church. Indeed, the chapter considers the American Catholic experience, which extends well beyond the boundaries of institutional Catholicism in the context of the United States. Dulles himself, of course, was sensitive not only to the pluralism within the Church in the United States, but also to the challenges and opportunities of ecumenism as the twentieth century drew to a close. Dulles's work on the strengths and weaknesses of different ecclesial models is a response to the diversity both within and outside of the Catholic Church.

This chapter explores how Avery Dulles, with his rich reflections on faith, revelation, and inspiration, is the perfect dialogue partner for an examination of the mutually informing belongings of both family members and Church members. Dulles's uplifting of the importance of experience at the point where our lives intersect with God's mystery can help us to see that the Church and the family bring about what they represent and can help us encounter God's self-communication and the mystery of Christ. In the same way that Dulles's models of the Church help shed light on revelation, as ultimately mysterious as it remains, so, too, does the image of the family as a domestic church help shed light on the Church, revelation, and the relationship between members of families and the entire Church. Indeed, Dulles posits the importance of images for the life of the Church, its preaching, its liberty, and its general feelings of common identity and loyalty. Images help to capture and inspire the Catholic imagination.

This chapter addresses Catholic universities. How can scholars in Catholic universities have academic freedom in the face of divine revelation? In some institutions, especially in some evangelical colleges, a commitment to God's revelation seems to limit scholars' research. Revelation becomes used as a barrier — happily, one not often approached — to undertaking some academic explorations. However, the chapter argues that if we accept Avery Dulles's fundamental understanding of divine revelation, then a Catholic university can maintain both the authority of divine revelation and confirm its support of academic freedom. To show this, it assesses three key questions. First, how can we understand academic freedom? Second, how can we understand divine revelation? Third, given these understandings, what does this say about how we should live in and live out the idea of a Catholic university?

J. Patrick Hornbeck's contribution considers the relationship between the twentieth-century Jesuit priest and cardinal Avery Robert Dulles, on the one hand, and the fourteenth-century writers William Langland and John Wyclif, on the other. He illuminates their shared investment – despite their many differences – in ecclesiological accounts that give “preference to a communion model of the church over an institutional one.” By including in his essay a theologian whose father was a U. S. Secretary of State, Hornbeck reminds us of another interesting element of Penn's career. With its combination of Jesuit affiliation and inside-the-Beltway location, Georgetown University has always been deeply concerned with questions about the relationship between statehood and religion. Within this frame, Hornbeck considers the implications of a communal model of the church. Specifically, Langland and Wyclif felt a responsibility to recognize a “rustic rather than corporate” social reality in their ecclesiologies, and they expressed this view in opposition to a political climate that increasingly attempted to assert the church's institutional power.

This chapter discusses the relationship of faith and theology from the point of view of Avery Cardinal Dulles, S. J. It claims that the subject has considerable importance because many of the difficulties people experience in Church and society are due to the impoverishment of faith or to theology that is not in harmony with faith. The chapter shows how theology in general, and Dulles' theology in particular, depends on faith and is in service to faith. It follows that theology is not only an exercise of faith; it is conducted in the service of faith—that of the individual and of the Church as the community of faith. The chapter concludes that faith is the presupposition and the animating principle of anything that claims to be theology and that faith is a gift that should be treasured.

This chapter explores the distinct roles of theologians and bishops in the Catholic Church, and how these roles changed from monastic to academic theologians with the birth of universities in the thirteenth century. After looking at the impact of the Protestant Reformation, French Revolution, and modern secularism, the chapter presents cases of how the tension between theologians and bishops has been dynamic (positive) and destructive (negative). The chapter concludes with several ways that bishops and theologians might interact positively.

This chapter provides an overview of twentieth-century narratives of the history of ecclesiology. These narratives argue for the necessity of the reform in Catholic ecclesiology that was accomplished at Vatican II. The authors of these narratives locate early modern ecclesiology as the locus of the deformation requiring such a reform. However, such narratives suffer from a twofold methodological shortcoming, namely, they focus almost exclusively on only one genre (treatises de Ecclesia) and only one figure (Robert Bellarmine). Both of these methodological shortcomings truncate current accounts of early modern ecclesiology, and both are overcome in the present book, which branches out from treatises de Ecclesia to present a fuller picture of early modern ecclesiology, and also focuses on a figure other than Bellarmine (Francisco Suárez). This chapter then provides necessary biographical information on Suárez and an examination of the state of the question concerning his ecclesiology before providing an outline of the work.

This chapter reassesses Suárez’s legacy and the contribution he makes to the current ecclesiological conversation. It begins by tracing the legacy of Suárez’s ecclesiology on the question of the ecclesial status of the baptized children of heretics through the papacy of Benedict XIV and into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This question is highlighted because it is (1) crucial for ecumenism and (2) often seen as a point of rupture between Tridentine Catholicism and the ecclesiology of Vatican II. It is argued that the delineation of this legacy significantly narrows the supposed chasm between early modernity and Vatican II. In addition, this chapter also suggests ways that Suárez can contribute to our current ecclesiological conversation on at least two fronts: the definition of the Church and the relationship between unity and missional catholicity.