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This chapter provides an introduction to Congar’s life and work. It recounts Congar’s remarkable life story, describes his theological method, offers a brief overview of his vast corpus of writings, and discusses some of the primary influences on his theology of the Holy Spirit, including Thomas Aquinas, Johann Adam Möhler, the ecumenical movement, and the Second Vatican Council.

Chapter fifty-four examines the crowning achievement of Hodge’s publishing career, his three-volume Systematic Theology. Rather than simply compile and edit his theological writings of the past half century, Hodge took the opportunity to write his Systematic as an organic whole. Certain new stresses appear in the volumes. He emphasized Baconian scientific method and the role of the intellect in theological study to a degree that had not been the case in his theological lectures. He used his Systematic to argue for the importance of the intellect (over the emotions) in theological study, and he made his volumes and apologetic for God’s goodness and benevolent work in the world, even after the devastating events of the Civil War.

Gives detailed analyzes of Boethius’ five short theological treatises. In particular, it examines the use of Aristotelian physics in the treatise written against the Nestorian and Monophysite views on Christology, the discussion of how far Aristotle's Categories can be used in talking about God and in analyzing the Trinity, and the ontological scheme, and argument about abstraction set out in Treatise III. Boethius is presented as an important innovator in theological method.

This chapter asserts that any accurate interpretation of Charles Hodge’s theological method requires careful consideration of his wider intellectual and religious contexts, especially the time he spent in Germany and his engagement with German theology. It analyzes Hodge’s work in modern and post-Enlightenment contexts, explains Hodge’s scientific theology in relation to his exegetical theology, and explores his dialogues with August Tholuck and Ernst Hengstenberg. This chapter suggests that Hodge was neither a mediating nor a rationalistic theologian, but an eclectic thinker who readily drew from a variety of sources to defend Calvinist orthodoxy. It also shows that it is essential to recognize how Hodge’s work as a biblical theologian shaped his other theological works and epistemology. In view of the recent effort to redefine scholasticism, the chapter argues that Hodge might be considered a Reformed orthodox scholastic.

Theological method belongs to the agenda to fundamental theology. Hence this final chapter recognizes three styles of theology: (1) an academic style in search of truth that finds its sources in writings from the past; (2) a practical style in search of justice that ‘consults’ the poor and suffering in matters of faith, doctrine, and morality; (3) a prayerful style in search of the divine beauty that nourishes a yearning for a final future through public worship. These styles, which, when developed unilaterally, can go astray, need and complement each other. The chapter ends with eight pieces of advice to theologians: be scriptural, historical, philosophical, provisional, ecumenical, local, converted, and prayerful.

The third chapter argues that Sobrino’s approach to spirituality reflects both a general structure relevant to all human beings and a more specific Christian structure, namely the following of Jesus. Focusing on the general structure, it examines the foundational anthropological elements that undergird Sobrino’s spirituality—that is, the human dispositions that enable the proper relationship between any human person and reality. This examination is complemented with an analysis of the presuppositions that ground his engagement of the theological task. Such analysis sheds light on how his spirituality enriches and organizes all of his theology and demonstrates how these same elements structure his understanding of the demands, concerns, and purpose of the theological enterprise.

The theologians of the ressourcement are often contrasted with Karl Rahner: the former based their work on biblical and patristic sources; Rahner focused on re‐receiving Thomism, via a dialogue with modern philosophy and culture. While that characterization might be broadly true, it obscures the fact that Rahner and his contemporaries shared a commitment to recovering the dynamism of Christian faith from what they regarded as the stagnation brought about by neo‐scholasticism. This chapter explores the path that Rahner's work followed in the decades before the Second Vatican Council, with a particular focus on his theology of grace. In doing so, the chapter highlights the creative originality of Rahner's theological method. This creativity produced a theology distinct from, but sharing the same spirit as, those regarded as the prime representatives of the ressourcement.

This chapter introduces the overall argument of the book. It describes the concerns that drive the divide between liberals and postliberals. Liberal theologians are concerned to validate theological claims as being true, while postliberals are concerned with the Barthian project of preserving the lordship of Jesus Christ over all of theology, including method. This leads in turn to a concern to maintain the particularity of soteriological and Christological claims and to avoid systematizing. These concerns yield a postliberal theology that is essentially Wittgensteinian both in its understanding of the meaning of theological claims and in its antitheoretical bias. The liberal concern for validation, on the other hand, yields a theological method that accepts descriptivist requirements for successful reference and a descriptivist or truth-conditional understanding of the meaning of theological claims. Neither of these understandings of language are adequate, but recent developments in analytic philosophy of language make possible more adequate accounts of meaning and reference, which in turn can yield a more inclusive method that can lead beyond the liberal/postliberal divide.

This chapter outlines the book's theological method, surveys the biblical record on the treatment of animals, and shows how there are surprising resources in Judaism and Christianity for an ethic of compassion toward animals. It then examines two theological approaches to animals, one based on the Bible and the other on an appropriation of philosophical rights language. It concludes that neither strategy is adequate to both the complexity of the issues involved and the particularity of our actual relationships with animals.

Chapter 5 is the author’s contribution to theological method in light of what that has not been sufficiently developed within the four methodological types. Specifically, it is an adaptation of the principle lex orandi, lex credendi called regula spiritualitatis, regula doctrinae, or, “the rule of spirituality and the rule of doctrine.” This principle (1) exhibits the traditional pentecostal emphasis on pneumatology and eschatology, (2) establishes a strong relationship between theology and spirituality in the process of formulating doctrine, (3) is attentive to the hermeneutical matrix constituted by pentecostal communities, and (4) gives a prominent place to biblical interpretation in systematic theology. An exercise in the Lord’s supper illustrates the salient points of the proposed method. After the pattern of lex orandi, lex credendi, some of the primary concerns of pentecostal spirituality are permitted to raise the theological questions addressed in a doctrine of the Lord’s supper. In turn, a doctrine of the Lord’s supper is permitted to inform aspects of pentecostal spirituality.

This chapter describes Barth’s influence on postliberal theology. It does so by analyzing Hans Frei’s doctoral dissertation, which described Barth’s methodological break with liberal theology. Frei elucidates three themes in Barth, all of which are designed to move Barth’s theological thinking away from its anthropological starting point. First, Barth prioritizes ontology over epistemology. In Barth’s view, one of the things that made liberal theology subject to Feuerbach’s critique was that it began with epistemological considerations, and then refused to make claims that could not meet its epistemic criteria. After the break, Barth insists that theology must begin with ontological affirmations about God, as these affirmations are given in the Incarnation and the testimony to it in the Bible. Second, after the break, Barth insists that theological method must be subordinate to and governed by positive ontological statements about God. This implies that theology cannot be systematic, because Barth believes that all true systematizing will be anthropologically and epistemologically driven. Third, Barth insists that interpretive method must be governed by his methodological commitments and his ontological affirmations about God. All these themes will drive Frei’s later work, as I’ll describe in subsequent chapters.

Calvin's modest, Augustinian Trinitarianism is explored. His dislike of any subordination of the Son to the Father is emphasized. For Calvin, the Trinitarian dogma maybe seen as providing a set of rules enabling us to think of the divine mystery as Scripture reveals it rather than offering an explanation of it.

This chapter introduces Luther’s sermon on usury, and situates it in the context of his day. It then gives a commentary on Luther’s method in the sermon, discussing inter alia such matters as its genre, Luther’s moral understanding of ‘the gospel’ and its relation to financial and commercial matters, and the way in which Luther reads and deploys Scripture in social ethics. Also analysed are the ways in which Luther exploits particular doctrines (such as creation and justification by faith alone) with respect to a moral question, and his core theopolitical concept of the twofold government of God. This chapter analyses the way in which Luther brings these theological motifs to bear on a pressing economic question which confronted him: the rise of the Zinskauf, a method of lending money at interest which circumvented canonical prohibitions on usury.

This chapter explores how the aims of feminist theological projects are (or are not) sought/accomplished through their methodologies, turning to futurity as a rubric and Sarah Coakley’s théologie totale as a case study. This chapter argues that despite her laudable desire to reframe systematics under a formational frame that she sees as liberative, the teleological thrust and attendant onto-epistemological assumptions undergirding théologie totale (and the role of contemplation within it) betray and thwart precisely what her approach seeks to engender—the inculcation of un-mastery, attentiveness to otherness, and awareness of the complex interrelatedness of sexual and spiritual desires. In assuming and proffering a narratively-cohering and linear account of subjectivity that takes as given a clear telos of desire, Coakley’s methodology adheres to what José Esteban Muñoz calls “straight time’s choke hold.” The latter half of this chapter suggests that a feminist theological imagination (and method) that aligns with the aims of théologie totale approaches “the future” not by asking “how do we secure or obtain it?” but rather, “who are the ‘we’ that make up and enact it?” This chapter concludes by proposing potential hallmarks of a feminist theological method in a queer time and space.

Chapter 1 is methodological and sets the stage for many of the modes of reasoning found within the remainder of the book. The central argument is that reflection upon ideal human love can be used as a reliable source for gaining significant insight into the nature of God’s love. More specifically, reasons are presented for believing that various New Testament authors presuppose that divine and human love (or species of each) are similar in such a way that scrutiny of how humans ideally should love can be used fruitfully to inform how Christian theologians and philosophers think of God’s perfect love. This methodological conclusion provides a foundation for the construction of a model of God’s love found in Chapter 2, and it offers the beginnings of a more general framework for considering certain kinds of actions relevant to this book that God might, or might not, be inclined to perform.

The introduction outlines the structure of the “problem of human animality” in Christian theological anthropology and explains how it leads to ineradicable tensions and contradictions in Christian accounts of human life that rely on anthropological exceptionalism. Prior to a summary of the book, the introduction also offers an explanation of its method with particular attention to the rationale behind the choice to focus on fourth-century Christian authors in conjunction with contemporary critical and constructive theology.