Tradition and the Normativity of History

By T Merrigan

This collection of essays by some of the world's leading theologicalvoices aims at unfolding and reflecting upon the complex relationshipbetween theology and history, with a special focus on the development oftradition. The articles gathered here make it clear that the role ofhistorical consciousness within theology and the contribution ofhistorical studies to the theological disciplines, are of paramountimportance, and fundamentally alter the shape of the theologicalenterprise. Rather than destroying theology, tradition and theologicaltruth claims, historical consciousness contributes to the deconstructionof all facile appeals to history in order to support theological claims, and works to prevent us from proposing simplistic readings of traditionin terms of continuity or discontinuity. Moreover, it offers newopportunities to theology to engage in the process ofrecontextualization in the contemporary context, taking into account itssensibility to historicity, contingency and particularity. It allows us, for example, to think resurrection anew, and to constructively criticizeour forgetfulness of dangerous memories. It is not by overcoming thesefeatures of the contemporary age that theology will succeed in itsstriving after theological truth, but by discerning how such truth isrevealed precisely within, and thanks to, particular and contingenthistories, and not in spite of historicity, contingency andparticularity. When this is done, the dialogue between theology andhistory/historical studies contributes to a contemporary reconsiderationof the radical dialogical character of revelation, that is, of the wayin which God reveals Godself in history. It is the hope of thiscollective volume that it will further deepen the understanding ofrevelation that was developed in Vatican II's constitution on divinerevelation, Dei verbum.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9042929650
• ISBN13: 9789042929654
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: Peeters
• Length: 225 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 9.4"