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Encountering the Crucified God: the Soteriology of Sebastian Moore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

William P. Loewe
William P. Loewe*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America
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Abstract

These reflections on Sebastian Moore's soteriology fall under four headings. By way of introduction and in order to establish a context, I commemorate an anniversary (I). There follows an effort to state in summary fashion what I understand Moore to be saying and what I understand him to be doing in what he says (II). A third section contains a suggestion concerning the ecumenical significance of Moore's work (III). The paper concludes with a number of critical observations and proposals for further work (IV).

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 1982 , pp. 216 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1982

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References

1 Moore, Sebastian, The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger (New York: Seabury, 1977).Google Scholar

2 Moore, Sebastian, The Fire and the Rose Are One (New York: Seabury, 1980).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 140.

4 Aulén, Gustaf, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, trans. Hebert, A. G. (New York: Macmillan, 1969).Google Scholar

5 See Alpers, H., Versönnung durch Christus: Zur Typologie der Schule von Lund (Göttingen, 1964).Google Scholar

6 Aulén, p. 158.

7 Ibid., p. 59.

8 Ibid., p. 17.

9 Ibid., p. 91.

10 Ibid., p. 79.

11 Ibid., p. 80.

12 Ibid., p. 14.

13 Ibid., p. 143.

14 Ibid., p. 14.

15 Joseph Mitros, for example, identifies “Christus Victor” as one among the six distinct patterns he discerns in the soteriology of the patristic literature. See his “Patristic Views of Christ's Saving Work,” Thought 42 (1967) 414–47.Google Scholar

16 Althaus, Paul, in The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Schultz, Robert C. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), p. 222Google Scholar, concludes that it is “a significant misrepresentation of Luther to classify him one-sidedly as a representative of the ‘classical type’ as the Lundensians do.”

17 Contrast, for example, the vindication of Abelard's orthodoxy in Weingarten, Richard E., The Logic of Divine Love: A Critical Analysis of the Soteriology of Peter Abelard (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970)Google Scholar with Williams', Paul L. interpretation of Abelard as a “Christian Seneca” in The Moral Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980).Google Scholar

18 Aulén, p. 155.

19 Ibid.

20 Aulén himself presses no further than to distinguish the “outward dress” from the “underlying idea,” pp. 10-11 and passim.

21 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, p. xi.Google Scholar

22 Ibid.

23 Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, p. xiii.Google Scholar

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., p. 96.

26 Ibid., p. 4.

27 Ibid., p. 3.

28 Ibid., p. 4.

29 Ibid.

30 Aulén, p. 114.

31 Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, p. 4.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., p. xiv; see also The Crucified Jesus, p. 95.

34 Lonergan, Bernard, Method In Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 85–100.Google Scholar

35 Lonergan, Bernard, De Verbo Incarnato (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964), pp. 552–58Google Scholar; see also Loewe, W., “Lonergan and the Law of the Cross: A Universalist View of Salvation,” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977), 162–74.Google Scholar

36 Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, p. 37.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., p. 133.

38 Schleiermacher, Fredric, The Christian Faith, ed MacIntosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 2:427.Google Scholar

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., p. 428.

41 For some of the critical groundwork toward a retrieval of Barth's soteriology see Loewe, W., “Two Theologians of the Cross: Karl Barth and Juergen Moltmann,” The Thomist 41 (1977), 510–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 See Rivière, J., “Rédemption,” Dictionnaire de théologie cathoiique, vol. XIII/2 (Paris: Librairie Letousey et Ané, 1937), especially col. 1952Google Scholar; more recently, Richard, Lucien, The Mystery of the Redemption (Baltimore: Helicon, 1965), esp. pp. 211–12.Google Scholar

43 See Dillenberger, John and Welch, Claude, Protestant Christianity Interpreted Through Its Development (New York: Scribner's, 1954), pp. 78–85.Google Scholar

44 Pesch, Otto Hermann, Die Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1967)Google Scholar; parts of the final chapter have been expanded under the title “Existential and Sapiential Theology—The Critical Confrontation Between Luther and Thomas Aquinas,” in Wicks, Jared, ed., Catholic Scholars Dialogue With Luther (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), pp. 61–81.Google Scholar

45 See Wicks, p. 65.

46 Pelikan, Jaroslav, ed., Luther's Works (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1963), 26: 276–91.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., p. 283.

48 Ibid., p. 281.

49 Ibid., p. 276.

50 Ibid., p. 277.

51 Ibid., p. 288.

52 Ibid., p.280; see also pp. 276, 278, 279.

53 Ibid., p. 287.

54 See note 19.

55 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, p. 5.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., p. 108.

57 Ibid., pp. 4-5.

58 Ibid., p. 107.

59 Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, p. 91.Google Scholar

60 Pelikan, , Luther's Works, 26: 287.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., pp. 281-82.

62 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, pp. 80-81.Google Scholar

63 Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, pp. 80–84.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., pp. 13-14.

65 Ibid., p. 105.

66 Rahner, Karl, “Christianity and Non-Christian Religions,” Theological Investigations, 5 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), pp. 115–34.Google Scholar

67 Gregson, Vernon, “The Historian of Religions and the Theologian,” in Lamb, M., ed., Creativity and Method: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1981), pp. 141–51.Google Scholar

68 For a similar argument see Moule, C. F. D., The Origin of Christology (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, p. 133.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., p. 143.

71 Ibid.

72 Descamps' review may be found in Revue Théologique de Louvain 6 (1975), 212–23.Google Scholar

73 “En elle-même, la thèse del'A. n'est pas incompatible avec la foi, puisqu'il admet qu'il y eut, à l'origine, des expériences apostoliques qui furent l'action de Dieu, lequel révéla ainsi aux disciples la réalité de la survie de Jésus.” Ibid., pp. 218-19.

74 “La portée de nos remarques est, répétons-le, d'ordre purement historique, car de soi le schéma de l'A. ne compromet pas nécessairement la foi au ressuscité.” Ibid., p. 220.

75 “… pour nous, le schéma “apparition” n'est pas purement littéraire; il vient de la tradition orale et, en dernière instance, d'expériences psychologiques du type ‘vision’ qui ont été très vite le support d'une foi d'aboird comprise comme adhésion à un Jésus vivant, sans réflexion sur la résurrection corporelle.” Ibid., p. 221.

76 Schillebeeckx seems to have been receptive to this point. See his Interim Report on the Books JESUS and CHRIST, trans. Bowden, John (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 80–81.Google Scholar

77 Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, pp. 142–43.Google Scholar

78 Ibid., p. 86.

79 For an argument that the differences among at least some of the currently proposed positions on the Easter encounter reduce finally to differences on the philosophical question of the nature of objectivity, see Loewe, W., “Appearances of the Risen Lord: Faith, Fact, and Objectivity,” Horizons 6 (1979), 177–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, p. 13.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., p. 24.

82 For an illuminating interpretation of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo along the lines sketched here, see Greshake, Gisbert, “Erlösing und Freiheit: Zur Neuinterpretation der Erlösungslehre Anselms von Canterbury,” Theologische Quartalschrift 153 (1973), 323–45Google Scholar; Greshake's views are represented by his teacher, Kasper, Walter, in Jesus The Christ (New York: Paulist, 1976), pp. 219–21.Google Scholar

83 See Komonchak, Joseph A., “Ministry and the Local Church,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 36 (1981), 56–82.Google Scholar

84 Crowe, Frederick E., The Lonergan Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1980), pp. 90–97.Google Scholar