To resolve the impasse between various competing apocalypticisms, I suggest the writings of Julian of Norwich exemplify an eschatology that incorporates features of what Catherine Keller calls counter-apocalyptic while avoiding the risks of deconstructionist theology. Julian faced an impasse as she struggled to reconcile the traditional apocalyptic claim of the church that some human beings were damned with her own revelatory experience that “all would be well.” According to the long text of the Revelation of Divine Love, in facing this crisis Julian did not abandon the belief in divine omnipotence. Like Keller's position, Julian's apophatic counter-apocalyptices chews understandings of Christiane eschatology as the simple disclosure of divine power and justice. Instead, Julian's counter-apocalyptic is founded upon the vulnerability of Christ's body. Julian's vision of Christ's kenotic love transcends the impasse between eschatological determinism and Keller's process theology, and his love establishes a stronger foundation for a truly liberating eschatology.

Once the need to reform Catholic ethics became manifest with the Second Vatican Council, revision and adaptation of moral theology, the science that had served since the Council of Trent as official Catholic ethics, was often presented as the theological path to renewal. Scrutiny of philosophical, ethical, and theological presuppositions, however, discloses that the foundations of moral theology differ radically from those on which contemporary theological ethics must be based and that, accordingly, the way to true reform is not revision and adaptation of moral theology but the replacement of this self-contained science through construction of a fundamentally different kind of ethics, theological relational ethics as an essential, integral part of a reconstituted holistic theology.

This article engages the on-going debate over the interpretation of Vatican II's documents. It argues that a careful examination of this dispute reveals that it is not primarily concerned with the existence of “rupture” or “continuity” in the council's texts, but instead is driven by fundamental questions regarding the nature of reception and the character of ecclesial authority. The article outlines the distinctive notions of reception operative in the debate over Vatican II and the way in which such views shape their proponents' hermeneutics of interpretation. To that end, it illumines a determinative link between larger paradigms of ecclesiological structure and related approaches to reception. The final section explores Vatican II's own documents for the ways that they address the authentic nature of reception and the character of legitimate authority. Ultimately, this study argues that Vatican II's affirmation of a dynamic notion of reception points a way forward for its own interpretation and, more broadly, for advancing the Church's overall self-understanding.

As the global community becomes increasingly attuned to the disastrous consequences of our long-standing environmental prodigality, Christians and Christian theologians are cultivating theological and ethical responses to the ecological crisis with the goal of fostering life-giving understandings of creation and ecophilic lifestyles. While many theologians and ethicists have heeded this call to read the signs of the environmental times, Schillebeeckx's creation theology remains an underutilized resource for developing an ethical response to this contemporary crisis. This article seeks to offer Schillebeeckx's theology of creation as fertile soil for nurturing an ecological ethic. This article highlights Schillebeeckx's growing ecological concerns, illustrates the connection between Schillebeeckx's theology of creation and his ecological consciousness, and transposes Schillebeeckx's emerging ecological themes into the register of environmental ethics. This ecological ethics emphasizes co-creativity with God in creation, ecological asceticism, following Christ's creational praxis, and actualizing the present practice of the coming kingdom of God.