Search Results (57)

This article examines the theological trajectories of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) on sanctification, union with Christ, and deification, situating their contributions within recent reappraisals of the doctrine of theosis in the academy. Though deification was universally affirmed by the early church and retained in various forms in medieval and early Protestant theology, post-Reformation Western Christianity marginalized this theme in favor of juridical and forensic soteriological categories. Against this backdrop, Nee and Lee offer a theologically rich, biblically grounded, and experientially oriented articulation of deification that warrants greater scholarly attention. Drawing from the Keswick Holiness tradition, patristic sources, and Christian mysticism, Nee developed a soteriology that integrates justification, sanctification, and glorification within an organic model of progressive union with God. Though he does not explicitly use the term “deification”, the language he employs regarding union and participation closely mirrors classical expressions of Christian theosis. For Nee, sanctification is not merely moral improvement but the transformative increase of the divine life, culminating in conformity to Christ’s image. Lee builds upon and expands Nee’s participatory soteriology into a comprehensive theology of deification, explicitly referring to it as “the high peak of the divine revelation” in the Holy Scriptures. For Lee, humans become God “in life and nature but not in the Godhead”. By employing the phrase “not in the Godhead”, Lee upholds the Creator–creature distinction—i.e., humans never participate in the ontological Trinity or God’s incommunicable attributes. Yet, in the first portion of his description, he affirms that human beings undergo an organic, transformative process by which they become God in deeply significant ways. His framework structures sanctification as a seven-stage process, culminating in the believer’s transformation and incorporation into the Body of Christ to become a constituent of a corporate God-man. This corporate dimension—often overlooked in Western accounts—lies at the heart of Lee’s ecclesiology, which he sees as being consummated in the eschatological New Jerusalem. Ultimately, this study argues that Nee and Lee provide a coherent, non-speculative model of deification that integrates biblical exegesis, theological tradition, and practical spirituality, and thus, present a compelling alternative to individualistic and forensic soteriologies while also highlighting the need for deeper engagement across global theological discourse on sanctification, union with Christ, and the Triune God. Full article

In his passion, Jesus Christ was a victim of the intentional violent acts of others, which were highly likely to have been traumatic for him and those around him. In the Eucharist, traumatizing acts and events are represented through symbolism, narrative and action. Although the body is a common doctrinal and eucharistic trope, particularly in Paul, the flesh, which is prominent in Johannine imagery, is a more distinctively Christian symbol as well as being more generative for a eucharistic theology of the victim. In the eucharistic elements of separated bread and wine, Christ the priest is presented as also the paradigmatic victim. His shed blood, which was not reassimilated into his flesh at his resurrection, indicates an abiding earthly humanity in solidarity with other victims. For traumatized victims, where space in the Eucharist is provided for the acknowledgement of suffering and other negativity, participation in it may be a pathway of transformation. Traumatized victims might themselves continue this priestly transformation in the world, bearing, like Christ, the sins and woundedness of others and contributing to Christian witness, instruction and healing. Full article

The relationship between Scripture and the Liturgy remains one of the most extensively debated subjects in theological discourse. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, a divided Christendom witnessed the rise of a dichotomy between Scripture and Liturgy, as well as between the Word and the Sacrament. This dichotomy, however, is absent from the patristic thought, which perceives the unity and complementarity between Scripture and Liturgy, owing to their shared belonging to the one life of the Church—broadly defined as Tradition—and to the way they are understood and experienced as interconnected modes through which the singular Mystery of Jesus Christ is communicated to the faithful. The present study aims to demonstrate this unity by drawing on a substantial body of patristic writings, highlighting the fact that the life of the Church is one and is lived both as the rule of faith and the rule of prayer, and that through it, one and the same Christ communicates Himself to the faithful both through the Word and through the Holy Sacraments. For the Church Fathers, the Christian faith is not an abstract doctrine about Christ, but a real and personal encounter and communion with Him in the life of the Church. This patristic approach may offer a starting point for contemporary Christianity in addressing the current liturgical crisis and in rethinking and renewing future ecumenical dialogue. Such renewal presupposes a movement beyond secular formalism and nominalism, which have fostered excessive conceptualization and an antithetical view of Scripture and Liturgy, Word and Sacrament. Full article

This article offers a theo-phenomenological investigation of the body, exploring the dialogue between contemporary phenomenology—especially its theological turn—and Eastern Orthodox spirituality as found in the Philokalia. Building on the phenomenological distinction between body and flesh and drawing on Orthodox theology’s understanding of the body–soul unity, the article analyzes the intramundanity and finitude of the human body, as well as its transfiguration through ascetic practices and divine grace. The Incarnation of Christ is examined as a central paradigm for rethinking embodiment, revealing the eschatological promise of glorified flesh. Concepts such as ipseity, self-affection, intentionality, and counter-intentionality are employed to articulate a phenomenological vision open to theological transcendence. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary approach affirms the possibility of a body transformed by grace and destined for resurrection. Full article

The polemics of idol worship in John Capgrave’s Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria have been interpreted by previous scholars as either the author’s engagement with the Lollard image controversy or a political critique of Henry VI. This essay, however, shifts the focus from Katherine and her iconoclasm to the concept of divine iconoclasm, defined here not only as the divinely sanctioned or divinely motivated destruction of religious images but also as God’s direct intervention to dismantle false representations and correct human perceptions of the divine. It further argues that Capgrave’s Life redefines sacred space as primarily constructed through light, emphasizing its immateriality and exposing the saint’s physical limitations. In these scenarios, divine iconoclasm emerges as a constructive force that resolves the tension between the secular and the sacred. Moreover, Christ’s celestial manipulation of the vision of sacred space and the relationship between body and space—encouraging confidence while discouraging self-inflation—serves as a model for how a monarch should inspire both love and fear. In this way, Capgrave’s Mirrors for Princes is embedded within his hagiography, where the image debate features prominently, addressing the heated political and theological controversies of his time. By combining these elements, the essay bridges two strands of criticism that have previously treated the political and theological dimensions of the text separately. Full article

This study demonstrates that Paul presents the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 as an identity-forming and identity-sustaining liturgical act. Through literary analysis, the research first highlights Paul’s deliberate fivefold use of the verb συνέρχομαι (“to come together”) to frame the passage, emphasizing the communal nature of the Eucharist. The meal is intended to mark the identity of the church as one body—set apart from the status-based divisions typical of Roman banquet culture. The current study also observes that Paul strategically places the early Christian confession of the Lord’s Supper at the center of his argument. In doing so, he calls the Corinthians to recall this tradition and re-engage in a shared act of remembrance—one that enacts the memory of Christ’s death and thereby reconstitutes them as a unified body. This understanding is rooted in Jewish conceptions of ritual memory, in which liturgical acts not only recall the past but renew and reinforce communal identity. Through such embodied remembrance, the church does not merely recall who it is; it performs and sustains that identity. Thus, the Eucharist functions both to form the church as one body distinct from the world and to maintain that identity through repeated, participatory remembrance. Full article

The Catholic Church in the United States is no longer a Euro-American church receiving immigrants. Rather, it is an immigrant church, the cross-cultural Body of Christ. Serving such a diverse church is difficult and complex, providing both prophetic and pragmatic challenges for pastoral leaders seeking to build the parish as a dynamic, relational, multicultural community, living out the Gospel of Christ. The challenges of creating vibrant parishes in the light of growing diversity was the subject of a qualitative research study that interviewed more than 500 Catholic pastors, staff, and parishioners, from 40 parishes across the US. This study discovered that, while parishioners from different cultures want the same things—good liturgy, leadership, community, and faith formation—they want it in culturally distinct ways. This has created challenges not previously encountered by parish leaders. Effective leaders in these communities exhibited the skills of adaptive leadership, learning to put aside biases and assumptions, in a synodal style of ministry in which they listen deeply, and respond to, the needs of their faith community while using intercultural competencies. Together, pastoral leaders are becoming bridges, bringing together the faithful across cultures, enriching the life of the community. Full article

The doctrine of deification (or theosis) has seen renewed interest in recent decades within lines of inquiry that extend beyond its traditional association with the Eastern Orthodox tradition. The ascendancy of Tuomo Mannermaa’s Finnish interpretation of Luther—a rereading of the mercurial monk linking his doctrine of justification to deification—was an important catalyst of this turn of events, as it prompted scholars to reexamine the presence of deification–imagery within the intellectual topography of significant Protestant figures. Initially regarded as absent from, alien to, or even contradictory with Western Protestantism, deification is increasingly being recognized as a core feature of biblical soteriology—particularly in relation to articulating the contours of what union with Christ and/or participation in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4) truly entails. Indeed, several biblical specialists—Michael Gorman, Ben Blackwell, Stephen Finlan, L. Ann Jervis, and others—following the lead of their theologian counterparts, have similarly proposed that deification best characterizes both Pauline and Johannine soteriologies. Although scholars are now exploring how deification operates within the theological frameworks of key Protestants, two significant issues persist within the ever-growing body of literature on the doctrine. The first issue concerns adequately defining deification, as its contours and content differ among individual thinkers and across theological, chronological, and geographic spectrums. Norman Russell aptly recognizes this problem due to his decades-long research tracing the evolution of the concept of deification and notes that the doctrine requires a clear working definition due to entering both mainstream theological traditions—manifesting in diverse forms—and popular spirituality. The lack of a clear definition is directly tied to a second issue—little attention has been given to articulating the doctrine’s practical disciplines and lived experience within theological frameworks external to Eastern Orthodoxy, and more recently, the Western academy. To fill this lacuna in scholarship, we introduce a portrayal of deification advanced by a significant Christian voice from the Global South, Witness Lee (1905–1997), whose theological vision presents a distinctive understanding of the practical experienced of deification called the “God-man living”. Full article

While most Christians might imagine the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as a single event, for the author of Ephesians, the resurrection is a continuing event of cosmic proportions. In a very real way, the Epistle to the Ephesians is an extended reflection on the ongoing multidimensional cosmic consequences and transformations that result from the death of Jesus and his resurrection, whose impact not only affects the macrocosm in which Christ sits triumphantly at the right hand of God, “far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion” (Eph 1: 20–22), but also the microcosm of the Church, “his body, the fullness of the one who fills the universe in every way” (1: 23), transforming those who compose the smallest microcosm, the baptized who form a Christian household and who, gathered at table to share Eucharist (5: 17–6: 9), are “seated with Christ in the heavenly places” (2: 6), already participating in the eternal Messianic banquet. This is to say that, for this author, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the catalyst for an ongoing and ever more evolving “new creation” of humanity and, indeed, the entire cosmos, with “Christification”—the full maturation into the divine “Christ nature” (Eph 4: 13, 15–16) as the telos or goal for the whole universe (Eph 1: 10). Full article

The centrality of disruption as a graced moment of awakening social imagination to a new dawn where human flourishing becomes a possibility ought to be the focus of the church’s praxes of sacramental rituals. In fact, Christianity is itself a religion of disruption. The God–human reality that manifests itself in Jesus Christ is itself a graced disruption. God chooses to disrupt the familiar world of fallenness and thus offers God-self as a mediating gift that reorients creation to a new way of being that transcends the familiar orientation towards sin. Disruption, as an existential phenomenon, is not alien to the human condition. In fact, all aspects of human life are saturated with disruption. In fact, grace is itself God’s disruptive intervention in human history. Since creation embodies the goodness of God, creation can be said to be a sacramental symbol of disruption. In a social world where racism and other structures of marginality operate, victims of such marginalities embody in their existence the disruptive grace that can transform such a society. Black bodies are loci for encountering the disruptive grace intended to end the vice of racism. They also serve as the loci for the church to imagine a new way of being a sacrament of disruption in the world because of their existential proximity to the historical realities defining the life of Jesus Christ as a victim of the hegemony of empire. This work shows how black bodies can help foster a new imagination of the human in our contemporary world where systems of marginalization continue to shape human life in general. It attempts to address the following question: how can one conceive of black bodies in a world defined by systems of erasure that directly affect black persons and their embodied agencies? To do this effectively, this work appropriates a constructive theological approach that grounds itself in an interdisciplinary discourse with the intent to argue that to speak of the human person is to instantiate a polyphony of insights: insights that appeal to an ethical consciousness that is defined by altruism. Full article

The Shroud of Turin attracts consistently the interest of both the scientific community and the general public, as many believe that it is the burial cloth of Christ. This article aims to provide a comprehensive review of the relevant scientific research addressing two key questions: (i) how were the image of the human body and the bloodstains formed on the Shroud? (ii) What is the age of the Shroud? The answer to the first question remains a mystery, and the article explores the most promising hypotheses. Consequently, the scientific community should have another opportunity in the near future, similar to that of the 1978 STURP campaign, to study the object. The 1989 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud, which addressed the second question and suggested that the linen cloth dates to the 14th century AD, is discussed in light of hypotheses and experimental studies that have raised concerns and objections about the Shroud’s possible medieval origin. It is concluded that the evidence from the significant reports published to date, which challenge the radiocarbon dating, is insufficient to overturn its finding. However, extracting new samples from different parts of the object to perform a second series of radiocarbon dating measurements is suggested. Full article

Suffering is a problem addressed by many world religions. This paper examines the understanding of suffering in three religions: Catholic Christianity, Shia Islam, and Shakta Hinduism. In each of these cases, ordinary suffering is transformed into mystical sorrow, becoming a path to closeness and divine union. This transformation makes use of religious symbolism of the family, emphasizing the role of the mother. Worldly suffering is no longer meaningless; instead, it becomes a spiritual path through which the individual person, and even the world at large, may be redeemed. Full article

One of the central metaphorical themes of Ephesians is maturity, expressed most memorably in 4:13. In this verse, the goal of the church is portrayed as the attainment of the “mature man” (εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον), the state of completion to which Christ’s corporate body is growing until it reaches “the measure of the stature of the fullness” of its head. Despite the clear origin of Paul’s metaphor in the realm of human development, minimal discussion has centered on how Paul’s contemporaries employed the phrase “mature man” (τέλειος ἀνήρ) in relation to other developmental milestones along the commonly conceived life course in Greco-Roman antiquity, and what implications this might have for understanding where in the maturation process Paul would have plotted his implied readers. This investigation explores these contextual matters and then uses the results to cast light on related developmental imagery in the surrounding passages of Ephesians, including not only the human growth terminology in 4:12–16 but also the pedagogical rhetoric in 4:20–21, the allusion to the Roman toga virilis ceremony in 4:22–24, and the military analogy in 6:10–18. Collectively, this metaphorical imagery helps to identify the church’s current stature as that befitting of a young man who has recently come of age and located within the liminal phase of early male adulthood. Explicating the fullness of the maturity metaphor in Ephesians helps to illuminate the thematic coherency of the letter as well as how Paul sought to make his realized eschatology intelligible to his ancient readers. Full article

Few things can potentially divide (and are dividing) Christians like the LGBTIQ+ issue. Conservative churches argue that sexuality forms an integral part of the human being and, hence, that sexual sin falls in a category of its own in any catalogue of sins. It is sin committed in the human body that radically affects one’s participation in Christ’s earthly body. To act on the realisation of same-sex lust is in itself sinful. Same-sex practices are viewed as sexual sin and all practitioners are condemned. On the other hand, there are Christians who accept that a homosexual orientation can be a biological given that needs to be accepted but that God views homosexual practice as an evil that should be avoided at all costs. Then there are also Christians who accept that a homosexual orientation is integral to some people’s humanity and accept same-sex behaviour as a regular expression of sexuality. Romans 1 plays a key role in the church’s discussion of the issue. The article reconsiders the textual evidence, using an exegetical model based on the historical–critical method combined with biblical theology. The conclusion is that Romans 1:24–29 refers to same-sex behaviour within the context of the Gentile world of idolatry that engages in wilful transgression of God’s bounds, resulting in degeneration in the lives of offenders. Full article

Taking into consideration both of the statements of the Catholic magisterium and the pastoral environment of Catholic institutions, this essay offers some observations on the roots and objectives of interreligious dialogue. Framing dialogue in the faith experience of Christ as Lord allows the dialogue of life to emerge as a living expression of the way of life of every faithful Catholic. To live in Christ is the essence of being the Church. The mission of the Church is to proclaim the saving work and living presence of Christ. Christian spirituality is an intentional search for the fullness of Christ’s humanity so that the community at prayer can embody the Risen One under all circumstances. This “embodiment” necessarily includes encountering human “others”, diminishing the feeling of separateness, and discerning human conditions and possibilities for growth. To accomplish this task, Catholic Christians are invited to find Christ in all phenomena, including in other religions as disclosures of what it is to be human. To grow spiritually under the present circumstances of our communities, Catholics can begin to listen to hear the “voice” of the Good Shepherd wherever it resounds. In hearing the authentic ring of this voice of mercy and love, the community discerns that a previously “unknown” Christ is present before us, inviting a deepened understanding of Christ, both human and divine. Out of this understanding arises an affirmation of the Christologies of the historical Catholic consensus, now impelling the Church toward new forms of mission, service, and contemplation. This essay takes note of recent trends in Christology, suggesting correction courses for both progressive and traditionalist approaches. Full article