Does God Need the Church?: Toward a Theology of the People of GodLiturgical Press, 16/12/2014 - 352 من الصفحات Are not all religions equally close to and equally far from God? Why, then, the Church? Gerhard Lohfink poses these questions with scholarly reliability and on the basis of his own experience of community in Does God Need the Church? In 1982 Father Lohfink wrote Wie hat Jesus Gemeinde gewollt? (translated into English as Jesus and Community) to show, on the basis of the New Testament, that faith is founded in a community that distinguishes itself in clear contours from the rest of society. In that book he also described a sequence of events that moved directly from commonality to a community that was readily accessible to every group of people and was made legitimate by Jesus himself. Only later did Father Lohfink learn, within a new horizon of experience, that such a description is not the way to community. The story of the gathering of the people of God, from Abraham until today, never took place according to such a model. Today Father Lohfink states that he would not write Wie hat Jesus Gemeinde gewollt? the same way. The situation of belief and believers has undergone a shift: the question of the Church has become much more urgent. Church life is declining and the religions are returning, often in new guises. In light of these shifts and the change in his own view of community, Father Lohfink inquires in Does God Need the Church? of Israel's theology, Jesus' praxis, the experiences of the early Christian communities, and of what is appearing in the Church today. These inquiries lead to an amazing history involving God and the world - a history that God presses forward with the aid of a single people and that always turns out differently from what they think and plan. |
المحتوى
Why God Needs a Special People | 1 |
Evolution and History Belong to Creation | 7 |
God Risks a History Tainted by Sin | 15 |
God Wills the Salvation of the Whole World | 21 |
The Salvation of the World Demands a Concrete Place | 26 |
That Concrete Place Is Israel | 31 |
What Does It Mean to Say that God Is Almighty? | 39 |
The Characteristic Signs of Israel | 51 |
The Scarlet Thread of Salvation History | 97 |
The Quest for the Form of the People of God | 106 |
Jesus and the Figure of the Twelve | 121 |
The Todayness of the Reign of God | 134 |
Salvation Superabundant | 139 |
The Basic Sacramental Structure of Jesus Actions | 150 |
Apostles Disciples People | 164 |
This | 179 |
A People of Faith | 60 |
The Exodus Experience | 67 |
The Torah as Social Project | 74 |
A History of Resistance | 88 |
The Characteristic Signs of the Church | 203 |
The Church and I | 311 |
Church What Do You Have to Say for Yourself? Arnold Stötzel | 323 |