Articles varia
- BERNAT Chrystel - Éditorial
- BERTHELOT Katell - L’Empire romain, un défi politico-religieux pour le judaïsme antique
- BOURQUIN Yvan - Encadrement et circularité dans les Évangiles : variations sur le renvoi du lecteur au monde réel
- MATHOT Benoit - L’apologétique tillichienne et la crise du religieux (1913-1951)
The people of Israel was confronted with numerous empires throughout Antiquity, but the Roman empire represented a special challenge for Jewish thought. Not only did the Jews experience several defeats in front of Rome, but the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem was followed by the foundation of a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, in place of Jerusalem, a fact which could lead Jews to think that Rome was replacing Israel. Another reason why the Roman empire represented a special challenge for the Jews was that Roman conquests and domination were established first and foremost in the name of the Roman people and of its exceptional destiny ; moreover, the choice of Rome by the gods and the mission attributed to Rome could, from a Jewish perspective, look paradoxically similar to Israel’s election and vocation.
The first purpose of this article is to clarify the notions of echo, frame, inclusion, circularity and narrative circle in reference to the four Gospels. In these narratives, various themes form an inclusion : the name of Emmanuel in Matthew, the region of Galilee in Mark, the enjoyment of the believers and the worship in the Temple in Luke, and the awakening to faith in John. How do these various echoes – static or dynamic – affect the reader ? How are we sent back to the real world at the end of the four Gospels ? More exactly, which reader is then involved ? The “implicit reader” or the historical reader, the person to whom the narrative is addressed ? The word “variations” may suggest that there is a diversity to be respected. Each of the four narratives finds its own way to send the reader back to the real world.
The notion of apologetics runs through Paul Tillich’s entire theological work. First understood as “attack”, this notion evolves to be progressively defined as “answer” to the questions addressed to theology. Benoit Mathot’s essay follows the transformations of apologetics from Tillich’s early papers to his Systematic Theology. It shows incidentally how Tillich constantly tried to distance himself from Barth’s position.
Dossier
- BERNAT Chrystel - Engagement et défaut d’engagement : allégeance, preuve, évitement (Avant-propos)
- NOCQUET Dany - Engagement, réciprocité et Écritures. Réflexions sur l’herméneutique de l’alliance dans l’Ancien Testament
- BERNAT Chrystel - Vanité des excuses de ceux qui ont succombé souz la persécution : faiblesses humaines et engagement pour Dieu selon Gabriel Mathurin au temps de la Révocation et de l’apostasie
- BORELLO Céline - De la chaire à la tribune. La parole pastorale comme geste d’engagement civique sous la Révolution française
- ANTIER Guilhen - L’insensibilité spirituelle : une figure kierkegaardienne du désengagement
- SINGER Christophe - Rhétorique de l’engagement et liberté évangélique
In this paper Dany Nocquet tries to understand God’s commitment to Israel in biblical times. During the exilic and post-exilic period (6th-4th Century BCE), the main way for God to be in relation to Israel is the gift of the Torah. This book is the most remarkable singularity of Israel according to Deut. 4. Israel’s answer to God’s commitment is developed through the leitmotiv of the covenant. This notion is the subject of a large internal exegesis in the Old Testament in regard to the diversity of historical situations, and in regard to a deep anthropological change in exilic times. This internal reworking of the Old Testament invites the reader to interpret, rather than repeat, the text so as to claim its legacy.
In this article Chrystel Bernat examines the antithetical notions of spiritual desertion and commitment to God in a book issued in the Huguenot Refuge at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). This book ascribed to Gabriel Mathurin is entirely dedicated to refuting the motivations and stratagems employed by French Protestants to justify their abjuration and confessional duplicity ; it not only appraises the principles meant to preserve the Reformed faith from apostasy and Nicodemism ; it also reveals the theological tension at work in the pastoral discourses founded upon a highly retributive concept of justice as it raises the thorny question of whether renegades can be saved.
Prior to the French Revolution Reformed pastors were expected to show a constant commitment to God in their various functions, in particular in their sermons. Between 1789 and 1799 this expectation became hard to fulfill : after having achieved public recognition for a time, Protestant churches soon relapsed into clandestinity under the Reign of Terror and its program of de-Christianization. Where and how did their pastors manifest their commitments in this turbulent context ? Céline Borello examines the conditions and oratorical devices of these commitments, and their apparent abandonment in the cases of pastors abdicating their function.
Guilhen Antier explores the question of disengagement in the light of Kierkegaard’s category of spiritual insensitivity. He shows how this category mobilizes Christian subjectivity to demobilize it from the inside, building a distorted relationship with God, others, oneself and the world. Spiritual insensitivity enlightens some fundamental Kierkegaardian categories such as anxiety, despair, becoming and truth. Addressing the issue of faith from the very place of its avoidance enables us to basically reconsider what faith is all about.
Founded mainly on voluntary work, the Church has developed a rhetoric of commitment. But commitment has radically changed with our hypermodern times, where subjectivity and individual liberty mark the pace. How can the paradox of free commitment be enlightened by the Gospel, without the Gospel coming across as just an ambiguous speech ? What does this imply for ecclesial rhetoric ? Christophe Singer suggests the answer could lie in the dialectics of works and faith.