Articles varia
- TETAZ Jean-Marc - Bach et Luther. A propos de la théologie des Cantates de Bach
- BULUNDWE Luc - Caïn et Marthe, cancres ou héros ? Lecture synoptique de deux récits de fratrie
- GUIGNARD Christophe - Marcion et les Evangiles canoniques. À propos d’un livre récent
- BOSS Marc - Thèses pour une théologie ecclésiale et scientifique, missionnaire et civique
- GISEL Pierre - Une double vocation de la théologie, interne et externe. Ordres différents et compatibilité
In this essay, Jean-Marc Tétaz shows how Bach reads and understands Luther. Bach’s personal library informs us about his readings and theological concerns. It reveals a musician passionately interested in Luther’s work, which he reads through the lenses of a spiritual tradition in which Arndt’s mystique of music plays an essential part. Bach’s acquaintance with this tradition is corroborated by some of his rare statements about worship music, whereby it is possible to draw the outline of a theology of the cantata with the support of some musical examples.
In this synoptic study of two stories of siblings, Genesis 4:1-16 and Luke 10:38-42, Luc Bulundwe examines the grounds and reasons of the asymmetry he observes between the principal role that Martha and Cain play from a narrative point of view, and their deprecation in favour of their younger brother and sister, Abel and Mary, in the Christian and traditional reception of these texts.
However important it may have been for Paul, the resurrection of Christ would have remained unimportant for most Christians if it had not been rediscovered and updated by Marcion in the middle of the second century. A chief premise of this provocative argument stated by Markus Vinzent is that Marcions’s work antedates most writings of the New Testament in which the resurrection plays an essential part – including the canonical Gospels. Christophe Guignard’s critical examination of this premise shows it to be untenable.
If they are to take part in the public debate of a democratic society, faith communities require some sort of reasoned self-understanding to regulate the process of their self-alteration by reference to their internal norms. While this dynamic self-understanding cannot be provided by merely descriptive studies of religion, the Christian experience offers an example of how this need can be met by the practices and institutions of theology (or its functional equivalents in other traditions). The multidimensional vocation of Christian theology – which is here claimed to be at once scientific and ecclesial, missionary and civic – allows indeed Christian communities to take part in public debate by drawing from their own history and canonical literature the resources they need for their relentless critical self-reinvention. Marc Boss suggests that a democratic state should encourage and support discursive practices of a similar kind in all moral communities it houses, whether the good they pursue is conceived in religious, nonreligious or antireligious terms.
The twofold vocation of theology meets a double challenge: on the one hand, the various traditions running through society should not be diluted or abandoned in some conciliating concept of universality; on the other hand, society has to be addressed and thought in its own terms, whereby it should be sharply distinct from the historical traditions it shelters, as well as from any particular position or trajectory. Pierre Gisel expects theology to be at work on both sides, but according to two irreducible modes, granting the intellectual and institutional specificities of each order while acknowledging their compatibility, and even the request of a mutual – though oblique – service.
Notes et chroniques
- WHITWORTH Charles - Quatrième centenaire de la King James Bible
- REYMOND Bernard - Un théâtre de l’épreuve (Ruth Stawarz-Luginbühl)