Abstract
Vito Mancuso (b. 1962), one of Italy’s younger theologians, whose lay affiliation succeeded in creating significant waves of both admiration and criticism, is one of the theological rising stars of today’s academic agenda. A controversial figure perceived as a liberal within Vatican circles, Mancuso has recently stirred Italian traditional Catholicism by publishing a series of books that attempt to remake the faith of Christianity. An acquaintance of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Mancuso launched a personal campaign directed against the dogmatism of classical Roman Catholicism in an attempt to offer a theology that matches the experience of contemporary people. Having published most of his books after the year 2000, Mancuso intends to reinterpret Christianity as a world religion, a mere human phenomenon, and in order to prove his point he resorts to the reality of man’s historical existence. Following the empirical observation that Christianity exists as a religion among many others, Mancuso focuses on the concept of faith, which he dramatically reinterprets as man’s awareness of the idea of good. At the same time, he explains that faith should not be understood in terms of obedience or as a gift of God, according to the pattern of traditional theology; on the contrary, faith should be reread as freedom in connection with man’s capacity to evaluate his own experience as well as to produce a worldview.
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Notes
David Lehmann, “Religion and Globalization,” in Religions in the Modern World, ed. Linda Woodhead, Paul Fletcher, Hiroko Kawanami, and David Smith (London: Routledge, 2004), 348–49.
E. J. Ashworth, “Religious Pluralism,” in The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Taylor and Francis, 1998), 260–67.
See also Roger Trigg, Rationality and Religion (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), 168.
A useful tool for the investigation of the relationship between religion and human experience, which of course includes science, is James D. Proctor, ed., Science, Religion and Human Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
For details about Christianity as a world religion, see Clive Erricker, Teaching Christianity: A World Religions Approach, 2nd rev. ed. (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1987).
Lancelot L. Whyte, The Universe of Experience: A Worldview beyond Science and Religion (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 1–18.
Curtis Hutson, Great Preaching on the Resurrection (Murfreesboro, TN: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 2000), 72.
Jeffrey A. Kottler, Doing Good: Passion and Commitment to Helping Others (London: Routledge, 2000), 117.
Mary A. Stenger and Ronald H. Stone, Dialogues with Paul Tillich (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002), 13.
Luke T. Johnson, “Religious Rghts and Christian Texts,” in Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives, ed. John Witte Jr. and Johan D. van der Vyer (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996), 80.
Vito Mancuso, Rifondazione dellafede (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), 26.
For details about intolerance within Christianity and some possible solutions, see Ian S. Markham, Plurality and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1–17.
See also Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 1:129.
Also see David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 91–92.
John Hick, Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 196.
For a contrary view, see Geoffrey W. Bromiley, “Christianity,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 660–61.
For details, see Fred R. Dallmayr, Margins of Political Discourse (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989), 200–1.
Details about the Filius Dei can be found in Gerald J. Bednar, Faith as Imagination: The Contribution of William F. Lynch, SJ (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 7.
It must be stressed here that Mancuso’s criticism is directed specifically against the tenets of the First Vatican Council. Further information about the light of reason in Vatican I can be read in Gianfranco Fioravanti, “Nationalism,” in Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, ed. Jean-Yves Lacoste (London: CRC Press, 2004), 1:1104–6.
For further information about the meaning of the experience of the self in connection with the concept of God, see Harold G. Coward, Jung and Eastern Thought (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), 129–30.
See also Peter Williamson, Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture (Leuven, BE: Peeters, 2001), 104–5.
For details about the capacity of the self to investigate religion, see Wayne Proudfoot, God and the Self: Three Types of Philosophy of Religion (Cranbury, Associated University Presses, 1976).
For the issue of pluralism within a distinctive religion, see Paul Helm, Faith and Understanding (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 62–64.
See also Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), xiii.
It seems that, in using the idea of the pure good as attached to the self who has the capacity to exercise his reason with view to the knowledge of God, Mancuso actually demythologizes even Catholic mysticism. For details about Catholic mysticism, see Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 205.
For a discussion of man’s subjectivity in perceiving the good, see Robert M. Wallace, Hegel’s Philosophy of Beauty, Freedom, and God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 302.
An informative book that debates the claims of truth of various religions, also in connection with Christianity, is Gavin D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (London: Continuum, 2000).
Strangely enough, Mancuso seems to be quite medieval in his conviction despite his evident modernistic impetus because, during the Middle Ages, the intellectual superiority of Christianity was defended against other religions, especially Judaism. See Gillian R. Evans, Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers (London: Routledge, 2002), 85.
For an interesting discussion of faith as a gift of God, by a nontradi-tional theologian, see Mark C. Taylor, After God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 60–62.
This is the definition of faith also according to Vatican I. See Avery R Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For: A Theology of Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 186.
Donald W. Wuerl, Thomas C. Lawler, and Ronald Lawler, eds., The Gift of Faith: A Question and Answer Version of the Teaching of Christ (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2001), 83.
See Thomas R Edgar, “Through the Written Word, Spiritual Truth Can Be Known,” in The Fundamentals of the Twenty-First Century: Examining the Crucial Issue of the Christian Faith, ed. Mal Couch (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 43–47.
For an excellent discussion of God’s grace and how it acts within the human being, see Michael R. Miller, “Freedom and Grace,” in Gathered for the Journey: Moral Theology in Catholic Perspective, ed. David M. McCarthy and M. Therese Lysaught (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 191–96.
See, for instance, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (London: Continuum, 1969), II.2:128.
Such as Evangelical Reformed theology. See, for example, Roger E. Olson, The Westminster Handbook to Evangelical Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 183.
This could mean that, at the end of the day, everyone has faith in something. See, for instance, Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 19–20.
For the distinction between religious faith and theological faith, see also John D. Caputo, Kevin Hart, and Yvonne Sherwood, “Epoché and Faith: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments, ed. Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart (London: Routledge, 2005), 39.
For an interesting parallel, see Eric D. Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007), 41–42.
For Mancuso, however, objective reality is still some sort of subjectivity: a communitarian subjectivity as opposed to and higher than individual subjectivity. For a good discussion of subjectivity and objectivity within the theological and philosophical discourse within modernity, see A. K. Min, “Phillips on the Grammar of «God»,” in Ethics of Belief: Essays in Tribute to D. Z. Phillips, ed. Eugene T. Long and Patrick Horn (Berlin: Springer, 2008), 137.
Christian songs contain innumerable references to love, and especially to God’s love or Christian love. See Erik Routley, A Panorama of Christian Hymnody (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005).
See also Cornelius A. Buller, The Unity of Nature and History in Pan-nenberg’s Theology (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 187.
In this respect, Mancuso comes very close to Charles S. Pierce; see Peter Ochs, “Charles Sanders Pierce,” in Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy: Pierce, James, Bergson, Whitehead, and Hartshorne, ed. David R Griffin et al. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 75.
This classical formula shows that Mancuso does not totally give up traditional theology, but he uses its language, which he later translates into his rational “theology from below.” See also David Bordwell, ed., Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: Burns and Oates, 2006), 170.
Kenotic theology became quite influential on the eve of the Second Vatican Council. For details, see Philip Kennedy, Schillebeeckx (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 100.
Catholic feminism makes frequent use of the practical display of love in Christ’s kenosis. For more information, see Tina Beattie, New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory (Oxford: Routledge, 2006), 160.
See also Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 142.
Mancuso is in full agreement here with the general pluralistic perspective of postmodern thought on world religions. See, for details, David W. Smith and Elizabeth G. Burr, Understanding World Religions: A Road Map for Justice and Peace (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), xliii.
Also see David O. Ahearn and Peter A. Gathie, eds., Doing Right and Being Good: Catholic and Protestant Readings in Christian Ethics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), 37.
Mancuso’s approach at this point seems to bear a powerful resemblance to Oriental religious philosophies. See, for further information, Thomas P. Kasulis, ed., Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 190–91.
For further details about the relationship between creation and evolution in Christian theology, see J. P. Moreland, John Mark Reynolds, and Stanley N. Gundry, eds., Three Views on Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 8.
See also Edward O. de Bary, Theological Reflection: The Creation of Spiritual Power in the Information Age (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 23–24.
A detailed presentation of the basics of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s theology can be found in Celia Deane-Drummond, “Theology and the Biological Sciences,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918, ed. David Ford (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 360.
F For useful details about worldview formation, with special reference to Husserl, see David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 108–21.
At this point, Mancuso is very close to Schillebeeckx, who is convinced that, through the action of humans, the natural world or the world of phenomena turns into a realm for the giving of meaning. See Erik Borgman, Edward Schillebeeckx: A Theologian in His History (London: Continuum, 2004), 210.
See also Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ, the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1963), 4.
For a thorough discussion of freedom and meaning, see Wilhelm Dupré, Patterns in Meaning: Reflections on Meaning and Truth in Cultural Reality, Religious Traditions and Dialogical Encounters (Leuven, BE: Peeters, 1994), 238–40.
See also Chiedozie Okoro, “Phenomenology for World Reconstruction,” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed., Analecta Husserliana (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), XCII.5: 340–42.
In this respect, Mancuso comes close to Paul Tillich, who saw the logos as the essential structure of reality. Moreover, the logos reflects itself both in man’s mind and in reality. Cf. John P. Dourley, Paul Tillich and Bonaventure (Leiden, NL: Brill, 1975), 176–77.
See also Swami Ranganathananda, Human Being in Depth: A Scientific Approach to Religion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 3–4.
Mancuso is fully aware that the promise of existence beyond individual death is one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity. See also Charley D. Hardwick, Events of Grace: Naturalism, Existentialism and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 13–14.
Experience is the source of theology as, for instance, in Edward Schillebeeckx. For details, see Marguerite Abdul-Masih, Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Frei: A Conversation on Method and Christology (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001), 2–6.
For an informative discussion of experience and how it influences theology, see Bruce D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 81, 83, 84.
Mancuso does not say whether matter itself has an origin outside the world or it is the very origin of everything in the world. Nevertheless, it is logical to suppose that he makes reference to matter as the origin of everything in the world. For an interesting discussion of the origin of everything, see Roger Ellman, The Origin and Its Meaning (Santa Rosa, CA: Origin Foundation, 2004), 17–20.
Mancuso’s theology is very similar to Teilhard de Chardin’s thought, which is based on the conviction that there is no Christ without the cosmos and no spiritual being without matter. The incarnation is merely an indication that matter encompasses everything, including the spiritual realm. In other words, there is no spiritual realm without matter, which is explained through the idea of incarnation. See, for a detailed presentation, Anne Hunt Overzee, The Body Divine: The Symbol of the Body in the Works of Teilhard de Chardin and Ramanuja (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 50–52.
Mancuso would agree with John Hick. See Brian Hebblethwaite, Philosophical Theology and Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 60–61.
See also Hans Dirk van Hoogstraten, Deep Economy: Caring for Ecology, Humanity and Religion (Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 2001), 1–5.
This feature of Mancuso’s theology resembles, to a high degree, both existentialism and Marxism. For details about existentialism and Marxism, see Robert B. Mellert, “Reconsidering the Medieval Concept of Nature in the Development of a Scientific Ethics,” in Miscellanea Medievalia 13/2: Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, ed. Jan P. Beckmann and Wolfgang Kluxen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 609.
Mancuso is in agreement with Kant, who believed that the shift from theocentrism to anthropocentrism is man’s transition from childhood to maturity. See Predrag Cicovacki, Between Truth and Illusion: Kant at the Crossroads of Modernity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 124.
Mancuso’s approach to the Trinity can be defined as psychological because it is man, or man’s soul, who defines Trinity as symbol. This brings Mancuso closer to Jung; see C. L. Rothgeb, ed., Abstracts of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung (London: Karnac Books, 1992), 74.
See also Harold W. Percival, Thinking and Destiny: The Descent of Man the Eternal Order of Progression (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2001), 596–97.
See John Macquarrie, Stubborn Theological Questions (London: SCM Press, 2003), 136–37.
As in Schillebeeckx, who believes that God is accessible only through justice and love. See Philip Kennedy, “God and Creation,” in The Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary C. Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 52.
So Christ the man preexists his own incarnation as, for instance, in Robert Jenson. See, for details, Oliver D. Crisp, “Incarnation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, ed. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 167–69.
Mancuso’s image of man looks like Auguste Comte’s perspective on man as the Great Being, who replaces the traditional God. See Frederick C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy: 19th and 20th Century French Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2003), 95.
Man has the capacity to develop his own powers of love, reason, and justice, so spirituality exists only in man, not outside him. The development of man’s capacity to understand spirituality as belonging exclusively to his own realm, which is the natural world, is the result of the process of human evolution, which confirms Mancuso’s belief in the lack of contradiction between creation and evolution or between theology and science, provided creation and theology are understood only in terms of evolution and science. Man turns to himself because he knows or rather he learns how to love himself, first as individual then as humanity. This perspective resembles that of Erich Fromm, as in Pat D. Hutcheon, Leaving the Cave: Evolutionary Naturalism in Social-Scientific Thought (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1996), 350–51.
Vito Mancuso, Hegel teologo (Casale Monferrato, IT: Edizioni Piemme, 1996).
Mancuso is not entirely right because, although the situation he signaled could be true in Italy, it is certainly not the case in the United States of America. See, for further information, Michelle N. Baum and Janice L. Benton, “The Evolution and Current Focus of Ministry with Catholics with Disabilities within the United States,” in Disability Advocacy among Religious Organizations, ed. Albert A. Herzog (Philadelphia: Haworth Press, 2006), 39–54.
A book that seems to agree with Mancuso is Amos Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 158–63.
However, Mancuso’s view is not supported by Hans S. Reinders, Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 88–90.
For an interesting perspective that equates God with energy, see Joseph Davydov, God Exists: New Light on Science and Creation (Rockville, MD: Schreiber Publishing, 2000), 125–40.
William E. May, Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life: Celebrating the Beauty of Being (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2000), 16.
See also Robert L. Perkins, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 232.
Cf. Gregg Horowitz, Sustaining Loss: Art and Mournful Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 50.
For the medical connotation of the phrase, see Daniel Callahan, The Troubled Dream of Life: In Search of a Peaceful Death (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 97.
An informative work in this respect is Eduardo J. Echeverria, “The Gospel of Redemptive Suffering: Reflections on John Paul II’s Salvifici Doloris,” in Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil, by Peter van Inwagen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 111–47.
Kevin O’Rourke, “Pain Relief: Ethical Issues and Catholic Teaching,” in Birth, Suffering and Death: Catholic Perspectives at the Edges of Life, ed. Kevin Wm. Wildes, Francesc Abel, and John C. Harvey (Dordrecht: Kluwer Publications, 1994), 157–70.
For more details, see Charles E. Curran, The Catholic Moral Tradition Today (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999), 37–42.
Detailed information can be found in Robert Feduccia Jr., ed., with Jerry Windley-Daoust, Michael C. Jordan, and J. D. Childs, Great Catholic Writings: Thought, Literature, Spirituality, Social Action (Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 2006).
See also Stan van Hooft, Life, Death and Subjectivity: Moral Sources in Bioethics (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 137.
Donald W. Wuerl, The Teaching of Christ: A Catholic Catechism for Adults (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2004), 55.
See also Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Commentary on Familiaris consortio (Apostolic Exhortation on the Family), in Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations, ed. Kenneth R. Himes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 363–88.
For the traditional view, see John A. O’Brien, The Faith of Millions: The Credentials of the Catholic Religion (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1974), 438
and Kevin D. O’Rourke and Philip Boyle, Medical Ethics: Sources of Catholic Teachings (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999), 249–50.
Peter Williamson, Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture: A Study of the Pontifical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2001), 35.
See Hazel J. Markwell and Barry F. Brown, “Roman Catholic Bioethics,” in The Cambridge Textbook of Bioethics, ed. Peter A. Singer and A. M. Viens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 436–45.
Mancuso’s “theological drama,” which is essentially a way to describe the impossibility of reconciling God’s love and omnipotence with human disability, has nothing in common with Hans Urs von Balthasar’s “theological drama,” which is a way to express the turmoil of faithful Catholics who are not properly understood by the churches they serve. See Aidan Nichols, No Bloodless Myth: A Guide through Balthasar’s Dogmatics (London: Continuum, 2000), 127.
A counter position is defended by Thomas J. Massaro, “From Industrialization to Globalization: Church and Social Ministry,” in Living the Catholic Social Tradition: Cases and Commentaries, ed. Kathleen Maas Weigert and Alexia K. Kelley (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 56.
For details of cellular suicide, see Jeffrey W. Myers, Marianne Neighbors, and Ruth Tannehille-Jones, Pathophysiology and Emergency Medical Care (Florence, KY: Thompson Cengage Learning, 2002), 16.
See also John Macquarrie, “Theological Reflections on Disability,” in Marilyn Bishop, ed., Religion and Disability: Essays in Scripture, Theology and Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), 44.
For a counter argument, see Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 312.
See also James J. Walter, “Theological Parameters: Catholic Doctrine on Abortion in a Pluralist Society,” in Contemporary Issues in Bioethics: A Catholic Perspective, ed. James J. Walter and Thomas A. Shannon (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 145–80. On this particular issue, Mancuso’s attempt to isolate God from the world with reference to his direct acts is very similar to Mal-ebranche’s philosophical enterprise.
See, for instance, Donald Rutherford, “Malebranche’s Theodicy,” in Steven M. Nadler, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 165–89.
See also Martin Michael, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 200–202.
For details about how Roman Catholicism perceives in vitro fertilization, see Tom Davis, Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 197–98. Not all traditional theology refutes in vitro fertilization. For instance, Protestants tend to accept it because medical techniques fall within the realm of general revelation, so humanity can carry its mandate to multiply, fill the earth, and exercise dominon over it. There is, however, one condition to the acceptance of in vitro fertilization in traditional Protestant theology, namely the necessity that the genetic material should come from the spouses.
See, for details, Scott B. Rae, Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 150–52. The argument is that infertility is the consequence of the entering of sin into the world, and the evident result is the inability of the human reproductive system to work properly. This can be equated to other health problems that render various organs virtually useless, and the only way to restore their natural functions is by means of medical intervention.
This is a typical example of the difference between traditional theology and radical theology. Thus, while radical theology is convinced that— by means of modern science—we can actually correct the work of God, traditional Christianity holds that we can only correct the consequences of sin, which affect the work of God. In fact, these approaches stem from two different approaches of the idea of God: radical theology envisages God as nonmetaphysical in terms of ontological reality, while traditional Christianity understands God as utterly metaphysical when it comes to the reality of his actual existence. See, for details, Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Genesis of God: A Theological Genealogy (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 20
and Christopher Martin, ed., The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas: Introductory Readings (London: Taylor and Francis, 1988), 99.
See also William Stanley Dell, Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (London: Routledge, 2001), 180.
Mancuso is hegelian at this point; see John Walker, “Hegel and Religion,” in David Lamb, Hegel and Modern Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1987), 189–225.
Mancuso’s thought is similar to that of Paul Tillich; see Paul Tillich, Theological Writings [Hauptwerke 6], ed. Gert Hummel and Carl Heinz Ratschow (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Verlag, 1992), 308.
See Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (London: Routledge, 2003), 185.
This is morally acceptable if the medical procedure facilitates the conjugal act and helps it reach its natural objectives, so the reproductive material must be collected from the spouses. See Todd A. Saltzman and Michael G. Lawler, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 239.
Ruth Macklin, Surrogates and Other Mothers: The Debates over Assisted Reproduction (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 34
and Lewis Petrinovich, Human Evolution, Reproduction and Morality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 279.
For the risks of the procedure, see F. Shenfield and C. Sureau, “Ethics of Embryo Research,” in Ethical Dilemmas in Assisted Reproduction, by F. Shenfield and C. Sureau (New York: Informa Healthcare, 1997), 15–22.
Leonardo de Castro, “Bioethics in the Philippines: An Overview of Developments, Issues, and Controversies,” in Regional Perspectives in Bioethics, ed. John F. Peppin and Mark J. Cherry (London: Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers, 2003), 307.
Paul Flaman, Genetic Engineering: Christian Values and Catholic Teaching (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2002), 92.
Pablo Gadenz, “The Church as the Family of God,” in Catholic for a Reason: Scripture and the Mystery of the Family of God, ed. Scott Hahn and Leon J. Suprenant (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 1998), 80–82.
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Simuţ, C.C. (2010). Radical Christian Thought in Late Postmodernity. In: Traditionalism and Radicalism in the History of Christian Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113145_7
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