HEYTHROP JOURNAL最新文献

This excellent work of scholarship makes one central and striking claim: that there is an intimate link between legal ‘ritual’ and religious ‘ritual’. That is, the law has a form of sacramental functioning; and Christian sacraments (especially in the Catholic understanding, although there are ecumenical voices here too) rely on law. Like most engaging works such as this, the premise is simple and easily grasped; yet the argument is fresh and deals clearly and fairly with contested issues. Turning the pages, then, one finds an argument which is comprehensively argued, judicious in its criticism, honest in the uncertainties of the author, and unsparing in its praise. It's not just that Hahn is perfectly qualified—as a Professor of Canon Law—to make this argument; it's also that—in the care taken and detailed exposition of the central claim—there is an evident delight.

Three key propositions govern the work (p. 3): (1) the law utilises sacramentality to effect changes in legal status; (2) the Church makes use of the law to give community members access to grace (this remarkable proposition deserves and indeed receives very careful handling—they are not ‘legal acts’ [p. 5]); and (3) through sacramental acts, the Church gives its members access both to grace and to the law. How so? Marriage is a means of grace, but also a conveyer of new legal status (although, as Hahn admits, not so obviously in countries where the religious and legal elements are kept strictly separate). Similarly, baptism cleanses from sin and confers status within a community. Ordination, with its religious significance and effects, also includes the conferring of power, establishing a new hierarchy, and assigns specific duties with legal consequence.

These propositions deserve careful definition and delineation. At every step, Hahn feels the reader's increasing discomfort and alleviates with a steady hand. First, sacramentality itself is defined and given an exposition which will point forwards to the rest of the book (p. 14). Hahn is clear that the law is not actually ‘sacramental’ (pp. 7-9), but the resemblances are what motivates the book, and what leads Hahn in the most illuminating chapter to address both using the philosophical-linguistic approach of speech act theory. ‘Sacrament’, if understood in a broader sense to refer to any symbol with a sensible sign and effecting that to which it points, has a clear and obvious presence beyond the Church, and the locus of law and society is an eminently sensible place to look, not least because of its ancient precursors.

For this reader the least satisfying (albeit still engaging) part of the book is the central two sections—‘The Ritual Frame of Sacraments’, and, applying those findings, ‘Sacramental Change in Status’. Hahn is a wide and critical reader of the principal material—Durkheim, Girard, Elizabeth Bell, and Roy Rappaport, the last of whom seems to have convinced Hahn the most

This paper explores a tension between Francis's openness to ‘liminality’ and certain papal statements condemning transness that reproduce the ways in which people are marginalised as trans. It seeks to make sense of these tensions, reading them back through Francis's theology of history, and suggesting a place for trans people to locate ourselves within the Church in spite of them. It argues that Francis's failings around transness can be viewed as ‘limitations’ to be overcome in a redemptive movement. It then argues that Francis's theology of history is reflected in his ‘dialogical’ use of authority, which admits a space and role for us as pastorally accompanying the Church beyond these limitations. Finally, it argues that Francis's pastoral theology is founded on a theology of encounter which suggests that this process is an expression of divine love that draws people to God through a loving encounter with others. Trans people are thus called to put ourselves at the service of this love, and can take hope in its powers even amidst our own weakness.

In this essay, I argue that Hegel's Absolute must be understood to be transcendent in the sense of being both immanent within the world and exceeding it. This account of transcendence invariably turns on Hegel's inheritance of the Christian tradition and, in particular, the metaphysics espoused through Christian Platonism. To support my argument I will examine the methodological immanentism of Hegel's phenomenology to show that such immanentism, while demanded by any phenomenology, is not necessarily imported into his metaphysics. I will then examine Hegel's Logic to show that the dialectic which his thought relies upon compels the finite subject to recognise that all finite things, including themselves, are grounded within the Absolute Idea. I will then examine whether we must understand the Absolute Idea as immanent or whether there is room to conceive of it as transcendent. I conclude the essay by showing that the sense of transcendence as found within Nicene Christianity provides an understanding of transcendence that is not only compatible with Hegel's thought but actually allows us to make better sense of his system than the immanentist interpretation of it.