The Lutheran formula “simul Justus et peccator” originally applied to the individual Christian believer. However, it can also apply to the ecclesial community of believers and it can also have ecumenical dimensions and consequences. This article investigates these dimensions and consequences in view of the discussions which were occasioned by Vatican II.

Both Native American shamans and mind-cure practitioners dispel disease by visualizing it in symbolic form and enable recovery by invoking symbols of well-being. This paper shows how comparative study of shamanism and mind-cure furthers understanding of the techniques of symbolic healing characteristic of each religious tradition. Mind-cure techniques of hypnotic suggestion illumine the Native American idea that prayers, songs, and stories are spiritual forces. Conversely, the performing arts practiced by Native American shamans contribute to further understanding of the effective healing techniques practiced by Mary Baker Eddy and her teacher, Phineas P. Quimby. The paper also comments on the implications of studying particular forms of Christian theology and practice, such as the mind-cure movement, in light of shamanism.

Genuine objectivity, says Bernard Lonergan, is the fruit of authentic subjectivity. Certainly, the two are closely linked. In this essay, I propose that authentic subjectivity consists, not in overcoming the particularities of one's subjective standpoint in order to embrace a hypothetical universal viewpoint shared in common with other individuals, but in getting more deeply in touch with the unique particularity of one's own perspective in order better to appreciate both the similarities with and the differences from the standpoints of other individuals. Genuine objectivity, then, consists in recognizing that there neither is nor ever will be a universal standpoint. All standpoints by definition are particular. This is not to deny, of course, that at any given moment there is an objective state of affairs, quite apart from any one's subjective perception of it, but only to affirm that no one (not even God) has a totally objective grasp of that same state of affairs.

The present essay distinguishes two ways to “settle” the problem of evil, “defense” and “theodicy,” as practiced in contemporary Christian philosophical theology. It argues that Christian theology can defend Christian belief from the charge of inconsistency, but that when it attempts to explain why and how God permits or wills evil in his world, it stumbles over denying the reality of evil or the goodness of God. The essay concludes by arguing that the Christian theologian cannot and should not attempt to make Christianity plausible by constructing theodicies but should concentrate on other methods of demonstrating the plausibility of Christianity.

Without an appreciation of symbol, one cannot hope to grasp concepts such as revelation and incarnation which are foundational for theology and for other varieties of religious thought. Unfortunately, the undergraduate years find our students at an age when they are natural demythologizers: impatient and exasperated with symbols. Are we wasting our breath in trying to teach them disciplines which are constitutionally disabled from understanding? This article suggests that human cognition must develop through the successive stages of literal, conventional, critical, and conjunctive understanding. It recommends strategies for helping students move from conventional to critical thinking so as to prepare the way for conjunctive thought beyond age thirty.

This article explores modern psychoanalytic object relations theory as a potential resource for Christian spirituality in the development of an integrated theological and psychological model of the self. The necessity for such a model is first suggested by considering some potential dangers within the current revival of modes of “imageless” prayer. A suggestive effort that has already been made to construct a “spectrum” model of self development that combines psychoanalytic insight with the psychology of Theravada Buddhism is then examined. The final section assesses the interpretive power of a similar model worked out for the distinctive religious vision of Christian spirituality.

The incorporation of feminist issues and feminist methods and sources into a Christian ethics curriculum is at once a simple and a complex enterprise. It is simple because a feminist approach to ethics can be made explicit at almost every juncture in the curriculum. It is complex because feminist ethics is, like most other general approaches to ethics, pluralistic. Moreover, as a systematic discipline it is in its beginning stages, and there are few comprehensive sources to which students can turn for analytical foundations. The difficulties which students and teachers face in building a syllabus for feminist ethics, however, are not essentially different from those we confront in much of the teaching of ethics. That is, controversy demands the use of a variety of sources; most of the appropriate readings are to be found in short essays rather than in book-length treatments; and since ethics is in many respects a derivative discipline, significant materials must be drawn from many other areas of learning, including theology, biblical studies, and the behavioral, social, and natural sciences.

“Religious Myths and Rituals,” a course I teach once a year, is a lower division undergraduate course designed to introduce students to the academic study of religion. Its purpose is to acquaint students with the wide range of scholarly views regarding the meanings, origins, and functions of religion, the mythic and ritual components of religion, the widespread presence of religious symbols, the metaphoric character of religious language, diverse crosscultural images of transcendence, sacrality, and the like. In order to introduce the theoretical materials or to test or illuminate them, we focus on the specific religious expressions of American Indian and African tribal societies. Although examples from other religions are cited in the course of class lectures, these two tribal cultural settings serve as our primary reference points for understanding the phenomenon of religion.

On the course syllabus and early in the quarter, I articulate the following questions as a way of describing the task of the course: What is religion? What are the origins and functions of religion? What can we learn about myths and mythologies and the functions they have in human experience? Why do rituals arise in human behavior? (How do they take shape and what are they for?) Do any of the myths and rituals of traditional, tribal religions have any bearing on contemporary American life? How might we discern the meaning of religious symbols? What are some of the predominant myths and rituals that both reflect and affect our own lives as individuals or as a people (as Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists—as students, Americans, Westerners, as women or men)?

What does it mean to be a Christian in today's business world? It is this question which provides the focus for a course I teach called “Modern Decision Making in the Christian Tradition.” The course is designed for college juniors and seniors who are interested in exploring the implications of Christian faith for a professional life. Students are exposed to the flaws in Adam Smith's famous apology for the capitalist economy and offered an approach to working in the system and reforming it from a Christian standpoint.

It has been my experience that most students in the course are serious about their Christian faith, that is, they go to church on Sunday and they strive to live the sort of life that they understand to be Christian. They are largely from good homes and have learned the value of friendship and love from dedicated parents. Most of them, however, have not been challenged to think through the implications of their Christian faith for their life in the business world or in the wider social order.

While they may be models of compassion and generosity to those in their immediate circles, many students today have a blindspot for responsibilities in the socio-political order. In the traditional vocabulary, they are strong on charity but weak in justice. Justice in our time is often equated with “law and order,” the quid pro quo's that insure that we each get what we deserve. One of the objectives of the course is to widen the horizons of the students so that they come to see more adequately what is entailed in calling oneself “Christian.” To begin, I have them reflect on sections of “Justice in the World,” the document issued by the Roman Synod of Bishops in 1971.

John Dunne's books A Search for God in Time and Memory and The Way of All the Earth describe and employ a method which their author calls “passing over and coming back,” in order to attain and lead his readers into a sympathetic understanding, first of other lives and second of other religions. These and Dunne's other books are generally taken to be among the major theological works of recent years, but teachers of theology have tended to find them forbidding as texts for undergraduates. In this paper I wish to discuss some techniques which I have employed to assist undergraduates not only to read Dunne's books but to engage personally in the process of passing over and coming back. I wish to go further than that, though. It seems to me that the techniques I am presenting are applicable to other texts besides Dunne's, and I want to stress that broader application. It also seems to me that there are some real problems, especially moral problems, in engaging in “passing over and coming back” in a classroom setting, and I want to set out something of what those problems are, to discuss the extent to which I cope or fail to cope with them, and to invite readers' reflections on how better to cope with them. Because I am offering reflections on my own experience (including unsolved problems) as a teacher and not trying to put forward a general theory of any kind, I am keeping this paper in the first person singular throughout.