"Throughout the history of Christian theology, the question of tradition repeatedly surfaces in times of crisis, and the greatest theologies of tradition arise from the response to these crises. Here one can recall the work of such leading lights as Irenaeus of Lyons, the Council Fathers at Trent, John Henry Newman, Johann Adam Möhler in the nineteenth century, and Yves Congar in the past century. The discourse around race and colonialism has pressed Christian theologians once again to take up the question of tradition. Nothing Gained Is Eternal grapples with this question, and what one finds is remarkable. Carpenter accessibly brings to the fore the problem of tradition and traditioning in the course of engaging several key thinkers--Maurice Blondel, Charles Péguy, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Bernard Lonergan, Shawn Copeland, and James Baldwin. What results is not a history or a chronology, but instead nothing less than a 'constructive argument about the being of tradition,' an argument surely poised to usher in a new wave of theological reflection on tradition. This book marks Anne Carpenter as a distinctive theological voice worth listening to. I recommend it highly."
Nothing Gained Is Eternal: A Theology of Tradition
In the decades since the declaration of the "end of history," the West has been reminded time and again that history is not yet done with us. Time marches on, but the past keeps pace. The twin questions at the heart of the last two hundred years of philosophy and theology--What is history? What is tradition?--are more pressing now than when they were first posed. While most answers to these questions are methodological and descriptive, Nothing Gained Is Eternal presents an answer both theological and theoretical, an answer rooted in action, memory, and freedom.
Drawing on the thought of some of the brightest lights of the twentieth century, such as Bernard Lonergan, Charles Péguy, Maurice Blondel, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Anne M. Carpenter argues for a new theory of tradition. It is a theory firmly moored to the ambiguities, contradictions, and varied fruits of the past. Carpenter shows ressourcement to be a way not only of retrieving the past but of making moral judgments about both a former age and our own. The resulting account of tradition pushes back against sentimental and triumphalist interpretations of Christian patrimony.
Yet, this work also identifies the ways in which theology's turn to history is incomplete and confronts its own theory of tradition with decolonial criticism. Carpenter challenges readers to wrestle with whether tradition can persist when its colonialist practices are brought to light. And in asking this question, she offers hope for transforming the life of tradition in its wake.
- Publisher Fortress Press
- Format Hardcover
- ISBN 9781506471730
- eBook ISBN 9781506471747
- Dimensions 6.25 x 9.25
- Pages 218
- Publication Date September 13, 2022