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The Survival of Dogma

by Avery Dulles


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Available editions of The Survival of Dogma

9780824504274 9780824504274, Paperback, Natl Book Network, 1982

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on Aug 19 2008, feeney said:

"For Roman Catholics, the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-3) launched a new era in moral practice, liturgical services and rethinking of old theological positions, including previously sacrosanct "dogmas." The theologian author Father Avery Dulles, S. J., son of Eisenhower's Secretary of State, was furiously busy from the mid 50s throughout the 70s wrapping his thoughts around evolving, indeed accelerating Catholic theological thinking. In 1968 he summed up his work to that point with REVELATION AND THE QUEST FOR UNITY, as the separated Christian churches worked back gingerly back into sync with one another. Between 1968 and 70 Dulles took for his focus faith, teaching authority and dogma. He published twelve articles on these three interrelated themes. He pulled them all together for this book, THE SURVIVAL OF DOGMA -- 1971, updated 1982. Catholics nowadays don't just believe the same things in different ways from the way their forefathers did 452, 1517 or even 1870. They sometimes believe the opposite or nearly the opposite of what their ancestors did. But that is not the Catholic stereotype! Catholics never change, their critics allege. Once upon a time charging interest on money loaned constituted the sin of usury. That's why in the European Middle Ages only Jews were doing it legally. Once the dogma EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS -- NO SALVATION OUTSIDE THE (CATHOLIC) CHURCH was enforced by kings and executioners. Now, it is quietly shelved! Dulles urges preachers not to mention in in their sermons. It might confuse the faithful. The shifts in theology, according to Dulles, were not incremental steps within a previously defined box. They were qualitative shifts, quantum leaps. When the Jewish Christians confronted Greek learning, they rethought the Gospel and put it in Greek categories. Later that happened when Arabic learning came West. Since the Reformation, Luther, Calvin et al. are getting their due from Catholics, no longer grudgingly either. Usually, a belief changed first. Only later did theologians scramble to catch up in words, through the process of "reconceptualization." That these shifts actually happened Dulles makes clear. And they had to happen or Christianity itself would have been shelved. The mechanics of HOW the leaps occurred he does not make clear. One day people just stopped thinking that way. Why? Perhaps the subject of a later book by an aging Cardinal Avery Dulles."
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