22/05/2024 14:15 - 16:30

HALL: LA PIRA - ROOM 2

Proponent: Mccosker P.

Chair: Mccosker P., Van Erp S.

Speaker: Gaut W., Hewitt S., Klug F., Mccosker P., Van Erp S.

Most Christians profess a belief in the church's catholicity (from the Greek kath'holou: according to the whole). But what actually is catholicity and what is the 'whole' to which it points? Some of the ressourcement theologians of the 20th century started rethinking catholicity. They pushed back against quantitative understandings (whether geo-spatial, sociological, or temporal) in favour of more qualitative understandings, going as far as to suggest that catholicity is ultimately a quality of God, or Christ, of the Spirit. They started to pick out varieties of catholicities: quantitative/extensive, qualitative/intensive, counterfeit, actual, partial, virtual, secular, performative, diachronic, synchronic, creational, apophatic, amongst others. Within the context of a 5 year international research project based at the ACU, this panel invites papers which consider the variety of ways of conceiving catholicity, whether from the perspective of theological doctrines, different traditions, or any time period or geographical location. The panel is particularly interested in paper proposals which focus on soteriology and eschatology. It is also interested in papers which explore the history and politics of different paradigms for construing catholicity.