Theological reflection definition12/20/2023 ![]() ![]() The foundation of the ontological priority of experience over theology lies in the concept of Christian experience itself. Given this premise, there are good grounds for saying that every crisis of theologyprovided that the requirements of its object and the rigor of its method have been ensuredhas its ultimate explanation in a crisis of Christian experience. What is more, theology is born of Christian experience and must ceaselessly refer to the horizon that this experience sets for it. Theology, understood as systematic and critical investigation, is in itself incapable of producing Christian experience by its own resources. It is theology's proper horizon, whereas the reverse is not the case. In the first place, we have to remember that Christian experience is ontologically prior to theology. ![]() My aim is simply to present two brief reflections and some of their implications as a kind of portico leading into the articles on experience in the current issue of ![]() Nevertheless, I want to record a few short reflections on what is commonly understood under the rubric of Christian experience (the entirety of a life lived according to the faith and, therefore, within the community of the Church), in the hope that they may suggest some fruitful clarifications regarding its relationship to theology. It is not my task here to meet to this challenge. Only then will we be able to eliminate all the impasses and to set the relationship between experience and theology on a secure enough foundation. Therefore, it is still necessary to work out a rigorous account of the notion of Christian experience. Nevertheless, the complexity attendant upon a careful definition of the two concepts experience and theologyincreases prodigiously whenever we try to make a single coherent statement about both. In the history of Catholic thought, especially in our century, there has been a complex, highly nuanced relationship between theology and what we may call Scholars are unanimous that the credit for having freed the concept of Christian experience from its principal formative influencesin particular those relating to the Modernist crisisbelongs to Jean Mouroux, who thus enabled theological reflection or experience to go beyond the initial task of legitimating its subject matter. The priority of experience over theology is ontological, and this priority reveals plainly that man is primarily and essentially the receiver, not the producer, of truth. ![]()
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