Author Description

The "turn to experience" has been a hallmark of contemporary Catholic theology. But although it has become a crucial factor in nearly all major theological movements today, major problems remain in both definition and its use. Theologian Donald Gelpi focuses on a broad range of modern theologies: the New Testament Christology of Edward Schillebeeckx, Latin American liberation theology, process theology, and transcendental Thomism, among others. In all of these, the turn to experience has yielded negative results for theology because their constructs of experience do not adequately explain both the ordinary human social experience and the graced transformation of that experience by Christian faith. Making use of proposals by Charles Peirce and Josiah Royce, the author argues for a new and better construct of the "turn to experience" that is triadic, realistic and communitarian in nature. The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology is a solid guidebook that explains the social context of theology: how words and experience articulate values in society; how to articulate "God" for the modern age; how we achieve the linguistic "recovery" of language; what the importance of experience is in theology today. This groundbreaking work is an exciting scholarly contribution that will be a welcome addition to the libraries of all who keep up with theology.