The Normativity of History

This collection of essays engages the basic themes of the five-year, joint research project (GOA), The Normativity of History. The project brought together specialists in the areas of Church History and Systematic Theology to investigate questions of truth and tradition in light of their varying expertise. The thematic scope of this volume includes questions concerning tradition and its development, the present context of plurality and its challenges for discerning a theological epistemology of tradition-bound truth, and the challenges of religious diversity for contemporary theology. As a whole, these reflections suggest that the force and weight of history must be adequately accounted for when attempting to answer theological questions in a manner that does justice to a tradition that is very much embedded in and shaped by the complexities manifest in its living and at times, ambiguous history.