Interview with David Tracy

[Akita Suggagaki]

I have been appreciating David Tracy after many years of thinking he was way over my head. Well, he is. But he stretches me and has helped clarify my personal theology. I am almost done with "Naming the Present". I had to scan through "Analogical Imagination" because it was a library book. Over 30 years ago I read "Blessed Rage for Order" and lost it.

David Tracy (Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology)

KW: Turning to the second part of your first-volume title, what do you mean by “The Existential Situation of Our Time”?

DT: For philosophers and theologians, I think, it’s nihilism. The sense that there is no meaning. The sense of the absurdity and meaninglessness of life. Even if it’s not brought to a theoretical level, when people live without religion, in my judgment, they eventually end up leading a nihilistic life, sometimes without knowing it. That’s the intellectual situation.

The more important existential situation, I think, remains the massive global suffering that human beings face—both as whole cultures and groups and of course as individuals. Christian salvation, after all, is fundamentally about responding to the profound sense of transience—that we are transient, and everything we own or love is transient, including our cultures, and our traditions. And of course death, and facing death, which remains a great existential issue for every human being. I call these kinds of issues “limit” questions, limit experiences, limit situations. These ultimate questions that any thoughtful human being eventually asks. And that is our existential situation.

In Praise of Fragments | Commonweal Magazine

Fr. David Tracy, widely regarded as one of the most creative and influential theologians of the past half-century, speaks about his life and work.

www.commonwealmagazine.org

In spite of that sobering "existential situation", I see a lot of hope, optimism and joy in his. If anyone is interested I will share some extracts from "Naming The Present". Otherwise we will let the thread disappear into cyber oblivion.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

If anyone is interested I will share some extracts from "Naming The Present". Otherwise we will let the thread disappear into cyber oblivion.

I find that with books by David Tracy one should not be in a hurry. Rather than finishing one ought to just let the book do its formation in the soul. It takes concentration to read David Tracy, but in the process there is a deepening that can be experienced.

I wont try to summarize this book. But I will say that it takes us through the theological impact of living in a "polycentric" world that must account for "global suffering". With only 139 pages I think it makes a great book for personal reflection, challenging and stretching for those who find their own personal theology in need of new avenues.

I am not a professional theologian, so it was not an easy read. But well worth the work.

"The God of history, thanks to the remarkable achievements of the political, liberation, and feminist theologians, can now be viewed as the God revealed in the history of Jesus, i.e., the history of the God revealed in the hiddenness of suffering, negativity, cross. By empowering human beings to become agents of history rather than either passive participant of whatever happens or modern compulsive egos, the new vision of God also frees the "mystical" part of the mystical-political option to its own new understanding of God as love - a love so excessive it is ultimately incomprehensible."

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

I just ordered Fragments. Like I really need another book.