A SCRIPTURAL, HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE IDEA OF CONCUPISCENCE AS IT RELATES TO REPRESENTATIVE THEORIES OF ORIGINAL AND ACTUAL SIN IN CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC ETHICAL SYSTEMS
The theological understanding of concupiscence has had a tortured history and throughout the centuries contradictory, dangerous and erroneous approaches to the notion have been taken. Partly because of this, contemporary systematic theology tends to avoid this difficult topic, even though it is one of the essential elements needed for an authentic Christian anthropology. This dissertation utilizes the tools of modern biblical exegesis to see what the Scriptures have to offer for our understanding of the idea and uses historical data to see how the idea developed throughout the centuries. Pivotal Christian documents are examined to determine the most promising directions to be pursued in the study of the notion. Karl Rahner's distinction between the dogmatic and moral uses of the term has solved many of the theoretical problems in regard to concupiscence that have burdened much of theology. This dissertation demonstrates that his insights, if systematically integrated into theology, on the whole would shed a great deal of light on the problems of original, actual, and social sin and its dynamics.^ In order to demonstrate this, select works by Alfred Vanneste, Josef Fuchs, Philip Keane, Luis Segundo, and Anthony Kosnik are carefully analyzed in this dissertation from the perspective of concupiscence. In regard to the area of the dynamics of social injustice, the insights of Reinhold Niebuhr into the nature of group behavior are shown to be compatible with sound understanding of concupiscence. ^
JEFFREY JOSEPH MICKLER,
"A SCRIPTURAL, HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE IDEA OF CONCUPISCENCE AS IT RELATES TO REPRESENTATIVE THEORIES OF ORIGINAL AND ACTUAL SIN IN CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC ETHICAL SYSTEMS"
(January 1, 1983).
ETD Collection for Fordham University.