The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism

The Priority of Christ addresses the need to transcend the theological style that has dominated Christian thought since the time of Schleiermacher, viz. experiential-expressivism. By this I mean the view that dogma, doctrine, practice, and ritual are but expressions of universal spiritual experiences. Father Barron proposes a reversal according to which interpretive primacy is given to the “densely textured world” opened up by the Biblical revelation.  He proposes a theology were that “densely textured world” shapes experience and not vice versa. This shift is of special importance in regard to Christology, for in the dominant Christologies of the post-conciliar period—Küng’s Schillebeeckx’s, Rahner’s, Haight’s, to name just a few—interpretive primacy is clearly given to anthropology and subjective experience. This has led to a serious attenuating of the content of the New Testament revelation.

Brazos Books, 2007.