Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology: The Twentieth Century Sojourn of Samuel Stefan Osusky

by Paul R. Hinlicky

Overview

Samuel Stefan Osusky was a leading intellectual in Slovak Lutheranism and a bishop in his church. In 1937 he delivered a prescient lecture to the assembled clergy, "The Philosophy of Fascism, Bolshevism and Hitlerism", that clearly foretold the dark days ahead. As wartime bishop, he co-authored a "Pastoral Letter on the Jewish Question", which publicly decried the deportation of Jews to Poland in 1942; in 1944 he was imprisoned by the Gestapo for giving moral support to the Slovak National Uprising against the fascist puppet regime.

Paul R. Hinlicky traces the intellectual journey with ethical idealism's faith in the progressive theology of history that ended in dismay and disillusionment at the revolutionary pretensions of Marxism-Leninism. Hinlicky shows Osusky's dramatic rediscovery of the apocalyptic "the mother of Christian theology", and his input into the discussion of the dialectic of faith and reason after rationalism and fundamentalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780567660206
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	06/16/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	365 KB

About the Author

Paul R. Hinlicky is Tise Professor at Roanoke College in Virginia, USA, Docent of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Professor of Systematic Theology at the Institute of Lutheran Theology, USA.
Paul R. Hinlicky is Tise Professor of Lutheran Studies at Roanoke College, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: From Dissent under Imperialism to Nation Building
Chapter Two: Resistance to Fascism and the Turn to the Bible
Chapter Three: Speaking from the Scriptures to a World at War
Chapter Four: Biblical Theology in Samizdat
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

[An] erudite intellectual biography ... This book exhumes [Osuský's] intellectual legacy. It does this by exhaustive analysis and by extensive summaries of his numerous writings, supplemented by situating him within the currents of Lutheran theology.
Theology

Paul Hinlicky has done a signal service by unlocking the witness of the Slovak Lutheran theologian and bishop Samuel Stefan Osusky for a wider audience. Osusky faced two world wars, democracy, fascism and finally the communist regime that silenced him, moving gradually from the idealism he inherited to a more biblical and apocalyptic message. Hinlicky deftly traces this halting move from "apologetics" to "catechesis." illuminating Osusky's struggle to speak the authentic gospel to a church under fire. The history is fascinating and the lessons for the current church profound.
Jonathan Sorum, Institute of Lutheran Theology, USA

Slovakian intellectual Samuel Stefan Osusky lived through and reflected on the European disasters of the twentieth century, despite the threat of the Marxist-Leninist regime in Czechoslovakia to destroy his legacy. Here, Paul Hinlicky combats that erasure and relays Osusky's valuable story to an English-speaking audience. Only Hinlicky - a theologian of the highest order with high-ranging interests, mastery of the Slovak language, and a record of interrogating the place of philosophy and theology in the rise of fascism and bolshevism - could have written this welcome book.
Michael P. DeJonge, University of South Florida, USA

From the Publisher