Issued as part of UPCC book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-381)

Introduction -- 1. Irenaeus of Lyons : the story of salvation -- 2. Anselm and the turn to theory : why this story as the story of salvation? -- 3. Thomas Aquinas and the ordo disciplinae : completing the turn to theory -- 4. Martin Luther : existential soteriology--a window on interiority -- 5. Friedrich Schleiermacher : redemption as transformation of consciousness -- 6. Bernard Lonergan : lex crucis and the dialectics of history.

What is the true story of God and humankind, and how does that story become a saving story? These are pivotal questions that constitute the narratives Christians tell about themselves, their values, and how the Christian life is to be lived. In shaping those stories into a coherent, intelligible framework that provides comprehensive meaning, soteriology--the doctrine of redemption--developed as a keystone to Christian consciousness. This study investigates that development of the soteriological tradition. Employing Bernard Lonergan's notion of the stages of meaning as a hermeneutic, the volume traces the origins of soteriology in the early Christian tradition represented by Irenaeus to its establishment as a systematic theory in Anselm, Aquinas, and subsequent developments in the Protestant tradition of Luther and Schleiermacher. The author concludes with a constructive exploration of Lonergan's own work on the question of soteriology and offers an articulation of the dynamics of Christian conversion that opens onto the social, cultural, and political mediations of redemption necessary for the contemporary age.

Description based on print version record.