This book uses the insights of cognitive linguistics to argue for the possibility of differentiated consensus between separated churches. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church in 1999, represents the high water mark of the twentieth-century ecumenical movement. It declares that the sixteenth-century condemnations related to justification do not condemn the teachings of the partner church. Some critics reject the agreement, arguing that a consensus that is differentiated is not actually a consensus. In this book, Jakob Karl Rinderknecht shows that mapping the "cognitive blends" that structure meaning can reveal underlying agreement within apparent theological contradictions. He traces Lutheran and Catholic positions on sin in the baptized, especially the Lutheran simul iustus et peccator and the Catholic insistence that concupiscence in the baptized is not sin. He demonstrates that the JDDJ reconciles these positions, and therefore that a truly differentiated consensus is possible.

Since the middle of the last century, the emergence and development of fields as diverse as artificial intelligence, evolutionary science, cognitive linguistics, and neuroscience have led to a greater understanding of the ways in which humans think. One of the major discoveries involves what researchers refer to as conceptual mapping. According to theories of conceptual mapping, human thought is profoundly shaped by the ability to make connections. Simply put, human thinking is metaphorical all the way down. This insight has revolutionized the way in which scientists and philosophers think about the mind/body problem, the formation and function of language, and even the development of scientific progress itself. Until recently however, this research has gone largely unnoticed within Christian theology. But this revolution in understanding human cognition calls for broader and richer engagement with theology and religious studies: How does this new insight into human meaning-making bear on our understanding of religious meaning-making? And how might Christian theology interpret and respond to this new understanding of the development of human thought? This edited volume offers an introduction to conceptual mapping that is accessible to those with no previous knowledge of the field, and demonstrates the substantial resources this interdisciplinary research has for thinking about a variety of theological questions. The book begins with a chapter introducing the reader to the basics of conceptual mapping. The remaining chapters apply these insights to a variety of theological topics including anthropology, sacramental theology, biblical studies, ecumenical theology, and ethics.

This book uses the insights of cognitive linguistics to argue for the possibility of differentiated consensus between separated churches. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church in 1999, represents the high water mark of the twentieth-century ecumenical movement. It declares that the sixteenth-century condemnations related to justification do not condemn the teachings of the partner church. Some critics reject the agreement, arguing that a consensus that is differentiated is not actually a consensus. In this book, Jakob Karl Rinderknecht shows that mapping the "cognitive blends" that structure meaning can reveal underlying agreement within apparent theological contradictions. He traces Lutheran and Catholic positions on sin in the baptized, especially the Lutheran simul iustus et peccator and the Catholic insistence that concupiscence in the baptized is not sin. He demonstrates that the JDDJ reconciles these positions, and therefore that a truly differentiated consensus is possible.