Eschatology & Speech Acts

Schreiter, Robert John, Eschatology as a Grammar of Transformation: A Study in Speech Act and Structural Semantics and Their Application to Some Problems in Eschatology (1974) looks very interesting - though its that horrible type written kind of book.

Schreiter has degrees in philosophy and psycology and a doctorate in theology. He's a Roman Catholic, anti-Liberal, pro-Patristic and medieval.

There's stuff about Speech Acts, Austin, Promising, Austin in Theological Literature, Searle, Time, Socially construed reality, Semiotics of the Symbolic Universe.

The book closes (p279f) with some Theses, of which these were my favs:

“1. Theology is more in need of a remythologization process than any crude sort of demythologization.”

“3. The further use of structural semantics [and reader response?] in exegesis could lead to an important re-appropriation of patristic and medieval exegesis for contemporary theology.”

“4. Current theology has more need of investigations into the language of concrete theological texts than a further proliferation of theories about what religious language might possibly be.”

“6. How the presence vs absence problem is approached and articulated plays a central, if not the central, role in the generation of eschatological theology.”

“11. Current discussions of a critical theology, i.e. those trying to relate theology’s role to the other faculties of the university, should take caution lest their real guiding research interest become getting their share of the university budget.”

“15. Despite all the difficulties of applying philosophy of language to the problems of theology, one of Austin’s sayings makes for immediate application to those of us who try to bring the two areas together: “On these matters, dogmatists require prodding: although history indeed suggests that it may sometimes be better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.”