Ecumenical Reception: Its Challenge and Opportunity

In 1988 William Rusch wrote a book tracing the development of the idea of reception up to that time. During the intervening years, both reflection on reception and the experience of attempting to engage in it have progressed considerably.

Rusch begins with a bird's-eye view of the term reception across several disciplines — law, philosophy, literary criticism — before homing in on its theological import. He traces its use as a term and as a practice from the New Testament up to the twentieth...