Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology

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.<br/><br/>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.