Description: Hans Gustafson proposes pansacramentalism as holding potential for finding the divine in all things and all things in the divine, which carries significant inherent interreligious implications--especially for doing theology. Presupposing the challenge of doing theology divorced from spirituality (lived religious experience), he presents pansacramentalism as a bridge between the two. In so doing, Gustafson offers a history of spirituality and sketches the foundations of a classical approach to sacramentality (through Aquinas) and a contemporary approach to the same (through Rahner and Chauvet).
Brief description: Hans S. Gustafson is the associate director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University (Minnesota) where he teaches in the theology departments.