Steffen Lösel – Författare

In Reformed Sacramentality, the late Graham Hughes discusses the role of physicality in worship. He contends that to counter the Reformed tradition’s vulnerability to a cultural colonization by secular modernity, Reformed theology needs to amplify its appreciation for God’s omnipresence in creation with a re-appropriation of the condensed symbols of faith. Hughes’s argument builds on a historical analysis of the Reformed tradition’s rejection of material sacramentality and its ecclesial and cultural consequences. From a late modern vantage point, Hughes advocates for a rediscovery of material sacramentality both as a lever against modern solipsism and as an iconic reminder of God’s radical otherness.

This book asks what theological messages theologically educated Catholics in late-eighteenth-century Prague might have perceived in Mozart’s late opera seria La clemenza di Tito. The book’s thesis is two-fold: first, that Catholics might have heard the opera’s advocacy of enlightened absolutism as a celebration of a distinctly Catholic understanding of political governance; and second, that they might have found in the opera a metaphor for the relationship between a gracious God and humanity caught up in sin, expressed as sexual concupiscence, pride, and lust for power. The book develops its interpretation of the opera through narrative character analyses of the main protagonists, an examination of their dramatic development, and by paying attention to the biblical and theological associations they may have evoked in a Catholic audience. The book is geared towards academic readers interested in opera, theologians, historians, and those who work at the intersection of theology and the arts. It contributes to a better understanding of the theological implications of Mozart’s operatic work.