This chapter contains sections titled: Setting the Task Constructing the Christ Setting the Boundaries: Christian and/or Jew? The Third Race: Christians as In‐Group Putting on Christ: Christianity's Signals of Commitment Loving Your Neighbor and Turning the Other Cheek.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Walking the Bodhisattva Path/Walking the Christ PathU.S. Conference of Catholic BishopsCatholics and Buddhists brought together by Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, the San Francisco Zen Center, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met 20-23 March 2003 in the first of an anticipated series of four annual dialogues. Abbot Heng Lyu, the monks and nuns, and members of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association hosted the dialogue at (...) the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, California. The community had transformed their Confucius Hall into a chapel, with a large, newly constructed wooden cross on a wall above an altar facing out from a raised platform, so the Catholic delegation would have a space for worship. A special poster announcing the theme of the conference, "Walking the Bodhisattva Path/Walking the Christ Path," showing a Buddhist dharma wheel at one foot of a bridge and a Celtic cross at the other foot, had been created by the hosting community.The daily schedule for the dialogue did not interfere with the monastic routine at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, which included early morning chanting (4:00-5:00 am), daily rituals in the Buddha Hall, and the single large meal for monastics before noon to which all participants were invited. Catholics and Buddhists meeting in the dialogue began each day with an optional forty-five minutes of quiet sitting together in the monastery meditation hall, each following their own form of meditation and prayer. There was a Eucharist on Friday and Saturday evenings for the Catholics and to which the Buddhists were invited, and additional meals of breakfast and supper throughout the meeting at the City's Jyun Kang Restaurant.Fourteen Buddhists and fourteen Catholics participated in the formal discussions. Each participant spoke on what it means to them to follow Christ or the way of the Bodhisattvas or enlightened beings. In addition to speaking, each participant distributed a short passage, usually from a traditional text, on this topic. Several passages from Master Dogen's Shobogenzo and the Gospel of John were among those shared by the group. Other passages shared were taken from the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Shurangama Sutra and from the other gospels and the writings of Zen master HakuinZenji, the Dalai Lama, Korean Zen Master I-sahn Hye-yeon, the teachings of Master [End Page 247] Hsuan Hua, Shantideva, Origen, St. Ignatius, St. Benedict, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross, and Chiara Lubich. A minute of silence separated the fifteen-minute segments for each presentation. With so large a group, most of the time in the formal sessions involved listening to series of presentations; however, during discussion periods the participants asked several challenging questions of one another.Some participants noted the tension they felt between belonging to a particular religious group and the need to let go of any consequential narrowness. The goal of the discussion was to promote understanding of the differences and similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. At one point, the participants noted several concerns about mutual enrichment: whether Buddhist methods can be separated from Buddhism and Christian methods from Christianity, and what specific aspects of Christian practice truly enrich Buddhists and which Buddhist practices likewise enrich Christians. Several times participants discussed their understanding of terms such as transformation, grace, the incarnation and the passion of Jesus, discernment of spirits, prayer, Buddha-nature, and related terms. There was consensus that Buddhists and Catholics can practically help one another regarding mental cultivation and religious precepts. They expressed this consensus in their choice of the topic forthe next dialogue, "Transformation of Hearts and Minds: Chan/Zen-Catholic Approaches to Precepts."The group agreed to reconvene in 2004 to respond to six presentations, three from each side, on different aspects of this topic.Chairing the sessions were Rev. Heng Sure for the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, Rev. Taigen Dan Leighton for the San Francisco Zen Center, and Bishop John Webster for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their three organizations are the sponsors of the Northern California Chan/Zen-Catholic Dialogue. Chan and Zen are respectively the Chinese and Japanese terms for the meditation school... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Missing the Cross?Types of the Passion in Early Christian ArtS. Mark Heim (bio)René Girard has frequently contended that the core of his best known theories is already contained in the Bible, that in the end he is "only a kind of exegete" (Girard and Treguer 1994, 196). To those who object that the Bible had to wait two thousand years to be read as he reads it, he protests (...) that this is a gross exaggeration: "three quarters of what I say can be found in Saint Augustine" (196). In the introduction to I See Satan Fall like Lightning, Girard puts it like this:The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus's death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound.(2001, 3)In other words, Girard's insight comes only in the train of revelation. The revelation in the biblical sources was not perfectly grasped in the religious traditions that flowed from them, and was frequently betrayed through the construction of sacrificial theologies. But Girard insists that its power was in significant measure perceived and effective from the beginning. His view of the meaning of the passion cannot be correct if he is the first one to see it. So it is no minor matter to ask whether in fact early Christians saw the connection of the cross with scapegoating that is so central for Girard.One point that appears to tell against Girard's case is the absence of images of the cross and crucifixion in the first four Christian centuries. A brutal realism about this specific event is the keystone of Girard's understanding of the passion narratives. The fact that the sight is literally hidden from view throughout this formative Christian period hardly appears consistent with his claims.There is a notable early Christian work of art, the so-called Brescia Casket (see fig. 1), that sheds some important light on the general question of the [End Page 183] representation of the passion and, even more dramatically, upon its interpretation in Girardian terms. The casket indicates that the widespread use of Old Testament types as representations of Christ, and specifically as representations of his passion, may partly explain the absence of literal depiction of the crucifixion. And the particular types involved fit extremely well with Girard's outlook. This essay draws out the connection—so far unremarked—between this significant work of early Christian art and Girard's reading of the passion. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Brescia Casket. Ivory, late fourth century.Christ's passion and death were described in stark terms in the gospels and recounted explicitly from the beginning in the church's liturgy, teaching, and preaching. On this plane, there is no question of the centrality of the cross. Yet no literal depictions of the crucifixion survive in art from the first four Christian centuries. There is no entirely satisfactory explanation of why the cross would figure so centrally in Christian faith and worship, but be visually absent. Representations of Jesus in early Christian art most often display a healer, wonderworker, or teacher. In fact, the early centuries offer an odd inversion in creed and art. Early creeds focus on Jesus's beginnings and endings, "skipping right from 'born of the Virgin Mary' to 'suffered under Pontius Pilate,' with no mention of Jesus's life and work, while the art appears to take an opposite tack" (Jensen 2000, 131–32). Perhaps the frequent Christian use [End Page 184] of images of anchors and ship's masts, or of the chi-rho sign, served as their image of the cross. Perhaps the reality the scriptures described was too gruesome to easily picture, too readily ridiculed by outsiders, or too awesome and mysterious to present directly. Perhaps, in a persecuted and at times martyred church, such a sign would be realistically terrifying to many and dangerously seductive to some.That the... (shrink)

Matthean scholars have predominantly viewed Jesus’ healing ministry through the lens of ‘fulfillment of prophecy’, which connects his healings to David the shepherd and the fulfilment of the covenant, the restoration of the covenant people, and the establishment of the new covenant. This interpretation has largely emerged from an analysis of Jesus’ healing ministry as a singular event. However, it is necessary to revisit previous studies that have posited that the stories of Jesus’ healings were arranged in (...) a larger context and theological perspective, rather than as a disjointed list of individual events. In particular, the healing events in Matthew 8–9 appear to have been arranged with the intention of teaching discipleship, indicating that the healing stories in the Gospel of Matthew, while scattered, are part of a cohesive pattern of theological themes. These themes include the forgiveness of sins, compassion and mercy, healing through faith, and confession of Jesus as the Messiah. The author of Matthew employs this pattern to systematically present a theological perspective that acknowledges Jesus as divine and confesses him as the Messiah. Contribution: This study aimed to analyse the pattern of these theological themes as they appear in Jesus’ healing narrative. The repetition of these themes serves to establish Jesus’ divinity and reinforce the confession of him as the Messiah. Furthermore, the pattern of theological themes in the healing narrative suggests that it was constructed during a period of transition for the Matthean community, as they moved from Judaism to Christianity. The pattern highlights the community’s confession of Jesus as God and their efforts to solidify their faith. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theology, Philosophy, and Biology:An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus ChristJuan Eduardo CarreñoIntroductionA large body of literature and a vigorous academic establishment—university chairs, foundations, societies, and journals—focus on an interdisciplinary field variously described as "science and religion," "science and faith," or "science and theology."1 "Philosophy" is a recent occasional addition which turns these dyads into triads.2 However, not only the terms themselves but also the ways their relationship (...) are understood have generated debate. Indeed, Ian Barbour's well-known typology defining four canonical modes of the science-religion relationship—conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration—has played an organizing role but has not satisfied everyone.3 Although our purpose here is not to recapitulate these discussions, it might be helpful to mention an issue that frequently arises within them: whether Barbour's classification is necessarily exhaustive, and in particular, if what he understands by "integration" is really the perfect culmination of a link that could connect science and faith. Thus, some authors prefer to speak of [End Page 71] "interaction," "compatibility," or "articulation" to describe this relationship, either replacing or superimposed upon Barbour's integration modality.4We believe that at least part of this series of controversies results from the lack of fundamental definitions and distinctions. "Science" is not univocal but an analogous term, since it can be predicated both from extremely diverse disciplines and also from a cognitive act, a habit, or a corpus of knowledge.5 On the other hand, "faith," "religion," and "theology" have neither identical meanings nor even an analogous epistemic scope in different religious traditions. All this outlines a problem whose many edges cannot be enclosed within the margins of a categorization, however nuanced.This article aims to illustrate the complexity of the relationship between science, philosophy, and theology, using as a case study the contribution of contemporary embryology and developmental biology to theological reflection on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. We begin by examining some theological hypotheses that, using the biological knowledge and speculations of their time, attempt to deepen our understanding of the mystery of the incarnate Word. Next, we propose an interpretation of the conception of Jesus Christ, in which the facts contributed by biology could enrich, and perhaps illuminate, certain aspects of theological reflection. As we will argue, this encounter does not fit the integration model described in Barbour's typology, because, among other reasons, the discourses at stake—theological and biological—neither belong to the same epistemological plane nor play an equivalent role in this relationship.Some Hypotheses about the Conception of JesusInterestingly, from as early as its antecedents in ancient Egypt, the genesis and development of mankind inevitably intersects with religious beliefs. This trend is projected in Judaism and reaches its greatest realization, for reasons partly understandable, in the Christian tradition. Of course, an authentic religious worldview cannot avoid at least some mention of human [End Page 72] ontogenesis, but belief in the factual basis of the Incarnation elevates the matter to a new and original plane. This is how it is understood by a number of believers who, from the first centuries of our era, and until recent times, advance hypotheses and models where biological and philosophical knowledge about human conception are combined, in different proportions, with Christological notions and doctrines. The account offered here is not intended to be exhaustive; our interest is only in outlining certain theological interpretations that have arisen in the course of history, as precursors to those discussed in the next section.The Conception of Jesus and the Incarnation of the WordOrigen's position regarding preexistence of the soul (proyparxis) and its union with the human body as a result of a fall attracted many philosophical and theological objections in the centuries following.6 Once this alternative was rejected, however, several paths remained open to account for human generation. The "translationist" hypothesis (according to which the human soul, like the body, derives from the parents through the act of natural procreation) had its Eastern adherents but seemed to find itself at home in the West. This reception was undoubtedly influenced by the plausibility the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine, albeit hesitantly assigned to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks, and: The Buddha's Gospel: A Buddhist Interpretation of Jesus' WordsJohn D'Arcy MayThe Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks. Edited by Ray Riegert and Thomas Moore. London: Souvenir Press, 2004. 140 + xi pp.The Buddha's Gospel: A Buddhist Interpretation of Jesus' Words. By Lindsay Falvey. Adelaide: (...) Institute for International Development, 2002. 108 pp.Since Roy C. Amore's Two Masters, One Message (1987) revived the hypothesis of Buddhist influence on Christian origins and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit's research established links between Nestorian Christianity, Gnostic Manichaeism, and Mahayana Buddhism in Central Asia, there is scope for further reflection on commonalities between the two traditions over and above the purely doctrinal and philosophical. The two books under review, though intended for a general readership, are indications that interest in these matters is very much alive.Riegert and Moore preface their selection of texts with the story of Bishop Aleben (A-lo-pen), who travelled the Silk Road from Persia and was received with honour at the imperial capital of Xian (Chang-an) at the beginning of the Tang dynasty (635 CE). The emperor Taizong was sympathetic to what he called the "Luminous Religion," a Nestorian version of Christianity, possibly in Syriac, as presented by Aleben. It seems that these teachings were translated into Chinese in the form of sutras. One of them, preserved in stone as the Monument Sutra, features the cross rising from the lotus, the symbol chosen by Karl Reichelt for Tao-fung Shan, his Christian center in Buddhist style at Sha-tin outside Hong Kong, many centuries later. Thousands of Buddhist texts were preserved in the library cave at Dunhuang monastery, about one thousand miles west of Xian, where they were rediscovered by the Taoist priest Wang Yuanlu, who arrived there in the 1890s and became the self-appointed guardian of the scrolls.Included in this treasure trove were the Jesus Sutras, which are now scattered in museums and private collections, largely inaccessible to the public. But if the selection published here in a very elegant translation is anything to go by, they are [End Page 190] extremely significant religious documents with a spiritual value all their own. For the uninitiated, there is no way of checking the authenticity of these translations. The commentaries that accompany them could be slightly tendentious in that they nudge us in the direction of the editors' particular holistic worldview. But the texts themselves have a beauty and integrity that speaks for itself. They represent a Higher Dharma of perfect purity (p. 86), which, like a mirror, reflects the world with no trace of self: no desire, no action, no virtue, no truth (pp. 80–83, 126–129). The Jesus story is retold, and Jesus is portrayed as the teacher of this Higher Path. The sutras speak of One Spirit who is self-created, One God who is creator of the world, and One Lord, the Messiah who will return. There are prayers, too: "O Loving Father, Enlightened Son, Holy Spirit King"; "Lamb of Love and Bliss"; "O Holy Sage, Universal Lord, Messiah" (pp. 110–113). The texts obviously bear witness to a Buddhist-Christian dialogue much earlier and at a far deeper level than many would have thought possible. Whether they represent the religion of the future, as the editors suggest, remains to be seen.Lindsay Falvey's project of interpreting the canonical texts of Buddhism and Christianity in reference to one another has a similar orientation. In the course of agricultural development work in Thailand he came to realize "that the striking similarity between the two teachers may well be a seamless cloak of congruence beneath the mantle of culture and lore" (p. 13); the texts, in other words, may be quite literally translatable into one another's terms. Though aware that Q, the collection of Jesus' sayings that is supposed to have been available to the synoptic evangelists, is a hypothetical reconstruction, he still feels able to use a version of it as a basis for his experiment. He prefaces this with what he calls "A... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks, and: The Buddha's Gospel: A Buddhist Interpretation of Jesus' WordsJohn D'Arcy MayThe Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks. Edited by Ray Riegert and Thomas Moore. London: Souvenir Press, 2004. 140 + xi pp.The Buddha's Gospel: A Buddhist Interpretation of Jesus' Words. By Lindsay Falvey. Adelaide: (...) Institute for International Development, 2002. 108 pp.Since Roy C. Amore's Two Masters, One Message (1987) revived the hypothesis of Buddhist influence on Christian origins and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit's research established links between Nestorian Christianity, Gnostic Manichaeism, and Mahayana Buddhism in Central Asia, there is scope for further reflection on commonalities between the two traditions over and above the purely doctrinal and philosophical. The two books under review, though intended for a general readership, are indications that interest in these matters is very much alive.Riegert and Moore preface their selection of texts with the story of Bishop Aleben (A-lo-pen), who travelled the Silk Road from Persia and was received with honour at the imperial capital of Xian (Chang-an) at the beginning of the Tang dynasty (635 CE). The emperor Taizong was sympathetic to what he called the "Luminous Religion," a Nestorian version of Christianity, possibly in Syriac, as presented by Aleben. It seems that these teachings were translated into Chinese in the form of sutras. One of them, preserved in stone as the Monument Sutra, features the cross rising from the lotus, the symbol chosen by Karl Reichelt for Tao-fung Shan, his Christian center in Buddhist style at Sha-tin outside Hong Kong, many centuries later. Thousands of Buddhist texts were preserved in the library cave at Dunhuang monastery, about one thousand miles west of Xian, where they were rediscovered by the Taoist priest Wang Yuanlu, who arrived there in the 1890s and became the self-appointed guardian of the scrolls.Included in this treasure trove were the Jesus Sutras, which are now scattered in museums and private collections, largely inaccessible to the public. But if the selection published here in a very elegant translation is anything to go by, they are [End Page 190] extremely significant religious documents with a spiritual value all their own. For the uninitiated, there is no way of checking the authenticity of these translations. The commentaries that accompany them could be slightly tendentious in that they nudge us in the direction of the editors' particular holistic worldview. But the texts themselves have a beauty and integrity that speaks for itself. They represent a Higher Dharma of perfect purity (p. 86), which, like a mirror, reflects the world with no trace of self: no desire, no action, no virtue, no truth (pp. 80–83, 126–129). The Jesus story is retold, and Jesus is portrayed as the teacher of this Higher Path. The sutras speak of One Spirit who is self-created, One God who is creator of the world, and One Lord, the Messiah who will return. There are prayers, too: "O Loving Father, Enlightened Son, Holy Spirit King"; "Lamb of Love and Bliss"; "O Holy Sage, Universal Lord, Messiah" (pp. 110–113). The texts obviously bear witness to a Buddhist-Christian dialogue much earlier and at a far deeper level than many would have thought possible. Whether they represent the religion of the future, as the editors suggest, remains to be seen.Lindsay Falvey's project of interpreting the canonical texts of Buddhism and Christianity in reference to one another has a similar orientation. In the course of agricultural development work in Thailand he came to realize "that the striking similarity between the two teachers may well be a seamless cloak of congruence beneath the mantle of culture and lore" (p. 13); the texts, in other words, may be quite literally translatable into one another's terms. Though aware that Q, the collection of Jesus' sayings that is supposed to have been available to the synoptic evangelists, is a hypothetical reconstruction, he still feels able to use a version of it as a basis for his experiment. He prefaces this with what he calls "A... (shrink)

The Qurʾān states that it is the last link in the chain of divine books, such as the Torah, Psalms, and the Gospel, and that it is also the approval and regulator of these books. As a result, there are some mutual narratives with other holy books, as well as some issues that differ from them and bring different explanations from them. These issues have been the subject of polemics, especially with Judaism and Christianity throughout the history. The (...) crucifixion of Jesus Christ formed the foundation of Christianity theology. However, the subject of ‘the cross’ has also been one of the most important issues by which Christian communities have made different explanations and interpretations since the 1st century, and have diverged accordingly. Although the docetists, who are our subject, are divided into many groups with different views, they generally accept that Jesus Christ was of a different nature from other people, had a divine nature, and therefore, it was not possible for him to be crucified. In the only verse in the Qurʾān that deals with the cross of Jesus Christ, it is mentioned that Jesus was not crucified. For this reason, a significant part of the interpretations in the commentaries have some similarities with the views of the docetics at first glance. It is possible to see more of the similarities mentioned in the commentaries, especially in the so-called “substitutionary interpretation”, in which it is stated that someone else was crucified instead of Jesus. In the Christian world, it is often claimed that Islam emerged in the Arabian Peninsula, where Christian heretics are abundant, and that it was influenced by the views of some heretic Christians. In this context, starting with John of Damascus in the 8th century, based on the above-mentioned similarities, many Christian researchers throughout the history claimed that the Qurʾān took this view from docetics. In this study, there has been an attempt to examine all of these claims. In this context, first, the docetics were researched, and as a result, it was revealed that Christians named groups with very different views from the early times as “docetic”, and that there was no standart use of the concept of “docetic” in the Christian World for centuries. It appears that it was determined that the concept would be used as a kind of umbrella concept for groups considered heretical. Then in the article, the different translations and interpretations of the verse in the Qurʾān and certain sources from the classical and modern Islamic literature were selected and identified. This led to the examination of how the said verse was understood in the Islamic world throughout the history. In this context, all types of substitutionary interpretations in the commentaries were made into a list by mentioning the sources of these interpretations, and then, these interpretations and the views of the docetics were compared. After revealing the similarities and differences in the explanations and interpretations in the commentaries and the views of the docetics, a new perspective on the subject was attempted by trying to explain the verse outside of its traditional interpretation throughout the history, considering the context of this verse and the Jewish literature. Considering that various Jewish claims about Jesus and Mary were responded to at the beginning of Qurʾānic the verse and just before the verse that mentions the cross, information in the Jewish religious literature was consulted about the allegations that Jews killed Jesus as mentioned in this verse. In this context, Jewish claims about the end of the life of Jesus in the Talmud, that they first killed him and then crucified him, were adressed and researched. Furthermore, an attempt is made to explain that the use of wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu in the verse may be an answer to the claims of the Jews that they first killed Jesus and then crucified him. These claims of the Jews in the Talmud are further explored, and considering the context of the Jews of that time, it is explicated that these actions would not have been possible due to the political conditions in that period. Taken together, this study has attempted to address that the view claiming that docetics have an impact on the Quran via the related verse is not validand that the actual recipient of the verse is the Jews. (shrink)

In this article, the subject of Jesus and the Gospel is discussed according to the Qurʾān. This study focuses on the position of Jesus and the nature of the Gospel from the perspective of the Qurʾān about the perception of Jesus and the Gospel in the Christian belief. The issue of Jesus and the Gospel has been the subject of different understandings and discussions between Muslims and Christians from the first periods of Islamic history until today. (...) There are serious confusions around them both within the Christian world and Islamic world. Even if there are common points between the information contained in the New Testament and in the Qurʾān on these issues, this information does not agree with each other. While Jesus and the Gospel described in the Qurʾān are not independent and not detached from the historical process of divine revelation; Jesus, which was placed in a superior position in Christianity, and the Gospels written by different writers on different dates after Jesus, do not integrate with this historical process. As for the Islamic world, it can be said that the perception of Jesus and the Gospel is not directly shaped by the Qurʾān, but rather by narratives and common beliefs. In this article where concept analyses are intense, the Qurʾān, the Bible, TDV (Türkiye Religious Foundation) Encyclopaedia of Islam, dictionaries, commentary resources and studies on Jesus and the Bible were mainly referred to. According to the Qurʾān, all the messengers called rasūl and nabī are human prophets chosen by Allah and none of them are angel or superhuman. Allah is the only God and there is no god but Him. According to the Qurʾān, it is not possible for God to adopt a wife or son. Allah is not the third of the three that finds its expression in the Christian belief in the form of the trinity: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Rūḥ al-Quds). According to the Qurʾān, every understanding that deifies Jesus and carries him to a position above human is a deviation from the right path. The deification of Jesus, who was born of Mary without a father, has been a belief formed over time. It is stated in the Qurʾān that Jesus is a messenger of Allah and a word He informed Mary, like the other prophets. What is meant by the word of God is that Allah heralds Mary with a child whose name is Christ, Jesus and the son of Mary. While it is said in the Qurʾān that Jesus is the word of God, it is not meant that the word is embodied and transformed into Jesus; however, it is meant that Jesus was created and brought to life with a word that came from Allah. The fact that Jesus is the word of God can also mean that he will speak to people in the name of Allah when he is in the cradle and then with the words that were revealed to him, and he will notify the way of the Lord in his message. As his birth is a miracle, his talking to people while in the cradle is also a miracle. Allah put His words in the mouth of Jesus like as He put them in the mouth of Prophet Muḥammad, and He also revealed the Gospel to Jesus. Thus, the words of God and the messenger who speak in the name of Allah became synonymous. Because when he speaks in the name of Allah, the words coming out of his mouth are not the words of Jesus himself, but the words of God. All prophets, including Jesus, are a single ummah sent on Islam. The essence of the books they brought from Allah is one. Although there are some differences in details arising from history, culture and social conditions, there is no difference between them in terms of the basic principles, norms and decrees brought from Allah in matters of faith, worship, morality and law, and especially the principle of unification. According to the Qurʾān, the Bible is the name of the divine book that Allah sent down to Jesus who was held responsible for His message, and that confirms the previous books. Contrary to the common belief among Muslims, the Qurʾān does not abolish the Gospel sent down to Jesus, but endorses it. In fact, all the books that God sent through the prophets confirm each other in terms of their essence, as well as the basic principles and provisions they contain. Allah taught Jesus the book, the wisdom, the Torah and the Bible, and sent him to confirm the Torah. He also sent down the Qurʾān to Prophet Muḥammad as confirming the Torah and the Bible. The purpose of these books sent down by Allah is to provide guidance and light to humanity. It is emphasized in the Qurʾān that all the prophets are actually one ummah, and that God who sent them is the true Lord of the people and that worship should be done only to Him. The verse in the Qurʾān "The only religion in the sight of Allah is Islam" should be understood in this context. In this respect, the common understanding among the scholars who study in the Islamic tradition that Qurʾān abrogated the divine books sent to humanity before, which is incompatible with the Qurʾān and turned into a common belief, should be reviewed and evaluated. (shrink)

The church in Africa, like its counterparts elsewhere in the world, is called to fulfil the mission of God as expressed in the call ‘Missio Dei’ and influentially remains with the integrity of the mission of Christ, which is liberative and practical. For Christ was not only concerned with the spiritual needs of the people, but also with their material well-being. The following question therefore arises: how can the church in Africa, in general, and in (...) Zimbabwe, in particular, actively do God’s mission and remain with integrity in the midst of the reality of suffering. Furthermore, how can the church for mission and reconstruction be understood in a post-colonial Zimbabwe given the contextual realities of political crises, corruption, poverty, moral decadence, defined or censored truth, leadership crises and no freedom of expression? This article argues that, although the church is faced with these arduous realities, it remains called by God to do God’s mission. While in post-colonial Zimbabwe the socio-political, socio-economic and socio-religious situation might seem hopeless, the church has remained vibrant and alive for reconstruction theology. The transformation of society is possible given the authority and mission mandate of the church. This article argues that the church is a key player in reconstruction theology and in the transformation of society. For transformation to be possible, the church should witness to the gospel of Christ without fear of being labelled, castrated and persecuted. The article asserts that the spirit of the Bible should be revived in a time of reconstruction in Zimbabwe. The assumption in this article is that Zimbabwe is ready for reconstruction discourse. For this to happen, the researchers argue that the church as a critical relevant player in reconstruction needs to ‘be church’ in its missional mandates. Integrity is essential if a church wants to be relevantly missional and reconstructive. Integrity means that the church has to embrace the risks and opportunities associated with mission. (shrink)

What is successful Christian leadership? How should leadership be developed within a Christian context? This article encourages Christian leaders to seek to identify with Jesus’ mission and paradigm in developing leaders by examining the Scriptural passage in Mark 3:13-19. Jesus’ example in leadership development was based on succession of leadership primarily accomplished through personally shaping his disciples in close, mentoring relationships. This article, in particularly examines Jesus’ practice of having his disciples near him in order that (...) they might best accomplish the task he had purposed for them. Currently, this pattern of leadership development has been given diverse definitions from servant-based leadership to transformational leadership, but to Jesus, developing leaders was best accomplished through simple mentoring. Jesus’ desired goals for his disciples were realized through an intentional nearness to the lives of the twelve. For Christian leadership to be healthy, its success depends on close relationships being developed between the mentor and the mentee. The indispensable mark of Christian leadership is the combined effort of action and agenda while purposing to influence others. (shrink)

The Song of Songs was considered as Sacred Scripture before the Christian Era. The Pharisaic discussion in the 2nd century C.E. as to whether the Canticle defiles the hands refers neither to canonicity nor to inspiration; it expresses a doubt as to whether for any reason whatever in the text an exception could be applied to the Song with regard to the general rule that sacred books defile the hands. The copy of Esdras in the Temple was such an (...) exception. The reason for the presence of the Song of Songs in the Canon is not based on its author , nor on any allegorical explanation . The reason for canonicity can be seen in the sapiential character of the Song which shows itself in its literal sense that presents the natural love of a couple in all its amplitude and that by analogy can be referred also to the love of God. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGSeit den 80er Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts ist die Jesusforschung in eine neue Phase getreten. Dieser Beitrag nimmt sowohl die Forschungsresultate als auch die Diskussion auf und versucht, Konsequenzen für die systematisch-theologische Christologie zu ziehen. Dies geschieht in drei Schritten. Im ersten Teil wird die Debatte um den historischen Jesus und deren Aufnahme in die dogmatische Christologie dargestellt. Der zweite Teil zeichnet grundlegende Aspekte der neueren Jesusforschung nach. Unter dem Titel ›Christologie als Religionshermeneutik‹ wird schließlich die Bedeutung der third (...) quest für die dogmatische Christologie ausgeführt. Diese besteht darin, dass sie die vielfältigen Rezeptionen Jesu von Nazareth als Christus bewusst macht. Die Christologie hat die Aufgabe, das Ineinander von Faktum und Deutung zu explizieren, welches für jede Deutung von Geschichte grundlegend ist.SUMMARYThe research about Jesus has gone into a new phase since the 80th of the last century. This paper includes both: the results and the discussions of Jesus-research and tries to draw conclusions for the systematic-theological Christology. That happens in three steps. A first part reflects on the debate on the historical Jesus and its reception in dogmatic Christology. A second part refers to basic aspects of the present Jesus-research. Finally, a third part with the title “Christology as religious hermeneutics” explains the meaning of the third quest for dogmatic Christology which shows that there is a wide but not unequivocal variety of receptions of Jesus of Nazareth as Christ. Christology has got the task to explain the interaction between fact and interpretation which is fundamental for every interpretation of history. (shrink)

(From Liberty Fund:) The topics of church and state, religious toleration, the legal enforcement of religious practices, and religiously motivated violence on the part of individuals have once again become burning issues. Pierre Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary was a major attempt to deal with very similar problems three centuries ago. His argument is that if the orthodox have the right and duty to persecute, then every sect will persecute, since every sect considers itself orthodox. The result will be mutual slaughter, (...) something God cannot have intended. -/- The Philosophical Commentary takes its starting point from the words attributed to Jesus Christ in Luke 14:23, “And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.” Bayle contends that the word compel cannot mean “force.” From this perspective, he constructs his doctrine of toleration based on the singular importance of conscience. His point is not that coercion usually is ineffective in matters of faith but that, even when effective, it is wrong because it ignores the indispensability of the free conscience. (shrink)

Contemporary Nigerian society is in its doldrums as regards the culture of violence and distrust among peoples from various ethnic groups that make-up this nation. To an extent, religio-political reasons are fueling this culture of violence and distrust. The thrust of this paper is that: Christian military chaplains are stakeholders as promoters of peace and mutual co-existence in Nigeria with regard to controlling the culture of violence and disunity. The core of this thesis remains Jesus’ convictions concerning non-resistance (...) to the evil one as documented in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: 38-42, and His life as the Peace-Builder. Therefore, contemporary Nigerian context calls for Christian military chaplains to be more conscious that being messengers of peace and promoters of peaceful coexistence in our country, they have ethical responsibility to build bridges to harmony. Since Christ (God) is love, the chaplains should rediscover the poetics of testimony as a principle for building and reconstructing paths that lead to mutual co-existence in view of encouraging the reign of justice, unity, and peace in Nigeria. (shrink)

In this paper we will analyze critically the traditional interpretation of the principle of subsidiarity in the Chilean Constitution of 1980 and its influence on the configuration of our economic constitution. To this end, firstly we will study the traditional interpretation of the subsidiarity, trying to demonstrate its faults, and its relationship with neoliberalism. After, we will evaluate the influence of this position on the constitutional jurisprudence of recent years. And finally, considering the crisis of legitimacy of our political (...) system, we believe that the Welfare state could be a solution to the constitutional problem. (shrink)

Two essential periods may be identified in the early stages of the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets. The first was the period during which a very well known deficiency disease, rickets, acquired a scientific status: this required the development of unifying principles to confer upon the newly developing science of pathology a doctrine without which it would have been condemned to remain a collection of unrelated facts with very little practical application. One first such unifying principle was provided by (...) the notion of hygiene; while the blanket explanations provided by this notion alone were much too general to enable rickets to achieve scientific status, it did point out the need to look for specific external causes for the disease and to examine the life-style and dietary habits of the patients. The second phase of the conceptualization of the disease was the assumption of a specific cause — that is, using concepts developed in the area of infectious diseases. This was made possible by fundamental similarities between deficiency and infectious diseases, in spite of their apparent differences. Both types of illness have some of the characteristics of what Georges Canguilhem calls the ontological representation of disease as opposed to dysharmonic representations, which primarily concern the endocrine diseases. It is precisely this shift from one to the other manner of perceiving ill health that enabled the identification of the vitamin D-resistant rickets. Conceptualization of the notion of vitamin D resistancy required that the conditions causing the disease be looked for within the organism rather than outside it; this was thus the first time that endocrine concepts were applied to studying the physiology of vitamin D.The history of resistant rickets therefore represents an interesting model for understanding the growth of biomedical knowledge. It allows the development of a number of more general ideas on the question of the relationship between biology and medicine and on the thorny problem of specificity in medical thinking. As far as this topic is concerned it can be seen that there was an ongoing exchange between medical and biological thinking during the initial period up until 1937, and that one could deny any such specificity in medical thinking during this same period. Albright, for example, used human diseases as spontaneously produced models for experimental biology. It was also more feasible for an experimental biologist to administer toxic doses than for a clinician to do so.What, then, if any, is the place of the specificity of medical thinking in this history? The fact that medicine is characterized not only by it ccognitive content78 but also by its final aim, which is to restore health, makes it necessary to take factors other than objective knowledge into consideration. This is particularly evident in two aspects of medicine, therapeutics and nosology, and in approaching the notion of pathological individuality.Therapeutic activity has a largely empirical approach. Many drugs, such as cod-liver oil, were discovered empirically. Treatment often in the past, and still now, has proceeded by trial and error, upon no established theoretical basis. At this level the relationship between biology and medicine is roughly comparable to that between science and technology79 \3- that is, it is impossible to reduce either therapeutics or technical activities to the simple application of basic science. In this sense, the application of vitamin D to vitamin-resistant rickets is quite typical. Further-more, in the case studied here, the therapeutic activity heralds a definite breaking away from the medicatrix naturae of conventional medicine dating back to ancient times, and it embodies a new concept of the organism and of disease: no longer can the diseased organism be thought of as merely having a perturbed equilibrium requiring restoration by means of a natural style of medicine. On the contrary, vitamin D resistance is an obstacle that indicates profound biological dysfunction, to be rectified only by means of an extremely aggressive and therefore dangerous therapy. The therapy thus serves to reveal the severity of the dysfunction, thereby leading inevitably to conceptual innovation. This sheds light on the theoretical innovations of which the therapeutic activity is capable.Therapeutic activity is also influenced by notions of health and illness, normal and pathological states, none of which may be determined entirely objectively. For example, the term healing as used by Albright in the case of resistant rickets that he described may be discussed in this light.Nosology, or the classification of diseases, depends largely on the description of clinical syndromes, which are themselves mainly based on subjective elements (discomfort, disability, or the extent of a patient's suffering). The advent of pathological anatomy at the beginning of the nineteenth century disrupted classification by introducing the concept of localized anatomical lesions81-and, hence, an element of material objectivity \3- into nosology. Radiological examination further complicated matters by enabling the equivalent of an autopsy on living matter. Lastly, biological examination complicated nosology by showing that biological anomalies may exist in human beings without necessarily leading to a pathological condition. Medical thinking can choose to combine all these elements to describe a disease, but can also separate them and retain only a few, or a single one, according to requirements - as did Albright.The notion of biological and pathological individuality is fundamental to the development of medical thinking. Whatever its theoretical origin, medical thinking has since ancient times incorporated the idea that each individual reacts differently to the same treatment and his own specific pathological tendencies. I mentioned earlier that in the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets the notion of rachitic tendency reflected this type of thinking. After 1937, this history progressed by successively separating new individual entities, affecting smaller and smaller groups of individuals in each case. In other words, the need to understand and to define individual illness more closely required the development of new concepts and the construction of new individual categories of disease linking these concepts to older clinical, radiological, and biochemical elements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist MonkChristian P. B. HaskettThe Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk. By Georges B. J. Dreyfus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 445 + xv pp.Georges Dreyfus is a uniquely valuable contributor to the academic study of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the first Westerner to have received the Geshe degree, signifying (...) a thorough mastery of the curriculum of the Geluk (dge lugs) school, and in his latest work, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping, he not only displays the critical acumen produced by that education, but also candidly reveals the personal details of life as a monk in a Buddhist monastic university. This alone should commend this project to the attention of readers seriously interested in Buddhism; however, Dreyfus also gives us a work of scholarship of religion that is exemplary in its capacity to use a single topic as a starting point to explain vast swathes of religion and culture. A brief overview of the chapters precedes my assessment of the book's successes and its importance for Buddhist-Christian studies.The first chapter gives a brief historical overview of Tibetan Buddhism. Those with a passing acquaintance with Tibetan history will find little new information here, but Dreyfus does manage to succinctly and accurately present 1300 years of religious history in a mere fifteen pages. Chapter 2, "Tibetan Monasticism," takes up the context in which most Buddhist scholastic activity occurs, "describing...some of its characteristics and discussing its strengths without hiding its drawbacks" (p.33). Dreyfus moves from a depiction of the Indian precedents and textual foundations of monasticism in general to a discussion of the mass monastic movement in Tibet. His assessment is unsparing but nonjudgmental as he describes monks as tax collectors, ritual actors, priests, and even "punk-monks." In the third chapter "Becoming a Monk," the personal and autobiographical nature of Two Hands Clapping begins to emerge as Dreyfus relates his own personal experience of entering [End Page 192] monastic life interwoven with accounts of both the normative Tibetan standards and the present-day situation of Tibetan monastics. These vivid reports detail the sleep deprivation, poor diet, and rigorous lives of exiled monks, and the genuine affection that those who endure these circumstances feel for one another. This chapter also examines the differing roles of teachers as housemasters, scholastic preceptors, and gurus, and begins introducing several teachers with whom Dreyfus studied. These three chapters comprise the first section, "The Context."Despite the title and cover picture of a debating monk, this book is a study of the full range of scholastic monastic practices. Dreyfus begins his far-ranging comparisons to other religious educational traditions such as yeshivas and medieval European monasticism in the second section, "Tibetan Scholastic Practices." Chapter 4 looks at reading and memorization, considering literacy and education in Tibet first. His discussion of memorization comprises details of memorization practices and a good but not overwhelming discussion of modern psychological theory on memorization and mind. Chapter 5 presents the curriculum followed by Tibetan monks and identifies a key element of scholasticism: commentary. The section on comparative perspective is particularly good, comparing Shi'ite, Christian, and Tibetan models and citing theorists including Foucault and Halbertal to elucidate how commentary is used to create sectarian positions out of shared canonical texts. While the sixth chapter begins by comparing curricula and practices followed by both Ge-luk and non-Ge-luk monasteries, it concludes with a detailed section on the role of scholasticism in the production of authority and orthodox, accounting for the emergence of sectarian divisions within Tibetan Buddhism within a sociopolitical context. This return to the history provided in chapter 1 explains the history of sectarian divisions in Tibet and demonstrates both the centrality and scope of the impact of scholasticism in Tibetan religion. In chapter 7, "Scholasticism and Orality," Dreyfus gives the sort of detailed and nuanced testimony that only a long and careful observer of and participant in Buddhism could. He carefully dissects the role of orality in memorization and recitation on the one hand, and of oral commentary in pedagogy on the... (shrink)

This book marks the beginning of a new phase in the philosophical investigation of classical and contemporary accounts of the self: canonical boundaries have been crossed and doctrinal justification abandoned in favor of a cosmopolitan ideal of syncretic, theoretically perspicuous, and historically informed systematic reflection. That such reflection bears on so central a concept as the self is only fitting given its implications for a broad range of questions concerning agency, the mind-body problem, and self-knowledge that are now (...) pursued across a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. But Ganeri is not simply interested in bringing the wealth of Indian speculations on the self to bear on contemporary discussions, in the hope of supplying a much-needed corrective lens, fill in some important lacunae, or bring another voice to the table. Rather, the goal is to think with these classical Indian thinkers (of which, no less than 21 are debated at length .. (shrink)

On his website, Robert Cummings Neville makes an interesting remark: My serious intellectual life began in 1944 at the age of five when a kindergarten classmate told me that God is a person. I checked with my father about this, and he said, “No, Jesus was a person but God is more like electricity or light.” This seemed reasonable and triggered in me a decisive love of God. Electricity makes things go, like my electric train, and my father (...) explained that God makes everything go, which remains my theology to the present day.1 The question I want to discuss in this paper goes back to the very early beginnings of Neville’s outstanding academic career. Over.. (shrink)

This article pursues Rahner’s idea that the Holy Spirit has the role of “Spirit of Christ” even before the Incarnation, namely as “entelechy” directed to the Christ event. In the article, particular use is made of a biblical text hitherto not invoked in this connection, namely 1 Peter 1:11, from which a biblical base for this theology is developed. The article also investigates Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of evolution encompassing the world religions and Christianity, the absolute religion. The (...) idea of the Spirit of Christ as entelechy is clarified and refined by application of the author’s construct of the “return” model of the Trinity, in which the Son does not just come forth from the Father, but returns to him in the power of the Spirit (see his newly published book, Deus Trinitas). Before, and in reparation for, the Son’s historical return to the Father, in Christ, the Spirit, precisely as entelechy, has to seek him in history, that is, through the creation and evolution of the cosmos, the arrival of humans, the consequent and new operation of the Spirit as grace, and the history of Israel culminating in the lives of Mary and, finally, Jesus, in whom this operation finds its final goal. Moreover, the role of the Spirit as entelechy complements and forms a unity with that of the same Spirit (again “Spirit of Christ”) as sent historically by the glorified Christ upon the Church, and continues even after the Incarnation, in leading to Christ (as “anonymous Christians”) men and women of goodwill, including those belonging to the world religions who have not yet had the gospel effectively preached to them. Finally, the paper notes that it covers some of the same ground as the Vatican Declaration Dominus Iesus, but in a different way, namely as instructed by the work of Teilhard and Rahner. (shrink)

Lam, Joseph The election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio on the evening of 13 March 2013 stunned as many Vatican observers as had the resignation from the Chair of St Peter announced by Pope Benedict XVI during the ordinary consistory of cardinals at the Vatican on 11 February that year. While the Vaticanisti expected a younger pope, the seventy-six year old Archbishop of Buenos Aires emerged from the conclave as the 266th pope and successor of the ageing German pope. However, the (...) real surprise was Bergoglio's choice of name, which also signalled a new direction for the church's government and pastoral focus. In calling himself Francis, he evoked the way of simplicity that derives from the Gospel. While Benedict's teaching draws much from the Augustinian well, Francis, however, is more attached to Franciscan spirituality and practice. A look at Francis's first apostolic exhortation, 'The Joy of the Gospel', where he quotes Augustine only twice may cement this view. Nevertheless, in spite of these minimal references, Francis holds the Bishop of Hippo in high regard. This is very evident in his homily at the beginning of the last Augustinian general chapter held in Rome, on 28 August 2013. Reflecting on Augustine's restless heart, Francis pointed to two elements of the Augustinian heart. On the one hand, Augustine's restlessness was a craving for God's tender and forgiving love that can only be found in the encounter with Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the love Augustine found stirred in him a new unrest urging him to proclaim the Gospel of loving kindness with courage and without fear. It is not an exaggeration that Augustine was also the bearer of the honorary title, doctor caritatis. In this joyful unrest Augustine was spiritually close to St Francis, who became the disciple of God's humble love for the poor. As for Augustine, who to my knowledge was the first Latin author who designated God as humble, St Francis's love for creation is grounded in God's humility. The central theme of Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium is the proclamation of God's tender love, a love that constantly renews the lives of the faithful. Therein, Francis takes up the perennial divine quality. Yet, Francis would not be himself if he had not supplemented it with his own emphasis. (shrink)

One of the most considerable changes in the contemporary European educational mentality is a person's disconnection from spiritual life. Christian formation has been replaced with religious pluralism, in terms of syncretism influenced by global economic ideologies. Some consequences are low resilience and low spiritual resistance to contemporary challenges, associated with mental traumas or social behaviour deficits. Is it possible to restore the modern person's spiritual education? There is no evolution in the modern individual's social life without a horizon (...) of spiritual expectation and fulfilment, different from the strictly material one. Moreover, conscious education cannot deprive people of cultivating the spiritual part of their consciousness from which the real values of existence are born. A series of arguments for renewing the relation between school and the mature, Scripture-based Christian thinking in the spirit of the European pedagogy are revealed by the factual historical analyses. Both Eastern and Western European experiences have met after 13 years of evolving into two antagonist geopolitical spheres. Their lessons in the education field could be an appropriate model, academically applied at the cultural mentality and the European pedagogy level. CONTRIBUTION: With this study, I want to highlight the historical and conceptual frameworks of the Christian religious education meaning in the context of the rediscovery of Orthodox Christianity by the international theological culture in post-communism. Orthodox Christianity, forgotten in dictionaries and syntheses by the Western theological elite, brings in a spiritualisation of education according to the Lord Jesus Christ's Gospel and not of the ideological cultural interests. (shrink)

This study constructs a measurement scale for Socially Responsible Consumption in the particular context of Colombia. It uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodological approach, beginning with four focus groups and ending with a quantitative validation exercise employing Exploratory Factor Analysis. The result is a Socially Responsible Consumption measurement scale consisting of four dimensions that reflect paradigms found in the existing literature. These are, however, expressed differently in Colombia. In particular, Socially Responsible Consumption involves consumer behavior that (...) favors corporate social responsibility practices and the rational consumption of resources and products while recognizing the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle through healthcare. (shrink)

Neste artigo, nossa tarefa será estudar a estratégia literária usada na composição da narrativa do encontro de Jesus com a mulher samaritana, famosa passagem do quarto capítulo do evangelho de João. Defenderemos a hipótese de que o autor fez, para a construção desta narrativa sobre Jesus, uso de um enredo arquétipo, uma cena-padrão do Antigo Testamento que era usada todas as vezes que se pretendia contar uma história de casamento. Veremos os elementos que constituem tal enredo padrão e (...) alguns exemplos textuais, para então analisar o evangelho de João demonstrando em detalhes como o evangelista manipulou este gênero literário popular para atingir seus próprios objetivos. Metodologicamente falando, é a análise narrativa ou narratologia que conduzirá nossas reflexões e análises exegéticas, mantendo o foco desta investigação sempre na figura do “leitor implícito” da narrativa bíblica, que é quem deveria surpreender-se ao notar que o texto conduzia Jesus ao próprio casamento, até uma reviravolta criativa do autor no final. Palavras-chave : Exegese; Narratologia; Bíblia; Cristianismo Primitivo; Evangelho de João.In this article, our task will be study the literary strategy used in composition of the narrative of meeting among Jesus and the Samaritan woman, famous episode of fourth chapter of John’s Gospel. We’ll defending the hypothesis that the author made, for to construct this narrative about Jesus, use of a master-plot, a standard scene of the Old Testament that was used all times when someone wished to tell a marriage store. We’ll see the compositional elements of this standard plot and some textual examples, and then, we can to analyze the John’s Gospel and show how the evangelist manipulated the popular literary genre for reach your own objectives. Methodologically speaking, the narrative analysis (or narratology) going to drive our reflections and exegetical analysis, keeping the focus of this research always in “implicit reader” of biblical narrative, who would to feel the surprise through to see the text driving Jesus to the own marriage, until the creative author’s turnaround at the end. Key words : Exegesis; Narratology; Bible; Primitive Christianity; John’s Gospel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 419-420 [Access article in PDF] Martin Mulsow. Moderne aus dem Untergrund: Radikale Frühaufklärung in Deutschland, 1680-1720. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002. Pp. x + 514. Paper, € 58.00.This is a marvelous, detailed, textured study of a large number of minor works and minor figures that developed and transmitted many of the elements of modern philosophy in early modern Germany. Many of (...) the texts were written in Latin, and only some were published. One should not teach the philosophy of the Enlightenment from Hazard or Cassirer without attention to these figures, whom they did not know. Now we know where our heroes like Lessing, Hume, and Kant got many of their fundamental ideas.Martin Mulsow ends this book with ten theses. The first holds that most of the authors discussed were radicalized in a multi-layered process, not simply from the reading of Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle, or Toland. For example, one could take the role of an opponent in an academic disputation, and bit by bit begin to believe one's unorthodox role. Or one could be provoked by ultra-orthodox opponents to explore the opposite of what they believed. Some authors evolved into and out of radical positions over the course of their lives.Further theses contend that small, trusted circles of friends were often the enabling condition in which unorthodox views were first expressed and then hammered out. Irony, satire, humor, paradox, and ambivalence played key roles. It is often difficult to tell whether some of these texts were serious or intended as jokes, and perhaps the authors did not always know themselves. Some radical ideas were spread simply by curious erudites who assembled collections and bibliographies of radical manuscripts and texts without believing them.Mulsow shows how people wrote on controversial topics in coded scholarly language. Spinozism was discussed under the rubrics of Platonism and Stoicism; the sovereignty of the people was considered in terms of the lex regia; and Biblical criticism became code for the physicians' rejection of the materiality of the soul. Thus philosophical discourse can be found where one might least expect it in legal, philological, historical, and scientific debates. The numerous case studies that the author assembles amount to philosophical microhistory.Substantial chapters deal with various aspects of the intellectual stew that emerged from the bubbling pot of Jews and Socinians and other Christian sects that were semi-tolerated in the Netherlands. Unlike any construction of moderate and radical positions as opposed and at odds, Mulsow shows how they were often intertwined. The destruction of Christian Platonism, the paradoxical development of Enlightenment ideas out of anti-humanism, and the uses of so-called eclecticism in philosophy made possible the assembly of modern philosophical positions.In yet another paradox, many of these writers belong to what has been called the "conservative Enlightenment," intending only to temporize and draw the teeth of the political and philosophical radicals, and yet their writings systematized and transmitted the ideas of the radicals, opening the way to further radicality. It is a perennial weakness of the skeptics and proto-liberals like Gundling that they defended freedom of thought and libertas philosophandi even where it would undermine the ideas and institutions in which they believed.Most of the philosophically radical positions began as critiques of theological positions, and this is one reason why it is ever more apparent that one cannot understand the rise of modern philosophy without a close acquaintance with early modern theology. None of the early modern philosophers we are trying to understand was ignorant of the many levels of theological debate. There are numerous connections to later times: for example, a seventeenth-century debate over political theology anticipated Carl Schmitt's twentieth-century rediscovery of this topos.Mulsow places the Enlightened ideas of Locke and Newton in the context of their basis in the theology of anti-Trinitarian Socinians and Arians such as Samuel Crell. This was as important to many who radicalized it as the Spinozism credited with spawning the radical... (shrink)

This essay is an investigation of the relationship between homosexual interpretations of Jesus Christ and artistic explorations of the meaning of Christ to the LGBTQ community. I begin with an analysis of the public backlash to Enrique Chagoya’s 2010 lithograph The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals which features a depiction of Christ in a homoerotic situation. My analysis focuses both on Chagoya’s place in the historical canon of artists that create religious art that challenges heteronormative (...) interpretations of Jesus and also the resulting destruction of Chagoya’s work. My analysis examines the cultural importance of homosexual interpretations of Christ in the on-going debates about homosexuality as well as the biblical justifications for such interpretations. More, I argue that the public backlash to art that challenges traditionally held beliefs about Christ creates a cultural force for further marginalizing the LGBTQ community. I argue that traditional power structures, especially in contemporary America, rely upon the aesthetic marginalization of those individuals deemed to be engaged in subversive lifestyles in order to maintain their dominance in cultural discourse. Ironically, I argue, the attempts to subdue such artwork generates the necessary conditions for public discourse that will ultimately undermine the traditional cultural beliefs that undergird the protests against artists like Chagoya. (shrink)

A pioneer in the field, Christian Metz applies insights of structural linguistics to the language of film. "The semiology of film . . . can be held to date from the publication in 1964 of the famous essay by Christian Metz, 'Le cinema: langue ou langage?'"--Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Times Literary Supplement "Modern film theory begins with Metz."--Constance Penley, coeditor of Camera Obscura "Any consideration of semiology in relation to the particular field signifying practice of film passes inevitably through a reference (...) to the work of Christian Metz. . . . The first book to be written in this field, [ Film Language ] is important not merely because of this primacy but also because of the issues it raises . . . issues that have become crucial to the contemporary argument."--Stephen Heath, Screen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theory of the Apophantic Judgment According to René GirardDesiderio Parrilla Martínez (bio)introduction: criticism of judgment in rené girardIn his essay "Belief (Cultural Memory in the Present)" ("Credere di credere") Gianni Vattimo stated the conditions of possibility of a "weak and post-metaphysical Christianity" founded in René Girard´s victimary hypothesis.1 According to Vattimo, mimetic theory allows abandoning traditional metaphysics and the classical theory of truth, based on the judgment. In later (...) works, Vattimo insisted on the epistemological virtues of mimetic theory to reform the classical theory of adequacy2 and the theological implications of this reform.3 Mimetic theory definitely unmasks the violence of the "strong metaphysic," to enable the advent of a weak metaphysics and a kenotic theology based on love: "According to him, it is the survival of the victim-based mechanism, albeit in attenuated form, that explains the recurrence of violence in the history of Christianity. To complete Girard's argument, we learn from Heidegger that what Girard calls the victim-based mechanism is metaphysical objectivism."4 The Erlebnis (non-conceptualized experience) of this theological weakening [End Page 147] has occurred as an event from a previous epistemological weakening, which mimetic theory itself contributes to consolidating.5This drift toward the epistemological nihilism generated a debate between Gianni Vattimo and René Girard, who rejected this conclusion drawn from his mimetic theory.6 The transcript of this controversy first appeared in Verità o fede debole? Dialogo su cristianesimo e relativismo (2006) [Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith (2011)], a compilation of three dialogues on three fundamental concepts: truth, secularization, and relativism. In the first part, focused on the epistemological question of truth, Girard affirms he isn't accurately recognized in Vattimo´s thought, showing his distance and warning that, unlike the Italian thinker, his thinking is primarily realistic: "Personally, I agree with Vattimo when he says that Christianity is a revelation of love, but I do not exclude that it is also a revelation of truth. Because truth and love coincide and are one in Christianity."7 In the same chapter, Vattimo challenges René Girard for not having extracted the ultimate consequences of his mimetic theory, because he stays trapped in the realistic ontology of a pre-mimetic mentality: [Vattimo:] "In sum, the only thing I really can't go along with in Girard is his faith in the salvific power of truth, whether it be revealed or discovered by science."8However, in the controversy René Girard could not fail to recognize the central thesis of Gianni Vattimo, according to which his work involved a critique of the classical interpretation of judgment: "I think that there is some kind of incompatibility between traditional philosophy and mimetic theory. I feel, for instance, that scholars influenced by Thomism are handicapped in regard to mimetic theory, because they have to work with neatly distinguished categories. Philosophy is looking for logical foundation as well. It is difficult for philosophers to accept a mechanism that triggers opposite effects. Therefore, it always excludes the real anthropological foundation."9 René Girard acknowledges that in his eagerness to keep up the anthropo-genesis, he cannot avoid judging the theory of judgment from the mimetic theory.10 This critique appears since the beginning of his investigation in Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, when Girard distinguishes between Heraclitus's logos and the logos of John's gospel.11 In Violence and the Sacred he proceeded to investigate the historical origins of both forms of logos and discovered that a hidden reality underlay the evidence of the canonical judicative structure, using the resources of Derridean deconstruction, of which Girard acknowledges his debt.12René Girard's relationship with philosophy is problematic. Mimetic theory criticizes all human cultural constructions, including mythology and philosophy. However, in The Scapegoat René Girard approaches the issue of "judgment" as a place of truth. His relationship with philosophy therefore needs to be [End Page 148] recognized and his contribution valued. In this work Girard exposed the evolution and transformations that have resulted in the classic judicative structure, showing the assumptions of the last supplement of logical truth.13 In Of Grammatology Derrida took up the term "suppl... (shrink)

The question initially raised in this paper was on how one’s religious sensibility affects one’s response to suffering. Focusing on three particular disasters that hit the Philippines, we look at the various media sources: the writing about the rains and flooding found in broadsheets and online media, and some ethnographic descriptions coming from the social sciences; we also look at experiential or anecdotal sources. All this provides us with material to establish certain traits and topics that come to fore (...) in times of disaster, including such concerns as the lessons learned during disaster, the wrath of God, and points of cultural pride such as notions of solidarity and resilience. A significant upshot of this study has been the recognition of epistemic and methodological reevaluations that had to constantly be taken. This concludes in a retrieval of the contextuality of suffering, a redefinition of what it means to say that the response is a Christian one, and finally a proposal that paying closer attention to these points, in addition to non-philosophical sources, might be a way of rethinking the problem of suffering beyond the scope of traditional theodicies. (shrink)

Grit, which is originally conceptualized as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, has been associated with optimal performance. Although previous meta-analytic and systematic reviews summarized how grit relates to performance outcomes, they possess considerable shortcomings, such as (a) absence of summary on the association of grit with well-being outcomes; (b) absence of discussion on social, psychological, and emotional mechanisms linking grit to well-being; and (c) lack of elaboration on how alternative models can resolve fundamental problems in the grit (...) construct. This integrative review provides a comprehensive summary on the link of grit to performance and well-being outcomes. Importantly, it elaborates how alternative models can potentially address flaws in the existing grit theory. Future research directions are discussed on how to move forward the science of grit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Augustine's Intellectual Conversion: The Journey from Platonism to ChristianityTravis E. AblesBrian Dobell. Augustine's Intellectual Conversion: The Journey from Platonism to Christianity. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xvii + 250. Cloth, $82.00.The question of Augustine's Platonism is famously vexed. Since Peter Brown, the standard reading holds that Augustine did not move beyond the Neoplatonism of his early dialogues until he studied the writings of the apostle Paul (...) in the mid-390s CE, after which his distinctive theology begins to emerge. In this book, Brian Dobell's basic claim is that, whatever the validity of the "volitional conversion" of book 8, Augustine is not truly converted to orthodox Christianity until he discards the Photinian (adoptionist) Christology he admits to in Confessions [hereafter conf.] 7.19.25, and discards the Platonic ascent as a means to contemplative union with God, both of which take place with the reading of Paul. But the book is equally motivated by a concern to defend the historicity of conf.; Dobell claims it is perfectly reliable, once we understand the latter half of book 7 not as a few months in 386, but as a compressed narrative spanning Augustine's entire development until his true conversion to Christianity around 395. [End Page 137]Dobell develops this argument by isolating Augustine's twofold way of salvation in the writings of the late 380s. First is the "way of authority," in which Augustine's putative Photinian Christology portrays Christ as a kind of "poor man's Plato, sent to provide a path to salvation for the uneducated masses" (96). The human Jesus is "assumed" by God and is as "a man of outstanding wisdom" (73) but is not the incarnate Son. Dobell analyzes the homo assumptus/susceptus language of the early writings, arguing that Augustine does not truly hold an orthodox Christology until 396, concordant with the development of his theology of operative grace. The second, much longer section of the book concerns the "way of reason," the intellectualist path of salvation expressed in Augustine's early obsession with the liberal disciplines. Dobell dissects the Platonic ascents of conf. 7, adducing verbal and conceptual parallels from texts ca. 387–390 (De immortalitate animae, De ordine, De libero arbitrio, De vera religione) showing how Augustine's métaphysique des degrés d'être, a concept Dobell borrows from Olivier Du Roy, provides both a means of articulating these ascents and an answer to the problem of evil. But by De doctrina christiana, Augustine has decisively rejected the Platonic ascent and the liberal disciplines, and it simply remains for his Christology to come in line for the "intellectual conversion" to be complete.Dobell's book is a significant addition to the current debate. His knowledge of the first decade or so of Augustine's literary output is impressive, and his familiarity with the secondary literature is considerable, though not encyclopedic—he misses the work of J. Patout Burns, which complicates the Pauline thesis through consideration of the anti-Donatist literature. Dobell offers magisterial and invaluable discussions of famously fraught topics such as Augustine's indecisiveness about the preexistence of the soul, or the volitional solution to the problem of evil. There are some problems with Dobell's argument, though. While his main thesis that conf. 7.9.13ff. is a kind of précis of almost a decade of intellectual development deserves serious consideration, and is an elegant solution to debates about the historicity of Augustine's narrative in conf., the supporting arguments Dobell employs are less persuasive. A major portion of his book revolves around the contention that Augustine's early, heretical Photinian Christology extends much longer than modern scholarship has realized, that Augustine rectifies this Christology in conjunction with a Pauline soteriology of grace, and that all of this has to happen before Augustine's conversion is complete. If we suspend the question of normativity inherent in deciding Augustine's "orthodoxy" (particularly prior to Chalcedon), Dobell still does not succeed in showing that the early "pedagogical" homo assumptus Christology is, in fact, adoptionist; indeed, his evidence is often rather weak (for a tacit admission, see 73). On the flip... (shrink)

In the article, I demonstrate how realistic philosophy of religion can be employed in order to obtain a preliminary verification of the truthfulness of the doctrine proclaimed by a particular religious community. The first element of a religious doctrine that qualifies for philosophical evaluation is its non-contradictory character. For this reason I endeavour to reconstruct one such doctrine and show how it is possible to demonstrate, through philosophical analyses, that such a doctrine does not meet the aforementioned criterion. For the (...) object of my studies I chose the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (called the Mormon Church for short), as I find it particularly interesting among the religious movements alternative to Christianity. Among new religious movements currently in existence the Mormon Church stands out in several respects. First, this religious community utilises a variety of sources of revelation. Furthermore, although their sacred story, that spanning a dozen or so centuries, begins in Israel it mostly takes place on American soil. Finally, the Mormon Church sets forth a vision of a future ‘holy land,’ and the concept of salvation that is essentially different from those of other Bible-based religious movements. The Mormon concept of salvation, referred to as the plan of eternal progress shows both unique goal and unique means to achieve it. People are to become gods and populate multiple worlds. According to Mormons there will be different levels of salvation associated with what life a person lived on earth. Reconstruction and philosophical analysis of the main elements of the Mormon doctrine shows its weak points, inconsistencies, and oversimplifications. From this perspective, the Mormon ‘sacred story’ hardly could be regarded as something more than a colourful and interesting myth. But the question of reasons why Mormons still put their faith in such an inconsistent doctrine lies outside the scope of these considerations. (shrink)

Fair trade is an ethical alternative to neoliberal market practices. This article examines the development of the fair trade movement, both in Mexico and abroad, beginning with the experience of UCIRI (Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Región del Istmo – Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region), an association of small coffee growers in Mexico and a main actor in the creation of the first fair trade seal in the world, Max Havelaar, in 1988. Future success (...) of the fair trade movement depends mainly on resolving the tension between the capitalist business goals and the activist transformation goals of its diverse practitioners. (shrink)

There is an internal connection between ecclesiology, the teaching about the Church that we call academic ecclesiology, and mission, which is the inner heart of the Church and becomes visible through different practices. For the Orthodox Church involved in the ecumenical movement, there is a struggle to balance ecclesiology (theology) with ecumenical mission and dialogue (practice) in a divided Christian world. Nevertheless, the recent Synod of Crete (June 2016) addressed some important elements of this struggle. I have in mind, (...) for example, the act to accept the historical name of other non-Orthodox Christian Churches and Confessions that are not in communion with it. Also, this is the first Synod of the Orthodox Churches in modern times at which ecumenical dialogue, especially in the World Council of Churches, is officially affirmed. Because of mission dialogue has to continue, “if we wish never to ‘put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ’ (1 Cor 9:12).” The present paper highlights those statements of the Holy and Great Council which have direct relevance for discussing the relation of ecclesiology and mission. I assert that we should understand firstly the document Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the of the Christian World and only then reflect upon The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World (MOCT). Furthermore, I will make some references to the other texts which were central for this conference: The Cape Town Commitment (CTC), Together Towards Life (TTL) and Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (EG). I conclude by exposing briefly my reflections after reading these mission documents and by formulating some agenda points for further work in theology of mission. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John BehrMatthew Z. ValeJohn the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John Behr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), xv + 388 pp.Father Behr's book defies summary. Its ambitions span several fields—patristics, contemporary biblical scholarship, speculative systematics, phenomenology—and Behr has controversial proposals in each. The book is not (expressly) a work of systematic (...) theology, but its speculative élan and its ambition to give a normative account of Christian theology's beating heart is unmistakable. If a vice of the book is vagueness on questions of burning Christological, protological, and eschatological interest, among its virtues is the verve and vividness with which it provokes such questions to begin with. Behr has written, not a book on John, but a Johannine manifesto on theology. [End Page 989]The book is a "symposium" in three parts, each inviting a different kind of reader of John's gospel. The first is predominantly "historical" (the early Fathers of the Johannine school, reconstructed by modern scholarship), the second predominantly "exegetical" (contemporary biblical studies), and the third "philosophical," with a single guest in Michel Henry. The book's heart is an argument about what "incarnation" means. When it comes to the Incarnation, we labor, Behr says, under what Quentin Skinner calls a "mythology of doctrine," the hermeneutical fallacy of projecting onto a tradition's classical writers positions and whole doctrinal categories developed only later (6–8). The mythology of doctrine Behr opposes is, in fact, a mythological notion of the Incarnation as "an episode in the biography of the Word" (a phrase from Rowan Williams), the episode when a "pre-incarnate Word" is born as Jesus (3, and throughout). To break the ice on this mythology, part 1 reconstructs an original milieu for John's Gospel—a school of John the Evangelist, centered upon an original Pascha celebration—in which "becoming flesh," "Word," and "human being" mean something other than the dogmatic meanings we project back onto them. This Johannine school is not the Johannine "community" posited by historical-critical studies, but the school of John's "hearers" that J. B. Lightfoot traced from Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias of Hierapolis, and Melito of Sardis down to Irenaeus (30–31). Behr's reconstruction makes the following proposals. Our evangelist is John the Elder, the beloved disciple, not the Synoptics' son of Zebedee. This John was plausibly an eyewitness to the crucifixion—alone among the evangelists. He authored both the Gospel and the Apocalypse bearing his name, according to near unanimous second-century tradition (76). The Apocalypse was possibly written before the Gospel, perhaps before the Temple's destruction. John the Elder originated the yearly Pascha celebration, and it remained peculiar to his school until the second half of the second century. This feast originally celebrated the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost as the single event of the Passion, just as in John's Gospel Jesus's ascension (12:32), glorification (13:31–2), and "handing down the Spirit" (19:30) are identified with the crucifixion. Only later was the Passion's simple white light refracted into the liturgical cycle's rainbow of distinct feasts (91–92, 243).This reconstruction is explicitly speculative. Its purpose is to enliven our imaginations about what the evangelist's vision may possibly be. If the mythological picture of the Incarnation is easily recognized as false, our theological traditions still have not entirely exorcised it from their standard narration. Behr proposes a Johannine narration untroubled by this [End Page 990] mythology. The Incarnation is not a novelty occurring for God at some moment. No previously fleshless divine agent undergoes change to become flesh at some time. The Incarnation must instead be understood "apocalyptically," as the eternal mystery of Jesus Christ being revealed for us in time (256-57). The Incarnation is Jesus's eternal identity as the Word being revealed and wrought in time and pro nobis by the Passion (24, 29, 257, 130). John's Gospel should be read, in John Ashton's words, as "an apocalypse—in reverse, upside down, inside out" (4, 99... (shrink)

In this article I explore the relation between God's absolute governance of the world and ecclesial dominion over other communities in a shared political forum that seeks the greatest good of all. On this question I compare the positions of Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, and Edward Schillebeeckx as representatives of three distinct political theologies. Whereas Gunton's reservation regarding the participation of the church's politics in divine governance shows excessive deference to human sinfulness, Jenson on the contrary tends to absorb God's (...) Rule into ecclesial politics. Drawing upon Schillebeeckx's Christology, I argue that God's absolute Rule is compatible with ecclesial sovereignty; however, this does not allow for unilateral ecclesial dominion over others, inasmuch as God's Rule is disclosed as forgiveness. (shrink)

In this article I explore the relation between God's absolute governance of the world and ecclesial dominion over other communities in a shared political forum that seeks the greatest good of all. On this question I compare the positions of Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, and Edward Schillebeeckx as representatives of three distinct political theologies. Whereas Gunton's reservation regarding the participation of the church's politics in divine governance shows excessive deference to human sinfulness, Jenson on the contrary tends to absorb God's (...) Rule into ecclesial politics. Drawing upon Schillebeeckx's Christology, I argue that God's absolute Rule is compatible with ecclesial sovereignty; however, this does not allow for unilateral ecclesial dominion over others, inasmuch as God's Rule is disclosed as forgiveness. (shrink)

In this article I explore the relation between God's absolute governance of the world and ecclesial dominion over other communities in a shared political forum that seeks the greatest good of all. On this question I compare the positions of Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, and Edward Schillebeeckx as representatives of three distinct political theologies. Whereas Gunton's reservation regarding the participation of the church's politics in divine governance shows excessive deference to human sinfulness, Jenson on the contrary tends to absorb God's (...) Rule into ecclesial politics. Drawing upon Schillebeeckx's Christology, I argue that God's absolute Rule is compatible with ecclesial sovereignty; however, this does not allow for unilateral ecclesial dominion over others, inasmuch as God's Rule is disclosed as forgiveness. (shrink)

The relationship between socio-constructionism and Christian theology has not been sufficiently explored. This paper critically analyses some of the main insights of socio-constructionist theories and suggests that a reinterpretation of the idea of social construction from a theistic perspective can avoid the unresolved problems of its radical versions. The paper argues that an order of meaning, whose origin cannot be reduced to human action, has to be presupposed for practices of social construction to work. This resonates with (...) the belief in God´s action in human reality. (shrink)

With a crown of thorns on his head, nails in his hands and feet, and a spear wound in his chest, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who was hanging on the Cross, has occupied Christians for hundreds of years and continues to do so. All Christian faith centres around Jesus, who sacrificed himself on the crucifix for this symbolized event, or "salvation of sinful mankind." In this framework, Christians believe that every human being should imitate the life (...) of Christ as a "model savior", and especially experience the same wounds and passion on the crucifix. Paul was the first to say that he had the scars of Christ on his body. Francis of Assisi and others followed him, and they were considered stigmatics/stigmata bearers. In our country, although there have been many studies on Jesus, no study on the subject of stigmata has been found. Therefore, in this article, the emergence of the understanding of stigmata in the context of bearing the wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross on the body of believers, its historical development, the perceptions of the Middle Ages and the stigmata of Paul and Francis of Assisi will be discussed. Thus, the development of the understanding of stigmata in the Christian world and how effective it is will be tried to be revealed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Respecting the Boundaries of Knowledge:Teaching Christian Discernment with Humility and Dignity, a Response to Paul O. IngramSandra Costen KunzNatural Science and Buddhist Philosophy and Practice as Resources for Christian Spiritual DiscernmentBoundary Questions Arise When Teaching Spiritual Discernment in Western ContextsMy response to Paul Ingram's chapter titled "Constrained by Boundaries" in The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science1 will examine ways the Buddhist-Christian-natural science "trilogue" he advocates (...) might address some recurring problems encountered when teaching spiritual discernment in Western Christian contexts. These problems are examples of what Ingram calls boundary questions. He describes boundary questions as issues raised within a tradition of learning (such as an academic discipline or a religious community) that cannot be completely resolved within this tradition because of the culturally constructed "constraints" of the scope of its investigations and the assumptions and methods with which it makes its investigations. Ingram argues that boundary questions push hard against the cultural constraints that define a tradition. He gives examples of ways these questions can engender renewal within a tradition of learning if they are addressed honestly in conversation with another tradition (or traditions) of learning. This requires humility, but such conversation can help a tradition distinguish between the cultural constraints that still sharpen its core discovery processes and those that impede its quest in its current context.I will argue that dichotomous habits of thought endemic in modern Western cultures have constructed unnecessary boundary constraints within Western Christian theological anthropology and practical theology. I have watched Western Christians who are trying to discover God's guidance through spiritual discernment slam up against these constraints, and I have listened to the recurring boundary questions they [End Page 175] pose at these borders. Dichotomous assumptions and methods of investigation often weaken Western Christian spiritual discernment processes.I will suggest that particular Buddhist and natural science theories and practices of discovering knowledge—and some of the knowledge these practices have discovered—can be useful in teaching Christians spiritual discernment. This is because they can widen the scope of what human beings notice. This scope includes what people notice in their mental imagery, in the practices of their culture, and in creation around them. Spiritual discernment, as I describe it, involves the interplay of human imagination and discovery with God's guidance of all of creation, including human imagination and discovery. The human side of this interplay is made possible by the human spirit that (following practical theologian James E. Loder [1931-2001]) I describe as those unique human capacities that (1) allow us to reflect on our thinking and thus make partially free unselfish choices, and (2) draw us toward loving harmony with our creator and fellow creatures.2I am writing as a practical theologian specializing in Christian education who has studied cognitive neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy and practice. My job is to prepare those who lead Christian churches and schools to teach Christians how to continue Jesus's mission to rescue this world. I believe the most effective way I can help Christian organizations engage in positive, long-term social transformation is to teach their leaders how to teach their members time-tested spiritual discernment practices framed within the context of Christian faith.Spiritual Discernment and Christian Spiritual DiscernmentI assume that all cultures and communities that have sustained a healthy life together have done so in part because at least some of their members have practiced at least some form of spiritual discernment. Therefore I assume all healthy Christian and non-Christian religious communities have developed practices of spiritual discernment. I do distinguish, however, between spiritual discernment in general and specifically Christian spiritual discernment. Drawing on Christian, Buddhist, and neuroscience perspectives on decision making, creative problem solving, and behavioral change, I describe spiritual discernment in general as a transformative "process of divine-human cooperative imagination, focused upon reconfiguring the relationships among the actors and the other factors in a specific situation. This reconfiguration often begins in the imaginative rearrangement of mental images of these relationships, and continues in concrete social actions which eventually result in the actual rearrangement of social structures."3I thus describe spiritual discernment as... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sexism and Misogyny in the Christian Tradition:Liberating AlternativesRosemary Radford RuetherThe oppressive patterns in Christianity toward women and other subjugated people do not come from specific doctrines, but from a patriarchal and hierarchical reading of the system of Christian symbols as a whole. These same symbols can be read from a prophetic and liberating perspective. So what I will do in this essay is to show how Christian symbols have (...) been read as a system of domination, on the one hand, and then how they can be read as a system of liberation, on the other hand.1 The framework for reading Christian symbols as a system of domination derives from patriarchal slaveocracies, the social system in which Christianity was born. Yet Christianity also began as critique of this system that proposed prophetic-liberating alternatives to it that were then partially repressed.The New Testament is shaped in the context of this struggle. It contains testimonies to a subversive vision which has been partly repressed by reimposed patriarchal patterns. Thus the New Testament itself is the main source both for canonizing a sexist and slave social system and also for reconstructing an alternative egalitarian vision. In this essay I will first summarize the patriarchal reading of Christianity as it became the dominant interpretation between the second and sixth centuries, with further elaboration in medieval scholasticism. I will address this reading of Christianity under the five symbols of anthropology, sin and grace, God, Christ, and the Church. This will show that the patriarchal reading of these symbols is not a problem of the prejudices of particular theologians, but a comprehensive worldview. I will then analyze these same symbols and show how they can (and, in my view, should) be read from a prophetic-liberating perspective.I begin with the issue of anthropology. How is gender, male and female, related to humanness? Early Christianity saw a close relation between the human soul, understood as mind or reason, and the divine logos, which was seen as the divine nature of Jesus as the Christ. They interpreted the text of Genesis 1:27, “God created the human in the image of God,” to refer to the mind or soul in each human person. The human soul as mind or reason mirrors on a created level the divine logos or reason manifest in Christ. The human soul thus partakes in a created fashion in God’s nature and so is immortal and capable of eternal life. [End Page 83]But do women possess reason? Are they made in the image of God, or only male humans? The Greek philosophical tradition, particularly in Aristotle, which shaped early Christian views on this, believed that women lacked autonomous reason and were therefore inherently inferior and dependent on the male. For Aristotle, slaves and Asians (i.e., barbarians) were also dependent on ruling-class Greek males, who alone were fully rational.2 Thus Greek philosophy gave Christianity both a strongly gendered and also a classist and racist reading of anthropology.The Jewish tradition was ambivalent about whether women were equally made in the image of God. Some rabbinic teachers defended the belief that women were equally made in God’s image, while others argued that Adam alone was God’s image.3 This ambivalence is reflected in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11. Here Paul says, “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife and God is the head of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:3, NRS). Paul lays out a cosmic hierarchical order of headship of God over Christ, Christ over the male human, and the male human over the female human as the basis for his argument that the woman should cover her head, but the male should not cover his head. “For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but the woman is the reflection of man” (1 Cor. 11:7).Paul goes on to insist that “man was not made from woman but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but... (shrink)

Abstract:Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within an organization held by the employees of that organization. These subjective perceptions of fairness have been empirically shown to be related to 1) attitudinal changes in job satisfaction, organizational commitment and managerial trust beliefs; 2) behavioral changes in task performance activities and ancillary extra-task efforts to assist group members and improve group methods; 3) numerical changes in the quantity, (...) quality and efficiency of divisional outputs; and—though this is far more tentative—4) eventual changes in the competitive advantage and financial performance of the full organization. The authors propose that these constructs can be applied to all stakeholders, rather than just to the current employees of the firm, and that objective determinations of fairness by the managers can be related to subjective perceptions of fairness by the stakeholders that will result in the sequential series of attitudinal, behavioral and numerical changes that will lead to performance improvements. In short, the authors propose a normative stakeholder theory of the firm, based upon ethical principles, that will have testable descriptive hypotheses derived from the behavioral constructs. (shrink)

This article considers one element within the long tradition of the church’s self-identification as a city. It focuses on England, c. 1450 to c. 1510, and considers how the civic rhetoric developed by Italian humanists, pre-eminently Leonardo Bruni, was refracted through an ecclesiastical lens and so appropriated for English clerical use. It describes how two useful elements were quarried from recent writings imported from Italy: the first was the emphasis on the city and its buildings as a locus of virtue; (...) the second was that, because of its virtue, that city was under attack. The discussion begins with the time of social unrest in the mid-fifteenth century,in the wake of which Thomas Chaundler wrote his praise of Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, and his building works in his episcopal city. It ends in the first years of the sixteenth century with the relations between Christopher Urswick, dean of Windsor, and Thomas Goldstone, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. Their re-use of older texts, specifically the Speculum regis Edwardi III, which they assumed to be by Archbishop Simon Islip, and more recent humanist ones, by Celso Maffei and Goldstone’s predecessor as prior, William Sellyng, identified other enemies who attacked the church: invoking the name of Thomas Becket, they saw those oppressing them to be not rebels against authority but those in authority. This allows us to reflect on how a few English readers of humanist civic rhetoric found in it potentially radical force. (shrink)

According to robust versions of virtue epistemology, the reason why knowledge is incompatible with certain kinds of luck is that justified true beliefs must be achieved by the agent . In a recent set of papers, Pritchard has challenged these sorts of views, advancing different arguments against them. I confront one of them here, which is constructed upon scenarios affected by environmental luck, such as the fake barn cases. My objection to Pritchard differs from those offered until now by (...) Carter , Jarvis or Littlejohn in that it is based on the claim that cognitive performances may not be properly considered as achievements beyond the scope of the agent’s intentional action—an idea that confers more explanatory power on my argument, and contributes to stregthening links between knowledge and agency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Has Chalcedon to Do with Lhasa? John Keenan’s and Lai Pai-chiu’s Reflections on Classical Christology and the Possible Shape of a Tibetan Theology of IncarnationThomas CattoiThe starting point of this paper is a critique of John Keenan’s so-called “Mahāyāna Christology” in The Meaning of Christ, in light of Lai Pai-chiu’s “Chinese” response to Keenan’s position. My argument is that Lai correctly construes the Chalcedonian definition as (...) a critique of Hellenist ontology, but fails to critique Keenan’s crucial contention that this same definition ratifies the subjugation of lived spiritual experience to abstract philosophical speculation. I also claim that Lai does not engage Keenan’s flawed use, in his constructive Christology, of the teaching of the Buddha-bodies, which in my opinion could provide an apposite template for the development of a Tibetan contextual Christology. My paper has a twofold purpose: on one hand, I sketch the contours of a possible Tibetan theology of incarnation; on the other hand, I offer a few methodological reflections on the role of classical doctrinal definitions in the development of new contextual theologies.The burden of this paper is to offer a few suggestions toward the formulation of a culturally contextual theology of incarnation, which uses the resources of Mahāyāna speculation on the embodiment of the Buddha. My starting point is Lai’s critique of Keenan’s well-known 1989 volume The Meaning of Christ, in which Keenan sets out to critique traditional Hellenist Chalcedonian Christology and argues for an alternative articulation of the hypostatic union based on the Mahāyāna teaching of the Buddha-bodies.1 Lai’s article revisits Keenan’s critique and argues that the Chalcedonian definition, far from canonizing the uncritical appropriation of a school of thought, evidences the profound limitations of philosophical discourse. Keenan’s underlying contention that traditional Christology subjects the Christian message to the strictures of alien categories is thus deconstructed, although Lai goes on to offer yet one more Christological synthesis based on the Chinese understanding of Buddha nature. In my paper I concur with Lai’s reading of Chalcedonian categories, which I regard [End Page 13] as more accurate and fruitful than Keenan’s, but I also argue that Lai fails to engage the totality of Keenan’s argument and therefore does not appreciate the deeper flaws in Keenan’s appropriation of the Buddhakāya teaching. My constructive suggestion toward the end of this paper is that such teaching could actually provide a most useful template for the development of a “Tibetan” theology of incarnation, which would remain in continuity with the Chalcedonian tradition, and yet resort to the linguistic and philosophical categories of the local culture.Theologians wishing to develop contextual articulations of Christian doctrine often meet considerable resistance, since their emphasis on the culturally contingent nature of traditional formulas is seen as a challenge to their continuing normative character. As early as 1969, Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity expressed serious reservations about the growing tendency to “de-Hellenize” Christian theology and strongly reasserted the enduring “providential” character of traditional Trinitarian and Christological formulas.2 At the same time, the development of a postcolonial Christianity in many Asian and African countries could not but call for inculturated expressions of the Christian faith that embedded the Christian message in the categories of the local culture. Theologian Stephen B. Bevans begins his work Models of Contextual Theology claiming that in the contemporary world, “the contextualization of [Christian] theology [...] is really a theological imperative.” 3 The understanding of theology as an objective and unchanging science of faith is thus superseded by a new approach that gives pride of place to the religious experience of the individual and the community where he or she lives, operates, and worships.4 Bevans’s call for a contextual theology views the “experience of the present” as the ultimately normative benchmark against which the “experience of the past” is assessed, in the search for a new synthesis rooted in a particular cultural and social location.5The development of new Christological formulas that use the resources of Asian Buddhist culture is thus possible only after the... (shrink)

This article explores the background of the document ‘Christian witness in a multi-religious world’ to ask how the significance of the death of Jesus Christ can be communicated in the context of religious plurality in India. Traditional approaches to the death of Christ are presented as well as dialogical approaches testing them against the recommendation of the document that Christian witness in a pluralistic world includes engaging in dialogue with people of different religions and cultures.

This paper argues that Augustine did not take the proof inSoliloquia2.22-4, which centers on the Aristotelian notion of ‘being in a subject’, from a single source but constructed it in a deliberately imperfect manner from several passages from Porphyry’s works on Aristotle’sCategoriesin order to supplement it with further arguments in Book Three. InDe immortalitate animaeAugustine explicitly discloses the weaknesses of the proof and repairs them by means of a Neoplatonic notion of causality.

The anti-tuberculosis BCG vaccine was conceived and developed between 1905 and 1921 at Pasteur Institutes in France. Between 1921 and A. Calmette’s death in 1933, the vaccine went through a first period of national and international production and distribution for its use in humans. In France these activities were exclusively carried out by Calmette and his collaborators at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Initially improvised production in a small room in the cellar gave way in 1931 to the construction (...) of the spacious and magnificent ‘New laboratories for research on tuberculosis and the preparation of the BCG’ within the premises of the Pasteur Institute. Presentation and image-building of the vaccine in France insisted on the fact that the BCG was not a commercial specialty but distributed free of charge. The technical monopoly of its production nevertheless lay with the Paris Pasteur Institute and standardization of scientific proof of safety, efficacy and stability was dominated by that Institute in France. In contrast, the international production and distribution of the vaccine was entrusted and transferred, free of charge, to trustworthy laboratories outside France. Multiplication of producers and users led to an increased need for standardization. For this process the analysis distinguishes between the standardization of scientific proof concerning safety, efficacy and stability of the vaccine and standardization of its medical uses. Whereas standardization was rather successful in the inter-war period in France, the international efforts remained rather unsuccessful. Only after world war II under Scandinavian leadership and in the context of mass vaccination programs supported by the WHO and UNICEF was the international standardization effectively implemented and succeeded at least to some extend. (shrink)