Christianity, Misc

Presence as ordinarily understood requires spatio-temporal proximity. If however Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is understood as spatio-temporal proximity it would take a miracle to secure multiple location and an additional miracle to cover it up so that the presence of Christ wherever the Eucharist was celebrated made no empirical difference. And, while multiple location is logically possible, such metaphysical miracles—miracles of distinction without difference, which have no empirical import—are problematic. I propose an account of Eucharist according to which Christ (...) is indeed really and objectively present in the religiously required sense, without benefit of metaphysical miracles. (shrink)

This reflection on the Petrine Ministry is being made freely available to students during this ongoing pandemic of COVID 19. This very brief essay seeks to understand the meaning of the title of the eponymous novel by Graham Greene.

In this essay I discuss the concept of suffering, the causes of suffering, and the Christian solution to the problem of suffering. I conclude that there is no basis, within the Christian view of things, for raising the traditional problem of evil through reflection on the fact of substantial suffering in the world. I thus respectfully suggest that the problem of evil is only a problem for non-believers, who have the wrong perspective on the nature and source of suffering. (When (...) first uploaded to this website, the text of this essay was inadvertently replaced by that for a different essay, "Morality and Fallen Man." That essay has been uploaded and the original text restored.). (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate the implications for the discussion of theism in philosophy of religion for the beliefs of ordinary Christians and conclude that, in light of its historical development, those implications are minimal.

These two essays (minuscule acts of reading the Bible) by a Hindu, is a nascent praxis of theology. They have been privately circulated and now I am putting them up.

Reading only the contemporary and popular literature on the Orthodox spiritual life, it is possible to get the impression that Orthodox Christianity affirms only mystical theology and that it has no place for philosophical investigation, rational inquiry, or thinking for oneself. In this paper I show that this view of the relationship between philosophy and the Orthodox Christian life is one-sided and distorted. For while it is certainly true that reason is impotent to lay bare the very nature of God, (...) St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Maximos the Confessor, and St. John of Damascus all see it as a guide and powerful ally in coming to know that God exists and a little of what He is like, as well as in patterning our lives after He who is the source of all life. The explicit statements that these Fathers make as well as the use that they make of reason in their writings show how it can function as a guide for those in the beginning stages of the spiritual life even if it ultimately points beyond itself to the God who is beyond every conception. (shrink)

If Jewish Bolsheviks could put an end to the imperial rule of the Romanovs, could they pose a threat to the vision of a Third Reigh? A question the German National Socialists are likely to have asked themselves before and on the eve of plotting the rise of the Nazi regime. After all, Europe had had a long-standing relationship with blaming the Jews for the world’s miseries. A relationship Germany was ready to refuel, as indicated by German Field Marshal Walter (...) von Reichenau, when he stated that ‘the most essential aim of war against the Jewish-bolshevistic system is a complete destruction of their means of power and the elimination of Asiatic influence from the European culture.’ But the German fears of Jewish interference with their great scheme for Europe’s future, must surely have been inspired by more than just the age-old conspiratorial allegation that Jews were the main forces behind world politics. As such, this essay will seek to inspect the apparent rise of antisemitic fears at the time, and put a case forward to show how religion played into all this. (shrink)

This paper argues that at First Principles 2.3.6 Origen is responding to Gnostics who used a particular reading of Plato’s myths about the afterlife to justify their own belief that the elect will go after death into an incorporeal state. It examines the use of the terms idea and phantasia in commentary on Plato’s Phaedo; the evidence for Origen’s knowledge of such commentary; the evidence which allegedly shows that Origen himself believed in an incorporeal paradise; and the evidence that Gnostics (...) in the third century drew on Platonic eschatology. (shrink)

Social integration was theorized to be a ‘secularizing’ process for immigrants in Western Europe. Assuming that immigrants adapt to new social environments by complying with the mainstream culture of their receiving countries, immigrant religiosity is expected to decline as they assimilate in societies where secular norms prevail. Alternatively, religion could be a coping mechanism for immigrants who struggle to assimilate in their receiving countries. ‘Buffer’ theories of religion suggest that religious identity could be interchangeable with ethnicity and nationality to mitigate (...) the identity conflicts immigrants experience. This paper addresses the following research question: What role does religion play in the identity conflict experienced by immigrants who are both an ethnic minority and a national of a Western European country? Particularly, I explore the pertinence of religious identity for first-generation Sub-Saharan African Christian immigrants (SSACI) in Germany and France, where the models of immigrant assimilation diverge. Statistical tests were conducted on data derived from two surveys to compare religious, national, and ethnic self-identities at the group and individual levels. The group comparisons suggest that Christianity was indeed more salient for SSACI than native-born Christians. SSACIs without citizenship were also more likely to experience identity conflict, to which they may cope by associating less with their ethnicity or more with their religious identity. Perceived discrimination was associated with identity conflict only in Germany where immigrant assimilation is traditionally based on a common ancestry, in contrast to the values-based model in France. These are consistent with the predictions derived from ‘buffer’ theories of immigrant religiosity but longitudinal studies are needed for a more robust understanding of these trends. (shrink)

This book explores and expounds upon questions of paradox and contradiction in theology with an emphasis on recent contributions from analytic philosophical theology. It addresses questions such as: What is the place of paradox in theology? Where might different systems of logic (e.g., paraconsistent ones) find a place in theological discourse (e.g., Christology)? What are proper responses to the presence of contradiction(s) in one’s theological theories? Are appeals to analogical language enough to make sense of paradox? Bringing together an impressive (...) line-up of theologians and philosophers, the volume offers a range of fresh perspectives on a central topic. It is valuable reading for scholars of theology and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

As we explore panentheism, what can we learn from Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita? Although widely acknowledged as a panentheist, in the contemporary debate on how to characterize panentheism, Rāmānuja barely features. But Rāmānuja's position is worth studying not just because it bears on taxonomical questions. Among its interesting features is a conception on which devotional love, bhakti, serves an epistemic function that is also of crucial soteriological relevance. This chapter addresses both these topics. First, Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita is used to cast doubt on (...) a characterization of panentheism recently proposed by Mikael Stenmark. Second, Rāmānuja's conception of bhakti is juxtaposed with two conceptions of love that serve an analogous dual function: Weil's conception of supernatural love and Murdoch's conception of love as just attention. Rāmānuja's position, it is argued, is distinct, partly due to his panentheist commitments, but it also shares a number of features with the other two. In closing, it is suggested that for further comparative work on these three, ample room remains. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that Platonic Forms are angels. I make this identification by claiming that Platonic Forms have the characteristics of angels, in particular, that Platonic Forms are alive. I offer four arguments for this claim. First, it seems that engaging in self-directed action is a sufficient condition for being alive. The Forms are, as teleological activities, self-directed actions. Second, bodies receive their being from their Forms, and some bodies are essentially alive. Third, in the Good, all (...) the types of goodness, including life, are identical. The Forms are appearances of the Good. Fourth, since the Good imparts as much goodness as it can, the Forms are alive unless there is some bar to their being alive. There are good reasons to think that there is no such bar. I then show that ethical vices do not give body to human form, but give body to other forms—those that are evil angels. Lastly, I provide a survey of the relationships that various religious traditions posit between ethical vice and the demonic. (shrink)

I argue that the epistemology underlying Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic methodology is quasi-fideist. According to this view, the rationality of religious belief is dependent on absolutely certain ungrounded grounds, called hinges. I further argue that the quasi-fideist epistemology of presuppositional apologetics explains why Van Til’s method is neither fideist nor problematically circular: hinges are rational in the sense that they are partly constitutive of rationality, and all beliefs (not just religious ones) depend on hinges. In addition, it illuminates something (...) of why it may strike one as a misguided or uncompelling apologetic method: instead of starting by tackling the comparatively minor epistemic commitments of the nonbeliever, it directly approaches their deepest and surest commitments. (shrink)

This is an essay stressing on the differences between Christianity and the Sanatana Dharma. It provides a starting point for interreligious dialogue between Hindus and Christians.

One reading of the Doctrine of Original Sin has it that we are guilty of a sin committed by Adam, thousands of years ago. Fission theorists account for this by saying that Adam fissioned after he sinned and that each of us is one of his ‘fission successors’. This paper recaps the current discussion in the literature about this theory, arguing that the proposed version does not work for reasons already raised by Rea and Hudson. I then introduce a new (...) version of fission theory that avoids the Rea-Hudson objection. (shrink)

In this short essay, we sketch a theory of faith that features resilience in the face of challenges to relying on those in whom you have faith. We argue that it handles a variety of both religious and secular faith-data, e.g., the value of faith in relationships of mutual faith and faithfulness, how the Christian and Hebrew scriptures portray pístis and ʾĕmûnāh, and the character of faith as it is often expressed in popular secular venues.

This article seeks to consider the compatibility between the doctrine of the Trinity and the theory of the transcendental properties by offering a consideration of the notion of the ‘gift’ as a transcendental term. In particular, this article presents a re-reading of John Milbank’s influential theology of the gift through Colin Gunton’s project of developing ‘trinitarian transcendentals’. In addition to showing how Milbank’s notion of the gift could be systematically understood in terms of what Gunton calls a ‘trinitarianly developed transcendental’ (...) which nonetheless avoids many of the problems found in Gunton’s original project, this article argues understanding ‘gift’ as a transcendental term can not only provide us with new ways of reconceiving the relationship between the philosophy of transcendental properties and various traditional doctrines, it can moreover show us how the traditional and biblical names of the Holy Spirit as ‘the Gift’ and the Son as ‘the Word’ can offer new ways of developing distinctively trinitarian accounts of metaphysics. (shrink)

This blog post begins by showing the pejorative connotations inherent in the term 'Hindu' and goes on to lay bare the differences between Hinduism and other religions including Jainism and the Abrahamic religions. So that this necessary project of dialogues is not hijacked by celibates of various traditions; the post ends with these reflections: "The Hare Krishna movement, and all other prominent movements within the Sanatana Dharma including the various well known cults of hero-worship are all structured around centralised superstructures (...) which we acquired during our long history of colonisation. Many of these movements appeal to the Western mind because they are authoritarian with strict rules. But these rules have been negated within the Sanatana Dharma by thinkers ranging from Sri Utpaladeva to Sri Abhinavagupta to Sri Kshemraja. The Sanatana Dharma stresses marriage over celibacy not because it is akin to Protestantism. There is none to protest against. Nor is it better to marry than to burn. It is simply this; marriage is not a lower state than other choices in life. It is a first step towards recognising that one can indeed be two who form a monad.". (shrink)

Should we defer to or strongly prefer the majority opinion in theology, whether it be the majority opinion over the history of the church (as in G. K. Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead”) or the majority opinion of contemporary theologians? I argue that because of the vast differences in accessible evidence between past and present-day theologians, diachronic majority opinion is not a good indicator of where the truth lies. In the synchronic case, ignorance of minority arguments, biases, selection effects, and (...) the difficulty to deciding who gets to vote present many opportunities for majorities to be wrong. Finally, I consider whether the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit could rescue the democracy of the dead, but conclude that given the gentle way God corrects us, diachronic majority opinion, apart from belief in a very basic set of truths, is not epistemically bolstered by the Spirit. (shrink)

St. Paul writes, “whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10: 31 NABRE).” This essay employs the work of St. Thomas Aquinas and the recent philosophical work of Daniel Johnson (2020) on this command to investigate a series of questions that the command raises. What is glory? How does one properly act for glory and for the glory of another? How is it possible to do everything for the glory of God? I begin with Aquinas’ (...) account of glory and the pursuit of glory for God’s glory and Aquinas’s answers to some of the above questions that can be drawn from his discussion in De Malo. I defend Aquinas against criticisms from Daniel Johnson and present his own interpretation of the command. I advance the discussion through adding two additional interpretations that do not rely on a controversial assumption Johnson makes. Next, I address the puzzle of how we can intend everything for the glory of God using Aquinas’s three-fold account of intention. Finally, I discuss the relation between charity and the desire for God’s glory and how regular, actual intentions of one’s actions for the glory of God increases charity. (shrink)

Al correlacionar el aspecto histórico de la Escritura y su estatus como logos, Rudolf Bultmann introduce un procedimiento exegético-hermenéutico basado en la investigación histórico-crítica de la Escritura e impone, a su vez, la interpretación del logos como kerigma en un proceso que involucra las posibilidades de conocimiento presentes en un determinado contexto histórico-cultural y que conduce a la necesidad de corresponder a la cosmovisión de la época actual. Así, a partir del análisis crítico de Paul Ricoeur, el artículo se centra (...) en la desmitologización como distinción entre kerigma y mito en un movimiento que se solapa con el artificio mitológico y converge en el cuestionamiento de su significado original a través de un proceso que, al fin y al cabo, requiere su permanencia bajo el horizonte de la interpretación. El artículo señala que Ricoeur muestra que Bultmann prescinde de la reflexión que involucra al lenguaje lato sensu como objeto, superponiendo el lenguaje de la fe al lenguaje del mito en un movimiento que, aunque pretendiendo suplantar al sacrificium intellectus, finalmente converge hacia un construcción que tiende a exigir el sacrificium intellectus en las fronteras de la desmitologización y en el lenguaje de la fe que interviene en su proceso. (shrink)

Origen of Alexandria can be credited as the founder of a Christian speculative angelology, in which Christ the Logos is both the creator and the interpreter of the angels. He introduces the angels as the first created rational beings who, in contemplating the divine Word (Logos), freely choose to direct their will as holy angels in service to or wicked demons in antagonism against the love of God. The first created rational beings are divided into three orders: the angels, the (...) demons, and the neutral spirits of human souls. The angels remain closest in contemplation of the Logos, yet, due to their negligence, descend to unfold in the angelic hierarchy. The angels and demons thereafter guide the movements of all spirits, substances, and signs in the created world. The neutral spirits of human souls can choose to follow either the guidance of guardian angels or demons. And yet after the Incarnation, the angels are distinguished from the demons by their choice to follow Christ. Origen’s angelology has often been regarded as an early Christian alternative to Middle Platonic daemonologies. And after Karl Barth, his angelology has come to be dispensed from Christian theology. However, as Jean Daniélou has observed, Origen had previously departed from Platonic daemonology in affirming that angelic mediacy must pass away like the light of the stars before the brilliance of the Logos of Christ. He had, in this way, already assimilated the mediacy of the angels to the absolute mediation of Christ. And, in assimilating angelic to christic mediacy, Origen also attributes the reason with which the world is moved to the divine reason of the divine Word (Logos) of Christ in God. Origen’s angelology can thus be read both before and after Barth as a science of the angels. (shrink)

The Christian and Islamic doctrine of the VIRGIN BIRTH claim God asexually impregnated the Virgin Mary with Jesus, Mary’s impregnation was fully consensual (VIRGIN CONSENT), and God never acts immorally (DIVINE GOODNESS). First, I show that God’s actions and Mary’s background beliefs undermine her consent by virtue of coercive incentives, Mary’s comparative powerlessness, and the generation of moral conflicts. Second, I show that God’s nondisclosure of certain reasonably relevant facts undermines Mary’s informed consent. Third, I show that a recent attempt (...) by Jack Mulder to rescue VIRGIN CONSENT fails. As DIVINE GOODNESS and VIRGIN CONSENT are more central to orthodoxy, Christians and Muslims have powerful reason to reject VIRGIN BIRTH. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In the essay I analyse Micheletti’s three theses concerning: (a) the notion of mystery in relation to the “evidentialistic claim”; (b) analogical metaphysics in relation to “univocist immanentism” and to the importance of developing an analogical theism; (c) the fallibilistic conception of reason in relation to natural law, universalistic ethics and the so-called “essentialism” applied to individual human nature. I will try to show how deep is the intertwining and mutual implication of mystery and analogy – in metaphysics and theology, (...) in epistemology and ontology, in anthropology and ethics – and how Micheletti’s works have been an important step in bringing these two notions back to the center of the discussion that introduces oneself in the “question of God” and in the “question of Human being”. (shrink)

Although the question of whether, in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, sanctifying grace is “created” or “uncreated” has received considerable attention in the last several decades, many of the questions and arguments proposed by those, such as Karl Rahner, Jerome Ebacher, and A.N. Williams, in favor of grace being uncreated have gone unanswered. Among these ancillary questions and arguments are those concerning the proper subject of grace, the categorial classification of grace, and the reason for the mystery and unconsciousness of (...) grace. These questions appear unrelated, but, as this paper argues, they are each logically connected to each other and to the overall thesis that sanctifying grace is created, not uncreated. This paper aims to make Aquinas’s thesis that grace is created more palatable to objectors by addressing each of these previously unaddressed ancillary questions. (shrink)

We respond to Stephen T. Davis’ criticism of our earlier essay, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis.” We argue that the Standard Model of physics is relevant and decisive in establishing the implausibility and low explanatory power of the Resurrection hypothesis. We also argue that the laws of physics have entailments regarding God and the supernatural and, against Alvin Plantinga, that these same laws lack the proviso “no agent supernaturally interferes.” Finally, we offer Bayesian arguments for the Legend hypothesis and against the (...) Resurrection hypothesis. (shrink)

This review shows how all journeys are not futile; how human frailty makes us holy, in a certain sense. This review shows the great depth of the sovereignty of the Good. And how Professor Lane shows us that while all feet are clay; some realise so and go beyond their own frailties to tap into that which can only be experienced. Professor Lane should not be called Lane because academic styles demand us to do so. He actually professes what he (...) writes. If only one read the book then one will know what literature is. Literature is a journey. And not gobbledygook and blah. Wake up. COVID 19 and EBOLA are here. In my practise as a mental healthcare person, I am yet to hear a person call on Freud or Lacan or Marx, for that matter before going into wonderland. So take it or leave it; this is a great book. I have tried doing justice to Professor Lane's scholarship. (shrink)

This review shows how during COVID 19, poetry and theology both can soothe us. The collection of essays in this anthology is wide ranging engaging with Dante; right up to Wallace Stevens and Denise Levertov. The reviewer thanks the Ramakrishna Mission for providing him with a hard copy of this book. In passing; in the spirit of IndianLivesMatter, one notes that Prabuddha Bharata has never missed an issue from 1896 till date. In his long stint as reviewer for the Ramakrishna (...) Mission's mouthpiece; this reviewer had to perforce castigate authors. In this review which draws to an end his decade long pro bono career as a reviewer at Prabuddha Bharata; the reviewers bids his constant reader adieu. (shrink)

This review does not comment adversely against the original writer of this work, who is a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. The review shows how this particular edition of the book fails as a study edition. It does not show, even in its reprint version, the sources of St. Teresa of Avila's mysticism. This edition of the book is shallow and irrelevant. Not so the actual text of St. Teresa of Avila.

This is one of a series of reviews of Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks.

Bernard McGinn was a great historian of Christianity. But in this book under review he fails to do justice to the history of the Summa. He fails to understand the ontologies of the economic theories of Bernard Lonergan and the theology of Karl Rahner, for examples. The book is patchy and seems under-researched. McGinn does not do justice to the influence of the Summa as a text which forms a bridge between St. Augustine of Hippo and Hannah Arendt and Jean (...) Lyotard. The review is marred by a typos which the proofreader(s) of Prabuddha Bharata overlooked. Of course, the onus of the error lies with the reviewer. (shrink)

This review of one in the series of the monumental primary works of Kierkegaard shows him as the champion and, as it were, an inaugurator of the phenomenological turn in both philosophy and literature. The review touches upon serious issues regarding mass culture and Christianity. The review of the eighth volume in this series was published in January 2020, and these two reviews are the first by any Indian Hindu. While discussing Kierkegaard the reviewer touches upon John Caputo's theology derived (...) from Jürgen Moltmann's concept of a weak God. There are inadvertent typos in this review. (shrink)

Wendy Laura Belcher has done her cultural work by queering Mother Walatta Petros's life in this one of a kind book. The struggles of Mother Walatta Petros and her nuns and their heirs' reluctance to enunciate same sex desire is brought out well in this book and its review in Prabuddha Bharata which has not missed an issue from 1896 to date. The book under review establishes Mother Walatta Petros as an African proto-feminist. This is a very well researched book. (...) The genre of the gädl too is very well brought out by Belcher and Kleiner. Medievalists offline and online really do not as yet think African indigenous works as worthy of their consideration. Belcher overcame many roadblocks to write something actually worth reading. Because of constraint of space, the book could not be reviewed more expansively. While the book is one of its kind in its domain; it is still an act of colonial interference within Ethiopian realpolitiks of religions. I have mentioned in the review that African Roman Catholic Cardinals like Cardinal Sarah insist on washing his Church's dirty linen in private. Now, the question is, would say, Wendy Laura Belcher and Kleiner have the guts and their publisher too, to write about paedophilia in the various American Churches? Is it not convenient to impute lesbianism to Mother Walatta Petros and shy away from writing about female desire say, within the global Loreto Convents? This reviewer presumes from this book that all convents are dens of female desire: some can be enunciated by white folks; some cannot. The question is: why queer Ethiopian spirituality when Mother Walatta Petros is no longer alive to defend herself? (shrink)

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H Kirmmse, David D Possen, Joel D S Rasmussen, and Vanessa Rumble working with the Princeton University Press and the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen have produced this huge work with facsimiles etc. The review comments on Kierkegaard's shrewd observations which are applicable today in the New Media World of information skews in a COVID 19 world. Further; Kierkegaard's attack against mediocrity is commented on. This review finds Kierkegaard on St (...) Augustine of Hippo as immature. It is another thing that Kierkegaard's observations and this reviewer's extrapolations from them are not yet part of the New Media Studies's mostly platitude-filled webinars. How long will we go on about Marshall McLuhan? At least let us now learn from that most sharp of ironists: that the Press will be the Press and its mostly about optics. One wonders still how, Kierkegaard misread so much Augustine? Well, no man is an island and Kierkegaard tried to be an anonymous Christian. An impossibility. (shrink)

"Kierkegaard’s output is vast and earlier, was not available in English. Had they been available then certainly [Edith] Stein, [Simone] Weil, [Hannah] Arendt, and [Susan] Neiman would have constructed their theodicies around Kierkegaard more fully, abandoning the charlatanism of Martin Heidegger’s Nazi histrionics. These Princeton hardbacks, handsomely bound, with appealing fonts and meticulous notes will help disseminate Kierkegaard’s writings to a broader audience." This is how this review focussed on Kierkegaard's theodicy sees the volume under review. The reviewer thanks the (...) Ramakrishna Mission for getting the hardcopy of this book to this reviewer who is a recluse in a non-glamorous backwater within Kolkata; India. If the Ramakrishna Mission weren't generous enough; then this reviewer would not have been able to get his hardcover copy. The review thanks the Ramakrishna Mission for getting the hardcopy of this book to this reviewer who is a recluse in a non-glamorous backwater within Kolkata; India. Indian lives too matter! First world scholars do not read what people like I write. They in their white hot rage take it as a given that our writings don't matter. But the Ramakrishna Mission will outlast this reviewer and hundred others who will come by. In this sense; this review matters and those named in this review which, at the cost of reiterating, will be remembered two hundred years hence. Even IVY League Presses do not have the resources to archive everything, come the looming COVID 19 recession. & as Dr Anthony Fauci honestly says over and over, COVID 19 is going nowhere. And Ebola is out of the Congo. So, there we go...Indian writers on European thinkers do matter and will matter. All said and done, it was great fun reviewing these volumes. Kierkegaard gets it dot on mark that Christianity, or for that matter, any religion is all about the mystery of suffering. (shrink)

The privation theory of evil (PTE) states that evil is the absence of some good that is supposed to be present. For example, if vision is an intrinsic good, and if human beings are supposed to have vision, then PTE implies that a human being’s lacking vision is an evil, or a bad state of affairs. The mere-difference view of disability (MDD) states that disabilities like blindness are not inherently bad. Therefore, it would seem that lacking sight is not a (...) bad state of affairs. Thus PTE and MDD seem to be in tension. This essay discusses that apparent tension and explains how it might be resolved without doing violence to either view. Given the prominence of PTE in the history of Christian theology, and the wide support for MDD among disability theorists, it is worth finding a way to harmonize these two views. (shrink)

Se a pregação de Jesus consiste no pressuposto da teologia neotestamentária, segundo o pensamento de Bultmann, a análise do seu conteúdo emerge como fundamental para a compreensão do querigma cristão e da construção literário-teológica da comunidade primitiva. Dessa forma, o artigo se detém na pregação ético-escatológica de Jesus, que anuncia o reino de Deus e o tempo da decisão e o chamado à decisão, que converge para a radicalidade e exige a obediência escatológica enquanto realização da vontade de Deus. Assim, (...) escapando à condição de um dever que converge para a formação do caráter e ao princípio de determinação da comunhão humana, o artigo assinala que é a exigência do amor que se impõe à pregação escatológica de Jesus e a sua pregação ética e ao conhecimento da vontade de Deus, que implica o dever-ser e o poder-fazer envolvendo o bem incondicional em uma construção teórico-conceitual e subjetivo-existencial que envolve a consciência da situação-limite da existência e a necessidade de uma decisão existencial. (shrink)

Guizot (1787-1874) was a French historian, orator and statesman who was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848. A conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by Charles X to usurp legislative power, he worked to sustain a constitutional monarchy following the July Revolution of 1830. He then served the 'citizen king' Louis Philippe as Minister of Education from 1832-37, ambassador to London, Foreign Minister from 1840-47, and finally Prime Minister between 1847-48. Committed to supporting the (...) policies of Louis Philippe and to limiting the expansion of the political franchise, he became unpopular with more left-leaning liberals and it was his ban on political meetings by moderate liberals who wanted to extend the franchise that was the catalyst to the revolution that toppled Louis Philippe in February 1848, leading to the establishment of the Second Empire. A prolific writer on various subjects, these Meditations on Christianity were first published in 1864. (shrink)

In their book, Roman but Not Catholic, Kenneth Collins and Jerry Walls make the case that certain beliefs central to the Roman Catholic faith are unreasonable. This article evaluates, from the point of view of Eastern Orthodoxy, some of the arguments Collins and Walls make. In particular, it argues first that Collins and Walls are correct to criticize John Henry Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine as a reason to accept otherwise insufficiently supported Catholic doctrines. Secondly, it offers some (...) points of clarification concerning the matter of sacred tradition and attempts to show the areas of agreement and disagreement between Eastern Orthodoxy and the position that Collins and Walls articulate. Thirdly, it argues that Collins and Walls rely on what is, from an Eastern Orthodox point of view, a questionable view about the interpretation of scripture by assuming without good reason that the clear meaning of scripture is equivalent to the literal interpretation. (shrink)

This article examines some of the recent theological critiques of the movement of technological human enhancement known as ‘transhumanism’. Drawing on the comparisons between grace and technology often found in the theological discourse on transhumanism, this article argues that the Thomistic distinction between healing grace and elevating grace can not only supplement the theological analysis of transhumanism and its ethical implications, but also help Christian theologians and ethicists become more aware of how the phenomenon of technology may have implicitly shaped (...) the contemporary understanding of ‘grace’ as well as the task of theology as a spiritual and indeed ethical practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, if ‘the overrepresentation of Christian theists in analytic philosophy of religion is unhealthy for the field, since they would be too much influenced by prior beliefs when evaluating religious arguments’ (De Cruz and De Smedt (2016), 119), then a first step toward a potential remedy is this: analytic philosophers of religion need to restructure their analytical tasks. For one way to mitigate the effects of confirmation bias, which may be influencing how analytic philosophers of (...) religion evaluate arguments in Analytical Philosophy of Religion (APR), is to consider other points of view. Applied to APR, this means considering religious beliefs, questions, and arguments couched in non-Christian terms. In this paper, I focus on Islam in particular. My aim is to show that Islam is a fertile ground of philosophical questions and arguments for analytic philosophers of religion to engage with. Engaging with questions and arguments couched in non-Christian terms would help make work in APR more diverse and inclusive of religions other than Christianity, which in turn would also be a first step toward attracting non-Christians to APR. (shrink)

This article presents a new approach to Japanese Zen Buddhism, alternative to its traditional views, which lack exact definitions of the relation between the meditator and the Buddha’s ultimate cause, dharma. To this end, I offer a comparative analysis between Zen Buddhist and Christian views of causality from the medieval to early modern periods. Through this, human causation with dharma in the Zen Buddhist meditations can be better defined and understood. Despite differences between religious traditions in deliberating human causal accounts, (...) there are parallel ways of thinking and practicing between Christian and Buddhist meditators. Firstly, I reconstruct three sorts of Christian scholastic theories of creaturely causality: conservationism, occasionalism, and concurrentism. Secondly, Zen Buddhist doctrines are introduced by placing particular emphasis on dharma as causal agency. Focusing on the Japanese Zen practice of meditation, finally I expound two theories of human causality: Sōtō Zen quasi-occasionalism following Master Dōgen’s teaching of enlightenment, and Rinzai Zen quasi-concurrentism given the meditator’s interactive kōan practice. Hence, my comparative analysis explains why religious beings are causally active, passive, or interactive in relation to the first agency, God or dharma, whereby systematically establishing alternative definitions of human causality in Zen Buddhism. (shrink)

This article investigates the metaphysical transformation that occurs when a believer becomes a new creation, something which hasn't yet been explored in the literature. I start by setting out what this ontological transformation involves, and then provide two models as to how it might go. The first is a type of substratism, based on a theory of mixing, while the second thinks about this transformation in terms of replacementism. Throughout the article I seek to resolve difficulties that both of these (...) models bring, while also showing how other aspects of Christian thought can be explained by these models. (shrink)