Origen, Bardaiṣan, and the Origin of Universal Salvation

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilaria L. E. Ramelli

Is Origen of Alexandria the inventor of the eschatological doctrine of apokatastasis— of the eventual return of all creatures to the Good, that is, God, and thus universal salvation? Certainly, he is one of its chief supporters in all of history, and he is, as far as we know, the first to have maintained it in a complete and coherent way, so that all of his philosophy of history, protology, and anthropology is oriented toward this telos.1 There are, however, significant antecedents to his mature and articulate theorization, at least some of which he surely knew very well, and there is even a possible parallel. For this conception did not appear ex nihilo, but in a cultural context rich in suggestions and premises, and in a philosophical framework of lively discussions concerning fate, free will, theodicy, and the eternal destiny of rational creatures.

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Heidi M. Ravven
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
pp. 181-190
Author(s):  
A.B. Bocharov

This work is devoted to the analysis of the book by A.V. Malinov “Research and Articles on Russian Philosophy”. The main subject-content and thematic-subject lines of the book are revealed: philosophy of Slavophiles; historical, cultural and philosophical contexts of V.S. Solovyov and V.V. Rozanov; professional philosophy in Russia. Points to the variety of genres published in a collection of articles and materials of historical and philosophical articles, teaching materials (lectures and paragraphs from the textbooks), archival materials, methodological reflections. The author considers the interpretations of A.S. Khomyakov, the Slavophil ideas of O.F. Miller, the evolution of ideas about the common Slavic language, the attitude of V.S. Solovyov with N.I. Kareyev and St. Petersburg Slavophiles (including the polemic of V.S. Soloviev with the Slavophiles in the last work of the Russian philosopher – “Three Conversations”), V.V. Rozanov with the Slavophiles and V.I. Lamansky, features of V.V. Rozanov, the philosophical heritage of A.I. Vvedensky and the controversy caused by him, the place of L.P. Karsavin in the tradition of teaching the philosophy of history at St. Petersburg University, the specifics and historical path traversed by university philosophy in Russia, the modernization of the methods of modern historical and philosophical research, etc. The author notes the author's appeal to little-studied representatives of Russian philosophy, original interpretations of biographical and historical-philosophical plots, the use of the expressive possibilities of the Russian language, enriching the interpretive possibilities of the historiography of Russian philosophy. The conclusion is made about the preservation of the “Russian canon” in the research of Russian philosophy, about its heuristic possibilities. The author's intention is explained and the value of research of this kind, serving the purpose of reinterpreting the ideas of Russian philosophy, solving the problem of preserving the values and meanings of Russian culture in the modern historical and cultural context, is indicated.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Lipman

This chapter focuses on Ma Zhu (1640-after 1710), a Yunnanese literatus educated in the Neo-Confucian and Islamic curricula, author of the classical Chinese text Qingzhen zhinan (the compass or guide to Islam). His intended audience included both non-Muslim elites and Muslims literate only in that language. As he justified his ancestral religion, he had to solve an intractable problem—how could he narrate creation of the cosmos ex nihilo, a necessary part of the description of the Islamic God (Ar. Allāh), in a cultural context that lacked a cosmic creator? He solved this by placing God at the beginning of the conventional Neo-Confucian progression of the cosmos’s uncaused, impersonal evolution—from the chaos of Beyond Ultimate (wuji), via the Great Ultimate (taiji), yin and yang, the Five Phases, Heaven and Earth (qiankun) to phenomenal reality. Though unsuccessful in persuading non-Muslims of God’s cosmogenetic power, Ma Zhu’s book remains popular among Sino-Muslims, who combine Chinese and Islamic cultures in their intellectual and religious lives.


Author(s):  
Michael Blyth

This chapter focuses on religion as a common motif employed throughout John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995). As with many Western horror films, Christianity serves as a theological foundation, but Carpenter's film also draws interesting parallels with the Church of Scientology. In its depiction of the all-knowing, omnipotent author, able to alter reality with the mere power of their words, In the Mouth of Madness elevates the figure of the writer to near-religious status. As Sutter Cane types away on his very own ‘word processor of the Gods’, he too becomes one of those Gods, with divine control over those in his literary kingdom. With this notion in mind, the chapter explores the ways in which Carpenter's film repositions the writer from mere cultural commentator to modern-day prophet, or untouchable celestial being. It also considers how the film utilises theological concepts to form the basis of its philosophical framework, ultimately presenting religious cultdom as an extension of Carpenter's critiques on mindless consumerism and his apocalyptic obsessions with the loss of individuality and free will.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-42
Author(s):  
Lyudmila Klyukina

Staying in the framework of the hermeneutic approach, this article reveals and analyses the religious and philosophical ideas of Saint Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions in the text of Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”. This study demonstrates that Dostoevsky, while staying within the boundaries of contemporary culture, independently comprehended such universal ideas and problems as the origin of evil, free will, theodicy and salvation, which were first formulated in the European philosophical tradition by Saint Augustine. The author concludes that the idea of unbounded free will and universal salvation, offered by Dostoevsky who demonstrated that rejecting individual freedom is justified only for the sake of said salvation, profoundly influenced Russian religious philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (141) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Humberto Schubert Coelho

Resumo: Não apenas pela natureza sistemática do projeto hegeliano como pela importância que a teoria da subjetividade inconfundivelmente assume para ele, a filosofia da história, como outros elementos, não pode ser satisfatoriamente compreendida sem uma análise conjunta do caráter histórico da subjetividade. Uma vez que subjetividade e intersubjetividade se sustentam e justificam mutuamente, toda teoria da história é sempre e necessariamente também uma teoria sobre as biografias, individuais, e as formas da cultura, das coletividades. Ao passo que estes finitos não produzem o todo, o todo tem de poder ser neles encontrado, de maneira que os princípios gerais, como o da história, estão sempre implícitos nos sujeitos e suas comunidades específicas. Somente assim entende-se que a filosofia da história é capaz de resistir às muitas críticas de anulação da individualidade e da incerteza quanto ao destino, oriunda do livre-arbítrio humano. Apresentaremos, portanto, alguns dos intérpretes contemporâneos do hegelianismo buscando enfatizar suas teorias da subjetividade como imprescindíveis para esboços de filosofia da história que preencham os critérios mais atuais.Abstract: Due to the systematic nature of the Hegelian Project and the unmistakably important role the theory of subjectivity plays in this project, the philosophy of history, as well as many other aspects of the system, cannot satisfactorily be understood without a joint analysis of the historical character of subjectivity. Since subjectivity and intersubjectivity are mutually supportive and justify each other, any theory of history is consequently and necessarily also a theory on biographies (individuality) and on the forms of culture (collectivity). Whereas these finites cannot produce the whole, totality has to be found in them so that the general principles, such as that of history, are always implicit in individuals and their specific communities. Only then can the philosophy of history resist against the numerous allegations of annihilation of individual freedom and the uncertainty of destiny, which derives from human free will. This article will therefore present some contemporary interpreters of Hegel whose theories of subjectivity are indispensable for the essays on the philosophy of history that comply with the most recent criteria.


2021 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-468
Author(s):  
Nili Samet

AbstractThe language of Qoheleth is characterized by an awkward style and an unusual vocabulary. Past studies have assigned these peculiarities to linguistic factors, assuming that the book reflects an underrepresented dialect or register. The current study aims to expand the boundaries of this discourse by introducing extra-linguistic considerations into the discussion. Qoheleth is the only biblical book that is purely philosophical, focusing on abstract issues such as the purpose of life and the problem of free will. Such philosophical discussions require the use of an abstract terminology. The basic toolkit of any philosopher consists of conceptual phrases such as “time,” “space,” “cosmos,” “humanity,” “meaning,” etc. Yet abstract vocabulary was meager in the Hebrew at the author’s disposal. Paving a pioneering way in the realm of thought, Qoheleth’s author had to create a terminological system capable of expressing his new ideas. This article traces the ways in which the need for a personally-customized philosophical idiom shaped Qoheleth’s language. Exploring the origins of eleven key-terms in the book, this article reveals the dynamics that gave rise to Qoheleth’s personal lexicon. These include generalization and conceptualization of the extant semantic fields of certain terms in order to re-invent them as personal expressions reflecting the author’s philosophy. The author takes advantage of the “linguistic availability” of certain terms, that is, their foreignness or rareness that makes them better-suited, in his view, to bear newly created meanings. Taken together, Qoheleth’s neologisms constitute a personal idiolect, carefully designed to convey the author’s unique thought.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (136) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Humberto Schubert Coelho

Resumo: Não apenas pela natureza sistemática do projeto hegeliano como pela importância que a teoria da subjetividade inconfundivelmente assume para ele, a filosofia da história, como outros elementos, não pode ser satisfatoriamente compreendida sem uma análise conjunta do caráter histórico da subjetividade. Uma vez que subjetividade e intersubjetividade se sustentam e justificam mutuamente, toda teoria da história é sempre e necessariamente também uma teoria sobre as biografias, individuais, e as formas da cultura, das coletividades. Ao passo que estes finitos não produzem o todo, o todo tem de poder ser neles encontrado, de maneira que os princípios gerais, como o da história, estão sempre implícitos nos sujeitos e suas comunidades específicas. Somente assim entende-se que a filosofia da história é capaz de resistir às muitas críticas de anulação da individualidade e da incerteza quanto ao destino, oriunda do livre-arbítrio humano. Apresentaremos, portanto, alguns dos intérpretes contemporâneos do hegelianismo buscando enfatizar suas teorias da subjetividade como imprescindíveis para esboços de filosofia da história que preencham os critérios mais atuais.Abstract: Not only for the systematic nature of the Hegelian Project but also for the importance that the theory of subjectivity unmistakably assumes for Hegel, the philosophy of history, as well as other elements, cannot be understood satisfactorily without a parallel analysis of the historical character of subjectivity. Since subjectivity and intersubjectivity are mutually supportive, any theory about history is consequently and necessarily also a theory of biographies (individuality) and of the forms of culture (collectivity). Although these finitudes do not make the whole, the whole has to be found in them, so that the general principles, like history, are always implicit in individuals and specific communities. This seems to be the only way the philosophy of history can resist the many charges of annihilation of individual freedom and the uncertainty of destiny deriving from human free-will. Thus, we will present some contemporary Hegelian interpreters, in order to highlight their theories of subjectivity as instrumental to outline a philosophy of history that meet the more recent criteria.


Genre ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-125
Author(s):  
Peter Kratzke

Comparing Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (as framed by Bierce’s illuminating philosophical attitude) with the Frenchman Robert Enrico’s film adaptation (how his adaptation decisions are manifest in the film) and Rod Serling’s use of that film for an episode of The Twilight Zone (as the show’s cultural context was and is perfect for the task) reveals afresh that mood (involving an author’s attitude toward content) is necessarily more important than genre (involving content itself) when narrative content approaches the unknowable. What perhaps surprises in this comparison is that, arguably, Bierce’s short story is the least dark of the three versions of what may be called the mood and genre of sardonic death, for it only denounces (especially in terms of free will versus determinism) the doomed man, while Enrico’s film elicits sympathy and Serling’s episode empathy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Milan Tomašević

Paper examines social capacities of apocalyptic literature and presents some of its crucial concepts, motives and functions. It offers some of most important uptakes of end time narratives usage in a religious, but in a political and cultural context, also. Presenting apocalyptic literature as a compex genre, paper offers a view of multifunctional phenomenon that had been used by different social groups and agents. Paper portrays apocalypses as a part of revolutionary ideoloical texts and paralysing discourse of fear. By refering onto a structural liminality and prophetic method, it deconstructs way of manipulating with an apocalyptic imagination and socio-political acting. By representing main product of eschatology, as mileniarism and apocalypticism, paper offers understanding of revelations as a part of theology, teleology and philosophy of history and humankind.


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