Kierkegaard on the Transformation of the Individual in Conversion

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-163
Author(s):  
William C. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Simple Task ◽  
Remarkable Degree ◽  
Radical Nature ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Lutheran Orthodoxy ◽  
The Church

From at least the time of the writing of The Philosophical Fragments, Søren Kierkegaard's work takes a special interest in both the transition from unbelief to faith and the character of the life of true faith. Trained in Lutheran dogma and convinced of the radical nature of human freedom, his work on this subject demonstrates a profound concern for and grasp of Lutheran orthodoxy, as well as a remarkable degree of subtlety. After all, it is no simple task to give an account of the central features of the Christian life that is faithful to both a libertarian conception of human freedom and the doctrines of the church founded by the author of The Bondage of the Will. This paper proposes to accomplish two things: first, to state a problem that lies on the surface of Kierkegaard's account of the transformation involved in Christian conversion and second to present a resolution of the problem that is faithful to Kierkegaard's intentions.

The theological value of autonomy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adiel Zimran
Keyword(s):  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Will ◽  
Abrahamic Religions ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Will Of God

Abstract Western liberalism is based on two different humanistic traditions: First, the biblical tradition of the Abrahamic religions, according to which man was created in the image of God; and, second, the tradition that developed in the age of Enlightenment, which claims man’s absolute independence of any heteronomous or transcendental being and views the very existence as a goal in and of itself. Each one of these two traditions restricts the autonomy of the individual in different ways, thus influencing the constitutional structure one of whose principal functions is to safeguard the autonomy of the citizens. This article deals with the theological value of autonomy. It analyzes the tension between the humanistic-anthropocentric worldview, which sanctifies human freedom, and the humanistic-theocentric way of thinking, which sees God as the source of all norms and holds that the freedom of man is limited by the divine imperative. Subsequently, the article presents three different models of understanding the relations between the will of God and the will of man, through an analysis of the exegesis of three Jewish thinkers on the stories of man’s creation in the image of God and the sin of the Primordial Man. These models represent three attitudes towards the theological value of autonomy. After having presented the different models, I shall compare them to each other and explicate the conceptual differences between them. To conclude, I shall further assess the contribution of these models to contemporary discourse on autonomy and liberty.

Spiritual Direction, Social Justice, and the United Church of Christ

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 346-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry A. Gladson
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
United Church Of Christ ◽  
Spiritual Direction ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

How may spiritual formation, with its emphasis upon the individual, spiritual direction, and its shaping of spiritual life, and the ministry of social justice, with its stress upon the community, be balanced in a religious tradition? This study examines the United Church of Christ as an example of a social justice tradition within Protestant Christianity, with special interest in how it combines spiritual formation, spiritual direction, and social justice. Although during the first decades of its existence, the United Church of Christ seemed more interested in social justice, ostensibly to the diminishing of more spiritual concerns, during the 1990s the church began to develop greater interest in spirituality. At present, the denomination is starting to try to link spirituality, spiritual formation, and spiritual direction with social justice ministries.

The Idea of the Ecclesia Primitiva in the Writings of the Twelfth-Century Canonists

Traditio ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 61-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Perfect Form ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

Much recent scholarship on the period of the Investiture Struggle and the reform of the Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries has suggested that the origins of these reforms lay not merely in the desire for moral regeneration, but in the conscious wish to return to the antique, Biblical, patristic, and Roman models of the Christian life represented by the early, pre-feudal Church. What modern historians have sometimes called ‘Germanic Christianity’ or ‘feudal Christianity’ was felt to be a pattern of institutions which had at least partly corrupted the life of the early Church. This explains the great concern of the Hildebrandine Party to rid the Church of those abuses which they felt had grown ‘especially since the time when the government of our church passed to the Germans. … But we, having searched out the Roman Order and the ancient custom of our church, imitating the old Fathers, have ordered things to be restored as we have set out above.’ The reaction against the immediate past in favor of a more perfect antique model manifested itself in the notion, expressed throughout the period, that custom must always be judged by natural law and by truth: ‘the Lord said: “I am the Truth.” He did not say: “I am the custom”; but “I am the Truth.” The reformers became impassioned to restore the ancient discipline, to rediscover the ancient laws of the Church, to bring monasticism back to its original purity, and in all this to use what they believed to be the ancient forms of the Christian life as a model by which to compare and criticize the Christianity of their own times. An extensive and varied literature appeared dealing with the problem of what the ancient ideal of the Christian life had been, a literature which began both to speak frequently of the ecclesia primitiva, and to use this idea as a model by which to reform the Church. Often this literature passed beyond the use of the idea of the ecclesia primitiva as a tool of reform to the use of the idea as a basis for the discussion of the more basic problem of what the perfect form of the Christian life had been or should be. In this regard, ‘reform’ signified not only the restoration and reestablishment of the forms of the Christian life of the past, but also the search for the continuing perfection of both the individual and the Church. The nexus of ideas associated with the Augustinian reformatio in melius was in this respect close to the idea of ‘renewal.’ Men not only returned to the forms of the past, but also explored ways of introducing new structures and forms of life into the Church.

Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Teresa Of Avila ◽  
Interior Castle ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Standard Action ◽  
Action Verbs ◽  
The Church

In this chapter, the author articulates and examines what Teresa of Avila claims about divine action and human action in the Christian life, or in her terms, the Christian soul. The author pays critical attention to her work The Interior Castle, which charts her journey in grace within the framework of the doctrinal and liturgical life of the church. He notes that there is little treatment of the standard action verbs latent in the tradition, like regeneration, justification, and baptism in the Spirit. This is due to the fact that she is relying not on theological inquiries for her work, but her own personal journey in the church with the help of confessors. Teresa thus expands the horizon of what God can do in the life of the church and in the individual believer.

The “individual” in Johann Friedrich Overbeck’s and Franz Liszt’s Seven Sacraments

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-356
Author(s):  
Dolores Pesce
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Franz Liszt ◽  
Individualized Treatment ◽  
Sacred Art ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Voice ◽  
Emotional Effects ◽  
The Church

In the preface to his Septem sacramenta (1878–1884), Franz Liszt acknowledged its stimulus — drawings completed in 1862 by the German painter J. F. Overbeck (1789–1869). This essay explores what Liszt likely meant by his and Overbeck’s “diametrically opposed” approaches and speculates on why the composer nonetheless acknowledged the artist’s work. Each man adopted an individualized treatment of the sacraments, neither in line with the Church’s neo-Thomistic philosophy. Whereas the Church insisted on the sanctifying effects of the sacraments’ graces, Overbeck emphasized the sacraments as a means for moral edification, and Liszt expressed their emotional effects on the receiver. Furthermore, Overbeck embedded within his work an overt polemical message in response to the contested position of the pope in the latter half of the nineteenth century. For many in Catholic circles, he went too far. Both works experienced a problematic reception. Yet, despite their works’ reception, both Overbeck and Liszt believed they had contributed to the sacred art of their time. The very individuality of Overbeck’s treatment seems to have stimulated Liszt. True to his generous nature, Liszt, whose individual voice often went unappreciated, publicly recognized an equally individual voice in the service of the Church.

Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Social Change

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fida Mohammad
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Compare And Contrast

In this article I shall compare and contrast Ibn Khaldun’s ideas aboutsociohistorical change with those of Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim. I willdiscuss and elaborate Ibn Khaldun’s major ideas about historical andsocial change and compare them with three important figures of modemWestern sociology and philosophy.On reading Ibn Khaldun one should remember that he was living in thefourteenth century and did not have the privilege of witnessing the socialdislocation created by the industrial revolution. It is also very difficult tocategorize Ibn Khaldun within a single philosophical tradition. He is arationalist as well as an empiricist, a historicist as well as a believer inhuman agency in the historical process. One can see many “modem”themes in his thinking, although he lived a hundred years beforeMachiavelli.Lauer, who considers Ibn Khaldun the pioneer of modem sociologicalthought, has summarized the main points of his philosophy.’ In his interpretationof Ibn Khaldun, he notes that historical processes follow a regularpattern. However, whereas this pattern shows sufficient regularity, itis not as rigid as it is in the natural world. In this regard the position ofIbn Khaldun is radically different from those philosophies of history thatposit an immutable course of history determined by the will of divineprovidence or other forces. Ibn Khaldun believes that the individual isneither a completely passive recipient nor a full agent of the historicalprocess. Social laws can be discovered through observation and datagathering, and this empirical grounding of social knowledge represents adeparture from traditional rational and metaphysical thinking ...

Grace and Freedom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
The Church

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or “Calvinist” theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a focus on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, and his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his contemporaries affirmed that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insisted on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of libertarian freedom or compatibilism. In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of various Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and on several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called second scholasticism. His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the Continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

The Free Responsible Action of the Individual

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Extreme Situation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
Responsible Action ◽  
Action Type ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

If, as Chapter 12 argues, much of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking remains stable even as he undertakes the novel conspiratorial resistance, what is new in his resistance thinking in the third phase? What receives new theological elaboration is the resistance activity of the individual, which in the first two phases was overshadowed by the resistance role played by the church. Indeed, as this chapter shows, Bonhoeffer’s conspiratorial activity is associated with what he calls free responsible action (type 6), and this is the action of the individual, not the church, in the exercise of vocation. As such, the conspiratorial activity is most closely related to the previously developed type 1 resistance, which includes individual vocational action in response to state injustice. But the conspiratorial activity differs from type 1 resistance as individual vocational action in the extreme situation.

Schopenhauer and the Unconscious

2020 ◽  
pp. 496-516
Author(s):  
Stephan Atzert
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Arthur Schopenhauer ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Sabina Spielrein

This chapter explores the gradual emergence of the notion of the unconscious as it pertains to the tradition that runs from Arthur Schopenhauer via Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer to Sabina Spielrein, C. G. Jung, and Sigmund Freud. A particular focus is put on the popularization of the term “unconscious” by von Hartmann and on the history of the death drive, which has Schopenhauer’s essay “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual” as one of its precursors. In this essay, Schopenhauer develops speculatively the notion of a universal, intelligent, supraindividual unconscious—an unconscious with a purpose related to death. But the death drive also owes its origins to Schopenhauer’s “relative nothingness,” which Mainländer adopts into his philosophy as “absolute nothingness” resulting from the “will to death.” His philosophy emphasizes death as the goal of the world and its inhabitants. This central idea had a distinctive influence on the formation of the idea of the death drive, which features in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

scholarly journals Sartres Lösung zur Antinomie der sozialen Realität in der Kritik der dialektischen Vernunft

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (6) ◽  
pp. 817-847
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Dialectical Reason ◽  
The Individual

AbstractCritics have standardly regarded Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason as an abortive attempt to overcome the subjectivist individualism of his early philosophy, motivated by a recognition that Being and Nothingness lacks ethical and political significance, but derailed by Sartre’s Marxism. In this paper I offer an interpretation of the Critique which, if correct, shows it to offer a coherent and highly original account of social and political reality, which merits attention both in its own right and as a reconstruction of the philosophical foundation of Marxism. The key to Sartre’s theory of collective and historical existence in the Critique is a thesis carried over from Being and Nothingness: intersubjectivity on Sartre’s account is inherently aporetic, and social ontology reproduces in magnified form its limited intelligibility, lack of transparency, and necessary frustration of the demands of freedom. Sartre’s further conjecture – which can be formulated a priori but requires a posteriori verification – is that man’s collective historical existence may be understood as the means by which the antinomy within human freedom, insoluble at the level of the individual, is finally overcome. The Critique provides therefore the ethical theory promised in Being and Nothingness.

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