The social theory of the Trinity

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD SWINBURNE

AbstractSubsequent to the fifth century until modern times all theologians agreed that God the Trinity is constituted by three persons (in Boethius's sense of ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’) who have a common divine essence, and are individuated only by their relations to each other. Having that essence entailed each being omnipotent and so perfectly good. In virtue of his perfect goodness the Father necessarily produces the Son (in order to have one equal whom to love and be loved by) and the Spirit (in order that the Son have one equal other than the Father to love and be loved by). There cannot be more than three divine persons because three persons are sufficient for the existence of unselfish love, and so any fourth divine person would be produced by an act which none of the three needed to produce, and so would not exist necessarily and so could not be divine. Necessarily if there is one divine person, there are three and only three divine persons.

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 434-438
Author(s):  
R. CELIN DIANA

MRS. R. CELIN DIANA A female is God's lovable creature to balance man. She is mentally and physically weak through creation itself, but she express her feelings unexpectedly in the battle against her. She is even spoiled for that. A women’s picture is a central theme to literature writings around the globe. The writings of Anita Nair is concerned with man, females, nature, true life, and social convention. She explores the existential struggle of her protagonists in most of her novels. Nair describes particularly, how Indian women are exploited, abused, marginalized even in the modern times both by individuals and by the society. Apart from the society women are tossed even by her family members. Anita Nair emphasizes the need for creating awareness in women. Her female protagonists are conscious of the injustice in marriage brought to them.Probably, the protagonists of Nair’s novels denies to flow along the current.  They seem to be adamant or aggressive, but the fact is that they underwent much pain and suffering. Apart from the pain the protagonists are the losers of life, respect, family, dignity and everything. This paper is an effort to bring to light the pathetic conditions of the protagonists,and to study the social, family and economic picture of women's suffering in life. Though the protagonist characters are brave, they seem pathetic and losers of a common simple life, they dream to live. Anita Nair defines circumstances or occurrences that harm or kill characters due to the aggressive nature of characters in her novels.


1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-191
Author(s):  
Louay M. Safi

Shari'ah (Islamic law) has been the dominant moral and legal code ofMuslim societies for the gnxter part of their history. During the early centuriesof Islam, Shari'ah hcilitated the social growth and develojment of the Muslims,growth that culminaa in the establishment of a vast emph and an outstandmgcivilization. By the close of the fifth century of Islam, however, Shari'ahbegan to lose its role as the guiding force that inspired Muslim creativityand ingenuity and that nurtured the growing spirit of the Muslim community(Ummah). Consequently, the Ummah entered a period of stagnation thatgradually gave way to intellectual decline and social decadence. Regrettably,this painful trend continues to be more or less 'part of the individualconsciousness and collective experience of Muslims.This paper attempts to trace the development of the principles of Islamicjurisprudence, and to assess the impact of Shari'ah on society. It argues thatthe law ceased to grow by the sixth century of Islam as a result of thedevelopment of classical legal theory; more specifically, law was put on hold,as it were, after the doctrine of the infallibility of ijma' (juristic consensus)was articulated. The rigid principles of classical theory, it is contended, havebeen primarily induced by the hulty epistemology employed.by sixth-centuryjurists.Shari'ah, or Islamic law, is a comprehensive system encompassing thewhole field of human experience. It is not simply a legal system, but rathera composite system of law and morality. That is, Islamic law aspires to regulateall aspects of human activities, not only those that may entail legalconsequences. Hence, all actions and relationships are evaluated in accordancewith a scale of five moral standards.According to Shari'ah, an act may be classified as obligatory (wajib),recommended (mandub), permissible (mubah), reprehensible (makruh), orprohibited (haram). These five categories reflect the varying levels of moral ...


Author(s):  
Elia Nathan Bravo

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, it offers a general analysis of stigmas (a person has one when, in virtue of its belonging to a certain group, such as that of women, homosexuals, etc., he or she is subjugated or persecuted). On the other hand, I argue that stigmas are “invented”. More precisely, I claim that they are not descriptive of real inequalities. Rather, they are socially created, or invented in a lax sense, in so far as the real differences to which they refer are socially valued or construed as negative, and used to justify social inequalities (that is, the placing of a person in the lower positions within an economic, cultural, etc., hierarchy), or persecutions. Finally, I argue that in some cases, such as that of the witch persecution of the early modern times, we find the extreme situation in which a stigma was invented in the strict sense of the word, that is, it does not have any empirical content.


Author(s):  
Michael Mawson

How can theologians recognize the church as a historical and human community, while still holding that it has been established by Christ and is a work of the Spirit? How can a theological account of the church draw insights and concepts from the social sciences, without Christian commitments and claims about the church being undermined or displaced? In 1927, the 21-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer defended his licentiate dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. This remains his most neglected and misunderstood work. Christ Existing as Community thus retrieves and analyses Bonhoeffer’s engagement with social theory and attempt at ecclesiology. Against standard readings and criticisms of this work, Mawson demonstrates that it contains a rich and nuanced approach to the church, one which displays many of Bonhoeffer’s key influences—especially Luther, Hegel, Troeltsch, and Barth—while being distinctive in its own right. In particular, Mawson argues that Sanctorum Communio’s theology is built around a complex dialectic of creation, sin, and reconciliation. On this basis, he contends that Bonhoeffer’s dissertation has ongoing significance for work in theology and Christian ethics.


1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Fischer

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.


Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Rytilä

AbstractThe core idea of social constructivism in mathematics is that mathematical entities are social constructs that exist in virtue of social practices, similar to more familiar social entities like institutions and money. Julian C. Cole has presented an institutional version of social constructivism about mathematics based on John Searle’s theory of the construction of the social reality. In this paper, I consider what merits social constructivism has and examine how well Cole’s institutional account meets the challenge of accounting for the characteristic features of mathematics, especially objectivity and applicability. I propose that in general social constructivism shows promise as an ontology of mathematics, because the view can agree with mathematical practice and it offers a way of understanding how mathematical entities can be real without conflicting with a scientific picture of reality. However, I argue that Cole’s specific theory does not provide an adequate social constructivist account of mathematics. His institutional account fails to sufficiently explain the objectivity and applicability of mathematics, because the explanations are weakened and limited by the three-level theoretical model underlying Cole’s account of the construction of mathematical reality and by the use of the Searlean institutional framework. The shortcomings of Cole’s theory give reason to suspect that the Searlean framework is not an optimal way to defend the view that mathematical reality is socially constructed.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 155-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Q. Mclnerny ◽  

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Hollis Gause

AbstractThe doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the product of divine revelation, and is a doctrine of divine worship. The expressions of this doctrine come out of worshipful response to divine revelation demonstrating the social nature of the Trinity and God's incorporating the human creature in His own sociality and personal pluralism. The perfect social union between God and the man and woman that he had created was disrupted by human sin. God redeemed the fallen creature, and at the heart of this redemptive experience lies the doctrine of Holy Trinity, with the Holy Spirit as the communing agent of all the experiences of salvation. The Spirit is especially active in the provision and fulfillment of sanctification, which is presented here as the continuum of 'holiness-unity-love'. He produces the graces of the Holy Spirit – the fruit of the Spirit. He implants the Seed of the new birth which is the word of God. He purifies by the blood of Jesus. He establishes union and communion among believers and with God through His Son Jesus. This is holiness.


Philosophy ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 25 (92) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick C. Copleston

I. In the early part of the sixth century a.d. Boethius defined the person as “an individual substance of rational nature” (rationalis naturae individua substantia). This definition, which became classical and was adopted by, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, obviously implies that every human being is a person, since every human being is (to employ the philosophical terms of Boethius) an individual substance of rational nature. If one cannot be more or less of a human being, so far as “substance” is concerned, one cannot be more or less of a person. One may act as a human person ought not to act or in a way unbefitting a human person; one may even lose the normal use of one's reason; but one does not in this way become depersonalized, in the sense of ceasing to be a person. According to St. Thomas, a disembodied soul is not, strictly speaking, a person, since a disembodied soul is no longer a complete human substance; but every complete human substance is always and necessarily a person.


2021 ◽  

Edited by expert scholars, this volume explores the 'imposter' through empirical cases, including click farms, bikers, business leaders and fraudulent scientists, providing insights into the social relations and cultural forms from which they emerge.


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