scholarly journals Beyond the Modern-Anti-Modern Dilemma: Gaudium et spes and Theological Method in a Postmodern Context

Horizons ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-305
Author(s):  
Lieven Boeve

ABSTRACTThe Church has the duty in every age of examining the signs of the times and interpreting them in the light of the gospel, so that it can offer in a manner appropriate to each generation replies to the continual human questionings on the meaning of this life and the life to come and on how they are related. There is a need, then, to be aware of, and to understand, the world in which we live, together with its expectations, its desires and its frequently dramatic character (Gaudium et spes 4).

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-175
Author(s):  
Warseto Freddy Sihombing

AbstractNo one can be justified before God for doing good deeds. No matter how good a man is, if he does not believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, he will not be saved from the wrath of God to come. There is no human being who is right before God, and no sinful man can save himself in any way. The only way out is in the way that God has given to the problem of all sinners, by sending Jesus Christ to the world to die for sinners. "And for this he came, so that every man believed in him, who was sent by God" (John 6:29). The Bible teaches that salvation is only obtained because of faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the object of that faith. This salvation is known as the statement "Justified by faith. Paul explained this teaching in each of his writings. This teaching of justification by faith has been repeatedly denied by some people who disagree with Paul's opinion. The history of the church from the early centuries to the present has proven the variety of understandings that have emerged from this teaching, but one important thing is that sinful humans are justified by their faith in Jesus Christ before God.Keywords: Paul;history; justified by faith.AbstrakTidak ada seorang pun yang dapat dibenarkan di hadapan Allah karena telah melakukan perbuatan baik. Sebaik apa pun manusia, jika dia tidak percaya kepada Yesus Kristus, Anak Allah maka ia tidak akan selamat dari murka Allah yang akan datang. Tidak ada seorang pun manusia yang benar di hadapan Allah, dan tidak ada seorang manusia berdosa yang dapat menyelematkan dirinya sendiri dengan cara apa pun. Satu-satunya jalan keluar adalah dengan cara yang Allah telah berikan untuk masalah semua orang berdosa, yaitu dengan mengutus Yesus Kristus ke dunia untuk mati bagi orang berdosa. “Dan untuk itulah Dia datang, yaitu supaya setiap orang percaya kepada Dia, yang telah diutus oleh Allah” (Yohanes 6:29). Alkitab mengajarkan bahwa keselamatan hanya diperoleh karena iman kepada Yesus Kristus. Yesus Kristus adalah obyek iman tersebut. Keselamatan ini dikenal dengan pernyataan “Dibenarkan karena iman. Paulus menjelaskan ajaran ini dalam setiap tulisannya. Ajaran pembenaran oleh iman ini telah berulang kali disangkal oleh beberap orang yang tidak setuju dengan pendapat Paulus. Sejarah gereja mulai dari abad permulaan sampai pada masa sekarang ini telah membuktikan beragamnya pemahaman yang muncul terhadap ajaran ini, namun satu hal yang terpenting adalah bahwa manusia berdosa dibenarkan oleh iman mereka kepada Yesus Kristus di hadapan Allah.Kata Kunci: Paulus; sejarah; iman; dibenarkan oleh iman.


Author(s):  
Stephen Stephen ◽  
Franky Liauw

At present the activity of buying and selling/trading has been developing rapidly for decades. The growth of new malls spread throughout Jakarta. Making Jakarta the city with the largest and most shopping center in the world, with more than 173 malls. Coupled with the help of technology, an online shop platform has emerged that makes it easy for visitors to shop without having to come to the store. With the help of electronic media tools such as tablets or Smartphones. Nowadays, malls are not only a place to shop but also a place for recreation, socializing, or just for a walk alone. The progress of technology and human culture is changing. It's one of the factors that influence the impact of the decline in visitors at the old shopping center, every year such as a Pasar Baru shopping center. Re-Imagine Pasar Baru is a project that aims as a motor/propeller for Pasar Baru Community. Inviting the local people and Shop Owners to take part in making a change. Through a new program that strengthens unity and diversity to bring the conciseness cooperation (Gotong-royong) attitude that has been lost with the development of the times. Creating a place where people can socialize and interact, get closer, get to know each other, and also as a means of recreation for residents, visitors, shop owners, and also this project hopes to bring the Pasar Baru shopping area to life. Through the Urban Acupuncture method by analyzing the needs, potentials, deficiencies, demographics, ecology, etc. that characterize the Pasar Baru area. Where it can present a new program, and produce small-scale changes, but social catalytic intervention into the urban spatial structure. In physical and social-culture in Pasar Baru. Keywords: Community; Gotong Royong; Pasar Baru; Recreation; Urban Acupuncture  AbstrakSaat ini aktivitas Jual-beli/perdagangan sudah berkembang pesat selama beberapa dekade. Tumbuhnya mall-mall baru tersebar di seluruh Jakarta. Menjadikan Jakarta sebagai kota dengan pusat perbelanjaan terbanyak dan terbesar di dunia, dengan lebih dari 173 mall. Ditambah dengan bantuan teknologi, platform online shop memudahkan pengunjung untuk berbelanja tanpa perlu datang ke toko. Dengan bantuan alat media elektronik seperti tablet atau Smartphones. Saat ini, mall bukan hanya menjadi tempat untuk berbelanja melainkan menjadi tempat rekreasi, bersosialisasi, atau hanya sekedar untuk jalan-jalan semata. Kemajuan teknologi serta budaya manusia yang berubah, merupakan salah satu faktor yang berpengaruh terhadap dampak penurunan pengunjung di pusat perbelanjaan lama setiap tahunnya, seperti pusat perbelanjaan Pasar Baru. Re-Imagine Pasar Baru Merupakan proyek yang bertujuan sebagai motor / pengerak daerah Pasar Baru. Mengajak masyarakat dan para pedagang untuk ikut andil dalam melakukan suatu perubahan. Lewat program yang mempererat kesatuan dan persatuan guna memunculkan sikap gotong royong yang sudah hilang seiring berkembangnya zaman. Menciptakan tempat dimana warga dapat bersosialisasi dan berinteraksi, mendekatkan, saling mengenal satu sama lain dan juga sebagai sarana rekreasi warga lokal, dan proyek ini berharap dapat menghidupkan kawasan perbelanjaan Pasar Baru. Lewat metode Urban Acupunture yaitu dengan menganalisis kebutuhan, potensi, kekurangan, demografi, ekologi yang menjadi ciri khas dari kawasan Pasar Baru. Dimana dapat menghadirkan suatu program baru, dan menghasilkan perubahan skala kecil, tetapi intervensi katalitik sosial ke dalam tatanan ruang kota. Bukan hanya sekedar bentuk fisik, tetapi juga berdampak pada sosial dan budaya Kawasan Pasar Baru sendiri. 


2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Knitter

Responding to postmodernity as one of the “signs of the times”, Christians will have to carry out a balancing act between commitment to their own convictions and openness to those of others. This has implication for five areas of Christian theology and praxis. In theological method, we must recognise that all our beliefs are symbols that tell us something but never everything about God, self, world. In christology, we understand and follow Christ as the Way that is open to other Ways. The Church will be seen as a community that seeks a Reign of God that will always be more than what we now know of it. Ethics will be based on the principles and practice of non-violence: full commitment to moral convictions joined with genuine respect and compassion toward the convictions of others. Such a theology will need to be rooted in a spirituality in which we are “absolutely” committed to truths that we recognise are always “relative” - a truly eschatological spirituality that is always “on the way”.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-147
Author(s):  
Amit Mittal ◽  
Sahil Gupta

Vistara—a joint venture between Tata Sons (India) and Singapore Airlines (Singapore)—is a full-service private airline in India that launched operations in January 2015. The airline has been growing at a steady pace and has already won a number of awards, but going forward it shall have a number of challenges to confront, especially on how to increase its market share in an industry dominated by low-cost carriers and prone to uncertainties emerging from external factors beyond its control (e.g., fuel prices and an uncertain political environment). To further complicate issues, Indian aviation, despite being among the fastest growing aviation markets across the world, is still making heavy losses. For Vistara, a lot is at stake considering that the airline is backed by two major reputable organizations. In the times to come, the airline will have to learn how to navigate the complex aviation environment and seeks ways to live up to its name, which means limitless expanse.


1951 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto A. Piper

Interpretations of the last book of the New Testament usually dwell upon its visions of things to come. Except for its prayers and hymns, however, little attention has been paid to its liturgical character. This fact is the more surprising since it is just in that respect that the Apocalypse of John differs mostly strikingly from other Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings. Its visions are presented within a framework of liturgical activities, and toward the end of the book it is hardly possible to dissociate the acts of worship from the visions of the future. This close relationship shows that its liturgical portions are not a purely literary device. Rather in the Seer's mind they form part of the revelatory process itself representing the reaction of initiated creatures to the gradual disclosure of the saving purpose of God and its execution. From the historical viewpoint, this liturgical framework of the Apocalypse of John is interesting, because it contains a number of features which, in a similar manner, occur also in the liturgies of the Ancient Church. Thus it is from the liturgical character of the Apocalypse that the historical development of the Christian liturgy becomes intelligible. Out of the perplexing diversity of its types, the formative principle of its early stages emerges, and a number of motives become visible, some of which have determined its history to the present day. Others, which have no longer a vital role assigned to them, were, nevertheless, preserved on account of the significance originally attached to them. Among these features I mention the ideas of the Eucharistic Parousia, the Church's participation in the angelic worship, the emphasis placed upon the worthiness of the interpreter of Scripture, the connection between the Confession of Sins and the Eucharist, the separation of the believers and unbelievers prior to the heavenly meal, the celebration of the Eucharist as an act of the Church in its cosmic totality, the association of the Eucharist with the Judgment of the World, and the interpretation of the liturgy as a spiritual battle. It will suffice to single out two of these features, which for their lack of centrality in the liturgies are particularly apt to illustrate our point, viz. the participation of the Church in the angelic worship, and the worthiness of the interpreter of Scripture.


Author(s):  
Ion Marian CROITORU ◽  

Although scientific research is in full bloom regarding, for instance, the environment, the fact of creation cannot be ignored either, even if some scientists deny it, while others ascertain it, albeit from perspectives, however, foreign to the patristic vision specific of the Orthodoxy. Consequently, the limits of cosmology are structured as well by Christian theology, which shows that the study of the world, guided by laws of physics in a limited framework, is carried out inside the creation affected by the consequences of the primordial sin, so that the reality of the world before sin is known only to those who reach spiritual perfection and holiness, therefore, from an eschatological perspective, since they, too, go through the moment of separation of the soul from the body, waiting for the general resurrection. Therefore, a new way of being is affirmed in the Orthodox Church, by the personal experience of each believer, which is a transformation on the personal and cosmic level, according to Jesus Christ’s resurrected body, which means the reality of a new physics, which concerns both the beginning of the universe, but also its new dimension, at the Lord’s Second Coming, when heaven and earth will be renewed by transfiguration. Regarding the existence of the universe, the differences are given by the perceptions of two cosmologies. Thus, the theonomous cosmology highlights man’s purpose on earth, the necessity of moral and spiritual life, and the transfiguration of creation, explaining God’s presence in His creation, but also His work in it, namely the transcendence and the immanence in relation to the creation. The autonomous cosmology engenders the evolutionist theory, which leads to secularism and, consequently, to the gap between the contemporary man’s technological progress, and his spiritual and moral regress. Today, more scientists are turning their attention also to the data of the divine Revelation, the way it makes itself known by its organs, the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition, in the one Church, which will mean a deepening of the dialogue between science and theology in favour of the man from everywhere and from the times to come.


Author(s):  
Christiane Tietz

Christology stands at the centre of Bonhoeffer’s theology because God has revealed Godself in Jesus Christ and made himself approachable, though not manageable, for human beings. For Christians today, the encounter with Christ takes place in the church-community. It is Christ as the mediator between God and humankind that places Christians at a distance from the world, allowing them to engage with it critically. To live as a Christian means to follow Christ, yet today this is qualified differently than in the times of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.


1974 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob M. Myers

I and II Esdras is Volume 42 in the Anchor Bible series of new book-by-book translations of the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha, each by a preeminent scholar. Jacob M. Myers is Professor of Old Testament at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg and the author of three earlier volumes in the series: I Chronicles and II Chronicles and Ezra, Nehemiah. The present work constitutes the first English commentary on I Esdras in sixty years and the first on II Esdras in forty. Written about 10 BCE, I Esdras is a history ranging from the pious reign of Josiah to the religious reforms of Ezra. For this period Josephus follows I Esdras in his Antiquities of the Jews. An apocalyptic work, written 250 years later, II Esdras seeks to offer strength, courage, and hope to those whose faith was severely shaken in the gloom and despondency that followed upon the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Its chief purpose was to inspire trust in God and the ultimate triumph of righteousness, if not in this world, then in the world to come. “Tracts for the times such as II Esdras,” writes Dr. Myers in his preface, “have a message for us who in a revolutionary age are obsessed with the impatience reflected by Ezra; it was not that he lacked faith in God but that he, like Job, questioned his ways and the delay, perhaps seeming inactivity, in the face of what appeared to the prophet to be terrible urgencies. The questions posed are still asked in the context of our age.” Eight photographs of ancient Near Eastern sculpture and coins help the reader visualize both the events recounted in I Esdras and the apocalyptic imagery in II Esdras. Each book has its own introduction and bibliography.


Lumen et Vita ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero

This paper examines the Peruvian Catholic Church's responses to the challenges of COVID-19, and how this context might constitute a new stage of the Peruvian Church’s reception of Vatican II. First, it values that the Catholic Church has performed a significant social contribution by distributing humanitarian aid, providing spiritual accompaniment, and articulating the civil society to face the needs raised by COVID-19. This paper argues that such response relates to the process of reception of Vatican II in Peru. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Peruvian Church developed pastoral structures and ecclesial networks that specialized in engaging with and serving the world. Nowadays, the Church offers those strengths to the State and society.  Second, this paper examines how the pandemic presents opportunities for a new discernment of the "signs of the times" by highlighting some pastoral challenges the Peruvian Church needs to address in light of Peru’s new social reality and Pope Francis’ call for Church reform.


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