Yair Lorberbaum. Image of God, Halakhah and Aggadah. Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing House, 2004. 544 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-167
Author(s):  
Joshua Kulp
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Manifestation

The central thesis of Lorberbaum's book is that according to the rabbis, the meaning of imago dei is that there is tangible divine presence within every human being. This concept impacted primarily upon two areas of halakhah: the death penalty and procreation. Since humans are physical representations of God, execution is equivalent in some ways to deicide. Conversely, procreation is strongly mandated because it increases God's physical manifestation in the world by creating more vehicles in which to embody God's presence. Importantly, as “images” of the divine, human beings function as icons in a manner similar to the way idols function in the pagan world; they draw God's presence into themselves, blurring the borders between representation and form. Finally, the drawing of God's presence into the human body dictates that human beings are embodied with significant theurgic powers.

scholarly journals Om forholdet mellem skabelse og syndefald hos Grundtvig og Luther

2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-125
Author(s):  
Anja Stokholm
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Proper Form ◽  
The World ◽  
Natural Man ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Image Of God

Om forholdet mellem skabelse og syndefald hos Grundtvig og Luther[Grundtvig and Luther: on the Relationship Between Creation and Fall]By Anja StokholmTheologically speaking, two circumstances determine human life: on the one side, Creation and the creativity of God, on the other the Fall of Man and human sinfulness. Because God’s good creation is continuous, a positive understanding of the status and existence of natural Man is possible; but because Man is fallen and sin destroys creation, a negative perception of human life must also be acknowledged. Useful comparison may be made between the ideas of Grundtvig and Luther on this ambiguous relationship. One may ask of each: was the image of God in Man destroyed at the Fall or does the likeness of God remain a reality even in the fallen human being? Is it possible for natural Man to understand the Gospel and the Christian life? Can the understanding of the Gospels only have a negative character because it is reached from out of consciousness of sin; or can this understanding have a positive character because, sin notwithstanding, momentary experiencing of the truth of the Gospels may be granted? Are the views of Grundtvig and Luther too divergent to be reconciled?Regin Prenter maintained that their two positions closely corresponded, arguing that Grundtvig consistently developed Luther’s reformatory principles rejecting the possibility of human beings gaining justice or salvation by their own merit, and thereby also accepted that only in consciousness of the fallen condition of the world, the subverted nature of humanity, and sin, could the Gospel’s promises be received. Prenter’s harmonisation of Grundtvig and Luther, however, gives insufficient weight to the differences. Luther contends that the image of God in Man is lost, that Man is wholly sinful and unjustified; that just as inward spirit and outward flesh are discrete and cannot mix so are the justified and the unjustified states; and it follows that the unjustified human being is to be perceived a flesh alone. In so far as continuous creation, and manifestations of the positive such as the human capacity to recognise and comply with the demands of the law, are to be found in the world, these arise not from the inner resources of human beings but from the unmerited gift of God.Grundtvig too emphasises the seriousness and destructive nature of sin; but he insists that a remnant of the image of God persists in humanity - for instance in Man’s capacity to live in faith, hope and love, and to nurture the Word (that is, speech); and that its manifestation is a token of God’s continuing, and good, creation. Crucially important is Grundtvig’s conception that the image of God is located in the human heart, for this implies that goodness and the positive phenomena of creation express human life and nature in their true and proper form, and thus Grundtvig is able to identify natural human life, governed by the heart, as a positive context within which the word of the Gospel is indeed comprehensible. In differentiation, then, from Luther, Grundtvig maintains that natural Man also has a spirit and can be the agent of love and of goodness.Is this position incompatible with Luther’s doctrine on justification? Does the notion of goodness imply that Man can and must contribute to his own salvation? Grundtvig is careful to maintain that positive qualities such as love and goodness are a creation of God in Man, not an autonomous human achievement; and that the grace of God’s continuing creation in Man does not render salvation unnecessary. Man still needs the redeeming creation of Christ.Thus there are considerable differences between Grundtvig and Luther; but Grundtvig’s ideas are to be seen as a renewal and an independent continuation of Luther’s principal doctrine: that God alone can accomplish salvation. Yet acknowledgement and awareness of the differences, which arise in part through the different times and circumstances in which these independent thinkers worked, is conducive to a productive dialogue between the two.

scholarly journals The human being and the world as God’s creation: Present-day ethical conflicts and consequences of the doctrine of creation in the perspective of the doctrine of justification

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich H.J. Körtner
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Conflicts ◽  
The World ◽  
Hermeneutical Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Specific Contribution

All the medical and bioethical questions, ranging from stem cell research to converging technologies and synthetic biology, touch on the question regarding the image of human beings and their position in the cosmos, by which we are able to orient ourselves. This article argues that the biblical belief in creation and the discourse about humans as created beings by and in the image of God can still be proclaimed as a viable form of human self-interpretation in the present. The distinction between practical knowledge and knowledge of orientation may be of help here. Guidance for how to live and act is not best found in abstract principles, but rather in meaningful stories, in metaphors and symbols. On this level, too, is also where faith in creation and the certainty of our own creatureliness is located.Contribution: This article interprets the doctrine of creation by a hermeneutical theology. It analyses the interdependence between hermeneutics and criticism in the process of reinterpreting the classical propositions about the human being and the world as God’s creation and the relation of anthropology and ethics. The aim is to show what might be the contribution of Christian faith in creation to the approach of an ethics of responsibility in the field of bioethics and ecology. The specific contribution of this article to current debates on an ethics of creation is the thesis that the key to a well-balanced theological approach to all this is the Pauline doctrine of justification as interpreted by the protestant reformers.

A Liberdade e a Justiça: horizontes para uma racionalidade socioambiental

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Sepúlveda Ferriz
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
The World ◽  
Authentic Development ◽  
Sense Of Justice

Freedom and Justice have always been challenged. Since the most remote times, and in the most varied circumstances of places and people, human beings have tried to clarify and put into practice these two controversial concepts. Freedom and Justice, in effect, are words, but also dreams, desires and practices that, not being imperfect, are less sublime and ambitious. Reflecting on them on the basis of an ethics of development and socioenvironmental sustainability is still a great challenge in our contemporaneity. This book is born from the need that we all have to reflect, understand what our role is in relation to the OTHER, understood as the other as Environment. Doing this from such disparate areas and at the same time as current as Economics, Philosophy and Ecology, is still a great opportunity to discuss complexity, transdisciplinarity and the inclusion of diverse themes, but which all converge in the Human Being and its relationship with the world. Endowing human beings with Freedom and a sense of Justice means RESPONSIBILITY. To be free and to want a better and fairer world is to endow our existence with meaning and meaning. Agency, autonomy, functioning, dignity, rights, are capacities that must be leveraged individually and collectively for authentic development to exist. Development as Freedom is a valid proposal for thinking about a socio-environmental rationality that interferes in the controversial relations between economics, ethics and the environment.

Constructing human agency

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Natural Agents ◽  
The World ◽  
Theological Differences

This chapter argues that human agency is free agency. It is freedom, or dominium over one's own actions, which makes a human being different from all other animals; and it is the foundation of the world of the moral, the juridical, and the political, which are all continuous with one another and from which animals—and a fortiori all other natural agents—are excluded. However, during the sixteenth century, the idea that human beings are essentially and ineradicably free to control their own actions came under severe pressure from new and irreconcilable theological differences over the freedom of the human will—differences that therefore implicitly pressured the primary threshold of political space.

Moral Theory and Divine Justice

2017 ◽  
pp. 87-127
Author(s):  
Hussein Ali Abdulsater
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Sovereignty ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Point Of Departure

This chapter investigates the position of human beings in this theological system. Its point of departure is a definition of the human being, from which it develops an understanding of human agency in relation to God and the world. Divine assistance (luṭf) is highlighted as the bridge between human autonomy and divine sovereignty. Following is an elaborate description of religious experience: its origins, justification, relevant parties, responsibilities and characteristics. The concept of moral obligation (taklīf) is shown to be the cornerstone of Murtaḍā’s theory on religion. The chapter is divided into three sub-headings: The Human Being; Justification of Moral Obligation; Characteristics of Moral Obligation.

Pedagogika wobec problematyczności bytu ludzkiego. O konfliktach w życiu człowieka

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2 (252)) ◽  
pp. 70-85
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rumianowska
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
Complex Mechanisms

The purpose of the article is to outline the problem of widely understood conflicts in human life from the perspective of existential philosophy. Without questioning the importance of psychological research on complex mechanisms underlying conflicts, the author points to the issue of the problematic nature of human existence, the category of freedom, the problem of the authenticity of being and the sense of meaning. In the second part of the paper, the essence of educational process in the context of experiencing difficulties and conflicting situations by human beings has been introduced. The necessity of taking into account the problem of being oneself and constituting a human being in relation to himself, the world and others has been presented.

scholarly journals Effectiveness of interpersonal communication between physicians and diabetic patients in the salem district of tamilnadu

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
DEIVASREE ANBU A ◽  
Makesh S
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Body Language ◽  
Verbal Communication ◽  
Diabetic Patients ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
Interactional Process

Interpersonal communication is an interactional process in which one person sends message to another. It encompasses of oral, written and non- verbal.People around the world are very cautious about their health. The nature of human beings differs from person to person. Communication is one of the normal activities which play the major role among every human being. Communication may be verbal or nonverbal. Verbal communication does not create an impact whereas non-verbal communication creates impact on the behaviour of human beings. Non- verbal communication consists of sign language, body language, eye contact, gesture, touch, space, ocalics and so on. Non- verbal communication creates an impact among every one. A person‘s expression says more than that of wordsconveyed verbally.

scholarly journals Modernitetens modsigelser. Konfigurationskonflikter og samfundstænkning i Grundtvigs »Om Mennesket i Verden«

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Henning Eichberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Contradictions of Modernity. Conflicting Configurations and Societal Thinking in Grundtvig's »The Human Being in the World«A Worm - a God. About the Human Being in the World. Ove Korsgaard (ed.). With contributions of Niels Buur Hansen, Hans Hauge, Bosse Bergstedt, Uffe Jonas and Knud Bjarne Gjesing. Odense Universitetsforlag 1997.By Henning EichbergIn 1817, Grundtvig wrote »Om Mennesket i Verden« which can be regarded as a key to the understanding of his philosophy and psychology, but which is difficult to place in relation to his later folkelig, societal engagement. A recent reedition of this text together with some actual comments by Grundtvig researchers is an occasion to quest deeper about this relation.However, it is not enough to ask - as Grundtvig research has done for a long time - what Grundtvig wanted to say, but his text can be regarded as a document of how modem orientation in the world is characterized by conflicting linguistic and metaphorical patterns, which sometimes may tell another story than intended.On the one hand, Grundtvig's text speaks of a lot of dualistic contradictions such as life vs. death, light vs. darkness, truth vs. lie, God vs. devil, human fall vs. resurrection, body vs. spirit, nature vs. history and time vs. eternity. In contrast to the author's intention to produce clarity and lucidity - whether in the spirit of Christianity or of modem rationality - the binary constructions give rather a confusing picture of systematical disorder where polarity and polemics are mixed, antagonism and gradual order, dichotomy and exclusive either-or, paradoxes and dialectical contradictions. On the other hand,Grundtvig tries again and again to build up three-pole imaginations as for instance the threefold human relation to time, space and truth and the three ages of spiritual seeing, feeling and conceptualization resp. of mythology (childhood), theology (youth) and history (adult age). The main history, Grundtvig wants to tell in his text, is built up around the trialectic relation of the human being to the body, to the spirit and to itself, to the living soul.The most difficult to understand in this relation seems to be what Grundtvig calls the spirit, Aanden. Grundtvig describes it as Aandigt Samfund mellem Menneske og Sandhed, »the spiritual community between the human being and the truth«, and this may direct our attention towards samfund, meaning at the same time association, togetherness and society. Aanden is described by threefold effects - will, conscience and faith, all of them describing social relations between human beings resp. their psychological correlate. The same social undertone is true when Grundtvig characterizes three Aande-Livets Spor (»traces of spiritual life«): the word, the history and love. If »the spirit« represents what is larger or »higher« than the single human being and what cannot be touched by his or her hand, then this definition fits exactly to society or the sociality of the human being. Social life - whether understood as culture, social identity or folk (people) - is not only a quantitative sum of human individuals, but represents another quality of natural order. Thus it has its logic that Grundtvig places the human being in between the realms of minerals, plant and animal life on the one hand and the »higher« order on the other, which can be understood as the social existence.In this respect, the societal dimension is not at all absent in his philosophy of 1817. However, it is not enough to state the implicite presence of sociality as such in the earlier Grundtvigian thinking before his folkelig break-through. What was the sociality, more concretely, which Grundtvig experienced during the early modernity? In general, highly dichotomous concepts are dominating the modem discourse as capitalism vs. feudalism, materialism vs. idealism, modernity vs. premodemity, democracy vs. absolutism or revolution vs. restoration; Grundtvig was always difficult to place into these patterns. Again, it might be helpful to try a trialectical approach, transcending the dualism of state and market by civil society as a third field of social action. Indeed, it was civil society with its farmers' anarchist undertones which became the contents of Grundtvig's later folk engagement.

scholarly journals ARSITEKTUR ISLAM: Seni Ruang dalam Peradaban Islam

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aulia Fikriarini
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Islamic Architecture ◽  
Geometrical Relation ◽  
The World ◽  
Islamic Civilization ◽  
Islamic Values

Human being as a caliph, here related to the function of architect, has <br />responsibility for the environment. Hence, in doing their activities in this world, they have to cope with the nature considering the principal of balance and harmony. Architecture as one of the sciences should also go along with the Islamic values. The values based on the Quran should certainly be the foundation for all efforts of developing any sciences, including architectur. The application of Islam values will produce works of “Islamic architecture” that comprise a combination of culture and humans’ submission to their God, which characterizes the harmony of the human beings, environment, and their  Creator. Islamic architecture suggests a complex geometrical relation, hierarchy of shapes and ornaments, and deep symbolic meaning. This writing describes the fact that works of Islamic architectures in over the world that is based on Islamic ethical values and manners do not represent a single and identical shape. However, the varieties and wealth of shapes are unfield by one purpose, that is, as a medium of devoting to God. The varieties create a multitude of Islamic architecture products within Islamic civilization, which lead human beings to rahmatan lil alamiin. <br />

scholarly journals The Joy of Being as Anthropological Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Human Condition

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping

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