Living in the Light of Religious Ideals

2011 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 245-255
Author(s):  
Clare Carlisle
Keyword(s):  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Ontological Ground ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
Purity Of Heart ◽  
The Human Condition

As a ‘poet of the religious’, Søren Kierkegaard sets before his reader a constellation of spiritual ideals, exquisitely painted with words and images that evoke their luminous beauty. Among these poetic icons are ideals of purity of heart; love of the neighbour; radiant self-transparency; truthfulness to oneself, to another person, or to God. Such ideals are what the ‘restless heart’ desires, and in invoking them Kierkegaard refuses to compromise on their purity – while insisting also that they are impossible to attain. It is the human condition which makes them impossible, and he is willing to describe this in dogmatic terms as original sin – sin being the refusal and loss of God, and thus also the loss of a self that has its ontological ground in its relationship to God – but he is more concerned to explore it in psychological terms. The human condition is for Kierkegaard characterised not merely by ignorance, but by wilful self-deception.

The Human Condition in Hilary of Poitiers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella Image
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Stepping Stones ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Hilary Of Poitiers ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Human Condition

The mid-fourth-century bishop Hilary of Poitiers is better known for his Trinitarian works and theology, but this book assesses his view of the human condition using his commentaries in particular. The commentary on Psalm 118 is shown to be more closely related to Origen’s than previously thought; this in turn explains how his articulations of sin, body, and soul, the Fall, and the will all parallel or echo Origen’s views in this work, but not necessarily in his Matthew commentary. Hilary has a doctrine of original sin (‘sins of our origin’, peccata originis), which differs from the individual personal sins and for which we are individually accountable. He also articulates a fallen will which is in thrall to disobedience and needs God’s help, something God always gives as long as we show the initiative. Hilary’s idea of the fallen will may have developed in tangent with Origen’s thought, which uses Stoic ideas on the process of human action in order to articulate the constraints on purely rational responses. Hilary in turn influences Augustine, who writes against the Pelagian bishop Julian of Eclanum, citing Hilary as an example of an earlier writer with original sin. Since Hilary is known to have used Origen’s work, and Augustine is known to have used Hilary’s, Hilary appears to be one of the stepping-stones between these two great giants of the early church as the doctrines of original sin and the fallen will developed.

Essays in Analytic Theology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Rea
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Hiddenness ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Face ◽  
Part Deal ◽  
The Human Condition

This book is the second of two volumes collecting together the most substantial work in analytic theology that I have done between 2003 and 2018. The first volume contains essays focused, broadly speaking, on the nature of God; this second volume contains essays focused more on doctrines about humanity, the human condition, and how human beings relate to God. The essays in the first part deal with the doctrines of the incarnation, original sin, and atonement; the essays in the second part discuss the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness, and a theological problem that arises in connection with the idea God not only tolerates but validates a response of angry protest in the face of these problems.

scholarly journals Aquinas on Physical Impairment: Human Nature and Original Sin

2017 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338
Author(s):  
Richard Cross
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Physical Impairments ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Normalization Strategy ◽  
Corporate Punishment ◽  
Moral Model ◽  
Moral Construction ◽  
Construction Of Disability ◽  
The Human Condition

Medieval accounts of disability by and large (though not universally) defend what is now labeled the “religio-moral” construction of disability: seeing an individual's disability as a punishment for that individual's sin.1 Unsurprisingly, such models are not much in favor among contemporary disability theorists for a number of reasons, among which we might include the unacceptable thought that an individual with disabilities somehow deserves those disabilities. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) accepts some version of this theory, but one rather different from the standard one (or at least, from what is now generally understood as the religio-moral model). Aquinas sees physical impairments—things that constitute a subclass of what he labels “bodily defects”—fundamentally as punishments for original sin. He is (generally) very careful to distance his account of defects from notions of individual punishment. (When he is not, it is because of pressure from Scriptural sources—though as we shall see below he believes that by and large the Bible, too, explicitly rejects the view that disability could be a punishment for individual sin.) So whatever we think of punishment models more generally, Aquinas's certainly removes one of the least appealing aspects of such models as typically understood. And Aquinas is careful, too, to associate many features of the human condition—not just those identified as a certain subclass of defects – with corporate punishment for original sin. To this extent, his account of physical impairments tends to normalize such impairments, and to de-emphasize their distance from other features of post-lapsarian human existence. While I doubt that what Aquinas says about bodily defects would satisfy many contemporary disability theorists, it seems to me that parts of his accout—and not least this normalization strategy—may appeal to more theologically-inflected accounts of the human condition.

Evil, Suffering, and Original Sin

2016 ◽  
pp. 138-150
Author(s):  
Nicholas E. Lombardo
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
God's Love ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Catholic Theological ◽  
Historical Origins ◽  
The Human Condition

For early Christians, the revelation of Jesus Christ brought more than hope and ecstatic expectation. It also sharpened their sense of the disjunction between who we are and who we are meant to be. Working backwards from their experience of the risen Christ, they came to see Christ’s death and resurrection as proof not only of God’s love but also of the existential need for a saviour. Gradually, early Christian reflection coalesced into the doctrine of the fall or the doctrine of original sin. The Catholic theological tradition has always embraced this doctrine as a necessary tool for balancing appreciation for the goodness of creation with unblinking realism about the human condition. Its precise theological formulation, however, has varied considerably over the centuries. This chapter discusses the historical origins of Catholic teaching, the classical synthesis solidified by the Council of Trent, and recent developments in theology and magisterial teaching.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Kirkpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Central Claim ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter introduces and lays the groundwork for the book’s central claim, namely that Sartre’s philosophical anthropology in Being and Nothingness presents the human condition as fallen. This contention may come as a surprise, given that in his time there was ‘no more prominent atheist’. But Sartre’s atheism is ambiguous, both biographically and philosophically. After some preliminary comments on the origins and nature of Sartre’s atheism this chapter therefore introduces the claim that Sartre is a ‘secular theologian of original sin’, contextualizes the present work in existing research, and outlines the scope and structure of the argument that is to follow.

scholarly journals Self-Deception and the Apologetic of Despair in Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Bahnsen

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
THEODORE G. (TED) VAN RAALTE
Keyword(s):  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Human Condition

One Of The Helpful Approaches Of A Christian Apologist In The Present Anti-Christian Climate Is An Apologetic That Presses The Unbeliever To Admit That Their Views Lack Hope And Lead To Despair. Though Many Unbelievers Deny The Despair And Prefer To Deceive Themselves, One Influential Author Views Self-deception As Fundamental To The Human Condition And Non-culpable. However, Christians Must Expose Self- Deception As Evil—a Product And Species Of Sin—seek To Root It Out Of Themselves, And Lead Others To The Hope Of Dealing With Life Truthfully. This Essay Helps Christian Apologists By Utilizing The Analysis Of Self- Deception By Greg Bahnsen And Shows That The Older Accounts Of Blaise Pascal And Søren Kierkegaard Accord Well With Bahnsen’s Approach. KEYWORDS: Blaise Pascal, Søren Kierkegaard, Greg Bahnsen, self-deception, apologetic of despair, presuppositional apologetic, sin, history of apologetic, apologetic method

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