PREDESTINATION IN DANTE’S COMMEDIA IN LIGHT OF AUGUSTINE

Author(s):  
Thomas Graff

Abstract If Virgil’s damnation motivates Dante in the heaven of Jupiter to interrogate the inner workings of divine justice, the ultimate theological point in contention is the nature of predestination. This article offers Augustine as an unconsidered textual anchor and hermeneutic lens for illuminating predestination in the Commedia: a doctrine concerning not so much humanity’s attempt at impossible comprehension of God’s salvific will, as an invitation to creative participation in it, realized in and through ongoing, historical practices of caritas conforming the self to the body of Christ.

Author(s):  
Michael S Burdett

Abstract This essay argues that a Christian incarnational response to posthumanism must recognize that what is at stake isn't just whether belief systems align. It seeks to relocate the interaction between the church and posthumanism to how the practices of posthumanism and Christianity perform the bodies, affections and dispositions of each. Posthuman practices seeks to habituate: (1) A preference for informational patterns over material instantiation; (2) that consciousness and the self are extended and displaced rather than discrete and localized; (3) that the body is merely a tool, the original prosthesis we learn to manipulate and (4) that human life is organized such that it is seamless with intelligent machines. The Christian performance of embodied life, on the other hand, has Christ as template and, in the Eucharist, Christians are marked by offering, sacrifice and celebration in a community that affirms the integrity of our common incarnate life.


Lumen et Vita ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Heeder

The Eucharist, the healing Body of Christ, is a major source of grace paramount to the process of reconciliation. Paradoxically, for those who suffer from eating disorders, a prime source of grace is found in the Eucharist, a broken Body whose effects are imparted through eating. Exploring the reconciliation of one who struggles with eating disorders to herself, others (the Church) and the divine via the Eucharist’s grace is a largely unexplored area rife with hope. Eucharistic grace has the potential to bear great fruit in the process of recovery, reminding the person who she is, that for which she is created, the depth of Christ’s love, and her communal belonging. These graces respond to areas psychology identifies as problematic for those with eating disorders; recovery requires a reconciliation back to the self and others, especially the body of the Church, and carries implications for the Church’s vocation of love. 


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-96
Author(s):  
Sørina Higgins

In his unfinished cycle of Arthurian poems, Charles Williams developed a totalizing mythology in which he fictionalized the Medieval. First, he employed chronological conflation, juxtaposing events and cultural references from a millennium of European history and aligning each with his doctrinal system. Second, following the Biblical metaphor of the body of Christ, Blake’s symbolism, and Rosicrucian sacramentalism, he embodied theology in the Medieval landscape via a superimposed female figure. Finally, Williams worked to show the validity of two Scholastic approaches to spirituality: the kataphatic and apophatic paths. His attempts to balance via negativa and via positiva led Williams to practical misapplication—but also to creation of a landmark work of twentieth century poetry. . . . the two great vocations, the Rejection of all images before the unimaged, the Affirmation of all images before the all-imaged, the Rejection affirming, the Affirmation rejecting. . . —from ‘The Departure of Dindrane’ —O Blessed, pardon affirmation!— —O Blessed, pardon negation!— —from ‘The Prayers of the Pope’


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin D. Miller
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document