Doubts and Faith

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of Matthew ◽  
First Century ◽  
Explicit Model ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Physical Testing ◽  
True Variant

Three very different first-century Jewish authors hint at a possible deviation from the regime of anatomical testing of virginity as established by Deuteronomy 22. Both Josephus and Philo, in their paraphrases of the bloody-sheets pericope, strikingly leave out any mention of any physical remainder of the sexual act, thus deviating from the explicit model of Deuteronomy. In the end, however, Josephus, seems unlikely to be a true variant, likely avoiding rather than replacing the Deuteronomic standard. Philo, however, may well express a concern for spiritual, rather than (or in addition to) physical virginity. The contrast with Deuteronomy is even more pronounced in the Gospel of Matthew, where faith-based testing comes to replace physical testing.

scholarly journals Gesag as diens: Die rol van die dissipels in die Matteusevangelie

2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermie C. Van Zyl
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of Matthew ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Poor

Authority as service: The role of the disciples in the Gospel according to Matthew. This article juxtaposes authority and service in the Gospel of Matthew. Firstly the article refers to the transfer of authority from Jesus to the disciples. Several relevant texts are discussed, including Matthew’s employment of proserchomai. Secondly the content of this authority is examined. The emphasis falls on the teaching authority of the disciples, especially to forgive sins. Thirdly the nature of authority is treated. It is not about lording it over people but to serve the believers in humility. In a last section all of the above is viewed against the backdrop of the first century Matthean community’s struggle to find its place within formative Judaism. The thesis is put forward that Matthew propounds a voluntary marginality, according to which the reader should take upon him- or herself the position of the poor.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 207-234
Author(s):  
Gregorio Bettiza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Policy Regime ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Faith Based

The conclusion has two main objectives. The first is to show how the International Religious Freedom, Faith-Based Foreign Aid, Muslim and Islamic Interventions, and Religious Engagement regimes form a broader American foreign policy regime complex on religion. The second objective is to reflect on the book’s wider implications for the study of religion in international relations and highlight areas for further research. This includes assessing the strength of the book’s theoretical framework in light of ongoing developments under the Trump administration; understanding better the changes occurring to the religious traditions and actors that America draws from and intervenes in around the world; investigating further how the American experience with the operationalization of religion in foreign policy relates and compares to similar policy changes taking place elsewhere; and reflecting more broadly on the implications for international order of the growing systematic attempt by the United States to manage and mobilize religion in twenty-first-century world politics.

From Text to Therapy: Dealing with Anxiety Conceptual Integration Based on Philippians 4:5–9

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 292-307
Author(s):  
Pablo Polischuk ◽  
Hyun Mok S. Kang
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Feedforward Control ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Christian Counseling ◽  
Conceptual Integration ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Coping Process ◽  
Transdiagnostic Model

A heuristic derived from an appeal to Scripture as an epistemological source of data is proposed, from which principles are extracted and interpreted, and integrated with psychological theory and research. It represents an effort to expand the utilization of conceptual integration in the domain of Christian counseling in particular. A key text is drawn from the apostle Paul’s letter to first-century Christians (Philippians 4:5–9) in view of its relevance in treating anxious conditions from a transdiagnostic perspective. The distinction is made between the scriptural use of the construct “anxiety” in the neo-testamentary context and present-day definitions framed in DSM-5 terms. The authors postulate the need to develop a faith-based heart-mindset, entrained and anchored in God—a relational subject and love object—that may provide a believer with intrinsic assurance of God’s peace that “surpasses understanding” and empowers their mindful, metacognitive-executive control system, potentiating an adaptive coping process. This approach draws from CBT, MC, and ACT principles, and resonates with Barlow’s transdiagnostic model in particular. An integrated, emergent dimension is introduced—“perichoretic thirdness”—defined in theological-psychological terms, where reliance on God’s transcending/immanent, coparticipatory presence empowers the metacognitive-executive feedforward control system of a believer in enacting purposive, adaptive responses vs. anxiety.

Claiming the Right to Educate: Insider/Outsider in Practical and Contextual Theology

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Pears
Keyword(s):  
Religious Faith ◽  
First Century ◽  
Contextual Theology ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Postgraduate Level ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Educational Perspective ◽  
The Right

AbstractThis article examines some of the issues, challenges and possibilities facing a non-Christian, non-faith based educator teaching Christian practitioners at postgraduate level in practical and contextual theology. From my experience as a person of no religious background, belief or practice, this article will explore and deconstruct the concept of the theologian in an educational perspective; it will scrutinize the place of religious faith in the academic setting as a pre-requisite to engaging in meaningful theological discourse and reflection with the Christian practitioner; and it will contribute towards developing an understanding of the role(s) of the theological educator in applied, and practical and contextual theology in the twenty-first century university.

Science on Trial

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Caudill
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberties ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Science Standards ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union ◽  
State Board Of Education

This chapter examines the resurrection of William Jennings Bryan's rhetoric in the twenty-first century, one in Kansas and the other in a small town in Pennsylvania, as creationists continued to appeal to individual rights and democratic principles. One side fumed for science and against theocracy. The other side railed about the assault on religion and bemoaned the abandonment of sacred traditions. In both cases, two worldviews are evidently in conflict. This chapter begins with an overview of the controversy involving the State Board of Education in Kansas, which adopted science standards in 2005 that treated evolution as a flawed theory. It then considers the case in Dover involving the American Civil Liberties Union and how it brought intelligent design to “the center of legislative debates in more than a dozen states.” It shows that the Dover trial was proof that, over the years since Scopes, creationism had moved from a faith-based argument to one that claimed to be empirically grounded and an argument not about religion in schools but about individual rights and fairness.

scholarly journals The Suffering Messiah Complex in the Gospel of Matthew

Axis Mundi ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Gagliano
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Gospel Of Matthew ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
First Century

A Messiah who must suffer would have been a paradox for the Jewish people of the first century.  However, in the Gospel of Matthew, even though the author notes that Jesus Christ is in fact the promised and awaited liberator of the Jewish people, the Messiah must suffer.  The author prepares the disciples and his readers to anticipate this paradox by using comparisons between Jesus Christ and other characters who also suffer and by including explicit predictions of the suffering of Jesus.  At the same time, the opportunity to doubt this phenomenon is permitted. 

scholarly journals The Promise of Spirituality in Mediation: The Significance of Spiritual-Based and Faith-Based Approaches in Mediation

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Jones ◽  
Alexia Georgakopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Model Development ◽  
First Century ◽  
Mediation Process ◽  
Spiritual Values ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article advocates greater exploration and incorporation of spirituality or religion in the mediation process. As religious or spiritual values constitute an element of one’s culture, which inevitably forms a lens through which one interprets the world, the authors suggest a greater acceptance of exploring and acknowledging the power of addressing one’s own religious or spiritual makeup. The authors present an agenda for mediation research and practice for the twenty-first century and consider several examples to encourage model development. In particular, the following discussion presents potentially valuable elements for an alternative approach to mediation which incorporates either religion or spirituality.

Counting Bitcoin

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Finn
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
First Century ◽  
Value System ◽  
Page Rank ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Value Model ◽  
Fundamental Shift

This chapter uses the growing dominance of algorithmic high frequency trading in finance to frame a reading of Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies. By defining the unit of exchange through computational cycles, Bitcoin fundamentally shifts the faith-based community of currency from a materialist to an algorithmic value system. Algorithmic arbitrage is forcing similar transitions in the attribution of value and meaning in many spaces of cultural exchange, from Facebook and Google’s Page Rank algorithm to journalism. The fundamental shift from valuing the cultural object itself to valuing the networks of relations that the object establishes or supports leads to new practices and aesthetics of production, where form and genre give way to memes and nebulous collaborative works. Using Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology as an example of this new value model, the chapter considers the consequences of programmable value for the notion of a public sphere in the twenty-first century, an era when arbitrage trumps content.

The Multi-faith Paradigm in Policy and Practice: Problems, Challenges, Directions

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Dinham
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
First Century ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policy Document ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Faith Based

A significant infrastructure of multi-faith engagement grew and consolidated throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century in England, called forth, at least in part, by government policy. This arose in response to three narratives of religious faith: a policy narrative which constructs faith groups as repositories of resources; a faith narrative which is concerned with the lived experiences of faith; and a partnership narrative which reflects the growing role of faith groups in the mixed economy of welfare (see Dinham and Lowndes, 2008). It is inflected, too, by a fourth narrative located in the bundle of ‘Prevent’ policies which sought to address the risks of religious radicalisation and extremism. This article examines multi-faith policy in England, and the issues driving it, and explores its relationship to the faith-based practices which are imagined by it. It asks the question whether the multi-faith paradigm, as crystallised in the policy document ‘Face to Face and Side by Side: A Framework for Partnership in Our Multi Faith Society’ (CLG, 2008), engages with a real and lived experience or remains a policy chimera and a parallel world.

scholarly journals Salvation in Matthew 5:17–20 and its Implications in the Church in Antioch and St James Kajire Anglican Parish, Kenya

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fednand Manjewa M'bwangi
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Gospel Of Matthew ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Jesus Movement ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

This article was prompted by my fervour to find out how modern and ancient cultures influence Christian conception and the practice of salvation. To address this issue, I decided to do a comparative study of salvation in modern time, with first century practice of the same. On the one hand, I focused on exploring salvation as reflected in the Gospel of Matthew 5.17–20, because most scholars believe that this Gospel addresses a multi-cultural community composed of Gentiles and Judeans. On the other hand, to observe modern practices of salvation, I interviewed a focus group through a questionnaire and telephone calls in 2011 and 2019, respectively, to briefly explore the case of St James Anglican Parish at Kajire Village in Taita-Taveta County, Kenya. The overall goal of the article is to explore how, in pursuit of practising their salvation, the community of Matthew in Antioch had to contest the Roman Empire, accommodate Diaspora Judaism, and identify with the emerging Jesus Movement. Consequently, employing literary analysis and what I call “social identity political theory” (SIPT), I have argued that a culturally conditioned practice of salvation is prone to the promotion of group dominance. To address this problem, Matthew advances an inclusive view of salvation that entails the construction of a superordinate Christian identity, which has the potential to support a Christocentric perspective of salvation.

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