Semitic Religion and Sacrificial Ritual

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-218
Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology ◽  
Max Müller ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Sacrificial Ritual ◽  
William Robertson

We now turn to the broader intellectual context during the final three decades of the century, when sociology and anthropology were moving to the fore of the scene, often pushing philology backstage, as the preferred approach to the study of religion. As we shall see, the stakes, which were high, showcase at once ambivalent attitudes towards Judaism and the precarious status of Jewish scholars. The standing of Jewish scholars in the comparative and anthropological tradition reflects the strategy chosen by some among them (not always in a reflexive, conscious way) to overcome this precarious status. Both the comparative and the anthropological method permitted them to circumvent the traces of Christian theology which they correctly detected in more traditional, philological approaches to the study of the monotheist systems. Our three main protagonists here are Max Müller, Julius Wellhausen, and William Robertson Smith.

Theology and the Rise of Political Economy in Britain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

2014 ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
A. M. C. Waterman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Christian Society

In the eighteenth century, and for much of the nineteenth, Britain was a Christian society. In such a society, ideas are inevitably conceived within a theological matrix; and to be generally acceptable they must be consonant with prevailing theological orthodoxy. In eighteenth-century England and Scotland, there is hardly a trace of any dissonance between economic thought and Christian theology. But at the very end of that century there appeared T. R. Malthus’s anonymous Essay on the Principle of Population, which almost immediately created a conflict between theology and what was becoming known as “political economy,” a conflict which in some respects has continued to the present. This chapter surveys the characteristics of Christian society that provided the intellectual context of economic thought in those centuries and provides an account of the relation between economic thought and theology in the eighteenth century, and the story of what happened after Malthus.

An Introduction to Christian Theology

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Plantinga ◽  
Thomas R. Thompson ◽  
Matthew D. Lundberg
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology

The Old Man in Purgatory: The Indian Part in Yeats's Vision of Salvation

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 251-268
Author(s):  
Yeeyon Im
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
Selfless Action

This essay examines Yeats's Purgatory via A Vision, in an attempt to understand his view of salvation in particular relation to Indian philosophy. Read from a Christian perspective, Purgatory may be a work far from purgation, as T. S. Eliot once complained. I wish to show in this essay that Purgatory indeed places emphasis on purgation by a negative example, if in a different way from the Catholic one. Yeats denies the linear eschatology of Christian theology as well as its doctrine of salvation in eternal heaven. In A Vision, Yeats explains his view of the afterlife of the soul, which involves purgation through ‘the Dreaming Back’. The special treatment of the Old Man renders Purgatory a meta-purgatorial play that mirrors the Dreaming Back of his mother's spirit in the Old Man's, intensifying the theme of purgation. Purgatory effectively dramatizes the inability to forgive and cast out remorse: the impossibility of nishikam karma, or selfless action, to borrow Sanskrit terms, which is essential for Yeatsian salvation. Finally, I would also emphasize Yeats's deviation from the Hindu wisdom, which makes Yeats's vision uniquely his own.

Classical Conceptions of Visuality and Representation in John of Damascus' Defense of Holy Images1

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-308
Author(s):  
James A. Francis
Keyword(s):  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Iconoclastic Controversy

The Defense of Holy Images by John of Damascus stands as the archetypal exposition of the Christian theology of images. Written at the outbreak of the Iconoclastic Controversy, it has been mostly valued for its theological content and given scholarly short shrift as a narrowly focused polemic. The work is more than that. It presents a complex and profound explication of the nature of images and the phenomenon of representation, and is an important part of the “history of looking”in western culture. A long chain of visual conceptions connects classical Greek and Roman writers, such as Homer and Quintilian, to John: the living image, the interrelation of word and image, and image and memory, themes elaborated particularly in the Second Sophistic period of the early Common Era. For John to deploy this heritage so skillfully to the thorny problem of the place of images in Christianity, at the outbreak of a violent conflict that lasted a further 100 years after his writing, manifests an intellect and creativity that has not been sufficiently appreciated. The Defense of Holy Images, understood in this context, is another innovative synthesis of Christianity and classical culture produced by late antique Christian writers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document