Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Original Sin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Adolf Hitler ◽  
Anti Semitism

A central and abiding motive for anti-Semitism, I maintain, is the same thing that moved Haman in the book of Esther to plot the genocide of the Jews and that got Jesus crucified by the Romans: the embodiment of an uncompromising allegiance to a righteous Deity who creates, judges, and cares for all people. Whereas the Mosaic God of the Burning Bush warmed and enlightened without consuming, Adolf Hitler eventually sought to make a conflagration of anyone and anything who gestured away from Aryan blood and toward universal Deity, especially the Jews and their ideal of holiness. As believers in moral monotheism, the Jews were considered base and polluted, hence to be burned away with a stunningly rational efficiency. This Holocaust I attribute to a range of causes, but particularly to “original sin”: the tendency of anxious human beings to try to elevate themselves by denigrating others who differ from them or who challenge their erotic instincts.

Pelagianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kirwan
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Effort

Pelagius, a Christian layman, was active around ad 400. The thesis chiefly associated with his name is that (i) human beings have it in their own power to avoid sin and achieve righteousness. Critics objected that this derogates from human dependence on the grace of God. Pelagius did not deny that the power to avoid sin is itself a gift of God, an enabling grace; but he was understood to deny the need for cooperative grace, divine aid in using the power rightly, or at least to assert that (ii) such aid is a reward for human effort, and so not an act of grace. Later thinkers who held that God’s aid, though not a reward, goes only to those who do make an effort, were accused of believing that (iii) there is no need of prevenient grace in causing the effort in the first place. So Pelagianism is a tendency to magnify human powers: its defenders saw it as a (frightening) challenge to humans, its detractors as an insult to God. It was hard without Pelagianism to find a place for free will, or with it for original sin.

Roman Assimilation of Greek Myths and Botany

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Taiz ◽  
Lee Taiz
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Pliny The Elder ◽  
Greek Myths ◽  
The One ◽  
Nicolaus Of Damascus ◽  
The Middle Ages

“Roman Assimilation of Greek Myths and Botany” traces the absorption of Greek botanical thought by the Romans. Although Roman thinkers—Cato the Elder, Varro, Virgil and Columella—wrote about agriculture, theoretical botany was largely abandoned, while the one—sex model of plants remained entrenched. Roman myths, many syncretized with Greek, reinforced the gender bias by which plants were associated with women. Chloris, Greek goddess of flowers, was assimilated to Flora, and Ceres to Demeter. Ovid recounts a story concerning Flora and Juno that symbolically connects flowers to parthenogenesis. Of Greek derived works on plants, only Pliny’s Historia Natura and Nicolaus of Damascus’ De Plantis were widely available in the Middle Ages. One interpretation of flowers by Pliny the Elder, that they were created to delight human beings, endured into of the Christian era, while St. Augustine sited the “degeneration” of plants grown from seed as “palpable evidence” for original sin.

The Three Horseman of the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism, East European Empire, Aryan Folk Community

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
East European ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Conscious Choice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish

This article traces the three main issues which dominated Hitler's regime in Germany during the Holocaust. Two interpretive traditions have, since Hitler's day, commanded scholarly efforts to understand the Holocaust. One emphasizes ideas, recounting the intellectual history of anti-Semitism and the aims and political actions of those gripped by its poisoned talons. Paired with this approach is the conviction that history is made by human beings' conscious choice: beliefs inspire purposive behaviour seeking their realization. Historical actors are aware of their actions and responsible for them. In Holocaust historiography, this widespread understanding of history and human behaviour has yielded the ‘intentionalist’ argument. This holds that anti-Semitic ideology of a uniquely aggressive type flourished in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Germany; and the anti-Jewish policies (Judenpolitik) of Hitler's ‘Third Reich’ led, if perhaps by a ‘twisted path’, to a mass murder which the Nazis' anti-Semitic ideas, and the dictator Hitler's in particular, authorized and even commanded.

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.

Śmierć i ostateczne przeznaczenie człowieka w ujęciu Maksyma Wyznawcy

Vox Patrum ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 293-305
Author(s):  
Karolina Kochańczyk-Bonińska
Keyword(s):  
Original Sin ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Union With God

The article presents how Maximus as Christian and philosopher understands death and eternal life. First of all, Confessor connects death with original sin and separation from God. In another meaning death is for him separation of body and soul, so that our life becomes continues preparation for death. Another important problem presented is if and how different elements of human being (intellect, soul and body) would cooperate in eternal life. Author presents Maximus’ attitude towards the conception of apocatastasis and shows that there is no place for such conception in Maxim’s writings. The last important problem presented in the article is deification understood as union with God (not only human beings but whole creation united with Creator) and Sabbath, which is the end of all movement and rest in God.

scholarly journals Opstandingsverhale en opstandingsdogma

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Izak J.J. Spangenberg
Keyword(s):  
Original Sin ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Real ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
The World

Resurrection narratives and the doctrine of resurrectionThe article examined the closing narratives of the four canonical gospels and argued that they should be read as stories and not as historical narratives. These stories, however, show a progressive development and it is evident that the narrators of the later stories embellished the earlier narratives. Christian theologians of later centuries developed these stories into a theology of salvation and linked resurrection to the idea of death being God’s punishment for Original Sin. By doing so, they changed the Gospel of Jesus into the Gospel about Jesus. Currently, people have a different understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. Death is seen as part of the cycle of life and humans, like everything else, will not be resurrected but recycled. That is one of the reasons why Christianity is in dire need of a new paradigm that will take into account the real position of human beings in the cosmos.

“Non potest non peccare”: Karl Barth on original sin and the bondage of the will

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-207
Author(s):  
Shao Kai Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will

Summary This article offers an exposition of Karl Barth’s actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notions of original sin and the bondage of the will in § 60 and § 65 of Church Dogmatics IV/1–2. Barth redefines human nature as a total determination of the human being (Sein/Dasein) “from above” by the covenantal history of reconciliation. Human nature as such remains totally intact in the historical state of sin. The human being, however, is also determined “from below” by the Adamic world-history of total corruption. With this dialectical construal of sin and human nature, Barth redefines original sin as the radically sinful activities and decisions that determine the confinement of human beings to the historical condition of fallenness. Barth also challenges the famous Augustinian account of the bondage of the will to which original sin gives rise, and uses the present active indicative to express his actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notion of the bondage: “non potest non peccare”.

Malthus, Jesus, and Darwin

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Pullen
Keyword(s):  
Original Sin ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
General Context ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Original State ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Naturalistic Interpretation ◽  
The Moment

Malthus' theological ideas were most clearly presented in the final two chapters of the first edition (1798) of his Essay on the Principle of Population. They can be classified under eight main headings. (i) He admitted that the pressure of population causes much misery and evil, but he did not accept that this in any way impugned the benevolence of the Creator. He situated the population problem within the general context of the problem of evil, and argued that population pressure is permitted and ordained by the Creator as a means of stimulating mankind to attain a higher good. (ii) He opposed the traditional Christian notion that this world is a state of trial, with population pressure being one aspect of that trial. He believed that this notion of a state of trial is inconsistent with the notion of an omniscient Creator, and that it is therefore necessary to reject the notion of a state of trial in order to save the notion of Divine omniscience. (iii) Instead of viewing this world as a state of trial, he viewed it ‘as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mindr. This notion of the growth of mind is the central aspect of Malthus' theology. (iv) He expressed doubts about the omnipotence of the Creator, arguing that God did not have the power to create perfect human beings instantaneously, but required a certain process or a certain time to form beings with ‘exalted qualities of mind’. Malthus seemed to argue that Divine omnipotence and Divine benevolence are incompatible – because a truly benevolent creator would not have subjected mankind to the miseries of this world if He had the power to create a perfect world. Malthus was prepared to sacrifice the notion of Divine omnipotence in order to save the notion of Divine benevolence. (v) He saw the principle of population as part of the Divine plan for the replenishment of the earth, i.e. its full cultivation and peopling. (vi) His attitude to worldly pleasures and comforts was distinctly unpuritanical, and leaning towards hedonism. His ethics were world-enhancing, rather than world-denying and retreatist. (This point is discussed more fully in Part II below.) (vii) He gave a naturalistic interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of original sin, describing original sin as the original state of torpor and sluggishness of every human being at the moment of birth. The purpose of the principle of population, and of the other difficulties encountered in life, is to stimulate man to raise himself out of this original state. (viii) Finally, Malthus' theology included the doctrine of annihilationism (or conditional immortality), according to which eternal life is not an essential part of the human soul at birth, but is granted only to those who attain during life on earth an adequate growth of mind. The others are, at death, not condemned to eternal suffering, but are annihilated, body and soul.

Iqbal, Muhammad (1877–1938)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riffat Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
External World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Human Beings

Muhammad Iqbal was an outstanding poet-philosopher, perhaps the most influential Muslim thinker of the twentieth century. His philosophy, though eclectic and showing the influence of Muslims thinkers such as al-Ghazali and Rumi as well as Western thinkers such as Nietzsche and Bergson, was rooted fundamentally in the Qur’an, which Iqbal read with the sensitivity of a poet and the insight of a mystic. Iqbal’s philosophy is known as the philosophy of khudi or Selfhood. Rejecting the idea of a ‘Fall’ from Eden or original sin, Iqbal regards the advent of human beings on earth as a glorious event, since Adam was designated by God to be God’s viceregent on earth. Human beings are not mere accidents in the process of evolution. The cosmos exists in order to make possible the emergence and perfection of the Self. The purpose of life is the development of the Self, which occurs as human beings gain greater knowledge of what lies within them as well as of the external world. Iqbal’s philosophy is essentially a philosophy of action, and it is concerned primarily with motivating human beings to strive to actualize their God-given potential to the fullest degree.

Fallenness and anhypostasis: a way forward in the debate over Christ's humanity

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren O. Sumner
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
Hypostatic Union ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractThe doctrine of the incarnation suggests that Christ is necessarily like us in some respects, and also unlike us in others. One long-standing debate in modern christology concerns whether Jesus’ human nature ought to be regarded as ‘fallen’ – as conditioned by the effects of the Fall – despite the fact that he himself remained without sin (Heb 4:15). Is fallenness a condition which is necessary in order for Christ to sympathise with human beings, to represent them, and so to reconcile them to God? Is fallenness logically separable from sinfulness? Recent literature has suggested an increasing intractability on both sides of this debate. This article seeks to bring clarity to the question of the fallenness of Christ's human nature by identifying areas of common ground between advocates and opponents of this position. It engages the work of representatives from both sides – Oliver Crisp in opposition and Karl Barth in support – in order to determine the different ways in which they approach the matter of Jesus’ fallenness and impeccability, and to locate points of potential consensus. Crisp argues that fallenness cannot be detached from sin and guilt – i.e. Augustine's notion of both original sin and original corruption, in which sin is an inevitability. Barth, on the other hand, is critical of the Augustinian view and takes as his point of departure Jesus’ unity and sympathy with fallen creatures. Yet the fallenness of Jesus’ humanity does not mean that sin was a real possibility for him.In this article the christological doctrine of anhypostasis – a way of speaking exclusively of human nature apart from its hypostatic union with God the Son – is suggested as the primary way forward. Advocates of the fallenness position seem to have this qualifier in mind when describing Jesus’ human nature as ‘fallen’: it is true of the assumed nature only when considered in itself, apart from the hypostatic union. There are logical and historical grounds for opponents to accept fallenness strictly on these terms, as well. Beyond this, I argue that anhypostatic fallenness should be acceptable to both sides because it is never without a corresponding sanctification of Jesus’ human nature by its encounter with God. Though Jesus’ humanity was conditioned by the fall, by virtue of the communicatio gratiarum it was not left in a state of peccability.

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