The Word Refreshed

Author(s):  
Jeremy Begbie

This chapter takes its cue from the vision of music adumbrated by the previous three essayists: in which music is seen as depending on a ‘faith in an order of things that exceeds the logic of statement and counterstatement’, arising from an embodied dwelling in the world which is pre-conceptual, pre-theoretical. As such, music has the capacity to free us from the kind of alienating relation to our physical environment that an over-dependence on instrumental language brings, and free us for a more fruitful indwelling of it that has been largely lost to modernity. This resonates with broadly biblical-theological view of humanity’s intended relation to the cosmos, as exemplified in the concept of New Creation in Christ. This essay returns to language, considered in this light: how can music, and thinking about music, enrich language? Specifically, how might music facilitate a deeper understanding of the way ‘God-talk’ operates? It is argued that music can offer a powerful witness to the impossibility (and danger) of imagining we can grasp or circumscribe the divine (the antithesis of human freedom). More positively, it can greatly enrich our use (and understanding) of existing theological language, and generate fresh language that enables a more faithful perception of, and participation in the realities it engages.

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-38
Author(s):  
Beatriz Furtado LIMA

Psychology has been influenced by philosophical fundaments from the Phenomenological, Existential, and Humanist movements. Such prospect changed the way of conceiving man and making science, contributing, as well, to the emergence of the phenomenological-existential psychotherapies. This paper presents a brief historical journey through the main lines of thought that fundament the psychotherapies of such approach, mentioning the most important philosophers and psychotherapists. The study begins discussing the first perspective changes, when, overcoming the mechanistic point of view; the man begins to be considered part of a functional system interconnected with the world. It is shown that, afterwards, arise the Act Psychology of Brentano and Husserl’s Phenomenology. Subsequently, presents the Existentialism, when man is recognized as a free being and able to build its own history; and the Humanist movement, when many human values are revealed such as the human potential and tendency to growth. Finally, it is discussed the main ideas and concepts, from the thoughts mentioned above, that characterize the phenomenological-existential psychotherapies as an approach that recognizes human freedom and respects the client as someone able to find their own way once immersed in a favorable environment.


Author(s):  
Matthew Puffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of creation is rooted in the confession that Jesus Christ is the mediator. Apart from Christ’s mediation human beings cannot perceive God’s creation, because our postlapsarian world manifests only a fallen creation in which good and evil are confused and intermixed. Whereas Bonhoeffer in his student years affirmed a limited role for the orders of creation, his subsequent writings on the theology of creation can be read as a response to and reaction against the orders of creation. Although human beings have no unmediated access to knowledge of God’s creation, and know the world as fallen creation only through Christ’s redemption, in Christ they are empowered by the Spirit, incorporated into Christ’s body the church, and made a new creation. Only in light of the hoped-for eschatological fulfilment of the new creation may Christian theology speak of the beginning of God’s ways as Creator.


Ecclesiology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-31
Author(s):  
Derek W. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
The Way ◽  

This article brings Bonhoeffer into conversation with the Benedict Option in order to analyse the inner logic of neo-monasticism. Both contend that missional faithfulness in a post-Christian context requires the church to abandon the pursuit of power, a task that lies at the heart of the neo-monastic posture. But Bonhoeffer does so while remaining alert to the great temptation of monasticism. The temptation is not merely that the church becomes sectarian. The more serious problem has to do with the way the church’s separation from culture is theologically construed. This article suggests that whereas the Benedict Option is grounded in a Christ-idea, Bonhoeffer’s neo-monasticism is grounded in Christ himself. The temptation, in other words, is that ideology becomes confused with Christology. Following Bonhoeffer, this article claims that confusion on this point risks embroiling the church in the very power games that neo-monasticism attempts to avoid. Whereas ideologically grounded neo-monasticism must confront the world in the mode of conflict, Christologically grounded neo-monasticism is free from the temptation of power, and from this posture authentic witness becomes possible.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-60
Author(s):  
Ronald E. Santoni

I have two aims: to analyze Jonathan Webber’s analysis of bad faith and compare it to my own, traditional, account and to show that Webber’s focus on character, as a set of dispositions or character traits that incline but do not determine us to view the world and behave in certain ways, contributes further to understanding Sartre’s ‘bad faith’. Most Sartre scholars have ignored any emphasis on ‘character’. What is distinctive and emphatic in Webber’s interpretation is his insistence ‘on bad faith’ as a ‘social disease’ distorting the way one views, interprets, and even thinks about the world. (Matt Eshleman also moves in this direction). But, again, this pattern is not deterministic. Early in his work, Webber tells us that Sartre does not claim that we have bad faith by ‘ascribing character traits where there are none but by pretending to ourselves that we have ‘fixed natures’ that e.g. preclude the behaviour or character trait of which one is being accused.Though hardly disagreeing radically with Webber (or he with me) I do offer critical considerations. While Webber focuses on character, I focus on Sartre’s contention that the ‘most basic’ or ‘first act’ of bad faith is ‘to flee from what [the human being] cannot flee, from what it is’, specifically human freedom. And I disagree partially with Webber’s articulation of the ‘spirit of seriousness’, and strongly with both Sartre’s and his supporting claim that bad faith cannot be cynical. I also demur from Webber’s overemphasis on the ‘social’. For me, the root of all bad faith is our primitive ontological condition; namely, that at its very ‘upsurge’, human reality, anguished by its ‘reflective apprehension’ of its freedom and lack of Being, is disposed to flee from its nothingness in pursuit of identity, substantiality - in short, Being.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-68
Author(s):  
Jeffrey W. Aernie

Paul’s conception and description of God’s soteriological enterprise continues to be a prominent focal point in constructions of the apostle’s theology. The present essay attempts to provide an outline of this aspect of Pauline theology from inception to corporate participation. The essay is comprised of three parts: (1) an extended examination of the definition of Paul’s gospel; (2) a brief analysis of the way in which the gospel relates to Paul’s own self-presentation; and (3) a few concluding thoughts concerning the way Paul extends his conception of the gospel to the ecclesial community. The primary argument of the essay develops a construction of the participatory nature of Pauline soteriology, building on the notion that the prophetic scope of Paul’s gospel compels the apostle to understand both his own ministry and Christian theology in terms of a participation in the new creation inaugurated within the Christ event.


2019 ◽  
pp. 164-178
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Taylor

Throughout this book, I have attempted to detail some ways in which the native syntactic and semantic structures of natural language may fail to recapitulate the ultimate metaphysical structure of reality. I argued, for example, that the thematic structures of argument-taking expressions may vary significantly from language to language even when they express the same real-world relations, properties, states of affairs, or event structures. I begin this chapter with a further argument that changes in our encyclopedic representations of the world typically are not reflected in our native semantic representations of the world. Finally, I close the chapter and the book by illustrating the potential of the way of reference in metaphysics with respect to achieving metaphysical insight into the true nature of human freedom.


2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-443
Author(s):  
Paul Mazey

This article considers how pre-existing music has been employed in British cinema, paying particular attention to the diegetic/nondiegetic boundary and notions of restraint. It explores the significance of the distinction between diegetic music, which exists in the world of the narrative, and nondiegetic music, which does not. It analyses the use of pre-existing operatic music in two British films of the same era and genre: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and demonstrates how seemingly subtle variations in the way music is used in these films produce markedly different effects. Specifically, it investigates the meaning of the music in its original context and finds that only when this bears a narrative relevance to the film does it cross from the diegetic to the nondiegetic plane. This reveals that whereas music restricted to the diegetic plane may express the outward projection of the characters' emotions, music also heard on the nondiegetic track may reveal a deeper truth about their feelings. In this way, the meaning of the music varies depending upon how it is used. While these two films may differ in whether or not their pre-existing music occupies a nondiegetic or diegetic position in relation to the narrative, both are characteristic of this era of British film-making in using music in an understated manner which expresses a sense of emotional restraint and which marks the films with a particularly British inflection.


The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.


Author(s):  
Adrián Bertorello

RESUMENEl trabajo examina críticamente la afirmación central de la hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur, a saber, que el soporte material de la escritura es el rasgo determinante para que una secuencia discursiva sea considerada como un texto. La escritura cancela las condiciones fácticas de la enunciación y crea, de este modo, un ámbito de sentido estable en el que se puede validar una concepción de la subjetividad que está implicada en las dos estrategias de lecturas (el análisis estructural y la apropiación), esto es, un sujeto pasivo que se constituye por la idealidad del significado. Asimismo, el trabajo intentará precisar una serie de ambigüedades en el uso que Ricoeur hace del «ser en el mundo» para sostener la referencialidad del discurso.PALABRAS CLAVETEXTO, ESCRITURA, REFERENCIA, SUBJETIVIDAD, MUNDOABSTRACTThis paper critically examines the main assertion of Paul Ricoeur´s hermeneutics, i.e., that the material base of writing is the determining feature to consider a discursive sequence as a text. Writing cancels the factual conditions of enunciation and creates, in this way, a background of stable meaning where it is possible to validate a conception of subjectivity implicated in the two reading strategies (the structural analysis and the appropriation), i.e., a passive subject constituted by the ideality of meaning. Likewise, this paper aims to clarify some ambiguities in the way Ricoeur uses the «beings in the world» to support the discourse referentiality.KEY WORDSTEXT, WRITING, REFERENCE, SUBJECTIVITY, WORLD


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