The Sky Is Not the Limit

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-75
Author(s):  
David Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
Religionless Christianity ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Natural Life

In this chapter, we engage with the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We seek to build on Bonhoeffer’s comment that ‘God’s “beyond” is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties. The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life.’ The chapter addresses the early faultlines in Bonhoeffer’s thought, especially the themes of Mündigkeit, Sicut Deus, penultimacy, ‘natural life’ and creaturehood, evidenced in his Ethics as well as Creation and Fall. The affirmation of this-worldliness and religionless Christianity finds a more profound rendition in the doctrine of creation and creaturehood. The invitation to the religious other is a ‘call to creaturehood’ and to live etsi deus non daretur.

scholarly journals Różewicz and Bonhoeffer. On the Margin of the Poem Learning to Walk by Tadeusz Różewicz

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Przemysław Dakowicz
Keyword(s):  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Religionless Christianity

The departure point of the analysis presented in this article is a poem written by Tadeusz Różewicz learning to walk (nauka chodzenia). The protagonist of the poem is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who created the theory of “religionless Christianity”. According to Bonhoeffer, a modern Christian has to immerse himself/herself in the “godless” world so that – in tandem with the Saviour – he/she can be experience the final abandonment. The author of this article tries to prove that the theology of Bonhoeffer had a great impact on Różewicz, making him reconsider his viewpoint on faith. Due to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the poet also found a solution for a basic contradiction that was explicated in the famous poem entitled Bez (Without): “life without god is possible / life without god is impossible”.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–45)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Loup Seban
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Confessing Church ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
The World ◽  
Religionless Christianity

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a twentieth-century Lutheran theologian who associated Christian belief and political action in an exemplary fashion. His part in the struggle of the Confessing Church and of the German resistance against the National-Socialist dictatorship cost him his life. Christocentric and ecclesiocentric, he stressed personal and collective piety and revived the idea of the imitation of Christ; the concepts of obedience and of the suffering God are central to his view. His Ethik (1949) was widely influential; in it, he argued that Christians should not retreat from the world, but have a duty to act within it. His answer to the secularization of the modern world was a ‘religionless Christianity’, a communocentric, pietistic, personal discipline.

Creation and Religious Pluralism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Theology Of Religions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Creatio Ex Nihilo ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Other

In the well-worn debates about religious pluralism and the theology of religions there have been many different rubrics used to account for, comprehend, or engage with the religious other. This book is chiefly a work of Christian theology and seeks to bring the doctrine of creation and the theology of religions into dialogue and in so doing it comes at things from a different direction than other works. It contains an extensive exploration of the doctrine of creation and asks how it might intervene distinctively in these discourses to produce a new conceptual and practical topography. It will consider interreligious engagement from the perspective of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo that forms the dominant view in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. In the course of the book’s narrative, there will be close consideration given to anthropology (i.e. creaturehood), the quotidian and wisdom, the idea of ‘sabbath’, human action, and work, and vivifying the immanent through a consideration of some representative phenomenologists. The book will develop these ideas in a more practical direction by considering sacraments and rituals in the public sphere as well as attempting to describe the kind of ‘creational politics’ that might bring traditions into dialogue. Whilst these themes will challenge more conventional ways of considering relations between religions, such themes—because they are different from concerns commonly found in the literature—can also be profitably engaged with across the spectrum of opinion (i.e. exclusivist or pluralist etc.). Thus, whilst the position adopted in this work is creatio ex nihilo, part of the motivation is to review the ways in which this focus helps to broaden rather than limit the discussion.

Tinkering with cognitive gadgets: Cultural evolutionary psychology meets active inference

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Benjamin Badcock ◽  
Axel Constant ◽  
Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Cognitive Gadgets offers a new, convincing perspective on the origins of our distinctive cognitive faculties, coupled with a clear, innovative research program. Although we broadly endorse Heyes’ ideas, we raise some concerns about her characterisation of evolutionary psychology and the relationship between biology and culture, before discussing the potential fruits of examining cognitive gadgets through the lens of active inference.

The Integral Nature of Ethnicity and Religion during Northern Ireland’s Troubles

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Peter Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
The World ◽  
Sectarian Conflict ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
Religious Other

Northern Ireland’s Troubles conflict, like many complex conflicts through the world, has often been conceived as considerably motivated by religious differences. This paper demonstrates that religion was often integrated into an ethno-religious identity that fueled sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland during the Troubles period. Instead of being a religious-based conflict, the conflict derived from historical divides of power, land ownership, and civil and political rights in Ireland over several centuries. It relies on 12 interviews, six Protestants and six Catholics, to measure their use of religious references when referring to their religious other. The paper concludes that in the overwhelming majority of cases, both groups did not use religious references, supporting the hypothesis on the integrated nature of ethnicity and religion during the Troubles. It offers grounding for looking into the complex nature of sectarian and seemingly religious conflicts throughout the world, including cases in which religion acts as more of a veneer to deeply rooted identities and historical narratives.

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