The Logic of Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-170
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Human Choice ◽  
The Status ◽  
Natural Power ◽  
Power Of Choice

Like other early Christian writers, Nemesius condemns any theory which denies that humans are by nature free. Though he believes that the human body is an instrument, he passionately rejects the idea that ‘humankind is a mere instrument’. He cannot tolerate any reduction of humans to the status of a tool, whether by ‘pagans’ (in theories of fate), or by Christians (in theories of providence). In this chapter, we reconstruct Nemesius’ theories of human freedom and divine providence. The bishop believes that human laws—and, hence, crime and punishment—are inconceivable in the absence of human choice. Since all cities have laws, he reasons, humans must have a natural power of choice. From this cosmopolitan line of reasoning (which has roots in Greek antiquity), Nemesius derives a subtle theory of divine world-governance in the final pages of his (unfinished) treatise.

Who Were the Scribes of Latin Manuscripts?

2020 ◽  
pp. 704-710
Author(s):  
Alison I. Beach
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
The Status ◽  
Written Word

This chapter discusses scribes from antiquity and the early Christian era through the late Middle Ages: their professions, class, gender, education, religion, age, etc. The status of scribes varied dramatically from period to period, reflecting changes in literacy and respect for the written word. The author discusses monastic attitudes towards writing, the influence of different monastic orders and reform movements on ideas about scribes, and the place of scribal activity in Universities and secular bureaucracies.

Resurrection

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter van Inwagen
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Raising Of Lazarus

The Judaeo-Christian belief in a future general resurrection of the dead arose in late second-temple Judaism (see, for example, Daniel 12: 2 and John 11: 24). (Whether there would be a resurrection of the dead was one of the main points that divided the Pharisees and the Sadducees.) When the new Christian movement appeared – before it was clearly something other than a party or sect within Judaism – it centred on the belief that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been, in a literal, bodily sense, raised from the dead (resurrectus) and that his resurrection was, in some way, the means by which the expected general resurrection of the dead would be accomplished. Indeed, resurrection was so pervasive a theme in early Christian preaching that it was apparently sometimes thought that Christians worshipped two gods called ‘Jesus’ and ‘Resurrection’ (Anastasis). The early Christians generally said that ‘God raised Jesus from the dead’. In post-New Testament times, it became more common for Christians to say that ‘Jesus rose from the dead’. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus and a future general resurrection continue to be central to Christianity. Christians have always insisted that resurrection is not a mere restoration of what the resurrected person had before death (as in the story in the fourth Gospel of the raising of Lazarus) but is rather a doorway into a new kind of life. The status of a belief in the general resurrection in rabbinic Judaism is difficult to summarize. It should be noted, however, that a belief in the resurrection of the dead is one of Maimonides’ ‘thirteen principles’, which some Jews regard as a summary of the essential doctrines of Judaism. A belief in a general resurrection of the dead is one of many Judaeo-Christian elements that have been incorporated into Islam.

Fatalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Craig
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Choice ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Face ◽  
Future Events

‘Fatalism’ is sometimes used to mean the acceptance of determinism, along with a readiness to accept the consequence that there is no such thing as human freedom. The word is also often used in connection with a theological question: whether God’s supposed foreknowledge means that the future is already fixed. But it is sometimes explained very differently, as the view that human choice and action have no influence on future events, which will be as they will be whatever we think or do. On the face of it this is barely coherent, and invites the assessment that fatalism is simply an expression of resigned acceptance.

Action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hornsby
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
General Account ◽  
The Status ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

Philosophical study of human action owes its importance to concerns of two sorts. There are concerns addressed in metaphysics and philosophy of mind about the status of reasoning beings who make their impact in the natural causal world, and concerns addressed in ethics and legal philosophy about human freedom and responsibility. ‘Action theory’ springs from concerns of both sorts; but in the first instance it attempts only to provide a detailed account that may help with answering the metaphysical questions. Action theorists usually start by asking ‘How are actions distinguished from other events?’. For there to be an action, a person has to do something. But the ordinary ‘do something’ does not capture just the actions, since we can say (for instance) that breathing is something that everyone does, although we don’t think that breathing in the ordinary way is an action. It seems that purposiveness has to be introduced – that someone’s intentionally doing something is required. People often do the things they intentionally do by moving bits of their bodies. This has led to the idea that ‘actions are bodily movements’. The force of the idea may be appreciated by thinking about what is involved in doing one thing by doing another. A man piloting a plane might have shut down the engines by depressing a lever, for example; and there is only one action here if the depressing of the lever was (identical with) the shutting down of the engines. It is when identities of this sort are accepted that an action may be seen as an event of a person’s moving their body: the pilot’s depressing of the lever was (also) his moving of his arm, because he depressed the lever by moving his arm. But how do bodies’ movings – such events now as his arm’s moving – relate to actions? According to one traditional empiricist account, these are caused by volitions when there are actions, and a volition and a body’s moving are alike parts of the action. But there are many rival accounts of the causes and parts of actions and of movements. And volitional notions feature not only in a general account of the events surrounding actions, but also in accounts that aim to accommodate the experience that is characteristic of agency.

Suffering and Sacrifice

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-76
Author(s):  
Sarah Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
The Status ◽  
Spiritual Self ◽  
And Function ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

This article offers the argument that suffering (yisurin) in the Babylonian Talmud functions as a locus for the relationship between God and rabbinic Jews. Scholars of rabbinic martyrdom and asceticism have tended to claim that the Talmud's positive portrayal of suffering is a theodical apology for unexplained evil in the world. However, the article argues that the Talmud—in contrast to earlier rabbinic texts—presents suffering as spiritually relevant not primarily to justify preexisting suffering, but rather to develop a site at which to interpret information about an individual's spiritual status. The article draws on theories of sacrifice's structure and function, in conjunction with close analysis of rabbinic texts that relate suffering to sacrifice. The pericope at the core of the article's argument demonstrates a strikingly technical approach to the human experience of suffering, describing four examples of yisurin in which no real physical suffering occurs; in each instance the “victim” experiences extremely mild discomfort at most, and at the least barely registers an experience of inconvenience. Nonetheless, these experiences all qualify as “suffering,” and are thus still understood to bear indisputable soteriological import. Physical suffering in the Talmud is thus open for interpretation, yielding information about the status of the sufferer's spiritual self. Human suffering is viewed as religiously desirable in both late rabbinic and early Christian literatures. By developing an understanding of its hermeneutical function for the rabbis, this article helps to elucidate the value of suffering for rabbinic literature as a subset of late antique religious discourse.

Sermon on the Mount

2019 ◽  
pp. 587-601
Author(s):  
Mark Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Lord's Prayer ◽  
Sermon On The Mount ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Lay People ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Special People

This chapter discusses the three main things the early Christian writers found in Matthew 5–7. Those were, first, the Beatitudes with promises of spiritual goods made to what was considered to be a small group of special people, but with the application in city preachers to lay people gaining the goods of peace and order and much more in the life to come. Second, prayer, particularly the Lord’s Prayer with its eschatological orientation still very strong in the interpretations, along with trust in divine providence. Third, the Christian virtues and the nature of the relationship between the Testaments, as illustrated by Jesus’ ‘antitheses’: ‘But I say unto you …’ where there is a marked dialectic between penitential realism and inspiring idealism. The range of interpretations is diverse without being conflicting.

scholarly journals Bocheński on divine providence and human freedom

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Dariusz Łukasiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Divine Providence

Human freedom and divine providence: some new thoughts on an old problem

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Basinger
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
States Of Affairs

Christian theists have not normally wished to deny either of the following tenets:T1 God creates human agents such that they are free with respect to certain actions and, therefore, morally responsible for them.T2 God is an omniscient, wholly good being who is omnipotent in the sense that he has (sovereign, providential) control over all existent states of affairs.

Mortuary Archaeology and Religious Landscape at Graeco-Roman Deir El-Medina

1997 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Montserrat ◽  
Lynn Meskell
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
New Kingdom ◽  
Mortuary Archaeology ◽  
Material Data ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Status ◽  
Contextual Archaeology ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Late Roman

Post-excavation analyses and interpretations of the site of Deir el-Medina have focused on the extensive New Kingdom documentary and material data. This has usually been at the expense of later periods, although the site demonstrates a broad temporal spectrum, with the construction of a Ptolemaic temple and significant Saite, Ptolemaic and Roman mortuary activity. From the perspective of contextual archaeology, this article will examine some patterns of mortuary and religious usage in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods. This is based on three case studies: the general pattern of burials; a late Roman family burial in the cellar of a Ramesside house; and the Hathor temple. These illustrate how the status of the site shifted from the Ptolemaic to the early Christian Period, and how successive monumental constructions acted as vehicles for conceptualising different ideologies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document