Geoffrey Hill’s Poetic Incarnational Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 110-131
Author(s):  
Jesse Russell
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Existential Choice ◽  
Incarnational Theology

Abstract Geoffrey Hill’s poems are saturated with the cluttered bleakness of the nihilistic view of the natural world, but in Hill’s own Christian incarnational theology it is precisely this filthy world into which Christ was incarnated in order to redeem humans from Original Sin. Fortified with but also rattled by the Incarnation and the doctrine of Original Sin, in his poems Hill is faced with the profound, agonizing existential choice to embrace Christ or reject Christianity as a farce, and it is this perilous pose that serves as the theological grounding of the oeuvre the man who now, sadly, was the greatest contemporary Christian poet.

Moving Forward

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Human History ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Incarnational Theology ◽  
Constructive Engagement

The Augustinian vision of humankind, on which so much Christian thinking about war is based, is false. Thanks to Darwinian evolutionary biology we know there was no original couple, Adam and Eve; there was no eating of the apple; there is no original sin. We are not innately depraved in this way. Morbid fatalism is inappropriate. The killer-ape vision of humankind, on which so much Darwinian thinking about war is based, is equally false. Thanks to updated Darwinian evolutionary biology, we know that we did not evolve in the violent ways often presumed, and that in major respects we are designed to avoid war. Culture, particularly agriculture, changed much of that and war became common. Changing this is not to go against our nature. Naïve optimism is no more in place. There is hope of more constructive engagement between Christians and Darwinians. On the Christian side, there are alternative theologies to Augustinian Atonement theology, notable Incarnational theology, not dependent on a literal Adam and Eve. On the Darwinian side, there are fresh empirical findings and interpretations, with truer understandings of human history and nature. Perhaps now, together, we can move forward the debate on the nature and causes and possible ending of human warfare.

The Burden of Guilt and the Imperative of Reform: Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew Take Up the Challenge of Re-Spiritualizing Christianity in the Anthropocene Age

Horizons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Mongrain
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Saint Ignatius Of Loyola ◽  
Saint Bonaventure ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Saint Francis ◽  
Christian Leaders ◽  
The Trinity

This article discusses the pro-environmental theology of two contemporary Christian leaders. The first is the current ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I. The second is Roman Catholicism's Pope Francis. Both leaders seek to support members of their respective churches who are working to protect the environment, and also to speak globally across cultural and religious lines. Both Bartholomew and Francis believe the crisis of climate change has deep roots in modern culture's anthropocentric ethos, and hence there must be an “apocalypse” or an unveiling of this ethos as a betrayal not only of nature but also of God the Creator. Contrary to some religious environmentalists, therefore, both Bartholomew and Francis are careful to distinguish cosmocentric theology (pantheism and animism) and theocentric cosmology (monotheism centered on the Incarnation of the Trinity in creation). Francis in particular aims for a retrieval of Saint Francis of Assisi's relationship to the natural world as it was expressed by Saint Bonaventure, and later developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola into a discipline (ascesis) of learning to see all created things as expressions of God's glory. In rivalry with theascesisof modern capitalism, which could be described as “disciplined avarice in action,” Bartholomew and Francis advocate the classical monastic-Franciscan-Ignatian spiritual ethos of “disciplined contemplation in action.”

The Self Prior to Mimetic Desire: Rahner and Alison on Original Sin and Conversion

Horizons ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-31
Author(s):  
John P. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Karl Rahner ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Effective Instrument ◽  
Theological Task

ABSTRACTThis paper engages the theological anthropologies of Karl Rahner and James Alison in order to develop two mutually clarifying perspectives concerning original sin and the nature of conversion. It begins by considering the value and limitations of Alison's use of the Resurrection, as well as his Girardian reading of history, as lenses through which to understand the self, original sin, and conversion. Rahner's transcendental anthropology, because of its similar assumption regarding the priority of the Resurrection for understanding the self, provides an effective instrument for evaluating Alison's project. I conclude that Rahner's transcendental perspective from within the “order of being” represents a necessary compliment to the Alisonian viewpoint, which remains exclusively within the “order of discovery” and thereby limits rather than enhances persons' capacity to experience grace. I ultimately propose, however, that further investigation of Alison's work and its usefulness for illustrating the psychological, ethical, and socio-political aspects of conversion constitutes a worthy theological task within contemporary Christian culture.

Taking Soundings

Shadow Sophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Celia E. Deane-Drummond
Keyword(s):  
Current Literature ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Natural Evil ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
The Common ◽  
Distorted Form ◽  
Early Human ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations

This chapter introduces themes that are important throughout this work. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin continues to hold sway for many theologians and the chapter briefly discusses recent works that have taken his thinking seriously in the light of evolution. The chapter also begins to map the relationships between sin, evil, natural evil, and moral evil. This blurring between natural and moral evil represents the most recent example of why an adequate understanding of sin that takes account of humanity’s embedded relationship with the natural world is so important. The chapter begins with a very brief discussion of shame, conscience, and evolutionary explanations of religion in early human societies. Following this is a brief review of Western theological explanations for the persistence of evil through a review of current literature on original sin. The chapter then argues, following traditional sources, that sin is worth exploring in order to understand virtue; in other words, an exploration of vices helps to elucidate the meaning of virtues. The chapter then comments on the common dichotomy between natural and moral evil and argues for a much greater blurring of that boundary in thinking through the biocultural origins of sin and guilt. J.M. Coetze’s novel Disgrace captures the complex and ambiguous interlacing of human sin and animality. The rest of the present volume intends to show more clearly what that blurring signifies as well as the distinctive nature of human sin and its symbolic character, which has semiotic properties amounting to a grossly distorted form of wisdom, shadow sophia.

THE PARENT STYLE OR THE ORIGINAL SIN? ADAM REVIVED

1993 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
EILEEN HARRIS
Keyword(s):  
Original Sin
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