Theodicy Incarnate: Divine Self-Justification

2021 ◽  
pp. 001452462110570
Author(s):  
Paul K. Moser
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
A Charge ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Divine Goodness

The most prominent obstacle to hope and faith in God is an experienced world evidently at odds with the goodness and thus the reality of God. This obstacle gets traction when combined with the assumption, found in many Biblical narratives, that God merits worship and trust from humans owing to impeccable divine goodness. This article examines whether, and if so how, God can avoid the charge that divine failure to eliminate or to reduce actual human suffering disqualifies God from being worthy of worship and trust. We thus ask whether God merits the benefit of the doubt regarding a charge of divine neglect for evil human suffering. This leads to the key issue of the adequacy of a vantage point from which divine goodness is assessed. If a particular human vantage point is so narrow as to be misleading regarding divine goodness, it can be inferior to other available vantage points. Clarification of this lesson opens the door to a widely neglected vantage point of a ‘showing-how theodicy’ in contrast with an ‘explaining-why theodicy.’ The former theodicy fits with many of the Biblical narratives, and it enables God to merit the benefit of the doubt regarding a charge of divine inadequacy toward human suffering.

scholarly journals Spatial Vantage Points in Norwegian Sign Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 583-600
Author(s):  
Lindsay Ferrara ◽  
Torill Ringsø
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Mobile Agent ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Spatial Language ◽  
Fixed Position ◽  
External Observer ◽  
Point Position ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Vantage Points

AbstractPrevious studies on perspective in spatial signed language descriptions suggest a basic dichotomy between either a route or a survey perspective, which entails either the signer being conceptualized as a mobile agent within a life-sized scene or the signer in a fixed position as an external observer of a scaled-down scene. We challenge this dichotomy by investigating the particular couplings of vantage point position and mobility engaged during various types of spatial language produced across eight naturalistic conversations in Norwegian Sign Language. Spatial language was annotated for the purpose of the segment, the size of the environment described, the signs produced, and the location and mobility of vantage points. Analysis revealed that survey and route perspectives, as characterized in the literature, do not adequately account for the range of vantage point combinations observed in conversations (e.g., external, but mobile, vantage points). There is also some preliminary evidence that the purpose of the spatial language and the size of the environments described may also play a role in how signers engage vantage points. Finally, the study underscores the importance of investigating spatial language within naturalistic conversational contexts.

Divine Justice and Sublime Suffering

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-70
Author(s):  
Damien B. Schlarb
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Textual History ◽  
Bartleby The Scrivener ◽  
The Moment

This chapter shows how Melville draws on the book of Job to discuss issues of divine justice and human suffering. It argues that Melville uses the language and themes of Job to evaluate divine jurisprudence from the vantage point of the human plaintiff, celebrating human perseverance and indicting the arbitrariness of divinely mandated suffering. After sketching out the book of Job’s textual history, the chapter discusses in turn Mardi, Moby-Dick, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and The Encantadas on these grounds, detailing how Melville uses typology and intertextual reference to examine the Bible and to apply his findings to comment on natural, social, and cultural phenomena. It concludes that Melville sees the book of Job as a story not of defiance and repentance but of the learning and growth that occur in precisely the moment when one’s preconceptions and expectations of reality are shattered.

scholarly journals A Hierarchical Modular Architecture for Embodied Cognition

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 177-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana H. Ballard ◽  
Dmitry Kit ◽  
Constantin A. Rothkopf ◽  
Brian Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modular Architecture ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Dual Task Performance ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Independent Tasks

Cognition can appear complex owing to the fact that the brain is capable of an enormous repertoire of behaviors. However, this complexity can be greatly reduced when constraints of time and space are taken into account. The brain is constrained by the body to limit its goal-directed behaviors to just a few independent tasks over the scale of 1–2 min, and can pursue only a very small number of independent agendas. These limitations have been characterized from a number of different vantage points such as attention, working memory and dual task performance. It may be possible that the disparate perspectives of all these methodologies can be unified if behaviors can be seen as modular and hierarchically organized. From this vantage point, cognition can be seen as having a central problem of scheduling behaviors to achieve short term goals. Thus dual-task paradigms can be seen as studying the concurrent management of simultaneous, competing agendas. Attention can be seen as focusing on the decision as to whether to interrupt the current agenda or persevere. Working memory can be seen as the bookkeeping necessary to manage the state of the current active agenda items.

The Bible, Its Status and African Christian Theologies: Foundational Document or Stumbling Block?

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Punt
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
African Theology ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between the Bible and Christianity, including Christian theology, is traditionally strong and undisputed; however, in Christian theology in Africa, as elsewhere, the status of the biblical texts is contested. A brief consideration of the Bible as 'canon' leads to a broader discussion of how the Bible has to a certain extent become a 'problem' in African theology also, both because of theological claims made about its status, and - and in conjunction with - its perceived complicity in justifying human suffering and hardship. The legacy of the Bible as legitimating agent is dealt with from the vantage point of the history of interpretation; but the latter also provides for a 'rehumanising' of Scripture. In the end, this article is also an attempt to explain some of the different views of the Bible's status in Africa, and to address and mediate the resulting conflict by attending to proposals to view the biblical canon as 'historical prototype', foundational document' - as scripture. A number of important aspects regarding the continuing role of the Bible in African theologies in particular, conclude the essay.

Bearing Witness through Technology

2011 ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Yasmin Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Video Streaming ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
War And Conflict

The convergence of technologies brings a two-fold phenomenon into our technologically mediated world. Firstly, mobile technologies have enabled the recording of war and conflict by bystanders who can then transmit their recordings to the wider world through the Internet. Secondly, this form of bearing witness creates a proliferation of images of suffering leading to a new visual economy that invites new types of spectatorship which reconfigure events and integrate them into mainstream and niche media platforms. This chapter argues that the aestheticization of suffering is a dominant and integral part of our culture and new media technologies illuminate and offer new ways to both engage with and commodify suffering. The commodification of suffering on video-streaming platforms on the Internet results in spaces of perverse obsession with pain and suffering but also performative counter-sites which offer different ways to record and narrate human suffering beyond the vantage point of mainstream media.

What is newark?

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-15
Author(s):  
Aaron Wachhaus
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
The City

Farmer encourages the use of multiple perspectives as a means of developing robust knowledge. He points out that it is impossible to fully know any thing from a single vantage point. Further he encourages us to reflect on how our perspective shapes what and how we see. He also points out that practice is the test of theory. I apply that maxim here, considering how my understanding of the city of Newark, NJ is impacted by the perspective from which I view it, and by exploring how other vantage points may yield different views of the city.

scholarly journals Is It Ethical to Study Africa? Preliminary Thoughts on Scholarship and Freedom

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amina Mama
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Independent Research ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Pan African ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Do So

Abstract:This article explores the manner in which ethical concerns have been addressed within Africa's progressive intellectual tradition through the eras of anti-colonial, pan-African, and nationalist struggles for freedom, and into the era of globalization. Africa is characterized as the region bearing the most negative con-sequences of globalization, a reality that offers a critical vantage point well-attuned to the challenge of demystifying the global policy dictates currently dominating the global landscape. Ethical considerations are conceptualized as being framed by considerations of identity, epistemology, and methodology. It is suggested that Africa's radical intellectuals have effectively pursued anti-imperialist ethics, and developed regional and national intellectual communities of scholars who have worked for freedom, often challenging and subverting the constraints of dominant and received disciplinary approaches and paradigms. However, it is suggested that the liberatory promise of the anticolonial nationalist eras has not been fulfilled. While the fortunes of higher education and research in Africa have declined, scholars have established independent research networks in and beyond the campuses to keep African intellectual life alive. However, it is argued that Africa's intellectuals need to engage more proactively with the methodological implications of their own liberatory intellectual ethics. To do so requires that we address the intellectual challenges of Africa's complicated and contradictory location in the world and ensure that our unique vantage points inform methodological and pedagogical strategies that pursue freedom.

Human Suffering and the Power of Prevention

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Campbell Quick
Keyword(s):  
Human Suffering
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