Birth Narratives, Babies, and the Catholic Moral Imagination: Informing Influences on the Pope’s Address

The so-called Protevangelium of James is perhaps the most historically significant of all the non-canonical gospels. In prefacing its account of the birth of Jesus with an account of the birth and childhood of Mary, it has directly or indirectly shaped beliefs about the ‘holy family’ throughout Christian history. It is beyond doubt that the author is familiar with Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives and that he uses them extensively. Yet his use of source texts is seldom predictable, often creative, and almost always in the service of forging a compelling narrative that serves his idiosyncratic take on the tradition. The Protevangelium is a masterpiece of creative synthesis that reveres its source materials while being unafraid to plough its own furrow. This chapter investigates how the Protevangelium interprets and rewrites synoptic narratives, paying special attention to the author’s rewriting of the stories of the annunciation and the birth of Jesus.

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7. John Dewey and the Moral Imagination: Beyond Putnam and Rorty toward an Ethics of Meaning

The Human Eros ◽

10.1515/9780823252305-009 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 180-206

Keyword(s):

John Dewey ◽

Moral Imagination

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A Polanyian rationale for a liberal arts core curriculum

Theory and Research in Education ◽

10.1177/1477878521996237 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 147787852199623

Author(s):

Jon Fennell ◽

Timothy L. Simpson

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Subject Matter ◽

Liberal Arts ◽

Core Curriculum ◽

Moral Imagination ◽

Philosophy Of Education ◽

Michael Polanyi ◽

Character Formation ◽

Selection Of

What would we have the school teach? To what end? In the name of democracy, and building on the pioneering epistemology of Michael Polanyi, Harry S. Broudy, a leading voice in philosophy of education during the twentieth century, calls for a liberal arts core curriculum for all. The envisioned product of such schooling is a certain sort of person. Anticipating the predictable relativistic challenge so much on display in our own time, Broudy justifies the selection of subject matter (and thus the envisioned character formation and cultivation of moral imagination) by reference to the authority of experts in the disciplines. This response fails to fully repel the assault, thereby revealing the need for a dimension of Polanyi’s thought whose significance exceeds even that of the epistemology that Broudy so effectively invokes.

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