scholarly journals The Brahmans’ Lifestyle in the Refutatio omnium haeresium

Humanitas ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 57-82
Author(s):  
Chiara Di Serio
Keyword(s):  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Church ◽  
Positive Light

This research focuses on the analysis of chapter I 24 of the Refutatio omnium haeresium. Here the author presents the lifestyle of the Brahmans. Their habits are very peculiar: for instance, it is their custom to be naked, to eat fruits of the earth and to avoid meat from animals. There are no women nor children with them. They despise death, always celebrate God and raise hymns in his honour. Moreover they also believe that God is Logos. The text raises several questions: first of all, the reason why the Brahmans are presented in a positive light. The information reported by the author is, partly, confirmed by a long tradition in Classical Antiquity that reconstructs their image, attributing to them the stereotypes of a barbaric people. Therefore, the aim of this study is to verify from which perspectives these characters are presented, first by Graeco-Roman authors, and, secondly, in the literature of the Church Fathers, in order to identify the specific connections and the possible divergences.

History, Faith, Fortuna

Why History? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

Chronologically and conceptually, this chapter links classical antiquity to the middle ages. Most of its focus is on the second to sixth centuries, and especially the overlap of ‘late antiquity’ and the ‘patristic era’, or the era of the church fathers. It addresses historical thinking in Christianity in the context of Christianity’s relationship to Greco-Roman and Jewish influences. It is a story of intellectual novelty, and of imposition, but just as much it is a tale of syncretism. Of the rationales for History identified in the introduction, the two figuring largest in this chapter are History as Speculative Philosophy and History as Identity, the latter especially in its genealogical form. Along the way in the chapter, attention is devoted to the relationship between grand conceptualizations of the overall historical process and the study of human choice and agency. That discussion illustrates similarities as well as contrasts in the way causal explanations can operate in disparate sorts of historical account, whether or not divine or quasi-divine forces are involved. The point looking forward is that at certain levels secular and non-secular Histories need not conflict.

scholarly journals Christian Theological Interpretations of God's Grace in the Binding of Isaac

Perichoresis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-66
Author(s):  
Carey Ellen Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Early Church ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Genesis 22 ◽  
The Future ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Church ◽  
Divine Truth

Christian Theological Interpretations of God's Grace in the Binding of Isaac Typological exegesis, practiced by the early church fathers, enables us to catch spiritual meanings in the promise to Abraham, namely, that through him “all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). Christian interpreters caught a divine truth when they discerned an ecclesial meaning. God had just revealed to Abraham that he was not alone, that a church was in the future. His typological interpretation accounts for the seeming repetition of the promise in Scripture: it contains new revelation. The promise to Abraham has always involved a multitude of descendants through Isaac. But after his near sacrifice as a Christ figure, the multitude is the church which emerged after Christ’s death and resurrection.

Petrarch's Defense of Secular Letters, the Latin Fathers, and Ancient Roman Rhetoric

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Brenda Deen Schildgen
Keyword(s):  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Rhetorical Situations ◽  
Epistolary Form ◽  
The Church ◽  
Roman Rhetoric

Abstract: Like the Church Fathers before him, Petrarch was forced to defend secular learning against its detractors, and his defenses draw on many of the same arguments that Augustine and Jerome had used. In these defenses he blends classical rhetoric and Christian values, and his procedures also follow the traditions of classical rhetoric, relying on the epistolary form and utilizing the Ciceronian manner of debating all topics from opposite standpoints. Perhaps, however, because his indecisiveness complemented the classical rhetorical premise that many issues present many possible resolutions, Petrarch also rejects secular learning in some of his writings. His arguments are therefore conclusive only within their unique rhetorical situations.

Christus Virgo

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Sissel Undheim
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The description of Christ as a virgin, 'Christus virgo', does occur at rare occasions in Early Christian and late antique texts. Considering that 'virgo' was a term that most commonly described the sexual and moral status of a member of the female sex, such representations of Christ as a virgin may exemplify some of the complex negotiations over gender, salvation, sanctity and Christology that we find in the writings of the Church fathers. The article provides some suggestions as to how we can understand the notion of the virgin Christ within the context of early Christian and late antique theological debates on the one hand, and in light of the growing interest in sacred virginity on the other.

The Aggiornamento Phenomenon and the Second Vatican Council

2020 ◽  
pp. 98-105
Author(s):  
Hiermonk Ioann ( Bulyko) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
John Xxiii ◽  
The People ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Pope John Xxiii ◽  
The Church

The Second Vatican Council was a unique event in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Initiated by Pope John XXIII, it was intended to make the Roman Catholic Church more open to the contemporary society and bring it closer to the people. The principal aim of the council was the so called aggiornamento (updating). The phenomenon of updating the ecclesiastical life consisted in the following: on the one hand, modernization of the life of the Church and closer relations with the secular world; on the other hand, preserving all the traditions upon which the ecclesiastical life was founded. Hence in the Council’s documents we find another, French word ressourcement meaning ‘return to the origins’ based on the Holy Scripture and the works of the Church Fathers. The aggiornamento phenomenon emerged during the Second Vatican Council due to the movement within the Catholic Church called nouvelle theologie (French for “new theology”). Its representatives advanced the ideas that became fundamental in the Council’s decisions. The nouvelle theologie was often associated with modernism as some of the ideas of its representatives seemed to be very similar to those of modernism. However, what made the greatest difference between the two movements was their attitude towards the tradition. For the nouvelle theologie it was very important to revive Christianity in its initial version, hence their striving for returning to the sources, for the oecumenical movement, for better relations with non-Catholics and for liturgical renewal. All these ideas can be traced in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and all this is characterized by the word aggiornamento.

The Church on the World's Turf

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Bramadat
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Conservative Protestant ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Christian Fellowship ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

Is it possible for conservative Protestant groups to survive in secular institutional settings? Here, Bramadat offers an ethnographic study of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) at McMaster University, a group that espouses fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, women's roles, the age of the earth, alcohol consumption, and sexual ethics. In examining this group, Bramadat demonstrates how this tiny minority thrives within the overwhelmingly secular context of the University.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Mason
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Communal Experience ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Church ◽  
Francis Of Assisi

This chapter locates Rossetti in the context of the book’s ecotheological argument, which traces an ecological love command in her writing through her engagement with Tractarianism, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Church Fathers, and Francis of Assisi. It establishes her Anglo-Catholic imagining of the cosmos as a fabric of participation and communal experience embodied in Christ. The first section reads Rossetti in the context of current Victorian ecocriticism, which underplays the role of Christianity in the development of nineteenth-century environmentalism. The next sections question critical readings of Rossetti as a reclusive thinker and argue instead for an educated and politicized Christian for whom indifference to the spiritual is complicit with an environmental crisis in which the weak and vulnerable suffer most. This introduction also refers to the wider field of Rossetti studies and introduces her reading of grace and apocalypse as a major contribution to the intradiscipline of Christianity and ecology.

scholarly journals “‘But the Fountain Sprang Up and the Bird Sang Down’: Heidegger’s Gathering of the Fourfold and the Seven-Sacraments Font at Salle, Norfolk.”

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 464
Author(s):  
Marie Clausén
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Art History ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

My paper analyses the 15th-century seven-sacraments font at the medieval church of St Peter and St Paul at Salle in Norfolk (England). The church guides and gazetteers that describe the font, and the church in which it is situated, owe both their style and content to Art History, focusing as they do on their material and aesthetic dimensions. The guides also tend towards isolating the various elements of the font, and these in turn from the rest of the architectural elements, fittings and furniture of the church, as if they could be meaningfully experienced or interpreted as discrete entities, in isolation from one another. While none of the font descriptions can be faulted for being inaccurate, they can, as a result of these tendencies, be held insufficient, and not quite to the purpose. My analysis of the font, by means of Heidegger’s concept of Dwelling, does not separate the font either from the rest of the church, nor from other fonts, but acknowledges that it comes to be, and be seen as, what it is only when considered as standing in ‘myriad referential relations’ to other things, as well as to ourselves. This perspective has enabled me to draw out what it is about the font at Salle that can be experienced as not merely beautiful or interesting, but also as meaningful to those—believers and non-believers alike—who encounter it. By reconsidering the proper mode of perceiving and engaging with the font, we may spare it from being commodified, from becoming a unit in the standing reserve of cultural heritage, and in so doing, we, too, may be momentarily freed from our false identities as units of production and agents of consumption. The medieval fonts and churches of Norfolk are, I argue, not valuable as a result of their putative antiquarian qualities, but invaluable in their extending to us a possibility of dwelling—as mortals—on the earth—under the sky—before the divinities.

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