Chapter 3 Divine Wisdom and the Order of the World: Leibniz and Schleiermacher on the Perfection of Nature

Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal

A luminary of the Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance, Bulgakov moved from Marxism, to idealism, to Christianity in the early twentieth century. He rejected historical determinism, class struggle and all theories of progress that accept the suffering of one generation as a bridge to the happiness of another. He regarded the abolition of poverty as a moral imperative, insisted that Christianity mandates political and social reform, and wanted to create a new culture in which Orthodox Christianity would permeate every area of Russian life. His most important philosophical works, Filosofiia khoziaistva, chast’ pervaia (The Philosophy of the Economy, Part I) (1912) and Svet nevechernyi (Unfading Light) (1917), reflect his turn to a Solov’ëvian mysticism which apotheosized transfiguration, Sophia and Godmanhood (Bogochelovechestvo). Bulgakov saw the cosmos as an organic whole, animated and structured by a World Soul, an entelechy that he called Sophia, Divine Wisdom. Sophia mediates between God and his creation, working mysteriously through human beings. In emigration, Bulgakov developed new interpretations of Orthodox dogmatics and participated in the ecumenical movement. His lifelong concerns were the Church in the world and the interconnection of religion and life. His writings on contemporary political, social and cultural issues helped inspire the Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance.


Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, S.J.

Augustine named God as ‘the Beauty of all things beautiful’. The Old Testament speaks not only of the beauty of God but even more of overlapping realities: light, glory, wisdom, and word. The radiant light and glory of God, celebrated frequently in the Psalms and other biblical books, manifest the divine beauty. God’s creative and self-revealing activity is personified in beautiful Lady Wisdom. By being identified with divine Wisdom, Christ justifies Augustine in calling him beautiful in his pre-existence ‘in heaven’. Identified also with Word, another personification of God’s active power and self-manifestation, Christ can also be declared beautiful before his incarnation. By ‘becoming flesh’ the Word (or Wisdom) of God brought into the world the beautiful glory and light of God.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-124
Author(s):  
Anna KALTSEVA

e article draws parallels between the Bulgarian fairytale “The Three Brothers and the Golden Apple” and the second chapter of Vishnu Purana. The general philosophical aspects of these texts, which serve as a basis for the proposed hypothesis, are discussed. These are narratives of wisdom as a basis for the creation, development, existence of life, and human civilization. The gold thread in Vishnu Purana and the golden apple in the Bulgarian magic fairytale are symbols of knowledge and wisdom, with the power of which the visible world and the human society were created. If in Vishnu Purana this symbol is wrapped in a philosophical narrative about the creation of life, in “The Three Brothers and the Golden Apple” philosophy is hidden behind the seemingly concrete images and characters of the fairytale. In “The Three Brothers and the Golden Apple”, the tree with golden fruits symbolizes the tree of knowledge - an image that is present in all the sacred texts of the religions around the world. The tale is a story of the trials that one goes through in order to overcome one’s weaknesses, to know oneself, to understand the spiritual possibilities and qualities that make a person close and equal to God. The third brother continues his journey in the world, having a faithful companion - his intuition, symbolized by the most beautiful and intelligent princess. The third brother, or the symbol of the man who has overcome his weaknesses, can always benefit from the eternal Divine wisdom, symbolized by the golden apple.


Author(s):  
Sean D. Kirkland

In the Cratylus, Socrates seems to present the logos essentially as an always already present yoke binding us to our world. However, this prior and necessary bond does not entail that the world is revealed perfectly and completely in the terms and structures of our human language. Rather, within this bond, the logos opens up a distance between being and appearance, insofar as it points to ›what is‹ as the withdrawn possibility condition for the appearances ordered, gathered and separated according to names. Plato presents the essential ambivalence of logos not only in Socrates’ elenctic arguments, but also in the etymology of Hermes, where the possession of language is a cryptic message indicating to humans a divine wisdom. Thus, as essentially the recipient of such a message, as having been called toward being by the gods, the proper, indeed pious, human response is dialectical question and answer, Socratic searching and investigating together.


Author(s):  
Brian E. Daley, SJ

Apollinarius of Laodicea argued that the divine wisdom, in Christ, took the place of a human reason, and so that the human Christ has existed eternally, as part of the Logos’s person. So even the humanity of Christ is in some sense divine, for the Apollinarians, and we are transformed by imitating him or being sacramentally united with him. Against this view, Gregory of Nazianzus came to insist that Christ must have a complete and authentic humanity if he is our savior; his must be a “double” reality, in which creator and creature are mingled” in the actions and consciousness of a single agent. Gregory of Nyssa also emphasized the need for Christ to be fully human if he is to save us. He suggested that human nature is gradually being transformed by the divine qualities Jesus brings into the world. Human changeability is the condition of salvation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 130-178
Author(s):  
Damien B. Schlarb

This chapter argues that the book of Ecclesiastes helps Melville fathom the limits of wisdom philosophy. Ecclesiastes stresses the need to temper the idealism that underpins the perennial search for divine wisdom with the expediencies of daily life in the world. It is a meta-text that reflects critically on the wisdom project. Having found American culture to be fundamentally opposed to wisdom axioms (cf. Chapter 2), Melville, as this chapter shows, begins to push back against some of the skepticism in Solomon’s “despondent philosophy,” while maintaining the fundamental usefulness of its contemplative outlook on life. The works covered here—Redburn, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and the poetry collection Battle-Pieces—all depict individuals caught in the hermeneutical conundrum of applying wisdom teachings to the situations they find themselves in. Melville ultimately winds up embracing the wisdom axiom of moderation through contemplative discernment.


2019 ◽  
pp. 72-86
Author(s):  
Михаил Степанович Иванов

Цель исследования - выявить отличительные черты религиозно-философского подхода Паскаля к человеку. Философ рассматривает человека в апологетическом ключе. Придать своей мысли такое измерение французского философа побудила эпоха, в которую он жил и в которой непререкаемым авторитетом в богословии стал Фома Аквинат, верный последователь аристотелизма. Иллюзорным представлениям Аквината о мировой гармонии, якобы царящей в окружающем мире, Паскаль противопоставляет описание мира, «лежащего во зле», и человека, «висящего над бездной». В этом описании звучат экзистенциальные мотивы. Однако духовный поворот, произошедший в душе философа, оградил его от философии экзистенциализма, и парадоксальность человеческого бытия начинает осмысливаться Паскалем в православном ключе. В этом же ключе он начинает отличать философию как любовь к мудрости Божественной от философии по стихиям мира, а не по Христу (Кол. 2, 8). Здесь философом даётся прекрасное описание человеческого разума в его потенциальном и актуальном состоянии, а также ничтожество человека и его величие, достигаемое им на пути его верности и любви к Богу. The aim of the study is to identify the distinctive features of Pascal’s religious and philosophical approach to man. The philosopher considers man in an apologetic way. To give his thought this dimension of the French philosopher was prompted by the era in which he lived and in which the indisputable authority in theology was Thomas Aquinas, a faithful follower of aristotelism. Pascal contrasts Aquinas’ illusory notions of the world harmony supposedly reigning in the surrounding world with the description of the world «lying in evil» and the man «hanging over the abyss». There are existential motives in this description. However, the spiritual turn that took place in the soul of the philosopher, shielded him from the philosophy of existentialism, and the paradox of human existence begins to comprehend Pascal in the Orthodox way. In the same vein, he begins to distinguish philosophy as the love of divine wisdom from philosophy by the elements of the world, and not by Christ (Col. 2, 8). Here the philosopher gives a beautiful description of the human mind in its potential and actual state, as well as the insignificance of man and his greatness, achieved by him in the way of his faithfulness and love for God.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Draper

This article provides a critical reflection on Jan van der Watt’s theory of the network of the metaphor of the family in John’s Gospel, taking the Johannine understanding of the seed as a case study. In his reflections on God’s act of creation, Philo uses the language of impregnation and (re)birth of the natural man by his divine seed to produce children of virtue for those who open themselves to divine wisdom. His Middle-Platonic construction is unlikely to have been understood as ‘absurd, irrelevant or untrue’, which characterises a metaphor in Van der Watt’s definition. The discourse on the relationship between seed/sperm and life reflects ancient ‘scientific’ understanding of the world for Philo and John’s Gospel. This article analyses the connections and differences between Philo’s conception and the mysticism of John’s understanding of rebirth from above as contrasted with ‘natural’ birth.


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