“Break Their Evil Nature”:

2021 ◽  
pp. 251-286
Keyword(s):  
Evil Nature

Destroyer of the Law II

2021 ◽  
pp. 122-139
Author(s):  
M. David Litwa
Keyword(s):  
John The Baptist ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
The Law

This chapter shows how Christ destroyed the Law from Marcion’s (reconstructed) gospel (the Evangelion). After discussing the Marcionite reading of Luke 23:2 (Jewish leaders accuse Jesus of “destroying the Law”), the discussion focuses on Christ’s concrete violations of the Law. First, Jesus touched lepers in violation of the Law and healed them apart from the Law’s purification rites. Further, he allowed himself to be touched by an unclean woman but did not consider himself to be unclean. Moreover, he controverted the Law to honor parents by requiring a would-be disciple not to bury his father, and in general by requiring his disciples to abandon their families. Christ stated that the Law lasted until John the Baptist (Luke 16:16), indicating its abolition. Finally, Christ violated Sabbath laws numerous times, even claiming to be lord of—or over—the Sabbath. This Jesus who attacked the Law then died by the Law’s penalties. This was proof not only that Christ opposed the Law but that the Law was hostile to Christ. Yet the Law was only the instrument of the Lawgiver who plotted Christ’s death and so proved his evil nature.

scholarly journals Socio-Psychological Alienation in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Kharbutli ◽  
Ishraq Al-Omoush
Keyword(s):  
Psychological State ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
The Devil

This paper investigates socio-psychological alienation in Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown”. It focuses on Brown’s psychological motivations that lead him to leave his village, Salem, on a journey to be taken literally and allegorically along with the inner conflicts thereof. Eventually, the result is a short-lived schism in his psyche. In fact, what urges Brown to step farther into the dark wood is an insistence to discover the whole truth so as to put an end to any vacillation between threatening possibilities suggested by the devil about the Puritan society to which he belongs. Thus, Brown turns into a rejectionist of all the teachings of his Puritan culture. In the end not only does he liberate himself from these cultural shackles, but he also seems to rise above them. So, while he lives among his countrymen he is not one of them. Brown’s new psychological state never allows him to accept the evil nature and the hypocrisy of his ancestry. Moreover, the psychological confusion in Brown’s psyche reaches its peak in a state of depression that we notice at the end of the story, which eventually puts him among those who have come to be called the “dark” romantics of the period, along with Poe, Melville, and Dickinson.

WANG CHONG'S FATALISM

Early China ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 285-310
Author(s):  
Yunwoo Song
Keyword(s):  
Moral Autonomy ◽  
Personal Effort ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
The Way

AbstractAlthough Wang Chong has often been categorized as a kind of fatalist, many scholars maintain that his fatalism does not include one's moral autonomy, as he argues that one's inborn moral tendencies can be changed through education. He even acknowledges that a person can live a different life from what one's ming must have dictated. But in this article, I show that even when Wang seems to claim that personal effort is important in life, he soon claims that even the abilities to make efforts or to strive to be a better person are more or less decided at birth. And even when he claims that people born with evil nature can be guided to goodness, nowhere does he suggest that to be good or evil is a matter of our choice. And if there is an occasion where one does not live up to what one's ming has predetermined, it is only because there was another ming, one that is more powerful than that of an individual, that interfered with the realization of one's original ming, not because that one's original ming has changed. In the end, I argue that even though Wang Chong may not be a fatalist in its fullest sense, since fatalism means that every event is necessitated, he comes very close to being one, as he sees that in so many instances of our lives, we are not free to act in any other way than in the way that ming has prearranged.

“Count Guido Franceschini”: The Villain as Artist in The Ring and the Book

PMLA ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 1093-1102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Yetman
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
Murder Trial ◽  
First Time

Book v of The Ring and the Book affords us a view of Guido Franceschini very different from that provided by his second monologue. This difference is accountable to the Active rhetorical method that Guido employs in confronting the judges at his murder trial. In Book XI, having failed in his attempt to prolong life through fiction, Guido resorts to what he calls a more “voluble rhetoric” of the soul, thus becoming accessible to us for the first time in the same way that we see the other speakers in the poem. An analysis of Guido's fiction in Book V, especially his rendering of Caponsacchi, Pompilia, and himself, as the hero, heroine, and wronged husband, respectively, of popular medieval and renaissance literature reveals a conception of art as deception, contrary to Browning's informing belief in art as a means of arriving at truth by heightening rather than distorting reality. A comparison of Book XI with the earlier monologue indicates that, in addition to making plain the enormity of his villain's evil nature, Browning uses Guido's second monologue as an implicit repudiation of what he considers to be the specious theory of art that Guido relies upon in Book v.

The Father of the Devil (John 8:44)

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
pp. 540-565
Author(s):  
M. David Litwa
Keyword(s):  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian View ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
The Devil

Abstract This article argues that John 8:44 helped to inspire the early Christian view that the creator was an evil being. John 8:44 has at least four possible readings allowed by grammar. In two of these readings, taken by a variety of early Christian groups (including early catholics), there is indication that the devil has a father. Since the desires of this father are known from the parallel desires of his children, some early Christians inferred the hostility of the devil’s father toward Christ, and thus his evil nature.

Les marges de l’homme en jeu aux limbes du Pacifique

Revue Romane ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-281
Author(s):  
Chiara Mengozzi
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Face ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
The Common ◽  
As If

Résumé The article proposes a new reading of Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique with the intent to combine Postcolonial and Animal Studies, beyond the common emphasis on the notion of victim, and to resist the allegorical interpretations of the novel. Firstly, I demonstrate that during the “administrated island”, Robinson imposes an order based on the correlation among capitalism, colonialism and Oedipal sexuality, as if humanity as such could be reduced to the features of Western societies. Then, I explore how the novel relocates the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, challenging the exclusive identification of alterity to a human face. Finally, I focus on the new relation with otherness (both human and animal) experienced by the two characters: a kind of intersubjectivity based on the play, which is a practice that does not presuppose the knowledge of the other and exceeds the traditional categorical antithesis, such as truth/falsity, good/evil, nature/culture.

scholarly journals Augustine and Neo-platonism in the Understanding on the Doctrine of Original Sin: A Comparative Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 2065-2083
Author(s):  
Exson Eduaman Pane
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
Youth Experiences

Doctrine of Original Sin has been debated for centuries among the Theologians include Augustine. The Understanding of doctrine original sin as a theological term started from the teaching of Augustine around 5century B.C. Augustine‘s understanding regarding of original sin derived from his problem and his question concerning  the life of Adam and Eve, and particularly in his youth experiences of adultery. He believed that all men involved in Adam’s fist sin and original sin was transmitted through the parents to their children. Augustine learned Manichaeism, however he did not satisfied and then he went to learned Neo-Platonism and deeply impressed to him both for his Neo-Platonism and Christian life. In Neo-Platonism, Augustine respect and received the Plotinus views. For Neo-Platonism the root of sin is discovered in the very nature of the soul and in relation to the body as self- isolation.  Before it enters the body, the soul has a prior existence. When the souls falls and that is how it comes to be in the body. But the point is that the soul has an unruly and evil nature in its irrational parts even before it enters the body, so that it in one sense the cause of evil is present even in the soul preexistence state. Neo-Platonist believed  that original sin is  transmitted from one to another, Neo-Platonism underscored this notion by suggesting that in addition to such a transmission of evil, human souls would reappear via transmigration, bringing to the new body their earlier errors and judgments of value. Therefore, this study is to analyze and to compare Augustine’s view as a theologian of the original sin with Neo-Platonism concept.

scholarly journals Kant on Radical Evil: A Pragmatic Reading

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
Anthony Rimai
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Formal Proof ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Evil Nature

One of the primary concerns of Immanuel Kant in his major works on philosophy of religion is the doctrine of radical evil. He was greatly perplexed by the conundrums of this doctrine. Although Kant claimed it to be a universal trait, he failed to give a formal proof (evidence) supporting it. However, he asserted that the conducts of human beings are enough to demonstrate the nature of radical evil. The complexity of the doctrine is further fuelled by introducing the idea of the need of divine intervention for one to overcome such moral-religious predicament. Critical responses from both Christian and secular scholars reflect interesting take on his ethico-religious discourse. One of the prominent criticisms to Kant’s doctrine of radical evil is its relapse to religious absurdity reflecting the Christian doctrine of the ‘fall of mankind’ as narrated in the first book of the Bible. Consequently, the seriousness of the criticism not only affects the moral maxims but also the portrayal of its strong religious affinity, rendering the doctrine even more allusive and perplexing. The article intends to throw some light on the pragmatic perspective of the doctrine with special focus on the universality of the radical evil nature of human.

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