Philosophical, anthropological and axiological aspects of Constantine’s definition of philosophy

Abstract This paper focuses on the philosophical-ethical foundations of Constantine’s definition of philosophy, as well as its anthropological and axiological aspects. The focus is placed on the relationship between definitions of philosophy postulated by Constantine the Philosopher and John of Damascus, the latter of which traces the six classical definitions systematized by Platonic commentators. Byzantine thinkers proposed a method of unifying both the theoretical and practical aspects of ancient philosophy with a Christian way of life by interpreting the classical definitions of philosophy and dividing it into theoretical and practical parts, the latter including ethics. Constantine understood philosophy in the sense of the second (knowledge of things Divine and human) and the fourth (becoming like God) meanings of earlier definitions, with the addition of the Christian sense of acting in accordance with the image of God. In addition to these gnosiological and anthropological aspects, the paper also observes the axiological aspect of Constantine’s definition of philosophy, which appears to be a foundation for exploring human behaviour as in compliance with Christian laws encouraging changes in ethical principles so as to follow a new code of ethics, through which new values were presented to the Slavs.

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God′s Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic

Paragrana ◽

10.1524/para.2009.0004 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 53-63

Author(s):

Gérard Colas

Keyword(s):

Image Of God ◽

The Other ◽

Religious Images ◽

Natural Laws ◽

Sacred Texts ◽

Technical Requirements ◽

Other Hand ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God ◽

The Universe

AbstractDiscussions on the nature of the relationship between a god, his body and his material representation are almost non-existent in the Hindu devotional perspective, where such concerns are superfluous. Hindu theological and ritual Sanskrit texts, on the other hand, applied procedures of reasoning with regard to that relationship. This rationalization however accommodated rather than conflicted with the devotional attitude. Their attempt to clarify their stand vis-à-vis god′s body and material image followed from ideological or technical requirements. This was done sometimes systematically, as in the Viśiṣṭādvaita school of philosophy where the ritual image is declared to be a divine descent (of God) for the purpose of worship; sometimes incidentally, as in ritual manuals, where the process of changing statues into divine bodies is described.But why should gods have a body at all? While some contend that they do not possess any body, others assert that they possess several at the same time, yet others infer the necessity of a body for God to create the universe, to reveal sacred texts, etc. These are some arguments and counter-arguments found in theological texts. The nature of the hierarchy between divine descents and images (which may or may not be considered as real bodies of gods) is another aspect of the discussion.Another question is the various ways in which ritual texts consider the relation between a god and his image. While immediacy characterizes the relation between the devotee and the image of god, the relation between ritual and image is far from being spontaneous. Rituals insure the presence of a god in an image through a technico-mystical process consisting of successive stages and involving patrons, astrologers, artists, priests and others. The final product, namely a concrete god-cum-image, is fit for devotion, but remains for ever fragile, dependent on the continuity of rites and on the material preservation of the image. Behind the ritual perspective also lies the notion that this process of creating a body for a god is in keeping with natural laws. Hindu ritual prescriptions are applicable only to the religious images which, though man-made, are considered as natural. Supra-natural divine images, known as self-manifested images, must be worshiped, but are beyond the range of these prescriptions.

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Synthetic biology ethically evaluated: The creating God and co-creating human

In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi ◽

10.4102/ids.v48i1.723 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Riaan Rheeder

Keyword(s):

Synthetic Biology ◽

Image Of God ◽

Human Being ◽

Human Beings ◽

Absolute Value ◽

God's Image ◽

The One ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God

God did not create once and then put an end to it. Testimony from Scripture shows that God continuously establishes or creates new things. Humans can therefore expect to always see and experience new things in creation. With this pattern of reasoning, one can anticipate that the human being as image of God will continuously establish new things in history. Although nature has value, it does not have absolute value and therefore it can be synthesised responsibly. The thought that humans are stewards of God is no longer adequate to, theologically put into words, the relationship human beings have with nature. New biotechnological developments ask for different answers from Scripture. Several ethicists are of the opinion that the theological construction of humans and created co-creators can help found the relationship of the human being to nature. Humans developed as God’s image evolutionary. On the one hand, this means humans themselves are a product of nature. On the other hand, the fact that humans are the image of God is also an ethical call that humans, like God, have to develop and create new things throughout history. Synthetic biology can be evaluated as technology that is possible, because humans are the image of God. However, it should, without a doubt, be executed responsibly.Sintetiese biologie eties geëvalueer: Die skeppende God en medeskeppende mens. God het nie net eenmaal geskep en daar gestop nie. Uit Skrifgetuienisse kan afgelei word dat God voortdurend nuwe dinge tot stand bring of skep. Daarom kan die mens verwag om gedurig nuwe dinge in die skepping te sien en te beleef. Hiermee saam kan verwag word dat die mens as beeld van God voortdurend nuwe dinge in die geskiedenis tot stand sal bring. Alhoewel die natuur waarde het, het dit nie absolute waarde nie en kan dus verantwoordelik gesintetiseer word. Die gedagte dat die mens rentmeester van God is, is nie meer voldoende om die mens se verhouding tot die natuur teologies te verwoord nie. Nuwe biotegnologiese ontwikkelinge vra na ander antwoorde vanuit die Skrif. Verskeie etici is van mening dat die teologiese konstruksie van die mens as geskepte medeskepper kan help om die mens se verhouding tot die natuur te begrond. Die mens het deur ’n evolusionêre proses tot God se beeld ontwikkel. Aan die een kant beteken dit dat die mens self ’n produk van die natuur is. Aan die ander kant is beeldskap ook ’n etiese oproep dat die mens, soos God, nuwe dinge in die geskiedenis moet ontwikkel en skep. Sintetiese biologie kan gesien word as tegnologie wat moontlik is omdat die mens na die beeld van God geskape is. Sonder twyfel moet sintetiese biologie egter verantwoordelik beoefen word.

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Racism as a challenge for church and society in democratic South Africa: Human dignity perspective

Theologia Viatorum ◽

10.4102/tv.v44i1.35 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Leepo J. Modise

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Human Dignity ◽

Image Of God ◽

Human Being ◽

Human Relationship ◽

Physical Organic ◽

Philosophical Interpretation ◽

Church And Society ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God

The image of God has been vandalised by racism in South Africa, which it is argued is a sin. It is an ecclesiological responsibility to address the vandalised image of God in South Africa. The author will argue from the human relationship as a build-up to the Theanthropocosmic principle. This principle denotes the relationship between God (theos) the human being (anthropos) and the physical-organic environment (cosmos). For addressing this responsibility, the grounds of internal racism are exposed using a philosophical interpretation. According to the author, there is a correlation between sin and racism. The latter is viewed as multidimensional from a Theanthropocosmic perspective.The theoretical framework will be within hamartiology and soteriology. The philosophical interpretation will be utilised to broaden the understanding of the theological problem of the vandalised image of God.

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Knowledge, Control and Consonance in Sūrat Āl ‘Imrān 3:33–62

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474483179.003.0002 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 14-39

Author(s):

Leyla Ozgur Alhassen

Keyword(s):

Image Of God ◽

Narrative Style ◽

And Control ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God

Examining the entire story in verses 3:33–62, this chapter shows that the Qur’ānic narrative style serves to embody the image of God the narrator as being omnipotent and omniscient. In this chapter, the focus is on the literary themes of knowledge, control and consonance, as a means to look at the relationship that the narrator develops between God, the audience and the text. The first section of this chapter focuses on God’s withholding of knowledge, the second section on God’s withholding of control, and finally, God’s creating consonance. All of the parts of the story in Sūrat Āl ‘Imrān work towards putting the readers and even the characters in their place by emphasizing God’s knowledge and control and the readers’ and characters’ deficiency in both. At the same time, the story comforts people by developing consonance between the reader and the characters and even the reader and God, while also providing echoes that signal to the audience that they can understand more of the story if they read more of it in other places in the Qur’ān, thus developing consonance between the reader and the story.

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Dancing the Animal to Open the Human: For a New Poetics of Locomotion

Dance Research Journal ◽

10.1017/s0149767700000796 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 3-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Gabriele Brandstetter

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Image Of God ◽

Human Identity ◽

The Bible ◽

Nature Versus Nurture ◽

History Of ◽

Self Discovery ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God ◽

Made In

Animals have provided a theme and a model for movements in dance from time immemorial. But what image of man do danced animal portrayals reflect? What questions of human identity and crisis do they reveal? Do the bodies of animals provide symbolic material for the ethical, political, and aesthetic questions raised by man's mastery of nature?The exploration of the boundary between man and animal—in myths and sagas, in the earliest records of ritual and art, and in the history of knowledge—is part of the great nature-versus-nurture debate. In the Bible the relationship is clear: Adam, made in the image of God, gives the animals in Paradise their names. In this way he rules over them—but Thomas Aquinas's commentary on this biblical text makes clear that the act of naming animals in Paradise is a step toward man's experiential self-discovery. Since then the hierarchy seems to be beyond doubt.Homo sapien, as theanimal significans, is distinguished from other animals by his ability to speak, his upright gait, the use of his hands, and the capacity to use instruments and media—man as what Sigmund Freud called the “prosthetic god” (1966, 44).

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Created in the image of God and sexuality in early-Jewish writings

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v73i4.4636 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 73 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Ernest Van Eck

Keyword(s):

Sexual Orientation ◽

Image Of God ◽

Same Sex ◽

God's Image ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God ◽

Point Of Departure

This article pays tribute to the contribution made by Yolanda Dreyer regarding critique on the prevalence of patriarchy in society, as well as her defence of homosexuality as a normal sexual orientation. Taking as point of departure her work on the woman as created in God’s image, it is argued that understanding the metaphor ‘created in God’s image’ as referring to rule over all, and not as created as man and woman, has important implications for the relationship between man and woman, as well as the normalisation of relationships between the same sex.

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Childhood in Eastern Patristic Thought: Some Problems of Theology and Theological Anthropology

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s042420840001278x ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 31 ◽

pp. 39-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Graham Gould

Keyword(s):

Theological Anthropology ◽

Human Person ◽

Image Of God ◽

Christian Theology ◽

Early Church ◽

The Bible ◽

Definition Of ◽

Eternal Salvation ◽

The Image Of God ◽

Present Life

The writings of the Early Church concerning childhood are not extensive, but in the works of a number of Eastern Christian authors of the second to fourth centuries it is possible to discern some ideas about childhood which raise important problems of Christian theology and theological anthropology. The theological problem is that of the question posed for theodicy by the sufferings and deaths of infants. It is harder to give a brief definition of the anthropological problem, but it is important to do so because to define the problem as the Eastern Fathers saw it is also to identify the set of conceptual tools—the anthropological paradigm—which they used to answer it. These are not, naturally, the concepts of modern anthropology and psychology. Applied to patristic thought, these terms usually refer to speculations about the composition and functioning of the human person or the human soul which belong to a discourse which is recognizably philosophical and metaphysical—by which is meant that it is (though influenced by other sources, such as the Bible) the discourse of a tradition descending ultimately from the anthropological terminology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Patristic anthropology seeks to account for the history and experiences of the human person as a created being—fhe experience of sin and mortality in the present life, but also of eternal salvation and advancement to perfection in the image of God.

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Przebóstwienie człowieka w pismach Jana Kasjana

Vox Patrum ◽

10.31743/vp.3558 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 63 ◽

pp. 185-197

Author(s):

Arkadiusz Nocoń

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Image Of God ◽

Original Sin ◽

Relationship With God ◽

Resurrection Of The Dead ◽

The Dead ◽

John Cassian ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God

One of the principal ideas in oriental anthropology is that of the divinization of man. The author studies this idea in John Cassian and draws the conclusion that not only was it known to Cassian, but indeed it is the filter through which he views the question of grace. The author arrives at this conclusion, above all, by underlining oriental monasticism as the original context of the theology of divinization. Cassian was trained as a theologian and monk in this very ambience. All of the elements of the concept of divinization are present in the writings of Cassian and the two biblical models for the qšwsij of man – its creation of man in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1: 26-27) and the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Mt 17: 1-8; Mc 9: 2-8; Lc 9: 28-36) – are widely commented on by Cassian and form the basis of his theological and ascetical teaching. Cassian’s doctrine on grace, which is deeply penetrated by the concept of divinization, propounds the idea that, after original sin, the likeness of God in man is destroyed, but the image of God in man – reason, free will, and conscience – remains. The grace of God, perceived through the prism of divinization, in Cassian implies not a “resurrection” of the dead nature of man, but a strengthening of his relationship with God, a passage from the condition of “slave” to that of “friend”. This teaching, characterized as it is by a salvific optimism which is typically oriental, according to the author, should no longer be regarded as a form of semipelagianism. Rather, but with due qualification, it should be regarded as a valid and interesting way of speaking on the perennially difficult quaestio of the relationship between grace and free will.

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Den grundtvigske arv: Christian Hostrup som prædikant med særligt blik på de grundtvigske elementer

Grundtvig-Studier ◽

10.7146/grs.v30i1.15662 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 260-292

Author(s):

Christian Thodberg

Keyword(s):

Image Of God ◽

Dynamic Character ◽

Personal Awareness ◽

Present Book ◽

God's Love ◽

God's Word ◽

Simple Language ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Image Of God ◽

The Devil

The Grundtvig Heritage: Christian Hostrup as Preacher, with a Special Consideration of the Grundtvig Elements in his Sermonsby Christian ThodbergJens Christian Hostrup (1818-92) was one of Grundtvig’s most important heirs. Hostrup drew nearer to Christianity and to Grundtvig as a result, amongst other things, of the attack which Søren Kierkegaard launched on the official Church in the 1850’s. It was for this reason that in particular the sermon aimed at saving souls and formulated in simple language became a characteristic of Hostrup as a preacher. He did not take holy orders until he was a man of mature years with a praiseworthy career as a playwright behind him. Hostrup takes over Grundtvig’s words and concepts but attributes a different meaning to them. The renunciation of the devil and the creed, for example, were to Grundtvig a message with a personal address by virtue of the interrogative form used in the baptism ritual, but for Hostrup the renunciation and the creed in the form in general use become a minimum demand on the tempted believer. Above all he emphasizes a personal awareness of the relationship with God. Whereas Grundtvig returned to baptism and dramatically relived it, baptism for Hostrup is to be supplemented by a growing awareness in the mature Christian.Most instructive is the relationship between Grundtvig and Hostrup as analysed in their use of the word heart. For Grundtvig heart is often used in conjunction with mouth, tongue, word and ear. This pattern stresses man’s extrovert nature towards God and his fellow man. Thus for Grundtvig the heart is the subject of a series of distinctive verbs of experience, emphasizing the image of God and its dynamic character in the heart. It is different with Hostrup; for him the heart becomes exclusively the seat of religious awareness.Attention is centred to a great degree on the heart’s feelings that the truth and the power in God’s Word can only be received through the heart’s sensitivity, through its desire and its aspiration. The heart is thus made independent, but becomes at the same times an expression of man’s loneliness: man can go only so far as the heart will allow. Thus for Hostrup the heart is almost static, in contrast to the dynamic character it had for Grundtvig as a mirror of God’s love - as an ear and a sounding-broard for God’s word.With its background in a structuralist examination of Grundtvig’s words and concepts in the present book the paper proves that a corresponding examination of the words and concepts of one of Grundtvig’s heirs gives a precise specifi308 cation of the characteristic differences. In Grundtvig and Hostrup we find the same words and concepts, but the patterns into which they fit are different. A structuralist analysis is therefore useful for an investigation into what happens when a tradition is handed on and taken over.

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