scholarly journals When Ecclesiastical Unity is Pursued but not Realised: Synodical Independency and Denominational Pluralism Within the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP)

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhodian Munyenyembe ◽  
Johannes Wynand Hofmeyr
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

The aim of this article is to appreciate the fact that though the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) is taken to be one denomination, the independence of the synods has made it to appear as if there are actually five denominations. By tracing the similarities and differences of the synods from their genesis it becomes quite clear that diversity outweighs unity in the CCAP. From a theological point of view we see that some of the differences are there because of different theological emphases, especially due to traditions of the mother churches that gave birth to the synods. Regarding political issues, it has been seen that the geographical and cultural contexts in which the synods are situated do contribute to the synods’ perspectives on pertinent issues, as they cannot be taken to be operating in a vacuum. These observations therefore underscore the fact that the five synods’ unity under the General Assembly is that of a loose federation rather than an organic one.

scholarly journals God, the Christ and the Spirit in William P. Young’s bestseller The shack seen from a Pauline and Johannine perspective

2009 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andries G. Van Aarde
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

Among its more than a million readers, The shack has empowered traditionalists and seekers among Christian spirituals but has also been condemned for patripassionism and modalism. This article consists mainly of two sections. The first section considers the issue of reviewers of The shack often assessing its religious legitimacy and the value of its message by means of critically questioning its adherence to texts in the Christian Bible. The second section focuses on the accusation that, dogmatically seen, The shack’s narrative point of view is heresy, especially because of its nonstandard view of Christian dogma with regard to God Triune. The aim of the article is to argue that a great deal of commonality exists between the author of The shack and both Pauline and Johannine mysticism. With regard to their God talk, the author and these biblical writers express more of a present immanent communion with the transcendental God than an expectancy of authenticity that still lies in the future and exists outside humankind’s immanent time and space. It is as if they draw the end time into the sphere of the here and now by passionately talking about communion with God as a process of the future, inhaled by the present. By doing so, the God-threesome meet wounded humankind in a ‘shack’, not in the ‘church’ as such or ‘Scripture’ as such as if God could be placed in a box.

scholarly journals LOFTY BUT NOT POWERFUL: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE POSITION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY IN THE UNION OF THE CHURCH OF CENTRAL AFRICA PRESBYTERIAN (MALAWI)

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Rhodian Munyenyembe ◽  
J W Hofmeyr
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Church

In this article the specific focus is on the position of the General Assembly in the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) in Malawi. Though the General Assembly was meant to foster a closer unity of the constituent synods, it still remains an unstable entity, and has been so over the years due to the autonomy of the synods; much more so in recent years because of disputes among the synods. This especially applies to the border disputes between the Synod of Livingstonia and the Nkhoma Synod. Though the 2013 General Assembly has somewhat healed the tension, the future of the General Assembly is likely not to be a vibrant one as long as the synods do not fully surrender their autonomy to a body that is supposed to be above them administratively. However, this appears not to be the synods’ option in the nearest future, thereby perpetuating the loftiness of the General Assembly without its accompanying powers.

scholarly journals Editorial vs Political Commentary: Establishment of the Genres in Siberian Regional Press (a Case Study of Minusinsk Newspaper Texts in the Period of 1906-1917)

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-299
Author(s):  
Julia Kostyakova
Keyword(s):  
Information Sources ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Commentary ◽  
Current State ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Newspaper Text ◽  
Set Up

The article deals with editorial and political commentary as journalistic genres, reveals their typological features, similarities and differences. The author gives reasons for saving these genres and considering them as those belonging to the group of analytical genres, since their basis is the logical analysis of real events, phenomena or facts. The author studies the historical transformation of editorial and political commentary in the pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet periods, and determines the causes of the changes. The author infers that currently, editorial is best developing in the context of columnism, whereas political commentary is most successful in the Internet. This foregrounds the study of both current state and historical conditions for the development of these genres, especially in Siberian regional press at the establishment stage in the early XX century. The analysis of papers issued consecutively from 1906 to 1917 in Minusinsk, the central town of Yenisei province, shows the main trends in the change of the content of these types of newspaper text. An editorial containing comments on political issues was an indicator of particular quality of the newspaper, since the readers were provided with the editors or leading journalists reasoned point of view on the events and phenomena of those days. The choice of the topic and the content of the coverage were determines by the censorship and historical conditions, availability of information sources and the writers experience. Despite similarities in the topic and content, editorial and political commentary had different headlines and references to the author. Moreover, in the Bolshevists press, which became legalized in the time of the February Revolution, editorial was used as a means of agitation, and thus set up the tradition for the Soviet press.

scholarly journals Stages of modernity in perspective: Jane Austen’s Pride and prejudice and José de Alencar’s Senhora

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. e45472
Author(s):  
Maria Eulália Ramicelli
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Pride And Prejudice ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
Urban Novels ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Relationship

In the nineteenth century, England was one of the countries with a decisive influence on the formation of modern bourgeois society. Brazil experienced this process very unevenly and in particular ways. Jane Austen’s fiction and José de Alencar’s urban novels formalize important aspects of this formative process for both bourgeois society and the accompanying mindset in England and in Brazil respectively. A comparison of Austen’s Pride and prejudice and Alencar’s Senhora reveals similarities and differences between the narratives which point to meaningful contextual aspects of the broader modernizing process. Analysis of the relationship between point of view and the protagonists in both novels reveals specific socio-cultural rationales that the readers of both Austen and Alencar were encouraged to follow. In this sense, comparative study of the novels also discloses less obvious aspects of the formation of the modern bourgeois mindset in their different but related national and socio-cultural contexts.

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.

scholarly journals Traversing a Tightrope between Ecumenism and Exclusivism: The Intertwined History of South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Nyasaland (Malawi)

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Retief Müller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Church History ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Christian Nationalism ◽  
The Church ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

During the first few decades of the 20th century, the Nkhoma mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became involved in an ecumenical venture that was initiated by the Church of Scotland’s Blantyre mission, and the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia mission in central Africa. Geographically sandwiched between these two Scots missions in Nyasaland (presently Malawi) was Nkhoma in the central region of the country. During a period of history when the DRC in South Africa had begun to regressively disengage from ecumenical entanglements in order to focus on its developing discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism, this venture in ecumenism by one of its foreign missions was a remarkable anomaly. Yet, as this article illustrates, the ecumenical project as finalized at a conference in 1924 was characterized by controversy and nearly became derailed as a result of the intransigence of white DRC missionaries on the subject of eating together with black colleagues at a communal table. Negotiations proceeded and somehow ended in church unity despite the DRC’s missionaries’ objection to communal eating. After the merger of the synods of Blantyre, Nkhoma and Livingstonia into the unified CCAP, distinct regional differences remained, long after the colonial missionaries departed. In terms of its theological predisposition, especially on the hierarchy of social relations, the Nkhoma synod remains much more conservative than both of its neighboring synods in the CCAP to the south and north. Race is no longer a matter of division. More recently, it has been gender, and especially the issue of women’s ordination to ministry, which has been affirmed by both Blantyre and Livingstonia, but resisted by the Nkhoma synod. Back in South Africa, these events similarly had an impact on church history and theological debate, but in a completely different direction. As the theology of Afrikaner Christian nationalism and eventually apartheid came into positions of power in the 1940s, the DRC’s Nkhoma mission in Malawi found itself in a position of vulnerability and suspicion. The very fact of its participation in an ecumenical project involving ‘liberal’ Scots in the formation of an indigenous black church was an intolerable digression from the normative separatism that was the hallmark of the DRC under apartheid. Hence, this article focuses on the variegated entanglements of Reformed Church history, mission history, theology and politics in two different 20th-century African contexts, Malawi and South Africa.

Canons to the Left of Him: Brevard Childs, his Critics, and the Future of Old Testament Theology

1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Provan
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Probable Origin ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

It is well known that the seeds from which the modern discipline of OT theology grew are already found in 17th and 18th century discussion of the relationship between Bible and Church, which tended to drive a wedge between the two, regarding canon in historical rather than theological terms; stressing the difference between what is transient and particular in the Bible and what is universal and of abiding significance; and placing the task of deciding which is which upon the shoulders of the individual reader rather than upon the church. Free investigation of the Bible, unfettered by church tradition and theology, was to be the way ahead. OT theology finds its roots more particularly in the 18th century discussion of the nature of and the relationship between Biblical Theology and Dogmatic Theology, and in particular in Gabler's classic theoreticalstatementof their nature and relationship. The first book which may strictly be called an OT theology appeared in 1796: an historical discussion of the ideas to be found in the OT, with an emphasis on their probable origin and the stages through which Hebrew religious thought had passed, compared and contrasted with the beliefs of other ancient peoples, and evaluated from the point of view of rationalistic religion. Here we find the unreserved acceptance of Gabler's principle that OT theology must in the first instance be a descriptive and historical discipline, freed from dogmatic constraints and resistant to the premature merging of OT and NT — a principle which in the succeeding century was accepted by writers across the whole theological spectrum, including those of orthodox and conservative inclination.

Constantine as a ‘Bishop’

1947 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Seston
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Obiter Dictum ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

The author of the Vita Constantini (traditionally and persistently identified with Eusebius, despite the silence of St. Jerome), tells us that Constantine ‘at a banquet he was giving to the bishops declared that he too was a bishop. He added these words which I heard with my own ears: ἀλλ᾽ ὑμεῖϛ μὲν τῶν εἴσω τῆϛ ἐκτὸϛ ὑπὸ θεοῦ καθεσταμένοϛ ἐπίσκοπϛ ἂν εἴην ’.In attempts to define the relations between the first Christian emperor and the Church, no phrase is more frequently quoted than this obiter dictum. In the sixteenth century the French scholar Henri de Valois rendered τῶν ἐκτόϛ as if it were the genitive of τὰ ἐκτόϛ, and since then it has been the practice to regard Constantine as an ‘évèque du dehors’: the Emperor either exercised episcopal functions though not consecrated, or supervised mundane affairs (that is, the State), after the fashion of a bishop, or else held from God a temporal commission for ecclesiastical government, the bishops retaining control of dogma, ethics and discipline. Each of these three distinct interpretations is equally admissible.

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