scholarly journals CHRISTIAN ASCESIS: THE AXIS OF HARMONY OF SPIRITUAL LIFE

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-49
Author(s):  
Marin BUGIULESCU ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
In Christ ◽  
God's Grace

This article presents a very important topic that aims at the balance of the spiritual life, namely asceticism. Asceticism is the state developed by the divine energies that sustain man's spiritual progress. A believer, the more he practices on the path of doing good, the better and more virtuous he will become. The more he seeks to eliminate sin from his being, the purer and godlier he will become. This exercise is called in spiritual language: asceticism. Man is a reality of divine harmony, but we must keep in mind that this gracious presence cannot be expressed conceptually because it belongs to a transcendental, metaphysical reality. Therefore, Christian asceticism refers to the acquisition and perfection of life in Christ. In this endeavor man is not left alone. God's grace helps him to achieve the state of holiness, of perfection

Karl Barth on Religion: A Study for Christians in Mission

1978 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-461
Author(s):  
Carl F. Starkloff
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
Basic Issue ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Positive Input

Many feel Karl Barth has had his day, Father Starkloff disagrees. He feels a careful study of Barth's theory of religion, within the context of the search for “cultural sensitivity,” can be very rewarding. For it is Barth who reminds us that the central driving force of man's religious life is self-affirmation and self-insurance. Although a solid grasp of the phenomenology of religion is “essential to the training of all missionaries in order to overcome ‘adversaries' and for its positive input into the spiritual life,” the basic issue remains unchanged — the essence of God's unique and once-for-all disclosure and giving of himself to man in Christ.

Presence and absence of προαίρεσις in Christ and saints according to Maximus the Confessor and parallels in Neoplatonism

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Grigory Benevich
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Natural Will ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

Abstract The article shows that prior to the debate with the Monothelites, Maximus the Confessor followed the Christian tradition going back to Gregory of Nyssa in recognizing the presence of προαίρεσις in Christ and the saints. Later during the debate, Maximus declined to apply προαίρεσις to Christ and started to speak about the deactivation of προαίρεσις in the saints in the state of deification. Maximus was the first Orthodox author who distinguished deliberate choice (προαίρεσις) and natural will (θέλημα), and defended the presence of natural will in Christ according to His humanity. At the same time, the opposition of desire (βούλησις) and deliberate choice (προαίρεσις) can be found in some Neoplatonists, such as Iamblichus, Proclus, and Philoponus. Iamblichus and Proclus rejected the presence of προαίρεσις in the gods and god-like humans, admitting only the presence of βούλησις - the desire for the Good. Thus, the evolution of the doctrine of Maximus the Confessor, regarding the application of προαίρε- σις to Christ and the saints, finds a parallel doctrine (and even possibly a source) in Neoplatonism.

scholarly journals Rowan Williams

2018 ◽  
pp. 504-524
Author(s):  
Mike Higton
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
God's Love ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Church

Rowan Williams’s ecclesiology is shaped by his account of the spiritual life. He examines the transformation of human beings’ relationships to one another, driven by their encounter with God’s utterly gracious love in Jesus Christ. The church is the community of forgiven people generated by Christ’s resurrection. It is animated by its constant exposure to God’s love in Christ in word and sacrament. It is held to that exposure by its doctrinal discipline. It is a community in which members go on learning from one another how to go more deeply into that exposure. For Williams, the church’s commitment to unity and its commitment to truth go together: truth cannot be discovered without holding together in unity to learn from one another; and proper ecclesial unity is unity in this search for truth.

“The One Who Calls in Grace”: Paul’s Rhetorical and Theological Identification with the Galatians

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orrey McFarland
Keyword(s):  
Important Link ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace

Abstract This article explores an important link Paul makes between himself and the Galatians in Galatians 1: the connection between God’s calling the Galatians “in grace” (1:6) and the calling of Paul “through grace” (1:15). By describing his calling in the same language as the Galatians’, Paul presents himself, together with the Galatians, as one who has received grace in Christ: calling here designates foremost an act of divine creation in the Christ-event and only secondly a commissioning to a particular vocation. Paul’s and the Galatians’ stories thus become intertwined and mutually explicable as instantiations of the gospel Paul received. Accordingly, this rhetorical and theological identification with the Galatians more fully establishes how chapters 1-2 relate to 3-6: Paul’s autobiographical testimony of an unworthy Apostle who now preaches the gospel of God’s grace in Christ to his unworthy churches cannot be disentangled from his exposition and exegetical defense of that gospel.

scholarly journals Review of the monograph by V. Voynalovych and N. Kochan "The religious factor of ethnopolitical processes in Galicia: the postwar Soviet era and the present", Kyiv. IPiEND named after IF Kuras, 2018,408 p.

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-154
Author(s):  
Mykola Obushnyi
Keyword(s):  
Research Problem ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Compromise Solutions ◽  
State Administration ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

In the context of decentralization of state administration and expansion of powers of local authorities in Ukraine, the ability of, on the one hand, the leadership of the state and, on the other, regional managers, to find compromise solutions taking into account the specifics of each region and state interests becomes important. The monograph is devoted to clarifying the specifics of such an important area in the spiritual life of Ukrainians in Galicia - state-church relations and the problems that arise in the way of their solution in the context of decentralization. The research problem posed by the authors is generally revealed at the level of requirements for this type of work and will be useful to all who are not indifferent to the study of ethno-religious relations in Ukraine.

Psychological Dynamics in Christian Worship: A Beginning Inquiry

1973 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Harold Ellens
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Health ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
The World ◽  
Spiritual Wholeness ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Vertical Relationship ◽  
In Christ ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Severe Anxiety

Worship is essentially a horizontal relationship between the human persons involved, not a vertical relationship with God. It is a human celebration of the historical datum that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” That celebration is not essentially sermon pedagogy nor mood inspiration. The purpose of worship is the achievement of emotional health and spiritual wholeness in the form of relief from destructive anxiety by means of celebration of God's grace. God is involved in two ways. It is His event in Christ which is celebrated and He is spectator to the celebration. Worship involves humans in two ways. It is our act of Christian relationship to each other and it is our experience and expression of celebrating God's nature and behavior. Typical worship reinforces pathologies of anxiety and self-deception. Worship which is genuine will heal humans of overriding guilt, crippling shame and severe anxiety. That is the purpose of worship in God's economy.

The Last Adam Became a Life-Giving Spirit

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-133
Author(s):  
Giovanni B. Bazzana
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
The State ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
In Christ

This chapter looks at the fundamental role played by spirit possession in the religious experience of Paul and of his Christ groups. It begins with their doctrinal and specifically christological elaborations. Being “in Christ” is the idiom through which Paul expresses the experience of possession by a πνεῦμα‎, which is identified with the risen Christ and which, through its presence in them, grants to believers salvation from the eschatological wrath and the expectation of eternal life. For Paul, Christ has achieved the state of existence designated as πνεῦμα‎ through his death and resurrection. This was an idea that was also shared by other early Christ groups, as is confirmed—albeit not without negligible difference—by an examination of a key section in the Shepherd of Hermas.

Incongruous Conciliation: A Constructive Critique of John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-402
Author(s):  
F. Gerald Downing
Keyword(s):  
The Gift ◽  
In Christ ◽  
God's Grace

John Barclay has recently argued that for Paul God’s grace, χάρις, in Christ is, almost without precedent, maximally ‘incongruous’, given to unfitting recipients. In fact, however, there are at least six further contemporary non-Christian examples, mostly Jewish, of incongruous grace in conciliation, some using καταλλαγή, ‘(re-)conciliation’, others not. Further, betokening change, from discord to harmony, καταλλαγή never on its own conveys (in)congruent ‘restoration’ of anything. This, of course, affects our interpretation of Paul in Rom. 5.10-11, 11.15 and 2 Cor. 5.17-20 (where perhaps the ‘re-’ in ‘re-conciliation’ misleads).

scholarly journals Natural Conditioning of the Spiritual Life: A Contribution to Methodological Reflection

Verbum Vitae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Marek Matuszewski
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Sitz Im Leben ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Biographical Approach ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Methodological Reflection ◽  
Auxiliary Role

The spiritual life constitutes an integral experience of any person being led by the Holy Spirit toward full communion with God. It is never something abstract, divorced from Sitz im Leben, in either the psychological aspect or the socio-cultural dimension, thus it always bears certain signs of one’s temperament, environment, and history. The present paper proposes a methodology of research into the natural basis of the spiritual life (psychological and socio-cultural), which influences the way God’s grace is received and experienced. The natural structures of the spiritual life constitute the ground, which is submitted to God’s salvific action and bears fruit in various forms. The description of the spiritual life demands the use of the appropriate methodology, which can be based on the combination of the doctrinal-sapiential (deductive) approach and the existential-anthropological (inductive) approach. An important auxiliary role in the description of the spiritual phenomenon can be played by psychological methods, for instance those that derive from the psycho-biographical approach, which allows us to capture what is unique in human functioning.

scholarly journals Kajian Teologis Konsep Hidup Tekun Menurut Surat Yakobus 1:2-8 dan Aplikasinya Bagi Kehidupan Orang Percaya Pada Masa Kini

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Stefanus Agus Budi Yanto ◽  
Paulus Kunto Baskoro
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Maturity ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Life Process ◽  
Long Time ◽  
In Christ

The life of a believer is a process that continues until the end of his life. Because believe in the Lord Jesus, everyone faces a process to live a more beautiful life in Christ. Living like Jesus is the ultimate goal for every believer. But many are faound in the lives of believers, their lives are not optimal in following Jesus. Even though they have been to church for a long time and have even served, many Christians when facing life’s challenges, struggles, problems and suffering, are quicker to grumble and leave the Lord Jesus. This ia a sign of the spiritual immaturity of the believer. Not because believres do not understand, but not serious in following Jesus. In order to obtain accurate and accountable data, in this study the authors used the method of writing is Frist, to provide an understanding to every believer that perseverance is one the characteristics of spiritual maturity; Second, perseverance will make every believer experience a strong spiritual life process; Third, today’s beliavers can be witnesses for everyone who is facing life’s challenges. Kehidupan orang percaya merupakan proses yang terus berjalan sampai akhir hidupnya. Sebab percaya Tuhan Yesus, setiap orang menghadapi proses untuk hidup makin indah dalam Kristus. Hidup menjadi serupa dengan Yesus adalah tujuan utama bagi setiap orang percaya. Namun banyak ditemukan dalam kehidupan orang percaya, hidupnya tidak maksimal dalam mengikuti Yesus. Meskipun sudah lama ke gereja bahkan sudah melayani, namun banyak orang Kristen ketika menghadapi tantangan hidup, pergumulan, persoalan dan menderita, lebih cepat bersunggut-sungut dan meninggalkan Tuhan Yesus. Ini adalah sebuah tanda ketidakdewasaan rohani orang percaya. Bukan karena orang percaya tidak memahami, namun ketidakseriusan dalam mengikut Yesus. Untuk mendapatkan data-data yang akurat dan dapat dipertanggungjawabkan, dalam penelitian ini penulis menggunakan metode penulisan deskriptif literatur. Tujuan penulisan ini adalah Pertama, memberikan pemahaman kepada setiap orang percaya bahwa ketekunan adalah salah satu ciri kedewasaan rohanit; Kedua, ketekunan akan membuat setiap orang percaya mengalami proses hidup rohani yang kuat; Ketiga, orang percaya masa kini bisa menjadi saksi bagi setiap orang yang sedang menghadapi tantangan hidup.

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