scholarly journals The Cognitive Phenomenology of Doors in the Book of Revelation: A Spatial Analysis

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 194
Author(s):  
Jolyon Pruszinski
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Phenomenology ◽  
Cognitive Effect ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Material World ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Old Order ◽  
The Earth

Following Rowland’s and Foucault’s respective observations that apocalypses are not necessarily temporal, and that historical analyses have diverted attention unduly from spatial phenomena, this paper examines Revelation using a spatial hermeneutic, comparing it to the semi-contemporaneous Parables of Enoch. Analyzing ostensibly similar spaces that are presented divergently, the paper focuses particular attention on “doorway” phenomena in Revelation. Recent research in cognitive psychology by Radvansky et al. suggests that passing through a doorway has a measurable cognitive effect, inducing forgetfulness of prior thoughts. Revelation employs doorway and gateway language repeatedly, while Parables of Enoch does not. The respective spatial emphases of Revelation and Parables suggest diverging engagements with a traumatized material world. References in Parables of Enoch to oppressive landowners and transformative goals for the earth suggest a continuing critical engagement with the material world. The lack of comparable language in Revelation suggests a comparatively more escapist perspective. Revelation combines polemic against all the “inhabitants of the earth”, an emphasis on the replacement of the old order, and the use of compensatory cultic language to orient the reader away from the existing material world. The parallel narrative employment of doorway language suggests an operative governing psychology of separation and forgetfulness in Revelation.

scholarly journals Cosmology in the book of Revelation

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert J.C. Jordaan
Keyword(s):  
Physical Space ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
New Creation ◽  
Spatial Sense ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Church

The cosmology of the book of Revelation mainly involves God’s restored reign over the created universe (κόσμος). Throughout the book, the κόσμος is depicted according to its constituent parts, namelyheaven, sea and earth. At first sight, this threefold description seems to stem from the ancient Jewish and mythological three-storied cosmological view of ‘up-above’, ‘here-below’ and ‘down-under’. However, this correspondence proves to be only superficial. Heaven is used by John not as much in spatial sense as in temporal sense: as symbolic reference to a divine point above time and history. Heaven is also a qualitative reference to a situation of complete obedient worship to God. Earth in John’s visions is mostly used as metaphor for sinful mankind under the rule of Satan. Yet, the earth remains part of God’s creation under his divine authority, and even becomes a refuge for the church in this dispensation. The sea in Revelation, when not denoting a physical space, is often equated by scholars to the abyss or the underworld. However, in Revelation the sea is mostly used as metaphor for the basic evil from which the beast originates and of everything immoral and impure. The last chapters of Revelation reveal that in the eschaton heaven, sea and earth will all be part of the new creation − renewed to the point where God’s reign is restored and acknowledged above all doubt throughout the κόσμος.Kosmologie in die boek van Openbaring. Die kosmologie van Openbaring getuig van God se herstelde regering oor die geskape heelal (κόσμος). Regdeur die boek word die κόσμος volgens sy samestellende dele beskryf, naamlik hemel, see en aarde. Oppervlakkig beskou, lyk hierdie beskrywing na die antieke Joodse en mitologiese drie-verdieping-kosmologie van ‘daar bo’, ‘hier onder’ en ‘daar onder’. Hierdie ooreenkoms is egter slegs oppervlakkig. Hemel word deur Johannes nie soseer in ruimtelike sin gebruik nie, maar in temporele sin: as simboliese verwysing dat God bo tyd en geskiedenis verhewe is. Hemel is ook ’n kwalitatiewe verwysing na ’n toestand van volmaakte gehoorsame aanbidding van God. Desgelyks word aarde meestal gebruik as metafoor vir ’n sondige mensdom onder Satan se heerskappy. Tog bly die aarde deel van God se skepping onder sy goddelike heerskappy, en word dit selfs aangetoon as ’n toevlugsoord vir die kerk in hierdie bedeling. Waar die see in Openbaring nie na ’n fisiese verskynsel verwys nie, word dit dikwels deur biblioloë op gelyke vlak met die diep put of die onderwêreld gestel. Johannes gebruik die see egter meestal as metafoor vir die boosheid waaruit die dier sy oorsprong het, asook vir alles wat sondig en onrein is. Openbaring 21 en 22 maak bekend dat hemel, see en aarde in die eschatondeel sal wees van die nuwe skepping − vernuwe tot op die punt waar God se heerskappy herstel is en erken word regdeur die κόσμος.

The Burial of the Dead: Displacement and Agency in Hamlet

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Stephan Laqué
Keyword(s):  
Material World ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Hamlet tends to be regarded as a largely immobile man of the mind who fails to move in the material world of action. But right from the start, Hamlet is a play about displacement: the displacement of a dead king who walks the earth, of a corpse dragged around and hidden in the castle, of soldiers dying for a piece of land that cannot even offer them burial, of the bones of the dead thrown out of their graves. Hamlet gradually comes to recognize the extent to which he has to become an agent of the displacement of others and the master of his own displacement until, in the graveyard-scene, he can proclaim that he is “Hamlet the Dane”.

9. Confucian Cosmology and Ecological Ethics

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Mary Evelyn Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Ethics ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Ecological Concern

Mary Evelyn Tucker presents contributions to ecological ethics in Confucianism, highlighting the importance of Confucian cosmology for understanding the material world as vibrant and lively, not passive and inert. Confucianism facilitates an approach to ethics for which personal and social concerns are embedded in the Earth community and the whole cosmos, such that ecological concern is not separate from the practice of self-cultivation.

Thinking Critically with Children of the Anthropocene

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Somerville
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Advanced Capitalism ◽  
Human World ◽  
Induced Changes

In her Deleuzean analysis of advanced capitalism, Braidotti notes that all previous emancipatory positions have been co-opted by the marketplace and that even our earth others – animals, seeds, plants, and the Earth as a whole – have been subsumed by advanced capitalism. This article addresses the need for a reconceptualised critical qualitative inquiry within the context of advanced capitalism and increasing recognition of human-induced changes in the planet's biosphere. Justice is understood in relation to the more-than-human world and its entangled children born into the 21st century. Stenger's recommendation of thinking with the more-than-human is adapted to thinking methodologically with children in an experiment designed to explore intra-action. The article concludes that following children in their playful encounters opens a space where matter and meaning, time and space, and the being of the adult researcher is reshaped into an entangled material world.

Conclusion: Evil and the Adequacy of the Earth

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Mutter
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Material World ◽  
Secular Humanism ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Christian Understanding

This chapter contends that modernists find themselves entangled in a distinctly secular version of the “problem of evil.” As secularists they want to affirm the abundance of the immanent, material world, but this very world seems to resist the desires and needs specific to human personhood. This leads, in different writers, to a critique of “secular humanism” or to a valorization of the world as a scene of conflict. The chapter suggests, however, that Auden’s Christian understanding of secularity is able to elude this problem of evil by relinquishing the expectation that the material world satisfy the desires proper to embodied persons.

An Appreciation and Critique of Craig R. Koester, Revelation (ayb 38A; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014) with Special Reference to Revelation 15.6–22.21

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
John Christopher Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Review Article ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
The Earth

This review article is devoted to Revelation 15.6–22.21 in Craig R. Koester’s ayb volume on the Book of Revelation. The volume is praised for its exhaustive research, prudent judgments, and textual sensitivity. Among the issues raised are the topics of Revelation’s pneumatology, the commentary’s somewhat restrictive use of the Johannine literature, the issue of works and grace, and the significance of the kings of the earth in New Jerusalem and the conversion of the nations.

Sweetgrass Stories: Listening for Animate Land

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-352
Author(s):  
Warren Cariou
Keyword(s):  
Medicinal Plants ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Material World ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Cultural Sovereignty ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Living Material

This article examines Indigenous stories that reveal how the land communicates to humans through medicinal plants. The intention is to address a blind spot in new materialist theory, which Zoe Todd has criticized for its lack of attention to Indigenous forms and practices of relational materialism. The main focus of this essay is Indigenous narratives about the sacred plant sweetgrass (known as (wihkaskwa in Cree; wiingaashk in Anishinaabemowin). Reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s meditation Braiding Sweetgrass and Drew Hayden Taylor’s novel Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, and watching Jessie Short’s 2016 film Sweet Night, I argue that these artists portray sweetgrass as an intermediary between humans and the land, strengthening Indigenous cultural sovereignty and deepening human relationships by reminding people of their shared embodiment and their shared spiritual-territorial connection. The plant is revealed in these works as a teacher, operating through its scent, texture, and literal rootedness to teach humans about their own connectedness to particular living places.By working at the level of sensation rather than linguistic signification, the sweetgrass is also shown to have an immediate and embodied effect upon the characters in these works. In particular, it offers itself as a gift, and as a conduit of love. I argue that the repeated image of the sweetgrass braid in these works is not exactly a metaphor, but is instead a profound conjoining of the earth and the human body, both submitted to the care of human hands. To braid the earth’s fragrant hair is to treat it in the most intimate way, as a family member or a beloved. It is this human activity of braiding that clarifies the kinship aspect of sweetgrass, showing us that it is not a thing, but a relation. The reciprocity of this relationship shows an Indigenous ethic of engagement with the living material world.

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