scholarly journals Memandang Penderitaan Melalui Perspektif The Already and The Not Yet dari Rasul Paulus

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Alexander Darmawan Limasaputra

Penderitaan merupakan peristiwa yang dapat dialami setiap orang. Penderitaan telah membuat orang menangis, mempertanyakan atau bahkan meninggalkan Allah. Apakah penderitaan menjadi bukti bahwa Allah tidak ada? Bukankah kalau Allah ada maka penderitaan tidak ada? Apakah penderitaan menjadi bukti bahwa Allah sudah kalah dan tidak lagi berkuasa atas dunia? Artikel ini akan menjawab pertanyaan-pertanyaan tersebut melalui perspektif the already and the not yet dari rasul Paulus. Penulis menjelaskan bahwa penderitaan merupakan panggilan orang percaya karena berada di masa the already and the not yet, yaitu masa di mana Yesus Kristus telah menang atas kuasa dosa, kutuk alam semesta dan pemerintahan Iblis serta merupakan masa hadirnya pemerintahan Allah di dunia, meski semua ini belum mencapai kepenuhannya. Karena itu orang percaya tidak perlu takut atau meninggalkan iman Kristen. Kata-kata kunci: Penderitaan, Paulus, Eskatologi, The Already and the Not Yet, Ciptaan Baru, Pemerintahan Allah, Pemerintahan Iblis, Kuasa Dosa, Kutuk Alam Semesta    Suffering is something that is experienced by everyone. Suffering has made people cry out to God, question God or even leave God. Does suffering prove that God does not exist? Doesn’t God’s existence nullify suffering? Does suffering prove that God is impotent and no longer has power over the world? This article will address these questions through the framework of the already and the not yet schema developed by the apostle Paul. The author explains that suffering is a part of the call of believers because it is experienced between the time of the already and the not yet. A period when Jesus Christ has won over the power of sin, the curse of the universe and the government of Satan and is the time of God’s government in the world, even though all this has not yet reached fullness. Therefore, believers need not fear suffering nor leave the Christian faith because of it. Keywords: Suffering, Paul, Eschatology, The Already and the Not Yet, New Creation, God’s Rule, Satan’s Rule, Power of Sin, Curse on Creation


1972 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-250
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Torrance

Everything about us today tells us that we live in a world which will be increasingly dominated by empirical and theoretic science. This is the world in which the Church lives and proclaims its message about Jesus Christ. It is not an alien world, for it is in this world of space and time that God has planted us. He made the universe and endowed man with gifts to investigate and understand it. Just as he made life to produce itself, so he has made the universe with man as an essential constituent in it, that it may bring forth and articulate knowledge of itself. Regarded in this light the pursuit of science is one of the ways in which man exercises the dominion in the earth which he was given at his creation. That is how, for example, Francis Bacon understood the work of human science, as man's obedience to God. Science is a religious duty, while man as scientist can be spoken of as the priest of creation, whose task it is to interpret the books of nature, to understand the universe in its wonderful structures and harmonies, and to bring it all into orderly articulation, so that it fulfils its proper end as the vast theatre of glory in which the creator is worshipped and praised. Nature itself is dumb, but it is man's part to bring it to word, to be its mouth through which the whole universe gives voice to the glory and majesty of the living God.



Author(s):  
Matthew Puffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of creation is rooted in the confession that Jesus Christ is the mediator. Apart from Christ’s mediation human beings cannot perceive God’s creation, because our postlapsarian world manifests only a fallen creation in which good and evil are confused and intermixed. Whereas Bonhoeffer in his student years affirmed a limited role for the orders of creation, his subsequent writings on the theology of creation can be read as a response to and reaction against the orders of creation. Although human beings have no unmediated access to knowledge of God’s creation, and know the world as fallen creation only through Christ’s redemption, in Christ they are empowered by the Spirit, incorporated into Christ’s body the church, and made a new creation. Only in light of the hoped-for eschatological fulfilment of the new creation may Christian theology speak of the beginning of God’s ways as Creator.



2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-69
Author(s):  
Eddis Sagala

fulfilling the law according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 13: 8-10. The research method in writing scientific papers is a qualitative method with an exegetical study approach. The results of the exegetical study of Romans 13: 8-10, the meaning of fulfilling the law is to love God, love fellow believers, not believers and the government as rulers determined by God. So that the implementation of the present day congregation is that every Christian must love God faithfully, love his neighbor as himself, love his fellow believers by not being a stumbling block to fellow believers, loving others who are not believers through friendship with them and giving sweet love to Jesus Christ for them, then loves the government as the ruler through obedience to all the rules and regulations he sets.Keywords: Meaning, Compliance, Law



1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Mora Zahonero

Resumen: La doctrina conocida como «unidad del ser» tiene, en Ibn ʿArabī, su contrapunto en la visión dinámica de la creación continua o nueva creación, la cual postula que el cosmos, y todo cuanto contiene, es creado y recreado sin cesar a cada instante. Se trata de una visión caleidoscópica de la existencia que se enmarca dentro de lo que se ha dado en llamar «filosofías del acto», y más concretamente del acto creador divino, que contrastan poderosamente con las denominadas filosofías del ser, representadas por el pensamiento helénico y su concepción del ser como un principio inmutable. Revisaremos los antecedentes históricos de esta doctrina, tanto fuera como dentro del marco cultural del islam, y también las razones que la justifican, como, por ejemplo, el origen, en los nombres divinos, de los cambios que se producen en el exterior y el interior del ser humano o la indigencia ontológica de todo lo creado, que obliga a que su existencia se vea renovada de continuo por medio del Aliento del Todo-Misericordioso. De esta concepción dinámica de la realidad, en la que se precisa la intervención directa de la misericordia divina para el mantenimiento del mundo, se derivan diferentes consecuencias, como la insustancialidad, la inconsistencia y el carácter imaginal de las cosas que consideramos sólidas, el movimiento incesante de todo cuanto existe y la trascendencia de nuestra concepción habitual de la ley de causa y efecto. Por otro lado, el término «creación» es sinónimo de «teofanía» o manifestación divina. A pesar de las manifestaciones teofánicas son infinitas, todas ellas son irrepetibles. Además de otros textos, Ibn ʿArabī dedica gran parte del capítulo 12 de Los engarces de las sabidurías al tema que nos ocupa, vinculando la nueva creación a las fluctuaciones experimentadas por el corazón, las manifestaciones teofánicas y la pluralidad de las creencias que, acerca de la realidad, albergamos los seres humanos. La imaginación desempeña un papel crucial en esta perspectiva vertiginosa de la existencia, en la que ninguna realidad está, por así decirlo, plenamente cerrada o constituida. La facultad de la imaginación, tan importante en la cosmovisión akbarí, también es el principal intérprete de los signos que Dios ha diseminado en el exterior y el interior del ser humano, signos que siempre remiten al divino acto creador. La función suprema de la imaginación es hacer del mundo y de nosotros mismos un lugar de revelación teofánica, es decir, llevarnos a descubrir la presencia divina en todos los seres. Para ello, el sabio debe aplicar el doble ojo que contempla, al unísono, lo absoluto y lo relativo, la luz y la oscuridad, la unidad y la multiplicidad. La doctrina de la nueva creación nos presenta, en suma, una visión abierta de la realidad que nos asegura que no estamos condenados a repetir nuestro pasado y de que siempre tenemos la posibilidad de reconocer la irrupción continua de lo «radicalmente nuevo» en nuestra historia social y personal. La nueva creación también evoca la idea de que el mundo y las vidas de los seres humanos son una obra inconclusa. Corresponde, pues, a cada uno de nosotros, y en la medida de las posibilidades de nuestra imaginación creadora, darle el desenlace final.Palabras clave: nueva creación, filosofías del acto, ser, aliento del Todo-Misericordioso, cambio, indigencia ontológica, imaginación creadora. Abstract: In Ibn ʿArabī, the doctrine known as “unity of being” has his counterpart in the dynamic view of the continuous creation or new creation, which postulates that the universe and all it contains is created and recreated constantly to each instant. It is a kaleidoscopic view of life that is part of what has been called “philosophies of the act”, and more specifically of the divine creative act, which contrast strongly with the so-called philosophies of being, represented by the Greek thought and his conception of the being as an immutable principle. We will review the historical background of this doctrine, both outside and within the cultural framework of Islam, and the underlying reasons for it, like its origin in the divine names, the changes that occur on the outside and the inside the human being or the ontological indigence of all creation, which requires that its existence needs be continuously renewed by the breath of the All-Merciful. This dynamic conception of reality, which needs the direct intervention of divine mercy for the maintenance of world, has also different consequences: insubstantiality, inconsistency and imaginal character of things we consider as solid, the movement relentless of all that exists and the transcendence of our usual conception of the law of cause and effect. The doctrine of the new creation presents us, in short, an open view of reality that assures us that we are not doomed to repeat our past, and we always have the possibility of recognizing the continuing emergence of the “radically new” in our history social and personal. The new creation also evokes the idea that the world and the lives of human beings are a work in progress. Therefore, it is up to each of us, and to the extent of our creative imagination, gives it the final outcome. Keywords: new creation, philosophies of the act, being, breath of the All-Merciful, change, ontological indigence, creative imagination. 



2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Evers

This article aims to present Christology not as an add-on to monotheism, but as its specific Christian form. What Christ means can only be explained with reference to God and vice versa; what God stands for in a Christian sense has to be explained with reference to Jesus Christ and not with reference to generic religious terms. Christology thus informs and forms the Christian understanding of how to relate God and reality. Therefore, Christology has to be developed as combinatory Christology bringing different dimensions of reality including scientific and evolutionary perspectives into creative interplay. Theology is an ‘art of combination’ (Dalferth 1991:18), which in ever new ways relates traditions of faith with theoretical and historical knowledge in order to find relevant ways of understanding God’s presence in the world, to articulate the Christian faith in a meaningful way and to form our ways of living in such a way as to conform to God’s passion for the life of God’s creatures. This article wants to lay grounds for such an endeavour by re-evaluating the history of Christology and combining this analysis with present day challenges.



Philosophy ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 16 (63) ◽  
pp. 285-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney E. Hooper

I have tried to expound Whitehead's doctrine of Creativity and of actual entities. Nothing remains but to give a brief summary of what has been said in the foregoing notes.Creativity is the ultimate activity and principle of novelty in the Universe.The world is said to consist of “actual entities,” not substances. An actual entity is also called an “actual occasion.” It is essentially a genetic process, having two sides, (I) the process of “becoming,” and (2) the outcome of the process named the “satisfaction.” The satisfaction is the fully determined achievement abstracted from the process. On attaining satisfaction the actual entity viewed as a self-creating subject loses its “final” causation, and as a subject perishes, but the “satisfaction” remains as a potential constituent for the emergence of a new actual entity. This is its “efficient” causation. The potentiality of the satisfaction for a new creation is called its “objective immortality”: in this capacity it functions as an “object” for the self-creation of another actual entity.



2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
M.A. Kruger

Article 2 of the Belgic Confession deals with the following issue: By what means does God make Himself known to us? The first part of Article 2 that echoes the teaching of Calvin via the Gallic Confession reads as follows: “We know Him [God] by two means: First by the creation, preservation and government of the universe, which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are characters (read: letters – MAK) leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says (Rom. 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse.” This article of 1561 agrees with Calvin’s Institutes of 1559 (1, V, 1) and the early Reformed Confessions before the Canons of Dordt (1618-1619). It seems as though, after Calvin, a doctrine of insufficiency regarding this first means of revelation gradually developed. In the Westminster Confession of 1647 this means of understanding God’s revelation (i.e by receiving God’s communication through the creation, preservation and government of the universe) was explicitly interpreted as insufficient. Man’s inherent ability to know God by means of his own mental capacity, the so-called light of nature, that remained after the Fall, was also regarded as insufficient. The issue of whether the interpretation of Article 2A had not been changed in the first century after Calvin should therefore be seriously considered by Reformed churches. Furthermore, the church of today, situated in a world that experiences such phenomenal scientific and technological changes, should ask what relevance Article 2A of the the Belgic Confession has for the church and the world.



2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-26
Author(s):  
Pradeepa M ◽  
Shobha Ramaswamy

The creator of nature, the God is the Father of all, the Creator of the Universe and the Supreme Deity.He is also the Father of Jesus Christ and Saviour to His followers. God is seen in many ways, through miacles, such as the appearance of the butterfly when a crew is desperately lost at sea, the rainbow as a covenant toNoah, the actions of the raven and the dove. The present paper focuses on the presence of God in The History of the World in 10½ Chapters by the contemporary British novelist, Julian Patrick Barnes. The novel with ten and a half chapters represents the trust and faith towards the Supreme Power by means of water. Barnesrefers Him directly, indirectly or through the use of metaphor in every story of the novel. The paper draws attention on the actions of the God in the chapters of the novel with regard to nature.



2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Yonatan Alex Arifianto ◽  
Joseph Christ Santo

Abstract: In Indonesia as a multicultural country, there is a diversity of beliefs. History proves that unhealthy exclusivism endangers pluralism. Differences in religious beliefs can become a potential for horizontal conflict if the state does not act to prevent this. In order to create a harmonious society, the government has launched the Religious Harmony Trilogy through the Regulation of the Minister of Religion and the Minister of Home Affairs. As citizens of Indonesia, Christians cannot neglect this harmony effort. This study aims to answer the problem of how the role of believers in social life in applying the Religious Harmony Trilogy based on the perspective of the Christian faith. This research uses descriptive analysis method through related literature. The results of this study indicate: first, Christianity teaches living in harmony among fellow Christians as members of the body of Christ. Second, Christianity teaches to be the light of the world and the salt of the world in the midst of people with different faiths, so that harmony can be created. Third, Christianity teaches submission to the government because the government is determined by God, thus creating harmony between Christians and the government.Abstrak: Di dalam negara Indonesia yang multikultural dijumpai adanya keberagaman keyakinan. Sejarah membuktikan bahwa eksklusivisme yang tidak sehat membahayakan kemajemukan. Perbedaan keyakinan agama bisa menjadi potensi konflik horizontal apabila negara tidak bertindak mencegah hal tersebut. Dalam rangka mewujudkan masyarakat yang harmonis, pemerintah telah mencanangkan Trilogi Kerukunan Umat Beragama melalui Peraturan Menteri Agama dan Menteri Dalam Negeri. Sebagai warga negara Indonesia, umat Kristen tidak bisa berlaku abai terhadap upaya kerukunan ini. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjawab permasalahan bagaimanakah peran orang percaya dalam kehidupan bermasyarakat dalam mengaplikasikan Trilogi Kerukunan Umat Beragama berdasarkan persepektif iman Kristen. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif analisis melalui literatur terkait. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan: pertama, kekristenan mengajarkan hidup rukun di antara sesama umat Kristen sebagai anggota tubuh Kristus. Kedua, kekritenan mengajarkan untuk menjadi terang dunia dan garam dunia di tengah-tengah masyarakat dengan keyakinan iman yang berbeda, sehingga tercipta keharmonisan. Ketiga, kekristenan mengajarkan penundukan kepada pemerintah karena pemerintah ditetapkan oleh Allah, dengan demikian terwujud kerukunan antara umat Kristen dengan pemerintah.



Author(s):  
Paulus Sugeng Widjaja

The damage caused by humankind to nature is an undebatable fact. This article challenges the discriminative attitude that has allowed humans to place ourselves apart from nature and to claim a higher dignity over nature. The belief that humankind is imago Dei who has the right to dominate nature for the sake of their interests has worsened the situation. Faced by the problems, this article proposes a panentheistic and just Christian ecological ethics. It starts from the belief that the universe is one union coherent with and in Christ, in creation, in its history, and in its continuous transformation toward the fullness of that union with and in Christ. Incarnation is not mainly God’s salvific work to save humans, but God’s ethical act embracing and being embraced by nature. In incarnation God is not only present in the world, but is also united in and for the material world in the form of an embodied human, Jesus Christ. Hence human identity is always a perichoresis within which the existence of humans and the existence of nature mutually permeate each other. Neither is ontologically higher than the other, even though each has different function, because the two are sisters/brothers. In this light, a just relationship between humankind and nature must be worked out.



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