Topics in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-176
Author(s):  
Haym Soloveitchik

This chapter focuses on Ibn 'Ezra's Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh. Conflicting reports are to be found in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh as to the origin of the soul. At times it is described as originating from the holy spirit via a process of inbreathing. On other occasions it is said to have been lit from the flames of the Kavod or of the heavenly throne. Other passages speak vaguely of its having been created from the place of the heavenly spirit. Whether any of these processes, or all of them, are genuine acts of creation or only emanations cannot be determined from the text. A prominent place in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh is occupied by demuyot, mirror-images of man fashioned at the beginning of Creation and which stand in endless array before the Kavod, drawing their sustenance from the absorption of the heavenly light that streams forth from the Kavod, and in turn transferring this vitality to their earthly counterparts. The demut is a counter-shape and plays no role in the religious experience of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz.

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-172
Author(s):  
Baird Tipson

This chapter first describes the theology of the leaders of the evangelical awakening on the British Isles, George Whitefield and John Wesley. Both insisted that by preaching the “immediate” revelation of the Holy Spirit during what they called the “new birth,” they were recovering an essential element of primitive Christianity that had been forgotten over the centuries. Both had clear affinities with the conscience theology of William Perkins, yet both distanced themselves from it in important ways. In New England, Jonathan Edwards explored the nature of religious experience more deeply than either Wesley or Whitefield had done, and Edwards proudly claimed his Puritan heritage even as opponents found him deviating from it.


Author(s):  
Simeon Zahl

This chapter argues that a constructive recovery of the category of “experience” in Christian theology is best accomplished through the lens of the theology of the Holy Spirit. Thinking about experience in terms of the work of the Holy Spirit helps specify what we mean when we talk about Christian “experience,” while also avoiding the problems that arise in appeals to more general concepts of “religious experience.” The chapter shows how a pneumatologically informed theology of experience draws attention to a problematic tendency towards abstraction and disembodiment in much modern systematic theology. It then argues that the work of the Spirit is likely to take forms that are “practically recognizable” in the lives of Christians in the world, exhibiting temporal specificity as well as affective and emotional impact, and that pneumatologies that cannot take account of such practically recognizable effects are deficient.


Perichoresis ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Rudolph P. Almasy

ABSTRACT Focusing on two of Richard Hooker’s sermons, “Certaintie and Perpetuitie of Faith in the Elect” and “Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride”, this essay explores Hooker’s worries about how the mind reacts to matters of religious doubt, curiosity, arrogance, and mental confusions. These worries of what enters the mind influence the search for what Hooker calls the certainty of adherence (faith) and the certainty of evidence (knowledge). Such worries, prompted by what Hooker sees as the mind’s frag- ileness in the face of religious experience and religious truth, lead Hooker in the sermons, as well as in his Ecclesiasticall Lawes, to a certain religious and rhetorical position which emphasizes the notion of approaching faith and knowledge in terms of simplicity or singleness. This approach, Hooker counsels, should lead the potentially confused mind, regardless of the certainty it seeks and of the influence of the Holy Spirit, toward the notion of surrender-to God or to the rhetor.


Author(s):  
William K. Kay ◽  
Stephen J. Hunt

Historically, the majority of Pentecostal churches stem from holiness and revivalistic streams of Christianity, while neo-Pentecostal churches are often indigenous plantings that broke away from congregations established by earlier Protestant mission. Given their stress on religious experience and their belief in the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostal churches have always stressed individual holiness, and this holiness is understood in terms of abstinence from drugs, alcohol, gambling, immodest dress, and sexual immorality as traditionally defined. This chapter describes adjustments and initiatives that indicate how new norms may emerge. The issue is essentially concerned with the interpretation of Scripture and variations in church government. Where these interpretations align with an LBGT-friendly hermeneutic, LBGT-friendly Pentecostal churches will and have emerged. Such changes tend to occur in new or split-off groups rather than in traditional Pentecostal denominations, especially when denominations are governed by large ministerial conferences where decisions are by secret ballot.


Author(s):  
Joseph Olufemi Asha

In the Christian tradition, a spiritual experience is a phenomenon that in some sense remains controversial. Nonetheless, spiritual experience in Christianity refers to the personalization of the faith in Christ that transcends the normal. This is, however, critically contested and regrettably unexplored. It lends credence to why contemporary research on religious experience reveals that Christian spiritual experiences have the element of supernatural intervention by the Holy Spirit, although supernatural must not be confused with spectacular. It might be spectacular, as in the case of Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). Drawing upon extensive contemporary research, content analysis, and literature on religious experience, this study adopts descriptive methodology as techniques. The study situates religious experience as occurrence in an everyday situation of Christians through which they derive a clear inner realization of “the truth.” Findings reveal a significant implication for collective research on religious and spiritual experiences for Christians.


Author(s):  
Robert W. Caldwell

Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit played a central role in his theology. Beginning with the immanent Trinity, Edwards argued that the Holy Spirit is the bond of union of the Godhead who unites Father and Son in a communion of infinite, divine love. He then applied this concept Christologically to the hypostatic union, and soteriologically to the mystical union the Church enjoys with God. By closely identifying the Spirit with the divine affection that is communicated to the redeemed, Edwards effectively built his pneumatology directly into his discussions of grace, faith, and religious experience, a point which ensured that his doctrine of the Holy Spirit would pervade much of his writing.


Enthusiasm ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 63-104
Author(s):  
Monique Scheer

Following Chapter 1’s exploration of knowledge about emotions, Chapters 2, 3, and 4 examine how this plays out in practice. Chapter 2 looks at reactions to religious enthusiasm in nineteenth-century Germany to understand the demand for an interiorizing emotional practice. Starting with an examination of how the term Schwärmerei early in this period is redefined to create a kind of “proper,” inward religious experience, the chapter then focuses on the debates around how that interiority is to be accomplished. The emotional practices of evangelical revivals, the so-called “Protestant sects” and new forms of Methodism making their way across the Atlantic engender fascinated repulsion among liberal Protestant and scientific observers, but the focus in this chapter is on the deep and rather complex concern about them in the clerical press. German Lutheran pastors, unlike their more secular contemporaries, seek to maintain the possibility that the Holy Spirit can enter the heart, but view the exaltations of the “sects” as too exterior and superficial, and thus potentially dangerous. Harking back to older discourses, they fear such practices of enthusiasm can endanger the very institution of the Church.


Perichoresis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 61-71
Author(s):  
Ian Stackhouse

Abstract This essay was delivered as the third and last paper at Spurgeon’s Annual Theological Conference in the summer of 2015. The theme of the Conference was the nature of the trinitarian God, neatly divided a sequence of papers on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this essay on the person of the Holy Spirit, Stackhouse challenges some of the assumptions we make when we speak of the Spirit as the God who is near. By placing charismatic experience alongside the biblical revelation, he argues for an understanding of the person of the Spirit as no less transcendent as the Father and the Son, and actively engaged not simply in the phenomena of signs and wonders but in drawing the believer into the very life of the trinity. As the essay develops, Stackhouse seeks to draw out the implications of this approach to pneumatology for our notions of identity, holiness, prayer and Christian community. He argues for a much stronger connection in charismatic/Pentecostal experience between Christ and the Spirit; and in so doing, he warns against some of the more popular, and somewhat ironic, emphases on power, method and function. As with the first paper of the day by Dr Nigel Wright, Stackhouse draws upon the work of Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Like Wright, he regards Buber’s I-Thou construct of religious experience as critical for the future of contemporary revivalism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elia Tambunan

The Pentecostal Movement is recognized for its contribution to global church growth and contemporary social theories. But by his own people pentecostalism is often positioned only as a revival, experience with the Holy Spirit, and divine healing which in its development becomes associated with eschatological issues. In terms of methodology, Pentecostal scholars outside Indonesia analyzed Pentecostalism based on religious and theological perspectives with the approach of ritual theory and spirituality studies. Theologians, activists, and intellectuals as well as Pentecostal scholars in Indonesia also have not developed Pentecostal studies further methodologically. They have not used methodological work to develop a study of the Pentecostal movement into a useful framework for theoretical study or field research in the existing membership colleges. On the contrary, by social scientists it utilizes Pentecostals as the main object of research on social phenomena but is only limited to the study of the dimensions of religious experience. By prioritizing the study of English literature and presenting statistical results of field survey research, this paper intends to develop a study of Pentecost in Indonesia methodologically. This paper shows how to understand Pentecostal phenomena from the perspective of social theory. The author first reads the literature on Pentecostalism, especially the one produced by Poloma and then constructs itself and then integrates it with social theory integrally. Then, the writer will classify it in three broad outlines, namely the Pentecostal religious experience of religious psychology; Pentecostal dimensions: symbolic, ritual, ceremony and institution from the perspective of comparative theory of religion; and community and Pentecostal popularity from the perspective of religious sociology. From here it will be seen the contribution of Pentecostals as both the object of precisely the study society and scientific methodology combined with contemporary social theories. This can be used by theologians, activists, and intellectuals as well as Pentecostal scholars in Indonesia specifically to develop studies of the Pentecostal movement in Indonesia specifically.   ==== Gerakan Pentakosta diakui kontribusinya terhadap pertumbuhan gereja secara global maupun teori-teori sosial kontemporer. Namun oleh kaumnya sendiri pentakostalisme seringkali diposisikan hanya sebagai kebangunan rohani, pengalaman dengan Roh Kudus, dan kesembuhan ilahi yang dalam perkembangannya menjadi dikait-kaitkan dengan persoalan eskatologis.  Dari sisi metodologi, sarjana Pentakosta di luar Indonesia menganalisis Pentakostalisme berdasarkan perspektif agama dan teologi dengan pendekatan teori ritual dan studi spiritualitas. Para teolog, aktivis, dan intelektual maupun sarjana Pentakosta di Indonesia juga belum mengembangkan kajian Pentakosta secara metodologis lebih lanjut. Mereka belum menggunakan kerja metodologis untuk mengembangkan kajian gerakan Pentakosta menjadi kerangka pikir yang bermanfaat dalam kajian teoritis maupun penelitian lapangan di sekolah-sekolah tinggi kepentakostaan yang ada. Sebaliknya, oleh ilmuwan sosial justru memanfaatkan kaum Pentakosta sebagai objek utama penelitian tentang fenomena sosial namun baru sebatas kajian terhadap dimensi pengalaman beragama.  Dengan cara mengutamakan studi literatur berbahasa Inggris serta menampilkan hasil statistik penelitian survei lapangan, tulisan ini bermaksud untuk mengembangkan kajian tentang Pentakosta di Indonesia secara metodologis. Tulisan ini memperlihatkan bagaimana memahami fenomena Pentakosta dari perspektif teori sosial. Penulis terlebih dahulu membaca literatur tentang Pentakostalisme khususnya yang dihasilkan Poloma dan kemudian mengkonstruksi sendiri lalu memadukannya dengan teori sosial secara integratif.  Kemudian, penulis akan mengklasifikasikannya dalam tiga kerangka pikir secara garis besar, yakni pengalaman keagamaan Pentakosta dari psikologi  keagamaan; dimensi Pentakosta: simbolik, ritual, seremoni dan institusi dari perspektif teori perbandingan agama; dan komunitas dan popularitas pentakosta dari perpektif sosiologi agama. Dari disini akan terlihat kontribusi kaum Pentakosta baik sebagai objek tepatnya masyarakat kajian maupun metodologis keilmuan berpadu dengan teori-teori sosial kontemporer. Ini bisa digunakan oleh para teolog, aktivis, dan intelektual maupun sarjana Pentakosta di Indonesia secara khusus untuk mengembangkan kajian gerakan Pentakosta di Indonesia secara khusus.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Dolphijn

Starting with Antonin Artaud's radio play To Have Done With The Judgement Of God, this article analyses the ways in which Artaud's idea of the body without organs links up with various of his writings on the body and bodily theatre and with Deleuze and Guattari's later development of his ideas. Using Klossowski (or Klossowski's Nietzsche) to explain how the dominance of dialogue equals the dominance of God, I go on to examine how the Son (the facialised body), the Father (Language) and the Holy Spirit (Subjectification), need to be warded off in order to revitalize the body, reuniting it with ‘the earth’ it has been separated from. Artaud's writings on Balinese dancing and the Tarahumaran people pave the way for the new body to appear. Reconstructing the body through bodily practices, through religion and above all through art, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, we are introduced not only to new ways of thinking theatre and performance art, but to life itself.


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