scholarly journals Die einde van die wêreld: Die uitdaging van die moderne natuurwetenskappe aan die tradisionele eskatologie

2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Nürnberger
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Future Expectations ◽  
Literal Interpretation ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Heaven And Earth

The end of the world: The challenge of modern science to traditional eschatology. In biblical times the ‘Word of God’ indicated God’s creative and redemptive response to changing human predicaments and depravations. Redemptive events became traditions that were applied to new situations. Many biblical future expectations lost their relevance and plausibility already within canonical history. Modern science has rendered a literal interpretation of the most recent and radical biblical future expectations – resurrection and a ‘new heaven and earth’ – problematic. Apocalyptic deliberately employed enigmatic symbols and metaphors to indicate God’s miraculous intervention to change an evil world into a new and authentic reality. This motif can be reconceptualised as God’s vision for the comprehensive optimal well-being of humanity within the well-being of creation as a whole, which translates into God’s concern for any deficiency in well-being in any dimension of life. The emergence of the notion of resurrection to face judgement was rooted in concern about God’s justice (theodicy) rather than the longing for never-ending life. The resurrection of Jesus was deemed God’s affirmation of his messianic authority to proclaim and enact God’s redeeming love, thus its validity for all times and places – which opened up participation in the new life of Christ in fellowship with God for all people.

scholarly journals Systematic Theology – An experiential approach: Core assumptions of my ‘Invitation to Systematic Theology’

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Nürnberger
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Natural Evil ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Intellectual Integrity

Nürnberger’s ‘Faith in Christ Today: Invitation to Systematic Theology’ is meant to serve the proclamation of the Word of God in modern times. Based on ‘experiential realism’, as used by science, it restricts itself to immanent reality, avoids the reification of idealised abstractions and biblical metaphors and follows an emergent-evolutionary hermeneutic. God’s self-disclosure manifests itself as (1) creative power in the cosmic process as explored by science, (2) benevolent intentionality as proclaimed on the basis of the Christ-event and (3) a motivating and transforming vision in the community of believers. Classical doctrines are reconceptualised in action terms, rather than ontological terms. Christology: The ministry, death and elevation of Jesus of Nazareth as God’s messianic representative manifest God’s redemptive intentionality. Trinity: The God manifest in Christ is identical with the God of Israel and the Creator of the universe and the divine Spirit transforming and empowering the community of believers. Eschatology: The thrust of God’s vision of comprehensive optimal well-being moves through time like a horizon opening up ever new vistas, challenges and opportunities.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The task of Systematic Theology is to offer as comprehensive and consistent a presentation of the Christian faith as possible under current circumstances. This involves the retrieval of the biblical message from its ancient conceptualisations and to repackage it in current world view assumptions. To reach a readership informed by modern science, technology, commerce and the consumer culture, Nürnberger’s Systematic Theology applies the approach of experiential realism as practised by the positive sciences: restricting its analyses to immanent reality and avoiding metaphysical constructs. It follows a consistent emergent-evolutionary hermeneutic and works on an interdisciplinary basis, using insights from modern physics, biology, neurology and sociology. God is conceptualised as the transcendent Source and Destiny of experienced reality. The core of the Christian message is God’s suffering, transforming acceptance of the unacceptable, which involves us in its dynamics. It is geared to transformation rather than perfection. It is applied to all aspects of reality, including, for example, entropy, death and natural evil and so on. In this way, the author hopes to help Christians to regain their intellectual integrity and the credibility of their message.

METEOROLOGICAL VOCABULARY IN UKRAINIAN AND CHINESE LANGUAGES: SYSTEMATIC TRANSLATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (31) ◽  
pp. 36-50
Author(s):  
Natalia Gavrilyuk
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Close Link ◽  
Ancient People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

Within the anthropocentric paradigm of modern linguistics there is a steady interest in the human factor in language, which, among other things, is realized through the close attention of researchers to the theory of linguistic pictures of the world, which fully reflects the uniqueness of peoples Human life and activity are inseparable from nature. Nature is one, but manifests itself in various forms. In the process of learning about nature, man tries to realize both its unity and diversity. A special place in the perception of the world by man is occupied by climatic and weather phenomena that affect human behavior in the world, various aspects of his life, including economic, as well as well-being. In the IV century. BC became aware of the impact of fluctuations in weather conditions on human health. For example, Hippocrates established a close link between human disease and the weather conditions in which he lives. Over the centuries, people have gathered a variety of knowledge about nature: from misunderstanding of natural phenomena, fear of them, inherent in ancient people, to today’s scientific knowledge of nature, from the first folk signs of weather to the formation of modern science — meteorology. Nature as a source of everything necessary for man has an impact on both the material and spiritual culture of society. Therefore, knowledge of meteorological phenomena occupies an important place in the awareness of reality. The article considers the peculiarities of meteorological vocabulary in Chinese and Ukrainian languages, as well as the peculiarities of meteorological vocabulary translation in two languages.

The End of the World is Nigh!

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mee
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Outer Planets ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
End Of The World

Astronomy was the first science. Even in the fourteenth century, astronomers could accurately predict the date and time of an eclipse that lay one hundred years in the future. But early astronomers also developed some strange ideas which still resound today. Astrologers of the past identified conjunctions of the planets, especially the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn, with disastrous events such as floods, schisms, and pestilence. These ideas were related to the notion that world history can be understood as a series of 1,000-year cycles. This idea dates back to ancient Persian and Babylonian astrologers, but it has been perpetuated within Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity and is known today as ‘millennialism’. It is quite remarkable that the sequence of conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn was also the key that led Johannes Kepler to dedicate himself to astronomy and ultimately to transform astronomy into a modern science.

scholarly journals Eschatology as a manifestation of human uniqueness: Human vision, biblical revelation and divine agency

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus B. Nürnberger
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Future Expectations ◽  
Divine Agency ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Human Uniqueness

This essay extends my previous research on eschatology to cover the question of human uniqueness. Using the approach of ‘experiential realism’, I begin with a few findings of modern science that are relevant to the topic: big bang cosmology, entropy, regularity and contingency, and emergence theory. On this basis, I discuss human uniqueness at the physical, biological and consciousness levels. There is indeed continuity between humans and other living beings, yet humans are far ahead of other creatures on an exponentially accelerating trajectory. Part of human consciousness is the capacity to envision the future. It can confine itself to what is possible and probable, or overshoot these limitations. I discuss three ways human beings experience time: physical, experiential and existential. The latter projects a vision of what ought to become as a response to the experience of what ought not to have become. A vision of what ought to become implies criteria and an ultimate authority setting such criteria. Against this background, I analyse the evolution of biblical future expectations. Apocalyptic eschatology and resurrection of the dead are the most radical among many other, and more mundane future expectations. They emerged late in post-exilic Judaism, were never generally accepted and began to lose their plausibility and relevance in New Testament times already. While projections that overshoot the given are immensely important for human life in general and the Christian faith in particular, apocalyptic eschatology envisages the replacement of the existing world with a perfect world, rather than its transformation. This can lead to pious fatalism and despondency and thus become counterproductive. The theological defence of apocalyptic eschatology rests on various untested assumptions. I briefly discuss and critique the concepts of divine agency, omnipotence, eternity and contingency. Finally, I propose a reconceptualisation of Christian future expectations as human participation in God’s vision of comprehensive optimal well-being, which translates into God’s concern for any deficiency in well-being in any aspect of life and which operates like a horizon that moves on as we approach it, opening up ever new vistas, challenges and opportunities.

History, Phenomenology, and Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 306-322
Author(s):  
John Behr
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
The Past ◽  
Temporal Properties ◽  
The World ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Passion Of Christ ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Heaven And Earth ◽  
Made In

This chapter brings together the presentation of Michel Henry’s reading of John in Chapter Six with themes explored in the previous two parts of the work. In particular the connection is made in the concern of both theology and phenomenology with ‘apocalypse’, that is, ‘unveiling’, ‘revelation’, ‘appearance’. This unveiling results in a doubling: the way Scripture had been read before the Passion (as narratives about the past) and now in the light of the Passion (as speaking about Christ); and following this unveiling: the identity of Christ, no longer known as the son of Joseph and Mary, but the eternal Word of God; the Eucharist, which appears in the world to be bread and wine, but is consumed as the life-giving flesh of Christ; and ourselves, not simply as bodily children of our parents, but, as living flesh, sons and daughters of God, with a body not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. Sharing the Passion of Christ, recalled from absorption in the world to the pathos of life, is our entry, in and with Christ, into the divine reality of God, in which, while remaining what we are by nature, created beings, we share in the properties of God, uncreated and eternal, just as iron, when placed in a fire, remains what it is by nature but is now only known by the properties of the fire. And in turn, the divine fire, while remaining unchanged, is now embodied, but in a body no longer known by spatio-temporal properties as it appears in this world. The economy of God, understood in an apocalyptic key, brings together heaven and earth, the beginning and the end, in Christ, the first human being, the theanthropos.

Sacrificing youth for a fabricated humanity: Governance, youth, and onto-theology in the cabin in the woods

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-263
Author(s):  
Andrea E. Mayo
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Well Being ◽  
First Century ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

This paper analyzes Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon's recent film, Cabin in the Woods (2012), using Thomas J. Catlaw's Fabricating the People (2007), to illustrate the precarious position of youth at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The author argues that just as the film requires young people to sacrifice themselves for the good of humanity, recent political events ask young people to sacrifice their well-being for the sake of neo-liberalism. Throughout the film, youth refuse the sacrificial logic of the Director, choosing instead a “logic of subtraction.” While the film seemingly ends with the nihilistic end of the world, when viewed through the lens of Fabricating the People it may also offer a hopeful suggestion for how young people can resist and change oppressive systems of governance.

Russian Citizens' Representations of the Country's Position in the Geopolitical Space of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, and the World

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-251
Author(s):  
Victor F. Petrenko ◽  
Olga V. Mitina ◽  
Kirill A. Bertnikov
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Multidimensional Space ◽  
Commonwealth Of Independent States ◽  
Repertory Grids ◽  
Implicit Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Invariant Factors

The aim of this research was the reconstruction of the system of categories through which Russians perceive the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Europe, and the world as a whole; to study the implicit model of the geopolitical space; to analyze the stereotypes in the perception of different countries and the superposition of mental geopolitical representations onto the geographic map. The techniques of psychosemantics by Petrenko, originating in the semantic differential of Osgood and Kelly's “repertory grids,” were used as working tools. Multidimensional semantic spaces act as operational models of the structures of consciousness, and the positions of countries in multidimensional space reflect the geopolitical stereotypes of respondents about these countries. Because of the transformation of geopolitical reality representations in mass consciousness, the commonly used classification of countries as socialist, capitalist, and developing is being replaced by other structures. Four invariant factors of the countries' descriptions were identified. They are connected with Economic and Political Well-being, Military Might, Friendliness toward Russia, and Spirituality and the Level of Culture. It seems that the structure has not been explained in adequate detail and is not clearly realized by the individuals. There is an interrelationship between the democratic political structure of a country and its prosperity in the political mentality of Russian respondents. Russian public consciousness painfully strives for a new geopolitical identity and place in the commonwealth of states. It also signifies the country's interest and orientation toward the East in the search for geopolitical partners. The construct system of geopolitical perception also depends on the region of perception.

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