scholarly journals Die gewonde God: ’n Teologies-etiese besinning, veral vanuit Khoisan-perspektief

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Willa Boezak

This article presupposes the right of the faithful to pose critical questions about God. God-concepts cannot be distanced or freed from ideology. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the reflection on Jahwe and Elohim are mostly influenced by Israel’s exodus experience. The liberating God becomes a theme that legitimises their faith, but is ultimately coloured by their patrarchal Sitz im Leben. For black theologians, the image of God as the Liberator stands foremost as the Crucified. This has clear connections with Western thinking such as that of Jürgen Moltmann. The ancient native people of southern Africa developed a consciousness regarding a Higher Being through many years, eventually integrating it into their holistic worldview. God’s involvement in human suffering plays a significant role in all of these expressions of faith. The different views of God as the transcendant, yet involved God, should be revisited within the context of our current society characterised by human suffering, chronic poor communities, gaping inequality and increasing corruption. The theological-ethical question is whether the Khoisan people’s view of a wounded God is more suitable to help faithful people to engage with the world in a meaningful way.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Boban Milenkovic

SummarySyncretism, by which the man is being destroyed, connects the sport and the industry with different philosophical-religious stances toward the world, and it hides behind a mask of progress whose real face is greed – an insatiable wish to own the new world, which is without man and without God, and to create a “new” man. The world of progress is a world of greed which has its own laws, i. e. its ethics, in which a man as a creature which bears the image of God does not fit. It only fits if it is just a lever of this same progressive greed. The man by its nature shows himself through the work, and hence man has the right to work, for man makes work being work, it is not that the work makes man being a man. In such a context the game/sport is in the category of man’s work and the showing (accomplishment) of human God-likeliness and by that the central (man-centered) role of the man concerning the world around him, which is only preparation to accomplish the full theanthropocentricity (having Christ as center) of the whole creation. Sports industry requires the new ethics by its own measures, and by them it shapes the sportsmen as its indispensable, not self-aware parts. Regardless of being wounded by sin, corruptibility and death, by the gift of Lord, each grace-filled synergetic move (hence the game/sports) of the man toward the world is the confirmation of the theanthropocentricity of the creation and Christ-centered nature (theanthropocentricity) of man.


2017 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
Tetiana Gavryliuk

Being as it is - the eternal request of the human spirit. Responding to this request, humanity has formed a number of ideological paradigms that acquire new shades according to a certain era in the range between idealism and materialism, given about two and a half thousand years ago. The problem of interpreting the surrounding reality only appears, at first glance, as something of a minority for an ordinary citizen, as the prerogative of the mysterious philosophy inherent in individuals. At the same time, understanding and interpretation of being is the core of personality, since it is an expression of a human's outlook. As you know, the prevailing outlook determines the attitude of man to the world and to himself. He asks a certain direction as self-development of the individual, and its implementation in society. Humanity has won the right to free choice and free affirmation of philosophical paradigms step by step in recent centuries and often in a rigid controversy with Church Christian fundamentalism. Freedom in Christianity is a key characteristic of the theological understanding of man, since it is one of the fundamental components of understanding the image of God in man.


2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Decock

Images of war and creation, violence and non-violence in the Revelation of John Much of the violent imagery of Revelation can be seen as inspired by the image of God as the Divine Warrior who will overcome the chaotic forces threatening creation and who will bring creation to its fulfillment. This violence is reserved for God and the exalted Jesus although the prophetic ministry of churches shares to some extent in this divine power and even in its violence (11:5-6). However, human victory is won through worship of God instead of worship of Satan and the Beast, and through prophetic witness unto death in order to bring the inhabitants of the world to repentance and so to overcome sin that destroys creation. This human victory is made possible by the “blood of Jesus” and requires that his followers persevere in the works of Jesus to the end (2:26) in order to share in the new creation of which Jesus is God’s agent from the beginning (3:14).


1965 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Evdokimov

The biblical narrative describes the progressive course of creation ending with man. Man appears as its culmination, as a centre on which all the planes of the world converge, a ‘microcosm’. But, ‘created in the image of God’ he is also, according to the Fathers, a ‘microtheos’. This central position of man explains the normative subjection of nature to man as to its cosmic logos, as to one of its multiple hypostases. Man ‘cultivates’ nature, gives a name to creatures and things, ‘humanises’ them. His direct relation with the Creator is constitutive of his being.


2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Stephen Edmondson

ABSTRACTThis article explores Coleridge's understanding of imagination, Scripture, the spirituality of the world, and our reality as the image of God. I begin with Coleridge's understanding of the inspiration of Scripture and the interpretive process. By locating the imagination in this interaction among writer, reader, and God, I surface Coleridge's more significant description of imaginative thinking as a spiritual act that calls us into the truth of our being and of the world's reality. Implicit in Coleridge's vision is a correlation between human imaginative creativity and the creative being of God as a dimension of our reality as the image of God. Thus, I claim that imaginative preaching, when seen through Coleridge's lens, renews that image within us, awakening us to our reality as spiritual, free beings, but only when we enact our freedom within the context of God's freedom and action which we know through our reading of Scripture.


Author(s):  
Sayan Chattopadhyay

This study explores the “Sublime” and aims at clarifying the very ‘understood’ as well as ‘misunderstood’ figure or image of God(s) and showing how the established and vivid definitions of the Almighty can be discarded with the help of certain ‘Infinist’ concepts and the ‘De-Humanization’ of God. It also aims at presenting a new perspective towards the understanding of the ‘humanization’ that happened and shows the loop-holes in its definition i.e. given to date all around the world. This paper focuses upon searching the acceptability and validity of Rene Descartes’ Ontological Argument, through which I examine the image of God as I find the image of God being repeated  and, therefore, I would also raise the understandings from the Ontological Argument which is later debated through the concept of “theodicy” by Leibniz and which is altered and given an altered definition by H.P Lovecraft in the era of modernization. There has been a repeatation in the understanding of God and it’s Image. Infinism supports my statement, as it speaks of this Literature loop which is present and misunderstood very commonly as something new. A comparative methodology has been used in order to study the various theories upon God or Sublime from different ages, in order to study the changing images of God and the reasons behind it. The article presents my unique understanding of God that is different from the romantic understanding and the concept propogated in Monotheism.


Author(s):  
Ashley M. Purpura

Although Maximus hardly ever invokes the word “hierarchy” directly, he adopts the Dionysian concept of hierarchy as a theological given and draws on it to facilitate his own theological maneuvering of ecclesial authority. Maximus links the Dionysian ideal of hierarchy to a specifically orthodox confession of faith and adopts it as the foundation for his naming of that which renders both lay and ordained humanity divinized and God manifest. Maximus uses this concept to affirm the importance of order, unity, particularity, and liturgical hierarchy, even while the historical (and hagiographical) evidence of his life displays a discontinuity with what one might otherwise identify as ecclesiastical hierarchy. Maximus is an example of Dionysius’s hierarchic legacy existing beyond the mere adoption of a term as a way to name the boundaries of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, legitimate and illegitimate positions of authority, and the image of God in the world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-96
Author(s):  
Yannick Imbert

SUMMARYWhat does it mean for Christians to live in a highly technologised world? In this book, Jacob Shatzer searches for an answer. First, Christians have to answer these crucial questions: What is technology? What is its impact on our lives and on the world? Second, Shatzer gives some key indicators and guiding principles, framed in terms of Christian discipleship. This is a clear and useful book.RÉSUMÉQu’implique pour les chrétiens de vivre dans un monde où la technologie est omniprésente ? Jacob Shatzer tente de répondre à cette question. Tout d’abord, les chrétiens doivent s’interroger sur la nature de la technologie et sur l’impact des produits des techniques sur notre vie et sur le monde. Puis il propose des indicateurs clés et des principes directeurs, en vue d’une vie de disciple chrétien.ZUSAMMENFASSUNGWas bedeutet es für Christen, in einer hoch technologisierten Welt zu leben? In diesem Buch sucht Jacob Shatzer nach einer Antwort. Zuerst müssen Christen diese wichtigen Fragen beantworten: Was ist Technologie? Was macht ihren Einfluss auf unser Leben und unsere Welt aus? Zweitens gibt der Autor einige Schlüsselindikatoren und Richtlinien im Rahmen christlicher Jüngerschaft. Dies stellt ein klares und hilfreiches Book dar.


Perichoresis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Elaina R. Mair

Abstract The anthropology of Colin E. Gunton begins with the Trinity and specifically, the person of Christ. From trinitarian persons, Gunton deduces the ontological definition of what it means to be a person, that is, a being in relationship and in distinction, or ‘free relatedness’. To be a person is to be in the image of the personal God, which is christological language, for it is Christ who bears the image of God in its fullness. As the true image bearer, Christ’s humanity is paradigmatic of what it means to be in relationship: with God, with the world and with other human persons. Gunton’s christology is also thoroughly pneumatological, borrowing Irenaeus’ metaphor of God’s ‘two hands in the world’: The Son and the Spirit. Not only do the Son and the Spirit mediate God’s presence to creation according to Irenaeus, but Gunton builds on this metaphor to include the Spirit’s mediation of the eternal Son to the Father as well as the Incarnate Son to humanity. The Spirit also reshapes humanity to be in the image of Christ, through his relationships with God, with the world and with other human persons. This is an eschatological project, for in this reshaping, the creation is recreated toward its teleological perfection. The article concludes with a potential direction for future study within Gunton’s christological anthropology. To conceive what it means to be human theologically, Gunton insists that we must look to Christ’s own person.


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