scholarly journals Dissent and disparagement: Dealing with conflict and the pain of rejection in John

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
William R.G. Loader

This article addressed the issue of how the author of the Gospel according to John portrayed dissent, in particular, how the author had his protagonists respond to the experience of rejection by those typically designated as ‘the Jews’. Research thus far has usually focused on the identity of the dissenters but rarely on the way dissent was handled. This article’s aim was to examine the range of responses to dissent. It employed a sequential reading of the text to identify the various responses and then brought these findings into comparison with the way dissent was handled in related documents of the time, Matthew and Hebrews. It found that responses included not only argument and blame, including threat of divine wrath but also, beyond these, ad hominem allegations that those who dissent were inherently bad or beholden to the devil or had not been predestined or chosen by God to respond. Such categories were, however, not absolute, because the author assumed that people could choose to respond positively and so move from one apparently fixed and predetermined category to another. They served a rhetorical function. A further ploy was to reduce Israel’s tradition to witness and foreshadowing within the tension of asserting both continuity and discontinuity.Contribution: The article concluded that such strategies served in part to comfort and reassure hearers engaged in the process of grief at rejection. As such they warranted critical reflection.

Author(s):  
Eric C. Otto

     Read as apocalyptic ecothrillers, Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm and Liz Jensen’s The Rapture do not offer much in the way of critical reflection on the ecocatastrophes they stage. The Swarm’s focus on the feat of confronting the violent efforts of a superintelligent, deep-sea species to protect its ocean habitat against continued human exploitation and The Rapture’s focus on the feat of locating on time the psychically-predicted disaster zone of an impending undersea calamity overshadow their more than occasional spotlighting of, for example, the dangers of methane hydrate mining. Science fiction, however, requires readers to be attentive to those narrative moments when incongruities between the known world and the extrapolated world of the text emerge with critical, not just plot-supporting, purpose. Fundamental to the reading and interpretation of science fiction is the reader’s awareness of the genre’s extrapolative practice, which connects the now with the imagined then and therefore instigates critical thinking about present human practices. Read as extrapolative science fiction, The Swarm and The Rapture gain merit as ecopolitical works, for “science fiction reading” mobilizes the latent ecopolitics of ecothrillers, ecopolitics that “ecothriller reading” would otherwise diminish or fail to notice.   Resumen               Considerados ecothrillers apocalípticos, The Swarm de Frank Schätzing y The Rapture de Liz Jensen no ofrecen mucha reflexión crítica sobre las eco-catástrofes que presentan. The Swarm se centra en los violentos esfuerzos de una especie superinteligente que habita las profundidades para proteger su hábitat marino frente a la continua explotación humana. Por su parte,  al centrarse The Rapture en la hazaña de ubicar en el tiempo la zona catastrófica de un desastre submarino inminente que ha sido predicho psicológicamente, se eclipsan las más que ocasionales referencias a, por ejemplo, los peligros de la minería de hidrato de metano. La ciencia ficción, sin embargo, requiere que los lectores estén atentos a esos momentos narrativos en los que las incongruencias entre el mundo conocido y el mundo extrapolado del texto surjan con objetivo crítico, y no sólo para respaldar el argumento. Es fundamental para la lectura y la interpretación de la ciencia ficción la conciencia por parte del lector de la práctica extrapolativa del género, que conecta el ahora con el entonces imaginado, incitando así a reflexionar críticamente sobre el comportamiento humano en la actualidad. Considerados ciencia ficción extrapolativa, The Swarm y The Rapture ganan mérito como obras eco-políticas, porque "la lectura de ciencia ficción" moviliza la eco-política latente de  los eco-thrillers – eco-política que en "la lectura de eco-thrillers" de otra forma pasaría desapercibida.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Ag Efendi Darmanto ◽  
Don Bosco Karnan Ardijanto

Prayer was very important in Jesus’ life and the saints’ lives. Prayer also becomes the important need in the faithfuls’ life. Prayer is a mean to fight againts the devil and the power of sin. Prayer is also an expression of faith in God. It also becomes the way of human being to always remember to God. There are some problems: what is prayer? How do the Catholic teens of St. Hilarius’ Parish, Klepu pray together? What kind of benefits of praying together for the Catholic Teens in St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu? What kind of impedements in praying together that the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ Parish experience? The aims of this research are: to clarify the definition of prayer, to explain how the Catholic Teens of Hilarius’ parish, Klepu to do their praying together, to explain the benefits of prayer together for the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. Finally, to identify various factors that supporting or inhibiting the practice of prayer of the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. This research used qualitative research methods. In this study there are 10 respondents consisting of 4 male respondents and 6 female respondents. They are between 13-15 years old. They are members of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. The conclusions of the research are: 1) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu know the understanding of prayer. 2) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parihs, Klepu already carry out prayers in certain times either personally or communal prayer in St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. 3) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu understand that the benefits of communal prayer are: creating a partnership or relationship with God and friends, as well as the means to develop their personality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-39
Author(s):  
István M. Fehér

"Hermeneutical Considerations on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and on the Revisiting of his Path of Thinking II. Starting with preliminary philological-hermeneutical considerations concerning the way Heidegger’s Black Notebooks can and should be dealt with, as well as concerning the question of what tasks may be derived from them for future research, the paper attempts to discuss the Black Notebooks applying a variety of methods and approaches. Themes that are discussed at more or less length include: Time factor and the formulation of our task; explanation and understanding or the way a philosophical path should be approached and dealt with methodically (hermeneutically); the theme related to “Heidegger and anti-Semitism” and the question concerning individuality; prejudices from a hermeneutical perspective and the way to deal with them; relapses and their philosophical explanation; insufficient and exaggerated sensibility; Heidegger and Hegel; equivocality and the dark side of the “formal indication”; Lukács, Scheler and the devil; Heidegger’s great being-historical treatises and their greatness; suggestions for a reconsideration of Heidegger’s way of thinking. – One important hermeneutical claim brought to bear on the various discussions is this: just as it would be inappropriate in our dealing with Heidegger’s texts to disregard Heidegger’s own self-interpretations, it would be no less inappropriate to consider those self-interpretations – which themselves call for interpretation – as telling us the sole and ultimate truth. This second part of the paper dedicates special attention to the question of re-examining Heidegger’s whole philosophical itinerary in the light of the Black Notebooks. Keywords: hermeneutics, being, history, interpretation, individuality "


Author(s):  
Adam Gussow

This chapter explores the way in which the blues lyric tradition uses the devil as a figure for the southern white man and hell as a figure for the miseries of the Jim Crow South. The white slave master and slave patroller show up, in coded form, in the antebellum spirituals; this tradition was reconfigured after Emancipation to reflect the new realities of the sharecropper's and bluesman's world, one presided over by the white bossman, sheriff, and prison farm warden. Bluesmen acted the devil, one might say, in order to evade and supplant the (white) devil and live more freely in the Jim Crow South over which he presided. Big Bill Broonzy, Peetie Wheatstraw, Lightnin' Hopkins, Champion Jack Dupree, and others recorded songs in which they signified on this mean white devil; Wheatstraw and Broonzy imaged themselves as his son-in-law: the black man making love to the white devil's daughter.


Equity ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 152-188
Author(s):  
Irit Samet

This chapter examines the clean hands doctrine, according to which a claimant who knocks on the court’s door with a hand tainted by illegality or immorality will not be given her day in court. Instead of listening to her potentially successful claim, Equity resorts to its characteristic ad hominem, flexible, morally sensitive, and ex post approach to drive him/her away. The doctrine, despite its effect on a vast number of disputes, is under-theorised and fraught with lack of clarity. The chapter first considers the sources of the considerable legal anxiety caused by the way this powerful gatekeeper operates, before discussing the underpinnings of the three traditional justifications for keeping the clean hands gatekeeper in place: coherence, deterrence, and integrity. I then make the argument that by interpreting the integrity justification as a concept rooted in moral psychology, we can understand how the incommensurable justifications relate to each other and operate in judicial reasoning. I conclude by showing how the clean hands gatekeeper creates a ‘dirty hands’ type dilemma for judges and what they can do about it.


Author(s):  
Adam Gussow

This book explores the role played by the devil figure within an evolving blues tradition. It pays particular attention to the lyrics of recorded blues songs, but it also seeks to tell a story about blues-invested southern lives. The first four chapters investigate, in sequence, the origins and meaning of the phrase "the devil's music" within black southern communities; the devil as a figure who empowers and haunts migrant black blueswomen in the urban North of the Jazz Age; the devil as a symbol of white maleficence and an icon for black southern bluesmen entrapped in the "hell" of the Jim Crow system; and the devil as shape-shifting troublemaker within blues songs lamenting failed romantic relationships. The fifth chapter is an extended meditation on the figure of Robert Johnson. It offers, in sequence, a new interpretation of Johnson's life and music under the sign of his mentor, Ike Zimmerman; a reading of Walter Hill's Crossroads (1986) that aligns the film with the racial anxieties of modern blues culture; and a narrative history detailing the way in which the townspeople of Clarksdale, Mississippi transformed a pair of unimportant side streets into "the crossroads" over a sixty-year period, rebranding their town as the devil's territory and Johnson's chosen haunt, a mecca for blues tourism in the contemporary Delta.


1998 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 56-69
Keyword(s):  

Monday 15 January I was amazed today on opening The Mail to find that Rothermere has gone Fascist. I hope this doesn't mean trouble, for I shan't truckle to the devil, and I am too much of a democrat to be a Fascist, though too much of a disciplinarian to be a democrat in any but the vague Walt Whitman sense.Thursday 25 January On the 16th Jan the children were at John Simon's house for a party. I collected them on a dank wet night and J.S. was himself on his doorstep, looking dangerously like his own butler. We exchanged words and I took my bairns home. On the way I said to a sleepy Edward‘Well, how did you like the Foreign Secretary?’‘Which was the foreign secretary?’‘The bald headed gentleman.’‘Oh, I didn't notice the bald headed gentleman, but I liked Felixthe cat that the conjuror brought.’


Exchange ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Quayesi-Amakye
Keyword(s):  

From songs, sermons and practices, this article examines the way Ghanaian Pentecostals address the question of evil and suffering. It approaches this from the perspective of common believers and leadership. The discussions reveal that there are multiple understandings, perceptions and interpretative tensions concerning how to cope with evil among Ghanaian Pentecostals. Whereas common believers approach it through what Opoku Onyinah calls ‘witchdemonology’, leadership considers this as inadequate. This is because common believers fail to understand the role of evil and suffering in human existence. As such they tend to promote the devil far above the Almighty God. According to leadership the presence of evil may not necessarily contradict God’s goodness and purpose. The paper concludes with some Biblical propositions in an attempt to resolve the apparent tension.


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