scholarly journals Eternal Damnation: A Reply to Karori Mbugua’s “Gentler Theology of Hell”

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
R MJ Oduor

This article is a reply to Karori Mbugua’s article titled “The Problem of Hell Revisited: Towards a Gentler Theology of Hell” (Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya, New Series, Vol.3 No.2, December 2011, pp.93-103). The present article does not in any way seek to argue for or against the existence of eternal damnation. Instead, it advances the view that while Mbugua raises important philosophical issues around the question of eternal damnation, those questions deserve a more incisive treatment than Mbugua accorded them. The article further argues that as with all other matters touching on the way things are rather than the way they ought to be, the answer to the question as to whether or not eternal damnation exists cannot be determined by our opinions - its existence or non-existence is an objective fact. Consequently, philosophers cannot revise the fact to their liking; what they can do is to accept or reject the doctrine of eternal damnation altogether on rational grounds, but with no assurance that the objective fact is on their chosen side. KeywordsEternal damnation, hell, attributes of God, biblical doctrine

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
Adam Drozdek
Keyword(s):  

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), who is remembered today primarily for his novel Paul and Virginie, was mainly interested in showing the grandeur of God through his investigations of nature. He viewed nature from the teleological perspective: everything in it has some reason and the human task is to detect this reason. He provided hundreds of examples of such reasons, on many occasions exposing himself to derision. The article shows the importance of orderliness of nature, as it manifests itself in interlocking harmonies, as the way he followed to establish the theological conclusion regarding the existence and the attributes of God.


2013 ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
Izabela Front

The present article seeks to analyze the way in which the blasphemous figure of God in Dolce agonia by Nancy Huston allows the author to describe the sacred element in human life, seen as deprived of transcendental character. This is possible thanks to the three aspects of the text dependent on the type of God’s figure, which are: the contrast between passages marked by the cynical God’s voice and passages focused on man’s life filled with suffering; the tone and the appropriation of time var-iations and, finally, the double character of God who, at the same time, is indifferent to man’s lot while touched by his capacity of love.


Author(s):  
Adriana Iezzi

After illustrating the varied artistic production of the Kwanyin Clan, one of the most important Chinese graffiti crews, this paper analyses six of their main artworks in detail (styles, techniques, aesthetic conceptions and artworks texts). In these artworks, the Kwanyin Clan tried for the first time to merge Euro-American graffiti practice with the ancient traditional arts practiced and appreciated by the Chinese literati (calligraphy, poetry, painting, seals and ceramics). Comparing the Kwanyin Clan members to ‘modern literati writers’, the present article shows how this crew succeeded in reinventing ancient Chinese art forms using Euro-American graffiti vocabulary, paving the way for a new development of graffiti art in China.


Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Alicja Piechucka

The article focuses on an analysis of Hart Crane’s essay “Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros.” One of Crane’s few art-historical texts, the critical piece in question is first of all a tribute to the American poet’s friend, the Mexican painter David Siqueiros. The author of a portrait of Crane, Siqueiros is a major artist, one of the leading figures that marked the history of Mexican painting in the first half of the twentieth century. While it is interesting to delve into the way Crane approaches painting in general and Siqueiros’ oeuvre in particular, an analysis of the essay with which the present article is concerned is also worthwhile for another reason. Like many examples of art criticism—and literary criticism, for that matter—“Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros” reveals a lot not only about the artist it revolves around, but also about its author, an artist in his own right. In a text written in the last year of his life, Hart Crane therefore voices concerns which have preoccupied him as a poet and which, more importantly, are central to modernist art and literature.


Kairos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-205
Author(s):  
Teofil Stanciu

For Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, the kenosis of Christ climaxes with his God-forsakenness on the cross. It is this aspect of kenosis that the present article tries to explore and build upon. One key element will be the meaning of the concept of “a-theist” Christ – coined by Bloom – and how this status of the incarnated Son can function as a basis for our identification and solidarity with today’s atheists. By the way of kenosis, the incarnation brings together in one hypostasis the divine and human nature. This reality endowed both our nature and created order with significant dignity. This paper explores the possibilities from this dignity and how it can serve as a bridge for dialogue with humanists and materialists. As Bloom suggests, this can open the discussion towards the secular world and Christians could take some responsibility for the process of secularization. The objective of this article is to demonstrate that Anthony Bloom’s controversial idea of “a-theist” Christ can become a connection point with the other and a mirror in which western Christians might look at some of their anthropological shortcomings that hamper their solidarity and dialogue with those who do not share the faith in God.


Bioethica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Ελένη Καλοκαιρινού (Eleni Kalokairinou)

All kinds of enhancements, cognitive, physical, psychological, moral etc. are at the center of moral debates nowadays. In particular the moral enhancements of character by virtue of pharmacological and biotechnological means are widely discussed, as they raise a number of questions regarding human autonomy and freedom. In the present article, we argue that if we study carefully the way in which the moral enhancements are applied according to the bioethicists Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson, we will realize that they are logically impossible. That is, if we analyze the logical procedure of enhancing characters morally, as this is presented in Aristotle’s and Kant’s moral account, then we will understand that the kind of moral enhancement of character by virtue of biotechnological means which the two philosophers put forward is doomed to fail. Furthermore, we will also understand that the two philosophers offer an impoverished conception of morality, since reason, the basic element of the moral process, plays no role in the account of moral reasoning they propound.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-509
Author(s):  
Diana Orghian ◽  
Filipa de Almeida ◽  
Sofia Jacinto ◽  
Leonel Garcia-Marques ◽  
Ana Sofia Santos

In the present article, we investigate how a person’s power affects the way we infer traits from their behavior. In Experiment 1, our results suggest that, when faced with behavioral descriptions about others, participants infer both positive and negative traits about powerless actors, whereas for powerful and control (power irrelevant) actors, only positive but no negative traits are inferred, an effect we call the benevolence bias. In the second experiment, (a) we replicate this effect, (b) we show that it does not depend on the specific traits used in Experiment 1, and (c) we show that it is also detected when an implicit measure of inferences is used. Experiment 3 further shows that this effect generalizes to a more generic power manipulation. Theoretical explanations for these findings are discussed.


Author(s):  
William J. Abraham

The Christian vision of God is that God is three Persons in one Substance. This vision went beyond Scripture in order to do justice to Jewish monotheism, encounters with Jesus as an agent of divine action, and personal and corporate experiences of the Holy Spirit. Objections based on entanglement with Greek metaphysics and on certain feminist claims about male language fail. Loss of the Trinity involves serious impoverishment of the life and work of the church. Its continued embrace prepares the way for the exploration of the attributes of God.


2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 85-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Galloway

Jacques Rancière, in his essay ‘Are Some Things Unrepresentable?’, puts forth a challenge that is ever more pertinent to our times. What constitutes the unrepresentable today? Rancière frames his answer in a very specific way: the question of unrepresentability leads directly to the way in which political violence may or may not be put into an image. Offering an alternative to Rancière’s approach, the present article turns instead to the information society, asking if and how something might be unrepresentable in a world saturated by data and information. Thus one approaches the issue of transparency and secrecy here from the perspective of the relative perspicuity (or opacity) of data visualization. Two theses structure the argument, first that ‘data have no necessary visual form’ and, second, that ‘only one visualization has ever been made of an information network’. The tension between these two theses leads to a disconcerting conclusion, that the triumph of information aesthetics precipitates a decline in informatic perspicuity. One is obligated therefore to call for a strong reinvigoration of poetics and hermeneutics within the digital universe, so that representation as such can take place, perhaps for the first time.


The Library ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-474
Author(s):  
Christopher Donaldson

Abstract This article reports on the discovery of hitherto undocumented printings of John Brown’s Description of the Lake at Keswick. Brown’s Description has long been recognised as a foundational document in the development of interest in the English Lake District during the eighteenth century. The history of the Description, however, has not been fully documented, and this lack of documentation has led to a number of mistaken assumptions. The present article, therefore, not only updates the bibliographical record, but also clarifies a few inaccuracies in previous discussions of Brown’s account. In the process, the article explains how the early versions of the Description add a new dimension to the reception history of the text and shift our understanding of the way the private circulation of unpublished print informed eighteenth-century appreciations of the Lakes region. The article includes an appendix, which presents a copy of the early printings of Brown’s text.


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