A Beguine Woman Mystic of the 13th Century, Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Theological Anthropology as the Image of God : The Political Mysticism of Beguine Women Mystics in the Light of the Feminist Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-108
Author(s):  
Jeong-Sook Kim
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
The Political ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Women Mystics

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

The Sovereign’s Beatitude

2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172110420
Author(s):  
Zoltan Balazs
Keyword(s):  
Image Of God ◽  
The Political ◽  
Short Treatment ◽  
Divine Sovereignty ◽  
Conceptual Coherence ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Image Of God

Though it may sound awkward to ask whether the political sovereign is happy or unhappy, the question is relevant to political theory, especially within a political theological perspective. Because man was created in the image of God, human happiness needs to be a reflection of divine beatitude, and as divine sovereignty is, at least analogically, related to political sovereignty, the conceptual coherence is secured. The main argument is, however, that the analogy does not hold. I shall show how St Thomas Aquinas’s short treatment of God’s beatitude may mislead us about power, fame, riches, and dignity being essential to happiness, based on an analysis of Franz Kafka’s major novel, The Castle, and a few other writings by him. I shall argue that our tradition of political thinking and behavior remains ambivalent on this issue. The political sovereign is born out of our unhappy condition, yet its power, fame, riches, and glory suggests to us that it has appropriated our happiness. But for this very reason it cannot be happy, and it therefore suggests a false analogy between the divine and the political sovereign. It is fundamentally at variance with our happiness, which incites us to abandon, reject, and eventually, kill it.

> ... zum Leben ermutigen<

2001 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Thönissen
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Language Form ◽  
The Past ◽  
Joint Declaration ◽  
Biblical Perspective ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Cover Up ◽  
Biblical Teaching

AbstractDuring the past years the project of ecumenical social ethics was initiated without the burden of dogmatic questions. Jointpositions in questionsrelevant to society could be formulated without a prior consensus in fundamental controversial theological issues. Consequently the question arises whether the wished and aspired joint proclamation of social ethics of the churches really rests on a consensus in fundamental issues of the Christian faith or whether public pressure and the changed normative situation cover up differences which could prove themselves to be exclusive. There are agreements in three areas: in the understanding ofthe Gospel as foundational, in the biblical teaching ofman being created in the image of God as a fundamental article of theological anthropology and in a joint proclamation of the churches as an ecumenical task. Returning to a biblical perspective a consensus in the ethical demands of the Gospel andin the universal claim of biblical ethics can be established which does not exclude but rather include the differences between the traditional denaminational positions. This consensus can be called a »differentiated consensus« similar to the case of the »Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification«. Thus ecumenical social ethics has been relieved from the pressure of having to fully agree in language, form and contents in all conceivable questions.

scholarly journals The Image of God in Reformed Orthodoxy. Soundings in the Development of an Anthropological Key Concept

Perichoresis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Gijsbert van den Brink ◽  
Aza Goudriaan
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
The Image Of God

Abstract One of the less well-researched areas in the recent renaissance of the study of Reformed orthodoxy is anthropology. In this contribution, we investigate a core topic of Reformed orthodox theological anthropology, viz. its treatment of the human being as created in the image of God. First, we analyze the locus of the imago Dei in the Leiden Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625). Second, we highlight some shifts of emphasis in Reformed orthodox treatments of this topic in response to the budding Cartesianism. In particular, the close proximity of the unfallen human being and God was carefully delineated as a result of Descartes’s positing of a univocal correspondence between God and man; and the Cartesian suggestion that original righteousness functioned as a barrier for certain natural impulses, was rejected. Third, we show how, in response to the denial of this connection, the image of God was explicitly related to the concept of natural law. Tying in with similar findings on other loci, we conclude that Reformed orthodox thought on the imago Dei exhibits a variegated pattern of extensions, qualifications, and adjustments of earlier accounts within a clearly discernable overall continuity.

scholarly journals EM BUSCA DA “DRACMA PERDIDA” O CINEMA ENTRE A IMAGEM DE DEUS E A DO DITADOR

2003 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cláudio Aguiar Almeida
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
The Political ◽  
Image Reproduction ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
The Catholic Church

Proibidas pelo Antigo Testamento, a produção e a veneração de imagens se converteram em tema de amplo debate entre os cristãos para quem a encarnação de Jesus Cristo como um homem visível tornava possível, pelo menos em tese, a reprodução da imagem de Deus. Este artigo analisa esse debate, que coloca dados fundamentais à compreensão das reações da Igreja Católica ao cinema e a outros meios técnicos de reprodução de imagens que, no século XX, foram utilizados na propagação de “religiões políticas” como o fascismo e o nazismo. Searching for the lost dracma: cinema between the image of god and the dictator Abstract The production and veneration of images was forbidden by the Old Testament and became an important theme of discussion among Christians, for whom the incarnation of Jesus Christ as a visible man had made the reproduction of the God’s image possible, at least in theory. This article analyses this debate, which brings fundamental data to the understanding of the Catholic Church reactions to the cinema and to other technical media of image reproduction. These media were used for the propagation of the “political religions” such as the fascism and the nazism in the 20th century.

Iacopone da Todi

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Stabat Mater ◽  
Mystical Union ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Franciscan Order ◽  
Poetic Texts ◽  
The Image Of God

Iacopone da Todi (b. 1230/36–d. 1304/06) is the most important writer of laude between the 13th and 14th centuries and is considered an unavoidable model for laude collections of subsequent centuries. The genre of laude, which are religious poetic texts in the vernacular, came to life in the 13th century under the impulse of penitential movements, within the mendicant groups and the newly constituted religious confraternities. It prospered in the context of paraliturgical celebrations in the vernacular, thanks to which the faithful lay people reinterpreted the official Latin liturgy in forms that were more suited to them. After a worldly youth—according to ancient biographical accounts—Iacopone joined the Franciscan Order and participated in the bitter disputes between Spiritual and Moderate Franciscans, siding with the Spirituals and defending a more rigorous interpretation of Francis’s Rule. His inflexible stand also originated his conflict against Pope Boniface VIII, which caused his incarceration between 1298 and 1303, after the fall of the fortress of Palestrina where Iacopone was involved in a resistance together with other papal opponents. He wrote a collection of approximately one hundred spiritual laude and two Latin texts, the Tractatus utilissimus and Verba. The attribution to him of the Latin sequence “Stabat Mater” is debated. Some of Iacopone’s laude are catechetical texts, moral exhortations, political and ideological diatribes (for example, against incoherent Franciscan friars and clerics), ascetic meditations, and mystical confessions. At the heart of Iacopone’s mysticism is the concept of esmesuranza (extra-measure), or the infinite love human beings are called to give back for God’s infinite love on the cross. That is how human beings can transcend themselves, transforming into the image of God. Iacopone’s language includes the most disparate expressive registers, oscillating between a jongleur’s vigorous realism and passionate lyrical outbursts. His relationship to his contemporary Dante Alighieri is still much debated by literary criticism, although no philologically credible proof exists that the two ever knew of each other’s work or existence. Dante’s passion for Franciscan themes, such as poverty as an essential component of church purification and the mystical union with divinity, creates interesting parallels in the works of the two poets. Over the years, criticism has acknowledged the importance of the Iacoponian poetic model for the construction, over the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, of a lyrical grammar of divine love, which was shared by the European tradition of ecstatic confessions.

Childhood in Eastern Patristic Thought: Some Problems of Theology and Theological Anthropology

1994 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Gould
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Eternal Salvation ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Present Life

The writings of the Early Church concerning childhood are not extensive, but in the works of a number of Eastern Christian authors of the second to fourth centuries it is possible to discern some ideas about childhood which raise important problems of Christian theology and theological anthropology. The theological problem is that of the question posed for theodicy by the sufferings and deaths of infants. It is harder to give a brief definition of the anthropological problem, but it is important to do so because to define the problem as the Eastern Fathers saw it is also to identify the set of conceptual tools—the anthropological paradigm—which they used to answer it. These are not, naturally, the concepts of modern anthropology and psychology. Applied to patristic thought, these terms usually refer to speculations about the composition and functioning of the human person or the human soul which belong to a discourse which is recognizably philosophical and metaphysical—by which is meant that it is (though influenced by other sources, such as the Bible) the discourse of a tradition descending ultimately from the anthropological terminology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Patristic anthropology seeks to account for the history and experiences of the human person as a created being—fhe experience of sin and mortality in the present life, but also of eternal salvation and advancement to perfection in the image of God.

The Law of Homicide

2011 ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
David Novak
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter argues that the law prohibiting murder is the Noahide commandment most immediately and rationally evident. The rabbis considered its prohibition from two distinct points of view, the theological and the political. In theological terms, murder is the intentional taking of another human life, a life created in the image of God. In political terms, murder wrecks social life. Regarding murder at the individual level, the rabbis differentiated criteria for the punishment of Jews and gentiles. For Jews who commit murder, the death penalty is employed only under the strict standard of “hatra'ah,” or forewarning. Such a dispensation was not available to non-Jews. The law of homicide also deals with the morally knotty issue of abortion. Rabbinic Judaism permitted abortion only when the mother's life was in danger, but for Noahides, abortion was proscribed in every case.

Social Aspects of the Image of God in Man According to the Orthodox Theological Anthropology of the XX-XXI Centuries

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Сергей Анатольевич Чурсанов
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Vertical Dimension ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Image Of God

В статье выделены и рассмотрены пять ключевых принципов совершенного общения человеческих личностей по образу божественных лиц. Согласно принципу единства в различии, каждая человеческая личность, пребывая в полноте общения с другими личностями, в то же время пребывает и в личностной уникальности. возможность приближения к такому совершенному общению открывается для человека при реализации принципа личностной конституированности, состоящего в том, что по образу монархии отца человеческое сообщество возглавляется личностью, способной преодолеть трагические установки и на индивидуалистическое обособление, и на нивелирующее подавление. в качестве третьего богословского принципа совершенного общения представлен принцип тройственной личностной соотнесенности, предполагающий преодоление диадической замкнутости и в вертикальном измерении, то есть в отношениях с богом, и в горизонтальном измерении, то есть в отношениях между людьми. Далее, совершенное общение отвечает принципу всеохватности, означающему, что в состоянии богоподобного совершенства каждая человеческая личность в общении с отцом, Сыном и Святым Духом воспринимает божественные энергии, а в общении с людьми - охватывает всю общечеловеческую природу. наконец, в соответствии с принципом свободного дарения, по образу распространения нетварных божественных энергий отцом через Сына в Святом Духе вне божественной неприступной сущности, различные составляющие полноты бытия, обретаемой в межчеловеческом общении, передаются его участниками всем окружающим, в конечном счете - всему сотворенному миру. The article highlights and considers five key principles of perfect communion of human persons in the image of Divine Persons. According to the principle of unity in difference, while existing in the fullness of communion with other persons, each human person at the same time gains his or her personal uniqueness. The possibility of approaching such perfect communion opens up for a person while realizing the principle of personal constitution, which involves that, in the image of the monarchy of the Father, the human community is headed by a person who is able to overcome the tragic attitudes of both individualistic isolation and leveling suppression. As the third theological principle of perfect communion, the principle of triple personal relatedness is presented, which implies the overcoming of dyadic restraint both in the vertical dimension, that is, in relations with God, and in the horizontal dimension, that is, in relations between people. Further, perfect communion meets the principle of personal all-embracing, meaning that in the state of God-like perfection, each human person perceives the Divine energies in communion with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as well as embraces all human nature in communion with people. Finally, in accordance with the principle of free giving, in the image of spreading of uncreated Divine energies by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit outside the Divine inaccessible essence, the various components of the fullness of being obtained in interpersonal communion are transmitted by its participants to everyone around, and ultimately to the whole created world.

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