The Will as Key to Christology

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 292-304
Author(s):  
Nico den Bok
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The West ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
The Will ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
Intellectual Climate

In the last decades naturalism, the view that everything works by complex natural processes, leaving free will an illusory phenomenon, has gained influence in the intellectual climate of the West. This article addresses this issue from an unusual angle: the almost forgotten debate about the will(s) of Christ. It shows that classic Christian theology, during the course of its development, has come to articulate a non-naturalistic view of human nature, by stating that the nature ‘assumed’ by the second divine person includes a proper human free will. Theologically this means that, pace mainstream modern and postmodern orthodox theology, even in Christology human nature cannot be a mere instrument of God and his will.

A Secularism of the Royal Doors: Toward an Eastern Orthodox Christian Theology of Secularism

2019 ◽  
pp. 108-130
Author(s):  
Brandon Gallaher
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
The West ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
The Trinity

The opposites, sacred and secular, are in an ‘original’ or ‘polemical unity’ in Christ and do not have their reality except in Him in a polemical attitude toward one another bearing witness in this way to their common reality and unity in the God-Man. History’s movement consists of divergence and convergence from and toward Him. One cannot, therefore, understand secularism and the secular and secularization apart from the fact that the secular is what is continuously being accepted and becoming accepted by God in Christ. Influenced by the work of Bonhoeffer, Bulgakov, and Richard Kearney and invoking Orthodox liturgy and iconography, Gallaher points to a church that images Christ and the Trinity by manifesting itself in kenosis. He argues for a move from an Orthodox anti-secularism that simply denounces and shakes its fist at the West to a positive Orthodox theology of secularism that tries to see how Orthodoxy might witness boldly to Christ in the modern pluralistic and secular West.

Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Torrance
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The West ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Human Destiny

Christian theology has from its inception posited a powerful vision of humanity’s ultimate and eternal fulfilment through the person and work of Jesus Christ. That said, how precisely to understand and approach the human perfection to which the Christian is summoned is a question that has vexed the minds of many and diverse theologians. Orthodox Christian theology is notable for its consistent interest in this question, and over the last century has offered to the West a wealth of theological insight on the matter, drawn from both the resources of its Byzantine theological heritage as well as its living interaction with Western theological and philosophical currents. In this regard, the important themes of personhood, deification, epektasis, apophaticism, and divine energies have been elaborated with much success by Orthodox theologians; but not without controversy. This work addresses the question of human perfection in Orthodox theology via a retrieval of the sources, examining in turn the thought of leading representatives of the Byzantine theological tradition: St Maximus the Confessor, St Theodore the Studite, St Symeon the New Theologian, and St Gregory Palamas. The overarching argument of this study is that in order to present an Orthodox Christian understanding of human perfection which remains true to its Byzantine inheritance, supreme emphasis must be placed on the doctrine of Christ, especially on the significance and import of Christ’s humanity. The intention of this work is thus to keep the creative approach to human destiny in Orthodox theology firmly moored to its theological past.

Aquinas

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
The Will

Aquinas develops Aristotelian themes as a foundation for his account of the Christian virtues. The will is both rational, being directed towards the ultimate good, and free, being determined by practical reason about what contributes to the ultimate good. Virtue is the good use of free will; it requires both the appropriate training of the passions (the non-rational part of the soul) and the correct practical reason. Practical reason finds the first principles of the natural law (the rational principles that are suitable for human nature), and the action-guiding rules that specify the implications of the natural law for human beings with a social nature, and for human society. The virtues, embodying the natural law, guide us towards the good that is proper to human beings. They do not guide us all the way, because we are subject to the influence of the sins that turn us away from God. Divine grace moves our free will to overcome the effects of these sins, and to form the Christian virtues that lead us towards the complete good.

The Myth of Pelagianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Separate Group ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
History Of

Pelagius is the first known British author, important because of his persuasive advocacy of two ideas: that human nature was inclined to goodness, and that man had free will. After a campaign to vilify him, he was excommunicated in AD 418 for allegedly inventing a new heresy, and his name was made synonymous with arrogance. This book shows that Pelagius defended the contemporary ascetic account of Christianity and that, far from being the leader of a separatist group, he was one of many propagandists for the ascetic movement which swept through Christianity at this time and generated medieval monasticism. Textual analysis proves that Pelagius did not teach the ideas attributed to him or propose anything new. It is impossible to differentiate between Pelagius’ writings and other ascetic literature, and there was no separate group of ‘Pelagians’. This book also examines how and why the myth was created, setting this process in its historical context and in the context of scholarship on the function of heresy in religion and sociological analysis of the creation of deviance. Finally, manuscript evidence supports the argument that ‘Pelagianism’ was a deliberately created myth. Travelling under false attributions, Pelagius’ writings were staples of monastic book collections because they contained the same ideas as other texts promoting the ascetic version of Christianity. In the fourteenth century, when Christians once more sought a confident anthropology, it was Pelagius’ works to which they turned. This book presents a paradigm shift in our understanding of the history of Christianity in the West.

Recht und Pflicht – Einschränkungen von Freiheit?

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Klaus Vieweg
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
The Will ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

Abstract Can one speak philosophically of a justified limitation of freedom? Hegel’s logically founded definition of free will and his understanding of right and duty can contribute to a clarification of the concept of freedom. Important is a precise differentiation between freedom and caprice (Willkür) – the latter being a necessary but one-sided element of the free will. In caprice, the will is not yet in the form of reason. Rational rights and duties are not a restriction of freedom. Insofar as individual rights can collide (e. g. in emergency situations), there can be a temporary and proportionate restriction of certain rights in favour of higher rights, such as the right to life. Dictatorships are instances of capricious rule which restrict freedom; the rationally designed state, by contrast, restricts only caprice. What is tobe defined are the duties and the rights of the state and the duties and the rights of the citizens.

Locke and the Nature of Political Authority

2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Hoff
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Capacity To Consent ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Will

AbstractThis paper aims to illuminate the ongoing significance of Locke's political philosophy. It argues that the legitimacy of political authority lies, according to Locke, in the extent to which it collaborates with individuals so as to allow them to be themselves more effectively, and in its answerability to the consent such individuals should thereby give it. The first section discusses how the free will inevitably asserts its authority; the second shows the inevitability of the will's incorporation of authority as a kind of prosthesis, which in turn transforms the operation of the will; and the third treats the issue of consent, arguing that Locke is less interested in explicit acts of consent than in the norm of consent, in answerability to which structures of authority should be shaped so as to honor the beings whose capacity to consent is definitive for them.

scholarly journals "Sufficient to Have Stood, Though Free to Fall": Free Will in John Milton's Paradise Lost

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martineau
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
The Way

In Book I of Paradise Lost, John Milton (1608-1674) asserts his intent to “justifie the wayes of God to men” (Paradise Lost1 I 26), paving the way for a revolutionary discussion of human nature, divinity, and the problem of evil, all couched in an epic retelling of Satan’s fall from grace, his temptation of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as recounted in the Book of Genesis. In his treatment of the biblical account, Milton necessarily broaches a variety of subjects which were both relevant during his time and remain relevant in ours. Among these topics, and certainly one of the most compelling, is the matter of human free will.

scholarly journals The destruction of SFRY and Serbia

Napredak ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Vladislav Jovanović
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
National Minority ◽  
The West ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Will ◽  
Autonomous Province ◽  
Terrorist Acts

The paper recapitulates the process of the destruction of the Yugoslav state (SFRY and FRY). Special attention is given to the key factor in that process, the will of the West, embodied in the USA and the EC (EU), for whom the continued existence of Yugoslavia was no longer of geopolitical interest. The conferences on Yugoslavia, organized in Brussels and The Hague, were supposed to serve to legitimize this goal: the disappearance of Yugoslavia. The author points out that when the West did not manage to achieve its goal with political solutions, it involved NATO, through the aggression in 1999. Previously, Serbia's legitimate opposition to terrorist acts by the KLA on its territory, as an internal issue par excellence, was declared a threat to "peace and security in the world", and the UN Security Council took it as a permanent topic of its sessions. There had been secessionist uprisings and armed conflicts in UN member states before, as there are today, but the Security Council never before dared to violate the article of the UN Charter that states that these questions are the exclusive competence of the member state concerned. An exception was made only in the case of Serbia, although the defense against KLA terrorism was legal and limited to the territory of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, i.e., the Yugoslav state border was never crossed. The false claim of William Walker, the head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo and Metohija, concerning the massacre in Racak, was the cause of the war of aggression against the FRY. By illegally naming the protectorate of Kosovo as the so-called state of the Albanian national minority, the West took this as the final stroke in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and Serbia, thus ignoring the story of the phoenix rising from its ashes.

scholarly journals Finite in Infinity

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-109
Author(s):  
Hannah Laurens
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Metaphysical Theory

One of the main themes in Spinoza’s Ethics is the issue of human freedom: What does it consist in and how may it be attained? Spinoza’s ethical views crucially depend on his metaphysical theory, and this close connection provides the answer to several central questions concerning Spinoza’s conception of human freedom. Firstly, how can we accommodate human freedom within Spinoza’s necessitarianism—in the context of which Spinoza rejects the notion of a free will? Secondly, how can humans, as merely finite beings, genuinely attain freedom? Can Spinoza defend his claim that we may even attain blessedness? I will argue that these questions are answered by appeal to a twofold in human nature. According to Spinoza, we are finite in infinity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document