scholarly journals “In That Water You Could Rinse Things Clean”

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elina Takala
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of Election ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Theological Authority

The aim of this article is to explore the depiction of baptism in Marilynne Robinson's Lila. In a way that is unique for contemporary fiction, the protagonist, Lila, seeks in baptism a relief of her chronic feelings of shame and a confirmation that she is loved. However, after her baptism the Calvinist doctrine of election drives Lila to emotional and theological despair. I suggest that the Calvinist notion of adoption in baptism is a unifying thread in Lila's theological and psychological dilemma, emphasized by her reading of the Book of Ezekiel. From a theological point of view, in baptism one changes ontologically for once and for all. But Lila's story shows that grappling with this transformation can be an emotionally painful process. Robinson depicts her protagonist as a theologian in her own right. This is significant in a novel in which the theological authority lies with male pastors and theologians, regardless of whether they are present in theological books or in religious communities in the 1950s Midwest. Lila understands in a mystical experience of heaven that she will be able to bring her non-Christian loved ones with her into heaven. This unusual rewriting of sacramental theology signifies how Lila constructs her own theology; a rewriting that connects baptism with Barth's universalism and his idea of restoring all humanity. Thus, I argue in this article that in Lila Robinson incorporates a recurring idea of sacramental theology into her fiction, a final restoration in which grace mends the relationships severed in and by life.

"Om Alle Menschen Wel Te Leren Sterven"

1986 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-179
Author(s):  
E.J.G. Lips
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Original Text ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ars Moriendi ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Dutch Language ◽  
The Masses

AbstractThe genre of the Ars moriendi is by no means a homogeneous one. Indeed, the great textual diversity has more than once attracted the attention. This diversity, caused by various omissions and, more often, extensions in the original text-types, is often considered as the decay of an originally orthodox theological genre. In this essay, manuscripts and printed versions of the Ars moriendi in the Dutch language ( ± 1450-1530) are studied. Instead of considering the omissions and extensions meant above as a decline of the genre, the author attempts to regard them, as the medieval writers may have done, as means to make the texts find their way to the public more easily. Various methods used by the authors of these Artes to reach their public, are examined and their presumable succes is evaluated. It seems that, whereas particularly the older literature assumes an almost infinite public, recent research does not confirm this point of view. For, in spite of explicit remarks addressed to all christians, commerce dictated to the printers a more or less wealthy public. As for the manuscripts, these seem mainly to have had a public of clergy and (female) religious communities. However, considering the existence of a public of listeners, both manuscripts and printed versions had, in an indirect way, their impact on the masses of the christians.

Max Weber oder das Scheitern an der Religion

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Reinhard
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Other World ◽  
Careful Comparison

Der Weltruhm Max Webers geht langsam, aber deutlich zurück. An seinem Lebensthema, der Bedeutung der Religion für die moderne Welt, ist er langfristig gescheitert. Das gilt nicht nur für seine Protestantismus-These, sondern auch für den aufwändigen Versuch, die These durch Vergleich mit anderen Weltreligionen auszuweiten und abzusichern. Er landet dabei in der kolonialistischen Orientalismus-Falle, indem er beweist, was er zuvor vorausgesetzt hatte. Umgekehrt wussten und wissen Vertreter anderer Religionen das protestantische Christentum zur Modernisierung ihrer eigenen Kulturen ‚auszuschlachten‘. ‚Das Empire hat zurückgeschlagen‘. Auch Karl Jaspers’ post-koloniale Alternative zu weltanschaulicher Kommunikation auf gleicher Augenhöhe im Zeichen einer ‚Achsenzeit‘ ist gescheitert. Der viel berufene Aufschwung der Religionen besteht global gesehen in pluralistischer Beliebigkeit, die den Charakter von Religion überhaupt verändert hat. ‚Transzendenz‘ ist immanent geworden. Unsere Religion ist längst nicht mehr diejenige Max Webers. Obviously Max Weber’s fame is continuously decreasing. In the end, he failed in his self-chosen task to explain the growth of the modern world through religious experience. This statement does not only refer to his world-famous essay on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is also true of his extensive attempt to confirm and extent his thesis through careful comparison with other world religions. But he fell into the circular trap of colonialist orientalism because he simply proved what had been his own preconditions. On the other hand, members of other religious communities used and still use protestant Christianity selectively to modernize their own cultures. The empire hits back! Karl Jaspers’s Axial Age, his post-colonial attempt in cultural communication on equal level, failed as well. Today, from the global point of view the famous renewal of religion consists in arbitrary pluralism. The very character of religion as such has changed. Transcendence turned immanent. The religion of today is no longer the religion of Max Weber.

Reading tradition as pedagogy in Calvin and Augustine: the case of election

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-45
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Fundamental Interest ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of Election ◽  
Theological Authority ◽  
Pedagogical Framework

AbstractIn colloquial English the word ‘tradition’ tends to be understood as a noun referring to a more-or-less static set of propositions, often used to define the identity of the particular group that accepts them. This article seeks to challenge this convention by defending an older, more fluid sense oftraditiothat is not only found in but formative of a variety of major Christian theological sources. The argument draws especially on Jean Calvin, his preferred theological authority Augustine and briefly the New Testament itself, showing that each demonstrates a fundamental interest in Christian teaching as participation in divine pedagogy. Using the doctrine of election as a case study, I argue that this pedagogical framework evidences a dynamic conception oftraditioastradere, or a discourse on how human beings faithfully participate in what is properly a divine giving-and-receiving. This conception of tradition as pedagogy is commended for both its theological and its critical merit.

scholarly journals Religiøs argumentation som religionsfænomenologisk forskningsområde

1992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Aktor
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Specific Character ◽  
Concrete Material ◽  
Material World ◽  
Basic Point ◽  
Two Component ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of

This article is a reflection on the specific character of religious assertations and religious arguments. The basic point of view is that these religious practices should not be investigated as isolated religious phenomena sui generis, but on the contrary, that they are conditioned by and derived from common linguistic and epistemological practices that relate to the concrete material world. Religious assertations join together finction and description of the world, whereas religious arguments refer todata which are either quasi-empiric (a holy scripture  for instance) or quasi-public (a mystical experience for instance). in four text examples these derivations are investigated in the light of a two-component definition of religion, which stresses the concept of an essential difference as well as the concept of a possibility of a passage to an fro between essentially differenct categories.

scholarly journals Symbols of the Dyukovsky Park constructions in Odessa. Heritage of the 1950s agricultural exhibition.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (97) ◽  
pp. 181-190
Author(s):  
A.O. Kadurina ◽  
Yu.S. Nazarchuk
Keyword(s):  
Textile Industry ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Architectural Heritage ◽  
Construction Period ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Historical Heritage ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City ◽  
Pointed Star

Purpose. The research is devoted to the analysis of the agricultural exhibition pavilions symbolism in Dyukovsky Park in Odessa in 1950s years. Methodology. Field study and bibliographic research, synthesis and analysis, historical method, and method of analogies are used in that work. Results. The stages of Dyukovsky Park formation have been studied, from the Duke de Richelieu, which gave the name to the park, dacha creation to the active construction and landscaping of the park in the XX century. In particular, from the symbolism point of view, the architectural and artistic decor of the agricultural exhibition pavilions of the 1950s years is analyzed. These are: a pavilion of Vegetable growing which is crowned by layers of wheat and a 5-pointed star (the first place in the wheat export); the pavilion of the Textile Industry and other goods decorated with jugs and towels with symbols of fertility and abundance; the pavilion of the Vinery State Farms with plant motifs and the Fish Pavilion with high reliefs of fish, anchors, ship noses and bas-reliefs of nets (active development of sea fishing). In general, the symbolism of all presented pavilions reflects the idea of wealth, prosperity and active development of the main directions of agriculture and industry of the country. For the first time, the architectural heritage of the agricultural exhibition, which is the compositional core of the Odessa Dyukovsky Park, is analyzed from the symbolism point of view. At the same time, the decoding of the semantic loads inherent in the architectural and artistic decor of the pavilions is correlated with the theme of the exhibition, as well as with the historical features of the construction period. Today, all buildings of the former exhibition pavilions are empty or are used as warehouses. Perhaps the analysis of the information code of these buildings will again attract the attention of the city authorities to the issues of reconstruction of the city's historical heritage, reviving it.

G.R.G. Mure as Hegelian Scholar

1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (01) ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
W.H. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Coherence Theory ◽  
Philosophical Education ◽  
Successful Attempt ◽  
Residual Elements ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1950S

Geoffrey Mure, who died on 24 May 1979 at the age of 86, owed his original interest in Hegel, and indeed the greater part of his philosophical education, to his Merton tutor H.H. Joachim, later Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford. Joachim was an accomplished philosophical scholar who did distinguished work on Aristotle and Spinoza, approaching both from a point of view which was broadly Hegelian; he was also the author of a short but powerful book on the Coherence theory of truth. The book was welcomed by some critics of the current idealism, including Russell, because it said that the Coherence theory ended in shipwreck. But it was certainly never Joachim's intention to suggest that, because of his criticisms, idealism should be abandoned. What he wanted, and what Mure wanted after him, was to strengthen that philosophy by eliminating residual elements of false doctrine which (they thought) survived in the versions of it put out by F.H. Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet; to do that it was necessary to make explicit appeal to Hegel. It must be emphasised that, for Joachim and Mure alike, idealism was the only serious possibility in philosophy; realism, empiricism and naturalism, its various antitheses, were hardly worth serious consideration. One third that weakened Mure's thought, and made his defence of his own doctrine less impressive than it might have been, was that he knew so little about his opponents. True, when he wrote Retreat from Truth in the 1950s he made a serious if not wholly successful attempt to grasp and grapple with certain theories of Russell, for whom he had always had an admiration. But though he pontificated a good deal on the subject of modern philosophy in that book and elsewhere, he never managed to study it very closely. Joachim had convinced him in advance that views of a certain sort could never be true, which meant of course that they could be dismissed without a hearing.

scholarly journals Cult and Crisis: A GIS Approach to the Sacred Landscape of Hellenistic Attica

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 383-395
Author(s):  
Constanze Graml ◽  
Manuel Hunziker ◽  
Katharina Vukadin
Keyword(s):  
Catchment Area ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Sacred Landscape ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

AbstractFrom a political point of view, 3rd century BCE Athens represents a shattered unity. Parts of the Athenian countryside and even the city itself were occupied by foreign troops. This loss of control affected the city’s political, economic, social, cultural, and religious life. Since Cleisthenic times, relations between political units and religious communities had become institutionalised through specific cults. Other cult places of relevance to the larger community and therefore with a catchment area that exceeded a deme, e.g. Eleusis, were also affected, as they lay within the occupied territories. This partial inaccessibility of the countryside risked the disruption of religious duties. The project “Cult and Crisis: The Sacred Landscape of Attica and its Correlation to Political Topography” aims to identify potentially affected cult places with no limitations regarding their possible catchment area by analysing their placement in relation to foreign military bases. Alterations in cult practice can plausibly be detected in changes ranging from cessation to the rerouting of ritual movement or the establishment of substitute cult places. As these “solutions” rarely feature in written sources, our GIS-based approach will focus on material remains from sanctuaries. Although an object’s use for ritual practice cannot be deduced with certainty, the distribution of finds certainly attests to human activity. This contribution presents a trial of this approach, taking the Sounion area as its case study.

scholarly journals Religious Freedom in the Time of the Pandemic

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Piotr Mazurkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Perspectives ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Restrictive Policy

The subject of the paper is the issue of restrictions on religious freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic imposed by European countries. The period under examination covers the interval from March to December 2020. The issue is analyzed from the point of view of respecting human rights in a situation of conflict between the values of public health and religious freedom. In this context, the perception of importance and urgency regarding the values that should be protected and the concept of “essential goods”, which are understood differently in secular and religious perspectives, are of particular importance. Another essential issue is not only the scope but also the “depth” of state intervention in the life of religious communities. In Europe, there was a wide variety of national approaches to restricting religious freedom in order to ensure public health. Some of them pursued a very restrictive policy in this area, others moderate, and others very soft. One also could observe the difference in decisions made by most countries during the first and the second waves of the pandemic. A significant element enabling a possible evaluation of the applied solutions is the matter of their duration. Are the introduced limitations only temporary, implemented due to the extraordinary situation, or should they be view as a part of a “radical political experiment”, as a result of which the very understanding of religious freedom and its place in the hierarchy of human rights will change. The arguments of a philosophical, theological, legal and sociological nature are analyzed issuing methods appropriate to each of these disciplines.

scholarly journals The Petition Campaign of the Muslims of Leningrad on the Return of the Cathedral Mosque in 1946–1955

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 755-775
Author(s):  
R. I. Bekkin ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Leningrad Region ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
Council Of Ministers

The article examines the petition campaign for the return of the Cathedral Mosque, organized by the Muslims of Leningrad in the second half of the 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. The campaign represents an example of a human rights activity (albeit in a limited sphere, for securing freedom of conscience), and should be taken into account when studying the history of the human and civil rights movement in the USSR. The language and argumentation used by authors of the petitions are analyzed. The article examines the religious life of Leningrad Muslims outside of the mosque (in particular, the holding of festive services at the Tatar cemetery in the village of Volkova). The article touches upon the problem of historical memory. The memories of the struggle for permission to build a mosque in St. Petersburg in tsarist times, preserved among Leningrad Muslims, were taken into account by officials when deciding whether to return this religious building to believers in the 1950s. The problem of returning the mosque is considered in the context of changes in the confessional policy of the country’s leadership. The article demonstrates the role of such a body as the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR touches upon this role in resolving issues of returning religious buildings to believers in the post-war period. Particular attention is paid to the relations within the Leningrad Muslim community. On the example of the conflict between imam-khatib Abdulbari N. Isaev and Chairman of the twenty (dvadtsatka) Usman Bogdanov, the author examines the system of power relations within religious communities in the USSR in the postwar period. In particular, the article mentions the narrative that Bogdanov proposed to subordinate dvadtsatka directly to the Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs in the Leningrad Region.

scholarly journals A New Sacramental Theology for e-Eucharist?

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Mattijs Ploeger
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Real Presence

During the 2020–21 COVID-19 crisis, participation in the eucharist was largely reduced to watching a service on television or online. This article focuses on whether such a form of participation in the eucharist – perhaps enhanced by taking some bread and wine individually in front of the screen – could be called sacramental participation from the point of view of a (broadly Catholic) systematic sacramental theology. I argue that a spiritual form of real presence is possible by virtue of Christ’s omnipresence, but that sacramental presence is inevitably dependent on embodiment and locality.

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