The Moment of Truth

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Langenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Original Sin ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Christian Anthropology ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Fundamental Insight

Aaron Langenfeld reflects on how the discipline of comparative theology should be related to the normative grounds for religious truth claims to which theology as a whole is committed. Confirming a fundamental characteristic of comparative theology, he proposes that this challenge cannot be met if the question of truth is neglected; rather, it must be preserved as the central focus in concrete comparative work. To justify this proposition, in his Christian-Muslim work on salvation Langenfeld elaborates a fundamental insight regarding the Muslim critique of Christian anthropology, particularly regarding the concept of original sin, which is presumed in the Christian understanding of salvation and redemption. Langenfeld suggests we can see more easily how comparative theology really does proceed like other substantive forms of theology and thus is fairly measured by familiar theological standards, even if breaking new ground interreligiously.

scholarly journals SIGNIFIKANSI DAKWAH INKLUSIF NURCHOLISH MADJID BAGI MASYARAKAT INDONESIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-66
Author(s):  
Zaprulkhan Zaprulkhan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Religious Disagreement ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Islamic Values

Articulation of religion in the public sphere of Indonesia is still much to be exclusive and puritan, unilateral in monopolizing the truth claims of religious truth, and intolerance towards various religious disagreement. Whereas in the context of a pluralistic Indonesian nation, whether of race, ethnicity, culture, class, and religion, religious messages should be delivered by inclusive proselytizing. Anyone who would articulate religious discourses in the public sphere of Indonesia, should ideally be through inclusive proselytizing. In the context of inclusive proselytizing, Islamic values such as justice (al-'adl), human rights, freedom (Hurriyah), democracy (Shura), universal benevolence (Khoir), egalitarian (Musawah), tolerance (tasamuh), balance ( tawazun), social ethics (morals), universal humanity (an-nas), as well as peace and safety contained in the doctrine of principle Islam but those are inclusive. Inclusive priciples could embrace all people regardless of race, culture, race, class, and even religion. This article is going to discuss the significance of Nurcholish Madjid‟s inclusive proselytizing for pluralistic Indonesian society.

Christian Duty to Bury the Dead and its Contemporary Challenges

2020 ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
Tadeusz Zadorożny
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Christian Anthropology ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Church

The custom of burying the dead is not merely commonly accepted by Christianity the way of disposal of the human body after the death. It is most deeply rooted and perfectly expressing Christian anthropology, revealed in the Holy Scriptures as a consequence of original sin, sign of hope in the Resurrection, and imitation of Christ, who was buried in the tomb. In Catholic view the burial is a corporal work of mercy, act of care for the dead and their loved ones. Gaining popularity the practice of cremation is accepted by the Church for the sake of hygiene, economy, or community. Human remains, also in the form of ashes, always must be buried or placed in the columbarium. Church does not allow the human body to be disposed via resomation or promession. Alternative forms of memorializing the deceased, though attractive esthetically and sentimentally, are not only outlandish in Christian culture, but also contrary to the Christian teaching on origins, nature, and destination of the human person.

The Vanishing Absolute and the Deconsecrated God: A Theological Reflection on Revelation, Law, and Human Dignity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Beattie
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Cross

Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s idea of homo sacer and on the Catholic natural law tradition, Beattie explores the paradoxes and tensions inherent in the Christian understanding of divine justice and human laws. While natural law resists the pessimism of some Protestant theologies and their secularized postmodern derivatives, the doctrine of original sin means that all human laws are flawed in their quest to maintain justice through the imposition of order. Beattie argues that Christ is homo sacer in whom God is profaned, the human is made sacred, and the crucified body of the dehumanized other on the cross becomes the bearer of an absolute dignity outside the law.

Pluralism and the Being of the Between

1998 ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
Mark H Grear Mann
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Constructive Model ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Standard Model ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Typological Approach

In this paper I attempt to reassess the age-old problem of conflicting religious truth-claims by utilizing the fundamental metaphysical insights of William Desmond. I first outline and critique ways that philosophers have traditionally attempted to address this issue, focusing my critique on the standard model (viz., exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism) used to describe different ways of making claims about truth. I then develop Desmond’s "fourfold sense of being" (the univocal, equivocal, dialectical and metaxological) as an alternative approach. My conclusion is that Desmond’s metaphysics provides a constructive model for addressing conflicting truth-claims, while also avoiding the pitfalls inherent in the traditional typological approach.

Duns Scotus on the Female Gender

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn McCord Adams
Keyword(s):  
Female Gender ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Marriage Contract ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
The Moment

Scotus’ estimate of the female gender is shaped by his view that Mary is pre-eminent among merely human saints. Because Mary must be a real mother, he rejects the Aristotelian view that mothers are merely passive causes in reproduction. Christ’s most perfect saving act preserves Mary for immaculate conception, freedom from original sin, not just from birth but from the moment of foetal animation. Gender-justice is important in the marriage contract, even though God never dispenses from life-long indissoluble monogamy to allow polyandry or to permit women to divorce. The Franciscan distinction between dominion and use allows Mary and Joseph to be really married even though both vowed chastity. Gender-justice means that right reason would never permit merely human institutions from restricting ordination to men. The command must come from Christ himself.

Historical Truth in the Hermeneutics of T. S. Eliot

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-288
Author(s):  
Ryan R. Holston
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer

AbstractA small number of scholars have noted T. S. Eliot's anticipation of the hermeneutical theory later articulated by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. Eliot similarly concerns himself with the epistemological assumptions of positivism in the human sciences and the implications of objectivizing texts and other cultural phenomena by adopting the attitude of the scientific observer. For both thinkers, this represents an approach to social life which either distorts or altogether misses the truth claims of those whose ideas are to be interpreted. Furthermore, Eliot develops a theory of understanding that is similar to the historicizing of interpretation that one finds later in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. However, among those who have observed these affinities, a key difference has been neglected. In his effort to confront such secularizing forces in the human sciences, Eliot comes to embrace an intellectualist philosophy of history, which relies on a tenuous dualism between the metaphysical and the physical, while Gadamer's philosophy of history collapses the dichotomy between the world of ideas and the existential realm. Thus, Eliot ultimately identifies what transcends history exclusively with the realm of the spirit. This essay argues that as the mature Eliot struggled with the empirically reductive tendencies of the human sciences and aimed to save religious truth from their deterministic assaults, he increasingly retreated to an intellectualism that misconceived the ultimate basis of religious truth. Consequently, the existing literature neglects the intellectualism that defines Eliot's understanding of truth within history and the more concrete understanding of that encounter that one finds in Gadamer's thinking.

scholarly journals To the question of the concept of freedom in philosophy N. Berdyaev

KANT ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-107
Author(s):  
Islam Baliev
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
Russian Philosopher ◽  
Christian Understanding

The article is an attempt to demonstrate the exclusivity of the concept of freedom in the philosophy of N. Berdyaev. The fundamentality of freedom as a philosophical category is explicated, revealing its lack of prerequisite and primordiality, taking Berdyaev beyond the Christian understanding of freedom. The work also shows the influence of Jacob Bieme on the Russian philosopher through an appeal to the concept of "Ungrund" (abyss), which serves as a fundamental characteristic of freedom.

Circling the Elephant

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Thatamanil
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religion And Race

Christian theologians have, for some decades, affirmed that they have no monopoly on encounter with God or ultimate reality; other religions also have access to religious truth and transformation. If so, the time has come for Christians not just to learn about but also from their religious neighbors. Circling the Elephant affirms that the best way to move toward the mystery of divinity is to move toward the mystery of the neighbor. In this book, Thatamanil employs the ancient Indian allegory of the elephant and blindfolded men to argue for the integration of three, often-separated theological projects: theologies of religious diversity, comparative theology, and constructive theology. Circling the Elephant also offers an analysis of why we have fallen short in the past. Interreligious learning has been obstructed by problematic ideas about “religion” and “religions.” Thatamanil also notes troubling resonances between reified notions of “religion” and “race.” He contests these notions and offers a new theory of the religious that makes interreligious learning both possible and desirable. Christians have much to learn from their religious neighbors, even about such central features of Christian theology as Christ and Trinity. This book proposes a new theology of religious diversity, one that opens the door to true interreligious learning.

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