scholarly journals En læges religion

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Glebe-Møller
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Considerable Difficulty ◽  
English Prose ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
History Of ◽  
Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) is a well-known figure in English Literature. His most famous book is probably Urn Burial “seldom if ever equalled in English Prose.” Among his other works is the large Pseuudoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errors, published in 1646, in which he discusses errors in the natural sciences, in history, and in the history of the Bible. At the order of King Frederic III a secretary in the Danish Chancellery, Gabriel Knudsen Akeleye, translated, with considerable difficulty, this book into Danish. The translation, which was never published, is still to be found in The Royal Library. Under the heading “A Danish work on Religion in general” yet another translation of (most of) one of Browne´s books, Religio Medici (A Doctor’s religion) has recently been discovered in The Royal Library. In this book, which is a kind of report on Browne´s views as a doctor and as a Christian, we read the famous sentence: “I perceive every mans owne reason is his best Oedipus.” Though Browne regarded himself as a Christian, his appeal to reason made him suspicious in the eyes of orthodox theologians, but conversely popular among contemporary critics of religion. Therefore Religio Medici is often mentioned in the so-called “clandestine” literature of the time. Browne was also involved in the famous witch-trial which took place in Suffolk in 1664. At this occasion he referred to a similar trial two years earlier in Køge.

scholarly journals Richard Dawkins, Philip Kennedy and the Augustinian paradigm of Christianity

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Izak J.J. Spangenberg
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Richard Dawkins ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Darwinian Paradigm

Both Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion and Philip Kennedy’s book A Modern Introduction to Theology: New Questions for Old Beliefs were published in 2006. This article aims to compare the two books and to argue that Kennedy does not oppose Dawkins’s views but, in fact, debates along similar lines. Kennedy is adamant that the Augustinian paradigm of Christianity no longer makes sense, because it is based on an outdated cosmology and anthropology. He firmly maintains that Christianity requires a new paradigm, which is informed by our current knowledge and worldview. Thomas Kuhn’s ideas of paradigm and paradigm changes in the history of natural sciences are utilised in comparing the books, seeing that Dawkins accepts and works within the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary biology, and Kennedy argues that Christians and Christian theologians adhere to the Augustinian paradigm of Fall-Redemption-Judgement. It is argued that Dawkins should have referred to the paradigm change in the study of the Bible, which occurred towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, and the plea of theologians, like Kennedy, for a paradigm change in theology. The article concludes that only a paradigm change in Christianity, which is in line with the modern worldview, will enable Christians to keep the tradition alive.

Patterns of Stoicism in Thought and Prose Styles, 1530–1700

PMLA ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 85 (5) ◽  
pp. 1023-1034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Earl Miner
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
History Of ◽  
De Officiis

Numerous writings (especially by Morris W. Croll and George Williamson) have propounded the theory that a late sixteenth-century revival of Stoicism marked English thought and prose styles, replacing Cicero in popularity, that such Stoicism came to a climax in the period from about 1580 to 1630, and that Stoicism waned thereafter in the seventeenth century. The theory is disproved by the pattern of English publication of Stoic and neo-Stoic writers, and Cicero between 1530 and 1700. The important Stoic writers were more popular in the Restoration than before and little popular in the period from 1580 to 1630. Scholars of English literature have been misled by possible continental developments behind which England lagged and by insufficient exactness in understanding classical writers and thought. Seneca's style is said to be Asiatic rather than Attic, and Cicero is Stoic in such works as De Officiis. This one Ciceronian work was more popular in England than the total canon of Seneca. The evidence shows that an altogether new account is required for the history of neo-Stoicism in English thought and prose style, as well as of the development of English prose styles.

The Use and Misuse of Religious Language: Zionism and the Palestinians

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wetherell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Title Deed ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Question

Every discipline which deals with the land question in Canaan-Palestine-Israel is afflicted by the problem of specialisation. The political scientist and historian usually discuss the issue of land in Israel purely in terms of interethnic and international relations, biblical scholars concentrate on the historical and archaeological question with virtually no reference to ethics, and scholars of human rights usually evade the question of God. What follows is an attempt, through theology and political history, to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine land question in a way which respects the complexity of the question. From a scrutiny of the language used in the Bible to the development of political Zionism from the late 19th century it is possible to see the way in which a secular movement mobilised the figurative language of religion into a literal ‘title deed’ to the land of Palestine signed by God.

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