scholarly journals Den grundtvigske arv: Christian Hostrup som prædikant med særligt blik på de grundtvigske elementer

1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 260-292
Author(s):  
Christian Thodberg

The Grundtvig Heritage: Christian Hostrup as Preacher, with a Special Consideration of the Grundtvig Elements in his Sermonsby Christian ThodbergJens Christian Hostrup (1818-92) was one of Grundtvig’s most important heirs. Hostrup drew nearer to Christianity and to Grundtvig as a result, amongst other things, of the attack which Søren Kierkegaard launched on the official Church in the 1850’s. It was for this reason that in particular the sermon aimed at saving souls and formulated in simple language became a characteristic of Hostrup as a preacher. He did not take holy orders until he was a man of mature years with a praiseworthy career as a playwright behind him. Hostrup takes over Grundtvig’s words and concepts but attributes a different meaning to them. The renunciation of the devil and the creed, for example, were to Grundtvig a message with a personal address by virtue of the interrogative form used in the baptism ritual, but for Hostrup the renunciation and the creed in the form in general use become a minimum demand on the tempted believer. Above all he emphasizes a personal awareness of the relationship with God. Whereas Grundtvig returned to baptism and dramatically relived it, baptism for Hostrup is to be supplemented by a growing awareness in the mature Christian.Most instructive is the relationship between Grundtvig and Hostrup as analysed in their use of the word heart. For Grundtvig heart is often used in conjunction with mouth, tongue, word and ear. This pattern stresses man’s extrovert nature towards God and his fellow man. Thus for Grundtvig the heart is the subject of a series of distinctive verbs of experience, emphasizing the image of God and its dynamic character in the heart. It is different with Hostrup; for him the heart becomes exclusively the seat of religious awareness.Attention is centred to a great degree on the heart’s feelings that the truth and the power in God’s Word can only be received through the heart’s sensitivity, through its desire and its aspiration. The heart is thus made independent, but becomes at the same times an expression of man’s loneliness: man can go only so far as the heart will allow. Thus for Hostrup the heart is almost static, in contrast to the dynamic character it had for Grundtvig as a mirror of God’s love - as an ear and a sounding-broard for God’s word.With its background in a structuralist examination of Grundtvig’s words and concepts in the present book the paper proves that a corresponding examination of the words and concepts of one of Grundtvig’s heirs gives a precise specifi308 cation of the characteristic differences. In Grundtvig and Hostrup we find the same words and concepts, but the patterns into which they fit are different. A structuralist analysis is therefore useful for an investigation into what happens when a tradition is handed on and taken over.

Paragrana ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Gérard Colas

AbstractDiscussions on the nature of the relationship between a god, his body and his material representation are almost non-existent in the Hindu devotional perspective, where such concerns are superfluous. Hindu theological and ritual Sanskrit texts, on the other hand, applied procedures of reasoning with regard to that relationship. This rationalization however accommodated rather than conflicted with the devotional attitude. Their attempt to clarify their stand vis-à-vis god′s body and material image followed from ideological or technical requirements. This was done sometimes systematically, as in the Viśiṣṭādvaita school of philosophy where the ritual image is declared to be “a divine descent (of God) for the purpose of worship”; sometimes incidentally, as in ritual manuals, where the process of changing statues into divine bodies is described.But why should gods have a body at all? While some contend that they do not possess any body, others assert that they possess several at the same time, yet others infer the necessity of a body for God to create the universe, to reveal sacred texts, etc. These are some arguments and counter-arguments found in theological texts. The nature of the hierarchy between divine descents and images (which may or may not be considered as real bodies of gods) is another aspect of the discussion.Another question is the various ways in which ritual texts consider the relation between a god and his image. While immediacy characterizes the relation between the devotee and the image of god, the relation between ritual and image is far from being spontaneous. Rituals insure the presence of a god in an image through a technico-mystical process consisting of successive stages and involving patrons, astrologers, artists, priests and others. The final product, namely a concrete god-cum-image, is fit for devotion, but remains for ever fragile, dependent on the continuity of rites and on the material preservation of the image. Behind the ritual perspective also lies the notion that this process of creating a body for a god is in keeping with “natural” laws. Hindu ritual prescriptions are applicable only to the religious images which, though man-made, are considered as “natural”. Supra-natural divine images, known as “self-manifested” images, must be worshiped, but are beyond the range of these prescriptions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riaan Rheeder

God did not create once and then put an end to it. Testimony from Scripture shows that God continuously establishes or creates new things. Humans can therefore expect to always see and experience new things in creation. With this pattern of reasoning, one can anticipate that the human being as image of God will continuously establish new things in history. Although nature has value, it does not have absolute value and therefore it can be synthesised responsibly. The thought that humans are stewards of God is no longer adequate to, theologically put into words, the relationship human beings have with nature. New biotechnological developments ask for different answers from Scripture. Several ethicists are of the opinion that the theological construction of humans and created co-creators can help found the relationship of the human being to nature. Humans developed as God’s image evolutionary. On the one hand, this means humans themselves are a product of nature. On the other hand, the fact that humans are the image of God is also an ethical call that humans, like God, have to develop and create new things throughout history. Synthetic biology can be evaluated as technology that is possible, because humans are the image of God. However, it should, without a doubt, be executed responsibly.Sintetiese biologie eties geëvalueer: Die skeppende God en medeskeppende mens. God het nie net eenmaal geskep en daar gestop nie. Uit Skrifgetuienisse kan afgelei word dat God voortdurend nuwe dinge tot stand bring of skep. Daarom kan die mens verwag om gedurig nuwe dinge in die skepping te sien en te beleef. Hiermee saam kan verwag word dat die mens as beeld van God voortdurend nuwe dinge in die geskiedenis tot stand sal bring. Alhoewel die natuur waarde het, het dit nie absolute waarde nie en kan dus verantwoordelik gesintetiseer word. Die gedagte dat die mens rentmeester van God is, is nie meer voldoende om die mens se verhouding tot die natuur teologies te verwoord nie. Nuwe biotegnologiese ontwikkelinge vra na ander antwoorde vanuit die Skrif. Verskeie etici is van mening dat die teologiese konstruksie van die mens as geskepte medeskepper kan help om die mens se verhouding tot die natuur te begrond. Die mens het deur ’n evolusionêre proses tot God se beeld ontwikkel. Aan die een kant beteken dit dat die mens self ’n produk van die natuur is. Aan die ander kant is beeldskap ook ’n etiese oproep dat die mens, soos God, nuwe dinge in die geskiedenis moet ontwikkel en skep. Sintetiese biologie kan gesien word as tegnologie wat moontlik is omdat die mens na die beeld van God geskape is. Sonder twyfel moet sintetiese biologie egter verantwoordelik beoefen word.


2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leepo J. Modise

The image of God has been vandalised by racism in South Africa, which it is argued is a sin. It is an ecclesiological responsibility to address the vandalised image of God in South Africa. The author will argue from the human relationship as a build-up to the Theanthropocosmic principle. This principle denotes the relationship between God (theos) the human being (anthropos) and the physical-organic environment (cosmos). For addressing this responsibility, the grounds of internal racism are exposed using a philosophical interpretation. According to the author, there is a correlation between sin and racism. The latter is viewed as multidimensional from a Theanthropocosmic perspective.The theoretical framework will be within hamartiology and soteriology. The philosophical interpretation will be utilised to broaden the understanding of the theological problem of the vandalised image of God.


2021 ◽  
pp. 14-39
Author(s):  
Leyla Ozgur Alhassen

Examining the entire story in verses 3:33–62, this chapter shows that the Qur’ānic narrative style serves to embody the image of God the narrator as being omnipotent and omniscient. In this chapter, the focus is on the literary themes of knowledge, control and consonance, as a means to look at the relationship that the narrator develops between God, the audience and the text. The first section of this chapter focuses on God’s withholding of knowledge, the second section on God’s withholding of control, and finally, God’s creating consonance. All of the parts of the story in Sūrat Āl ‘Imrān work towards putting the readers and even the characters in their place by emphasizing God’s knowledge and control and the readers’ and characters’ deficiency in both. At the same time, the story comforts people by developing consonance between the reader and the characters and even the reader and God, while also providing echoes that signal to the audience that they can understand more of the story if they read more of it in other places in the Qur’ān, thus developing consonance between the reader and the story.


2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Brandstetter

Animals have provided a theme and a model for movements in dance from time immemorial. But what image of man do danced animal portrayals reflect? What questions of human identity and crisis do they reveal? Do the bodies of animals provide symbolic material for the ethical, political, and aesthetic questions raised by man's mastery of nature?The exploration of the boundary between man and animal—in myths and sagas, in the earliest records of ritual and art, and in the history of knowledge—is part of the great nature-versus-nurture debate. In the Bible the relationship is clear: Adam, made in the image of God, gives the animals in Paradise their names. In this way he rules over them—but Thomas Aquinas's commentary on this biblical text makes clear that the act of naming animals in Paradise is a step toward man's experiential self-discovery. Since then the hierarchy seems to be beyond doubt.Homo sapien, as theanimal significans, is distinguished from other animals by his ability to speak, his upright gait, the use of his hands, and the capacity to use instruments and media—man as what Sigmund Freud called the “prosthetic god” (1966, 44).


2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Van Eck

This article pays tribute to the contribution made by Yolanda Dreyer regarding critique on the prevalence of patriarchy in society, as well as her defence of homosexuality as a normal sexual orientation. Taking as point of departure her work on the woman as created in God’s image, it is argued that understanding the metaphor ‘created in God’s image’ as referring to rule over all, and not as created as man and woman, has important implications for the relationship between man and woman, as well as the normalisation of relationships between the same sex.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 185-197
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Nocoń

One of the principal ideas in oriental anthropology is that of the divinization of man. The author studies this idea in John Cassian and draws the conclusion that not only was it known to Cassian, but indeed it is the filter through which he views the question of grace. The author arrives at this conclusion, above all, by underlin­ing oriental monasticism as the original context of the theology of divinization. Cassian was trained as a theologian and monk in this very ambience. All of the elements of the concept of divinization are present in the writings of Cassian and the two biblical models for the qšwsij of man – its creation of man in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1: 26-27) and the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Mt 17: 1-8; Mc 9: 2-8; Lc 9: 28-36) – are widely commented on by Cassian and form the basis of his theological and ascetical teaching. Cassian’s doctrine on grace, which is deeply penetrated by the concept of divinization, propounds the idea that, after original sin, the likeness of God in man is destroyed, but the image of God in man – reason, free will, and conscience – remains. The grace of God, perceived through the prism of divinization, in Cassian implies not a “resurrection” of the dead nature of man, but a strengthening of his relationship with God, a passage from the condition of “slave” to that of “friend”. This teaching, characterized as it is by a salvific optimism which is typically oriental, according to the author, should no longer be regarded as a form of semipelagianism. Rather, but with due qualification, it should be regarded as a valid and interesting way of speaking on the perennially difficult quaestio of the relationship between grace and free will.


1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-96
Author(s):  
Erik Krebs Jensen

The Heart as the Image of Godby Erik Krebs JensenThe image of God in the heart and the heart as the image of God are at one and the same time the divine and the truly human in man. Since the Creation the image of God has been hidden in the human heart, and in the course of history it will be illuminated more and more until at the end of history it will be completely revealed.The image of God is a riddle for man. By feeling and understanding, that is, receiving impressions of other images of God (in nature, in poetry or of Christ) the image of God in the heart can be illuminated. This meeting of images happens through the living interplay of the word between heart and heart. The word with God’s Spirit is an image of God - it is in fact Christ Himself in His resurrected form, speaking to man. This word must be heard audibly for it to make an impression on the heart so that the Spirit can touch it and move it. For the heart is created precisely in order to be open to spirit (both God’s and the Devil’s), and where the heart does not harden against it but is stirred by hearing God’s word, there the image of God in the heart’s core is revived, and this echoes in the mouth of man as a confession in a word of faith, hope or love. In this echo (an echo of God’s word) it is revealed to God and men and to man himself that he has adopted God’s word. Grundtvig puts it as strongly as this: God has reincarnated Himself. Every time a man hears God’s word, Jesus is reconceived, and He is reborn in the echoing word and thereby revealed to the world.This revelation of Christ in the word on the lips of men is an expression of God’s continuing creation and activity. God’s creative deed is always the same two-pronged action with one and the same result. At the Creation God made man out of clay and breathed His Spirit into him so that man could talk to God. In the fullness of time God made His power overshadow Mary and His Spirit descend upon Jesus, so that Jesus could talk to God on earth. (Jesus healed by touch and by speaking words). At baptism the sign of the cross is made and the child is baptized, thereby giving it the child’s right to pray, to confess and praise. Where God’s word touches the heart and the Spirit captivates the heart, and the heart responds with a “Yes and Amen!” as an echo of what it has heard, there God’s creative presence in the word is experienced. And in the heart’s core the image of God is illuminated by the Spirit through the meeting between God’s image and its imprint.


1986 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-10
Author(s):  
N. F. S. Grundtvig

Created in the Image of Goda little-known account of Grundtvig from 1814The creation of man in the image of God means according to Grundtvig that man is created with the purpose of resembling the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Man is therefore tripartite, comprising body, soul and spirit, equipped to feel, imagine, and apprehend. As Father, God cannot be truly imagined, since our images are limited by time and space. When man nevertheless sets out to imagine God, it is as Creator, according to the Bible as “the living word” – as the Son. The Holy Spirit then becomes the power that unites the Father and the Son. Grundtvig believes that man must be created with free will, “for otherwise there was something that did not obey Him”, that is, God - namely the human will.However, Grundtvig does not envisage the newly-created man as a perfect image of God, but rather as a healthy new-born baby is “fully-developed” - with the potential to become the perfect image of God. The Fall breaks off this development, occurring as it did because man abused his reason by doubting the truth of God’s word: “of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it,” for “thou shalt surely die.” Instead man believed the devil’s words, which were lies, and let his reason serve his desire. If we doubt that we participate in this sin, we will be convinced “when we realise how little abhorrence we have of such a fall.” This was pride, and this was how we lost our immediate communion with God.This account is found in the first volume of Grundtvig’s second World Chronicle, published in 1814. Only the one volume was published; it has never been reprinted, and is therefore little-known.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-234
Author(s):  
Naser Ahmadi ◽  
Faramarz Sohrabi ◽  
Bagher Ghobari Bonab ◽  
Esmaeil Azadi ◽  
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