Storied Identity

In this paper, I explore two ways of understanding the moral and spiritual significance of stories, and in turn two ways of developing the notion of storied identity, and hence two ways of reading the Bible. I propose that these two approaches to the biblical text provide the basis for a fruitful interpretation of the Christian rite of the Eucharist, so that, to this extent, we can take the Eucharist to support these ways of drawing out the sense of the text. Accordingly, we can speak of reading the Bible eucharistically. The aim of the paper is not to substantially explain central features of the Eucharist as it has been understood in mainstream Christian teaching but, more modestly, to consider how these two ways of approaching the biblical text may help to bring some aspects of the rite, as depicted in Christian thought, into rather clearer focus, including its social dimension, and the relationship, on the Christian understanding, between the divine presence in the Incarnation and in the Eucharist.

A Literature Review on Ubuntu Concept as a Panacea for African Ecclesiology: A Case Study of Harvest Revival Ministry Churches in Kenya

The study seeks to examine the approaches taken currently with regard to scholarship on ecclesiology from the patristic era, the medieval era to that of the reformation and beyond. The study evaluates the various ecclesiological approaches of various confessional traditions that have defined ecclesiology over time. In progression, the study examines contextual ecclesiologies with a focus on three specific cultural geographical environments of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is because of the significance that these regions play in the current global shift within Christendom. African ecclesiology has been the centre of focus in an attempt to link all the discussed ecclesiologies with the African Christian thought. The study intends to review the Ubuntu concept and to capture the concept of the humanness of people in the African setting. The study intends to expose the gap in the literature demonstrating that the African conceptual framework can indeed be of use in articulating theology relevant to the African world. The study was keen to evaluate the contribution towards the development and construction of an African ecclesiology using the Ubuntu concept as a remedy to solve ecclesiological problems witnessed in Africa.

Imaginary Controversists: Abraham Gómez Silveyra and the Theologians of the Huguenot Exile

In the Huguenot refugee community in The Netherlands, known as a hotbed of the early Enlightenment, literary interest in Judaism was ubiquitous, yet actual Dutch Jews were relegated to a marginal position in the exchange of ideas. It is this paradoxical experience of cultural participation and social exclusion that a major unpublished source allows to depict. The ex-converso Abraham Gómez Silveyra (1651–1741), a merchant endowed with rabbinic education and proficiency in French, composed eight manuscript volumes of theological reflections in Spanish literary prose and poetry. This huge clandestine series, which survives in three copies, shows the author’s insatiable curiosity for Christian thought. While rebutting Isaac Jacquelot’s missionary activity, he fraternizes with Pierre Jurieu’s millenarianism, Jacques Basnage’s historiography, and Pierre Bayle’s plea for religious freedom. Gómez Silveyra, however, being painfully aware of his voicelessness in the public sphere, enacts Bayle’s utopian project as a closed performance for a Jewish audience.

Zhou Zuoren’s “Human Literature” View and Christianity: An Encounter and Departure

Zhou Zuoren’s “Human Literature” view which was raised by Zhou before and after “May 4th” Movement, was influenced by Christianity and therefore had a scent of “humanitarian love”. Zhou Zuoren was then dazzled by humanitarian love, but there was still a distance between his thought and Christian thought. This article aims at a discussion about the distance in the spirit of Zhou Zuoren’s “Human Literature” view and Christian humanitarianism which is represented by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and about the reasons for Zhou’s departure from the education of the masses.

Quintilian in Late Antiquity

This chapter provides a complete survey of the reception of Quintilian in late Antiquity. A brief note on the general literature and research tools available for the study of this vast topic, and on the key testimonies from the fourth until the seventh century, highlighting Quintilian’s fame as teacher of rhetoric and author of the Institutio and the Declamationes, is followed by a discussion of the influence of the Institutio on Christian education and on Christian thought, notably on Jerome, Lactantius, Hilary of Poitiers, Tyconius, Orosius, and Cassiodorus. Quintilian’s importance for the history of grammar is difficult to determine, but similarities between the grammatical chapters of the Institutio and the grammatical treatises of late Antiquity suggest that there may have been some direct influence. Donatus never cites Quintilian, while other grammarians such as Priscian, Diomedes, and Rufinus occasionally mention him or clearly make use of the Institutio. The influence of the Institutio on the so-called Minor Latin Rhetoricians is difficult to prove, but it is clear that the summaries, compilations, specialized monographs, and commentaries which form the substance of the rhetorical tradition in late Antiquity define themselves in one way or another by their relation to the Institutio. There was also some influence of the Institutio on the encyclopaedists Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, and Isidorus. It was also in late Antiquity that the collections of Major Declamations and Minor Declamations were ascribed to Quintilian.

Stworzenie z niczego, czyli słów kilka o monografii Jacka Zielińskiego „Koncepcja creatio ex nihilo w myśli Apologetów greckich II wieku”

The monograph of Jacek Zieliński, The Concept of Creatio ex Nihilo in the Thought of the Greek Apologists of the 2nd century, published by Wroclaw’s Atut in 2013, discusses an important problem of the theory of creation from nothing. It also asks an important question, how far the elements of the concept, articulated in its final form only by Augustine of Hippo can be found in the writings of the Christian apologists of the 2nd century. It is an important question, especially that the Bible in its canonical form, the early extra-biblical Jewish literature or – even more – Greek tradition does not unambiguously advocate the concept creatio ex nihilo. Hence the question how, when and why the concept was articulated, since it played such an important role in the Christian thought of later centuries. In addition, the book of Jacek Zielinski is important in Polish market, because there are only a few serious publications dealing with the issue. The article gives a description and short analysis of the book, pinpointing its strong sights and showing areas, which could be strengthened in this and — hopefully — following publications on creatio ex nihilo by Jacek Zieliński.

José María Rivas Groot: un acercamiento a la dimensión pragmática de su narrativa breve en «Rocinante» y «Día de inocentes»

José María Rivas Groot: an Approach to the Pragmatic Dimension of his Short Stories in «Rocinante» and «Día de inocentes». Having a multiform intellect, José María Rivas Groot (Bogotá, 1863-Rome, 1923) stood out as a public figure and a man of letters. Acting director of the National Library, senator, minister of state, plenipotentiary minister of Colombia to the Holy See, journalist, editor and writer, vocation this latter forged in the family bosom and in which his conservative and Christian thought, defender of tradition, is manifested. His intellectual production covers a wide variety of literary genres: poetry, novel, short stories, theater and historical essays, among others. Although his short stories have remained, in a way, on the sidelines of anthologies and studies, it is a faithful testimony of his style and thought, in a time of turmoil, affected by strong social and political transformations, framed by the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. Through two of his short stories classified as unpublished, Rocinante and Día de inocentes, this article offers an approach to his short stories from a pragmatic perspective with the purpose of revealing its meaning and intentional value, in which transtextuality, symbolism and irony are resources to which he turns, as a faithful representative of the lettered city, to express his position in the face of circumstances, behaviors and attitudes typical of his space -time, which remain in force until today.

What Christianity?

This chapter teases out many strands of Christian thought that inform the “Christian perspective” these curricula bring to bear in narrating history. It contends that they are unequivocally but narrowly Protestant. They reflect fundamental tenets of Martin Luther and John Calvin but incorporate facets of evangelicalism’s history from the eighteenth-century First Great Awakening to the present. Although the publishers do not acknowledge it, their understanding of “Christian” reflects every important evolution of evangelicalism and the battles fought both within that tradition and with external foes. The chapter highlights the broad variety of religious ideas contributing to these curricula’s undifferentiated “Christianity,” including providentialism, millennialism, and fundamentalism as well as narrower, minority religious views, notably dispensationalism, dominionism, and Christian Reconstructionism. These minority views were influential in shaping the contemporary alliance of the religious and political right.