Conclusion

This chapter discusses the trend among Roman Catholics to emphasize being “American Catholics” rather than “Catholic Americans” with emphasis on the adjective modifying the noun. It looks at David Gelertner's proposal that Americanism itself was the fourth biblical religion. It also mentions Michael Novak and George Weigel, who were responsible for an unprecedented rise in public religiosity in the United States. The chapter explores the synthesis of modern politics and conservative Roman Catholicism and neo-Americanism that became unsustainable in the first decade of the new century. It describes the Fortnight for Freedom, an annual program that became a vehicle of protest and voice of neo-Americanism.

Ritual Theology in/and Biblical Theology

Ritual is an integral part of the human experience and represents also a significant element of biblical religion. This chapter explores the important link between ritual and biblical theology, highlighting its role as a vehicle for communicating complex concepts related to worship, community, and “knowing” God. Rituals are often triggered by emotions and also generate an emotive response. They can abbreviate, emphasize, expand, critique, and innovate. Ancient ritual activity is not only expressed in texts but also in images, challenging the reader and observer to “make sense” of the world and God’s role in this world. Finally, since ritual appears in texts and traditions of most religious communities (including also the three Abrahamic faiths), it can function as a link and an invitation to dialogue about “rival tellings.”

Foreshadowing Spinoza

This paper examines two interpretations of a passage in Descartes’s text. Johannes Clauberg and Benedict Spinoza comment on the same paragraph in the Principles of Philosophy (1646). Descartes, in the paragraph, argues that the same amount of motion remains in the universe because of God’s immutable essence and operation. On the one hand, Clauberg embraces Descartes’s physics in general but modifies it to suit the theological tradition of the Reformed church, which held the official confession for where his professional career mattered. Spinoza, on the other hand, gets rid of all traces of the biblical religion from Descartes’s physics. While particular theological (or anti-theological) positions of these thinkers dictate their interpretations of Descartes’s text, their solutions are surprisingly similar.

America, Biblical Religion, and Covenantalism

Steven D. Smith’s Pagans and Christians in the City is an important and unique contribution to the vast literature on the American culture war. Smith’s distinction between immanent and transcendent religion refines and deepens James Davidson Hunter’s famous analysis of this conflict. As illuminating as this volume is, however, it fails to fully appreciate the religious dimension of the American founding. Specifically, Smith does not acknowledge or account for the covenantal nature of the American founding, and thus does not recognize the full degree to which the American experiment was informed by the transcendent religions of the Western world, namely, Judaism and Christianity.

Karl Jaspers’ Conception of the Axial Age and the Idea of Paradigmatic Individuals

This essay analyzes Karl Jaspers’ conception of the Axial Age and the comparative idea of paradigmatic individuals (Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus) among other relevant ideas (philosophical faith, biblical religion) in the light of post-secularity. The special focus is laid on the post-war situation in Western Europe which was one of the main factors of the formation of the aforementioned conceptions and ideas. The disaster which was brought by uncontrolled nationalism in Germany forced Jaspers to rethink the crisis of humanism after World War II. Using a comparative method Jaspers seeks a unity of human spirit and with this gesture his thinking appears to be a desire to have a foundation for the common being of contemporary society. Jaspers’ interpretation of paradigmatic individuals stimulated future research on comparative civilizational philosophies.

Covenant Relation as Prolegomena to Knowledge of God: An Exegetical Study of John 5

Summary The classical view of the Creator-creature relation conveys ontological asymmetry by affirming a real creature-Creator relation and a rational Creator-creature relation. But the hermeneutical implications of this view obscure the Creator-creature symmetry of biblical religion. In this article I propose a real covenant relation as a divine initiative establishing a relation within which Creator-creature intercourse is possible, actual, and real. I defend the notion of real covenant relation through a study of John 5, and I develop it theologically with reference to Reformed biblical and covenant theology. A real covenant relation preserves ontological asymmetry, vindicates religious symmetry, and affirms rather than obscures the anthropomorphic tenor of biblical revelation.

Introduction

At one time, God was a bird. But it is said that Christianity evolved away from its animocentric origins in order to defend a pure form of monotheism. This narrative, however, misses the startling scriptural portrayals of God as the beaked and feathered Holy Spirit—the third member of the Trinity who is the “animal God” of historic Christian witness. Appearing as a winged creature at the time of Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:21-22), the bird-God of the New Testament signals the deep grounding of biblical faith in the natural world. The Introduction calls this perspective “Christian animism” in order to signal the dialectical relationship between biblical religion and the beliefs of indigenous communities that Spirit enfleshes itself within all beings on Earth. It argues that all things are alive with sacred personhood and worthy of human beings’ love and protection in a time of massive environmental devastation.