Christ’s Seer Office in the South Sudanese Context

Christ's Seer Office (CSO) has a hotchpotch of controversies encompassing it. Among these polemical trajectories that obtains in these controversies is the African’s prophetic office. This is certainly due to the close parallelism that CSO matches the prophetic office of Christ. In the South Sudanese context, some African communities view Christ as a magician, medicine practitioner, or a traditional healer. This misconception should not be taken lightly. It needs a deeper introspection from the African Christian theologians, as the concerned communities may abandon the church and revert to their ancestral shrines for worship. The Nuer in South Sudan has embraced prophet Ngundeng as their Christ just because of some similarities that exist between Christ’s Seer Office and Ngundeng. This article fully reconnoitered the two prophetic offices by comparing them by using the principle of Nexus mysteriorum and Analogia entis to enhance the Nuer understanding of Christ. In its findings, this article reveals Christ as a prophet; the whom all the Old Testament prophets prefigured in their speeches and actions. Moreover, the study concluded that Jesus is Nuer’s Ngundeng par excellence.

Az ember istenképűsége, mint létanalógia

"The Imago Dei as an Interpretation of the Analogy of Being. Regular theological examination of human nature seems to be the exploding germ of a longer reflection and analysis. My expectations of this study, and hopefully also of the following ones, is that the crisis and uncertainty into which our churches have drifted can (and should) be the subject of theological inquiry. If we keep our study in the right trajectory, then, hopefully, a new light will be shed on the practical aspects of our church life as well. We need to show the world that the God we believe in has remained an active and immanent force in human lives and that there is a reason for a pure, diverse, and substantial unity of the world and existence. This monotheism, however, must be polar, in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have their place as elements of analogy in the interaction of which the beauty and efficiency of service can be renewed and given a new meaning. This analysis implies a simultaneous two-way approach. On the one hand, it should be a God-centred approach that simultaneously embraces the realities of the horizontal world, and, on the other hand, in the vertical-horizontal pattern, it leaves room for a contemporary interpretation of the concept of analogia entis. I am aware that there has been an attempt to do this in the twentieth century. The reference to the dialogue between Karl Barth and Urs von Balthasar could serve as a good example of a fruitful conversation for the benefit of our spiritual and institutional lives. Together with Barth, the other “dialectical” theologian hoped and opened their dialogue in the hope of a “true rebirth of Protestantism”. The dialogues of the last century therefore must be the driving force behind the dialogues of today. Keywords: ecclesiology, relational theology, individuality, contextuality, God’s immanence- transcendence "

“Se non scritto, almen dipinto”: The ethos of becoming in Purgatorio 28–33

A central question facing the reader of the Paradiso terrestre (Pg 28–33) concerns the selfhood of the protagonist, the character Dante. While the state of Dante’s soul was critical to the poem’s beginning in the dark wood, and remained implicit through the intervening cantos, it is only in the Paradiso terrestre that it becomes the poem’s central focus. This question is explored in cognitive and theological terms in a sequential reading of the six cantos that elucidates the learning process occurring in the character before and after his confession in Pg 31: in his encounter with Matelda, his sensory and perceptual experience of the procession, his dialogues with Beatrice, and his witnessing of her divine beauty as the analogia entis reflecting the beauty of God. The analysis acknowledges the changes in Dante’s style in this interval, which serves as a fulcrum of the entire Commedia, a spatio-temporal threshold in which the transition of one soul, from confession to redemption to instruction on the divine word, is linked to the destiny of humankind and the prospect of universal salvation. Throughout this process of becoming, the character’s cognitive limitations are exposed, not simply as flaws but as signs of his intrinsic humanity.

The God of the Covenant: Karl Barth on Creation Care

This article seeks to explore the identity of the Creator God in Karl Barth’s doctrine of creation. Attention is given to his understanding of the eternal covenant God has made with humanity and how we are cared for within a covenantal fellowship. The study also concerns itself with how Barth’s distaste for the notion of analogia entis is somewhat unsustained in his treatment of creation. I argue that, to some extent, the analogy of being vis-à-vis the cosmos is complementarily employed with analogia fides in Barth’s articulation of creation care. This is the case as he reconfigures the talk on creation rigidly in and through Jesus Christ as Creator and creature.

Identity, Denomination and Nationality

"Identity pins down accurately who individuals are in relation to God, society, and themselves. God’s statement about Himself (His self-identity) in the Bible “I am who I am” can guide us to find our own “I am who I am”, definitely taking into account the analogia relationis rather than the analogia entis. The constant domi-nant of our human identity as God’s identity as well is that we stay humans despite all circumstances, but its features (“our qualities”) are variable. We are only interested in two of the many identity features: our denomination and our Hungarian ethnici-ty, which are “only” features, but as such they have been decisive. In the 20th centu-ry, we, as Reformed Protestants and Hungarians, got under the burden of the polit-ical and ecclesiastical consequences of the two world wars. Our faith required that the church and the Hungarians did not lose their identity features from the per-spective of the communities and individuals. During the interwar period (1920–1944) and during the totalitarian regime (1945–1989), we, Transylvanian Re-formed Protestants, had one single duty to fulfil: clarify our relationship vis-à-vis the political authority in such a way as to remain disciples and a disciple church without which we are not the ones who we must be. In his prayer, Jesus does not ask the Fa-ther to take all of his followers out of this world (meaning society) but rather to de-fend them from evil (John 17:15). How can we fulfil it? Our yes/no answer is the issue of gratitude towards God and penitence before Him. Keywords: the content of identity, energy of the protective spirit, dominant church, non-democratic church, valve system."

O discurso sobre Deus na Analogia Entis e a contemplação como linguagem na teologia da cruz

O presente artigo se debruça sobre os limites do que é possível dizer sobre a identidade e os predicados de Deus em linguagem humana. Afirma a contribuição do discurso analógico sobre Deus, tomando como exemplo a analogia entis de Tomás de Aquino, para expressar certa proporcionalidade do Criador com suas criaturas. Ao mesmo tempo apresenta alguns de seus limites para dizer sobre a identidade mais profunda de Deus, inefável em si mesmo, mas revelado de modo todo próprio a partir da linguagem da teologia da cruz, marcada pela contemplação e pelo silêncio que comunica. Contribuirá nesse percurso a análise de textos de síntese sobre a analogia entis e argumentações advindas de dois autores vinculados à teologia da cruz: Moltmann e Edith Stein. Afirmamos que o dado revelado por Deus e captado a partir da racionalidade humana precisa ser conjugado com o dado revelado na cruz para tocar a identidade de Deus. Na primeira parte discorre sobre a teologia como discurso sobre Deus e volta-se para a analogia entis, passando em seguida a versar sobre a linguagem da teologia da cruz. Por fim, realiza-se uma síntese estabelecendo alguns dos limites da própria linguagem, da teologia ocidental clássica e a complementariedade da teologia da cruz.