Theology and Visual Culture in Early Modern Calvinism

Recent scholarship on the arts and the Reformation has come to focus more broadly on the cultural reconstruction the Reformation made necessary and the resulting material and visual culture. Calvin’s challenge in Geneva was not about what the Reformation had left behind but what would replace that medieval world. Key for Calvin was the experience of worship: the oral performance of the sermon, the singing of Psalms and partaking the sacraments, as a dramatic call enabled by the Holy Spirit summoning worshippers to a vision of God and God’s presence in the world. The regular communal worship and the preached drama of sin and salvation constituted the aesthetic-dramatic mirror (Turner) of the emerging Protestant imagination. This encouraged a mutual caring for the needy but also carried deep aesthetic implications. In the Netherlands this imagination is evident in the placement of textualized images in churches, and in landscape paintings and portraits, and, in France, it stimulated Huguenot architects to recover classical orders in the service of restoring to the earth its Edenic beauty.

Michael Psellos’ Theologica I.30 and the Byzantine Interpretations of Scala Paradisi XXVII/2.13

"The article examines the exegesis of Michael Psellos on the most mysterious of the “difficult places” of the Ladder by John of Sinai — Step XXVІІ/2.13. This interpretation is one of the so-called Theologica treatises (Theol. I.30). It differs significantly from the rest of the Byzantine explanations of this “difficult place”. Michael Psellos decisively rejects the Christological interpretation of the “vision” and the questions of St. John. He also develops the doctrine of the accessibility to a human in present life of the vision of God in “symbols” and “forms” only. Higher contemplations are linked to the degree of detachment of the soul from the body. Unlike Michael Psellos, other interpreters, firstly, pay more attention to the context in which the chapter of the Ladder in question is located, secondly, they mostly prefer a Christological interpretation of St. John’s questions to the unknown interlocutor, thirdly, they ask themselves who this interlocutor was, an angel or Christ Himself. One of the anonymous Byzantine commentaries convincingly defends the point of view according to which John Climacus talked with Christ. This paper analyses all the extensive interpretations of the difficult passage, and on the basis of the handwritten tradition, draws the conclusion that the exegesis of Michael Psellos had much circulation in Byzantium along with other conceptions of the mysterious chapter. In addition, there has been noted the reception of Psellos’s interpretation in the first Slavic edition of the Ladder in 1647. Appendices I and II contain the edition of the Greek text of an anonymous Scholium and a fragment from the commentary by Elias of Crete respectively. Keywords: Michael Psellos, Theologica, John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, Photius of Constantinople, Elias of Crete, byzantine commentaries, Church Slavonic translation. "

Eschatology and Revelation

A systematic study of Christian ‘revelation’ commonly involves a distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ revelation, which derive respectively from the created world through which God acts and speaks, and from God’s personal word and action culminating in the teaching, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This chapter attempts to show that this binomial stands in need of a third category, in order to fully understand Christian revelation. The category in question is eschatology, without which revelation would be incomplete and ultimately incoherent. In the first part of the chapter an attempt is made to justify the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ revelation on anthropological grounds. The second part goes on to explain the richness of the notion of revelation in terms of five different models which refer to the complex process by which revelation impinges on humans as the latter attempt to assimilate and identify with God’s word and grace: the propositional, the historical, inner experience, dialectic presence, and new awareness. All five models point directly or indirectly to the needed eschatological complement of revelation. Finally, the third section presents different aspects of Christian eschatology in which God is revealed to humanity definitively, ‘face to face’: the Parousia, or final coming of Jesus Christ at the end of time; the resurrection of the dead with the new heavens and the new earth; general judgement as God’s final word; all of which take place in the power of the Holy Spirit; then, heavenly glory as the eternal vision of God, or its possible loss; lastly, the significance of the end-time signs.

The Bhagavad Gita and the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

The Bhagavad Gita like the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola leading to spiritual enrichment points out of a meeting of heart and mind between two texts. The essence of the spirituality of the Bhagavad Gita, like the spirituality of Ignatius is the vision of God. Its spirituality is oriented towards God above the world as well as within it. Both texts offer a parallel insight for deep and authentic happiness building up a life towards God and in God. Even though the Bhagavad Gita and the Spiritual Exercises play different qualitative rolls in its own traditions, both agree that only those who have God above the visible world are able to experience God vice-versa. The quest to have God experience is an exercise involving conscious effort and constant attentiveness.

Medicine

From the outset of his career as a writer Dante demonstrated a profound and not at all predictable expertise in the medical field, particularly when it came to the physiology of the human body, and especially with respect to the pathologies linked to amorous passion. This study argues that it was precisely on this physiological and scientific foundation related to the humoral complexion of a person that Dante, beginning with the Vita Nuova, built his intellectual self-portrait. We encounter here an evolving yet coherent self-portrait of a visionary poet-figure, with physical and psychological characteristics that over time were ever more clearly identified as specifically prophetic, so much so that they were featured as assets in his journey through the afterlife and his final vision of God. In this way, Dante’s own authorial path appears unified under the aegis of a certain ‘humoral determinism’.

HERMENEUTICS OF DANTE’S INTERPRETATION OF HAPPINESS AS A CONCEPT OF GOOD

The basis of human nature according to Dante is natural inclination, love to good (Aristotelianism, Thomism). God is the highest blessing but some souls are deceived and choose to love the created world, such love can be broken and become a false love, a sin when either the measure or the choice of worthful goal the object of this love is violated. Thus it becomes a transgression punished in Purgatory or a sin punished in Hell. The crucial thing in person's life is a vision of God. In this respect Dante is a Thomist. It is also important to see Comedy as a kind of model of the universe, Dante embodies mathematical, philosophical, Christological, astrological, numerological and other views in it Keywords: Dante, Thomism, hermeneutics, philosophy of happiness, philosophy of culture