Accountability, Autism and Friendship with God

David Shoemaker has argued that autistic persons cannot be held accountable and are not members of the moral community. Arguing against this conclusion, this article both corrects the view of autism contained in Shoemaker’s paper and resituates his theory of accountability within a Christian virtue ethic based on the gift of friendship. The call to be accountable to God for one’s life contains within it the gift of God’s friendship and does not require the capacity for empathy ( contra Shoemaker) or joint attention ( contra Pinsent) as a prerequisite. Instead, the inclusion of autistic people within the moral community created by the call of God highlights that accountability is a grace given for the flourishing of all persons.

In societatem filii eius: Predestination in/as Friendship with God in Thomas Aquinas

Summary This paper proposes a reading of Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of predestination as fundamentally oriented towards and realized in friendship with God. On this reading, the seemingly disparate questions, “What does it mean to be predestined?” and “What does it mean to grow in friendship with God?” are not only mutually illuminating but ultimately coterminous. In the first part of the paper, I contextualize this theological rapprochement by foregrounding Aquinas’ treatment in the Summa Theologiae of predestination as a Christocentric, communal reality, and by considering friendship with God as the end of Aquinas’ doctrine of grace. In the second part, I attend to Aquinas’ scriptural commentaries on Romans and the Gospel of John, in order to conduct a reading of predestination in/as friendship with God. Ultimately, as invited in friendship and adopted in grace into the life of Christ, God’s ordering of the rational creature to eternal life is nothing other than God’s ordering of humanity as viator to friendship with Himself in the inner life of Trinitarian love itself.

Jürgen Moltmann: Persahabatan Sebagai Antisipasi Kepenuhan Harapan

Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope enacts the idea of hope as the foundation of friendship. Those who want to live in a friendship should be open to each other, acknowledging that misapprehension and misunderstanding are possible in a friendship journey. To achieve the value of salvation in experiencing friendship, one needs to have the courage to turn or direct his/her vision to the experience of God. God Himself has experienced that His logging to reach man and have good relationship with His people is obstructed by man’s stubbornness to refuse His love. Jesus’ passion and death is the peak of man’s refusal to God’s plan of love. Similarly, the faithful is able to open his/her heart and direct his/her vision to his/her friends only. The openness of one’s heart has the character of inviting and waiting until the right time his/her friends have the courage to open themselves in a salvaging relationship. Until the time comes, for the faithful, the friendship with God is comforting and supporting in every failure and rejection. The task of every Christian is to facilitate and mend the relationship. Moltmannian’s hope shows that the relationship between God, the Eschatology, and hope, is manifested in a commitment to inclusivity; the ministry to those in need, environment concern, and faithfulness to those who are poor and marginalized.

Transforming Friendship: Thomas Aquinas on Charity as Friendship with God

This article argues that Thomas Aquinas’s definition of charity in the Summa Theologiae as ‘a kind of friendship’ represents a distinctive and theologically significant development of both the Aristotelian and the Christian monastic traditions on which he builds. By approaching his discussion of charity in the secunda secundae through the gateway of friendship, Thomas is able to characterize the spiritual vision of this portion of the Summa through a twofold movement of grace and participation. The shape of this twofold movement has an implicitly incarnational character, and thus points to the divine Subject of the Summa’s third and culminating volume. But the participatory aspect of this spiritual theology also reveals the indispensable role of the human person, and thus allows Thomas to offer a nuanced explanation of the ways that friendship with God relates to friendships with other human beings.

Conversion: Falling into Friendship Like No Other

In the context of contemporary vicissitudes, this article examines how Lonergan’s grasp of the meaning of redemption illuminates our understanding of Christian conversion. Lonergan’s Law of the Cross implies that the effectiveness of Christian conversion hinges on one’s antecedent willingness to undertake suffering for the sake of the transformation of evil into good. His analogies for Christ’s salvific work with the sacrament of reconciliation and with friendship further clarify the christomorphic, penitential, and community-building character of conversion, which proceeds from the total, transformative, and diffusive falling into friendship with God.