Amor e justiça: uma abordagem hermenêutica a partir da tradição cristã | Love and justice: an hermeneutical approach drawing from Christian tradition

O objetivo deste estudo é mostrar de que maneira o amor pode ser melhor integrado à prática da justiça. A hipótese deste trabalho, que possui como referencial teórico principal o filósofo francês Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), consiste na ideia de que o amor está associado à justiça pelos laços do desejo, ou seja, o amor exige a justiça. Entretanto, a dialética entre amor e justiça é caracterizada por um conflito e uma desproporção. Em resumo, na obra ricoeuriana, há uma conexão conflitiva entre amor e justiça, na qual o amor é colocado no âmbito da subjetividade e a justiça no contexto das leis ou normas. Frequentemente, Ricoeur vê o amor a partir do contexto da fé bíblica e consequentemente o amor é colocado em um nível transcendente, sendo governado pela lógica da superabundância. Já a justiça é explicitada a partir de um contexto estritamente humano, sob a ótica da lógica da equivalência. Por meio dessa dialética, Ricoeur afirma a desproporção inicial entre ambos os termos (amor e justiça) ao mesmo tempo em que busca mediações práticas entre eles. The objective of this study is to show how love can be better integrated into the practice of justice. The hypothesis of this work, which has the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) as its main theoretical framework, consists in the idea that love is associated with justice through the bonds of desire, that is, love requires justice. However, the dialectic between love and justice is characterized by conflict and disproportion. In summary, in the ricoeurian work there is a conflicting connection between love and justice, in which love is placed in the scope of subjectivity and justice in the context of laws or norms. Ricoeur often sees love from the context of biblical faith and consequently love is placed on a transcendent level, being governed by the logic of overabundance. Justice is explained from a strictly human context, from the perspective of the logic of equivalence. Through this dialectic, Ricoeur affirms the initial disproportion between both terms (love and justice) while looking for practical mediations between them.

Reviews

Summary <p content-type="flush left">This book deals with one of the most important focus points of Pannenberg’s theology, the relationship between the biblical faith in God as creator and sustainer of the world, and the modern scientific and philosophical understanding of the world. The eleven articles expand and discuss Pannenberg’s insistence on a deep-rooted connection between the biblical view of reality as something evolving over time and the latest scientific theories. This is done through discussions of subjects like space, time, contingency vs. laws of nature, field theory and evolution. The articles also show how much scientific insights inform Pannenberg’s theology.

’Lest I Make You a Tertullian’: Early Anabaptist Baptismal Narratives and Patristics

Anabaptists have long been thought to have been ‘biblicists’ and shunned reading patristic literature. But a close analysis of the debates Anabaptists had with Magisterial Reformers shows that the Anabaptists developed an extensive history of baptism using church fathers. They attempted to show that adult baptism was the norm in the earliest centuries of the church and that infant baptism was the innovation away from the Bible. This debate was about who had inherited the biblical faith around baptism.

Toward a Theology of Cosmic Hope: From Theo-anthropology to Theo-cosmology

Summary This article seeks to lay a more solid foundation for the contemporary paradigm shift in the Christian theological thinking – that is, from theo-anthropology to theo-cosmology. In the new paradigm cosmic hope for the completion of the trinitarian project of creation, instead of human redemption from sin and death, comes to the fore as the most comprehensive horizon of Christian thinking. For this purpose the author reconstructs the underlying logic of the biblical faith in a narrative form from creation to eschatology.

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.

When God Was a Bird

At one time, God was a bird. In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the Ibis-headed divinity of magic and wisdom. Winged divine beings—griffins and harpies—populated the pantheon of Greek antiquity, and Quetzalcoatl was the plumed serpent deity of the pre-Columbian Aztecs. It is said that in spite of—or better, to spite—this time-honored wealth of divine avifauna, Christianity divorced God from the avian world 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, alongside the Father and Son, 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 archi-original biblical faith in the natural world. This book calls this new but ancient vision of the world “Christian animism” in order to signal the continuity of biblical religion with the beliefs of indigenous and non-Western communities that Spirit enfleshes itself within everything that grows, walks, flies, and swims in and over the Earth. To this end, it weaves together philosophy (Heidegger, Girard), theology (Augustine, Hildegard, Muir), and the author’s own birdwatching visitations (wood thrush, pileated woodpecker, great blue heron, American dipper, domestic pigeon) to argue that all things are alive with sacred personhood and worthy of human beings’ love and protection in a time of ecocidal, even deicidal, climate change.

The Writings and Canon

This chapter provides a summary of the Writings, describing the contribution this division makes to the Hebrew canon and to subsequent biblical interpretation. Acknowledging that the Writings are often perceived as amorphous, filled with diversity and difference that prevents a perception of order and purpose, the chapter asks whether these very characteristics witness to other intentions: (1) that diversity and difference are necessary for living out biblical faith; (2) that all biblical praxis (worship, discernment of wisdom, governance, envisioning the future, etc.) requires a relationship with both Torah and Prophets of the biblical canon. The Writings are seen to be a generator of questions and relationships with scripture, and to represent the first instance of canonical reception history, that is, the history of the impact and shaping of scripture in the subsequent history and faith of the community.

Buber, Martin (1878–1965)

Existential philosopher, essayist, translator and editor, Martin (Mordechai) Buber (מרטין בובר) was born in Austria and spent his earlier years studying in Vienna and Lemberg (now Lvov, Ukraine), eventually moving to Germany and Israel. Focusing on biblical hermeneutics and ethics, much of Buber’s writing is dedicated to the revival of religious Jewish consciousness through the idea of a transformed Zionist movement. Buber’s translation of the Hasidic tales, Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman (1906; The Tales of Rabbi Nachman), Die Legende des Baal Schem (1908; The Legend of the Baal Shem) and his original translation of the Hebrew Bible into German have remained valuable contributions to the study of spirituality, pacifism and human relations. Published in 1923, Buber’s most influential philosophical essay Ich und Du (I and Thou, 1937) is an articulation of the dialogic principle, or the duality of primal relations. In I and Thou Buber offers an ethical perspective by distinguishing between the I-Thou relations that stress the dialogical, mutual, holistic existence, and the monological I-It relations that objectify and dehumanize other beings. Buber allocates this dialogical relation to the very foundation of biblical faith and suggests that an authentic relationship to God is only possible through a dialogical life of existential responsibility.

Reply to Eleanor Helms on Faith Versus Reason in Kierkegaard

Two reasons are given for speaking of “reason” even where Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Climacus, speaks of “understanding.” First, we are dealing with a significant contribution to a centuries-old discussion of an issue that goes by the name of “faith and reason.” Second, whereas Kant and Hegel sharply distinguish mere understanding from reason, no such distinction is at work in Kierkegaard’s text. At issue is the quite different distinction of unaided human reason and divine revelation. It is not just any notion of reason that is the target of Kierkegaard’s critique, but an autonomous reason, independent of revelation, that claims hegemony over biblical faith in both its popular and academic forms. This hegemony expresses itself in both outright rejection of and radical reinterpretation of elements of biblical faith.

Are we »Christians« only on Sunday? What about Monday? - The biblical drama in four acts as a framework for an integrated view of work

By percentage Croatia is a highly »Christian« country (more than 91 percent), sadly that does not mean that it is a country of high ethics. In reality Croatia struggles on many ethical battlegrounds. We start this paper with the assumption that a rightly understood and clearly communicated integration of biblical faith and work can contribute to the solution of problems in Croatia. But we found through research that few people read and understand the Bible. When the Holy Scriptures do not have such importance, for most people who describe themselves as Christians, it is hard to understand and talk about the biblical view of work or biblical theology of work. We propose a new framework for an integrated view of work as a lens through which we can better understand the whole biblical story. Without looking at this more complete framework, we lose the context and conception of work.