Religious Advertising as an Evolutionary Form of Canonical Text Retelling

Religious advertising is a new phenomenon within the Ukrainian media sphere. It is successfully developing within the framework of modern media technologies. The expansion of the semantic field of religious concepts, the citation of sacred texts, the synchronization of the visual-figurative series, the synchronization of the substitute characteristics of God were revealed in Ukrainian religious advertising. In traditional approaches, the substitutional function is realized mainly by anthropic visualizations and appeal to the Sacred text. Another substitutional type can be observed when the emphasis is on the verbalized story, rather than on the visual component. Characteristics of God's linguistic personality, behavioural models of God, status-role structure of interaction with God are modern substitutes of God. As a rule, the substitution is represented as a complex of the sensor experience verbalizators of the concept ‘OWN’. This type of substitution causes the comfortable feelings of high selfesteem, relaxation, security, care, associated with God as the subjective source of these states. As a result, a renewal of the subjective perceptual model of communication with God is achieved. The social perception of God, through the objectification of His virtual presence in informal interpersonal interaction, including sexual, domestic, cognitive, etc., is also enriched. On account of this, the level of tolerance in society to various manifestations of deviations from traditional normative ideas (religious, ethnocultural, gender, etc.) is growing.

The Problem of Arbitrary Creation for Impassibility

There is a particular question that has plagued classical Christian theism over the centuries. What reason could God have for creating a universe? In this article, I shall articulate the unique claims of classical theism that other rival models of God lack. I shall argue that classical theism’s unique commitments entail that God cannot create the universe for a reason. Thus, any nonclassical model of God can claim to have the advantage over classical theism because they can affirm that God creates the universe for a reason. In Section 1, I shall articulate classical theism. In Section 2, I shall lay the groundwork for the debate by explaining what a reason is and what a creation is. In Section 3, I shall argue that a classical theist cannot affirm that God creates the universe for a reason, thus conflicting with God’s perfect rationality.

Rahner’s “Liturgy of the World” as Hermeneutics of Another World That Is Possible

This article explores Karl Rahner’s conception of the “Liturgy of the World” in light of the theme for the 2019 Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America, “Another World is Possible: Violence, Resistance and Transformation.” Employing Rahner’s hermeneutics of worship, violence can be conceived as a denial of this cosmic liturgy, transformation as conversion to it, and resistance as the stance opposing the denial. Resistance entails solidarity with all humanity in liturgical participation and in action for social justice. Metz’s political-theological critique of Rahner, with assistance from Bruce Morrill’s analysis of Metz’s work for liturgical theology, and Rahner’s reference to Teilhard’s “Cosmic Mass,” taken today in light of contemporary cosmology with assistance from Roger Haight’s non-dualistic approach to models of God, are among the implications to be considered for engaging Rahner’s vision in ongoing efforts at liturgical renewal.