Nudged by Nathan Following a Lessing line in interfaith theology?

Whereas a widespread malaise about the truth quality of much written and spoken communication had in our times apparently also infected the sensitive area of theological interfaith discourse, an injunction like the following of the apostle Paul receives renewed urgency: ‘the ‘kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power’ – against the background of the apostle’s own display of kingdom power ‘as if in a theatre’ (see 1 Cor 4:9, 20). The objective of this research study was to probe whether the recent leaning towards a more ‘dramatic mode of theologizing’ might be conducive to preventing the Christian interfaith discourse from descending into powerless talk about the kingdom of God. It, moreover, hypothesised that a ‘doing of the truth’ (in the Johannine sense of the phrase) – analogous to the faithful improvisation of an original theatrical script (in this instance: Holy Scripture) – could add value to the truth - claiming of Christianity in its encounter with Jews and Muslims. The method was followed for analysing the famous Enlightenment literary drama of Lessing, Nathan the Wise, to find a possible cue for proceeding in such a direction, and if found – to heuristically build thereon for such a real-life, contemporary interfaith discourse. The result was that Lessing’s ‘Parable of the Three Rings’ yielded some cue, which, however, was found to be deficient. Only filtered through Barth’s razor-sharp evaluation of the beautiful Lessing drama and then fitted into a Barthian view of the ‘Light and the lights’, which was, for its part, adapted to Calvin’s grand vision of the world as theatrum Dei gloriae, the cue could be moulded to be acceptable for our purpose. A notion of historical-dramatic interfaith encounter thus emerged, where truth is not precluded in undecided tolerance but preluded in expectation of its full eschatological uncovering. Employing this – reframed – ‘Nathan nudge’, a conclusionary sketch could be given of a theological interfaith contest, conducted as if biblical truth resounded through the Christian’s whole body in an interactive ‘inter-play’ with Jews and Muslims. This conclusion was highlighted by some improvisatory, preludial, hospitable and Christocentric accents inherent in such a rendering.Contribution: This article showed one way out of the impasse that threatens a form of interfaith truth claiming constructed around ‘mere words’ – which, moreover, are deemed to be ‘final’. By proposing a preluding – and yet not precluding – of Christian truth, it hopes to add value to interfaith kingdom theology that really matters.

The Emotional Mind and The Moral Mind

In The Emotional Mind, Asma and Gabriel (2019) develop their grand vision of affect. Their goal is to demonstrate the foundational and pervasive nature of emotion in the mind, culture and society through the embodied, embedded, and enactive process of evolution. The book discusses how affective adaptation supports or leads diverse facets of human psychology and society. In this paper, however, I raise three critical questions about Asma and Gabriel’s approach to emotion: (1) whether emotion is a natural kind, (2) whether internalized self-critical emotions came to exist through the adaptive and interactive process of decoupling, and (3) whether the variance and integrity of the tripartite layers of the mind can be maintained.

An Overstory for Our Time

Care is the intimate and necessary labor required to sustain those who are dependent, but it is also about acting in ways that sustain other species and the lives of strangers distant in time and space. The COVID-19 pandemic shines a spotlight on the vulnerabilities and gaps in global care networks. It creates a crisis of care on multiple levels—the immediate, the dispersed, and the systemic—and it is exceedingly difficult to keep them all in focus. Although Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Overstory (2018), is not about illness or pandemic, it can illuminate varied scales of care at the level of form, by moving from individual stories that are the typical subject of literary realism to a grand vision of the webbed planetary systems—the environment, the internet, the global economy—in which they are enmeshed. This essay argues that, read through the lens of pandemic, the overstory of Powers’s novel is the networks of interdependency that have put the world in grave danger and that gesture to an uncertain future.

The Kwame Nkrumah Legacy

Kwame Nkrumah’s notion of Pan-Africanism remains the formulation that guides the aspiration and organizational expression for the unity of the African continent. This analysis provides an elaboration of Nkrumah’s model for unity and situates his role at the moment of decolonization in the context of transformational leadership theory. Discussion then turns to the two most significant efforts to implement the Pan-African model: the development of a continental organization—the Organization of African Unity and the African Union—and the decolonization of the Gold Coast, which led to the founding of the state of Ghana. While the implementation of Nkrumah’s grand vision has not been realized, the legacy of his construct provides an enduring foundation for the aspiration to continental unity. Similarly, that same unity is reflected in the political culture and identity for the territory of Ghana, a feature of government stability. That territorial stability has not become the foundation stone for continental unity that Nkrumah imagined, but it also has not detracted from the enduring aspiration for that broader unity. In this regard the analysis shows both the possibilities and limits of transformational leadership.

The Billionaire’s Ambitions

This chapter assesses the roles played by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York City mayor John Lindsay, as well as William Ronan, in transforming the transportation system. Ronan, Rockefeller, and Lindsay all realized that improving public transportation was critical to strengthening the economy of the city and the region. They were also well aware of the benefits of a Second Avenue subway, since all three of them lived on the Upper East Side. After Lindsay failed to reorganize the transportation agencies, Rockefeller and Ronan developed their own grand vision for the region's transportation network, and in December of 1966, Ronan stepped down from his post as secretary to begin implementing their plan. At the beginning of the state's 1967 legislative session, Rockefeller and Ronan announced their two-pronged approach. First, they proposed integrating the New York City Transit Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) into the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (MCTA). In addition, Rockefeller and Ronan would seek voter approval to borrow $2.5 billion that would be dedicated for roadway and public transportation improvements across the state. In 1967, the governor and Ronan obtained the support they needed to transform the transportation network, a feat that Lindsay had not been able to accomplish.

Neoclassical geopolitics: Preliminary theoretical principles and methodological guidelines

The paper is aimed at making geopolitical studies and neoclassical geopolitics equivalent. In this sense, the objectives are conceptual and operational, comprising an original definition of geopolitical studies, and the explanation of the neoclassical geopolitics model and its variables: systemic stimuli, the geopolitical agent?s perceptions and capacities, and foreign policy outcomes (primarily the geopolitical design). Therefore, the problem at stake is to tie up several theoretical and methodological contributions into a solid new geopolitical model, in the limits of the phenomenological and soft positivist sphere. Two sections constituted the structure of this qualitative paper: 1) formulation of a chain of theoretical fundaments in geopolitical studies, and 2) description of a group of methodological steps that a geopolitical study can use. The research advances a) a new definition of geopolitical studies, b) explains the concept of geomisguidance, c) frames and unwraps Ratzel?s concept of Raumsinn, and d) ultimately systematises and assesses geopolitical studies? literature of different languages with respect to theory and methodology. All these findings were oriented to the practical aspect of the operationalisation of geopolitical studies, presenting the compact conclusion that the analysis of location is not enough for a grand vision of geopolitical studies as an international relations approach.