This book studies how the relationship between philosophy, morality, politics, and science was conceived in the Vienna Circle and how this group of philosophers tried to position science as an antidote to totalitarianism and irrationalism. This leads to investigation of the still understudied views of the Vienna Circle on moral philosophy, meta-ethics, and the relationship between philosophy of science and politics. Including papers from an international group of scholars, The Socio-ethical Dimension of Knowledge: The Mission of Logical Empiricism addresses (...) these topics and makes them available to scholars in the field of history of philosophy of science. (shrink)

Entre Islam et Occident, le conflit existe. Il est profond. Et il n'a pas débuté le 11 septembre 2001 car - sans remonter aux Croisades - il oppose deux civilisations dont les valeurs, depuis des siècles, ne sont guère compatibles. Les orientalistes qui le nient se bercent d'illusions. Les partisans de Huntington, qui croient à la mission salvatrice de l'Occident, font tout autant fausse route. Situation d'autant plus grave que, depuis la guerre des Six jours, le conflit en question (...) a pris une forme aiguë, caractérisée d'abord par l'essor du mouvement islamiste, puis par celle d'un terrorisme international dont Al-Qaïda n'est qu'un relais parmi d'autres. Face à ces dangers (dont l'Europe aujourd'hui s'obstine à ignorer l'ampleur), la seule stratégie réaliste me semble consister, pour l'Occident, à opposer un front uni à l'islamisme, tout en laissant celui-ci faire la dure expérience de la réalité dans les pays qui souhaitent le porter au pouvoir car s'il peut être vaincu, ce ne sera pas par la force des armes ni par celle de la rhétorique, mais seulement par l'usure du temps. Ne nous y trompons pas : cette stratégie sera malaisée à mettre en œuvre, car elle devra, d'abord, affronter la passion antiaméricaine, antisioniste et tiers-mondiste qui, chez nous, inspire une grande partie de l'opinion actuelle. Autrement dit, cette maladie que Nietzsche, il y a un siècle déjà, baptisait nihilisme - et dans laquelle il percevait, non sans raison, un écho assourdi de l'antisémitisme chrétien. Comme si la vieille Europe, fatiguée d'avoir trop vécu, était désormais proche d'abdiquer les valeurs des lumières sur lesquelles sa propre culture s'était non sans peine édifiée. (shrink)

Ethical analysis of armed drones has to date focused heavily on their use in foreign wars or counterterrorism operations, but it is important also to consider the potential use of armed drones in domestic law enforcement. Governments around the world are already making drones available to police for purposes including border control, criminal investigation, rescue missions, traffic management, and the monitoring of public assemblies. Unarmed and controlled remotely, these camera-equipped aircraft provide a powerful and mobile surveillance capacity that can be (...) highly effective in detecting suspicious activity and guiding police operations. In addition, for situations where criminal violence presents a danger to public safety, some governments appear to be readying their police to neutralize threats using drones that are also equipped with weapons. In anticipation of that potential development, this article discusses whether or how police should use armed drones. It applies some of the established ethical principles on police use of force (necessity, proportionality, and precaution), and it explores some of the challenges a drone-using, “tele-present” police officer is likely to face in seeking to adhere to those principles. (shrink)

In the future Belgian State, in which «communities» and «regions» are constitutionally authorized, the composition, the mission and the competences of the second Chamber, the Senate, are called in question.The «community-agreements» of Egmont and Stuyvenberg provided that the members of the regional councils should be also members of the councils of the communities and members of a Senate.His legislative roll should be limited to pass the revision of the Constitution, the bills with a special majority and to propose amendments (...) at the bills to the Chamber of deputies.The second Chamber, in the European states, envisaged by this study : the French Senate, the Italian Senate, the German Bundesrat and the Swiss Council of States, is always more powerfull that a simple Chamber of reflection, at least on the legislative ground, in the federal states, this assembly has not immediate political control on the national Government.The future Belgian Senate, as these second Chambers, must preserve an active roll in the elaboration of the most important laws and be an assembly of beneficial confrontation between the communities and their deputies; so, the Senate will assure their effective participation to the legislàtîve function. (shrink)

The article sets the tone for the rest of this journal by raising some fundamental question of the relevance of the margins for theology of the local church. It explores a possible theology for the local church in the margins of our society. Purusing the theme of Jubilee as ‘presence’ rather than as activism, the author explores five themes for constructing a missiology for the local church’s in the margins. The article defines the local church in the margins of our (...) society as a disruptive prophetic presence. (shrink)

This paper contends that in Africa, the belief in the reality of the spirit world is a persistent phenomenon, which occupies a significant place in their religiosity. By building their theologies around the existential needs of the African people, the prophetic and deliverance ministries represent a contextual approach to Christianity in Africa. Nevertheless, an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of these ministries reveal that their approach may fit well into the African cultural milieu, but their emphasis is a (...) threat to the progress of Christian discipleship in Africa and among Africans in the diaspora. Despite their rapid numerical growth, the deliverance ministries cannot bring the African out of the fear of witchcraft and other supernatural powers. The paper concludes that to be able to mitigate the challenges of these ministries, pragmatic solutions being discussed at the academic levels must be made accessible to grassroots prophets. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue ed. by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph WhiteFrederick Christian BauerschmidtThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue. Edited by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013. Pp. viii + 304. $36.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8028-6976-0.The essays collected in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue are the fruit of a (...) conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2011. As presented in this volume, they form five pairs, one each by a Catholic and a Protestant theologian, focused on the topics of (1) the being of God, (2) the Trinity, (3) Christology, (4) grace and justification, and (5) election, providence, and natural law. Thomas Joseph White provides a lengthy introduction, and Bruce McCormack concludes with a brief epilogue. All of the essays at least touch on both Barth and Thomas, though in varying degrees. It must be noted that, with the exception of the essays by White and Wawrykow, the Catholic interlocutors generally engage Barth less deeply than the Protestant interlocutors engage Thomas. Why this might be the case is a point to which I will return.Under the topic of the being of God, Robert Jenson begins with a brief, reflective essay focusing on the radical implications of Barth’s account of God’s “being” or “reality” as “event,” “I,” and “decision” (Ereignis, ich, Entscheidung), and on the content of God’s essence as “the loving One.” Jenson argues that if we follow Barth’s trajectory, we arrive at the paradoxical view that “God’s being is an implosion of freedom, so sheerly contingent that it is not contingent on anything and so is the one necessity. And it is an explosion of love, so sheerly a commitment to the other that it is freedom” (51). Thomas gets only a brief mention, though presumably he stands as the conventional account of God’s being that provides the background against which the true radicalism of Barth’s account can appear. Richard Schenk offers a Catholic counterpoint, engaging not so much with Barth himself as with Jenson and other post-Barthian thinkers such as Ebeling. His essay responds to Jenson’s paradoxes of imploding freedom and exploding love by educing from Thomas’s writings “a theodicy-capable theology of the cross” (57) that operates within a commitment to God’s impassibility as traditionally understood. Implicit in Schenk’s argument is the wager that a God who is, qua [End Page 301] God, beyond all suffering is a richer resource of hope for suffering humanity than is a God who suffers with us in his divinity.Under the topic of the Trinity, Guy Mansini’s essay launches something of a preemptive strike on Bruce McCormack, who, in a widely discussed essay (“Grace and Being,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 92-110) and in subsequent writings, has developed Barth’s notion of Christ’s obedience on the Cross as the manifestation in time of his “intra-trinitarian obedience” to the Father in order to argue against traditional notions of divine being and in favor of something like the view Jenson sketches in his essay. Mansini draws on the patristic and monastic traditions as well as Thomas to explore the humility and obedience of Christ, arguing that obedience can only be a virtue of a created will: “’To obey,’ like ‘to be caused’ or ‘to be moved,’ belongs exclusively to the created order” (82). Thus, Christ is humble and obedient qua human, not qua divine, and therefore one cannot sensibly speak of an intra-trinitarian obedience but only of the obedience of Christ’s human will to the one divine will that is common to the Father, Son, and Spirit. McCormack’s essay, which follows, seeks to show that the position he has developed by way of Barth’s theology can also be grounded in Thomas’s theology of the relation of divine processions and missions, at least as this has been interpreted by Matthew Levering. McCormack reads Thomas with notable ecumenical generosity, seeing in Thomas’s view that the... (shrink)

The central question of this conference is whether the media can contribute to high quality social dialogue. The prospects for resolving that question positively in the “sound and fury” depend on recovering the idea of truth. At present the news media are lurching along from one crisis to another with an empty centre. We need to articulate a believable concept of truth as communication's master principle. As the norm of healing is to medicine, justice to politics, critical thinking to education, (...) craftsmanship to engineering, and stewardship to business, so truth-telling is the news profession's occupational norm. Truth-telling is the ethical framework that fundamentally reorders the media's professional culture and enables them to enrich social dialogue rather than undermine it.Historically the mainstream press has defined itself in terms of an objectivist worldview. Centred on human rationality and armed with the scientific method, the facts in news have been said to mirror reality. The aim has been true and incontrovertible accounts of a domain separate from human consciousness. In Bertrand Russell's formula, “truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact” . In the received view, truth is defined in elementary epistemological terms as accurate representation. News corresponds to context-free neutral algorithms, and ethics is equated with impartiality.The attacks on this misguided view of human knowledge had already originated in Giambattista Vico's fantasia and Wilhelm Dilthey's verstehen in the counter-Enlightenment of the 18th century. They have continued with hermeneutics, critical theory in the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy, Gramsci, and in their own way, Lyotard's denial of master narratives and Derrida's sliding signifiers; until the anti-foundationalism of our own day indicates a crisis in correspondence views of truth. Institutional structures remain Enlightenment-driven, but in principle the tide has turned currently toward restricting objectivism to the territory of mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences. In reporting, objectivity has become increasingly controversial as the working press' professional standard, though it will remain entrenched in our ordinary practices of news production and dissemination until an alternative mission for the press is convincingly formulated.The demise of correspondence views of truth has created a predicament for the notion of truth altogether. However, instead of appealing to coherence versions or abandoning the concept, truth needs to be relocated in the moral sphere. Truth is a problem of axiology rather than epistemology. With the dominant scheme no longer tenable, truth should become the province of ethicists who can reconstruct it as the news media's contribution to social dialogue.When truth is articulated in terms of a moral framework, we can mold its richly textured meaning around the Hebrew emeth , the Greek aletheia . In Serbo-Croatian the true is justified as with plumbline in carpentry. In the powerful wheel imagery of the Buddhist tradition, truth is the immovable axle. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa presumes that sufferings from apartheid can be healed through truthful testimony. In Ghandhi's “satyagrapha,” the power of truth through the human spirit eventually wins over force . Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics contends correctly that a truthful account lays hold of the context, motives, and presuppositions involved .Telling the truth depends on the quality of discernment so that penultimates do not gain ultimacy. Truth means, in other words, to strike gold, to get at “the core, the essence, the nub, the heart of the matter” . For Henry David Thoreau – though addressing a different issue – when we are truthful, we attempt to “drive life into a corner and¼if it proves to be mean, why then to get the genuine meanness out of it and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by personal experience and be able to give a true account of the encounter” . For the former secretary general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, “the most dangerous of all moral dilemmas is when we are obliged to conceal truth in order to help the truth be victorious” . In the Talmud, the liar's punishment is that no one believes him.Augustine , professor of rhetoric at Milan and later Bishop of Hippo, illustrates a non-correspondence view of truth. His rhetorical theory is a major contribution to the philosophy of communication, contradicting the highly secular and linear view of the ancient Greeks. As with Aristotle, rhetoric entails reasoned judgement for Augustine; however, he “break[s] away from Graeco-Roman rhetoric, moving instead toward ¼rhetoric as aletheiac act” . Rhetoric for him is not knowledge-producing or opinion-producing but truth-producing . The Epistolae Doctrina Christiana scourges the value-neutral, technical language of “word merchants” without wisdom.Truth is not fundamentally a prescriptive statement. The aletheiac act in Augustine “tends to be more relational than propositional, a dialogically interpersonal, sacramentally charitable act rather than a statement¼taking into account and being motivated by [the cardinal virtues] faith, hope, and charity” . The truth for him does not merely make things clear, but motivates us to belief and action. In truthful communication for Augustine, “it is not enough to seek to move men's minds, merely for the sake of power; instead, the power to move is to be used to lead men to truth”. (shrink)

The development of Christian NGOs over the second half of the 20th century has been one of the great stories of the church. At a time when the evangelical church in the West had gone into reverse, away from a holistic gospel, emphasising personal salvation alone and leaving the social gospel to the more liberal and ecumenical branch of the church, individual Christians had responded to the needs of a suffering world by forming CNGOs to tackle the relief and development (...) problems around the world. This paper outlines the background to the CNGO movement, from earliest biblical times, describes the growth of the movement, with special reference to Tearfund, and then discusses the issues and challenges currently being faced. It concludes that by working through the local churches the mission of CNGOs can be holistic, and bring hope to the world. (shrink)

Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes; Christian Credentials for Roman Catholic Health Care: Medicine versus the Healing Mission of the Church, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecum.

This article first deals with Pantaenus’s mission to India, which began in Alexandria through the private initiative of Pantaenus, the teacher of Clement who was also well known to Origen. In the age of Athanasius (fourth century), another mission to India was organised in Alexandria, and this time the bishop himself took the initiative to send missionaries. Meanwhile in Alexandria the episcopacy had gained strength, and the head of the Didaskaleion – Didymus, a follower of Origen – was (...) then appointed by the bishop, whereas neither Pantaenus nor Clement were so appointed. The article also discusses to which “India” the mission was directed. Generally, it is considered to have been Ethiopia, but in fact it might have been India. (shrink)

Articles on the history of Assamese Sikhs.

The reflections of Jean Daniélou on the relationship of Christianity to non-Christian religions, in light of missionary activity; offer a means to assess our current situation. Using a key insight of Bernard Lonergan, this essay offers a reprise of nearly sixty years of theological practice. Recent reflections by Tariq Ramadan help us to see ways of bringing these to an institutional focus.

The culture of mass education has become an enduring tradition in Western Nigeria. The root of this culture is traceable to the mid-nineteenth century when the Christian missionary bodies began a process of systematic evangelization, using Western education as a medium and an indispensable tool. Early converts were taught how to read the Bible in vernacular – a measure that helped produce the first widespread literate class in Western Nigeria. Thereafter, mass education was promoted through the opening of primary and (...) secondary schools as well as teacher training colleges and trade schools. The pioneering missionary efforts, complemented in later years by the colonial government, received an accelerated boost, reaching a peak in the mid-1950s during the era of internal self-rule when the Western Nigerian government introduced the Free Education Programme in the region. In spite of the termination of the government that introduced the Free Education Scheme following the military take-over in 1966, the rising trend of popular education continued unabated. Military and civilian governments alike have, ever since, remained committed to mass education such that popular Education remains to this day, the greatest industry in Western Nigeria. The contention in this Paper is that the culture of mass education in Western Nigeria, even to this day, and in spite of occasional modifications, is a logical conclusion to an established culture of mass education, the root of which is traceable to the Christian missionary era. The paper concludes with an analysis of the impact, which the various phases of the evolutionary process have made on the history of education in Western Nigeria in particular, and the country as a whole. (shrink)

Memphis, Tennessee is the Blackest city with a Philosophy for/with Children (P4/WC) program in the United States, making it a unique site of engagement for practitioners. The city faces deeply historically rooted structural problems that continue to manifest themselves, in housing, food security, hate crimes, police brutality, workplace inequality, and segregation; all of which are present in our classrooms where we practice P4C. In this chapter, we illustrate some of the challenges we have faced while practicing P4/WC in Memphis, and (...) the ways in which these obstacles have transformed the practice and mission of the Philosophical Horizons (PH) outreach program. We have found that many of the methods and assumptions of traditional P4C can sometimes be harmful or alienating to some of our students if not properly reformed. We here outline the history of our program Philosophical Horizons (PH) and discuss some of the obstacles we have faced teaching in our specific context. We further provide a discussion of why the typical methods and assumptions of P4C do not serve us well in the context of Memphis. Additionally, we describe our own approach to philosophy for/with children and our primary mission within the city as an anti-racist practice. Finally, we discuss two case studies that exemplify some of the dynamics that we outline in this chapter. (shrink)

The 2013 FOIM (Fellowship of Indian Missiologists) Conference was hosted at Punalur, Kerala. 12 papers from this conference were compiled and published in Christian Mission in the Midst of Violence under the editorship of Dr. Joy Thomas SVD, director of Ishvani Kendra of Pune and Secretary of FOIM and Dr. Siga Arles, director of the Centre for Contemporary Christianity of Bangalore.

Autonomous weapon systems could in principle release military personnel from the onus of killing during combat missions, reducing the related risk of suffering a moral injury and its debilita...

Microfinance is the vanguard of financialization today. This is especially true in Colombia, where microfinance rivals any other type of formal credit. Entangled with Colombia’s micro-financialization is the phenomenon of microfinance corporations in joint ventures with Christian organizations that broker their microfinance programs. These faith-based corporations temper the surge in microfinance with ascetic discipline and the infusion of an entrepreneurial spirit. Economic discipline, say the microfinanciers, is required for what is referred to as ‘financial literacy’ and ‘financial inclusion’ programs that (...) instil a distinctly Christian corporate order. This article, based on 2 years of sustained fieldwork in Colombia, focuses on one such microfinance program run by a transnational Christian credit organization. With microfinance, souls are disciplined through debts and ideals of an ascetic prosperity. In the end, the article concludes that there is a Christian morality to financialized capitalism that is exercised at the level of the interior soul. (shrink)

There is an internal connection between ecclesiology, the teaching about the Church that we call academic ecclesiology, and mission, which is the inner heart of the Church and becomes visible through different practices. For the Orthodox Church involved in the ecumenical movement, there is a struggle to balance ecclesiology (theology) with ecumenical mission and dialogue (practice) in a divided Christian world. Nevertheless, the recent Synod of Crete (June 2016) addressed some important elements of this struggle. I have in (...) mind, for example, the act to accept the historical name of other non-Orthodox Christian Churches and Confessions that are not in communion with it. Also, this is the first Synod of the Orthodox Churches in modern times at which ecumenical dialogue, especially in the World Council of Churches, is officially affirmed. Because of mission dialogue has to continue, “if we wish never to ‘put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ’ (1 Cor 9:12).” The present paper highlights those statements of the Holy and Great Council which have direct relevance for discussing the relation of ecclesiology and mission. I assert that we should understand firstly the document Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the of the Christian World and only then reflect upon The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World (MOCT). Furthermore, I will make some references to the other texts which were central for this conference: The Cape Town Commitment (CTC), Together Towards Life (TTL) and Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (EG). I conclude by exposing briefly my reflections after reading these mission documents and by formulating some agenda points for further work in theology of mission. (shrink)

John Locke was considerably interested and actively involved in the promotion of Protestant Christianity among American Indians and African slaves, yet this fact goes largely unremarked in historical scholarship. The evidence of this interest and involvement deserves analysis—for it illuminates fascinating and understudied features of Locke's theory of toleration and his thinking on American Indians, African slaves, and English colonialism. These features include (1) the compatibility between toleration and Christian mission, (2) the interconnection between Christian mission and (...) English geopolitics, (3) the coexistence of ameliorative and exploitative strands within Locke's stance on African slavery, and (4) the spiritual imperialism of Locke's colonial vision. Analyzing evidence of Locke's interest and involvement in Christian mission, this article brings fully to light a dimension of Locke's career that has barely been noticed. In so doing, it also illustrates how the roots of toleration in the modern West were partly evangelical. (shrink)

Urban Christian missions battle with many challenges in this 21st century, such that there is a need for a strategic plan to do missions in the cities. Over the years, missions' emphasis has focused on village missions and underdeveloped places. However, there is a clarion call to shift attention to urban Christian missions in recent times because the world is witnessing a massive migration of people from villages to cities for greener pastures. Christian missions' opportunities are evident in the cities (...) because the cities attract all kinds of people. Urban Christian missions involve assembling converts and nurturing them to maturity, enabling them to teach others about Christ, and to do likewise to ensure that the Christian faith continues. The article employed a descriptive research method, and it investigated the task of developing leaders for active Christian missions in urban areas of Nigeria because of insufficient leaders who could adequately handle Christian mission work. CONTRIBUTION: This article is in line with the focus and scope of HTS Theological Studies in the sense that the journal is an acclaimed Open Access journal with broad coverage that promotes multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary religious aspects of studies in the international theological arena and the journal's publication criteria are based on rigorous research, accountable methodologies and novel findings based on sound ethical standards. Also, the research reveals that leadership training must be Bible-based and the Bible is the basis for Theological Studies. (shrink)

The issues of religious proselytization as well as the construction of house of worship are of main contentious topics inciting tensions between religious adherents, particularly between the minority Christians and the majority Muslims in contemporary Indonesia. This article discusses these two inter-religious problems and poses a question to extent that the competition between Muslim and Christians, both in their missionary activities and the building of new house of worship, inflicting inter-religious relation in contemporary Indonesia. Taken some cases as points of (...) discussion, this article further offers that inclusive dialogue and social justice are solutions to minimize—even to prevent—the worsening tension between Muslim and Christians. (shrink)

For decades, the mobilisation of Christian missions has encountered a number of setbacks and barriers because of several factors and elements that pose severe impediments to the conduct of missionary activities. Amongst these factors and elements, the involvement of politics in the activities of the Christian missions is prominent. The goal of the Christian missions is to expand the kingdom of God, as well as the salvation and restoration of lost souls, while the goal of politics is to secure power (...) and authority through manipulation for selfish interests or gains. A Christian mission seeks spiritual and heavenly fulfilment, while politics seeks mundane and worldly gains. (shrink)