ABSTRACTIn 2009, an earthquake struck the city L’Aquila, causing more than 300 deaths and leading to a trial which lasted almost four years and – though cleared in the appeal – in which scientists...

Kierkegaard struck out against all forms of established order–including the established church–that work to make men complacent with themselves and thereby obscure their personal responsibility to encounter God. He considered Training in Christianity his most important book. It represented his effort to replace what he believed had become "an amiable, sentimental paganism" with authentic Christianity. Kierkegaard's challenge to live out the implications of Christianity in the most personal decisions of life will greatly appeal to readers today who are trying (...) to develop their personal integrity in accordance with the truths of revealed religion. (shrink)

Informed Christians have learned in our day that Islâm is not a primitive desert religion spread by the sword, for which faith is reduced to fatalism and women have no souls. Yet Christian historians of religion who avoid such gross errors still tend to present Islâm as at best an imperfect and parochial version of Christian truth, lacking any distinctive genius truly worthy of its independent dignity among the world religions. But until modern times, when the Christianity (and (...) Judaism) of Europeans has been radically transformed along with their secular life, Christianity must long have struck an observer from Mars as, compared to Islâm, the relatively localized faith of largely backward lands. Islâm was the vehicle of a complex and sophisticated sense of social order in a varied and highly creative civilization which was expanding continuously until its field of action encompassed half mankind; it was the only one of the major historical religions which had successfully displaced in large areas other major faiths such as Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The Martian observing human history in the later Middle Ages might find it easier to understand why Muslims have looked on Christianity as merely an abortive form of Islâm, as for instance in the approach of those Şûfîs, Muslim mystics, who see the perfection of Islâm in its uniting at once the dispensation of Law, which reflects the Majesty of God, and the dispensation of Grace, which reflects his Beauty, whereas Judaism and Christianity are limited to only the one or the other. This Muslim conception is as inadequate, however, as its Christian counterpart. Probably any widespread religious system will find a place for all major types of religious insight and practice and is in its own way complete. Yet, as each system has matured, it has revealed a characteristic persistent pattern of norms in the interrelation and subordination to one another of all the elements embodied in it. If Christians are to perceive the genius of Islâm, it must perhaps be through the comparison of such persistent patterns. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Monasticism, Buddhist and Christian: The Korean ExperienceJames A. Wiseman OSBMonasticism, Buddhist and Christian: The Korean Experience. Edited by Sunghae Kim and James W. Heisig. Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs 38. Leuven: Peeters; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. 201 pp.In order to evaluate Monasticism, Buddhist and Christian properly, one must know something about its origin. The principal editor, Sunghae Kim, is director of the Seton Interreligious Research (...) Center in Seoul, a center that regularly sponsors interreligious dialogues at a scholarly level. In addition to those dialogues, the center also organizes a series of monthly lectures for the public at large, held each year around a specific theme. The chapters of this book were, with one exception, originally given in the 1995 lecture series and later translated from Korean into English. For that reason, most of the material will already be quite familiar to specialists in the Buddhist and Christian traditions and will at times seem to offer generalizations that would be accurate enough for presentations to the general public but would need various qualifications and nuances to meet the more rigorous standards of scholars.The first two chapters are broadly introductory. In the first, Sunghae Kim gives a brief overview of the renunciatory life in six major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). She concludes that “in terms of strict renunciation of possessions, family, and pursuit of the ego, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Daoism stand out” (p. 35), with Buddhism and Christianity in particular being characterized by highly developed forms of monasticism per se. Bernard Senécal, a Canadian Jesuit who teaches Buddhist studies at Sogang University in Seoul, wrote the following chapter, “Korean Buddhism Today and Its Encounter with Christianity,” specifically for this book. The eight chapters that follow are the heart of the book. Jaemoon Yun, the abbot of the Korean Buddhist monastery in Chung-ju, has chapters on the history of the Buddhist monastic precepts, on nonpossession and the use of property in the saṅgha, on the organizational structure of the saṅgha, and on the homeless life and the Buddhist practice of compassion. Following each of these four chapters is one by the Benedictine monk Thomas Timpte on the corresponding topic in Christian monastic life as found in the Roman Catholic Church. A short final chapter by Younghae Yun, a professor of Buddhist studies and comparative religion at Gongguk University in Kyeong-ju, highlights a few characteristics of Buddhist and Christian life. Rather than comment on material from each chapter, I [End Page 228] will discuss in this review three points that struck me as particularly interesting and/or controversial.At the beginning of the first of his four chapters, “The History and Spirit of Christian Monastic Rules,” Thomas Timpte rightly devotes several pages to clarifying terminology. The details need not concern us here, but in general monks and nuns in the Catholic Church make public profession of the “evangelical counsels” of poverty, celibacy (sometimes called chastity), and obedience; in addition, they practice some degree of enclosure (“separation from the world”) and (except for the relatively few who are hermits) live in community. Timpte notes that although there have been men and women who practiced the evangelical counsels since New Testament times, the formal institution of Christian monastic life arose in the eastern part of the Mediterranean only around the year 300. For that reason, he argues that monasticism cannot be considered central to the Church in an institutional sense, whereas monasticism was an essential part of Buddhism from the beginning, the Buddha himself and his earliest followers all having been monks. This is one of the points about which Younghae Yun disagrees with Timpte, for the Buddhist scholar claims that even though Buddhist monks and nuns, like their Christian counterparts, take vows (precepts), and in some sense live apart from society at large, such a way of life itself “is neither essential nor central” in Buddhism (p. 185). Younghae Yun bases his argument on the fact that the Buddha considered such practices as only “a means to achieve enlightenment” and that enlightenment itself is not the true raison d’être of Buddhism but is rather a way of facilitating... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE MEANING OF VIRTUE IN THE CHRISTIAN MORAL LIFE: ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR HUMAN LIFE ISSUES RoMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Dominican House of Stuaies Washington, D.a. RCENTLY, AN International Congress of moral theology convened in Rome brought together some three hundred academicians. They participated in an open forum devoted to current questions in moral theology and bioethics. Held at the Lateran University, the Congress, "Humanae vita,e: 20 Anni Dopo," was (...) divided into two parts. Although a majority of the presentations concerned the relevance of the Church's teaching on artificial contraception, the membership did devote the second part of the Congress to a sustained discussion of some new issues raised by Donum vitae (1987), the recent instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on " Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation." To be sure, both documents emphasize the Church's constant teaching concerning the providence of God in human life and the dignity of the human person. Nevertheless, procedures such as GIFT (gamete intra.-fallopian transfer), LTOT (low tubal ovum transfer ), TOT (tubal ovum transfer) provide the moral theologian with new challenges to interpret the Church's position which insists on identifying the procrea.tive and unitive aspects of Christian marriage. The following article discusses the papal documents from the perspective of a realist moral theology. First of all, I would like to recall a principle which Paul VI, however obliquely, enunciated in the course of Humanae Vitae, for I consider the principle an axiomatic one in the present discussion. At the beginning of section 8 entitled "Pastoral 178 174 ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Directives," we find a statement of theological purpose which should guide all Catholic moral practice. Hence, I would like to quote this text as a way of introducing the meaning of virtue in the Christian moral life. The Church, in fact, cannot have a different conduct toward men [and women] than that of the Redeemer: she knows their weaknesses, has compassion on the crowd, receives sinners; but she cannot renounce the teaching of the law which is, in reality, that law proper to a human Zife restored to its original truth and conducted by the Spirit of God.1 I am especially struck by the phrase " that law proper to a human life restored to its original truth," for I believe it actually describes the kind of life which develops in those who practice the virtues. Yet, before speaking about the implications of a virtue-centered morality for the difficult issues of bioethics, I would like to remark briefly on the way certain contemporary theologians misinterpret what Paul VI calls the " law proper to a human life restored to its original truth." In order to do so I have divided this paper into three parts. Thus, the first section of the paper examines several themes in contemporary moral methodology. The second section provides a general statement about the relationship between moral theology and the sa,cra domrina. Finally, the third section briefly considers why the life of virtue remains the only legitimate means for fulfilling the " law proper to a human life restored to its original truth." First, then, to contemporary themes. I Proportionate Reason and the Ethics of Personal Responsibility In an earlier draft of this paper, I titled this section "St. Ignatius, St. Alphonsus, and St. Elsewhere." I had considered actually outlining the moral methodologies of two Roman theo1 Paul VI, Humanae vitae, n. 20. VIRTUE THEORY AND HUMAN LIFE ISSUES 175 logians, the German Jesuit Josef Fuchs 2 and the Redemptorist Bernard Haring.3 These authors have influenced most leading revisionist moral theologians in America, especially Charles Curran.4 One could argue, therefore, that they figure among the principals in the current debate over bioethical norms. Upon reflection, however, it seemed rpreferable simply to signal two or three basic themes which appear in most revisionist moral theology, especially as it has been developed in the United States. In brief, these themes focus principally on (1) the freedom of the individual, and (2) the consequences or end results of an action. Revisionist moral theologians receive their name from the fact that their announced purpose... (shrink)

This essay explores the concept of a sense of humor in an effort to determine how this might be a peculiarly Christian virtue. Not every sense of humor is a virtue, much less a Christian one. A Christian sense of humor, being a capacity to be struck by incongruities of character and behavior (in oneself and others) that the Christian stories and concepts bring to light, is a kind of "vision," and thus a form of (...) Christian discernment. When turned upon oneself, it is a form of humility. Also, Christian humor can be a bridge for non-Christians and half-hearted Christians to the things of the Spirit. (shrink)

Over the past two centuries historians of Christianity have offered various theories concerning why and how the early Christian movement took root and flourished in the Greco-Roman world, which was surprising considering its modest beginning, its small size, its lack of cultural resources, and its bad reputation among the elites. This article argues that the formation of the early Christian catechumenate enabled the church not only to reach pagans but to transition them to the very different world of (...) Christianity and to keep them in that world. The catechumenate was necessary because the difference between paganism and Christianity was great enough to require that some kind of bridge be built between the two worlds if Christians hoped to win new converts to the faith and then establish them securely in that faith, and it was effective because it struck just the right balance between making Christianity attractive and accessible and yet setting high standards for membership, which in the long run made the church leaner and stronger. (shrink)

This paper argues that the foundation for Skovoroda’s philosophical evolution was laid by the elements of his existential experience: overcoming the fear of death; uncertainty of an individual’s existence in the world; friendship; a series of events in his social life, simultaneous to changes in his works. The most fundamental factor of this experience was Skovoroda’s Christian identity, particularly his continuous efforts to grasp the meaning of the most crucial dogma of Christian religion – the mystery of Resurrection. (...) The totality of these factors caused further development of Skovoroda’s doctrine. The article schematises the inner logic of this development as follows: (1) discovery of the perspective of love, interpreted as being struck by divine beauty; (2) interpretation of human condition as being on the edge of the created and the divine world; (3) proper assessment of the fact that a human being discovers in its own essence the incorruptible beauty of divine image; (4) comprehension of how love to this image arises; (5) interpretation of man as a being that is capable to grasp the eternity of divine charity, and understand itself as a meta-historical entity that has its continuation in eternity. The existential experience brings Skovoroda to a unique and extremely powerful existential experience of the mystery of Cross, which causes a cathartic effect: having undergone the sufferings of the Cross, the material fire of human ἔρως transforms into the living water of divine ἀγάπη, and the confusion of a living creature lost in the world gives way to a tranquil wisdom of a heir of divine gifts and a friend of God. (shrink)

Nietzsche was struck by the similarities between Greek and Indian philosophy. From the perspective elaborated in On the Genealogy of Morality - in which values are derived from the physiological, psychological, and social domains - we would expect the similarities of thought to derive from similarities in the conditions of the two cultures. A role is played here by the agonal spirit manifest in the Iliad, Hesiod, and Heraclitus as well as in Indian philosophy and in the Mahabharata and (...) Ramayana. Nietzsche found in both cultures viable models of self and state, born from an agonal context, that provided for him modes of being alternative to the Christian slave morality that he despised. (shrink)

This paper argues that the foundation for Skovoroda’s philosophical evolution was laid by the elements of his existential experience: overcoming the fear of death; uncertainty of an individual’s existence in the world; friendship; a series of events in his social life, simultaneous to changes in his works. The most fundamental factor of this experience was Skovoroda’s Christian identity, particularly his continuous efforts to grasp the meaning of the most crucial dogma of Christian religion – the mystery of Resurrection.The (...) totality of these factors caused further development of Skovoroda’s doctrine. The article schematises the inner logic of this development as follows: discovery of the perspective of love, interpreted as being struck by divine beauty; interpretation of human condition as being on the edge of the created and the divine world; proper assessment of the fact that a human being discovers in its own essence the incorruptible beauty of divine image; comprehension of how love to this image arises; interpretation of man as a being that is capable to grasp the eternity of divine charity, and understand itself as a meta-historical entity that has its continuation in eternity.The existential experience brings Skovoroda to a unique and extremely powerful existential experience of the mystery of Cross, which causes a cathartic effect: having undergone the sufferings of the Cross, the material fire of human ἔρως transforms into the living water of divine ἀγάπη, and the confusion of a living creature lost in the world gives way to a tranquil wisdom of a heir of divine gifts and a friend of God. (shrink)

Many commentators have contrasted the way that sociability is theorized in the writings of Mary Astell and Damaris Masham, emphasizing the extent to which Masham is more interested in embodied, worldly existence. I argue, by contrast, that Astell's own interest in imagining a constitutively relational individual emerges once we pay attention to her use of religious texts and tropes. To explore the relevance of Astell's Christianity, I emphasize both how Astell's Christianity shapes her view of the individual's relation to society (...) and how Masham's contrasting views can be analyzed through the lens of her charge that Astell is an “enthusiast.” In late seventeenth-century England, “enthusiasm” was a term of abuse that, commentators have recently argued, could function polemically to dismiss those deemed either excessively social or antisocial. By accusing Astell of enthusiasm, I claim, Masham seeks to marginalize the relational self that Astell imagines and to promote a more instrumental view of social ties. I suggest some aspects of Astell's thought that may have struck contemporaries as “enthusiastic” and contrast her vision of the self with Masham's more hedonistic subject. I conclude that, although each woman differently configures the relation between self and society, they share a desire to imagine autonomy within a relational framework. (shrink)

The main lines of this exploration are quite simply drawn. That the God whom Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship outstrips our capacities for characterization, and hence must be unknowable, will be presumed as uncontested. The reason that God is unknowable stems from our shared confession that ‘the Holy One, blessed be He’, and ‘the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth’, and certainly ‘Allah, the merciful One’ is one ; and just why God's oneness entails God's being unknowable deserves discussion, (...) though that will occur as we move along. The issue facing us is the one which preoccupied al-Ghazali: how does a seeker respond to that unknowability? The root meaning of the Arabic word for ‘student’ means ‘seeker’, and that attitude of ‘seeking the face of God’, along with the indescribability of the face, will be presumed throughout our discussion. That's why we are struck with the clumsy term ‘unknowable’ rather than its more euphonious Greek form ‘agnostic’. For Western agnostics are such largely because they cannot find God sufficiently compelling, while they ‘would not have the impudence to claim to be atheists’ – as one contemporary seeker puts it. So theologians feel it necessary to enclose the term in quotation marks when discussing, say, Aquinas' ‘agnosticism’ regarding divinity. Yet a genuine unknowing does lie at the heart of the inquiry of the Jew, Christian or Muslim seeking after God; indeed, it is the unknowing which distinguishes a search for God from lusting after idols. So let us follow al-Ghazali in an effort to discover the lineaments of both search and seeker after an unknowable God. (shrink)

Anyone who comes to read some of Aquinas' works and at the same time looks around for modern discussions of them will be struck by two things: first, the greater part of the latter is the product of American and European Catholic neo-scholasticism; and second, that, with a few distinguished exceptions,1 what is contributed by writers of the analytical tradition is often a blend of uninformed generalizations and some suspicion that what Aquinas presents is not so much independent philosophy (...) as propaganda for the cause of Christian theology. (shrink)

Consider intense moments when you have been seized by joy or, in different contexts, by anguish for another person, or a cat or dog, or perhaps even for a squirrel or possum struck as it dashed across the road: whether glorious or haunting, these are among the most profound and meaningful moments in our lives. Agape Ethics focuses our attention on such moments with utter seriousness and argues they reveal a spiritual reality, the reality of agape. Powerful streams of (...) modern Western rationality reject the idea of agape. This has created a crisis of foundations in modern ethics and alienated us from love for all creatures. Working wholly within the bounds of reason, Agape Ethics joins an increasingly vibrant struggle to legitimate the spiritual reality of agape, to awaken people to its power, to clarify its ethical implications, and to validate our spiritual communion with all creatures in all creation. The result is a powerful, inclusive, and wholly reasonable defense of moral realism that should speak to all who are passionate about creating a maximally loving and good world. (shrink)

There are broad commonalities between the projects of Donald MacKinnon (1913–1994) and Stanley Cavell (1926–) sufficient to make the claim that they struck an analogous pose in their respective contexts. This is not to discount their manifest differences. In the milieu of 1960s and 1970s Cambridge, MacKinnon argued in support of a qualified language of metaphysics in the service of a renewed catholic humanism and Christian socialism. At Harvard, Cavell articulated commitments that made him more at home in (...) the world of North American secular political liberalism. Where Nietzsche, Hume, Freud, Heidegger, Emerson and Thoreau were Cavell’s inspirations, Butler, Kant, G. E. Moore, Collingwood and the New Testament were MacKinnon’s. For all the stark differences, commonalities abound and the reason for this can be traced to a shared appreciation of Austin’s contribution to the ‘lingusitic turn’ together with Wittgenstein’s later work. They both developed projects obsessed with the problem of scepticism together with a commitment to a creative re-animation of moral discourse in light of it, with MacKinnon defending a qualified ‘moral realism’, and Cavell, ‘moral perfectionism’. Seen together, a distinctive post-Kantian and post-Wittgensteinian therapeutic moral philosophy is in evidence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images >> Quan Zhou Wu and Linaje’s GenealogyJulia Haeyoon Chang (bio) Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuENJOY (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 5] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuUNA DE ELLAS (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan ZhouWu Digital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 6] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuMEMORIAS RETORCIDAS(Linaje (...) 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 30] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou Wu,NEGATIVOS (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 31] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuELLAS Y YO (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 49] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou Wu,STATEMENT (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 74] Click for larger view View full resolutionQuan Zhou WuLAS ARTISTAS QUE NO FUIMOS (Linaje 2024)Art and design by Quan Zhou WuDigital infrastructure by Marco Fratini[End Page 75]Quan Zhou Wu’s followers will surely be struck—as I was—by the multisensory digital exhibit “Linaje” (“Lineage”), which was published in 2024 and departs, perhaps unexpectedly, from the artist’s previous well-established oeuvre. Before delving into the work in question, it may be fruitful first to have a glimpse at the artist’s iconic aesthetic. In 2015, and at the age of twenty-seven, Wu, a self-taught artist, debuted her first graphic memoir, Gazpacho Agridulce. The book commences with her parents’ newfound life in Spain after leaving Qingtian, a province of Zhejiang, China, to run a restaurant in Algeciras, a municipality of Cadiz. The opening pages of Gazpacho pack a punch, depicting Wu’s dramatic and untimely birth in a taxicab en route to the hospital.Gazpacho’s publication initiated a crucial sea change in the predominantly white Spanish publishing world, which would soon after be rocked by a boom of racialized1 authors penning anti-racist memoirs and other works of non-fiction.2 Gazpacho would also eventually become the first of the author’s trilogy of graphic memoirs, which was completed by the sequels Andaluchinas por el mundo (2017) and the most recent La agridolce vita (2023).Wu’s narratives capture the familial, identarian, and social conflicts that erupt from cultural disloyalties and racism—direct consequences of migration. She and her sisters, for example, loathe their family’s rigid Chinese and Christian mores and long for the cultural markers of an ordinary Spanish childhood, structured of course by U.S. global consumer culture, e.g. Barbie, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s.An illustrator, cartoonist, and podcaster, Wu’s talent as a storyteller lies in her complex use of humor. With great care for her subject and her reader, Wu deploys humor to tend to the uncouth, raw, and ugly parts of life. In so doing, the author invites us to laugh and ultimately reckon with our own discomfort as we with sit with the heaviness of racism, sexism, and post-migration melancholy—using humor as a salve.At her best, Wu serves irreverence, rawness, and wit. To be immersed in her books is to rub up against the rough-hewn emotions that bring her characters to life. The vibrancy of her palette and the whimsy of her pen strokes are inviting, animated, and deceptively light-hearted. In an instant, lines and pigment rearrange into abstractions dense with affect. Fiery hollowed eyes, a gaping mouth, and flushed skin burn through the frame—making the volcanic rage of a migrant mother immediately palpable. It’s so emotive, it practically singes your skin. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Cover of Wu’s first graphic memoir Gazpacho agridulce: Una autobiografía china-andaluza[End Page 102] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Excerpt from Gazpacho agridulce (courtesy of the artist)[End Page 103]While... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Innova dies nostros, sicut a principio:Novelty and Nostalgia in Thomas of Celano's First and Second Lives of St. FrancisBarbara Newman (bio)IntroductionIn his sixth-century compendium of hagiography, Gregory of Tours argued that one should always speak of the vita patrum or vita sanctorum in the singular. According to Pliny, he noted, grammarians did not believe the noun vita had a plural. More to the point, although "there is a diversity (...) of merits and virtues among [the saints], … the one life of the body sustains them all in this world."1 Just as the Church, the body of Christ, is one, so too the saints. Their project of imitatio Christi re-presents the one and only life of Christ for each new generation. As a literary genre, hagiography fleshes out this insight, for no other genre is so steeped in self-citation. Every vita is such a tissue of biblical verses that, to edit a saint's Life before Google, one had to know Scripture by heart or spend endless hours with a concordance. After the Bible, quotations from a few classic vitae were constantly recycled: Athanasius' Life of St. Antony, Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin, Gregory the Great's Life of St. Benedict. With the passage of time, newer classics joined older ones to produce one vast, self-referential monument, incarnate in the Acta Sanctorum: Gregory's vita sanctorum multiplied ad infinitum. So deep did this tendency run that, when an obscure saint needed a vita to justify a cult, shameless hagiographers would plagiarize whole paragraphs, plundering stories and miracles from earlier vitae to serve their turn.2 [End Page 169]It is small wonder, then, that the hagiographic genre is so often characterized as "traditional" or "conservative." It is nostalgic, too, in the sense that each saint's words and deeds bring a glorious Golden Age back to life—most often the apostolic age or the time of the Desert Fathers, but sometimes the graced beginnings of a religious order. Such memorials enabled later generations to idealize their glorious founders. This tendency to exalt the new as a renovation of the old has deep roots in Christianity; even the evangelist Matthew systematically represents Jesus as a new Moses. In the same vein, it is not unusual to find a saint identified as a new Jacob or a second David. On the other hand, many saints' Lives make an insistent claim to newness, renovatio. For the saints were, and are, extraordinary—not merely good men and women, but radical figures whose words and deeds shocked those around them, beginning with their parents. Like Jesus, they had not only admirers, but detractors in plenty. If their publicists held them up as exemplars of virtue, theirs was no ordinary kind, for the heroic virtue that gave saints their charisma could look much like madness. Despite the precedents of earlier vitae, their ascetic feats and challenging behavior often struck observers as new and unheard-of. In hagiography, therefore, claims of novelty play a key role that balances the familiar topoi. Sometimes the newness of a saint's charism is cause for joyful celebration. Jesus, after all, had declared ecce nova facio omnia (Rev 21:5). But "novelties" also had to be handled with care, for they could easily be condemned as heresies or extreme practices deviating from the tradition of the elders.This tension between novelty and nostalgia emerges most clearly in the vitae of saints who founded genuinely new forms of religious life. In this paper I will explore the way it plays out in two early Lives of Francis of Assisi, perhaps the most popular saint of all time. After his death in 1226, Francis set a speed record for canonization—one that would be surpassed in the Middle Ages only by his disciple, St. Anthony of Padua, and by the Dominican martyr Peter of Verona.3 Aside from his charisma and the exponential growth of the Franciscan Order, the fast-track canonization is due to Pope Gregory IX, who as Cardinal Hugolino had been personally close to Francis and supported his movement. For the ceremony in July 1228, less than two years after the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE ORIGINALITY OF ST. THOMAS'S POSITION ON THE PHILOSOPHERS AND CREATION TIMOTHY B. NOONE The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. AS IS WELL KNOWN, Thomas Aquinas stands out from his contemporaries in his apparent willingness to defend the possibility of an eternal but created universe, although, like all orthodox Christian believers, he affirmed that the world had a temporal beginning in the light of Scriptural teaching. That Thomas (...) Aquinas defended the possibility of an eternal creation was amply demonstrated over a decade ago by Fr. John Wippel, who pointed to Aquinas's discussion of creation and endless temporal duration in the De aeternitate mundi, a work written in 12 71 or earlier.1 More recently, Professor Mark Johnson wrote an article in which he concluded that, no matter what doctrine the historical Aristotle may have held, St. Thomas consistently attributes a doctrine of creation to Aristotle.2 Most recent of all have come a pair of important studies by Wilks and Macintosh defending the coherence of Thomas's claim that the 1 John F. Wippel, "Did Thomas Aquinas Defend the Possibility of an Eternally Created World? (The De aeternitate mundi Revisited)," The Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981): 21-37; on the date for Aquinas's De aeternitate mundi, see James A. Weisheipl, "The Date and Context for Aquinas' De aeternitate mundi," in Lloyd P. Gerson, ed., Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Presented to Joseph Owens, C.S.S.R., Papers in Medieval Studies, 4 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983), 270. Arguments for an earlier dating can be found in Thomas Bukowski, "An Early Dating for Aquinas' De aeternitate mundi," Gregorianum 51 (1970): 277-303 and more recently, "Understanding St. Thomas on the Eternity of the World: Help from Giles of Rome?" Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 58 (1991): 113-25. The main thesis of this paper is unaffected by the dating of the De aeternitate mundi. 2 Mark F. Johnson, "Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Creation to Aristotle?" The New Scholasticism 63 (1989): 129-55. 275 276 TIMOTHY B. NOONE world could be both eternal and created, while another pair of studies by Aersten and van Veldhuijsen have begun to explore from a more historical perspective the importance of Aquinas's formulation of the doctrine of creation for understanding his thought and its distinctiveness.3 The present paper is intended not so much to challenge the conclusions of any of these admirable studies as to put their findings into a wider historical framework through which we may hope to discover what is unique in Aquinas's doctrine of creation. In reading the Scriptum super Sententias of Thomas Aquinas, one is immediately struck by the novelty of Aquinas's claim that the philosophers and thus reason itself may reach the conclusion that the world is created. Such a claim seems quite different from the account of the philosophical knowledge of creation given by several of St. Thomas's immediate predecessors and contemporaries. What, then, emboldens Aquinas to make such a claim? Is Aquinas's reading of the philosophers so original and so superior to that of his contemporaries that he is capable of seeing in the philosophers a doctrine of creation that they missed? Or does Aquinas's originality on the philosophical demonstrability of creation have more to do with a reformulation of the doctrine of creation? Or does Aquinas both have an original interpretation of the philosophers and a different understanding of the doctrine of creation? In an attempt to answer these questions, the present paper will survey early and mid-thirteenth century views on the philosophers and the doctrine of creation and compare those views to Aquinas's position in the Scriptum super Sententias. The thirteenth-century authors included in this survey are chosen for their prominence in thirteenth-century thought, not 3 See Ian Wilks, "Aquinas on the Past Possibility of the World's Having Existed Forever," The Review of Metaphysics 48 (1994): 299-329; J. J. Macintosh, "St. Thomas and the Traversal of the Infinite," The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68 (1994): 157-77; J. A. Aertsen, "The Eternity of the World: The Believing... (shrink)

The most valuable finding of my first sightseeing trip was that medieval Europe was the seat of Christendom and that Christianity defines the West. I was amazed to see that Europe reveals so much of its past. I had not had such an experience in the United States, where I had lived as a student and then as a professor of economics.As I glimpsed the West, I found myself rediscovering Confucian civilization and how much I am still Confucian, although I (...) was born into a Presbyterian family in Korea. But then, Korea is the most Confucian country. Curious about the West since my first trip, whenever I can I have toured Europe in search of the meaning of the West.While travelling in Europe, my mind often jumps back to my early life in Korea and Japan. I am struck by the vivid contrast in appearance between medieval European towns and Asian towns, which were grey and as flat as pancakes. Medieval towns are stony and solid. Nothing is flimsy. Shaped by spires, domes, and towers, a European town's silhouette rises and falls like a stock market graph. Europeans obviously loved the vertical emphasis. A traveller can see either a soaring church tower or a castle keep miles away on the horizon. Churches predominate, as if to emphasize that the main business of the town is the worship and glorification of God. (shrink)

The philosopher and moralist Alasdair Maclntyre closed his influential work, After Virtue, with a call for ‘another…Saint Benedict’. The idea of calling for a moral exemplar and savior who could change both forms and practice struck him as the only kind of serious intervention the moral thinker can make under present circumstances, What is lacking in modern life, he reasoned, is a genuine tradition of moral reasoning-moral persuasion and reasoning presuppose such a tradition. So the only choice is to (...) create one. But the creation of a tradition is not something that a professor can do in the study. It is an act, as Maclntyre conceived it, of community formation and the development of a common narrative-what St Benedict did when he created the religious communities of post-Roman Europe through the attractive example of his own way of living as a Christian. (shrink)

Last year the B.B.C. arranged for certain eminent men to broadcast their Points of View to the public. The result was a most interesting series of talks; but for the sceptical philosopher the series was chiefly entertaining for its brilliantly illustrating the old tag: quot homines, tot sententiæ. One was struck not merely by the discrepancy of opinion, but by how each speaker was ‘true to type': the biologist, the physicist with a taste for spiritualism, the Christian Platonist, (...) and the rest—each spoke his part and told of a world built according to his own particular measuring-rod. (shrink)

Preface, by F. Böckle.--Articles: Empirical social study and ethics, by W. Korff. What does a non-Christian expect of the church in matters of social morality, by R. Garaudy. Social cybernetics as a permanent function of the church, by C. Wagner. World trade and international cooperation for development, by A. Ferrer. How can the church provide guidelines in social ethics? by P. Herder-Dorneich. Races and minorities: a matter of conscience by J. Musulin. The modern sexual revolution, by G. Struck. (...) Prudence and moral change, by F. Furger.--Bibliographical survey: Strength and weakness of the declaration on the Jews, by J.-P. Lichtenberg.--Documentation Concilium: Peace through revolution, by Concilium General Secretariat and H. Gross-Mayr. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Only the Truth Has Grace:A Tribute to Father Romanus Cessario, O.P.Ryan ConnorsGod's providence arranged that I was first to meet Father Romanus Cessario, O.P., during my studies as an undergraduate at Boston College. One of the first occasions in which I was privileged to learn from him transpired at the 2005 priestly ordination of my friend and his student, Father Kevin Bordelon of the Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana. (...) After I had driven to the ordination Mass and then to the lunch reception with the newly minted priest, I encountered Father Cessario who noticed my apparently stunned demeanor. In response to his inquiry about my well-being, I explained only that I was struck by the morning's events: "On the ride to the Cathedral Kevin was not a priest. But on the ride to the reception, he was." In his eminently imitable way, Father Romanus instructed: "Ryan, that is called a sacrament in which something really happens."Romanus Cessario is a realist. Indeed, what his Introduction to Moral Theology calls "moral realism" captures the decades of teaching and scholarship of our honored theologian.1 Various forms of idealism, illusions all, render Catholics unable to pass on the faith effectively and unprepared to confront the challenges that invariably arise. In point of fact, moral, sacramental, and ecclesial realism are the only expressions of Catholic theology that serve the Church's mission and do not cause harm to her members.2 In [End Page 1077] what follows, I offer five areas of Catholic theology necessary for flourishing ecclesial life today. A fulsome understanding of each of these aspects of Catholic faith presupposes the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas and benefits from the teaching of his noted—and much beloved—contemporary interpreter.SatisfactionAt the age of thirty-three, six years after solemn profession as a Dominican friar of the Province of St. Joseph, Father Romanus Cessario set out for the University of Fribourg to complete a doctoral dissertation under the direction of the Irish Dominican Colman O'Neill.3 The subject of this work, satisfaction in Aquinas, has remained a frequent theme of Father's writing in the ensuing decades. Put simply, sin requires a divine solution. People need redemption. Confessors do not stand as attorneys seeking the minimal punishment for their penitent defendants. There is no guiltless sin. Rather, the sacramental realist recognizes that sin carries its own consequence. The unfortunate state of original sin means fallen man stands in need of satisfaction. Christ's sacrificial love through his Passion and death enables the restoration and perfection of the imago Dei.The theme of Christian satisfaction relies upon the realism that grace does not merely cover over sin, but instead really heals and elevates the human person. Man requires—and in Christ can receive through the sacraments of the Church—divinely accomplished restoration.4 Pope Leo XIII, initiator of the Thomist revival of the late nineteenth century, observed: "Nothing is [End Page 1078] more useful than to look upon the world as it really is."5 In the words of Pope Paul VI: "Only the truth has grace." The ultimate error of casuistry lies in its inability to recognize the consequences of defective action.6 Pastoral practice today benefits from the knowledge that a parishioner's ignorance of moral truth does not provide consolation. The ignorance of many young persons, for example, about the defective nature of unchaste activity of whatever kind does not mean they are not harmed by such actions. Rather, the moral realist who observes St. Thomas's teaching, especially with the help of his authentic interpreters, comes to see that bad acts never perfect persons. Sinners stand in need of satisfying assistance. Only Christ provides such a divine remedy.7VirtueThe return to virtue-based moral reasoning in Catholic theology stands as a happy fruit of the post-conciliar period. In particular, Pope John Paul II's 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor remains among the most lasting intellectual contributions of his long pontificate. This much-maligned and misunderstood document has required explanation, especially to the English-speaking world. The United States, in particular, bears a long legacy of the misunderstanding... (shrink)

The story of David and Goliath is one of the most famous biblical stories. It had an impact on many branches of contemporary art. It is also an inevitable part of religious education and general education in all schools. Knowing the fact that the Church Fathers have an essential part in the lives of many Christians today (in the Orthodox Church, they were role models from the very beginning), it is interesting to see how did they, these original theologians, read (...) and interpret the story of David and Goliath. Was it for them, in the time when the Bible was the most sacred book for all, important as it is for us today? Did people during the sports events of that time talk on the markets about the underdog who struck the giant? Additionally, if one looks at the ancient Greek and Hebrew text, one will find out that the Hebrew version, which was used as the source for most modern translations, is 40% longer than the Greek one. Could the works of the Fathers help us to determine which version of the story is the Holy Scripture for Christians today? (shrink)

If patriotism can thus be seen as an incentive or as an instigation even in such a recondite science as epistemology, how much more readily can it be seen to perform such functions in other studies more immediately or inextricably bound up with communal human life? I pass over instances that occur to me—for instance, the Victorian Jesuit, Father Hopkins, declaring that every good poem written by an Englishman was a blow struck for England--and profit instead, if I may, (...) by the presence among us of Edward Said. I do not know, and it is none of my business to know, what passport Said presents at the international frontier. But it is surely common knowledge among us that he has deep and feelingful and intimate allegiances to the state of Lebanon. Who of us has failed to connect this with his books Orientalism and The Question of Palestine? The point is that, having made this connection, none of us thinks the worse of Said. On the contrary, we recognize that he has a special stake in such topics and therefore speaks on them with a special authority. Unless I am mistaken, that stake and that authority are, in a perhaps extended sense, patriotic. And whatever our speculative objections to the idea and the principle of patriotism, in practice we recognize it and we honour it.What I am questioning, it will now be plain, is the principle of "disinterest." "The disinterested pursuit of knowledge"—it is what in our distinct disciplines all of us have paid lip-service to, and perhaps more than lip-service. But when we come right down to it, is it what we believe? The honest patriot declares an interest; and if we are wise, we take note of the declaration, making allowances and reserving doubts accordingly. But what are we to make of the scholar who declares no interest, who claims implicitly to be truly disinterested. Can we believe him? And if we cannot, what guidance do we have as to what reservations to make, what doubts to entertain? I am of one mind with my Marxist colleagues who, from a political position very far from mine, warn us to be especially suspicious of the scholar who claims to have no axe to grind. We, all of us, have axes to grind; the crucial distinction is between those who know this about themselves and those who don't.Let me make myself clear. When I urge that the terms "patriotism" and "patriotic" be reinstated in our discourse, and particularly in those forms of our discourse that may be called "interpretation," I do not imply that patriotism is a nobler, a more elevated instigation than sundry others, mostly ideological, of which we are more aware. The point is precisely that of these others we are aware because we share a vocabulary which acknowledges them, whereas "patriotic" has been banished from our vocabulary, and so the reality which the word represents is left out of our calculations. Let me admit for the sake of argument what I do not in fact believe-- that patriotism is a concept and a sentiment so besmirched by the unholy uses made of it that, if mankind is to survive, patriotism will have to be eradicated. Even if that were the case, it remains true that patriotic interest and incitement are very far from having been eradicated from the world that we in fact inhabit, and try to interpret, here and now; and if we try to work within a vocabulary that pretends otherwise, we condemn ourselves to producing interpretations that are drastically partial and perhaps disastrously misleading. The point is not whether patriotism is a good thing or a bad thing but simply that it is; it exists, as powerful factor which we all in our hearts acknowledge even as our vocabulary refuses to. And when we speak in this context of "the world," we certainly include in that world ourselves, who offer to interpret it. Every one of our interpretations is coloured by the fact that we, the several interpreters, are British or American, French or Italian or Russian or whatever. If we think otherwise, we deceive ourselves; and yet where, in any of our currently acceptable vocabularies, determined as all of them are by the glib rationalism of the Enlightenment, do we find that momentous fact about ourselves acknowledged? Where is it acknowledged, for instance, in the vocabulary of feminism that "woman," as conceived by an American writing about Italians, cannot help but be significantly different from "woman" as conceived by an Italian looking at Americans? Or again, an Italian woman may well, we must suppose, be an Italian patriot; but where, in the current vocabulary of feminists, is that dimension of her "woman-ness" allowed for? Let it be acknowledged only so as to be deplored; but let it in any event be acknowledged. At the moment, it isn't.Donald A. Davie, the distinguished poet, is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Vanderbilt University and honorary fellow of Saint Catharine's College, Cambridge and of Trinity College, Dublin. He has edited The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, and his Collected Poems 1950-1970 appeared in 1972. His latest publications are Dissentient Voice and These the Companions; Recollections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Intersection of Medicine and ReligionJohn C. DormoisThe practice of medicine offers a host of rewards to the practitioner. Besides the obvious intellectual satisfaction of solving a difficult diagnostic problem or the ability to make a comfortable living, I have found the greatest personal sense of moral gratification when helping [End Page 196] families negotiate the most challenging event in life: making decisions at end of life. Whether the (...) condition was a ruptured intracranial aneurysm with brain death or a patient with far advanced cancer struggling with the choice between experimental chemotherapy or choosing comfort therapy at home surrounded by family for the remaining days of life, the moral courage required to provide the best guidance was considerable. In my early years of practice I didn’t call my actions in these situations “courageous” nor were there moral “guidelines” providing a blueprint. I knew I responded with empathy and compassion and that this ability had a lot to do with being raised in a religious or spiritual home. At the same time, I suspected that some of the lack of empathy and compassion I witnessed in some of my colleagues was related to the very training programs of physicians. This essay traces the origin of my moral and ethical concerns about medical education and my intention to reinvigorate the spiritual or existential voice in medicine.An early life experience had a great deal to do with shaping my moral development. At age seven my family traveled through the West Indies. My father’s amateur radio hobby meant that at every stop we would be greeted by one of his radio contacts. One stop in particular was life changing.Port au Prince, Haiti was an unknown place to this seven year–old, but to say it was a culture shock to a boy from Kansas would be an understatement of epic proportions. It was during this visit that I experienced true poverty in its most blatant form. In downtown Port au Prince I saw limbless beggars and the deformed from polio and malnutrition. But it was the sight of the garbage dump near the center of town that changed my world forever. There, among piles of detritus, I saw children and families making their home in the dump. They had hollowed out a sort of cavern in the piles of trash that served as a place of refuge from both the rain and the sun.This experience in many ways has served as a framework and background for my life. Although seen through the eyes of a seven year–old, the picture can only be adequately understood within the context of being raised by religiously faithful parents, parents free of hypocrisy whose lives personified the best in Christian virtues and practices. These early experiences planted the seeds that would only fully blossom some 60 years later.Medical school was a demanding but exhilarating experience. Each day was a day of discovery … anatomy, physiology, pathology … all subjects opening up a whole new world to explore. Internal medicine suited me best since it was the specialty that most closely integrated all the basic sciences necessary to arrive at a diagnosis. I loved the elegance of endocrinology in particular where a given hormone mediator could cause widely different effects if present in excess or completely absent. But I was in the end drawn to cardiology since it combined complex physiology with my avocation, the love of running.There was, however, a disturbing aspect of medicine education that I observed affecting many of my classmates. Although I can vividly recall the enthusiasm that all of us shared as we donned our white coats for the first time and envisioned a future of caring for our patients, things gradually and insidiously changed over the next four years. The altruism and empathy that was so evident in the early years gradually lessened as graduation approached. I could not help being struck by this change and wondered at the time why that should happen. I had no insight then that what I had observed was a well recognized consequence of the medical school experience. I’m sure that the passage from professional training to practice in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Professor CorlessRose DrewDo We Go from Here? The Many Religions and the Next Step. Over the years, his works examined Buddhist teachings and practices, Christian teachings and practices, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and interreligious dialogue; more recently his focus had turned to queer dharma topics and same-sex issues.A memorial service, "We Are Life, Its Shining Gift," was held for Roger on March 10, 2007, in San Francisco. Friends (...) and colleagues spoke of Roger's life and accomplishments and his impact on their lives. There were Buddhist chanting and Christian hymns, with the service opening and closing with two musical pieces selected by Roger for that purpose: "The Swan of Tuonela" by Jean Sibelius and "The Lark Ascending" by Sir Ralph Vaughn William.Monetary memorial gifts are being received by the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies to be used in some fashion toward the 8th International Buddhist-Christian Dialogue to be held in 2009. Gifts should be sent to SBCS Corless Memorial Fund, CSSR Executive Office, Rice University MS 156, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892. To donate by credit card, call 713-348 5721.I was about six months into my current PhD research on Buddhist-Christian dual religious identity when I read a profile of Roger Corless in which he spoke about his own Buddhist-Christian identity (or "identities," because Roger saw his Buddhist "self " and his Christian "self " as two distinct identities). Roger immediately earned a place on my "most wanted" list, and when the time came to approach potential interviewees, I was delighted to find that Roger was eager, despite his failing health, to share with me the results of his "experiment" in dual belonging. So, last spring, I stayed with him for a few days and we talked at length about his religious thought and practice.That Roger was a remarkable man is clearly evident in his work: his wit and playful sense of humor, his sharp and inquisitive mind and vast knowledge of his subject, his intellectual integrity and concern for authenticity, and his insightful and innovative perspectives. Roger also possessed a healthy awareness of the potential for theology and "dharmology" to fail to do justice to the Christian's and the Buddhist's experience (which was what he considered to be crucial)—an awareness that was complemented by his remarkable ability to combine an intuitive, emotional response to truth and a sensitivity to the power of myth, symbolism, and poetry, with a thoroughgoing academic rigor. Sometimes he might start an essay with a song and, then, as he put it, "try to convert it into a philosophy," asking any readers who felt he had failed in the conversion to return again to the song, because, as far as he was concerned, the song would be true even if he himself had not correctly understood it. When I met Roger in person, I was delighted to find my sense of his intuitive spirituality, rich imagination, and shrewd intelligence confirmed, and was immediately struck also by his disarming honesty and humbling humility.It is a great privilege to have had the opportunity to meet Roger and talk [End Page 153] with him about his fascinating ideas. I was not always sure I fully understood them, and we certainly did not agree on everything: argue though we did about his notion that there could be more than one "Absolute," we never did come to share a perspective. But his ideas nevertheless continue to be a challenge to me and a reminder of the need for all of us engaged in dialogue to be respectful of the integrity of the religious traditions, and a warning to anyone who, like Roger, sees himself or herself as a person who, rather than simply being engaged in dialogue, is a dialogue, to be wary of quick-fix solutions to the questions and difficulties he or she inevitably faces. As far as Roger was concerned, it was better to live as an authentic Buddhist and as an authentic Christian and to accept what he took to be their conceptual irreconcilability than to accept any tidy reconciliation that might reduce both to the status of merely partial truths... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:News and ViewsMark Gonnerman Click for larger view View full resolutionWhen I think of Roger Corless, I think of the bristlecone pine trees in the White Mountains of east-central California, about an hour's drive from Bishop up White Mountain Road. These trees (Pinus longaeva) are the world's oldest living beings. The senior member of the stand in Patriarch Grove, named Methuselah, is more than 4,700 years old.It is not (...) because Roger lived an especially long life—he was granted only sixty-nine-and-a-half years of calendar time—that he and these trees fuse in my mind. While Roger was an old soul from an older world, this association arises from Roger's adherence to the kind of "become who you are" eccentricity celebrated by Henry David Thoreau and other sages who remind each of us to "step to the music" of "a different drummer."When visiting the bristlecones, one is impressed by the various odd poses struck by each tree. Of course no two are alike; each holds a unique gnarly stance that says, "You are among a community of nonconformists." These trees remind us that each being is a unique expression of Nature and ought to be honored as such.Thoreau does not use the word "eccentric" in Walden, but writes of extravagance instead:I fear chiefly lest my expression not be extra- vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! [End Page 155] it depends on how you are yarded.... I desire to speak somewhat without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments.A lover of words, as was Roger, Thoreau splits extravagance in two to highlight its root meaning: "to wander" (vagari) "outside" (extra). To learn the truth of matters requires the courage to follow one's own path, even when—especially when—it takes one beyond the pale. Only then might wanderers become convinced of those truths they know, for they have been encountered firsthand and tested, experimentally, in the realm of personal experience.When one sets about the challenging work of claiming a natural right to eccentricity, one discovers self-authenticating feedback loops that encourage further steps along an always unfolding, yet untrammeled path. It takes courage to stay in motion, for the way is often rough. People get lost—and found. One's own authentic way leads to wakefulness. This in turn enables recognition and enjoyment of other liberated beings and compassion for those who have yet to hear chanticleer crow (to stay with Thoreau) or the lion's roar (as Buddhists might say).As Mas Kodani, a Jodoshinshu minister in South-Central Los Angeles has observed, "One does not stand still looking for a path. One walks; and as one walks a path comes into being." This walk requires a balance of both confident perseverance and an ability to respond to ever-changing conditions. Lives of both the bristlecones and Roger demonstrate perseverance in spite of hostile habitats: the pines, rooted in sandstone and dolomite, hang on in a cold and dry climate at 11,200 feet; Roger made his way with difficulty in spite of challenges he faced as a gay, Buddhist-and-Christian intellectual in Durham County, North Carolina. When, after thirty years, Roger became an emeritus professor at Duke and relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, he found himself in a much more hospitable setting.It may seem strange to draw out this comparison of Roger and those ancient White Mountain pines, but when I first met those trees in the summer of 1998, they set a standard for authenticity that came to mind whenever Roger and I interacted. His extravagant accomplishments as a teacher, scholar, and person who lived a life of genuine service to others were attained through the real work of daily spiritual practice, critical reflection, and adherence to the truths—always plural for Roger—of which he had been convinced. I'll always be grateful for his inspiring example of a human life well lived. It... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Original Dwelling Place: Zen EssaysRobert E. GossOriginal Dwelling Place: Zen Essays. By Robert Aitken. Upland, California: Counterpoint, 1996. 241 pp.Robert Aitken narrates his over forty-year journey into Zen, elucidating not only his spiritual journey but also reflecting the Americanization of Zen Buddhism. He was introduced to Zen Buddhism during World War II as an internee in a camp for enemy civilians in Kobe, Japan. Original Dwelling Place is Aitken’s (...) ninth book to explore a series of topics that accent his personal journey into Zen. He has gathered a series of essays about the texts and lineage teachers with whom he studied over the years. In the opening section, entitled “Ancestors,” he pays homage to the masters [End Page 212] who influenced his own Zen practice. He writes, “All of my guides have passed away, but they are alive in my mind and body” (p. 5). The book reflects his continuing bond with those deceased teachers who exercised a vital presence and environmental influence within his life. He shares some stories, personal insights, and legacies of some of his guides, such as Nyogen Senzaki, Soen Roshi, Blyth Sensei, and D. T. Suzuki. I found his essay on the legacy of Dwight Goddard filling in many personal details of a pioneer Western Buddhist who significantly contributed to the Americanization of Buddhism. In many ways, Aitken’s own spiritual development and Original Dwelling Place recapitulate the Americanization of Zen Buddhism, providing some important insights into that process of Buddhist acculturation.Yet Aitken does not limit his guides to twentieth-century ones. He brings alive the classical discourses and relates them to contemporary life. Throughout his essays, I was struck by how alive and dynamic Aitken’s Mahayana contemplative vision and practice are. There is a spirit of “contemplative action” that collapses the duality of meditative practice and living that discovers the truth dynamically within a matrix of open living. As a Christian practitioner of Ignatian spirituality, I found many parallels to the Jesuit ideal of being “contemplative in action.” Aitken’s essays elucidate an ongoing dynamic dialectic that fluctuates between meditative reflection and the world of experience—reminding me at times of the contemplative Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, and at other times of the Jesuit poet-activist, Daniel Berrigan.The reader garners an aesthetic sense that classical Zen texts have been an integral part of his journey and have provided him with a platform to reflect on topics such as marriage, death, the use of money, sexuality, and Zen practice. Some of his essays have a meditative quality, drawing the reader into an web of intertextuality and experience where Zen teachers and Western poets engage in a contemplative path of pleasure expressed in awareness of the everyday dewdrop world. There were moments that I envisioned reading a particular essay on retreat, for they had a meditative quality that reminded me of some the writings of Thomas Merton. Like Merton, Robert Aitken does not merely probe meditative experience but attempts to interrogate the everyday experiences of Western Buddhists from meditative awareness. Most Japanese Buddhists, he notes, are married within Shinto ceremonies, and Western Buddhists have resurrected old Buddhist marriage ceremonies seldom used by Japanese practitioners. Western Buddhist marriage ceremonies, Aitken notes, are a relatively new tradition that often blends ceremonies from The Book of Common Prayer with Buddhist rituals. He ends his short essay on marriage with final reflections on how marriage and family form a little sangha.In “Death: A Zen Buddhist Perspective,” Aitken breaks new ground by noting how Buddhists face the fact of death and find solace in impermanence. He quotes the Japanese haiku poet, Isa Kobayashi (1763–1827), grieving at the loss of his baby daughter:The dewdrop world is the dewdrop world, and yet—and yet(p. 124). [End Page 213]Isa looks desperately for something to give him hope but only finds comfort in his grief. Aitken points out that within grief is emancipation and that bereavement can be a good teacher. He develops some reflections on a highly underdeveloped topic within Buddhism: grieving and the transformation of grief into solace.Aitken writes on political revolution and the matters of ethics. He addresses... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Herodotus and Images of Tyranny:The Tyrants of CorinthVivienne J. GrayIntroductionThis paper considers Herodotus' presentation of the tyrants of Corinth (3.48–53, 5.92) and some recent readings of the same.1 The speech that Herodotus puts into the mouth of Socles of Corinth (5.92) is a main source for the tyranny of Cypselus and Periander, and also for the relations of the Spartans with their Peloponnesian allies and Athens, for it seems (...) to persuade the allies to oppose the Spartans in their desire to reimpose tyranny on Athens by offering a negative paradigm of tyranny.2 Yet historians agree that what Socles says about Cypselus and Periander is cast in the form of patterned stories of questionable value for "real history" and that the image of tyranny does not in all respects meet the aims of the persuasion.3 Socles has called tyranny "more unjust [End Page 361] and more murderous" than anything else in the world, yet they believe that he offers a sympathetic portrayal of the early history of Cypselus, the founder of the dynasty. The oracles that seem to say that he will bring justice to Corinth and the story of his survival as a babe, saved from death only by his smile, the pity of those sent to butcher him, and his mother's actions, should be explained, since they do not seem appropriate to a denunciation of tyranny. The usual explanation is that Herodotus has given too free a rein to his liking for a good story and has not succeeded in making Socles say what he ought to be saying. "The fairy–tale and the friendly oracles agree very ill with the general tendency of Herodotus' account, and we can best explain their presence in his text by supposing that they were already traditional elements in the stories before his time, and that he took them over without quite noticing how they told against his speaker's view of Cypselus."4 John Gould reads the speech as "narrative as persuasion," in which the narrative parts company with the persuasion and takes on an independent life of its own. Socles starts at the beginning and explains how the tyranny came to be, instead of proceeding to an ordered denunciation of its injustice.5 The general precedent for the practice is Homeric: Phoenix's use of the story of Meleager to persuade Achilles to return to battle seems to part company from the persuasion in similar ways (Iliad 9.527–99).6 The portrayal of Periander is generally agreed to serve the denunciation better, but even here the stripping of the women of Corinth has struck some as [End Page 362] anti–climactic.7 Gould believes that the narrative story of Periander and Lycophron, which is the other main evidence for the tyrants of Corinth (3.48–53), also drifts free of its author and context: "The story has a scale and a power and a weight out of all proportion to its overt function as an explanatory link in the larger narrative, and in this it resembles a whole range of other Herodotean stories."8 Christiane Sourvinou–Inwood finds it to be so patterned by mythic consciousness that the historical data are almost irrecoverable.9The first aim of this paper is to offer a reading of the speech of Socles in which the persuasion does not part company with the narrative, but remains firmly tied to it. The images of tyranny in the story of Cypselus, as in that of Periander and Lycophron, which has not had the same critical attention, are shaped by their context. The method will be to note the similarities and differences between their stories and other stories of similar pattern in Herodotus.10 Comparison will illuminate the adaptations that Herodotus has made to fit the pattern to the requirements of the various contexts and more clearly demonstrate the influence of context on the images of tyranny which they produce.The second aim of the paper is to emphasise the difficulties that the influence of context poses for the idea of a stereotype of tyranny in Herodotus. There is scholarly interest in whether Herodotus... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam: Jan Van Bragt (1928–2007)James W. HeisigEarly on the morning of Easter Thursday, April 12, 2007, Jan Van Bragt passed away quietly at the age of seventy-eight.1 During the previous year his health had begun to deteriorate, until in the final days of 2006 he was obliged to leave Kyoto and take up residence with his religious congregation in Himeji. On February 21, he was hospitalized with lung (...) cancer and was operated on some weeks later. After a brief period in a semi-comatose state, he regained consciousness but was never to speak again.Jan was born in Flemish Belgium and entered the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at age eighteen. Six years later, he was ordained a priest. After receiving his master’s degree in philosophy, he entered the doctoral program and at the same time lectured at the congregation’s seminary. Five years later he received his doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Leuven with a thesis on Hegel and immediately set sail for Japan, landing in December 1961.Jan undertook eighteen months of training in the language and then spent another eighteen months working as an assistant pastor at the Sakai Catholic Church near Osaka. In 1965, he was accepted as a research student at Kyoto University, where he spent the next six years studying with Takeuchi Yoshinori and Nishitani Keiji. In 1971, he was named provincial superior of the congregation in Japan, a post he held for five years until he was unexpectedly requested to serve as the first acting director of the newly established Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.For the next fifteen years Jan brought the fledgling institute to maturity, galvanizing the young and inexperienced staff into a community of scholars devoted to exploring the largely unknown and uncharted waters of interreligious dialogue in Japan. Among his first projects was the intermonastic exchange that brought leading Buddhist monks and nuns from Japan to European monasteries and vice versa. At a concluding symposium in Japan he served as chair, juggling Japanese, Flemish, German, French, and English with the skill and poise for which we all remember him. After a flurry of publications on the project, he left the project to others to carry on—as it has to this day, having reached a second generation, most of whom no longer know the inaugural role that he played.Jan was also a key figure in the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, founded in 1982. In addition to bringing the central office of the society to the [End Page 141] Nanzan Institute, he served as president from 1989 to 1997. During his years at the Nanzan Institute, he was in demand around Japan as a lecturer or partner in dialogue. For many years he traveled around the world in the same capacity and was invited to teach in Canada, Belgium, the United States, and the Philippines. From 1985 to 1990, he served as a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. In his thinking and writing, his study and reading, as well as in his moral concerns, Jan straddled any number of civilizations, histories, literatures, and cultures. In the end, however, it was in Japan that he felt most at home, where he found a loom on which to weave the things of life into a single view of the world.At his funeral, Jan Swyngedouw, a fellow Flemish missionary and longtime colleague at the Nanzan Institute, delivered a thoughtful and touching tribute to a man who had always shied away from honors and recognition, preferring to let others stand on his shoulders and even accept the credit that was rightly his. Swyngedouw told of going through Jan’s library (the philosophical portion of which he graciously donated to the Centro Studi Asiatico in Osaka) and being struck by the number of volumes on mysticism. Like all of us, he knew of Jan’s academic interest in the Christian mystics as a bridge between religions, but as he read through comments in the margins he came to realize what most of us had never noticed: how deeply Jan’s own spirituality was rooted in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Martin Luther and Buddhism: The Aesthetics of SufferingPaul O. IngramMartin Luther and Buddhism: The Aesthetics of Suffering. By Paul S. Chung. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002. 434 pp.As a member of the Lutheran community (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), I am struck by the fact that Lutheran theologians—referred to as "teaching theologians" when employed by Lutheran seminaries—seem little interested in religious pluralism in general and (...) interreligious dialogue in particular. There are important exceptions, of course, one being Donald Luck of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Ohio. And the most intense and coherent dialogue between Christians and Muslims now taking place in the United States is located at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. But by and large, Lutheran theology seems unengaged with the realities of religious pluralism. Rather than dialogue, "missionology" is the focus of most Lutheran theological encounter with the world religions, which means that most Lutheran conversation with religious pluralism is best characterized as monologue.It's different for most Lutherans sitting in the pews of local congregations. Most lay persons understand that they must live their faith contextualized by their religiously plural neighborhoods. Lutheran laity are interested the religious practices and worldviews of their neighbors because they are in contact with their neighbors everyday. They desire to meet and know the religious "other" not as "other," but as fellow human beings seeking to live in community. My distinct impression, gained [End Page 235] from teaching adult education courses in local congregations (mostly Lutheran and other mainline denominations), is that Christian lay people are usually miles ahead of their pastors, denominational leaders, and teaching theologians in their encounter with the realities of religious pluralism and their desire for dialogue. For these reasons, Paul S. Chung's book, Martin Luther and Buddhism, is important, and I hope it will be the beginning of specifically Lutheran dialogue with the Buddhist tradition. Again, as a Lutheran, I can only say, "It's about time."Chung's goal is twofold: (1) engaging in critical dialogue with the theology of Martin Luther, and (2) Asian pluralistic theology of religions. Specifically, the author, himself a Korean Lutheran pastor and theologian, places Luther's theology of the Cross in dialogue with Buddhist understanding of suffering (duh.kha). His thesis is that what Christianity and Buddhism have in common is their understanding of suffering, albeit each tradition having different approaches and "solutions" to universal suffering. Accordingly, rereading Luther's theology of the Cross in dialogue with Buddhism's take on suffering, its causes, and its resolution is the center of Chung's hermeneutical approach to Luther.Surely, Chung is on the right track. Buddhism's focus on the experience of universal suffering and its resolution is one of its defining features. Chung's reason for placing Luther's theology of the Cross in dialogue with Buddhism lies mainly in the fact that Luther focused on the suffering of God on the cross incarnated in the suffering of the historical Jesus, which he placed in direct contrast to the "theology of glory" of medieval scholastic theology. Chung's claim is that Luther's understanding of divine suffering is a "liberation theology" that needs be contextualized by contemporary struggle for social, economic, ecological, and women's liberation from systemic structures of injustice. Because justice issues are not religion-specific, Luther's theology of the Cross in socially engaged dialogue with Buddhism should be a source of liberation for both Christians and Buddhists.Chung's work stands in a long line of Asian Christians seeking to translate Christian teachings and practices into the religious traditions foundational to Asian cultures, in Chung's case Korean Buddhism and, to some degree, Confucianism. One immediately thinks of Aloysius Pieris's dialogue with Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Seiichi Yagi and Masaaki Honda's appropriation of Mahayana doctrines in their attempts to relate Christian faith to Japanese cultural experience, or Raimundo Panikkar's interpretation of Christian faith through the lenses of Hinduism and Buddhism. All ofthese theologians note that Anglo-European intellectual and cultural traditions are not easily translatable into Asian cultural experience. Because Western forms of Christian tradition are foreign to Asian cultural values... (shrink)

Ralph Cudworth, Doctor of Divinity, Master of Christ’s College at Cambridge, and philosophical chieftain of the Cambridge Platonists, published The True Intellectual System of the Universe in 1678 to disprove “the fatal necessity of all actions and events.” This disproof would destroy the various atheisms founded upon such “fatal necessity”; it would also correct those Christians who mistakenly honoured God by subjecting men to a divinely administered fate. Cudworth, with a constant eye on Hobbes, whom he did not name, (...) class='Hi'>struck at atheism by establishing a “true intellectual system” and by arguing away its principle of fate. His design swelled as he worked to meet the various versions of “fatal necessity” with the various atheisms founded upon them, to establish the true doctrine, and to accommodate his own copious learning, and it swelled too much for the published work to be more than a first instalment of his whole design. (shrink)

Kierkegaard, a poet of ideals and practitioner of the indirect method, also had a direct and polemical side. He revealed this in several writings throughout his career, culminating in The Moment, his attack against the established ecclesiastical order. Kierkegaard was moved to criticize the church by his differences with Bishop Mynster, Primate of the Church of Denmark. Although Mynster saw in Kierkegaard a complement to himself and his outlook, Kierkegaard challenged Mynster to acknowledge the emptying and estheticizing of Christianity that (...) had occurred in modern Christendom. For three years Kierkegaard was silent, waiting. When Mynster died, he was memorialized as "an authentic truth-witness" in the "holy chain of truth-witnesses that stretches through the ages from the days of the apostles." This struck Kierkegaard as blasphemous and inspired him to write a series of articles in Fædrelandet, which he followed with ten numbers of the pamphlet The Moment. This volume includes the articles from Fædrelandet, all numbers of The Moment, and several other late pieces of Kierkegaard's writing. (shrink)

Although the following essay is literary-philosophical, it arose from a practical interest. I have been struck by how widespread today is the complaint about the ‘inadequate father’. Of course a father may be inadequate in diverse ways, either absconding, absent and weak, or overbearing, bullying, and tyrannical, or some combination of these. Further, I am not restricting the term ‘father’ to its narrow biological sense, but using it rather as a metaphor for any institution or structure which an individual (...) or a group feels should have been in place to guide, direct, and protect them in important situations, but did not do its job properly. Consequently they are willing to concede they are not all they could have been, but they insist it is not their fault, rather the fault of the ‘father’ who should have done his job better. This ties in with the fashionable appeal of ‘victimhood’. Everybody today seems to want to cast themselves as a ‘victim’, for reasons similar to those mentioned above. If you are a ‘victim’, then there must be an ‘oppressor’– and some ‘parent’ organization that should have guided, directed, and protected you against the oppressor, but again did not do its job adequately. It is striking how many individuals and groups around the world today choose to perceive themselves, and to present themselves to others, as ‘victims’; it has indeed become a preferred characterization of our age, for it carries with it a rhetorical advantage that trumps all others. If you are able to cast yourself as a ‘victim’, and have others accept this, you disarm and neutralize criticism, not only of what you are, but of what you are currently doing – because the latter can be presented as a just ‘compensation’ for what you have suffered. As with guilt, there is no built-in quota or statute of limitations. This rhetoric was not as common thirty or forty years ago.There is an added factor here in America and the New World generally where, according to a whispered criticism, as our ancestors crossed the ocean, they experienced a ‘drop in civilization’. Life here was initially without some of the structures and institutions which had evolved over thousands of years in the Old World, which could thus be presumed there but here were absent. As we won with difficulty our independence, we unconsciously repudiated much of the ‘higher culture’ of the colonial master, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As the ‘economic bubble’ of having won the Second World War has gradually dissipated, we discover we are handicapped by an absence of the forms of maturation and self-realization that arise in and are necessary for dealing with prolonged peace. In our ‘ideology of liberty’, our adults become essentially grown children, unschooled in anything higher, and thus have particular difficulty assuming the responsibilities of parenthood. They are forced to fall back upon a military style of giving orders, because on this side of the water, ‘final causes’ in the form of commonly admired or agreed on goals for striving are not in place. In this sense there is an absence of the ‘adequate father’. Further, as ‘American Culture’ expands through publicity and the media, we spread the same disease.There is another relevant factor, the ‘celebrity-liberationist’ lifestyle that has been diffused into the general population since the 1960's and has become a default secular ethic of our time, replacing the traditional Judeo-Christian decalogue. The former is invoked as a justification for aggressively seeking fame and fortune, and making no attempt to conceal this; rather than worrying that such an attitude will cause offense, it is worn proudly and defiantly in the hope that others will identify with it, thereby branding the performer a cultural hero. This popular strategy towards fulfilment itself rests on a metaphysic of ‘expressive individualism’, a position that holds that the supreme ethical imperative to which other obligations must be subordinated is for each to bring forward their hidden noumenal core, the only source of value, into phenomenal appearances where it may be admired and benefit others and such that creation will for the first time be complete. This change in Western culture made possible by greater affluence and security represents a trickle-down phenomenon and democritization of the awe reserved for the artist revered as a genius during the nineteenth century, now spread to the entire population. Anything that constrains this expansion, which interrupts or limits this transfer, is to be rejected as parental abuse, psychological repression, or cultural imperialism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century by Eric O. SpringstedLissa McCulloughSPRINGSTED, Eric O. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021. xxi + 264 pp. Cloth, $100.00; paper, $35.00This book proposes taking French philosopher Simone Weil as a polestar to inspire and orient thought in the twenty-first century. It collects revised versions of eleven articles and essays published between 1994 and (...) the present, now organized into a whole with three new framing chapters (1, 3, and 14). Not intended as an introduction to Weil's life and work, nor as a study primarily directed to Weil scholars, the book seeks a broader readership that need not be well versed in her thought. Weil is recommended as a model for leading a thoughtful life of action exemplifying integrity, discipline, and the exercise of attention: "[W]ith Weil it is important to understand not only what she thought but how she thought," as in her own intellectual transformations she "moved from a strict disciplining of the mind to a regime of attentiveness." [End Page 160]A condensed three-page biography is provided for orientation to Weil's life before the reader is launched into the book's two parts, the first focused on philosophical and theological themes, the second on social and societal concerns. Springsted notes that these themes profoundly converge in Weil's later work, describing her political thought as a "retheologization of the space in which we dwell... an attempt to think about the natural life of humankind in supernatural terms while keeping in mind that this relation is often mediated and veiled." Theology concerns itself with "the sense that God communicates Himself and His Holiness," and the appropriate response is an opening up of oneself in order to listen further: "This is what mystery is about; it is not something to be solved, it is not a set of facts, but something that keeps giving itself.... This is not only the biblical worldview; ancient Greeks such as Plato had it too." Even as Weil's thinking on good, beauty, and truth is profoundly inspired by Plato's, dating back more than two millennia, her bold originality and gift for synthesis manages to pull this thinking into our late modern, post-Christian, and indeed anti-Platonic world of novel perplexities, demonstrating how powerfully this handful of essential words (God, truth, justice, love, good) can speak in our day. This is the key value that Weil offers: "Unless human thought finds some way of connecting itself to something bigger than itself, something that gives a sense of value (and this is what the world's beauty does), human thought will lose depth and dimensionality."Speaking in his own voice, the author affirms that "how we look at our problems can be very different if we understand that we have eternal obligations and that humans have an eternal destiny." This quest for ultimate value and sacramental order puts Springsted on the path of "searching for a new Saint Benedict," the formation of moral communities that bring thoughtful attention and practical work together in a communal life oriented to the good—though he admits that such value-community formation is difficult in increasingly pluralistic and divided societies. Partly because Weil tended to accent individualism, there is no easy or short route to apply Weil's insights on a communal level, even as she clearly sought to do so in her final book-length essay, The Need for Roots, written in 1943 just before her death at age thirty-four.To read Weil's final essay is to be struck by her prescience concerning the dominant intellectual-spiritual conundrums we face today, almost a century later, which are keenly analyzed by her far-seeing attention: the quandaries of post-colonial oppression and uprootedness, us-versus-them nationalisms, money-value as erosive force, mendacity and propaganda in politics, cultural vacuity and soullessness even in the nominally religious domain. To take Weil as one's polestar is indeed to be guided by a sharply critical, rarely lucid thinker whose rigorous criticism of social, political, and religious domains challenge the spectrum... (shrink)

On reading Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation (1806?7), one is struck by the numerous references to religion it contains. The religious aspect of Fichte's writing is interesting in itself as it touches upon wider issues of theology and political thought, but it is also surprising given that Fichte had been labeled an atheist. The purpose of this article is to explore the ?religious? aspect of the Addresses looking specifically at the relationship between Fichte's work and the idea of (...) ?a chosen people.? I argue that though not restricted to Reformed theology or even to the Christian faith, the idea of a chosen people can be found in Fichte's work but that it cannot be understood in a Lutheran nor Calvinistic manner but rather through the teachings of Jacob Arminius and the Remonstrants. (shrink)

Only six letters and the beginning of a seventh letter survive from ten original letters that Schiller composed to his patron Prince Friedrich Christian von Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg in 1793. These “Augustenburg Letters” represent the first draft of a project that was to become the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. As a letter to Körner attests, Schiller intended these letters to be published at a later date, perhaps in combination with other writings on the same topic. Their original purpose (...) was twofold: first, to convey gratitude for the unexpected beneficence of an annual pension at a time when Schiller was plagued by ill-health and limited means; second, to “road-test” his own reading of the Kantian philosophy—a philosophy whose ground-breaking significance for aesthetics and morality had struck Schiller from his first acquaintance with Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century by Raffaella CribioreRobert J. PenellaRaffaella Cribiore. Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century. Townsend Lectures/Cornell University Studies in Classical Philology. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013. x + 260 pp. Cloth, $49.95.Raffaella Cribiore has earned her Libanian stripes, especially with her The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton 2007). When she (...) was invited to give the Townsend Lectures at Cornell University, of which the book under review is the published version, she decided to use that occasion as an opportunity to settle some Libanian misunderstandings, to insist on certain methodological principles, and to offer solutions to some specific problems. The book touches on a good number of discrete points; it might be described as a Libanian mélange. But, as its title indicates, the agenda revolves around matters of rhetoric and religion.In chapter 1, “Rhetoric and the Distortion of Reality,” the central exhibit is Oration 1, Libanius’ so-called autobiography. Cribiore provides a good discussion of its compositional history—the main section (1–155) written in 374 when Libanius was sixty years old and the rest at various sittings from 380 to 393—and of the main lines of its narrative. Any autobiography is, of course, an interpretive construction, a “distortion of reality,” made at a certain point or points in one’s lifetime. Cribiore explores Libanius’ self-interpretations, most famously the [End Page 537] role he allots to Tychē in his life. She shows how Libanius’ letters, written with immediacy at a particular point in time, can sometimes act as a factual corrective to the autobiography. Cribiore wonders whether one source of Libanius’ self-shaping may have been the holy-man tradition. She is struck by commonalities in Libanius’ autobiography and biographies of Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagoras, and Plotinus, although she does not believe that the Philostratean and Neopla-tonic works in question directly inspired Libanius. On the other hand, she argues that he read Athanasius’ life of the Christian monk Antony, in which he “could find much that could help him shape the narrative of his own life” (74). While I would not deny that Libanius might have read this work, I am not convinced that we need to invoke it to explain similarities of motif (or of counter-motif) found in his autobiography. All the commonalities are better seen, in Mortimer Smith’s words, as arising “from the general religious and intellectual milieu” (63).Chapter 2, “A Rhetor and His Audience: The Role of Invective,” depicts Libanius as a master of the emotions—provoking pity, anger, and shame, and also consoling grief—and of invective and satire. Personal invective had deep roots in the classical past; and classical models of invective, especially Demosthenes and Aeschines, were still inspiring emulation in Libanius’ day. Libanius could control the size of his listening or reading audience and suppress proper names or resort to allusion in attacking contemporary figures in his orations, but Cribiore rejects Paul Petit’s view that Libanius kept his most abusive orations “hidden in his file drawers,” intended “only for himself or for an audience of two or three friends” (86–87). They were far more publicly intended than that. The publicity of invective, though, raises a problem: the same Libanius who condemns certain public figures in the orations is very polite to them in the letters. (Cribiore is particularly interested in the case of Proclus, comes Orientis in 383–84.) Does this not make Libanius a hypocrite who can turn easily from invective to flattery? Cribiore tries to mitigate bald inconsistency by observing that traditional invective would have been taken cum grano salis, whereas a friendly and restrained tone would have been expected in letters. Fair enough. But such an observation, based on conventions of genre and the expectations of the audiences, tells us very little about the writer’s actual state of mind and behavior in any particular case. Cribiore’s insistence here on the publicity (more or less) of orations is one side of a coin that first appears in chapter 1, although it is not put to much... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Spirituality":"Weasel-Word" or Gateway to New Understanding?Peter Gilbert (bio)Keywordsspirituality, faith communities, NIMHEVisiting the Samuel Palmer Exhibition at the British Museum, I was struck, not only by the spiritual power of the paintings, especially in the late Shoreham period such as, my favorite: The Magic Apple Tree (circa 1830)—but how Palmer appeared to bring both Christian and Pantheistic themes into his work. The museum's exhibition collator remarks that Palmer (...) saw the fruitfulness of the earth as an intimation of Divine creativity. The artist sought to capture "The essential vivifying spirit, vital spark" (Palmer's words) of the physical world in which we live.I was reminded as I moved from The Magic Apple Tree, to In a Shoreham Garden, and The Golden Valley, how these paintings had been used by a record company when they had issued all of Ralph Vaughan Williams' orchestral and choral works in the 1970s, to mark his anniversary. Vaughan Williams was not a signed up Christian, but many of his choral works express a strong yearning for the transcendent using Christian imagery. The day before I visited the Palmer exhibition, I listened to Professor Robert Winston on Start the Week (28th November, 2005), in which he spoke of his BBC series The Story of God (Winston, 2005). As a scientist, Winston is intrigued as to why humans seek the transcendent. He continually refers to this desired other as "God," although I think it would be more accurate to call it a search for the transcendent. Winston puzzles over why there appears to be "a God-shaped hole" within humanity (Start the Week, November, 28, 2005), and again, as a scientist, postulates that: "the more we understand about science, the less we understand about the Universe."In the light of the most popular films and books at present, the search for something beyond ourselves appears to be very much at the center, rather than at the periphery of humanity's consciousness at the present time. Reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and reading his various essays, we are struck by his articulation of the human search:We need a story, a myth that does what the traditional religious stories did. It must explain. It must satisfy our hunger for a Why... There are two kinds of Why, and our story must deal with both. There's the one that asks What brought us here? and the other that asks What are we here for?(Pullman, 2001)The author's article is very helpful in its practical approach to psychotherapy and spirituality. I particularly liked her reference to the work of Charles Corr (1991) and his work with people [End Page 197] who are dying and considering the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of the last days. The spiritual aspects being around identifying, developing, or reaffirming spiritual sources of energy and hope. This is the kind of approach that the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) national Project on Spirituality and Mental Health has been engaged in since 2001, the approach being to stress the spiritual dimension as an integral part of a whole person and whole systems approach to mental health; work with mental health services and their partners to engage with this agenda; and work toward a better understanding between faith communities and mental health services (see Gilbert and Nicholls, 2003). Service users and their carers are increasingly stating strongly to services that they wish to have their spiritual dimension and spiritual needs addressed properly—and certainly not in a "tick-box" method! The author quotes Samson and Zerter (2003) as saying that the person's spiritual dimension "draws a thread of identity, relationship, meaning and purpose, which weave through each of these aspects" (i.e. the life events and other aspects of their being).I welcome the author's stress on a "relational approach," and her breadth of reference, for example, the diary of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and philosopher, but I had some concerns about her use of the term personal theology, and talk of the personal aspect of religion and "the Divine," in that I think that this could... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Exception in Žižek’s ThoughtErik Vogt (bio)One cannot fail to be struck by the repeated occurrences and invocations of some logic of exception as well as by the proliferation of examples or stand-ins for exceptional positions (“Jew”; “woman”; “class struggle”) or exceptional collectives (“proletariat”; “slum dwellers”) in many of Slavoj Žižek’s writings. The significance of thinking exception is evident not only in Žižek’s powerful reconceptualization of (a supposedly outdated) (...) ideology critique and in his intriguing materialist account of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, but also in his interventions into contemporary debates as to what constitutes proper politics. For this reason, it might be appropriate, in a first sketch, to attempt to weave together some of the threads that combine into Žižek’s (critique of the) logic of exception.11The Symptom and Its Logic of ExceptionAlready Žižek’s early brilliant elaboration of a contemporary ideology critique in terms of a powerful coarticulation of Marx and Freud analyzes the “social symptom” in light of its hidden logic of exception [Sublime Object 11–53]. Since the “social symptom” is not to be grasped as some imbalance external to universality, but rather as its constitutive moment, it marks “a point of breakdown heterogeneous” to a given universal field that at the same time is “necessary for that field to achieve its closure, its accomplished form” [21]. A symptomatic ideology critique will seize on the logic of exception implicit in the fissures of universality by deciphering its “falseness,” insofar “as it necessarily includes a specific case which breaks its unity, lays open its falsity” [21]. What is impossible, then, is the claim to some totality or universality without including in it “the point of exception functioning as its internal negation” [23]. This seems to suggest that the “social symptom” does not present any obstacles to its ideological-critical decipherment according to the logic of exception. However, Žižek makes clear immediately that it often does not effect the dissolution of the “social symptom”; on the contrary, it might even reinforce it, insofar as this interpretive procedure appeals to and relies on an addressee that continues to be figured in terms of consistency, completeness, totality. Consequently, this interpretive procedure of dissolving the symptom remains stuck in the very logic of exception that it attempts to unearth [73–74]. This is the reason why Žižek suggests supplementing this notion of the “social symptom” as ciphered message with the notion of fantasy. He describes the relation between symptom and fantasy in the following manner: “Symptom implies and addresses some non-barred, consistent big Other which will retroactively confer on it its meaning; fantasy implies a crossed-out, barred, non-whole, inconsistent [End Page 61] Other—that is to say, it is filling out a void in the Other” [74]. A contemporary ideology critique will therefore have to account for both the exceptional status of the social symptom and its underlying social fantasy. In other words, ideology critiques must consist of two stages, of two complementary procedures:—one is discursive, the “symptomal reading” of the ideological text [...] demonstrating how a given ideological field is a result of a montage of heterogeneous “floating signifiers,” of their totalization through the intervention of certain “nodal points”;—the other aims at extracting the kernel of enjoyment, at articulating the way in which [...] an ideology implies, manipulates, produces a pre-ideological enjoyment structured in fantasy.[125]In short, what is required from ideology critique is an interpretation of the social symptom in such a way that it brings to light the very fundamental fantasy that, precisely as a preideological blockage to interpretation, has then to be traversed and correlated to the identification with the symptom. The social symptom has to be grasped as master signifier and as objet a. And Žižek illustrates the working of (a theory of) ideology via anti-Semitism and its construction of the “Jew.”2Briefly, anti-Semitic ideology articulates the “Jew” through a network of symbolic “overdetermination”; that is, the “Jew” becomes the point of condensation for heterogeneous and often incompatible attributes. What has to be taken into account, moreover, is the inversion... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Life as Dialogue:Remembering RogerHarry WellsI first met Roger when we both attended a colloquium on "Buddhist Thought and Culture" at the University of Montevello, Alabama, in April 1988. Roger read a paper that was thoroughly engaging, called "Becoming a Dialogian: How to do Buddhist-Christian Dialogue without Really Trying." At that point, I was hooked on getting to know this funny little man with a British accent who could (...) deliver an excellent reflection without being bothered by his occasional stammering.What struck me about Roger's paper was that it was meant to engage the one who heard it. It was written with a sense of interpretive transparency—a reflection on experience that was his own but also bigger than his own. It was one of those times where in hearing the account of his experience, one found one's own experience mirrored and affirmed. The paper was an autobiographical reflection on his journey into the interior ambiguity of interreligious dialogue, which at times can be very challenging when one tries truly to listen deeply to the visions of two distinct religious traditions. But his life was testament to the integrity of the journey and to an emergent overarching trust, or faith, that something very real and true was being birthed in the midst of it all.In the paper, which I use as an introductory essay for my Interreligious Dialogue course, he delightfully describes his boyhood "conversions" from one religious tradition to another in his own imagination as his pocket money purchases from Penguin Press "brought the world to my front door." One evening he emerges from his bedroom to inform his parents that he had become a Buddhist. "I had been reading all about it, I explained, and it was clear that I was already a Buddhist. It was as if I were remembering something from a past life. 'That's nice dear' commented my mother, 'have you finished your homework yet?' "He goes on to describe his theological studies, and his ever increasing grasp of, and being grasped by, the Eucharistic celebration. But he recounts:I was now in a quandary. Buddhism made sense to me, Meditation worked, and the Four Noble Truths seemed indeed to be true. But, now Christianity also made sense. In the Bible and the Mass some Power greater, more serene, and more loving than any other power I had known, was trying to contact me. Apparently, it was God, the same God, I presumed, that Buddhism denied.I did not know what to do, other than to be loyal somehow or another to what I had discovered, even though what I had discovered was self-contradictory. [End Page 157]The rest of the paper discusses his journey of that loyalty, becoming a Roman Catholic along the way, and later "the Buddhism erupted and demanded to be taken just as seriously as my Christianity."From that starting point twenty years ago, Roger and I shared our thoughts and reflections along the way at academic conferences and Buddhist-Christian dialogues. I always looked forward to hearing Roger speak, because he had a unique way of taking scholarship seriously by not being stuck in the mold of academic presentation. What I mean is this: Roger thoroughly researched what he was studying, but he is always studied for the engagement of life. As a result, his presentations were always lively in the best sense of that word—"alive," reflection seeking insight, and the "playful" embrace of living life within that insight.Here are some of the ways Roger impacted my life:• Roger taught me about "faith." He helped me learn to trust my experience of being compelled into interreligious experience, which takes immense effort and internal conflict initially but is a "burning in one's bones," to quote the prophet Jeremiah, for those called to be in that stance.• He taught me how to be a better teacher-scholar. He modeled for me the ability to present papers that were written to make a difference in the lives of those present, to connect with them in a way that led me and them to participate in insight as it was manifesting. Scholarship was... (shrink)

Though usually skeptical of a foreword written by the author's friend, this reviewer agrees entirely with Russell Kirk's judgment of this book. This densely documented but highly readable study of Burke is indeed a "first-rate contribution to the discipline of politics" by a "temperate and painstaking scholar." It shows clearly the fruits of thirty-five years of research by one of Burke's most eminent living interpreters. It also provides further proof for the reading Stanlis has been offering of his subject since (...) his first book in 1959, Edmund Burke and the Natural Law. There Burke is depicted as an explicitly Christian critic of the Enlightenment influenced by Scholastic and Ciceronian natural law. In contrast to Alfred Cobban and other Burke scholars who emphasized their subject's pragmatic statesmanship and appeals to circumstance, Stanlis was struck by Burke's references to the "eternal frame of the universe" and to "the one great, immutable pre-existing law, a law prior to all our devices.". (shrink)

Students of philosophy, East and West, will be benefited greatly by this reprint of Professor Raju's pioneering study of comparative philosophy, which is the outgrowth of a series of lectures presented in Saugor University during 1955. Even for comparative philosophy, man must be the leitmotif, the common denominator for analyzing and interpreting the diversity of philosophical traditions. In his attempt to contribute to the "sense of the basic oneness of humanity, the human solidarity in spite of differences," he interprets the (...) three great philosophical traditions in terms of their respective approaches to the inward and outward aspects of reality. The central meaning or thrust of these traditions is expressed in the titles of the major sections of the book: "Western philosophy and the struggle for the liberation of the outward," "Chinese philosophy and human mindfulness," and "Indian philosophy and explication of inwardness." Western philosophy accomplished primarily a "liberating of the object or outwardness from its entanglement with the subject or inwardness." Chinese philosophy, by trying to build an ethics and philosophy on the emotional rather than the rational nature of man, has struck an even balance between the extremes of inward and outward by establishing clear lines of relatedness between individual men, society, and nature. Indian philosophy has been characterized chiefly by a "reflective inwardness," an overriding concern for the nature of the ätman, the interrelationship between intellect and intuition and the way to ultimate liberation from the round of rebirth and redeath through the immediate, intuitive apprehension of the unity of all things. The final section is dedicated to a general overview of the three major traditions in which the author delineates some of the more obvious and central parallels and distinctions among them. While the book is filled with useful information, novices are sure to be misled and professionals disappointed by the attempts to reduce entire religio-philosophical traditions to a set of neat interpretative labels, such as: Judaism is ethical zeal, Christianity is neighborly love, Buddhism is compassion, Islam is social solidarity, and the Upanishads is divine communion.--J. B. L. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:276 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The Elements of Moral Science. By Francis Wayland. Edited by Joseph L. B1au. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1963. Pp. 1 + 413. $7.50.) We are indebted to Professor Blau of Columbia University and to the series of John tIarvard Books of the Harvard University Press for this attractive edition of a genuine American antique. Of this college text 100,000 copies were sold. Editions were (...) published in 1835, 1837, and 1865; also an abridged edition for secondary schools and translations into several languages. The present edition reproduces the 1837 text and gives the variations of 1835 and 1865 in the form of appendices. Especially noteworthy are Appendix (H), in which the author's denunciation of slavery is expanded in 1865 into a vigorous abolition appeal, and Appendix (N) against the supposed right of rebellion against "civil society." The Editor's fine, fifty-page Introduction gives us both a sketch of Wayland's distinguished career and an account of the writing, revising, and use of this book. The textbook is a product of Wayland's teaching of Ethics during his Presidency of Brown University. It was quickly adopted by many colleges and remained for two generations a favorite exposition of "Christian ethics" both for colleges throughout the United States and for the mission fields abroad. Among Baptists it was especially popular, but it was not sectarian either by intention or by influence. Wayland began his instruction in moral science by using as a text William Paley's Principles o[ Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). Finding himself in disagreement with Paley on many points, he introduced his own lectures increasingly until finally Paley was completely displaced by Wayland's own lectures and textbook. Both Paley and Wayland agreed in teaching that "the will of God" is the ultimate and absolute ground of moral obligation, but both also agreed with Dr. Johnson, when he said that "religion will appear to be the voice of reason and morality the will of God." There could be no conflict between the principles of eternal happiness and the obligation to obey a benevolent God. What turned Wayland against Paley's text was the preference shown to "natural theology" over "the moral sense" or conscience, and in Bishop Joseph Butler's Sermons he found a justification for the reliability of conscience as an innate, instinctive faculty of correct moral judgment. This confession on Wayland's part seems to indicate that he repudiated "theological utilitarianism," as Paley's system was called, along with Paley's Natural Theology and Evidences of Christianity, and embraced the Scottish "moral sense" philosophy. However, anyone who reads both Paley's and Wayland's texts will be struck by the ways in which Wayland's "moral science" shows the influence of Paley's philosophy and Principles. In the interest of the history of philosophy it may be appropriate to devote the remainder of the review to pointing out how Wayland followed Paley more than Butler. What seems to have annoyed Wayland in Paley's text was not so much the theoretical philosophy and theology as the practical application of obligations to British society. Wayland was a conservative Jeffersonian Republican in his political ideas, whereas Paley was a latitudinarian Anglican, critical of the society in which he lived. One illustration of this difference is striking: Paley begins his treatment of Practical Ethics (which is by far the larger part in each text) as follows: If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nineof them gathering all they got into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest perhaps, the worst pigeon of the flock; sitting around and looking on all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched the grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying about it, and tearing it to pieces: If you should see this, you would see... (shrink)

"Divination and Human Nature" casts a new perspective on the rich tradition of ancient divination--the reading of divine signs in oracles, omens, and dreams. Popular attitudes during classical antiquity saw these readings as signs from the gods while modern scholars have treated such beliefs as primitive superstitions. In this book, Peter Struck reveals instead that such phenomena provoked an entirely different accounting from the ancient philosophers. These philosophers produced subtle studies into what was an odd but observable fact--that humans (...) could sometimes have uncanny insights--and their work signifies an early chapter in the cognitive history of intuition. Examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists, Struck demonstrates that they all observed how, setting aside the charlatans and swindlers, some people had premonitions defying the typical bounds of rationality. Given the wide differences among these ancient thinkers, Struck notes that they converged on seeing this surplus insight as an artifact of human nature, projections produced under specific conditions by our physiology. For the philosophers, such unexplained insights invited a speculative search for an alternative and more naturalistic system of cognition. Recovering a lost piece of an ancient tradition, "Divination and Human Nature" illustrates how philosophers of the classical era interpreted the phenomena of divination as a practice closer to intuition and instinct than magic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Eternal Present: Slow Knowledge and the Renewal of TimeDouglas E. ChristieA woman is seated in a chair at the center of a large, light-filled atrium. Across from her sits an adolescent girl, Asian or Asian-American, maybe thirteen years old. They are both perfectly still. They look intently at each other. That is all. Minute after minute passes. Neither of them moves. I look more closely. Utter stillness. Not (...) quite repose, for there is a sense of intentionality to their engagement with each other, but deep stillness and calm. I look around the room and see a hundred or so persons also taking in the scene. Everyone is silent, though there are occasional sounds—shoes shuffling on the floor, a cough, a sigh. It takes me a few minutes to understand what is going on, what I am seeing. I feel my own anxiety to place myself somehow in this scene, to find the appropriate categories for grasping what is unfolding before me. I ask a person nearby; he tells me: it’s Marina Abramovic. She is performing “The Artist Is Present,” part of a retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.1 “Oh,” I say, “thanks.” It’s performance art. Got it. But knowing this only helps a little. What are they doing? What is going on here? What is my part, if any, in what is happening? My mind, as usual, is racing ahead trying to figure it out. Which in this moment I cannot do. So, I pause (inwardly), take a step back and try to reorient myself. I take a breath, then another. I look again at the two figures.Their stillness is uncanny. This is part of what is making me anxious, I think. They are absorbed completely in the simple act of gazing at each other. I smile, thinking at first of the “stare-downs” I used to have with my brother when we were kids. Who would flinch (and fall into uncontrollable laughter) first? It was a game of chicken. With the eyes. Usually it was of short duration, and someone had to lose. This is different. The quality of attention, in particular, feels utterly different. These two are not trying to knock each other off their chairs. No one is trying to “win” at anything. They are, it seems, simply giving themselves to the work of beholding and being beheld. Extraordinary. I am not sitting in the chair. But I feel a jolt run through my body as I begin to feel the depth and power of this moment. The sense of nakedness, of naked abandon, of vulnerability. What else? Tenderness. Yes, I sense a certain tenderness passing between these two figures. And not just between them. Also touching those of us gathered in the room watching them. How is that possible? We are all [End Page 13] strangers to one another after all. And yet within this space, for these few moments there is a remarkable and palpable sense of intimacy.I am not sure at how long I stand there. But after a while, I feel the need to move, to get some relief from the intensity of this exchange. I leave the room where the artist and her companion are sitting and walk into a nearby gallery. (Later I learn that anyone visiting the museum can occupy the chair opposite the artist and that over the course of the exhibit many, many people do just that.) I am not ready to look at anything else, not yet. I have to gather myself a little first.Eventually, I do begin to take in some of the other art in the museum. But my mind keeps returning to that room and to those two seated figures. During the next couple of hours, I return to the atrium several more times. Each time I do, I am struck by how still these two figures are, how alive. Also how still and alive I feel entering into that space. Those of us beholding the scene are respectful and quiet but also animated, exchanging brief whispers, glances, smiles. We are captivated, enthralled.Suddenly... (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of animals in divination in ancient times. It discusses ancient observers’ interpretation of signs coming from instinctive animal behaviour and from the structure of animal body parts. It explains the three main currents of philosophical thought on divination. Plato and Aristotle believed the divinatory insights to be tied with animal instinct and belong to a fringe form of cognition that is specifically connected with humans’ animal natures. On the other hand, the Stoics considered divination as (...) an important piece of their understanding of the cosmos as a whole, and of humans as part of it. (shrink)