Religious symbols hold a specific significant image as a conveyer of religious and cultural belief, possessing both the religious power and cultural capital. Throughout the development of Christian culture, Chinese religious symbols of God have undergone the translation and variation. Drawing upon the concept of symbolic capital, this study focuses on the Chinese translation of God in the different fields of Chinese Christian culture by means of qualitative research, exploring the factors that influenced the spread of Christian culture in China. (...) This study finds the variation of God in different historical fields of Chinese Christian culture and elucidates the process of cultural capital accumulation associated with different religious symbols of God in contemporary Christian culture. Therefore, this study argues that Chinese translation of religious symbols concerning God in Christian culture is not merely translation of religious symbols, but rather the outcome of power struggle for religious authority and cultural capital. However, this study must emphasize that Term Question represents a significant episode in the propagation of Christian culture in China, the numerous historical research materials are not all covered in this paper. Therefore, by examining the translation and variation of God as language symbol in Christian culture, according to language and symbolic capital, this article argues that it reflects not only the dilemma of translation and language, but also the issues of religious power and cultural capital. Hence, by examining the historical missionary experience in China, valuable insights regarding language translation challenges and cultural assimilation issues in the global evangelization of Christianity can be gleaned, providing a basis for enhanced problem-solving approaches within missionary endeavors. (shrink)

L'article explore le sens que peut avoir le symbole du Règne de Dieu aujourd'hui dans le contexte asiatique. Après une courte histoire du symbole, l'article présente six défis que l'Asie pose à son usage en un discours théologique en contexte asiatique. La seconde partie passe en revue l'usage fait du symbole du Règne de Dieu par certains théologiens asiatiques contemporains: les théologiens Tissa Balasuriya et Aloysius Pieris du Sri Lanka, les théologiens Coréens du minjung, et le théologien presbytérien du Taiwan (...) Choan-Seng Song. En se basant sur les oeuvres de ces théologiens et à la suite de la théologie de la libération, la dernière partie essaie de montrer comment les six défis posés plus tôt peuvent être résolus dans la perspective de la philosophie confucianiste. (shrink)

Although Eugen Fink often reflected upon the role religion, these reflections are yet to be addressed in secondary literature in any substantive sense. For Fink, religion is to be understood in relation to “play,” which is a metaphor for how the world presents itself. Religion is a non-repetitive, and entirely creative endeavor or “symbol” that is not achieved through work and toil, or through evaluation or power, but rather, through his idea of play and “cult” as the imaginative distanciation (...) from a predictable lifeworld. This paper describes Fink’s understanding of religion and its most relevant aspects found in Spiel als Weltsymbol. The paper is organized into five sections—1: An introduction to his phenomenological approach in general, and description of the role of “play”; 2: investigations into the relation between play and world; 3: a description of his phenomenology of religion; 4: engagements in the idea of cult-play and the sacred sphere, and 5: reflection on his idea of the play of God. (shrink)

This article is written in the style and method of an autoethnography that focuses on the author's spiritual journey with God while living with chronic pain. The labyrinth is used as a metaphor and spiritual tool to describe this journey. The author's personal experience with religion and spirituality is described as well as the choice of moving from thinking about God being 'out there', far away and looking upon God's creation to discovering God within - God 'right here'. The affects (...) and effects of living with chronic pain are discussed in reference to the process of walking the circuits of a labyrinth. The role of different people who played a part in this journey is highlighted. This way of writing corresponds with a narrative way of living which concentrates on deconstruction of dominant discourses and looking for outcomes that may lead to hope and transformation. The difference between rainbow hope and reasonable hope is explained and the consequence of choosing reasonable hope is discussed. Transformation of the person through the journey becomes apparent in the article. (shrink)

The kingdom of God was a central theme in Jesus' vision. Was it meant to be understood as Utopian as Mary Ann Beavis views it, or existential? In 1st century CE Palestine, kingdom of God was a political term meaning theocracy suggesting God's patronage. Jesus used the term metaphorically to construct a new symbolic universe to legitimate a radical new way of living with God in opposition to the temple ideology of exclusivist covenantal nomism. The analogies of father and king (...) served as the root metaphors for this symbolic universe. They are existential root metaphors underpinning the contextual symbolic universe of God's patronage in reaction to the collapse of the patronage system which left peasants destitute. Jesus' paradoxical use of the metaphor kingdom of God had a therapeutic value and gave the concept new meaning. The initial motivation for proclaiming God's patronage originated in Jesus' primary identity formation by Mary as single parent and was reinforced in his secondary identity formation by John the Baptist. From these results can be concluded that kingdom of God was not meant to be understood as utopian, but existential. In order to clarify the meaning of kingdom of God and God's patronage for the 21st century, demythologisation and deconstruction can be helpful especially by highlighting the existential meaning of the kingdom of God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:God’s Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering. Vol. 1 of Divine Vulnerability and Creation (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 100)Raymond Kemp AndersonGod’s Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering. Vol. 1 of Divine Vulnerability and Creation (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 100) Jeff B. Pool Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. 358 pp. $38.00One should not be put off by a negative-sounding title. (...) Jeff Pool’s exhaustive study could as well be titled more positively as “God’s Passion” for the “passio” root-meaning linked to our concept of suffering describes in large part what [End Page 224] he is about. But we must reluctantly concede that Pool’s treatment barely glimmers where we might expect to find light-hearted joy in the passion-resurrection and eschatological promise that he does acknowledge is at the heart of the Christian gospel.In his effort to follow methodological strictures consonant with his Chicago schooling with Langdon Gilkey and others, Pool is at pains to keep his academic back to the wall. So the first part of this two-part volume simply rehearses the enormous plurality of “Christian attestations” to the theme of divine suffering (and patripassianism). Attestations of every stripe rub shoulders here and seem to acquire almost equal footing. Yet by calling his topic a “symbol,” Pool does not mean to question the believed ontological actuality of “divine suffering.” In his view, this suffering is not just a symbol but describes for Christian faith an actuality that corners into the meaning and purpose of our very existence. So, as it turns out, he offers us much more than a history-of-religions compilation of diverse “attestations”; he is intent on reworking a tenable systematic theology and theological ethic as these intersect with his theme.Pool’s criteria for ranking some “attestations” over others remain obscure, and we might think him to be arguing rationalistically from personal preferences, until finally (217 pages into his text) he slips in what he calls “an additional epistemological interlude” that divulges what apparently has been an underlying hermeneutic basis all along: his own Messianic secret, as it were, a Christological-revelational criterion and final norm based on the apostolic tradition.Pool’s proclivity for rational analysis may become self-deceptive. At points he does include disclaimers, explaining that his “analyses” of living realities are only mental abstractions describing aspects of personal wholes that in fact cannot be split apart. Yet he forgets himself here, I think, and attempts to subject both divine and human personhood to scholastic “analysis.” For example, his descriptive categories of different “human capacities to love” (along the lines of Nygren’s three loves) become so reified in his “analysis” that he begins to refer to them as if they were schizoid entities that modify, block, and limit each other in our psyche and even in God’s (as if we could strap down the mystery of holistic love and dissect it). Nevertheless, theologians may find Pool’s analytic endeavors quite challenging.This book is definitely not for your introductory ethics course. Pool’s language is labored and presupposes a wide command of the field. His treatment is original, in some respects idiosyncratic, and intentionally revisionist. Written in a neoscholastic vein, this study will give you far more about God’s suffering than you thought anyone ever wanted or needed to know. Yet it promises you a substantial theological workout, offering something provocative and worth considering on nearly every page. Its greatest strength is its perceptive bibliographical annotations, both in the text and in the wealth of footnotes that compose between a third and half of the book. The bibliography [End Page 225] itself, however, which masses together more than a thousand titles, may be too exhaustive to provide much selective guidance.Raymond Kemp AndersonWilson CollegeCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In Section Two of Second Piece of Religion, Immanuel Kant presents a step‐by‐ step assessment of the biblical account of salvation, starting with the Genesis narrative, proceeding from there to the life and teachings of Jesus, and concluding with his death and resurrection as the source of a new freedom. The main text of the Second Piece then ends with a summary interpretation of the rational meaning of biblical symbols regarding the struggle between good and evil. Kant gives an account (...) of the metaphorical description of the struggle between evil and good‐a description that portrays the struggle through the symbolism of two external powers (Satan and God). The chapter focuses separately on several equally important themes Kant emphasizes in the development of the second experiment. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotic—his theory about signs, reference, interpretation, meaning, and communication—is applicable with illuminating results to innumerable processes of semeiosis or sign interpretation. Robert C. Neville is the first deep student of Peirce’s semeiotic to have systematically applied that theory to the analysis and theory of theological signs, interpretation, and truth—hereafter, theological semeiotic. The result is easily the deepest and richest theological semeiotic currently available. Being the best, it is also most worthy of critique. In this essay, I argue (...) that Neville misinterprets Peirce’s concept of an index, conceiving an index in terms of the interpreter-object rather than... (shrink)

This article argues that, as far as the problem of Confucian religiosity is concerned, there is an interpretative turn from Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics to Tu Weiming’s religious hermeneutics. Some concluding remarks are made: First, Tu’s hermeneutics is rooted in the ontology of self as interrelatedness, which is completely different from Mou’s theory of true self as transcendental subjectivity. Second, Tu’s hermeneutics of self can be better illuminated with the help of Heidegger’s notion of Dasein as Being-with (Mitsein). For Tu (...) and Heidegger, self cannot be seen as something separate from community. This article also points out that the paradigmatic shift is evidenced in another similarity between the four categories of self, community, nature, and the transcendent in Tu’s hermeneutics on the one hand, and the four symbols of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals employed by Heidegger to interpret the meaning of dwelling, on the other. In such a primordial situation of dwelling, gods are not supposed to be intellectually known; they are rather to be neighbors in community. (shrink)

This is a systematic theology focusing on what makes Jesus important in Christianity. It studies six families of symbols about Jesus, showing how they are true for some people, not true for others, and not meaningful for a third group. Divine creation is analysed in metaphysical and symbolic terms, and religious symbolism is shown to be wholly compatible with a late-modern scientific world view. Robert Cummings Neville, a leading philosophical theologian, presents and illustrates an elaborate theory of religious symbols according (...) to which God is directly engaged in symbolically shaped thinking and practice. Symbols are not distancing substitutes for God. Theology of symbolic engagement is defended as an alternative to doctrinal or descriptive theology. This major work re-shapes the way we think about Jesus, and will be of value to students, academics, clergy with theological training, and others grappling with the meaning and importance of religious symbols in our age. (shrink)

The current methods in psychoanalytic studies of God images and representations have focused almost exclusively on individual, internal processes. This article examines how psychological anthropologists go about formulating symbolic representations of deity in their research, in comparison with the object relations method of God- representations. Drawing on Melford Spiro's integrative proposal for interpreting the mental and collective representations in religious symbol systems, this paper proposes that there is a need for a comprehensive model of the representational process in the (...) Eastern world in order to suit its cultural traditions. The author uses both theoretical and historical materials as well as personal narrative throughout its entirety to balance the two in a mutual and coherent flow of understanding. Noting the culturally patterned interactions with culturally postulated God-symbols, the object relations method of God- representations will be utilized to probe how God is both created and found on a collective level as well as individual level. (shrink)

The general typology for the dialogue between religion and science is built on the assumption that there is an objective world, one reality that can be described. In this paper, I present an alternative epistemological framework for the dialogue that understands all descriptions of reality as symbolic. Therefore, this understanding creates a new possibility for mutual enrichment between the two dialogue partners. I demonstrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to the dialogue between artificial intelligence (AI) and theology. (...) I discuss an advanced AI project: Cog, a humanoid robot. After briefly describing this project, its assumptions, and the emotions it creates (mainly hope and fear), I show how the project can be enriched by theological insight. The concept ofimago Dei—the understanding of humans created in the image of God—can be applied to the Cog project especially when it is presented in a way that takes the metaphorical character of both theological and scientific theories seriously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Love of Country and Love of God: The Political Uses of Religion in MachiavelliBenedetto Fontana*This paper will discuss the place of religion in Machiavelli’s thought. 1 The traditional and generally accepted interpretation presents Machiavelli’s religion as a belief system whose value is determined by its functional utility to the state. In this he is said to resemble Cicero, 2 Montesquieu, 3 and Tocqueville, 4 among others. This view is (...) based on the proposition—one that is now fundamental to a modern understanding of Machiavelli—that his political theory develops a politics without moral, theological, and religious foundations (what Benedetto Croce 5 calls the “autonomy of politics” and Sheldon Wolin 6 the “autonomy of political theory”). Students of Machiavelli who ascribe to him an instrumentalist theory of religion rest their interpretation on this conception of politics: a distinction is established between religion viewed as religio, and religion conceived as fides, where the former is used to develop and cement social bonds and the latter is a faith based on a transcendent “truth.”A reading of the texts shows that Machiavelli discusses various kinds of religion. He refers, for example, to multiple forms of Christianity, such as “primitive” [End Page 639] or original Christianity, 7 official, medieval Christianity, the ecclesiastical principality of the papacy, as well as to ancient Judaism, 8 paganism, and to Islam. 9 However, it is possible to discern in Machiavelli two principal or distinctive types. One is based on the opposition Machiavelli sees between the religion of the Romans (which instills virtù) and the religion of the post-classical and post-Roman Christian world (which teaches humility and passivity). The other is prophetic religion, in which Machiavelli contrasts the prophet armed to the prophet unarmed. Thus, we have prophetic religion and non-prophetic religion; the former is either armed or unarmed, and the latter is either immanent (natural) or transcendent. 10Machiavelli’s stress on the importance of virtù (whether of the prince or of the people) suggests that religion is not simply religio—that is, a political technique to rule and to control the masses. Rather, it presupposes a concern for a moral fides which, though certainly not transcendent, is nevertheless necessary to the construction of a political order based on virtù. His concern with civil and military virtue links the armed prophetic religion with that of the ancient Romans, such that ancient Judaism, Islam, and a reformed Christianity (a kind of Lutheranism ante litteram) all stand opposed to primitive and post-classical Christianity.Machiavelli anticipates in theory the national, anti-papal, and anti-imperial movements that were later realized in history by the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations. He attempts to infuse the corrupt and decadent Christian conception of the world with a new, innovating spirit, one opposed to the prevailing medieval and scholastic conception of the world. In the past Christian philosophers and thinkers revised the classical notions of virtus and arete, transforming them into Christian concepts of value. Machiavelli attempts a similar “transvaluation of values” (Nietzsche), but for different ends and in a different direction: he reinterprets the Christian religion in order to assimilate it into his conception of virtù and his vision of a vivere civile.In the first part of this paper the relation Machiavelli establishes between “speaking with God” and the founding and/or reforming of states is explored. Parallels between Christian and pre-Christian (pagan and biblical) rulers reveal a basic ambiguity in Machiavelli’s belief that religion—that is, the claim of having spoken with God—is necessary to effective rule. In the second part [End Page 640] Machiavelli’s teaching (“new ways and methods”) is compared to Christ’s message of the “good news.” The contrast between the two is presented in terms of an opposition between different “ways of living,” each with its specific moral claims and political consequences. The opposition is not, the section argues, between logos and kratos, ethos and kratos, but rather between diverse ways of understanding logos and ethos. The final section argues that Machiavelli uses biblical, pagan, and Christian forms of religious symbols and metaphors in order to reevaluate the concepts of patria and amore. In so doing... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 278-283 [Access article in PDF] The Voice of God on Mount Sinai. Rabbinic Commentaries on Exodus 20:1 In Light of Sufi and Zen-Buddhist Texts. By Reinhard Neudecker. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2002. 157 pp. Reinhard Neudecker's study of the central event of the first five books of the Bible, namely the revelation of God on Mount Sinai to Moses and the Israelites, is an important (...) contribution to interfaith studies that should be of interest to both the scholar and layperson alike. The clarity of purpose and treatment makes this study very accessible; each chapter is thoughtfully structured, with rich footnotes that provide documentation, further explanation, and information. The appendixes contain the relevant rabbinic texts in the original Hebrew; indices of terms, subjects, and Bible citations; as well as a helpful list of consulted works.The stated purpose of the study is to shed light on enigmatic rabbinical interpretations of Exodus 20:1, the verse that introduces the TenWords (commandments) [End Page 278] that form the basis of the complete Torah by taking into consideration analogous passages from the Sufi and Zen Buddhist traditions. In explaining his methodology, the author makes three important distinctions. First, Neudecker is "not dealing with Judaism, Islam and Zen Buddhism as such, but with the views and experiences of some rabbinic Jews, some Sufi Muslims and some Zen Buddhists" (p. x). Second, the chosen texts are offered for their spiritual and mystical insight, not for their historical context or content, because "the mystic has learned to convert the great events recorded by tradition into symbols which express the ongoing inner revelation to which he has been exposed" (p. 6). Because spiritual and mystical writers generally refrain from explaining deep experiences openly (especially because of the impossibility of putting them into words), the author refrains from adding his own interpretations and instead invites the reader to a meditative encounter with the texts. Third, the author does not intend to offer simple parallels or to readily claim correspondences between the rabbinic, Sufi, and Zen texts, but leaves it up to the reader to judge what the "different traditions may have in common and to what degree and where one tradition may go a step further than the others (p. 11, n. 30). His main purpose, as stated above, is to understand the rabbinic comments better by using the method of "intercultural reading" in drawing upon Sufi and Zen Buddhist texts.After the introductory chapter, which offers the methodological considerations and basic information about the Rabbinic sources and Buddhist terminology, the author presents Exod. 20:1 in its rabbinic translation: "And God spoke all these words to say." This short verse has become the stumbling block for the rabbinic interpreter, just as much as a Zen koan becomes a stumbling block for the Zen student or an obscure verse in the Koran for the Sufi. What these stumbling blocks have in common is that they open up a new way of nondiscursive understanding of the text that leads to profound insights and a deep spiritual experience.Chapters 4-9 of the book are devoted to unraveling the mysteries of these insights. The reader is drawn into an engaging process that opens up layer upon layer of meaning, comparable to the peeling of an onion. A short exposition of the themes of each chapter as introduction to the texts proves very helpful for orientation in this process. Chapter 4 addresses the question of how the people at Sinai heard the Ten Words. The rabbis differ on whether the people heard all of the commandments or only the first two of them, but the important point of comparison is the enigmatic statement that God pronounced all the Ten Words, including the entire Torah, "in one single sound, as the (human) mouth cannot speak and the (human) ear cannot hear" (p. 35). This statement implies that God's revelation exceeds the limits of human speaking and hearing, and that God communicates in... (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to focus upon two things. The first concerns the intertwining of naturalism and religion, namely the fact that early American naturalism defined itself as a “secular religion”. This expression sounds like an oxymoron, but the analysis of a dazzling text by Francis Ellingwood Abbot will help us to clarify the concept of “godless religion”, which will be taken up in the following years by all the major naturalists of the time. The second concerns the (...) power of the symbolic dimension of naturalism, especially in the debates of the 1940s. In those years naturalism was engaged in a battle for the survival of democracy. “Science”, “democracy” and “freedom” were not only concepts debated on a theoretical level, but they outlined a system of archetypes by virtue of which post-war liberal and democratic America would build a relevant part of its self-image. (shrink)

The central themes of Jesus’ preaching, the kingdom and household of God, are root metaphors expressing the symbolic universe of God’s patronage subverting patronage and patriarchy structuring contemporary Mediterranean society, thus legitimising an anti-hierarchical community of faith. This dominant focus of Jesus’ message was discarded, as society’s prevalent patronage and patriarchy became the societal structure of the later faith communities. Today, patronage and patriarchy still forms the social structure for a large sector of Christian communities and many cultures, resulting in (...) inequality, injustice, exploitation and suffering. This article proposes that the only remedy for the faithful is a return to Jesus’ essential message, by investigating the social dynamics suggested by these root metaphors using metaphor theory and social scientific methods. Patronage is studied within contemporary Roman and Mediterranean aristocratic patriarchal society, forming an a-typical broad-based needle-like power pyramid with multiple similarly structured power pyramids within, based on a morality of indebtedness, honour and power. Jesus accepted God as his father and declared the advent of God’s patronage as king (kingdom of God) and father of the faithful (children of God). Within the kingdom and household of God, there was no hierarchy, except for the primate of the first born son, whom Jesus symbolises as broker for God’s patronage to all his followers. Within the faith communities there should be no hierarchy or any form of clientage other than God’s patronage. Rather, the faithful are equal and should serve each other and their communities with compassion, responsibility and justice.Contribution: The contribution of this research is its focus on similarity and dissimilarity of these patronage metaphors and their application to subvert the power dynamics of patronage and patriarchy within the community of the faithful, in order to proffer God’s patronage of a society of caring, selfless equals today. This research falls within the scope of HTS Theological studies, as it is a multi-disciplinary study of key biblical metaphors investigated with accepted methodology resulting in valid conclusions which are ethically sound. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 71-98MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Hospitality after the Death of GodTracy McNultyPierre Klossowski's fiction has been only sporadically published in English, and largely dismissed as perverse erotica or soft-core porn. When his 1965 trilogy Les lois de l'hospitalité was partially translated in English (under the title Roberte, ce soir & The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes), its Library of Congress classification characterized it simply as "erotic (...) fiction—French." Even in France, Klossowski has become the very signifier of perversion. His artwork graces the cover of Serge André's L'imposture perverse and of numerous erotic novels, he has been "diagnosed" as a pervert by writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and unironic readers of his Sade mon prochain hail him as Sade's disciple and heir.1Admittedly, the larger stakes of Klossowski's work are easily obscured by its free adaptation of the stock themes of libertine literature. His fictional works, like his visual compositions (essentially representations of rape scenes, often on historical themes—Diana and Actaeon, the Rape of Lucretia), explore the conflict between a woman's chaste moral attitude and her gradual surrender to an assailant's advances. The Laws of Hospitality concerns the erotic awakening of "hospitality" in a woman, which exposes a contradiction within her moral character and reveals her symbolic identity to be without foundation. Its protagonist Octave, who bears more than a passing resemblance to his creator, is a collector of artworks that eroticize the moment of moral hesitation experienced by women submitting to the sexual advances of a chance stranger—or even a "spiritual" apparition. His "laws of hospitality" are the fruit of his desire to experience this operation firsthand; they name a practice wherein the master of the house "offers" his wife to fortuitous guests, in order to savor the moment of her surrender.However, the stakes of Klossowski's "perverse" meditations are very different from the Sadeian project of uprooting religious morality. Sade challenges the patriarchal and religious authorities of his day by demonstrating that the paternal signifier on which their laws are based is without foundation. In proving that the law cannot hold [End Page 71] up against the repeated assaults of libertinage, he mounts a systematic deconstruction of the symbolic order of language by the real of jouissance. But although Klossowski may share Sade's perverse drive to "humiliate the law with the object,"2 his target is not the signifier as such, but rather the imaginary consistency afforded by what he calls the "grammatical fiction of the 'I,'" the illusion of autonomous personhood. The "object" he confronts it with is not the natural "truth" of jouissance, but rather the feminine object who disrupts the identity of the "master" who offers her.Klossowski's reflections on the special status of femininity in Enlightenment culture—at once marginal and singularly "extimate"—have never been fully appreciated, despite their enormous interest for the study of culture. In a way unique among contemporary authors, Klossowski sheds light on Jacques Lacan's enigmatic insight that the cultural importance of the feminine object consists in its sublimated status as an "object raised to the dignity of the Thing" [Lacan 112]. His fiction underscores the close ties between the feminine and what Freud called das Ding, the Thing uncannily internal to subjectivity that Lacan later identified with the function of the Nebenmensch, as the apotheosis of the Christian idea of the prochain, or neighbor [Lacan 151–52].Although Klossowski's erotic scenario invites comparisons with Sade's and Fourier's utopian calls to dissolve the privative boundaries between subjects, what he understands by "hospitality" is not the abolition of personal identity, but rather the staging of its internal contradiction.Hospitality, at the Limits of the LawThe act of hospitality—whose theological and philosophical origins this former Dominican novice and Latin scholar was intimately acquainted with—concerns a very particular tension. Etymologically, the host is the "master," the one who "eminently personifies" identity: not only his own identity, but also that of the group in whose... (shrink)

The text discusses the importance of religion as a symbolic construct which derives from fundamental human needs. At the same time, religious symbolism can function as an explanation for the major crises existent in the lives of individuals or their communities, even if they live in a democratic or a totalitarian system. Its presence is facilitated by the assumption of the biographical element existent in the philosophical and theological reflection and its extrapolation in a biography which concerns the communities and (...) its governmental resorts. It is in this context that we discuss the way in which the myth concerning the death of God can influence the formation of political ethics relevant for the contemporary man. From the analysis of the signification of the death of God in the contemporary Judaic theology and philosophy emerges a series of important elements for the creation of a political ethics situated between biblical morals and the extermination of the innocents in the 20th century. (shrink)

Tillich has been accused of being an atheist and pantheist. This study shows mainly that once one studies Tillich's work with care and with an open mind, one can see clearly that his existential ontology is quite consistent in form and theistic in content, and that the terms which he uses to express the idea of God are not unduly vague at all. ; There are six chapters in this thesis. In the first chapter, I argue that Tillich is not (...) an atheist; his God above the God of theism is a more adequate concept than most traditional concepts of God. I show that, for Tillich, God as our ultimate concern expresses the appropriateness of a worshipping attitude towards God, and that God as being-itself shows that God is the ground of being that gives us the moral courage to affirm our being in spite of the fact of nonbeing. God is thus the "power of being" which conquers anxieties. ;In the second chapter, I show more clearly what being-itself means for Tillich. God as being-itself is not a being among beings. Beings are bound to the structure of being and the categories of finitude, but God as being-itself is not bound by them. Being-itself transcends the world and everything within it. Being-itself is not the kind of immanent God that pantheism holds. Thus I once again argue against the accusation that Tillich is an atheist or pantheist. I also argue against the idea that the Platonic or Aristotelian universal is adequate as a model to interpret Tillich's idea of being-itself. Being-itself, for Tillich, cannot be identified with the Platonic or Aristotelian universal. ;The third chapter shows how Tillich gives a philosophical-theological interpretation of religious symbols. Except for the claim that "God is being-itself" is a direct non-symbolic statement about God, everything we say about God is interpreted by Tillich as symbolic. In chapter four, I show in some detail why, for Tillich, the word "existence" cannot be applied to God. But when Tillich claims that God does not exist, he does not mean that there is no God. He only rejects the misleading combination of the word "existence" and "God." "Existence" should be applied only to finite beings, not to being-itself. Therefore I also argue that arguments for God's existence cannot be constructed out of Tillich's system as some commentators have claimed. In fact, for Tillich, God is presupposed necessarily; any argument for God's reality is impossible and unnecessary. ;Chapter five is a discussion of Tillich's idea of freedom in relation to God's transcendence. Only things are determined. Human being has finite freedom which is rooted in his destiny. And God is absolute freedom. However, God's absolute freedom does not destroy man's finite freedom. For Tillich, the crucial theistic assertion of God's transcendence is rooted in this reality of both human and divine freedom. ;In the final chapter, I discuss Tillich's proposed solution to the problem of evil and omnipotence. For Tillich, to say that God is omnipotent does not mean that God can do everything; rather it is to express our trust in God. It is to assert that God as the power of being can conquer nonbeing in all its expressions. The existence of evil does not constitute a reason for a believer to abandon his belief in God; it simply constitutes one of the mysteries of existence reflected in religion. The existence of evil is inevitable because it is implied in the creaturely finitude. To believe in God's providence, according to Tillich, is the only answer to the question of theodicy. Thus Tillich shows us how to face suffering. (shrink)

Abstract. Found in the Primeval History in Genesis, the biblical concepts of the “image of God” and the “knowledge of good and evil” remain integral to Christian anthropology, especially with regard to the theologoumena of “fall” and “original sin.” All of these symbols are remained important and appropriate descriptors of the human condition, provided that contemporary academic theological anthropology engages in constructive dialogue with the natural and social sciences. Using Paul Ricoeur's notion of “second naïveté experience,” I illustrate the hermeneutical (...) significance of contemporary bio-cultural or socio-biological evolutionary theory for reformulating these concepts of Christian anthropology today. (shrink)

The linguistic theory of the Kabbala, as it is explained in the writings of the Kabbalists of the 13th century—or at least basically implied in them—comes to rest upon a combination of the above-mentioned interpretations of the Book of Yetsira with the doctrine of the Name of God as a basis of that language. What is essentially new in this is the way in which the scope and range of a divine language—as understood by the Kabbalists—is brought into unique prominence (...) over and beyond the realm of created man. In the Book of Yetsira there could still be some doubt as to whether the ten Sefiroth and the 22 letters were themselves thought of as created; and as we have seen, there is even considerable evidence in favor of this conception. In the doctrines and teachings of the Kabbalists, however, this is no longer the case. The ten original numbers have become ten emanations of the divine fullness of being. Where these are concerned one can only now talk in terms of creation in a meta-phorical sense. In the Sefiroth of the Kabbalists, God manifests himself in ten spheres or aspects of his activity. The 22 letters are themselves part and parcel of this area; they are configurations of the divine energies, which are themselves grounded in the world of the Sefiroth, and whose appearance in the world either beyond, outside or beneath this realm of the divine emanations is simply a gradual process of de-refinement and an intensified crystallization of those innermost signs of all things, as they correspond to the progressively evolving and increasingly condensed media of the creation. All creation, from the world of the highest angel to the lower realms of physical nature, refers symbolically to the law which operates within it—the law which governs in the world of the Sefiroth. In everything something is reflected—one might just as well say—from the realms which lie in the center of it. Everything is transparent, and in this state of transparency everything takes on a symbolic character. This means that every thing, beyond its own meaning, has something more, something which is part of that which shines into it or, as if in some devious way, that which has left its mark behind in it, forever. The Book of Yetsira was still far removed from this type of interpretation. For the Kabbalists, however, the Sefiroth and the letters, in which the word of God is explained, or which constitute the word of God, were simply two different methods in which the same reality might be represented in a symbolic manner. In other words: whether the process of the manifestation of God, his stepping outside under the symbol of the light, and his diffusion of knowledge and reflection is what is represented, or whether it is to be understood to be the activeness of the divine language, of the self-differentiating word of the creation or even of the self-explanatory name of God. In the last analysis, this, for the Kabbalists, is no more than a question of the choice between symbolic structures which are in themselves equally arranged—the symbolism of light and the symbolism of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Śaṅkara, Tillich, and Abhinavagupta’s Use of “God” as a Peircean Index to the Ground of Being and Depths of NatureGreylyn Robert Hydinger (bio)I. IntroductionThis article argues that the sign “God” can function as a Peircean index to, not an icon of, the ground of being or depth dimension of existence. The ground and any generic traits of existence that the ground grounds would be the content of the (...) class='Hi'>symbol, the object to which the indexical symbol points. Paul Tillich argued that (good) theology employs the “method of correlation,” highlighting the “independence and interdependence of existential questions and theological answers.”1 This article presents an answer to two vitally important questions about religious naturalism posed by Dan Ott, LeRon Shults, and Demian Wheeler: (1) must theology be theistic, and (2) what content can the concept of “God” have in naturalism?2 Succinctly, the answers are, “no,” and the content meaning of the sign “God” in a religious naturalism should be the ground of being and the depths of nature.To support these answers, the article builds on a Peircean semiotic theory and compares the theologies of Adi Śaṅkara and Paul Tillich, with a strong appeal to Abhinavagupta; this comparison provides evidence that supports the hypothesis that a determinate symbol like “God” can be used and has been used to refer to an indeterminate, non-personal, naturalistic ground of being. Therefore, theology need not be iconically theistic. In Peircean terms, these philosophical theologians all claim that the sign “God” (Sanskrit: Īśvara, Nārāyaṇa, or Parameśvara; also, Kṛṣṇa or Śiva) stands, in one or perhaps several respects, for the object (“the Ground of Being” or “nirguṇa Brahman”) to an interpreter without implying that the object of interpretation is like the sign that points to it. All three of these philosophical theologies avoid the personal, agential being understanding of [End Page 60] “God” that is so frequently and justly the object of religious naturalist critique. The argument of the article is thus very simple on Peircean grounds, so long as the ground-of-being case studies do in fact illustrate the use of God as an index to the ontological ground of nature. The first part of the article, therefore, provides a semi-detailed discussion of Peirce’s semiotics; the second part demonstrates how Tillich, Śaṅkara, and Abhinavagupta have employed theistic symbols to engage the naturalistic ground of being.Two additional hypotheses undergird this inquiry as “premises.”3 First, naturalism can be a legitimate and important constraint on theological inquiry or a correction to theological hypotheses. Second, at least some ground-of-being theologies find compatibility with religious naturalisms, while iconic theisms do not. Each of these premises requires qualifications.First, as Robert Neville has pointed out, religious naturalism gets several things right as an ideology: (1) it rejects authoritarianism in favor of empirical and experiential inquiry, and (2) it rejects “literal supernaturalism [and supra-naturalism, cf. Tillich] as having explanatory or hermeneutical power.”4 In these respects, naturalism does provide appropriate constraints on theological inquiry. While literal, or iconic, supernaturalism, or theism, lacks explanatory power, part of the argument of this article is that theism can be used indexically to engage the depth dimension of nature, including its ontological ground, which is nothing apart from the things grounded (see the later discussion of Abhinavagupta’s “ābhāsa-vāda” theory).5 This indexical theism provides a pragmatic approach to “effing the ineffable,” as Wesley Wildman would say.6 [End Page 61]However, naturalism also can be “so easily wrong.”7 Alfred North Whitehead argued that philosophy (or theology) has a vital role to play in relation to science: philosophy must both critique science’s abstractions (and reductions) and engage in speculative flights of the imagination.8 While science engages parts of reality with exceptional clarity, it is reductive to the categories of (primarily) mathematics. Moreover, as Neville and Donald Crosby argue, science almost always excludes value from its account of reality.9 Science is thus partially inadequate to experience and, ironically, less empirical than (good) philosophy in this respect. In this regard, philosophy or theology can also be an appropriate constraint... (shrink)

For Erasmus, the two fountains streaming milky juice—a new mother’s breasts—represent powerful symbols of love and authority. Erasmus describes the mother’s breasts as fountains oozing love to the sucking child. Elizabeth Clinton extends the image of Mother to represent God, reminding the nursing mother that when she looks on her sucking child, she should remember that she is God’s new born babe, sucking His instruction and His word, even as the babe sucks her breast. Dorothy Leigh extends the image of (...) the nursing mother to an image of Christ himself. Mother’s love, especially a breast-feeding or “lying in” mother’s love, is one of the most authoritatively gendered representations of love. Issues of gender and authority converge often around the image of the breast-feeding mother. Drawing on the image of the nursing mother, Dorothy Leigh and other early modern writers actively engaged in the most contentious and public debates of their day, including the authority of men, preachers and kings. (shrink)

The paper presents, according to the dialectical metaphysics of choice, arguments in favor of the proposition that the biblical story of creation is a philosophical construct, within which the religious message (obedience, disobedience, sin) is abrogated in the philosophical perspective of the Absolute (equality of the subjects in the definition of good and evil); it has been stated that the story of creation contains an antinomian perception of God as a symbol of man (both a hierarchical and non-hierarchical relationship (...) between the parties, the latter being preferred and ascribed the status of a “divine image”); the paper proposes that the Old Testament is a literary work, rather than religious scripture, and contains a broad range of cultural experience, including elements of a philosophical outlook, which religion and theology subject to a simplified and biased interpretation, groundlessly universalizing a traditional culture based on domination andobedience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE IN THE REPRESENTATION OF GOD IN HIS SEMINAL work on the theory of signs, Charles Morris affirms that human beings are " the dominant sign-using animals" and that" the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs-if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning." 1 By means of acculturation we learn to use and interpret signs, both linguistic and (...) non-linguistic; and by virtue of these capacities we can appropriately designate the human animal as homo symbolicus, homo loquens, and homo sapiens. Indeed, all forms of human culture presuppose the ability to use and interpret signs, including that form of human culture which leads us to speak of ourselves as homo religious. Over the years I have come to understand and speak of religion as a community with its cultus. There is the community, be it triba1, national, or universal with its polity or structure and ongoing history; and there is the cultus with its organic system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs, encompassing ·such elements as stories, creeds, scriptures, doctrines, theologies, confessions, prayers, chants, songs, rites, rituals, sacraments, artifacts, etc. Like any other cultural system, scheme or network of signs one can characterize a religious cultus as an inter -subjective set of signs whose usage is determined by the implicit or explicit rules that govern the relations of signs to each other; the relations of the signs to the objects which the signs designate or denote, or stand for in some way; and the relations of signs to the users or interpreters of these signs and to those who are affected by these signs in some way. 1 Charles W. Morris, FoundatioJi of the Theory of Signs, in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), p. L 6~7 628 WILLIAM L. POWER: Given this understanding of community and cultus, one can describe a religion as an organized group of socially interdependent human beings which uses or employs ·a system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs to represent reality in its various modalities and mixtures of good and evil and to affect human ways of life on the basis of that representation. Altering the terminology somewhat, one could say that a religious community uses its cultus to proclaim, enact, and display a comprehensive worldview.and to form and tr:msform the ethospathos of human beings in their solidarity and solitude. Expressed semiotically, there is the system of signs of a particular community, the intended signification of these signs, and the significance of these signs for those who use and are affected by them. What distinguishes a religion from other forms of human culture is that a rel·igious cultuml sy•stem or a religious community with its cultus is primarily concerned with ultimate or supreme reality or with that which is divine, holy, or sacred and that reality's bearing on and relevance for human life and well-being. In short, a religion is a cultural system which functions to map the whole of re.ality and to acculturate in desirable ways or to civilize. If a religion is a cultural system, then one can identify three distinct yet inseparably related dimensions of every religion. There is 1) the cultural dimension consisting of the interrelruted signs, symbols and expressions of a cultus; 2) the reality and value dimension consisting of the ontological and axiological purport of the cultus; and 3) the experiential dimension consisting of the existential import of the cultus. It is this thioo dimension which has led many in the past and in the present to speak of religion as piety, consciousness of things divine, ultimate concern, religiousness, etc. In the tradition of Peircian semiotics, one can speak of these three dimensions as the syntactic, semantic, and praigmatic dimensions of a religion; and they can be analyzed and studied with the aid of syntactics or syntax, semantics, and pr:agmatics, which as a unity LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE 629 constitute the discipline of semiotics. As Peirce recognized, modem semiotics is continuous with the Medieval trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric-the semiotics of almost a millennium a;go... (shrink)

'A mere metaphor', 'only symbolic', 'just a myth' - these tell tale phrases reveal how figurative language has been cheapened and devalued in our modern and postmodern culture. In God and the Creative Imagination, Paul Avis argues the contrary: we see that actually, metaphor, symbol and myth, are the key to a real knowledge of God and the sacred. Avis examines what he calls an alternative tradition, stemming from the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth and Keats and drawing on the (...) thought of Cleridge and Newman, and experience in both modern philosophy and science. God and the Creative Imagination intriguingly draws on a number of non-theological disciplines, from literature to philosophy of science, to show us that God is appropriately likened to an artist or poet and that the greatest truths are expressed in an imaginative form. Anyone wishing to further their understanding of God, belief and the imagination will find this an inspiring work. (shrink)

As human beings we inevitably try to explain our experience. In philosophical language, we deal with transcendent assertions and aspirations. The issue, then, is: how can we talk about what matters, given the structures inherent in language and basic to the way we are made? Instead of the philosophical category of Being, I advance a case for giving the human brain privileged status as an analogical expression of God, the symbol‐concept of what matters most, and then suggest the illumination (...) which can come with using that analogical expression, especially as that analogy connects us with the environment at the limbic level and constructs our world at the cerebral level. (shrink)

The article presents a formalization of Anselm's so-called Ontological Arguments from Proslogion . The main idea of our research is to stay to the original text as close as is possible. We show, against some common opinions, that (i) the logic necessary for the formalization must be neither a purely sentential modal calculus, nor just non-modal first-order logic, but a modal first-order theory; (ii) such logic cannot contain logical axiom ⌜ A → ⋄ A ⌝; (iii) none of Anselm's reasonings (...) requires the assumptions that God is a consistent object or that existence of God is possible (in symbols "⋄Eg"); (iv) no such thing as the so-called Anselm's Principle (in symbols "□(Eg → □Eg)") is involved in any of the proofs; (v) Anselm's claims (that God exists in reality and that God necessarily exists in reality) can be obtained independently, hence there is no need for presenting them in an opposite order than Anselm did. Moreover we show a single line of reasoning underlying the whole Proslogion and allowing Anselm to deduce many theorems concerning God's nature. Last but not least we study the possibility of proving the uniqueness of God within the outlined theory. (shrink)

I selectively and critically review the state of knowledge about human evolution and the place of humans vis-à-vis living apes, with emphasis on bipedal posture and locomotion, expansion of the brain and associated cognitive capacities, speech, tool behavior, culture, and society. I end with a personal perspective on God and Heaven.

This paper suggests that Ricoeur’s language about God can be read as a “symbol that gives rise to thought,” or even specifically as a symbol for “hope.” It examines the tensions found in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics in four layers of such symbolic language: First, the language of faith, for Ricoeur, is essentially circular, is poetic language, a language of manifestation and not of adequation. Second, the biblical discourse is composed of several kinds of languages, a polyphony of discourses that (...) provide different (though individually always incomplete) paths toward God. Third, these discourses are characterized by limit-expressions that introduce extravagance and excess into God-language and open paths to new possibilities. Finally, Ricoeur’s theological language emphasizes paradox, perplexity, enigmas; it stays open toward any thinking about God that gives rise to new thoughts. (shrink)

In ethical reflections on new technologies, a specific type of argument often pops up, which criticizes scientists for “playing God” with these new technological possibilities. The first part of this article is an examination of how these arguments have been interpreted in the literature. Subsequently, this article aims to reinterpret these arguments as symbolic arguments: they are grounded not so much in a set of ontological or empirical claims, but concern symbolic classificatory schemes that ground our value judgments in the (...) first place. Invoking symbolic arguments thus refers to how certain new technologies risk undermining our fundamental symbolic distinctions by which we organize and evaluate our interactions with the world and in society. Such symbolic distinctions, moreover, tend to be resilient against logical argumentation, mainly because they themselves form the basis on which we argue in the cultural and ethical sphere in the first place. Therefore, effective strategies to evaluate and counter these arguments require another approach, showing that these technologies either do not challenge these classifications or, if they do, how they can be accompanied by the proper actions to integrate these technologies into our society. (shrink)

With an aim to develop a public theology for an age of information media (or media theology), this article proposes a new God-concept: God is a communicative system sui generis that autopoietically processes meaning/information in the supratemporal realm via perfect divine media ad intra (Word/Spirit). For this task, Niklas Luhmann's systems theory is critically appropriated in dialogue with theology. First, my working postmetaphysical/epistemological stance is articulated as realistic operational constructivism and functionalism. Second, a series of arguments are advanced to substantiate (...) the thesis: (1) God is an observing system sui generis ; (2) self-referential communication is divine operation; (3) unsurpassable complexity is divine mystery; (4) supratemporal autopoiesis of meaning is divine processing; (5) agape is the symbolic medium of divine communication. Third, this communicative model of God is developed into a trinitarian theology, with a claim that this model offers a viable alternative beyond the standard (psychic, social, process) models. Finally, some implications of this model are explored for constructive theology (conceiving creation as divine mediatization) and for science-and-religion in terms of derivative models: (1) God as a living system sui generis and (2) God as a meaning system sui generis. (shrink)

How should judges deal with the manifestation of religious symbols in public educational institutions? In light of the important role of human rights in our legal and political system, courts should grant maximum protection under the freedom of religion or belief. The central thesis of this article is that the European Court of Human Rights fails to live up to this standard. In order to reach this conclusion, the article analyzes relevant case law of the European Court and compares its (...) case law with that of the high courts of Canada and South Africa. In addition, the article assesses the case law of all three courts from the angle of interpretation theory and particularly Cass R. Sunstein’s theory of judicial minimalism. Adoption of a more consistently minimalist methodology by the European Court might lead to a greater protection granted to individuals and groups. However, a wide and deep ruling is first required to overturn the current line of reasoning. The European Court can draw inspiration from Canada and South Africa for such a judgment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 3-22 [Access article in PDF] Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol "God" 1 Gordon D. KaufmanHarvard UniversityI am a Christian theologian. This does not mean, however, that I understand my work as being essentially a matter of explaining and defending Christian faith and the Christian set of symbols for interpreting human life and the world. The task of the Christian theologian is rather, as I (...) understand it, to scrutinize carefully, critically evaluate, and reconstruct (in whatever ways seem appropriate and necessary) the central Christian symbols, so they will encourage and support a faith and life appropriate for today. 2 In our time it is no longer sufficient for theologians simply to take it for granted that the basic structure and commitments of traditional Christian faith are--in all of their main lines--right and proper; and to proceed, then, to expound and reinterpret them in whatever ways seem intelligible and persuasive. Whatever may have been the value and justification of this sort of theologizing in the past, the crises of the twentieth century (to many of which Christian symbols, institutions, and practices have themselves contributed) have made it clear that thorough reassessment of the traditional Christian symbol-system, with an eye to its (possibly drastic) reconstruction or even to the total rejection of some of its principal features, is required--if it is to continue to contribute to human well-being, and to the well-being of the rest of life, on planet Earth. It is with this thoroughly critical and open understanding of the task of Christian theologians today that this contribution to our Buddhist-Christian dialogue has been prepared. And I hope a similar spirit will animate the responses to this paper, whether offered from the Christian or the Buddhist side of our conversation. I My assignment here is to examine the topic of "Christianity and Ecology." This is, of course, a very broad topic, much too large for a paper of this sort. I have taken the liberty, therefore, to confine my discussion to only one of the many questions that might be considered under this heading. The central symbol in terms of which Christian faith and Christian life (as well as most other western religious traditions) understand and order themselves is God, usually thought of as designating the creator and governor of the world, the only One to whom unqualified devotion, love, [End Page 3] and service are due. If we can come to some understanding of how this symbol has functioned in the past, and might be conceived properly to function today with respect to ecological concerns, we will have made a large step toward understanding the overall topic of Christianity and ecology. I am devoting this paper, therefore, to the question of "Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol 'God.'"Throughout my professional life I have been concerned with the problem of the continuing viability (or lack of viability) in our contemporary world of the symbol "God," as that symbol has been understood through most of western history (not only by Christians and Jews, but also by many humanists and secularists). And for the last thirty years or so, I have been reflecting on the issues which our growing ecological consciousness poses for our understanding of--and our ordering of life in terms of--this symbol. My earliest writing directly concerned with this question is in a paper entitled "The Concept of Nature: A Problem for Theology" published in the Harvard Theological Review in 1972. 3 In that paper I attempted to show that there is a fundamental tension--indeed, a conceptual and logical incompatibility--between, on the one hand, the understanding of God, and of the intimate relation of humanity to God (as seen in our western religious and philosophical traditions), and on the other hand, our growing awareness that human existence is essentially constituted by, and could not exist apart from, the complex ecological ordering of life that has evolved on planet Earth over many millennia. 4The main emphasis in that paper remains largely correct in my view. Hence, I would like to... (shrink)

The aim of the book is to show that the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas, i.e. his five arguments to prove the existence of God, are logically correct arguments by the standards of modern Predicate Logic. In the first chapter this is done by commenting on the two preliminary articles preceeding the Five Ways in which Thomas Aquinas points out that on the one hand the existence of God is not self-evident to us and on the other hand, that, similar (...) as in some scientific explanations, the mere existence of a cause for an effect which is evidently known to us can be proved. In the second chapter every argument is translated into the symbolic form of Predicate Logic and its logical validity is shown. Additionally a detailed and critical discussion of the premises of each argument is given. (shrink)

As the all-nurturing earth mother goddess. Ruether points out that merely replacing a transcendent male deity with a female one does not answer the "god-problem." What we need, in her view, is a vision of a much more abundant and creative source of life. "A healed relation to each other and to the earth calls for a new consciousness, a new symbolic culture and spirituality." writes Ruether. "We need to transform our inner psyches and the way we symbolize the.

This article has two parts, as the title suggests. The first sketches what I call biohistorical naturalism, a naturalistic position in which it is emphasized that the historicocultural development of our humanity, particularly our becoming linguistic/symbolical beings, is as central to our humanness as the biological evolutionary development that preceded (and continues to accompany) it. Apart from such a biohistorical emphasis (or its equivalent), naturalistic positions cannot give adequate accounts of human religiousness. The second part suggests that, although it would (...) not be consistent with biohistorical naturalism to continue thinking of God in the traditional supernaturalistic way as “the Creator,” it would be quite appropriate to understand God as the ongoing creativity (of truly novel realities) manifest in the long history of the universe, particularly in the evolution of life on Earth. (shrink)

How do religions refer to reality in their language and symbols, and which reality do they envisage and encounter? on the basis of some examples of an understanding of religion without reference to reality, I first answer the question of what ”realism’ is. realism has been an opposite concept to nominalism, idealism, empiricism and antirealism. The paper concentrates especially on the most recent formation of realism in opposition to antirealism. In a second section the consequences for philosophy of religion and (...) theology are considered. How the reality, as it is considered in philosophy of religion and in theology, has to be characterised, if and how this reality is relevant for human beings, and what its relation is to everything else, can only be answered and clarified in a presentation in a language that is specific for this reality, the reality of God. (shrink)

O papel da Igreja foi fundamental no processo de constituição do território no Novo Mundo. Neste artigo, explora-se a forma como se implementaram no Novo Reino de Granada (hoje Colômbia) as “Instruções para a fábrica e decoração das igrejas” de Carlos Borromeo de 1577, documento considerado como a consolidação arquitetônica do Concilio de Trento. A análise parte da comparação dos principais preceitos contidos nas Instruções com os contratos de fabricação das igrejas celebrados pelo Visitador Luis Henríquez entre os anos 1599 (...) e 1605 no território da Província de Tunja. Dentro da empreitada religiosa e de unificação da Coroa espanhola no território americano, a doutrina dos indígenas americanos tornou-se um projeto crucial e, portanto, a fabricação das igrejas e a concentração da população. A igreja era o ponto de partida para a conformação de novos assentamentos para indígenas sob a responsabilidade de um padre, chamados “povoados de índios”. A força do projeto secular espanhol deixou suas marcas na forma destas igrejas de doutrina construídas e que, 400 anos depois, permitem realizar uma reflexão sobre a imposição do simbolismo e da hierarquia eclesiástica em Colômbia. Palavras-chave: Arquitetura religiosa. Novo Reino de Granada. Carlos Borromeo. Igrejas de doutrina.In the territorial constitution of the New World the role of the Church was crucial. In this article, we investigate the implementation in the new kingdom of Granada (the current Colombia) the “Instructions to the factory and decoration churches” by Charles Boromeo, 1577, a document considered as architectural consolidation of the Council of Trent. This analysis is grounded in the comparison between the Borromeo's Instructions and the numerous contracts assigned by Luis Henriquez in the period of 1559 and 1605, in the territory of the province of Tunja. The indoctrination process of the indigenous American people became the main project in the religious enterprise and unification of Spanish Crown through the construction of sturdy churches and concentration of this population around them. The church was the start point for urban conformation of new indigenous settlements named “povoados de índios”, upon the responsibility of a priest. The force of Spain’s secular project left its mark in the shape of such “churches of doctrine” constructed across the territory in the XVII century, which allow today a reflection about the symbolic imposition of a new ecclesial hierarchy in Colombia during this period. Keywords : Religious architecture. New Kingdom of Granada. Charles Borromeo. Churches of Doctrine. (shrink)

Njemački filozof Karl Jaspers, promišljajući smisao ljudske egzistencije, usmjerava svoju pažnju na transcendentnu stvarnost u kojoj pronalazi izvor egzistencije. Jedan je od simbola-šifri koji transcendenciju uprisutnjuje i pojam «Bog». Polazeći od filozofsko-povijesnih poticaja, Jaspers uobličuje na temelju filozofske i, Zapadu bliske, biblijske koncepcije božanstva svoj pojam Boga kao šifre transcendencije – to je nespoznatljiv Bog pojedinca-egzistencije, o kojem ne znamo ništa jer je ne-misliv, ali možemo živjeti iz njegove stvarnosti do koje dolazimo putem filozofskog vjerovanja. U njemu mi dosižemo izvor (...) svoje egzistencije.Tako poimanog Boga Jaspers suprostavlja Bogu religijskih sistema, koji guši istinsku egzistencijalnu slobodu. Dogme o religijskom Bogu isključuju sve koji drukčije misle i stoga su neprihvatljive jer je njihova bezuvjetnost apsolutna. Bog kojem se obraća egzistencija nužno ostaje skriven, jer to je jedini uvjet slobode. Religijske dogme i institucije moraju postati svjesne svoje povijesne uvjetovanosti.German philosopher Karl Jaspers, in contemplating the meaning of human existence, points his attentionto transcendent reality, which is the origin of existence. One of the symbols-markers whichmakes that transcendence alive, is the concept of ‘God’. Starting with philosophical-historicalurges, Jaspers, on the basis of philosophical and Western-Biblical conception of divinity, makes hisconcept of God as the marker of transcendence. This is unknowable God of single human existence,of whom we do not know anything because he is unthinkable, but we can live within his reality,that is reachable by the way of philosophical faith. In this God, we reach the origin of our existence.Jaspers confronts such a God to a God of religious systems, which suffocates real existentialfreedom. Dogmas on religion God exclude everybody of different opinion, and are therefore unacceptable,because their unconditionality is absolute. God to whom existence is addressed to, remainshidden by necessity, because this is the only condition for freedom. Religious dogmas and institutionshave to become aware of being historically conditioned. (shrink)

David Brown explores the ways in which the symbolic associations of the body and what we do with it have helped shape religious experience and continue to do so. A Church narrowly focused on Christ's body wracked in pain needs to be reminded that the body as beautiful and sexual has also played a crucial role not only in other religions but also in the history of Christianity itself. Dance was one way in which the connection was expressed. The irony (...) is not that such a connection has gone but that it now exists almost wholly outside the Church. Much the same could be said about music more generally, and Brown writes excitingly about the spiritual potential of not just classical music but also pop, jazz, musicals, and opera. Like Brown's much-praised earlier volumes, God and Enchantment of Place, Tradition and Imagination, and Discipleship and Imagination, the present book will enlarge horizons and challenge the narrowness of much theological thinking. (shrink)

This response offers considerable agreement with Anne Foerst's analysis in her essay “Cog, a Humanoid Robot, and the Question of the Image of God” (Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 33 [March 1998]), yet endeavors to make her argument even more helpful. The response deals mainly with (1) the concept of symbol and the symbolic approach, (2) the symbolic description of a human being by artificial intelligence (AI) and by the theological symbol, “image of God” (imago dei), and (...) (3) the ensuing dialogue between scientists and theologians. (shrink)

Rage against the system : the unity of truth -- A philosophy of hope? The universality of truth -- Absolutely no absolutes? Ricœur's encounter with Thévenaz -- Finitude and the infinite : the God of the philosophers -- Finitude and evil : the crucial distinction -- Rightly relating evil and finitude -- The poetic symbol of creation -- The mysterious unity of creation -- The original goodness of creation -- Conclusion. New frontiers between philosophy and theology.

Searching for God draws upon the traditional categories of systematic theology as it guides readers through the Catholic theological thought process involved in the search for God. At each step we examine the work of a past thinker from the time of the early church up to the early twentieth century, and a present thinker whose works are often required reading in theology courses. Not only do readers have the opportunity to critically evaluate several important theological works in the Catholic (...) tradition, they can also enter into dialogue with those works as they engage in their own search for God. Among the ten categories represented are: Bible: Hearing God--Past: Hugh of St. Victor, Noah's Ark (ca. 1130) Present: Sandra Schneiders, The Revelatory Text (1999) Christ II: Understanding God (Dogmatic Approach)--Past: Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ (429) Present: Roger Haight, Jesus: Symbol of God (1999) Religions of the World: Listening for God Past: Jean Daniélou, The Salvation of the Nations (1946) Present: Raimon Panikkar, The Experience of God (2006) +. (shrink)