The present study intends to demonstrate that there is no logical-formal inconsistency in the Christian Trinity. However, the demonstration requires specific tools, other than those of classical logic. There are many older or newer attempts that try to remove the thesis of the inconsistency of the Christian Trinity. There is often a call for mathematical tools. As far as we are concerned, we will appeal to co -inherence and the nesting relationships specific to the Christian Trinity, as they appear especially (...) in Augustine’s work. We advance the hypothesis that Augustine's metaphor "heaven of heavens" has a foundational role in the logical plane of explanation. In this sense, Augustine points out that in the "heaven of heavens", reason does not know "in part", but it knows everything suddenly, entirely, as in a totality. This totality with a founding role functions as a principle, which we can call the principle of free totality. But the co -belonging of entities in the free and founding totality also expresses co -inherence. Divine persons are an emanation of God. That is why we are talking about co -inherence. The "co" particle points out that the starting point is in the free totality of God, and that this totality logically precedes the rest of the process. Thus, we can consider the term "the Christian Trinity" as a nested term, as co -habitation. The totality of God is not a generalization in the spirit of the Aristotelian abstraction, but rather a particularity, a "personalization" that does not cancel the individual, but it highlights in instantiation. In this sense, the Christian God is not an abstraction, but a divine Being in three persons, in whom He instantiates. The logic of this process is the one of vagueness. (shrink)

The lack of academic religious studies in India has several causes: the choice of the secular University of London as model for the first universities in India in 1857, the secular constitution, the secularist approach of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the explosive relation between major faith traditions. However, with the waning of the Indian secularist framework and the continued power and influence of Hindutva ideology, there is a need to discuss different models for religious studies (...) in India. In this article, the point of departure is Banaras Hindu University, one of the few universities in India that has religious studies, but also a faculty of Hindu theology. The focus is on the history of BHU and the recommendations of several educational commission from the 1930s to the 60s, with a note on recent attempts at BHU of renewing value education. The aim is to highlight one alternative for developing religious studies in India, whose primary goal is the formation of good citizens enabled by a set of universal human values instantiated in local traditions. (shrink)

God revealed to man during the history of his salvation in two ways: through word and through image. In other words, the divine message was addressed to the hearing and seeing of man. In the second case, revelation was achieved in a complete form. Man was part of a theophanic act, he was enveloped by the divine light and with the help of his spiritual eyes he was able to see, as much as it was permitted, God who is light. (...) This light was not completely strange to man, even though he could not see it with his physical eyes. The uncreated light that God made even from the first day of creation did not disappear when the great light were put in the sky. It had the purpose to arrange creation and to be the environment within which man could meet God and talk to Him face to face. Even though the fall took man out of sight, God established that from time to time this bright environment should be revealed to man in order to call him back to the life within light. These presentations of the Lord in the light of His glory continued after His incarnation. The mystical experiences of the Fathers of the Church constitute a testimony to this respect. But seeing this divine light is not reserved exclusively to the mystics, but may be experienced, partly, by the faithful nowadays. The present study endeavours to provide contemporary man with the necessary premises to experience the sight of the deifying light by means of religious imagery. Whether we have in view icons painted on wood or walls or stained glass imagery, they all contain, hidden within, the kind of light which, once experienced, illuminates man and fills him with light. (shrink)

The paper takes a Critical Discourse Analysis angle and joins Social Media Studies and Religious Studies perspectives of Computer Mediated Communication material to examine such strategies of online interpersonal communication as may foster civic solidarity on social networks sites over local incidents with national and international media coverage. Computer mediated discourse is often underpinned by ideological antagonism especially when tackling social, political, cultural and even religious issues. Our topic choice was occasioned by an infelicitous episode – a fire in a (...) local venue hosting a rock concert that resulted in a high number of casualties and fatalities. The tragic episode triggered some polarized and highly opinionated positioning in the social media, both independent of and/or in retaliation to media sourced accounts and personal posts. We analyzed qualitatively authentic CMC material as well as edited media inputs in order to establish if and how the networked, yet generationally diverse, public achieve symbolic solidarity through reactive and correlated digi-participation where sociocultural identities become tangent to such ecclesiastic issues as became salient and were up-cycled in the local political conjecture. (shrink)

As in religious traditions, the soul organizes entirely the human condition horizon; postmodern culture sets the body as the organizing centre of its sacralizing mechanisms. Some even speak about a cult and about ritual mechanisms having a religious charge. On the one hand, the body is attributed a symbolic dimension surfacing in the fight against the finite and life’s lack of meaning. On the other, turning the body into a centre of the existential universe triggers a better delineation of the (...) functions it may fulfill. An important role belongs to the networking function that crosses over the human inhabited worlds, from the physical one to the spiritual and religious one. To highlight these aspects, I called on the reflections in Aurel Codoban’s communication philosophy. The new view on corporality brings the image of body as language, as communication instrument and as significant surface. Against this background, the body sets a self-concern whose consequence, symbolically, is a dialectic movement of body and soul nourishing one other and improving one another in light of authenticity. (shrink)

The present study proposes a valorization of the work of professor and philosopher Ioan Biriş. The statistics of his books and studies, their distribution by areas of interest, and especially the ideas in his work confirm the need for philosophy in the Romanian cultural life. As a whole, his philosophical endeavor is based on the concept of totality. Thus in the Hegelian spirit, Ioan Biriş successfully convinces us that the logical may exceed the limits of formal exercise and become the (...) organon of philosophy. In this capacity, the logical may operate on the real and valorize the multiple relationships between identity and difference. His books Filosofia și logica științelor sociale, Totalitate, sistem, holon, Rolul imaginarului în cunoașterea științifică, Istorie şi cultură, as well as a series of studies among which let me mention: “L’identité symbolique et la logique partitive des valeurs spirituelles”, “On the logic of religious terms”, “Le rapport identite-difference et la conjonction collective. Aspects logiques”, clearly prove the author’s capacity to integrate existential, religious, cognitive and axiological issues into a unitary vision. As Noica would say, he succeeded to enter the spirit’s life thorough the intellect’s gate. (shrink)

This paper explores the shift in the position of the Catholic Church regarding religious freedom, in the context of the changing perspective on the relationship between Church and State. The Declaration Dignitatis humanae of Vatican II recognised religious freedom as a human right deriving from the dignity of the person. It reflected a significant change in perspective as it understood religious freedom as abidance by convictions held in conscience and as freedom from coercion. Both the State and the Church are (...) expected to ensure freedom from external coercion and from psychological pressure. The process which led to the recognition of religious freedom in the Catholic Church went along with the acknowledgement of the autonomy of the State in secular matters. The State is expected to recognise the freedom to profess freely religious beliefs and the right to free worship, but religious freedom may not interfere with secular authority in its own sphere of competence. Dignitatis humanae is therefore known as the declaration of the separation between Church and State. Yet, a more attentive lecture shows that it actually also advances a balanced model for the collaboration between State and Church in the shared concern for the common good. Both are required to act in a manner that advances the common welfare of society. (shrink)

Can the turn caused by the Protestant Reformation, which started 500 years ago, be understood in all its complexity without considering its hermeneutical aspects? Does the “actuality” of the Reformation, which addresses our present-day world, not manifest itself primarily as a hermeneutical actuality, or rather the actuality of hermeneutics? These are the questions motivating my investigation on the relationship between the hermeneutical turn of Martin Luther’s Reformation and the Schleiermacherian-Gadamerian turn of modern hermeneutics, respectively on the horizontal and the vertical (...) orientation of transcendence, with special attention to the ontological status of the sacred Word and to modernity’s experience of finitude in establishing the horizontal transcendence, which will prevail again with the Reformation. In the second part of my essay, I focus on the analysis of three modernization processes ‒ methodological awareness, practical worldly rationality, and technological functionality ‒, in which the verticalization tendencies opposed to the prevalence of the horizontal transcendence, based on the mutual interconnectedness of finitude and completeness, keep on recurring and attempt to disrupt their togetherness, counteracting the hermeneutical attitude. (shrink)

Whether Confucianism is a religion or not has been a controversial issue for many years. Recently, along with the “national revitalization” movement in China, Confucianism has been valued and advocated again in China at both official and civil levels. This trend sometimes has been perceived by some observers as a kind of religious revival movement. This paper analysis some key components in the thought of Confucius, such as his idea and attitude towards “Gods”, “Tian” and other divine or supernatural beings, (...) in order to prove that, although Confucius does not exclude religious faith, and has accepted some traditional religious rituals, the basic Confucian doctrines are not constructed on any religious foundation. The essence of Confucianism is humanism and rationalism characterized with the practical reason of “zhongdaology”. It provides a rational base for constructing the secular ideology in ancient China. In today’s Chinese society, Confucianism can still play a role in constructing the modern secular ideology, which may accommodate cultural diversity yet maintain a harmonious social political environment. (shrink)

Since the last decades of the 20th century the meaning and content of knowledge has dramatically changed. This necessitates adopting a historical perspective in ap­proa­ching the questions of knowledge. But so far all the efforts of putting knowledge in a historical perspective since Hegel’s historization of Spirit either suffer from the limitations of the presupposition of the One or fail to ground the historicity of knowledge on the history of coming-to-be and passing-away. Moving from Heidegger’s ‘history of Being’ toward the (...) Aristotelian understanding of coming-to-be and passing away as a process of becoming has the potential to open up new avenues in approaching the historical question of knowledge as well as establishing its relation with the never com­plete ground of the entities as its historical a priori condition of possibility. (shrink)

Public health ethics is a subfield of bioethics that focuses on population health. This study aims to conform the principles of biomedical ethics to Islamic values in the context of public health. It culturally helps to optimize health care delivery. The approach is based on the method of immanent critique. The principle of the common good in Islam has a rational justification to draw public interests and ward off harms. The rule of “no harm”, with an emphasis on the preferability (...) of preventing harm to increase benefits, is consistent with the principle of utility, intending to produce a maximum balance of benefit over harm in the context of public health. Thus, on the one hand, the government is obliged to prevent harm and improve public benefits and, on the other hand, as a steward of health and with reference to the article “limitation of the ownership dominance”, it has the right to protect public health with the least justifiable harm. Islam attention to human dignity, individual justice and good will in the rule of goodness implies that Islam, beyond distributive justice, knows that human flourishing and the cultivation of moral virtues are a requisite for the realization of social justice. The present study discusses about the adjustment of the principles of PHE to the principles of the Islamic jurisprudence and, at the same time, it explains why the optimal PH in Muslim societies requires research in order to define accurate indicators of benefit and harm based on the teachings of revelation and reason. (shrink)

Review of Ioan Chirilă, Model, Chip, Sens, București: Editura Eikon, 2017.

This desk analysis exposes conflicts that have been created by the coming of Christianity and how they may be resolved from an endogenous perspective within the Shona people in Zimbabwe. The analysis looked at archival material and reviewed some classical literature related to the clashes pitting the two religions. The analysis is influenced by two theories: Social Dominance and Clash of Civilizations. The two theories argue that in society, there are struggles for domination which lead to conflicts among belief systems. (...) The study acknowledges that while Pentecostal Christianity has contributed to the demise of indigenous practices through its tough approach and the use of financial resources, there are other indigenous factors. Rescuing indigenous practices from extinction may be a challenge given that almost all the institutions have adopted Christian models while association with indigenous systems is now a ‘shame’. However, documentation and practicing the rituals for continuity purpose are encouraged. (shrink)

The question of the morality of abortion has long been the subject of intense, sometimes acrimonious debate. Even people within the same religious or philosophical tradition often disagree on the issue. For example, there are Christians who are “pro- choice” and there are Christians who are “pro-life.” Both sides marshal biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments in support of their positions. The substance of the abortion debate seems to reduce to one tricky question: when does personhood begin? Christian experts in various (...) fields, such as theology, biblical studies, ethics, and philosophy, have protracted disagreements over this question. In this article we will apply insights from the current literature on epistemic peer disagreement to the abortion issue. We will assume that there is only one correct answer to the abortion question. However, after making a crucial distinction between rationality as understood by internalists versus externalists, we will argue that there is more than one rational answer to the abortion question, since there is more than one rational way to weight evidence. We will conclude that, in a case of disagreement between two Christians who are epistemic peers with regards to the morality of abortion, both parties can be rational in adhering to their respective positions, but that this does not entail or even support ethical relativism. (shrink)

This article is an overview of the evolution of Islamic radicalism during the 19 th - 21 st centuries. It demonstrates that nineteenth century Islamic radicalism is based on the ideas of pan-Islamism, whose main representatives are J. al-Din al-Afghani and M. Abduh. In turn, Islamic radicalism of the twentieth to twentyfirst centuries is based on the ideas of Islamic fundamentalism. Its main representatives are H. Al-Banna, S. Qutb, the Deoband movement, al-Maududi and R. Khomeyni. Pan-Islamic theories of the 19 (...) th -20t h centuries are based on the thesis that people who seek liberation from colonial oppression should merge. However, scholars have different views on the union of the Muslim world. It was, once, regarded as a combination of historical circumstances and the political realities of the nineteenth century. These were further shaped by the basic idea of Islamic fundamentalism in the twentieth to twentyfirst centuries, which is Salafiyya, or a return to “pure Islam”, a revival of active faith traditions and the union of all walks of life under the Sharia law and strict interpretation and application of its rules. The instruments used by Islamic fundamentalists and radicals to implement it have been the Islam-related slogans for Takfir and Jihad. But in the 21st century, integration and globalization have started playing a significant role. Various geopolitical forces are using various tools, including the idea of Islamic radicalism. (shrink)

Vampire stories and folklores have originated from a range of sources; however, it is rather certain that the repulsive but attractive vampiric monster images in present popular culture are primarily derived from Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire. That being said, it was around the end of the eighteenth century that vampires first invaded the popular literary world, with literary vampires growing noticeably more powerful and perpetual than any of their monstrous predecessors in the years since the publication of (...) John Polidori’s successful short story The Vampyre in 1819. Due to associated aesthetic transformations, vampirism itself has become increasingly popular, to the extent that it now commands some followers who even worship vampiric rituals and lifestyles in spite of there being no solid, physical evidence of actual vampires, but rather only literary and imaginary examples of the creatures. In order to grasp how this fascination with vampires has turned into a quasi-religious phenomenon and ideology, a proper investigation of vampiric mechanisms and aesthetics should be empirical in nature. Utilizing Interview with the Vampire as an example due to its clearly substantial influence on current vampire imagery, this article examines how the paradoxical interchange between aversion and attraction plays its role in the visceral religion of the vampire-immersed world. (shrink)

Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn was a religious Zionist thinker and one of the founders of the “Mizrachi” movement. The present article aims to trace his approach towards work: did he see work as a need, an obligation imposed upon the human being to sustain his household, or did he, perhaps, associate work with a religious value as an integral part of the theology which he steered by? The conclusion is that R. Hirschensohn's approach towards work is both a must for a (...) livelihood and part of Jewish and national identity, to the point where Redemption itself depends upon it. Work is also part of religious Zionist theology, one of whose proponents and founders Chaim Hirschensohn was. (shrink)

A brand is a complex construction. In addition to its tangible and intangible dimensions, it implies an intrinsic relational dimension associated to any brand building process. The relational dimension is even more visible in the case of the political brand. The political brand brings with it a symbolic construction in which the experience of a diffuse form of sacredness is central, by the presence of the inadequate report specific to the manifestations related to the sacred representations. On the one hand, (...) we are experiencing a meeting that creates the context of identity, and on the other hand a cohabitation that highlights the role of alterity. The brand imposes itself as a symbolic construction based on this game of identity and alterity in a global communication market. Communication advisers must pay attention to this symbolic dimension. It is the expressive form in which interpersonal relationships manifest themselves as assuming the values and meanings that individuals place under the idea of having a better life. The orientation towards the development of political brands understood as personal brands corresponds to a phase of professionalization of politics and political communication in electoral campaigns, but also in the stages between campaigns. At the same time, political brands grow in importance in times of crisis, both because they offer exemplary models and because they synthesize the mythological elements of the imaginary of abundance, trust and authentic dialogue. (shrink)

Review of Kristina Stoeckl, Ingeborg Gabriel, Aristotle Papanikolau, eds., Political Theologies in Orthodox Christianity. Common Challenges – Divergent Positions,, Edinburgh: T&T Clark and Bloomberg, 2017.

The present paper starts from the postulate that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has had and continues to have a significant role in political debates and in the structuring of the public arena. Expounding – in the context of “God’s return” into the life of postsecular society – the vision of the famous theologian Joseph Ratzinger on democracy and its opponents, this paper also dwells on the manifestations of irrationality in secular religions. Finding its theoretical grounds in myths (...) and utopias, monism of power gives free rein to irrationality in history and ends up in ideology, totalitarianism and crime. Pluralistic democracy, so challenged by enemies from within as well as without can be defended and reinvigorated – and Europe alongside it –, Ratzinger states, by restoring Christianity and its values to their rightful place within the public sphere, by means of a fruitful collaboration between reason and faith in the cultural and political life, and by grounding the law in stable, universal ethical principles, which ought to take precedence over any other type of consensus, such as the natural moral law or the dictates of conscience. “The central concern of ecclesiastic policy”, according to pope Benedict XVI, is defending and promoting freedom, even to the point of martyrdom, by cultivating the dualism of power. (shrink)

This paper argues that a new genre of therapy has appeared in the arena of contemporary spiritual alternative healing, which expresses an outlook never-before-seen in the history of medicine: postmodern therapy. Postmodern therapeutic methods express a popularization of postmodernist philosophy in regards to language’s role in the therapeutic process, expressing a novel cosmology. These methods are illustrated in the paper, and then analyzed in comparison to two other groups of methods: traditional/occult magic, and modern medicine. Finally, PTMs are characterized as (...) neo-magic, bearing features similar to modernistic outlook on the one hand, and features similar to pre-modern magic outlook on the other hand. Thus, these new outlook demonstrate a double appropriation and rejection of perceptions viewed as contradictory – traditional magic and secular science. (shrink)

Ancient Jewish law took a strict approach to medical relationships between Jews and non-Jews. Sages forbade Jews to provide non-Jews with medical services: to treat them, circumcise them, or deliver their babies, in order to refrain from helping pagan-idolatrous society. Such law created particularly severe social conflicts in cases of mixed societies based on joint systems. The current paper focuses on the attitude of Moses ben Maimon, a medieval Sephardic Jewish Rabbi towards providing medical service to gentiles. Following the classical (...) rabbis R. Moshe ben Maimon in his halakhic tome Mishne Torah, objected to treating non-Jews. His rigid attitude found expression in several aspects of helping and giving medical treatment to non-Jews. Despite the classical rabbinical restrictions on medical relationships between Jews and non-Jews, and his own rigid halakhic verdicts, Maimonides treated gentiles. According to one understanding, Maimonides cured Muslims for a wage, which is permitted. However, it seems that the main factor that may have facilitated Maimonides halakhic position is the identification of Islam as a non-idolatrous faith. Interestingly not only on medical issues did the Maimonides act differently than his halakhic rulings in Mishne Torah, rather in other areas as well. (shrink)