Why is a Reformational philosophy needed in Africa? It is necessary, because something is missing in African Christianity. Most Western missionaries taught Africans a “broken” or dualistic worldview. This caused a divorce between traditional culture and their new Christian religion. The Christian faith was perceived as something remote, only concerned with a distant past and a far-away future. It could not become a reality in their everyday lives. It could not develop into an all-encompassing worldview and lifestyle. Because Reformational philosophy (...) advocates the Biblical, holistic approach of a comprehensive worldview, it is welcomed on our continent. It contains a healing and liberating message to our bleeding and lost continent. What Africans, however, neither want nor can afford, is an ivory tower philosophy, playing intellectual games; a philosophy which does not do or change anything. They want a philosophy which is a “marriage” between abstract ideas and the facts on the ground. They need a Christian philosophy with compassion that may even contribute to the alleviation of their poverty! (shrink)

This study will focus on the differences in the way that Roman Paganism and Christianity organize systems of beliefs. It rejects the theory that “beliefs” have no place in the Roman religion, but stresses the differences between Christian orthodoxy, in which mandatory dogmas define group identity, and the essentially polythetic nature of Roman religious organization, in which incompatible beliefs could exist simultaneously in the community without conflict. In explaining how such beliefs could coexist in Rome, the study emphasizes three main (...) conceptual mechanisms: polymorphism, the idea that gods could have multiple identities with incompatible attributes, orthopraxy, the focus upon standardized ritual rather than standardized belief, and pietas, the Roman ideal of reciprocal obligation, which was flexible enough to allow Romans to maintain relationships simultaneously with multiple gods at varying levels of personal commitment. (shrink)

. The question of whether nature can embody love or be considered in this sense as “friend” is a thorny problem for Christian theology. The doctrines of finitude and sin argue against nature as a realm of love, whereas the doctrine of creation out of nothing, which links God and the creation so forcefully, would seem to argue for such a view of nature. This paper explores the thesis that Western culture has not offered a concept of nature rich enough (...) to allow for an understanding of it as a domain of gracious-ness. From pre-Socratic times through the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science, nature was conceived of as a realm of defect or lacking in creative possibilities. Christian theology has consistently spoken of nature in terms that defy the limitations of the authorized views proposed by the ambient Western cultures. The present times, under the influence of the sciences, have furnished for the first time an authorized concept of nature that is large enough and dynamic enough to entertain the dimension of grace. Consequently, ours is a time of great promise for developing a more adequate theology of nature. (shrink)

Scholarly use of the label “school” to describe groups of philosophers has sometimes led to a neglect of the ways in which such gatherings of philosophers could function as unofficial associations of recognizable types. Concerns to distance supposedly “secular” philosophers from any “religious” connection have fed into this image of the philosophical “school,” diverting attention away from other important dimensions of associative life among philosophers and other literate professionals, including involvement in honours for the gods and in commensal activities. Epigraphic (...) evidence helps to elucidate the broader associative context. The fact that some philosophers formed associations has implications for adjacent fields, such as Christian origins, where there is a tendency to ask whether groups of Jesus followers were socially analogous to a Judean synagogue, an association, or a philosophical school, as though these were distinct options rather than overlapping social phenomena. Such associations of relatively literate people were among the few in antiquity that can also be described using the scholarly category of “reading communities.”. (shrink)

In his brief comments on the Abraham-episodes of Genesis 15:1–11, Emperor Julian the Apostate indirectly attacks the apostle Paul's interpretation that Abraham exhibited πίστις as a justifying ‘faith’. Through a close reading of the biblical text, he interprets Abraham as, rather, receiving a divine πίστις—a ‘pledge’ or ‘confirming sign’—during two theurgical rituals. Although modern scholars have overlooked Julian's subtle argument, Cyril of Alexandria recognized Julian's strategy and responded directly. Attention to Julian's and Cyril's competing accounts shows that different conceptual grammars, (...) tied to rival traditional narratives, lay behind their incompatible claims to Abraham and his πίστις. (shrink)

The basic framework of Roman policy towards the Jews and Judaism, initiated at the time of Julius Caesar, until before the time of Claudius, was quite permissive, allowing the Jews considerable religious freedom and privileges. There were of course occasional different applications of the policy depending on the Emperors or procurators in the regions. Nonetheless, Judaism in the first half of the first century to some degree infiltrated into the Roman Empire and the range of the social status of the (...) constituents was wide, from low class to high. There were considerable numbers of gentile adherents to Judaism and also of proselytes: among them were Roman adherents and proselytes and some of them were even members of the royal house. The pragmatic policy of Rome towards the Jews and their religion, the wide range of Jewish infiltration into various classes of people, and in particular the numerous cases of conversion among the Romans do not exclude the possibility of the conversion of a Roman officer, despatched to the province in approximately AD 39, to a sect of the Jewish religion. (shrink)