This book has been prompted by the dishonesty of much contemporary treatment of the Bible. It is not a 'debunking' of the Bible, but an attempt to show what qualities and what preliminary assumptions are needed for the Bible to be genuinely understood and interpreted. Honest scholarship and honest interpretations must acknowledge that a revolution has taken place in the understanding of the Bible during the last two hundred years and that to try to deny or play down or disguise (...) the results of this revolution is to be faithful neither to God nor to ourselves. With that conviction, and with their customary panache, the authors then go on to look at the facts about the Bible; the New Testament interpretation of scripture; the interpretation of the Bible in the early church; historical criticism; fundamentalism; and prophecy. 'They analyse the books of the Bible, examine the canon and the Bible as norm and as the church's book, consider the role of faith and conclude with a chapter 'In Praise of the Bible'. Here, in the last book together, the Professors Hanson are indeed on top of their form. (shrink)

La parution d'un catalogue collectif des bibles imprimées conservées à Paris fournit l'occasion de faire le point sur les bibliographies qui signalent les anciennes éditions de la Bible. Le catalogue est ensuite présenté de manière critique. Son analyse débouche sur quelques réflexions montrant l'intérêt des bibliographies exhaustives des éditions de la Bible.

Talitha Cooreman-Guittin et Catherine Vialle Cet article pose une question nouvelle : Y a-t-il dans la Bible un biais « validiste » contre les femmes porteuses de handicap? Les auteures répondent par un prudent « oui, mais… ». Toutefois, la réception des textes qui évoquent des situations de handicap commence à changer. Cette étude est une illustration de ce changement en cours.

Ever since the publication of the third edition of Rudolph Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica (BHK3) to the present gradual production of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ) so-called editiones criticae minores of the Hebrew Bible are diplomatic editions. The Codex Leningradensis, dating from 1008/9 CE, is used as the base text, and the Biblia Hebraica text editors note significant variants in other Hebrew manuscripts and/or the ancient versions in eclectic fashion in a text-critical apparatus. The Hebrew University Bible Project (HUPB) also publishes (...) a diplomatic text based on the Codex Aleppo but with a more detailed text-critical apparatus. The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Editio n (HBCE) follows a different route, traditionally more familiar in the production of critical editions of the Septuagint and New Testament, namely to publish an eclectic edition. The text editors produce a theoretical, reconstructed text of what they regard as the ‘correct’ reading after careful consideration and weighing of variants in all available textual witnesses. I argue that critical editions of the Hebrew at the disposal of Hebrew Bible scholars, whether based on a diplomatic or eclectic text, have two inherent weaknesses, namely eclecticism and lack of context. Taken together, these shortcomings might be classified as subjectivism. I propose at least considering the alternative of a synoptic text-critical approach beyond the diplomatic-eclectic dichotomy. Contribution: This research critically reviews the current diplomatic/eclectic approaches in the production of scholarly Hebrew Bibles and proposes at least considering a third alternative, namely a synoptic approach. (shrink)

Augustine often pairs the words locutio and sensus in his efforts to interpret the books of the Heptateuch. Locutiones are un-Latin expressions in the Latin text of the Bible, which point to a Greek or Hebrew idiom behind the Latin. In each case, Augustine tries to decide whether or not a sensus, an intelligible meaning, can be found that explains the locutio. In some cases, he writes confidently that the idiom does not conceal a meaning. In other cases, he suspects (...) that it does; sometimes he can discover the meaning, sometimes not. This study demonstrales Augustine’s profound respect for the Old Latin text, as well as his effort to make sense of the text, without violating the rules of grammar or reason. Within these boundaries, he took delight in the biblical text and its mysteries. (shrink)

Focusing on the Astronomia Magna, the magnum opus of Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, the dissertation provides a detailed look into Paracelsus ' oft-neglected and misrepresented views on the make-up of humans and the universe, and highlights the religious values fundamental to the formation, expression, and reception of his science, Robert K. Merton and Reijer Hookyaas have helpfully pointed to salient religious factors in the development of modern science, but they overemphasize seventeenth-century English Calvinism. A century earlier, Paracelsus had (...) molded a unique, influential, and thoroughly biblical and ethical system of the world, and with many of the same goals as the Puritans. Paracelsus ---whose ideas were often referred to and even incorporated by the likes of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon, and Joan Baptista van Helmont---insisted that humans were created to research, discover, and utilize nature. ;Book I of the Astronomia Magna, highlighting the sidereal and elemental bodies of humans, is a systematic explication of natural magic, human nature, and cosmology. There are clear alchemical and Neoplatonic sources, but the discussion is rooted in Paracelsus ' Genesis exegesis. Book II---focusing on the soul and the immortal body, the latter acquired in baptism---contains a summary of Paracelsus ' soteriological and eschatological views, and reiterates Paracelsus ' eucharistic theology. Books I and II thus encapsulate Paracelsus ' universe of two analogous realms, mortal and divine---Book IV regards the demonic. ;Scholars point to the influence of Paracelsus ' theology in the seventeenth-century, but downplay its early reception. However, various sixteenth-century intellectuals eagerly produced Paracelsus ' works despite their divisive religious content, and some of his followers adopted his spiritualism, ethics, and heterodoxy. Toxites' preface to the first edition of the Astronomia Magna is largely a summary and endorsement of Paracelsus ' theology. ;Scholarly treatments of the Scientific Revolution, even within Paracelsus studies itself, fail to capture the unity of Paracelsus ' theological and medical-natural philosophical works and ideas, hence producing incomplete and flawed interpretations. Thus, it is essential to build on the insightful work of Kurt Goldammer, Hartmut Rudolph, Allen Debus, and Charles Webster, and to explore more deeply Paracelsus ' bible-based science. (shrink)

Christians hold that God uniquely speaks to us in the Bible. The saying, “The Bible is true”, may mean submitting to the Bible, placing ourselves under its theological and religious authority. The theories of biblical authority of Nicholas Wolterstorff and Mark Wallace are discussed. Trusting or submitting to the Bible is not a random choice, but based on the conviction that the Bible is objectively trustworthy; this conviction is crucial for the Christian community.

The Bible is full of stories. Many are read each week as part of the liturgy of the Service of the Lord’s Day. They are reflected on during personal and group Bible studies—even in Sunday school. They are stories that inspire, challenge, encourage and nurture our journey of Christian faith. However, there are also stories in the Bible we would prefer were not re-told. These particular stories confront, offend and profoundly challenge our understanding of God. We ask where God is (...) in this story. Why is it in the canon of Holy Scripture? What can we learn from the re-telling of this story in our context? Where is the Good News? These are the‘tough stuff stories of the Bible —their subject matter embarrassing to our thinking, faith and theology in the 21st century. What part of ‘No’ don’t you understand? is one of those stories. It is a story that must always be re-told. (shrink)

In the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas More criticized Martin Luther’s purported denial of a conscious intermediate state between bodily death and bodily resurrection. In the same century, William Tyndale penned a response in defense of Luther’s view. His argument essentially defended the proposition: If the Intermediate State obtains, then bodily resurrection is superfluous for those in the paradisiacal state. In this article, I enter the fray and argue for the truth of this conditional claim. And, like William Tyndale, I use (...) the content and argument of a particular chapter in the Bible, namely, 1 Corinthians 15, to make the point. (shrink)

Claudel's last work, J'aime la Bible is an appreciation of great feeling at its best and a kind of muddy carping with the Bible's detractors at its worst. The translation, by Wade Balkin, is idiomatic rather than poetic, and reads smoothly and easily.--R. F. T.

Scaliger brought critical standards and methodological innovations to the already extensive sixteenth-century interest in chronology. He invented the Julian Period, a device for the reckoning of dates, exposed historical forgeries, and showed the independent value of non-Biblical sources even acknowledging Egyptian dynastic chronology antedating the Biblical Creation, although he could not satisfactorily resolve this conflict. After Scaliger, the quality of chronological studies declined as questions were argued less on historical grounds than on theological ones, but the confusion this created eventually (...) contributed to breaking the hold of the Bible on chronology, along the lines anticipated by Scaliger. (shrink)

In the Gospels, Jesus points to children as pattern and paradigm of God's reign. Challenged by Jesus' counter-cultural affirmation of the child, Christian communities are called to vigorous and insistent advocacy for children in our own time.

Homosexuality and homophobia in South Africa exist side by side. Homophobia is very common in communities and churches. Biblical texts, traditional cultures and politics partner to dismiss, discredit or disqualify homosexuality, but historians and anthropologists have evidence that homosexuality has been around within African cultures for many ages. Christians are divided into two camps. There are those who openly oppose gay rights with citations from biblical texts, claiming that homosexuality is forbidden by God. Others claim that this is poor biblical (...) scholarship and a cultural bias read into the Bible. To these, the Bible says nothing about homosexuality as an innate dimension of personality; as a sexual orientation, it was not understood in biblical times. Despite a progressive constitution and affirming legislation, sexual and gender minorities experience discrimination in South Africa. The church expresses homophobic tendencies by excluding homosexual people from the sacraments, liturgy and ordination. Theology is invited to embark on a journey of dialogue with communities and homosexual people in order for it to be meaningful and relevant and contribute towards social, political and economic empowerment. Through dialogue with the homophobic community, theology can journey out of the continuous hermeneutic circle spanning biblical text, dogmatic traditions and the present, ever-changing historical context. This journey is taken, applying the ethics of faith, hope and love.Contribution: The article invites further research on theological grounds for exclusion of same-sex orientation people from ecclesial rights such as ordinances, liturgy, confessions and ordination. (shrink)

Creationists have acquired a more sophisticated intellectual arsenal. This book reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. Creationism is no longer the simple notion it once was taken to be. Its new advocates have become more sophisticated in how they present their views, speaking of "intelligent design" rather than "creation science" and aiming their arguments against the naturalistic philosophical method that underlies science, proposing to replace it with a "theistic science." The creationism controversy is not just about the status of Darwinian (...) evolution—it is a clash of religious and philosophical worldviews, for a common underlying fear among Creationists is that evolution undermines both the basis of morality as they understand it and the possibility of purpose in life. In Tower of Babel, philosopher Robert T. Pennock compares the views of the new creationists with those of the old and reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. One of Pennock's major innovations is to turn from biological evolution to the less charged subject of linguistic evolution, which has strong theoretical parallels with biological evolution, both in content and in the sort of evidence scientists use to draw conclusions about origins. Of course, an evolutionary view of language does conflict with the Bible, which says that God created the variety of languages at one time as punishment for the Tower of Babel. Several chapters deal with the work of Phillip Johnson, a highly influential leader of the new Creationists. Against his and other views, Pennock explains how science uses naturalism and discusses the relationship between factual and moral issues in the creationism-evolution controversy. The book also includes a discussion of Darwin's own shift from creationist to evolutionist and an extended argument for keeping private religious beliefs separate from public scientific knowledge. (shrink)

In the article, I demonstrate how realistic philosophy of religion can be employed in order to obtain a preliminary verification of the truthfulness of the doctrine proclaimed by a particular religious community. The first element of a religious doctrine that qualifies for philosophical evaluation is its non-contradictory character. For this reason I endeavour to reconstruct one such doctrine and show how it is possible to demonstrate, through philosophical analyses, that such a doctrine does not meet the aforementioned criterion. For the (...) object of my studies I chose the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (called the Mormon Church for short), as I find it particularly interesting among the religious movements alternative to Christianity. Among new religious movements currently in existence the Mormon Church stands out in several respects. First, this religious community utilises a variety of sources of revelation. Furthermore, although their sacred story, that spanning a dozen or so centuries, begins in Israel it mostly takes place on American soil. Finally, the Mormon Church sets forth a vision of a future ‘holy land,’ and the concept of salvation that is essentially different from those of other Bible-based religious movements. The Mormon concept of salvation, referred to as the plan of eternal progress shows both unique goal and unique means to achieve it. People are to become gods and populate multiple worlds. According to Mormons there will be different levels of salvation associated with what life a person lived on earth. Reconstruction and philosophical analysis of the main elements of the Mormon doctrine shows its weak points, inconsistencies, and oversimplifications. From this perspective, the Mormon ‘sacred story’ hardly could be regarded as something more than a colourful and interesting myth. But the question of reasons why Mormons still put their faith in such an inconsistent doctrine lies outside the scope of these considerations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus (1540–1602)Dane T. DanielJole Shackelford. A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus (1540–1602). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. Pp. 519. Cloth, $83.00.The Paracelsian and Danish royal physician Petrus Severinus complained, "If we can make more potent [drugs], extracted from metals and minerals,... I ask, what age (...) except this one will oppose our efforts?" (115). Indeed, early modern attempts to prepare and prescribe drugs forged in the alchemical laboratory often faced vehement opposition by the university-trained physicians who were weaned on the humoral theory and herbal materia medica of Galen. The orthodox Galenists disdained not only the "chemical poisons" of the Paracelsians, but also their theoretical speculations. After all, the Paracelsians dismissed the belief that disease was the result of humoral imbalances, and promoted both the analogy of microcosm (the human) and macrocosm (the natural world, including the stars), and the idea that diseases were essences or actual beings.Severinus was prescient in his prediction that chemical medicine would become popular, but—as Jole Shackelford notes in the introduction to his A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine—the concepts of Paracelsus and his followers continue to remain peripheral to the grand narratives of early modern intellectual history. This remains the case despite the illuminating studies of such scholars as the late-Enlightenment medical historian Kurt Polycarp Sprengel, Walter Pagel, and Allen Debus. Thus, Shackelford sheds much needed light on this significant strand of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science and medicine. Via text-oriented study, particularly of Severinus's Idea medicinæ philosophicæ (Ideal of Philosophical Medicine), Shackelford provides a long-awaited and meticulous biographical account of Severinus and explains with refreshing clarity the sources and speculative theory behind his brand of chemical medicine. Like such recent scholars as Michael Walton and Charles Gunnoe, Shackelford presents Paracelsianism as an ideology, duly noting that the ideas of Severinus, reflecting the reception of Paracelsus in general, were frequently accepted or rejected on religious grounds.To begin, Shackelford establishes Severinus's importance, noting that the medical author and Wittenberg professor Daniel Sennert wrote in 1619 that most iatrochemists followed in the steps of Severinus, who had molded Paracelsus's ideas into a coherent philosophy. Shackelford then traces the story of how Severinus—after studying at such universities as Padua and Paris—joined his friend Pratensis (a recognized Paracelsian) and Tycho [End Page 488] Brahe in bringing an increasingly eclectic Denmark up to continental cultural and intellectual standards. Unfortunately, Severinus's appointment as physician to the king distracted him from completing most of his research projects, but he had already left for posterity his Idea medicinæ, published in 1571.As Shackelford writes, the Idea medicinæ promoted Severinus's belief that Paracelsian medicine was not only an alternative to humoral medicine, but also promised to cope better with "new" fevers. Also, Severinus invested Paracelsianism with authority by emphasizing its ancient forebears and by arguing that Paracelsus was the latest in the line of prisca theologia—one of the few to "ascend to the inner chambers of the Mosaic mysteries" (57). In his amalgamation of Neoplatonism, the Hippocratic tradition, and Paracelsus, Severinus's featured doctrine was efficient causation, or "semina theory." Unlike Robert Boyle's inertial, material corpuscles and their active principles, Severinus's semina were "intrinsically formal and immaterial, and were logically and ontologically prior to matter" (17). The characteristics of these "loci," which accounted for all change in the subvisible world, could be observed through chemical analysis, and they were uniquely attractive to Christians, who were drawn to Severinus's Paracelsian interpretation of Genesis and his idea that when the predestinations contained in the semina are completed, the world will reach its end.Shackelford engages the reader with such fascinating topics as why Tycho—who was not just an astronomer, but also a student of alchemy—departed Denmark, and how Paracelsians were involved in the effort to improve the Danish Bible by "cleansing" it of non-Lutheran elements. Very welcome too is Shackelford's discussion of the neglected topic of Paracelsian therapeutics, especially his evaluation of... (shrink)

Preface 9 PART I: RELIGIOUS, SCIENTIFIC, AND PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND Introduction to Part I 19 1. The Bible 27 2. Natural Theology 33 William Paley 3. On the Origin of Species 38 Charles Darwin 4. Objections to Mr. Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species 65 Adam Sedgwick 5. The Origin of Species 73 Thomas H. Huxley 6. What Is Darwinism? 82 Charles Hodge 7. Darwinism as a Metaphysical Research Program 105 Karl Popper 8. Karl Popper’s Philosophy of Biology 116 Michael (...) Ruse 9. Human Nature: One Evolutionist’s View 136 Francisco Ayala 10. Universal Darwinism 158 Richard Dawkins PART II: CREATION SCIENCE AND THE McLEAN CASE Introduction to Part II 187 11. The Creationists 192 Ronald L. Numbers 12. Creation, Evolution, and the Historical Evidence 231 Duane T. Gish 13. Witness Testimony Sheet: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 253 Michael Ruse 14. United States District Court Opinion: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 279 Judge William R. Overton 15. The Demise of the Demarcation Problem 312 Larry Laudan 16. Science at the BarùCauses for Concern 331 Larry Laudan 17. Pro Judice 337 Michael Ruse 18. More on Creationism 345 Larry Laudan 19. Commentary: Philosophers at the BarùSome Reasons for Restraint 350 Barry R. Gross PART III: INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM AND THE KITZMILLER CASE Introduction to Part III 369 20. But Isn’t It Creationism? The Beginnings of "Intelligent Design" in the Midst of the Arkansas and Louisiana Litigation 377 Nick Matzke 21. What Is Darwinism? 414 Phillip E. Johnson 22. Is It Science Yet? Intelligent Design, Creationism, and the Constitution 426 Matthew Brauer, Barbara Forrest, and Steven G. Gey 23. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Expert Witness Testimony 434 Michael Behe 24. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Expert Report 456 Robert T. Pennock 25. A Step toward the Legalization of Science Studies 485 Steve Fuller 26. What Is Wrong with Intelligent Design? 495 Elliott Sober 27. United States District Court Memorandum Opinion: Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. 506 Judge John E. Jones II 28. Can’t Philosophers Tell the Difference between Science and Religion? Demarcation Revisited 536 Robert T. Pennock. (shrink)

Cette note présente des ouvrages parus récemment en français et constituant des instruments de travail permettant d’aborder la lecture de la Bible, essentiellement le Premier Testament. Ils ne sont pas destinés d’abord aux exégètes mais à un public plus large. Il s’agit de traductions de parties ou de livres de l’A.T., d’introductions à la Bible, en particulier l’A.T. ou certains de ses corpus, d’une histoire d’Israël et d’une étude sur l’évolution de sa religion, et enfin de réflexions sur la lecture (...) et l’interprétation de la Bible. (shrink)

The meaning of any given lexical item emerges from an analysis of its contextual usage, but with biblical languages, often a traditional gloss will be accepted as if it were the clear meaning of a lexical item. Lexicons and dictionaries rarely go all the way back to a fresh analysis of the actual usage of a lemma, so the traditional meaning is rarely reconsidered. Those learning biblical languages accept the lexicon’s judgement without stopping to reflect on how the lexicon reached (...) its conclusion. The acceptance of a traditional gloss as the meaning then gets assumed as more and more texts are read, reinforcing the assumption that the meaning is the gloss learned early on as the equivalent for that lexical item. This study focuses on the biblical Hebrew root בשׁל and the Greek verb ἕψω, both traditionally understood to denote the activity of preparing food by boiling in liquid. These lexemes appear in the Old Testament in some exegetically challenging texts, so clarifying the range of meaning may help to illuminate the interpretation of difficult passages. The full context of the usage of these lexical items in the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint is examined using cognitive semantics with the goal of identifying the semantic and pragmatic clues that point to the conceptual meaning evoked by these lexical items in biblical Hebrew and Greek.Contribution: The re-analysis of the data serves to re-evaluate traditional assumptions about the meanings of these words. Clarifying the meaning may illuminate some exegetical difficulties. (shrink)

The Assemblies of God (AOG) celebrates its centenary in 2017. The paper aims to show the historical development of theological education and ministerial training and formation in this denomination. It starts by showing how internationally AOG embraced the Bible Institute movement as a way of evangelism, church planting and growth from the early decades of the 20th century after the birth of the Pentecostal Movement. Then there is a South African scenario, lamenting the de-emphasis of the importance of theological education, (...) though there was emphasis on evangelism and missional endeavours on the grassroots. The research unfolds the development of institutions from 1949 to the present. All in all, 10 institutions are identified and briefly explained, some of them with their demise. The article concludes by historical reflections on what was taught and identifies the gaps by suggesting that the Pentecostal curriculum should be relevant to the context of Africa by embracing inclusivity: Hidden Curriculum, Gender Studies, Inculturation and Liberation ideals and renaissance of pneumatology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 263 articles, and supplementing his anthology of Wright (Liberal Arts Press). The biographical chapter presents Wright as an attractive character among devoted friends and also as a solitary, original scientist. Wright's primary achievement was to apply utilitarian principles to Darwinian natural selection theory. Since Darwin himself made no such attempt, nor did John Stuart Mill, and since Darwin showed an evident interest in Wright's attempt, this represents (...) a major contribution to evolutionary theory. On the negative side, too, Wright was incisive in his criticisms of Spencer, Mivart, Hamilton, Mansel, and Lewes. The pragmatic strains in Wright's philosophical method were incidental to his primary interest in showing that sciences are metaphysically "neutral." But his influence on Peirce and James was direct and strong, both on their cosmological and methodological doctrines. He deserves to be mentioned as the prime mover in this trinity of early pragmatism and naturalism, but since his own writings were relatively few and scattered, his historical importance rests largely on the use which Peirce and James made of his ideas and the development which they gave to his philosophy. HER~VRTW. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California Propos sur Jules Lequier: Philosophe de la libert~--R~flexions sur sa vie et sur sa pens~e. Par s Callot. (Paris: l~ditions Marcel Rivi~re et Cie, 1962. Pp. 142 [1]. Biblioth6que Philosophique.) L'oeuvre de Jules Lequier est importante. Nos philosophes am~ricains Charles Hartshorne et William L. Reese en ont fait un grand ~loge dans leur Philosophers Speak of God (pp. ix, 17, 109, 118, 227-230). Dans ce nouveau livre I~mile Callot nous donne des rfiflexions, des considerations, vraiment des Propos sur Jules Lequier en occasion du centenaire de la mort de Lequier (1862). La vie de Lequier est incontestablement dramatique. N~ en 1814 en Br6tagne off il passa son enfance, Lequier subit l'influence de son pays natal, de sa m~re dont il ~tait le ills unique, et d'une 6ducation profond~ment catholique. I1 entra ~t l'l~cole Polytechnique et il en sortit peu apr~s. Mais il y connut Renouvier et c'est grace ~ Renouvier que la pens~e de Lequier nous est connue. Renouvier intercala dans ses livres des fragments de Lequier et en publia des bonnes pages sous ce titre La recherche d'une premiOre v~rit& A l'~ge de 37 ans Lequier eut un acc6s de dfimence. Puis il eut un amour exaltfi pour une jeune fille qui le refusa en mariage. Lequier mourut, noy~, ~t l'~ge de 48 ans. De sa fin il nous est impossible de savoir si elle a 6t~ un suicide ou un accident, mais Lequier garda toujours con- 264 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY science de son g6nie: "Je crois avoir trouv6 un myst~re merveilleux de simplicitY, de profondeur et de t~n6bres: quelque chose h quoi nul ne pense." Lequier est un philosophe de la libert& Tout philosophe part de l'id& de v~rit~, cela est n&essaire, mais la prudence exige qu'on la mette sans cesse en cause. Comme Vinet (1797-1847) a dit, "La v6rit~, sans la recherche de la verit6, n'est que la moiti~ de la v~rit& On ne salt bien que ce qu'on n'a pas su toujours; on ne croit bien qu'apr& avoir dour6; on n'est vainqueur qu'apr6s avoir &6 vaincu. Et c'est pourquoi, en cette mati~re, notre premier effort doit avoir pour objet de mettre l'homme en demeure de choisir." Lequier avait eu tr& fort le sentiment du d&erminisme universel. Mais, au moment oth la croyance ~ la n&essit6 semblait devoir triompher dans son esprit, il la rejetta brusquement "par une r&olte de l'&re entier." Selon Lequier, la premiere et fondamentale d6marche de l'esprit est une affirmation de la libert~ par la libert6 m~me. La libert~ ne cr& pas la v6rit6, mais la croyance en la libert6 est une premi6re v6rit6. Sans cette croyance, on ne peut rien chercher et rien d&ouvrir. Mais l'homme, auteur de ses actes par la libertY, ne l'est pas de sa libert& Le Dieu de la Bible est un &re infini qui rien ne peut &happer. Ainsi le probl6me entier de la pr6destination se pose ici de nouveau. Et Lequier d&ouvre une solution originale: Si Dieu... (shrink)

The Septuagint (LXX) generally approached the antiphrastic, euphemistic use of ברך [bless] with a literal translation of ברך with εὐλογέω. This choice produced a Hebraism, as the Greek verb is not generally used antiphrastically. The translators may have expected the Greek audience to track with the figurative usage. Job contains four of the six uses of this euphemism, and LXX Job is evenly split between the use of εὐλογέω and the use of more creative renderings. These creative renderings in Job (...) 1:5 and 2:9 reflect the exegesis of the translator.Contribution: The contribution of this research article is its focus on the phenomenon of euphemism in Biblical Hebrew and the implications of non-literal renderings in the Septuagint for a theologically-significant Hebrew euphemism. The article fits within the scope of the journal as a contribution to this special collection on the Septuagint. (shrink)

In pre-democratic – also pre-modern – times, religion had been at the centre of much of human life, filling the private as well as the public realm of people’s daily existence. However, with the change to democratic rule in major countries in the modern world (see, most influentially, Article 1 of the French Constitution after the French Revolution and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, influencing all other democracies in their wake), religion has for the most (...) part reflexively been sidelined from public life. Or has it? Does religion not still hold a special place in law in democratic societies, but now in reverse? Firstly, whereas matters of religious faith had throughout the greater part of human history been included in matters of politics, it is now as a matter of course of law excluded, purposely so. Religion is thus still a ‘special case’, a unique aspect of humanity when compared to all other matters, in law as much as in politics and other aspects of public life. Secondly, in the post-secular cultural climate dawning across the world, matters of faith (religion, spirituality) are no longer as stringently excluded from public life, which impacts directly on how religion is touched upon in law, sociology, philosophy, music and other academic disciplines too. Our dawning post-secular age is bringing something new. Two scholars, who have been doing foundational work in this regard, have done so fully in parallel, not taking cognisance of the mutualities in their academic contributions. Otto in Munich, Germany, has been combining his two areas of expertise, the Pentateuch in the Hebrew Bible and the sociologist Max Weber, to indicate the trajectory through history of democratic impulses from Ancient Near Eastern founding documents into the current era. Benson in Sydney, Australia, has on his part been drawing on his expertise in law as practised in Canada and taught in Europe, South Africa and Australia to indicate how, in inclusively liberal democracies, law cannot justifiably be used to exclude religion from the public domain, as has been the usual modern case. Drawing together these parallel contributions, Lombaard places these initiatives within the emerging post-secular climate, which augurs a different way of being religious or non-religious, publicly as much as privately, in democratic societies in our time. (shrink)

By using principles from a variety of scientific disciplines, Yale Professor Samuel Wilkinson provides a framework for human evolution that reveals an overarching purpose to our existence. Generations have been taught that evolution implies there is no overarching purpose to our existence, that life has no fundamental meaning. We are merely the accumulation of tens of thousands of intricate molecular accidents. Some scientists take this logic one step further, suggesting that evolution is intrinsically atheistic and goes against the concept of (...) God. But is this true? With respect to our evolution, nature seems to have endowed us with competing dispositions, what Wilkinson calls the dual potential of human nature. We are pulled in different directions: selfishness and altruism, aggression and cooperation, lust and love. When we couple this with the observation that we possess a measure of free will, all this strongly implies there is a universal purpose to our existence. This purpose, at least one of them, is to choose between the good and evil impulses that nature has created within us. Our life is a test. This is a truth, as old as history it seems, that has been espoused by so many of the world's religions. From a certain framework, these aspects of human nature--including how evolution shaped us--are evidence for the existence of a God, not against it. Closely related to this is meaning. What is the meaning of life? Based on the scientific data, it would seem that one such meaning is to develop deep and abiding relationships. At least that is what most people report are the most meaningful aspects of their lives. This is a function of our evolution. It is how we were created"--Dust jacket flap. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis’s argument from desire is best understood as an argument to the best explanation. It has two weaknesses. First, it is not clear that everyone in fact has the experience it references. Second, even if it successfully points to the existence of some Desired Object not experienced in the finite temporal world, it cannot of itself show that this object is a god, much less the God of the Bible. Nevertheless, the argument does have value in confirming, for (...) people who recognize themselves as having had the experience of sehnsucht, the more explicit conclusions reached by other arguments. (shrink)

The church in Africa, like its counterparts elsewhere in the world, is called to fulfil the mission of God as expressed in the call ‘Missio Dei’ and influentially remains with the integrity of the mission of Christ, which is liberative and practical. For Christ was not only concerned with the spiritual needs of the people, but also with their material well-being. The following question therefore arises: how can the church in Africa, in general, and in Zimbabwe, in particular, actively do (...) God’s mission and remain with integrity in the midst of the reality of suffering. Furthermore, how can the church for mission and reconstruction be understood in a post-colonial Zimbabwe given the contextual realities of political crises, corruption, poverty, moral decadence, defined or censored truth, leadership crises and no freedom of expression? This article argues that, although the church is faced with these arduous realities, it remains called by God to do God’s mission. While in post-colonial Zimbabwe the socio-political, socio-economic and socio-religious situation might seem hopeless, the church has remained vibrant and alive for reconstruction theology. The transformation of society is possible given the authority and mission mandate of the church. This article argues that the church is a key player in reconstruction theology and in the transformation of society. For transformation to be possible, the church should witness to the gospel of Christ without fear of being labelled, castrated and persecuted. The article asserts that the spirit of the Bible should be revived in a time of reconstruction in Zimbabwe. The assumption in this article is that Zimbabwe is ready for reconstruction discourse. For this to happen, the researchers argue that the church as a critical relevant player in reconstruction needs to ‘be church’ in its missional mandates. Integrity is essential if a church wants to be relevantly missional and reconstructive. Integrity means that the church has to embrace the risks and opportunities associated with mission. (shrink)

It is a mistake to oppose law and grace, for God's grace makes way for a radically transformed social and moral order. The law of Christ enables a new way of life that is obedient to God.

"This is the book that I have been waiting for for twenty years. With exceptional clarity, Draine introduces the underlying physics and brings the basic pieces together to describe the multiphase structure of the interstellar and intergalactic medium. Combined with many useful tables and figures, this book will rapidly become a hit with students and researchers alike. It continues the fine tradition of Princeton professors writing seminal books on this topic."--Ewine van Dishoeck, Leiden University "A true tour de force, providing (...) a definitive account of the physics of interstellar matter. Written with authority and insight by a master of the subject, Bruce Draine's book will be a treasured guide for new graduate students as well as a comprehensive and rigorous reference for galactic and extragalactic researchers."--Eve Ostriker, University of Maryland "Draine has written an interstellar-medium textbook worthy of Lyman Spitzer, updated thirty years later. His coverage of atomic, molecular, radiative, thermal, and dynamical processes is excellent. Most valuable to students and professionals are the combinations of physical processes with multiwavelength observations appropriate for the modern astronomer."--J. Michael Shull, University of Colorado at Boulder "This book is a comprehensive account of the physical processes that take place in the interstellar medium and that determine its behavior. It is likely to become the bible on the subject."--Alexander Dalgarno, Harvard University "This is an outstanding text on an important topic in astrophysics. Draine carefully goes into the physical processes, providing a unifying discussion that is often missing in other treatments."--Christopher F. McKee, University of California, Berkeley. (shrink)

Bishop John A.T. Robinson's Honest to God was exceptionally successful. In the decade following its publication more than a million copies were sold in seventeen different languages. Robinson was aware that numerous awkward questions were being asked about traditional Christian beliefs, which it was no longer possible to ignore. His purpose was not so much to question traditional ideas of God as to suggest alternatives for those who found them unsatisfactory . He wanted to convince such persons that an inability (...) to believe what is stated in the Bible or the prayer book does not disqualify them from calling themselves Christians and presenting themselves at church. He speaks of traditional Christian beliefs, as stated in the New Testament, as a ‘language’ and thinks that Christianity should be conveyed to people in a variety of languages. By employing, as he does, the language of such Christian scholars as Bonhoeffer, Tillich and Bultmann, an atheist may find himself able to call himself a Christian. But the old familiar language of the Bible remains more pleasing to most of God's children, particularly to his ‘older children’ , so we must not give it up, although he allows that it is becoming increasingly unpopular, so that without ‘the kind of revolution’ he is advocating, ‘Christian faith and practice … will come to be abandoned’. (shrink)

While the Psalter imparts instruction to the faithful on the ways of God, it also teaches them to pray. Simply put, prayer is the effort to ask something of God and to anticipate a divine response in word, deed, or presence.

Jehovah's Witnesses are students of the Bible. They refuse transfusions out of obedience to the scriptural directive to abstain and keep from blood. Dr Muramoto disagrees with the Witnesses' religious beliefs in this regard. Despite this basic disagreement over the meaning of Biblical texts, Muramoto flouts the religious basis for the Witnesses' position. His proposed policy change about accepting transfusions in private not only conflicts with the Witnesses' fundamental beliefs but it promotes hypocrisy. In addition, Muramoto's arguments about pressure to (...) conform and coerced disclosure of private information misrepresent the beliefs and practices of Jehovah's Witnesses and ignore the element of individual conscience. In short, Muramoto resorts to distortion and uncorroborated assertions in his effort to portray a matter of religious faith as a matter of medical ethical debate. (shrink)

This article considers the concepts of revelation and inspiration. The two notions are distinct but closely connected in Christian theology; they come together preeminently in discussions of the Bible. The purpose of revelation is to bring it about that humans come into a personal relationship with God, one that involves freely chosen love as well as worship and obedience. Inspiration is that influence of the Holy Spirit on the writing of the Bible which ensures that the words of its various (...) texts are appropriate both for the role which they play in Scripture and for the overall salvific purpose of Scripture itself. In other words, working in conjunction with the human author, God ensures that the words written are revelatory and fit God's purposes. Because of inspiration, God speaks to us in the Bible. Scripture is not just a record of revelation; it in itself is revelatory. (shrink)

Although there are several monistic and dualistic approaches to the mind-body problem on the basis of classical or quantum mechanics, thus far no consensus exists about a solution. Recently, the Elementary Process Theory (EPT) has been developed: this corresponds with a fundamentally new disciplinary matrix for the study of physical reality. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the mind-body problem within this newly developed disciplinary matrix. The main finding is that the idea of a duality of body (...) and mind has to be rejected as an incomplete representation of reality: in the universe of the EPT, man hás to be a trinity of body, spirit and soul, where ‘body’, ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ are names for distinct physical things. The mind is then a mere idea that arises from (self-)experience, but without onto-logical connotation. In addition a mechanism for mental causation, which implies a principle of choice, is rigorously formulated. The main conclusion is that a fundamentally new physicalist approach to the mind-body problem, according to which man has a free will, has been formulated strictly within the language of the EPT. Further physical research is then required to describe how the interaction between body, spirit and soul is to be understood in terms of fundamental interactions. In addition, further philosophical-theological research has to establish whether the presently discussed trinity and the trinities of body, spirit and soul mentioned in the Bible and the Vedic texts are one and the same thing. -/- Edit: a revised version of this preprint has been published as a book chapter. (shrink)

Earth is changing in ways it hasn't for hundreds of thousands of years. At the same time, Christianity is breaking away from its millennium-long geographical and cultural center in the Euro-West. Its growth is in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, primarily in Pentecostal, evangelical, and independent churches. These dramatically changed planetary and ecclesial landscapes have led many to conclude that we need a new way of thinking about our collective existence: who are we and what is the nature of our (...) responsibility in this deeply altered world? To address that question, biblical scholars Bruce C. Birch and Jacqueline E. Lapsley and Christian ethicists Larry L. Rasmussen and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda carry on "a new conversation" that engages how Christians are to understand the authority and use of Scripture, the basic elements of any full-bodied Christian ethic attuned to our circumstances, and the nature of our responsibility to our planetary neighbors and creation itself. (shrink)