Jonathan Edwards is known as one of the most respected thinkers in American history and presided over the Great Awakening, one of the formative colonial events. What many don't realize is Edwards lived during a time of widespread conflict, which eventually touched the people of Northampton personally. Through these collected sermons, many of which are unpublished, Edwards sought to instruct, train, and comfort his congregation during a precarious season in provincial life. These sermons demonstrate the scope of Edwards's greatness: (...) a global thinker intimately connected to the British Empire as well as shepherd of the Northampton flock. The first part of this collection presents the sermons Edwards preached while the theater of war centered on the continent and the Caribbean. During this phase, Edwards's sermons leveraged martial language to promote the burgeoning revivals. In 1744, war was transplanted to the colonies in which the Northampton congregation personally participated. After a short hiatus of international conflict, warfare spread throughout the colonies. While he served a frontier mission, Edwards prepared his Indian congregation for yet another season of war. These sermons present Edwards as theologian, historian, philosopher, but most importantly, as pastor. (shrink)

I argue that we can understand John Henry Newman as defending the Principle of Faith throughout the University Sermons. According to the Principle of Faith, belief in the Christian message is in itself a good act of the mind, and it has moral significance. I argue that Newman’s developed account of faith and its relation to reason in Sermons 10 through 12 are designed to defend the Principle of Faith. Finally, I argue that we can understand Newman’s defense of the (...) Principle of Faith as a reaction against criticisms dating back to the English Deists. (shrink)

I argue that we can understand John Henry Newman as defending the Principle of Faith throughout the University Sermons. According to the Principle of Faith, belief in the Christian message is in itself a good act of the mind, and it has moral significance. I argue that Newman’s developed account of faith and its relation to reason in Sermons 10 through 12 are designed to defend the Principle of Faith. Finally, I argue that we can understand Newman’s defense of the (...) Principle of Faith as a reaction against criticisms dating back to the English Deists. (shrink)

Robert Grosseteste delivered his inaugural sermon, Dictum 19, in 1229/1230. Like many inaugural sermons, Dictum 19 praises Scripture, its divine author, and the study of the sacred text. Grosseteste’s sermon, however, is unique in that its author had an extensive background in the natural sciences. I propose that his understanding of the nature of light influences his understanding of Scripture in Dictum 19. Specifically, Scripture, like light, gives form to others, creating a hierarchy of bodies which mediate this form. Grosseteste’s (...) thought influenced Saint Bonaventure, who delivered his inaugural sermon Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia at his 1254 inception. Like Grosseteste, Bonaventure’s understanding of the nature of Scripture is based in part on his light metaphysics. I conclude that, for both Grosseteste and Bonaventure, their use of light as an analogy for Scripture is rooted not only in traditional theological metaphors but also in their metaphysics of light. (shrink)

This essay further substantiates the author’s earlier thesis that St. Bonaventure’s De reductione was the second half (or resumptio) of his inaugural lecture atParis. After reviewing the central aspect of that thesis, the essay further shows how an unedited inaugural sermon, Fons sapientiae Verbum Dei in excelsis (found in Vatican Burghesiani 157) received the De reductione in its earliest form, particularly in its use of specific authorities and its division of the lights of knowledge. The discovery of this sermon further (...) confirms in its reception of the De reductione that the work was originally an inaugural lecture. The essay then further explores the purpose and uniqueness of the De reductione as an inaugural lecture by comparing it to Fons sapientiae. (shrink)

Orations of the Fatimid Caliphs: Festival Sermons of the Ismaili Imams. Ed. and tr. Paul E. Walker. Ismaili Texts and Translations Series, vol. 10. London: I. B. Tauris, with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2009. Pp. xvii + 162 + 58. £29.50, $51.29.

Your God is too small—way too small! What if God is not a human-like personal being but the God Beyond God of the Christian mystical traditions? What if God is the ultimate reality beyond all beings, including beyond all divine beings, indeed beyond all Being? It’s a mind-bending idea. Speaking of God as a human-like personal being is much easier but people who care about the deepest mystical understandings of God within our traditions need to make the effort to speak (...) about the God Beyond God, despite the difficulties. This book makes the attempt to speak of the God Beyond God in the language of the sermon, using metaphor and potent imagery tuned to the existential intensities of human life. The God Beyond God is closer to us than our jugular veins, vividly present in every moment of our lives. These sermons are practical and moving, and they also resonate with the most rigorous theological understandings of ultimate reality. Their deconstruction of our convenient fantasies about a divine being make these sermons emotionally intense and perhaps not suitable for beginners in the journey of faith. But veteran believers can breathe deeply in the air of these meditations, relaxing into the bliss of engaging ultimate reality without delusions, without deflections, and without controlling the object of our worship. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, no religious institution in America has done more to explore the link between the environment and spirituality than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Now, for the first time, a selection of the finest of the Cathedral's ecological sermons appears in a single volume.

In his lifetime, Ralph Waldo Emerson became the most widely known man of letters in America, establishing himself as a prolific poet, essayist, popular lecturer, and an advocate of social reforms who was nevertheless suspicious of reform and reformers. Emerson achieved some reputation with his verse, corresponded with many of the leading intellectual and artistic figures of his day, and during an off and on again career as a Unitarian minister, delivered and later published a number of controversial sermons. Emerson’s (...) enduring reputation, however, is as a philosopher, an aphoristic writer (like Friedrich Nietzsche) and a quintessentially American thinker whose championing of the American Transcendental movement and influence on Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, William James, and others would alone secure him a prominent place in American cultural history. (shrink)

Managerialism impacted North American churches long before South and Central American churches, due to both the greater affinity for managerialism in Protestant ecclesial structures, and to the earlier development of advanced capitalism in North America. The most recent managerialist developments in Catholic churches of both continents have manifested themselves in the curial and Episcopal treatment of the clerical pedophilia scandals, while the developments in Pentecostal churches, especially in Latin America, have emanated from lower structural levels. Most of these (...) emanate from pastors in churches on a growth trajectory that utilizes mass media, especially televised services and sermons. (shrink)

h cme of his sermons cm humzm righrs, President Carter explained char we owe Vietnam no debt and have no responsibility co render in any assistance because "chc descrucrion was mu:ual."g Ifwcntds have meaning, this must stand among [hc most astonishing scmzcmcms in diplomatic hismry. What is most interesting about chis scaccmcm is thc reaction to it among cducacccl Americans: null. Furthermore, thc cccasional rcfcrcncc cc it, and what it means, evokes FLO comment amd FLO inccrst. Ir; is considcrcd ncithcr (...) appalling, nor even noteworthy, and is felt to have 1*10 bearing 0n C21r[cr’s standing as patron saint OF human rights, any more than do his actions: dedicated support for Indonesian atrocities in Timor and thc successful terrorist campaign undertaken in El Salvador cc destroy thc popular organizations that were dcfcndcd by chc assassinated Archbishop; A hugc incrczuc in arms flow :0 Israel in parallel wich ics l9’?8 invasion of Lebanon, its subsequent largcscale bombing ofciviiians, and irs rapid expansion imo thc occupied ccrriccries; acc. All cafthis is a cribute no che successes cfa system of indoctrination than has few if any peers. (shrink)

Derrida insists that any effort to think theological–political power “in its possibility” must begin with the death penalty. In this paper, I revisit the death of Moses Paul, “an Indian,” executed in New Haven in 1772 for the murder of Moses Cook, a white man. The Mohegan minister Samson Occom delivered Paul’s execution sermon and accompanied him to the gallows. Revised, Occom’s sermon was one of the first works published by a Native American author in English. Occom suggests there (...) can be a theological–political power that signals itself not by decreeing the death penalty, but by opposing it. Hence sovereignty can be thought, with and against Derrida, as the theologico-political power to restore life. By opposing death to grace, moreover, Occom achieves a division of sovereignties, creating an opening for Indigenous nations within the scaffolding of the settler state. Working in collaboration, then, Occom and Paul produce a political theology. (shrink)

A collection of Chogyam Trungpa's early teachings in North America--on buddha nature, emptiness, the feminine principle, and the three bodies of enlightenment. At the beginning of a North American teaching career that would span seventeen years, the meditation master Chogyam Trungpa conducted five pivotal seminars covering various dharmic topics. The transcripts from these seminars are collected here so that readers can experience them right at home. Comprising twenty-six talks in total, each one followed by a Q&A, Glimpses of the (...) Profound is sure to provoke glimpses of all kinds: glimpses that inspire you to look further, glimpses that give you confidence, glimpses that upset the apple cart, glimpses that open your heart, glimpses that undermine falsity, glimpses that awaken you to your boundless potential. This book was originally published as four separate volumes by Vajradhatu Publications. Judith L. Lief has written a new introduction. (shrink)

In many ways, the African world view and African theology are closer to nature than Euro-American theology is. This can be seen, for example, in its emphasis on holism and interconnectedness, and its inclination to consider all natural objects to be inhabited by the spirit world. This article argues that this closeness to nature should not be confused with a Romantic reverence for nature. Since the 19th century, Romanticism has been very influential in the Euro-American idea of nature. (...) Nature came to be seen as something that is both good and valuable in itself. The conception of nature that is dominant in African ways of thinking is very different: nature is seen as potentially threatening and, at best, ambivalent; and respect for nature and living in balance with nature is judged by the extent to which they help humans to live successfully. In this article, a theological and philosophical clarification of these two contrasting conceptions of nature is combined with qualitative anthropological analysis of the way Zambian pastors speak about nature in their sermons. These two approaches together bring out the often-misinterpreted non-Romantic idea of nature in African theology. Contribution: This article clarifies the important idea of nature within the context of African theology. It brings out how the meaning of holism and sacredness in African settings differs from the meaning of these ideas in Western eco-theological contexts. Hereby, it untangles important confusions in the field of eco-theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 265-267 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Community, Violence, and Peace: Aldo Leopold, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gautama the Buddha in the Twenty-First Century Community, Violence, and Peace: Aldo Leopold, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gautama the Buddha in the Twenty-First Century. By A. L. Herman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. xi + 245 pp. (...) At first glance, this title might seem a bit over the edge: how could an author intelligently juxtapose such diverse thinkers as an ecological scientist, two advocates of human rights, and an ancient religious founder? For the most part, the author succeeds in demonstrating that the twenty-first century requires a definition of community that includes environmental, social, and spiritual concerns. In a format particularly [End Page 265] helpful for undergraduate teaching, he carefully rehearses at the end of each section three central questions: how does this thinker contribute to our understanding of community? Does his approach lead to the diminishment of violence? Does it facilitate peace?For the first quarter of the book, Herman explores various aspects of community. Drawing from Erich Fromm, Socrates, and Aldous Huxley, he demonstrates that out of enlightened self-interest, all people seek peace for themselves. He is careful to point out, however, that the Socratic virtues of wisdom, courage, self-control, and justice, which arise from within, are far superior to the uniformity of the World State as described in Huxley's Brave New World, which leaves nothing uncontrolled by the external authorities. Both lead to nonviolence and peace, but the World State can fall prey to what Fromm terms cultural insanity.Supplementing his discussion of Aldo Leopold with references to the work of Rachel Carson and J. Baird Callicott, Herman emphasizes that ideas of community peace must be informed by holistic structures of nature, particularly as articulated in Leopold's Sand County Almanac. However, he also warns that if the welfare of the biotic community takes precedence over all other concerns, then society could fall into a state of ecofascism.Herman's chapter on Mahatma Gandhi ably summarizes the life and works of this great political reformer, with particular focus on his formative years in South Africa. Influenced by John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi developed the concept of the "Ashramic community," a means of collective, intentional living designed to effect social change. After describing the Phoenix Settlement (1904, Johannesburg), the Sabarmati Ashram (1915, Ahmedabad), and Sevagram Ashram (1933, Wardha), Herman presents a fifteen-page play script based on the Asian travel diaries of Professor George P. Conger, chair of philosophy at the University of Minnesota from 1937-1953. Conger spent two months at Gandhi's ashram in Wardha, India, in 1933, and in the play called "Salt," his students take up issues including the ill treatment of Jews in Germany, the definition of nonviolence, and emphasized, as does Gandhi, the necessity for self-transformation to achieve personal and community peace.Martin Luther King Jr. inspired by the example of Mahatma Gandhi, employed nonviolent techniques to bring about the many successes of the American Civil Rights Movement. Herman provides a brief biography of Martin Luther King Jr., quotes several of his pivotal sermons, and emphasizes the notion of beloved community as critical to King's thinking. He writes that "in King's interpretation of agape, it is your being loved that gives you value; and it is your selflessly loving others that gives them value and makes the beloved community possible" (p. 138). According to King, fear and racial discrimination prevent one from entering into the beloved community. By changing laws, and, more importantly, changing the hearts of individual people, a more peaceful community can be built.The least successful chapter of this book discusses Gautama Buddha and the "karmic community." Rather than focusing directly on Buddhist theories of Karma, Herman engages in a long discussion of the Bhagavad Gita, an important Hindu text, as a foil to explain Buddhist theories... (shrink)

In The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896, Yvan Lamonde traces the province's political and intellectual development from the British Conquest to the election of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. From the individuals who formulated them, to the networks in which they circulated, to their reception, Yvan Lamonde focuses on ideas at work and their role in shaping Quebec history. The mapping of a complete intellectual circuit allows Lamonde to follow the strains of ideological debates - monarchism, liberalism, republicanism, democracy, (...) revolution, ultramontanism, nationalism - over more than a century. His work is informed by an encyclopaedic reading of the print culture of the period and the book conveys a profound and nuanced knowledge of the social context and cultural channels - educational institutions, newspapers, the book trade - in which intellectual debate occurred. Lamonde argues that while these ideas concerned politics, they went beyond the political: they were a fundamental and everyday element of civic society that was expressed in the public sphere through pamphlets, the popular press, and sermons. Lamonde's scrutiny of public opinion in Quebec allows him to place such currents of thought in the colony's international context: that of France, England, Rome, the United States, and their respective metropolises. The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896 covers a volatile time in the province's history - from the end of the French Regime through the American invasion, the War of 1812, and the Rebellions in Lower Canada - capturing the cultural ascension of a society and the foundations of Quebec identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston PersonalismJ. Edward Hackett1. IntroductionWhen the question of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophical legacy arises in the academy, so far, the question remains open-ended (though, as I will shortly argue, the question has already been answered by King himself). Beyond his presence in public American consciousness, King left behind speeches, sermons, correspondence, and writings that inspire both (...) philosophical and theological reflection. However, King is also interpreted on the merits of the biases and philosophical traditions that we scholars navigate. Such biases and philosophical traditions mediate our experience of encountering King, and this mediation can impact our understanding of what exactly King’s philosophical legacy is.1Accordingly, we should seek to reconstruct King’s thoughts in the philosophical vocabulary King employed rather than displacing King from his own agency and the contexts that shaped him.2 In doing so, we prevent mistakes and misunderstandings that plague the public knowledge of King’s legacy. And yet, serious misunderstanding occurs every January with light fluff pieces in major newspapers and websites from authors who do not read King’s corpus. What’s more, some scholars are guilty of this lack of reading King widely. Consider Martha Nussbaum and her glaring error and omission in her recent contribution to a recent book that purports to look at King as a philosopher: “Although a religious man, [King] did not advance in his political writings a comprehensive and religious doctrine, as Gandhi did” (Nussbaum 123). In an otherwise interesting article about political emotions, Nussbaum completely neglects any historical consideration or development where King describes himself as a personalist.3 Like others, Nussbaum disregards King’s own self-description. This disregard is tantamount to a silent [End Page 45] and implicit racism that results in scholarly efforts that deprive King of his own intellectual agency when interpreting his work. This tendency prevails in both philosophy and theology departments, and this neglect has also been the larger challenge of African American philosophy gaining more acceptance as a field of philosophical inquiry (McClendon and Ferguson 38). My efforts in this article are to put an end to continual misreadings of King. First and foremost, King is a personalist.While this essay defends the personalist interpretation of King, let me lay out briefly those pieces of evidence. The interpretation of King as a personalist rests on four evidential sources: (1) King’s own words, (2) family background, (3) influence of personalist ideas on his writings, and (4) the tradition of King’s reception by other Boston personalists. First, King describes himself in his own words as a personalist. This is perhaps the biggest piece of evidence for why we should read King as a personalist. Second, King was influenced by personalism before studying Brightman’s philosophy with Gregory Davis at Crozers Theological Seminary.4 Before Morehouse College and Crozers Theological Seminary, according to Rufus Burrow, homespun personalism emerges out of King’s upbringing within the Black Church. For this reason, scholars should not doubt that King synthesizes personalist influences with how he was raised (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 17–31). Moreover, given that King chose to go to Boston University to study with Brightman and to be where Boston personalism was known to be strong, all of these facts indicate that King was a personalist (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 24).Homespun personalism gave King a vocabulary to bring together and synthesize many intellectual forces in his life, and this synthesis is recognized by other personalists. Walter Muelder is one such personalist. Muelder was Dean of Boston University’s School of Theology from 1945–1972 when King attended. Muelder and King exchanged correspondence, and Muelder delivered many lectures, some published and others unpublished, on the personalism of King. The most famous of these lectures is one Muelder gave to Morehouse College in 1983, in which Brightman’s moral law system is read into King’s own words. Taking this historical background and also that, to this day, some teachers at Morehouse College, like Lawrence Carter, make their students learn the personalist moral law system from Muelder and Bright-man, the personalist interpretation... (shrink)

"This book will take its place in libraries next to the finest works abou;this creative thinker." —Religious Studies Review "... gives a fine sense of the present state and the future direction of Edwards studies... Recommended for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students." —Choice "... this volume opens up new windows, not only on previously neglected texts of Jonathan Edwards, but on the larger cultural functions and effects of those texts." —Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences Here is a (...) compact survey of current Edwards scholarship. These essays present groundbreaking contemporary scholarship focusing on the writings of the 18th-century American philosopher and theologian Jonathan Edwards. They range widely across the Edwardsian canon, including his most prominent and important published texts—Religious Affections and The Nature of True Virtue—as well as unfamiliar treatises and sermons. (shrink)

The first in a series that collects the "Sermon Series" by renowned African American theologian Howard Thurman, this volume on "Man and the Moral Struggle" and "The Message of the Prophets.".

In The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896, Yvan Lamonde traces the province's political and intellectual development from the British Conquest to the election of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. From the individuals who formulated them, to the networks in which they circulated, to their reception, Yvan Lamonde focuses on ideas at work and their role in shaping Quebec history. The mapping of a complete intellectual circuit allows Lamonde to follow the strains of ideological debates - monarchism, liberalism, republicanism, democracy, (...) revolution, ultramontanism, nationalism - over more than a century. His work is informed by an encyclopaedic reading of the print culture of the period and the book conveys a profound and nuanced knowledge of the social context and cultural channels - educational institutions, newspapers, the book trade - in which intellectual debate occurred. Lamonde argues that while these ideas concerned politics, they went beyond the political: they were a fundamental and everyday element of civic society that was expressed in the public sphere through pamphlets, the popular press, and sermons. Lamonde's scrutiny of public opinion in Quebec allows him to place such currents of thought in the colony's international context: that of France, England, Rome, the United States, and their respective metropolises. The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896 covers a volatile time in the province's history - from the end of the French Regime through the American invasion, the War of 1812, and the Rebellions in Lower Canada - capturing the cultural ascension of a society and the foundations of Quebec identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sighs and Tears:Biological Signals and John Donne's "Whining Poetry"Michael A. WinkelmanPhebe: Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love. Silvius: It is to be all made of sighs and tears...—Shakespeare, As You Like It (5.2.83–84)ISighs and tears permeate John Donne's poetry, as well they should. Crying in particular functions as a costly signal in biological terms: a blatant, physiologically-demanding, involuntary indicator of hurt feelings. "Tears dim mine eyes," (...) laments Donne's Sappho ("Sappho to Philaenis," l. 56); they are "Fruits of much grief" in "A Valediction of Weeping" (l. 7).1 The theory of costly signaling, related to the handicap principle, was developed fairly recently by Israeli zoologists Amotz and Avishag Zahavi. As the Zahavis explain: "in order to be effective, signals have to be reliable; in order to be reliable, signals have to be costly."2 Initially their idea was resisted, but it has since become widely accepted and it has proven very helpful in making sense of both animal and human behavior. Wasteful conspicuous consumption among upper-class Americans, as noted a century ago by sociologist Thorstein Veblen, exemplifies this handicap principle in action. Like gazelles jumping in place or stotting rather than running away when wolves appear, it indicates fitness by flaunting excess resources.Shedding tears when feeling sad is an evolved human adaptation that broadcasts unhappiness. The wailing of infants demands attention, and crying does something similar for grown-ups: among other things, it tests the commitment of hearers to appease the distressed. For instance, in Chaucer's tragic medieval romance Troilus and Criseyde, Pandarus advises [End Page 329] Troilus to provoke a suitable reaction from Criseyde by embellishing his billet-doux: "Towchyng thi lettre... Biblotte it with thi teris ek a lite" (touching thy letter... Be-blot it with thy tears a little).3 Early modern authors also knew their importance. In the words of Robert Herrick, "tears are tongues," while Claudius suspects that "There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves" (Hamlet, 4.1.1).4As a case in point, Donne was overwhelmed by the death of his dear wife Anne in 1617. As his contemporaneous biographer Izaak Walton reported: "his very soul was elemented of nothing but sadness; now, grief took so full a possession of his heart, as to leave no place for joy."5 Donne even hoped to be literally entombed with her soon: "as the grave is become her house, so I would hasten to make it mine also; that we two might there make our beds together in the dark" (Walton, p. 51). His miserable mood was revealed in his initial sermon after her demise:His first motion from his house was to preach, where his beloved wife lay buried (in St. Clement's Church, near Temple-Bar, London) and his text was a part of the Prophet Jeremiah's Lamentation: "Lo, I am the man that have seen affliction."And indeed, his very words and looks testified him to be truly such a man; and they, with the addition of his sighs and tears expressed in his Sermon, did so work upon the affections of his hearers as melted and molded them into a companionable sadness; and so they left the Congregation.(Walton, p. 52)Listeners responded in kind to his honest confessions, a textbook illustration of the empathy generated by crying. (A related issue—how and why literature affects audiences so strongly—is currently generating some very interesting work from New Humanists investigating the question from an evolutionary perspective.)These qualities make sighs and tears fundamental to love poetry. In other words, writers deploy them because they reflect universal states of mind, rather than originating as some arbitrary, socially-constructed literary device. The copious opening sonnet of Petrarch's magnificent Rime sparse codifies the theme:6You who can hear in scattered rhymes the soundof all that sighing which once fed my heartin my first youthful error, when in partI was a person of a different kind—my changing manner as I weep and reason, [End Page 330] between vain aspirations and vain grief,leads everyone who has known... (shrink)

This essay focuses on James Baldwin's treatment of the Atlanta child murders in The Evidence of Things Not Seen, a book that began as a series of reports for Playboy magazine. Returning to the United States from France, Baldwin not only reported on the child murders, but offered a treatise on terror as well: a treatise that distinguishes an imagined or remembered menace from a terror that might be considered constitutive, ontolological. This terror persists, Baldwin maintains, as the negative cause (...) of African American existence. Insistently political, the kernel of nonbeing to which Baldwin's thought appeals is not the grand abstraction of death but the becoming-abstract of abduction and permanent disappearance. Baldwin's essay on the Atlanta child murders thus seeks not only to bear witness to the plight of the missing children, but of the persistence of this “terror of being destroyed” as well. This essay revisits Baldwin's late work, often dismissed as either lackluster polemic or as sermonizing reportage, as no less apocalyptic a work of Pauline witnessing than The Fire Next Time. (shrink)

Taking Kierkegaard Personally: First Person Responses is a one-of-a-kind volume in which scholars from the world over address personal, existential lessons that Kierkegaard has taught them. Papers were selected from the June 2018 International Kierkegaard Conference, sponsored by the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College. The Conference's prompt-The Wisdom of Kierkegaard: What Existential Lessons Have You Learned from Him?-compelled scholars to drop their guards and write primarily in first person narrative instead of standard third (...) person scholarly/professorial narrative. Papers range from a preacher in Texas discussing how this white nineteenth-century Dane's thought speaks to black issues, to a university development director wondering what Kierkegaard can teach Silicon Valley executives, to a Danish scholar struggling with human autonomy versus dependence on God, to a Jewish scholar finding hope in this Danish Protestant's works in which existential alienation from the world is the norm, to a Nigerian scholar introducing Kierkegaard's "single individual" into his Ndi Igbo community (a tribe predicated not on the individual but the collective), to a Slovak scholar surviving a bad divorce, to an Hispanic scholar's passion to teach Kierkegaard along the U.S.-Mexico border to Hispanic students, to an American scholar fielding his father's questions about suicide, to other scholars suffering from and coping with deaths of parents, raising children, working in trauma units, finding the need for self-denial in flourishing countries, preaching valuable sermons, dealing with college campus/department politics, and living perfectly quotidian lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE USE OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RENEWAL OF MORAL THEOLOGY: THE CATECHISM AND VERITATIS SPLENDOR 1 SERVAIS PINCKAERS, 0.P. L'Universite de Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland T.HE SECOND Vatican Council ratified the biblical reewal that had prepared it. It truly gave Scripture back o the Catholic people and recommended it as " the very soul of sacred theology." 2 The Council invited theologians to show the inner coherence of the mysteries (...) of salvation proposed by the Scriptures. They were exhorted to make use of the teaching of the Fathers and to engage in speculative reflection, with St. Thomas as a guide, in order to search for the solutions to human problems in a manner suitable to contemporary man. In particular, the Council affirmed : Special care should be given to the perfecting of moral theology. Its scientific presentation should draw more fully on the teaching of holy Scripture and should throw light upon the exalted vocation of the faithful in Christ and their obligation to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the world.3 The document on the formation of future priests published on February 22, 1976 by the Congregation for Catholic Education 1 This paper was presented at the Theological Consultation of American Bishops at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, September 12, 1994. The English translation was prepared by Sister Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. 2Dei Verbum 24; English translation by Liam Walsh,O.P., Vatican Council II, ed. Austin Flannery, O.P., revised edition, (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 764. See 0Ptatam totius 16. s Optatam totius 16; English translation by B. Hayes, S.M., S. Fagan, S.M., and Austin Flannery, O.P., Vatican Council II, 720. 1 2 SERVAIS PINCKAERS, O.P. makes the directives in this conciliar text beautifully explicit and helps us to perceive its main lines. Notably, it states : In the past, moral theology exhibited at times a certain narrowness of vision and some lacunas. This was due in large part to a kind of legalism, to an individualistic orientation, and to a separation from the sources of Revelation. To counter all this,... it is necessary to clarify the method by which moral theology ought to be developed in close contact with Holy Scripture (n. 96). The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the encyclical V eritatis Splendor have each in its own way effected the reestablishment of the bonds between Scripture and moral theology. I propose to touch upon the principal points of this scriptural renewal in the teaching of moral theology. In order to get an idea of the novelty of these recent developments, a comparison will help. We shall look at the presentation of Catholic moral teaching given in the manuals which have served as textbooks in seminaries and which have oriented preaching and moral catechesis over the last four centuries, following the Council of Trent. These manuals developed and transmitted a certain systematization of moral theology based on categories which have become classic. Even those who criticize the manuals, proportionalists and consequentialists, for example, still use these categories. The moral theory of the manuals constitutes a common cultural base, one whose concepts and categories (for the most part connected with certain currents in modern philosophy such as Kantian ethics) have exercised a determining role in the relationship between the teaching of Christian ethics and Scripture. In our effort to delineate the principal elements of scriptural renewal proposed to us by the Catechism and the Encyclical, we shall examine six points: firstly, the use of Scripture; next, the great moral texts it offers us, the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, apostolic catechesis, and the treatment of cases of conscience ; finally, we shall respond to the difficulty created by new ethical problems and by recent cultural changes. CATECHISM AND VERITATIS SPLENDOR 3 I. SCRIPTURAL QUOTATIONS We need only run through the moral section of the Catechism to see that Biblical citations are there far more numerous than in the manuals of former times. These citations appear even in the section titles, such as " Life in Christ" and " Life in the Spirit," taken from Saint Paul in order to describe the moral life. The table of... (shrink)

Prepared by editors of the distinguished series The Works of Jonathan Edwards, this authoritative anthology includes selected treatises, sermons, and autobiographical material by early America’s greatest theologian and philosopher.

v. 1. Freedom of the will -- v. 2. Religious affections -- v. 3. Original sin -- v. 4. The Great Awakening -- v. 5. Apocalyptic writings -- v. 6. Scientific and philosophical writings -- v. 7. The life of David Brainerd -- v. 8. Ethical writings -- v. 9. A history of the work of redemption -- v. 10. Sermons and discourses, 1720-1723 -- v. 13. The "miscellanies" (entry nos. a-z, aa-zz, 1-500) -- v. 15. Notes on Scripture -- (...) v. 17. Sermons and discourses, 1730-1733 -- v. 18. The "miscellanies" (entry nos. 501-832) -- v. 19. Sermons and discourses, 1734-1738 -- v. 20. The miscellanies -- v. 22. Sermons and discourses, 1739-1742 -- v. 24. The "blank Bible" (2 v.). (shrink)

In "Amazing Grace," the best-loved of all hymns, John Newton's allusions to the drama of his life tell the story of a youth who was a virtual slave in Sierra Leone before ironically becoming a slave trader himself. Liverpool, his home port, was the center of the most colossal, lucrative, and inhumane slave trade the world has ever known. A gradual spiritual awakening transformed Newton into an ardent evangelist and anti-slavery activist. Influenced by Methodists George Whitefield and John Wesley, Newton (...) became prominent among those favoring a Methodist-style revival in the Church of England. This movement stressed personal conversion, simple worship, emotional enthusiasm, and social justice. While pastoring a poor flock in Olney, he and poet William Cowper produced a hymnal containing such perennial favorites as "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" and "God Moves in a Mysterious Way." Later, while serving a church in London, Newton raised British consciousness on the immorality of the slave trade. The account he gave to Parliament on the atrocities he had witnessed helped William Wilberforce obtain legislation to abolish the slave trade in England. Newton's life story convinced many who are "found" after being "lost" to sing Gospel hymns as they lobbied for civil rights legislation. His close involvement with both capitalism and evangelicalism, the main economic and religious forces of his era, provide a fascinating case study of the relationship of Christians to their social environment. In an afterword on Newtonian Christianity, Phipps explains Newton's critique of Karl Marx's thesis that religious ideals are always the effect of what produces the most profit. Phipps relies on accounts Newton gives in his ship journal, diary, letters, and sermons for this most readable scholarly narrative. (shrink)

Contemporary debates concerning a universal theory about the praxis of love in human society and culture can benefit greatly from the works of two twentieth‐century thinkers, the French paleontologist and religious writer Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Russian‐American sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin. Although from very different personal and disciplinary backgrounds, they share amazingly similar views on the power of love as transformative energy for transcending the individual self and for creating radically new, collaborative, and cooperative ways of acting (...) that will transform whole societies, indeed the planet. Traditionally, ideas of love have been associated with religion, but these two thinkers advocate systematic scientific research on the production and application of “love‐energy” for the change of culture, social institutions, and human beings. The article is organized in five parts: (1) altruism, science and love: what is love energy? (2) Teilhard's understanding of the phenomenon of love; (3) Sorokin's approach to creative, altruistic love; (4) comparison of Teilhard's and Sorokin's ideas; and (5) performing works of love. As far as I am aware, this is the first article comparing the remarkable parallels as well as distinctive differences between Sorokin's and Teilhard's ideas on love as the highest form of human energy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 303 philosophical, artistic) forms as a vivid protest "from within." If, on the contemporary scene, religion wants to actualize itself and the Church "to answer the question implied in man's very existence" (p. 49), then theology has to use the material of an "existential analysis" of the various cultural realms, confronting this material "with the answer implied in the Christian message" (p. 49). Part II gives so (...) to say instances of such a theological appreciation of cultural expressions. Successively passed in review are: religious "language" (signs and symbols), artistic "style," existential philosophy, psychoanalysis, science, morality, and education. Though each essay is illuminating, those on Existential Philosophy: its historical meaning (1944) and The Theological Significance o/Existentialism and Psychoanalysis (1955) may be called brilliant. Part III contains comparisons of theological thought in Germany and America (in which the author gives some personal reminiscences), and of religion in America and Russia, together with An Evaluation o/Martin Buber (1948). The book concludes with Part IV: Communicating the Christian Message: a Question to Christian Ministers and Teachers (1952), which appears to be relevant to Christians in general. It may be said that it has been a privilege for America to have received among the intellectual refugees of the "catastrophe" of 1933 this powerful German thinker, just as it must have bcen a privilege for Dr. Tillich to be able to elaborate his thought in a country where it received such great response in thoughtful circles. One recognizes behind this thinking the essential continental problems of the relation between philosophy of religion and theology, between religion and culture, between personal existence and industrial society: questions becoming American problems as well. In all his work, the role of religion is positively appreciated, and an appeal is made to a religious "courage to be," reminding man in his estranged life situation of his essential nature and his final destiny. It is not with the deus est esse, neither the certitudo ex se ipsis, nor the ultimate concern, nor the unconditional, that we should like to voice here some questions with regard to the author's views. Rather it is with two seemingly minor questions. Accepting his circumscription of religion as "the dimension of depth," we would be interested to see if within or beside a Theology o] culture, a Theology o] religion would also be possible, having as its subject religious expressions under and outside the authority of the Gospel. A second question arises from the author's statement: "Self is good, self-affirmation is good, self-acceptance is good, but selfishness is bad because it prevents both self-affirmation and self-acceptance" (p. 145). Although this phrase may have its particular context in Moralisms and Morality (1955), I personally wonder if the deflated Self does not risk becoming the essential prison of industrial society, in which, unfortunately, there is no Nirwana.... JACQUES WAA_RDENB URG University o[ California, Los Angeles BOOK NOTES John A. Mourant, ed., Introduction to the Philosophy oI Saint Augustine. Selected Readings and Commentaries. University Park, Pa., Pennsylvania State University Press [1964]. Pp. ix + 366. $7.50. This is an excellent introduction to the philosophy of Augustine as well as to the general Romanizing of the Platonic tradition. Professor Mourant's thirty pages of Introduction (supplemented appropriately by the great "Prayer" in which the Saint explains the world to his Creator), the bibliographical references, and the critical comments, all provide a concise exposition of the varioua ways in which Augustine attempted to organize his faith into a system of thought. The selections from the treatises, sermons, and letters are well arranged and contain several new translations into English by competent scholars. Both the editor's exposition and Augustine's own efforts to face the basic issues created by the meeting of diverse systems of doctrine and language enable the student to become aware of the amazing range of Christian philosophy created by a man who was both a busy bishop and an inquisitive truth-seeker. The reader can follow Augustine himself in dealing with his problems, instead of being confronted with the literature and context of modernization or of apologetics. 304 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Since this volume is evidently and... (shrink)

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

Theodore Parker was among the American Transcendentalists who flourished prior to the Civil War. A lecturer and Unitarian minister, Parker was also a social reformer and an articulate critic of American culture. Collins’ selections from Parker’s writings reflect the breadth of his concerns. The selections include the complete texts of "Transcendentalism," "A Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity," "The Position and Duties of the American Scholar," "The Political Destination of America and the Signs of the (...) Times," "The Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson," and "A Sermon of War.". (shrink)

Eckhartian studies in English have recently taken a large step forward. In addition to the present volume, two other books and a special issue of The Thomist have since 1977 been devoted to the Rhineland mystic who for so long lay in oblivion. Schürmann’s study first appeared in French in 1972. It is here translated by the author himself, who now teaches at the New School. Schürmann’s format in each of the three chapters is to offer a translation of a (...) key sermon of the Meister, and then to weave the main themes of his teachings in a detailed analysis and commentary upon each sermon. At the end of each chapter, and sometimes within it, five other sermons which treat of a cognate theme are also translated. The translations alone are quite welcome in view of the scarcity of good English renderings of Meister Eckhart. And Schürmann’s commentary is extremely valuable as well. The American edition follows the French edition quite closely. Schürmann has added a short conclusion to the third chapter, excerpted from a previous article. And he has added an additional sermon, "Blessed are the Poor," at the end of the book. This is a happy choice, for the sermon in question is to my mind Eckhart’s greatest, and it serves as an excellent transition to the appendix, which is also new in the American edition, and treats of the Eckhart interpretation proposed by Suzuki in Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist. The subtitle of the book has also been changed; the French read "la joie errante," the wandering joy. (shrink)

A liberal rabbi comments in fifty brief lecture-sermons upon a variety of topics associated with the interaction of the Jewish tradition and contemporary American society.--G. E. S.

Newman’s constant preoccupation with “connectedness” leads him to explore and to insist upon the importance of the relationship between the “notional” and the “real,” and therefore of that between theology and philosophy, on the one hand, and spirituality and morality or ethics, on the other. This paper explores Newman’s expression of these ideas, firstly in his sermons and theological writings, and finally in the more philosophical context of the Grammar of Assent.

An interactive collaborative drawing ‘machine’ designed on the concept of a neural network, allowing participants to experience a shared creative process, using the principles of open-source and social networked communication through an analogue string system. The underlying concept of the String Neural Network is to introduce participants to the idea of collaborative-shared drawing practice, as a dispersed collective that alludes to Roland Barthes The Death of the Author (1967) whereby each participant plays an equal role as both viewer and artist. (...) Played out like a surrealist Exquisite Corpse game of consequences or as a piece of Haiku poetry, the drawing participants contribute marks, signs and signifiers to an open-content drawing, akin to the development of open-source software. The string network consists of five drawing table ‘nodes’ within a room/studio space measuring eight by eight metres square. Each node is linked to the other four via pulleys and washing lines, making it possible to peg a sheet of A4 paper to a line and winch it across to any one of the other nodes. The network system uses ten string connections between the five drawing tables, creating a pentagram within a pentagon neural network design. Representing the interconnected synapses and neurons of the brain, the role of each participant is that of cause and effect. A single instruction initiates a series of consequences that unfold in drawings, marks and patterns that are created whilst being hoisted simultaneously across the room in quick succession. The Neural String Network project was first set up in March 2012 to coincide with ‘DecodeRecode’, a telematic art project undertaken by students at MediaCityUK Salford University, as part of the centenary celebration of Alan Turing. Each participating student was given a single word drawn from the Turing theme, such as machine, brain, code and apple that were interpreted and communicated as a drawing by a collective consciousness. (shrink)

Dozens of records attest to the fact that during the mid-seventeenth century politicized public nudity or “going naked as a sign” as it was known to early modernsubjects proliferated. This practice captured so much popular attention that Sir Charles Sedley along with other royalist libertines notoriously stripped in front of 1,000 spectators in 1663 and delivered a mock sermon in a grotesque parody of religious sectarians. I examine Quaker approaches to signification, focusing on their deployment of incarnational signs to advance (...) a revolutionary challenge to the empty reified signs of a burgeoning secular and commercial culture. Although both men and women went naked as a sign, the creative potential of women’s bodies, I argue, constituted a doubly-threatening specter to observers. In the midst of a period that witnessed what James Holstun has characterized as “the sundering of human life from providential history,” women openly exposed their bodies in order to visually underscore their creative potential and to call attention to the sacred and incalculable promise of life itself. (shrink)

Both individually and collectively, the five essays in this groups are brilliant. Each of the authors has worked with extraordinary care and success to represent my position, and they all succeed. The essays work to expound my thought in a progressive order. Bin Song's lays out my approach to comparison, setting it within the larger whole of my philosophy. David Rohr's explores in depth my epistemology and shows its relevance to my philosophy as a whole and also to its application (...) to Christian sermons. Michael Raposa's works through my specific claims about how "praying the ultimate" is its real meaning. Andrew Irvine's carries that thought through to religionless religion, asking: What if that is really... (shrink)