In the article of Natalia Kovalchuk «Sanctity phenomenon of St. Feodosiy Pecherskyi in context of holy persons life» the spiritual way of St. Feodosiy Pecherksyi as a search of time, which bring him closer to the sanctity and search of his personal dimension as a holy place are regarded. Through the analysis of food and cloth, which connect St. Feodosiy with world, his life is researched. Spiritual way of St. Feodosiy Pecherskyi brings him closer to the sanctity.

In the view of Hans Urs von Balthasar, what is needed to bring a human life to fulfilment—to become ‘whole’—is the death of one's ‘personality’, and the acquisition of one's specific ‘personhood’, which is given to one, along with one's mission, by God. Moreover, according to von Balthasar, a human being becomes a ‘unique person’ when encountering God in contemplative prayer. And it is within contemplative prayer that one comes into contact with one's ‘Idea’, which is actualised when one' (...) personal identity is fully developed, and which it is one's mission to conform to. Thus this article shows how the fundamental components of von Balthasar's distinctive phenomenological model of human holiness fit together, in actual practice as lived, around his core concept of ‘mission’. (shrink)

Christ, the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, uses the first-person pronoun in a "declarative" manner in speaking to the Father, and thus reveals the difference of persons within the Holy Trinity. A purely third-person revelation would not enjoy the same literalness and depth; the Trinity could not have been as clearly revealed by, say, a prophet. Christ makes it possible for the believer also to use the first person declaratively in addressing God. The declarative (...) use of the first-person pronoun expresses the speaker’s personhood, his status as an agent of truth. (shrink)

Are the actions of a person operating out of the gifts of the Holy Spirit the same as the actions of that person operating out of infused virtue? Answering this question provides an opportunity to offer a Thomistic account of how the gifts of the Holy Spirit are distinct from, yet related to, the infused virtues. This article begins with two recent arguments for how the gifts differ from the infused virtues. It then rejects those arguments (...) based on Aquinas's mature writing on the gifts. The following section offers an account of the role of the gifts in the graced life of discipleship, including their relationship to the infused virtues, through a focus on the relationship between habit and act. The article concludes with three areas for further research and a nod toward pastoral application of this argument in sacramental preparation for confirmation. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to uncover the meaning of holy feigning in the late-antique Christian text the Apophthegmata Patrum, or Sayings of the Desert Fathers [and Mothers]. Whereas stories in this text depict demonic feigning as a regular occurrence (demons often appearing in the guise of a fellow desert dweller), what I call ‘holy feigning’ depicts one desert Christian expressing empathy for the situation of another – and helping the other to change. By looking at two (...) stories that are paradigmatic of holy feigning, I show that exemplary deceptive behaviour, though explicitly defying the otherwise consistent rhetoric of ‘radical self-honesty’ in the Apophthegmata Patrum, paradoxically marks out the person who feigns as holy, discerning and imitative of Christ. In this article, I offer several suggestions for accounting for this seeming contradiction in the desert literature and propose how a spirituality of holy feigning might remain meaningful to readers of this literature today. (shrink)

In recent years, public discourse has largely embraced the idea that persons with addictions have a “brain disease,” and ought to be treated medically rather than judicially. This article first argues that this social shift is mostly the result of middle- and upper-class whites being among the addicted. The medical language is deployed so that such persons avoid the stigma of “deviance” commonly linked to addiction. Second, this article argues for a Christian “holy deviance,” whereby Christians become deviant by (...) going out to those who are already marked by society as deviant, letting the latter know in word and deed that they are loved. (shrink)

This paper explores the comparative dynamics of self-mutilation among young, contemporary, female self-cutters, and the holy stigmatics of the Middle Ages. It addresses the types of personalities that engage in self-mutilation and how some manipulate their self-inflicted pain into a method for healing and empowerment. The similarities between teenage cutters and female stigmatics are striking in their mutual psychoanalytical need for self-alteration as a means of escaping their own disassociative identities; and offers evidence of how their mutual bricolage of (...) pain, imagining, languaging, and subsequent self-mutilation often provide a transformation from bodies under siege to a resemblance of health and transformation. (shrink)

A new 2023 translation into American English of Marx's influential 1845 "Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume IV in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. The Holy Family is Marx's first foray (...) into building his dialectical materialism, while still attacking the modern Hegelians.The main title itself is mocking Bruno Bauer's "Pure Criticism", which Marx parodies with the nonsense "Critical Criticism". This is the first publication Engels and Marx published together, only one year after meeting in person in 1844. Here he is attacking other Hegelians and Critical Philosophy writ large, arguing against Hegel's idealistic dialectic for his own dialectal Epicurean Materialism which he began to outline in his Ph.D. Thesis "Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie" in 1841. Marx believed that Critical Philosophy in general (kritische Philosophie), which sees the most fundamental task of Philosophy as primarily judging the possibility of knowledge before asserting any claim of knowledge itself, as misguided in its Platonic Ontology. The entire work is a polemic against "The Holy Family" of young Hegelians, mocking and insulting them on every page. He uses sarcastic parody, nearly Horatian satire, specifically towards Christianity- "Criticism so loved the masses that it sent its only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life". Ultimately, he declared these dilettante philosophers "false prophets" and himself the true prophet of Atheistic, Skeptical and Materialistic Humanism. Here he also argues that the only way to deal with "the Jewish problem" is by eradicating Christianity and all metaphysical beliefs because the "bourgeois morality" gets in the way of implementing a true, final solution to the muddying of pure European nationality by the existence of the Jews. Here we see the foundations of the National-Socialist movement which declared "there is no God but the German people" and started eradicating millions in the name of Humanism and Progress. (shrink)

The angels in Isaiah's vision of God's heavenly temple (Isa. 6) used threefold repetition to praise His holiness, the superlative form of emphasis in the Hebrew language. Their cry tells us that nothing is as significant as the holiness of God. Tragically, the holiness of God has been obscured in our time, and as a result, the church's doctrine and ethics have been tarnished, entertainment has replaced worship in many places, the gospel is misunderstood and neglected, and the church assimilates (...) itself to the culture instead of seeking to transform it through the preaching of God's Word. Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God offers a corrective. Here, the holiness of God is defined, explored, and praised by a lineup of leading evangelical pastors and scholars, who show how it affects our worship, doctrine, and personal walks with Christ. Adapted from the addresses at the 2009 Ligonier Ministries National Conference, Holy, Holy, Holy unfolds the character of God and the holiness that sets Him apart. Here is high theology in understandable language, bringing deeper knowledge of God and promoting love for Him. Book jacket. (shrink)

I reconsider in this article the problem of the Holy Trinity from the standpoint of some recent theories of the ontology of relations. After having presented the problem and after having introduced some basic ontological concepts, I shall briefly dwell on the ontology of non-symmetrical relations and on the O-Roles theory suggested by Francesco Orilia. Afterwards, I shall develop my own solution to the problem of the Holy Trinity by exploring the status of Intratrinitarian relations and of divine (...) Persons. Among other things, I shall defend the thesis that divine Persons are not substances, but peculiar modes of God. I shall also ground the distinction between the properties attributed to God himself and the ones attributed to specific divine Persons. Finally, I shall anticipate and face some objections against my account and argue that it is legitimate to maintain that there is no kind of persons in general—which is a consequence of my view. (shrink)

In the vast literature centering on the Itinerarium Egeriae there is a serious lacuna. No attempt has been made to analyse the circle of readers to whom this remarkable document was addressed and for whose sake Egeria recorded so faithfully every detail of her journey. Yet if a full understanding of the IE is to be achieved, some definition of the circle of Egeria and of its relations with the pilgrim is essential. In other words, who in the West at (...) that point in the late fourth century, would have been so interested in Holy Land pilgrimage as to read attentively such a personal account as the IE? The following is a tentative essay to gauge the concerns, expectations and cultural background of Egeria's immediate circle of readers through her own emphasis on various aspects of her pilgrimage. In addition, the investigation will try to assess the place of pilgrimage in the life of western communities and the value of communications between the pilgrim on the road and the society back at home. (shrink)

John Schellenberg has advanced the hiddenness argument against God’s existence, based on the idea that an all-loving God would seek personal relationships. This paper develops a reply to Schellenberg’s argument by examining the notion of moral impurity, as understood by Paul the Apostle. Paul conceptualized moral impurity as a causal state that transfers from person to person, like a contagious disease. He also believed that moral impurity precludes divine-human relationship. The goal of this paper is to develop these (...) ideas into a problem for one Schellenberg’s key premises. (shrink)

Wholeness and Holiness guides us through a three-step journey to psychological soundness, spiritual wholeness, and saintly holiness. To attain this goal, a person must work at all three.

Zen teachings--infused with elements of memoir--by a popular modern teacher who "grew up" at the feet of two of the great figures who brought Zen to America, Shunryu Suzuki and Dainin Katagiri. He employs his reminiscences of those two great masters as teaching anecdotes. Tim Burkett was twenty when he met Suzuki Roshi, and it was love at first sight. He immediately quit pursuing the career in law to which his illustrious family of jurists inclined him, and became a serious (...) Zen student. He went on to become a licensed psychotherapist and then followed Katagiri Roshi to Minneapolis to become a founder of the Zen scene there. He never left. Now that he's himself a revered Zen teacher, he's decided to articulate his own view of Zen. He structures the teaching according to five not-necessarily sequential levels on the road to enlightenment: (1) commitment to the path, (2) studying the self, (3) cultivating compassion and equanimity, (4) perseverance, and (5) emptiness. This is an introduction to Zen teaching that reads like an intriguing memoir, as the author discovers the teaching in the people, places, and experiences he encounters in the course of his practice. (shrink)

This study explores the phrase ‘sealed with the Holy Spirit’ of Ephesians 1:13 as a metaphor, which relates the status of the recipients with the seal. Past studies view that the metaphor teaches about covenant or unity in God’s protection, assurance, and ownership. This study hypothesises that the author uses metaphor to address the recipients who have a deeper sentiment with a seal meaning they are both Jewish and Gentile Christians but especially those who are slaves. The study combines (...) the Ephesians’ background, lexical, and exegetical analyses with the cognitive-linguistic metaphor exploration. The result shows that the metaphor ‘seal’ is closely related to the personal experience of the Gentile Christians especially the slaves more than to others as it teaches that the endowment with the Spirit makes them worthy and united in the same identity as God’s chosen people. Contribution: This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing challenges that Indonesian Christians face in manifesting their unity because of their diverse cultural or historical backgrounds as part of a formerly colonialised nation especially those who are underprivileged and live in rural areas. By recognising that God has redeemed, endowed them with the Holy Spirit, and united with each other, they are free from various status bondages, especially as a minority group among the largest Muslim population in the world. (shrink)

This book is about the work of the Holy Spirit in the world, as distinct from the Spirit’s work in the church. One traditional term for this work is ‘common grace’. The book argues that there are four kinds of unity that the Spirit is working to bring about, and it takes one example of each. After the first chapter which is introductory, the second chapter takes up the first kind of unity: unity between us and the material world. (...) The example chosen is our experience of the beautiful and the sublime, and Immanuel Kant’s treatment of how this experience takes us to a divine being who lies behind both our faculties and the beautiful and sublime things we experience. The chapter uses two pieces by Beethoven, including the first movement of his Eroica symphony, as illustrations of the kind of unity that Kant has in mind. The second kind of unity is unity within a human life, and the third chapter discusses the example of gender transition within the life of a person assigned female at birth. The third kind of unity is unity between human beings, and the fourth chapter discusses the example of love of our country (patriotism) and its relation to the ideal of cosmopolitanism. The fourth kind of unity is unity of human beings with God, and the fifth chapter discusses the unity we can achieve in contemplation. Finally, the sixth chapter discusses the nature of unity itself and its relation to the Spirit’s love. (shrink)

Holiness is an important but problematic concept for religious discourse. It is unclear what it means, both in classical texts and in contemporary usage. Holiness seems to signify a property in some cases and a relation in others. The Bible itself preserves a range of usages. Some of these are ontological: holiness as a would-be property inheres in objects, places, persons, or times. Other uses are imputed: holiness connotes a status that human beings ascribe to things. The range of use (...) can be explicated by the concept of a social or institutional reality developed by Searle. Social facts entail valuations, intentions, and practices; they presuppose a basis of brute fact. A plausible contemporary view of holiness will link ontological and axiological commitments in such a way as to express the underlying goodness of being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Fool Is a "Holy Fool"?Agneta Schreurs (bio)The editors asked me to write a short response to your commentaries. They asked me to do that as a set; therefore, I respond to your texts as a whole.First, I thank you for your comments. I appreciate very much that you took the time to read and reflect on my article. I am really very happy with your positive evaluation (...) of my article, particularly because my choice for this subject has much to do with my own biography. I have been raised by nonreligious parents and grandparents. My mother being a classical scholar and my father a scientist, I knew more about antiquity and chemistry than about the Bible, which in fact did not figure at all in my education. However, when I was forty years old, I took on theology at the University of Utrecht as an extra study in my free time, mainly because I felt embarrassed whenever my students or clients brought the subject up and I did not know the first thing about it. Right from the beginning I became absolutely excited about this study, not only about the broad range of fascinating subjects, but also because quite a number churches had merged the academic part of their seminaries with the theological faculty of the University of Utrecht into an academically very high-standard curriculum. Students and teachers were a mix of Dutch Reformed, Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, Baptist, and several other denominations, in my time even a Jewish rabbi and a Winti (an indigenous religion in the former Dutch West Indies). Outsider as I was, this offered me a unique opportunity to become acquainted in a personal and natural way with their various faiths. Nevertheless, it took me three years before I realized what all those fascinating things had to do with my life and with my work! This realization was the reason why, after getting my master's degree in theology, I decided to choose a combination of philosophy of religion and psychology of religion for my doctoral dissertation and to change my group practice into work that explicitly dealt with the interconnections between spirituality and psychotherapy.I also want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on the larger contexts of my subject. From my biographical sketch, you can see that I agree with both of you in that it is high time that psychiatry and psychotherapy pay more attention to—and become more knowledgeable about—their religious patients' religion and spirituality. Not because I think the "talking cures" may have much in common with "faith healing" (in fact, I agree with Gibson [2000] that they have much more in common with the gentle craft of taking confession), but because it is unprofessional not to do so. When a person consults a priest or minister with regard to a religious problem, it often appears that there are also psychological problems involved. That is why theological curricula include pastoral psychology and clinical training courses. This is also true the other way round: psychological problems treated in psychotherapy and counseling may involve a patient's religious mindset. However [End Page 205], most psychotherapists are generally neither religious themselves nor trained in assessing and understanding the great variety of ways in which people may be religious and how these may be intertwined with the problems for which they have sought therapeutic help. In particular, they are mostly not trained in discovering how their patients' religiousness may be a cause of therapeutic failure or, alternatively, a source of support and as such a help toward therapeutic progress. In addition to such lack in information and training, and in contrast with most clergy, clients in therapy may easily have very different religious backgrounds. As a result of this professional situation, many psychotherapists feel uncomfortable in this area and unprofessionally tend to ignore, avoid, or reinterpret in psychological terms their patients' spiritual expressions.The point I tried to make is this: to successfully discover and assess how a patients' religiousness may be a cause of psychological problems or conversely, be a source of support and as such a help toward therapeutic progress, you need at least some basic... (shrink)

In 2014, Ray Yeo published a modified account of the Spirit’s indwelling in “Towards a Model of the Indwelling: A Conversation with Jonathan Edwards and William Alston.” Yeo utilizes a conglomerate of Two-Minds Christology and Spirit Christology to provide a metaphysical framework for his model which he believes offers a viable alternative to more traditional merger accounts like those of Edwards and Alston. After providing an overview of Yeo’s objections to the merger accounts of Alston and Edwards, I will summarize (...) Yeo’s modified model. I will argue Yeo’s emphasis on the humanity of Christ in lieu of a literal, internal, and direct union of the Holy Spirit and the human person cannot alleviate the core metaphysical concerns which surface in all accounts of union between the divine and human. Yeo’s misunderstanding of Two-Minds Christology leads him to deny the full humanity of Christ; a humanity upon which his entire account of the indwelling relies. Yeo’s modified model will be shown unsuccessful as an account of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit even if one accepts both his conception of Two-Minds Christology and his conditions for indwelling. (shrink)

In the late thirteenth century, western Europe suffered the notable disgrace of losing the last of the Christian strongholds in mainland Syria with the fall of Acre in 1291, and yet throughout the early fourteenth century Western powers were unable to launch a crusade to recover the Holy Land despite repeated and costly attempts. Until not long ago, historians of the crusades had interpreted the inaction of the fourteenth century as a sign that the age of true crusading was (...) over and that both disillusionment with the machinery of the papal indulgence and increasing local strife effectively removed the possibility of international cooperative action that a crusade to the Holy Land required. Recent scholarly work on the late Middle Ages has shown that this interpretation ignores both historical reality and late-medieval attitudes toward crusading. Acre's loss in many respects crystallized issues regarding crusade reform, and, though no new crusade to the Holy Land ever materialized, crusading in its various guises experienced renewed vitality throughout the fourteenth century—notably in Iberia, Italy, and the Baltic—in spite of the ravages of the Black Death, the suppression of the Templars, the collapse of prominent Italian banking houses that supported crusade finance, and the Anglo-French conflict. While the Holy Land may have remained in heathen hands, crusading remained a diverse, multifaceted, and vibrant set of practices that continued to be contested and redefined by various social groups despite the papacy's sophisticated descriptions of it in papal bulls and in canon law. In this study I hope to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion of crusade theory and practice by examining literary evidence—specifically, the Middle English romance Sir Isumbras—with a more broadly conceived notion of crusade discourse that includes connections among propaganda, chronicle, religious ritual, and popular romance. As I argue, Sir Isumbras critiques certain knightly behavior following Acre's loss and at the very least imagines, if not outright promotes, crusading reform and action for a mixed audience of lesser knights and non-nobles. The topicality of the poem's critique, however, is fully intelligible only when considered in light of other facets of crusade discourse; hence, I discuss below how features of popular fourteenth-century crusading movements, chronicle histories, and literary history are appropriated and reconfigured by the text. By reading these various sources as part of a connected, evolving discussion, we effectively expand our definition of the genre of the crusading romance in a way that not only incorporates historians' recent insights regarding the range of crusading practices but also reveals that crusading's personal and political aspects, in addition to its mass military campaigns, continued to shape a complex medieval outlook that found literary expression. (shrink)

Quietism brought the individual to a state of “holy indifference” where nothing mattered; particularities of Christian belief and practice, pleasures of the senses, personal desires, all vanished in the utter self-abandonment of the soul in the presence of God. The “resigned” soul simply left everything to God. This was a mode of spirituality but also a challenge to the Church and the need for its sacraments. Ecclesiastical authorities of various colors, both protestant and Roman Catholic, found this unacceptable in (...) its earlier manifestations in the later Middle Ages and again in its heydey in the late seventeenth century. Meanwhile in the sixteenth century, adiaphora had become controversial. These were matters of Christian belief and practice about which Christian opinion could legitimately vary and which were therefore “indifferent.” This paper explores the ways in which both these controversies rose from the same underground stream of medieval dissidence, discussing the contributions of the leading characters in the story and seeking to describe the common ground of idea and ideology which unites the history and which suggests that Quietism represents an archetype among the great “positions” of Christendom. (shrink)

Introduction: -/- It is likely that Boethius (480-524ce) inaugurates, in Latin Christian theology, the consideration of personhood as such. In the Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius Boethius gives a well-known definition of personhood according to genus and difference(s): a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Personhood is predicated only of individual rational substances. This chapter situates Boethius in relation to significant Christian theologians before and after him, and the way in which his definition of personhood is (...) a particular answer to the question, “Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but is one what?” Among Greek (and Syriac) speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘hypostasis’. Among Latin speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘persona’. It is Boethius’s definition of ‘persona’ that inaugurates personhood as such in Latin speaking theology. Although the Greek and Syriac theologians that I survey come close to a concept of personhood as a distinct category, they do not have such a concept and did not need it for their theological purposes. I show that Rusticus the Deacon is an early witness to this Latin theological invention, and also show that for later Latin theologians, the rationality condition for personhood does very little metaphysical work for their Trinitarian theology or Christology. -/- Further, this chapter surveys Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians’ answers to the question, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one God, but each is one what?” The same replies as above are typically given by Christian theologians. These two theological questions frame the discussion about personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) and put a boundary around what a satisfying account of personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) would be. -/- In contemporary philosophy, there is a lot of attention paid to the rationality condition for personhood. But if we look at the text in which Boethius defines a person, we do not find any precise criteria for it. In other texts, he says that a rational being is one compatible with (capable of) thought and free choice of the will. What we find is that detailed discussion of personhood shows up in theological questions about the Trinity and Incarnation, but not in e.g., applied ethics. The intrusion of personhood into contemporary applied ethics with a focus on detailed and disputed criteria for rationality as a condition for personhood seems to be a modern development. From a Patristic and Medieval Christian theology point of view, trying to find just the right detailed criteria for rationality in order to define personhood is a wild goose chase. This chapter makes clear another contribution that Christian theology had for personhood. Given the theological issues at play in developing a notion of personhood, Christian theologians came to posit that e.g., an individual human is a person contingently (i.e. not essentially), but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each a person essentially. The contingency for created persons is not based on whether e.g., an individual human has conscious acts (as might be the case for John Locke) but on the possibility of a divine person’s assuming e.g., an individual human nature. -/- This sampling of Christian intellectual history spans over one thousand years. I make no claim of being exhaustive. The chapter consists of six sections, where each section covers significant historical conversation partners who together represent the sorts of things that Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians where concerned with in theorizing about ‘persona’ or ‘hypostasis’. -/- 1. Origen of Alexandria and the Cappadocians: Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa 2. Miaphysites: Severus of Antioch, John Philoponus, and Peter of Callinicum 3. Boethius and Rusticus the Deacon: Rationality, Subsistence, and the Invention of Personhood 4. Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Leontius of Byzantium 5. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (I): Gilbert of Poitiers, Richard of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ware 6. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham . (shrink)

Ad Serapionem I, 20 by Athanasius was of paramount importance for theology of Nicephorus Blemmydes, John XI Beccus and Gregory of Cyprus. Blemmydes seems to have produced several changes of words in the passage making Athanasius say of the Spirit as of the Life and Energy of the Son. In such a form Ad Serapionem I, 20 gave Blemmydes an excellent opportunity for substantiating his own doctrine on the Spirit's eternal illumination through the Son. In his teaching no strict demarkation (...) line had been drawn between the Person and energy of the Spirit. Nicephorus might have tried to approach to a more "essentialist" discourse in triadology, e.g., like that which is found in Symeon the New Theologian. By his sometimes ambiguous, but generally fresh and suggestive pneumatology Nicephorus has paved the way for Gregory of Cyprus, Gregory Palamas and the Palamites. While taken at face value, Nicephorus' teaching seemed to open a path for early Scholastics, with John Beccus at their head, as well as for subsequent anti-Palamites, whereas the Palamites took pains to interpret Blemmydes along the lines of traditional Cappadocian, Maximian and Photian triadology. (shrink)

A piece of wax—typically of a spherical shape—has been evoked occasionally as an apt example of how our engagement with the commonest everyday object may constitute a “raw” yet unexpectedly rich (and taxing) experience, from the Aristotelian discourse of Περὶ Ψυχῆς (_On the Soul_) to the ancient Chinese historical treatises, where the technique of making _lajuan _(wax-embraced silk) became a practical metaphor for the low-key transmission of classified information. Using the semi-enclosed, “walled” space—specifically, made of the material of wax from (...) Descartes’ often misread _Meditationes_—as a metaphor of an unlikely shape or structure for inducing the presence of the absent (e.g., memories of personal lives or ancient technology), the paper responds to Hoły-Łuczaj (Philosophy & Technology 36:19, 2023 )’s favorable and subtle touches in the Commentary on the recent study of ancient Eastern measurement and measuring thinking (Philosophy & Technology 36:22, 2023 ; Philosophy & Technology 34(4):785–809, 2021 ) by relating to the childhood experience of living with measuring tools and measuring/measured person(s) (_homō _-_mētiēns_/-_mēnsus_; to be distinguished from the Pythagorean formula of _homo_-_mensura _or man _as _the measure [of everything]). (shrink)

Medieval philosophical theologians thought that they had solved the problem of how God and creatures can be alike genuine agents in producing the world as we know it. But could God and creatures share genuine agency, when it comes to counting creatures and their actions worthy of eternal life? All agreed: God’s contribution was to elevate created agents by making them holy. Thinkers from Lombard to Ockham saw God as doing that in two ways: through a distinctive kind of (...) presence and through extra efficient-causal contributions. After Lombard, both were seen to involve Divinely infused habits. Debates about the role of infused habits led to refinements of the concept of genuine created agency. The attempt at philosophical accounts of the special kinds of presence that some but not other Divine persons could have to some but not other creatures, at first provoked conceptual experimentation with appeals to hypostatic union or primitive relations, but later ran to verbal accommodations of the theological authorities. (shrink)

Education has been acknowledged as the key factor contributing to personality development and identity formation. To ensure appropriate education, it is thus of utmost importance to reflect on the power of the educational content. As a result, respecting Islamic values from a major authentic source, like the Holy Qur’an, paves the ground to fulfil this goal. On the contrary, the first and foremost educators to convey these values are the family, because each person mainly spends the time of (...) one’s education in this small, primary social institution. Above and beyond, the building block of a society and the starting point of a culture, a civilisation and human history is the family. As a noble book of guidance for the human beings, the Holy Qur’an has accordingly shed light on the role of the family. Against this background, this study, adopting a descriptive analytical approach, aimed to investigate the Islamic family from the perspective of the Holy Qur’an with an emphasis on the education of children. Accordingly, the Holy Qur’an reveals that the main purposes of creating a family are inner peace, generational survival and expansion of the faith and monotheism. A healthy family environment can thus have a profound impact on cultivating moral character and virtues. In view of the Holy Qur’an, the family is the first place to seek relief and perform the acts of worship. No divine religions have also given as much value to the family as Islam, which implies its comprehensiveness. Despite much attention to the family in most societies, it receives special importance in the Qur’anic teachings. This article is a review study that dealt with Qur’anic concepts related to education in the family. Therefore, after categorising different Qur’anic verses, analyses have been presented in each category. Contribution: Islam has set many specific programmes and educational instructions from childbirth and then delegated their implementation to the family. Accordingly, this noble religion offers many guidelines for picking a perfect name, breastfeeding and weaning, loving, observing justice and fulfilling promises in relation to children. (shrink)

Education has been acknowledged as the key factor contributing to personality development and identity formation. To ensure appropriate education, it is thus of utmost importance to reflect on the power of the educational content. As a result, respecting Islamic values from a major authentic source, like the Holy Qur’an, paves the ground to fulfil this goal. On the contrary, the first and foremost educators to convey these values are the family, because each person mainly spends the time of (...) one’s education in this small, primary social institution. Above and beyond, the building block of a society and the starting point of a culture, a civilisation and human history is the family. As a noble book of guidance for the human beings, the Holy Qur’an has accordingly shed light on the role of the family. Against this background, this study, adopting a descriptive analytical approach, aimed to investigate the Islamic family from the perspective of the Holy Qur’an with an emphasis on the education of children. Accordingly, the Holy Qur’an reveals that the main purposes of creating a family are inner peace, generational survival and expansion of the faith and monotheism. A healthy family environment can thus have a profound impact on cultivating moral character and virtues. In view of the Holy Qur’an, the family is the first place to seek relief and perform the acts of worship. No divine religions have also given as much value to the family as Islam, which implies its comprehensiveness. Despite much attention to the family in most societies, it receives special importance in the Qur’anic teachings. This article is a review study that dealt with Qur’anic concepts related to education in the family. Therefore, after categorising different Qur’anic verses, analyses have been presented in each category.Contribution: Islam has set many specific programmes and educational instructions from childbirth and then delegated their implementation to the family. Accordingly, this noble religion offers many guidelines for picking a perfect name, breastfeeding and weaning, loving, observing justice and fulfilling promises in relation to children. (shrink)

Although Political Theology examined mainly the political dimension of the relationship between God-Father and God-Son, it is paramount to consider the political performance of the Holy Spirit in the Economy of Redemption. The Holy Spirit has been characterized as the binding cause and the principle of relationality both referring to God’s inner life and to God’s relationship with His creatures. As the personalization of relationality, the Holy Spirit performs a unique task: to bring together what is apart (...) by means of organisation. This power of the Spirit to turn a plurality into a unity is manifested in the Latin translation of oikonomía as disposition, that is, giving a special order to the multiple elements within a certain totality. Within this activity of the Spirit, Theodicy can be regarded as the way to depict God’s arrangement of the world and of history, bringing everything together towards the eschatological Kingdom of God. The paper aims at showing this fundamental activity of the Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, and intends to pose the question on how to think on a theology beyond theodicy, that is, how to think on a Trinitarian God beyond the categories of sovereignty and totalization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Divine Person" as Analogous NameDylan SchraderThe position of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic school that human beings cannot name God and creatures univocally is well-known.1 This includes the term "person," which is predicated of the Trinity, of angels, and of human beings truly but analogically. In contrast, it might seem that, when speaking of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in respect of one another, (...) "divine person" must be univocal.2 [End Page 217]The seventeenth-century Discalced Carmelites of Salamanca (the Salmanticenses) thought otherwise. They argued that the ratio3 of "divine person" is common to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit not univocally, but analogically, and that this follows from established Thomistic principles.4 Their position makes for an interesting case study in religious language, as the Salmanticenses apply a highly developed material logic to the central mystery of Christian faith.Words, Concepts, and ThingsIn On Interpretation (Peri hermeneias), Aristotle explains that words immediately signify concepts and, by means of concepts, things.5 This so-called "semantic triangle" makes it easy to misunderstand univocity and analogy if we do not first determine how a particular thinker conceives of the relationship among words, concepts, and things. To discern how the Salmanticenses understood this relationship, it is most helpful to look to their counterparts, the Discalced Carmelites at neighboring Alcalá de Henares outside Madrid, commonly called the Complutenses.6 The Complutenses' Artium cursus [End Page 218] serves as philosophical handmaid to the Salmanticenses' Cursus theologicus, and is therefore essential for correctly interpreting the latter's claims about grammar, logic, and metaphysics.7To begin with the verbal element, this is how the Complutenses, following a fairly typical account, explain the difference between a vocal sound, a name, and a term: A vocal sound (vox) is speech considered simply as an audible phenomenon, the pure sound wave. A name (nomen) is a vocal sound that signifies something. A term (terminus) is a name insofar as it serves as one end of a proposition.8 Terms may be purely mental (as when a proposition is conceived of in the mind alone), or they may be spoken or written.Names and terms are useful precisely because they signify. The Complutenses define "signifying" (significare) as "representing to the knowing power something other than [the signifier] itself."9 A name or term points beyond itself so that something else can become known to the mind through that name or term.When it comes to spoken (or written) terms, a term is "common" (communis) if it signifies more than one thing. Common terms may be "non-transcendent" (non transcendens) or "transcendent" (transcendens). Common terms are non-transcendent if they are predicated of certain things (such as "man" or "animal"). They are transcendent if they are predicated of all things. Six terms are usually acknowledged to be transcendent: "being" (ens); "thing" (res); "true" (verum); "good" (bonum); "something" (aliquid); and "one" (unum).10 [End Page 219]Here it is necessary to distinguish first and second "intention" (intentio).11 The Carmelites take "first intention" properly to be the act whereby the intellect knows things in accord with what is in them as realities.12 This act of the intellect is the "formal first intention," while the thing known is the "objective first intention." A name signifying a thing in this way is a "name of first intention."But the intellect can also attend to those things not in accord with what is in them from their own perspective as realities, but instead with reference to their character as acted upon by the intellect itself. This act is called "second intention."13 An example of first intention is the intellect's knowing that "man is an animal," whereas an example of second intention is its knowing that "'animal' is a genus."The Complutenses stress that first and second intention are, properly speaking, acts of the intellect—distinct ways of attending to what it knows—even though logicians often use "first intention" and "second intention" as shorthand to refer to the objects of these acts.14 In fact, because objective second intentions (the objects of the intellect's second-intentional acts) are beings of reason... (shrink)

The Orthodox Church has been given the fullest of truth by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, truth honored and valued in the communion of the Saints. For men, to grasp divine truth is a progressive process part of a permanent development. Each and every person walks along this path together with other people, without being the same as the others. Every person is offered and understands truth according to their own religious experience and skills to understand. (...) Ultimate truth exists and it has been revealed completely, but the way in which it is grasped varies from one person to another. “This is not a narrowly doctrinal vision of theological truth. However, it is an essentially spiritual vision for worldly reality, one that removes arrogance from authority and opens new ways of approaching believers of other religions. It presupposes magnanimity and charity, faith and hope, tolerance and reconciliation. It opposes forceful conversion and conflinct, imposition and intolerance, aggression and violence”.85 This approach prevents us from assigning to God intentions and plans which are exclusively ours. Thus, whenever we have a dialogue with those of different beliefs and ideologies, we must always start from God’s sacrificial love for all men. (shrink)

Ekpo, Anthony The church is a sacrament of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a fruit of Pentecost. The church came to birth through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit and is forever sustained and renewed through the influence of the same Spirit. It is in the Spirit-the breath of God that cannot be domesticated by anyone-that the church lives, moves and has its being. Without the Spirit, therefore, the church would not be the living Body of Christ; (...) it would rather be a corpse, which, left to its own devices, could only putrefy and decay. Hence, the church is the workshop of the Holy Spirit, and through his graciousness, the church and its members are blessed with myriads of pneumatic enablement that have been called charisms. Charisms 'are the manifold ways in which the graciousness of God is manifested in the lives of individual Christians, especially by making them effective instruments of grace to others in the body of Christ'. (shrink)

This article will show that lectio divina or the formative reading of Holy Scripture goes beyond exegetical-critical methods and fosters in the heart of every reader a more personal-reflective approach. This approach serves as a directive source guiding our faith and formation journey. Formative readers by definition desire to grow in spiritual self-knowledge and to allow the communications they receive to touch and transform their lives, if God so wills. Two requirements for formative reading will be explained herein: its (...) meditative or contemplative components and its applicative dimensions. Both facets of this discipline lead to a dynamic encounter with sacred words. We are to read the Bible and the literature of spirituality in such a way that the texts we imbibe will help us to tune into the inner life form or direction meant for us by God from eternity. Essential to this article is also a description of the difference between informational and formational reading. While there is a time and place for both, one way should not be substituted or forgotten in favor of the other. In short, the integration of head and heart, of inspiration and incarnation, is the hidden goal of formative reading. (shrink)

By the late 1830s, John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey were discussing the re-introduction of monastic/religious life into the Church of England. Though Newman did not remain in the Church of England long enough to see the full flowering of this effort, his writings as an Anglican theologian reveal that he viewed the monastic/religious life as a central way in which a person could grow in holiness and also a means of fostering the holiness of the Church as (...) a whole. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Open Letter to the Enemy:Jean Genet's Holy WarSteven Miller (bio)J.G. seeks, or is searching for, or would like to discover, never to uncover him, the delicious enemy, quite disarmed, whose equilibrium is unstable, profile uncertain, face inadmissible, the enemy broken by a breath of air, the already humiliated slave, ready to throw himself out the window at the least sign, the defeated enemy: blind, deaf, mute. With no (...) arms, no legs, no stomach, no heart, no sex, no head, all told a complete enemy, already bearing all the marks of my bestiality that now need never be used (too lazy anyway). I want the total enemy, with immeasurable and spontaneous hatred for me, but also the subjugated enemy, defeated by me before he even knows me. Not to be reconciled with me, in any case. No friends. Above all, no friends: a declared enemy, but not a tortured one. Clean, faultless. What are his colors? From a green as tender as a cherry to an effervescent violet. His size? Between the two of us, he presents himself to me man to man. No friends. I seek an inadequate enemy, one who comes to capitulate. I will come at him with all that I can muster: whacks, slaps, kicks, I will feed him to starving foxes, make him eat English food, attend the House of Lords, be received at Buckingham Palace, fuck Prince Phillip, and be fucked by him, live for a month in London, dress like me, sleep in place of me, live in place of me: I seek the declared enemy.This brief text was not published until 1991. It was almost published in 1975 in a book of homages to William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and was to have been preceded with the following explanation of its origins, written by Gysin:In Tangiers in 1970, Jean Genet asked me what ever happened to the English underground newspaper The International Times. When I responded that the editors were having trouble with the law in England because of the newspaper's ads for "special friendships" [amitiés particulières], he exclaimed: "Why friends? Personally, I am looking for a suitable enemy [un ennemi à ma taille]." He then wrote the following text...[qtd. in Genet, ED 9]Hence the anecdotal reason for the form of the personal advertisement. In 1991 the text was published—according to Genet's wishes—as the first page of the posthumous collection of his political writings and interviews, L'ennemi déclaré.1 Such a placement demands more than an anecdotal explanation. What is a personal ad doing as the preface to a collection of political writings? Albert Dichy, the editor of the collection, notes that this text has the status of an exception: "the text that opens the collection does not belong to the group of writings that make up the book as a whole" [ED 331]. Each of the other texts emerges from Genet's involvement in specific political events (the [End Page 85] 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention, the Chatila massacre) or with named political figures and groups (the Palestinians, the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof group, George Jackson, Angela Davis), whereas the form of the ad that he wrote for Gysin seems to number it among his literary works. Nonetheless, this eccentric text remains the first in the collection—"en tête de l'ouvrage," is Dichy's phrase—and gives the book its title. Rather than serving as an introduction to the other texts, this text, by virtue of its exceptional form, is a challenge addressed directly to the public. Dichy himself is the first to accept this challenge. His editorial notice passes quickly from anecdote to interpretation:The fact that Genet wished to see the publication of his political articles preceded by this precise text has an unavoidable impact, not only on the identity of the author, now partially assimilable to a fictional character ("J.G. cherche, ou recherche..."), but also on the way in which we read the different texts in the collection, now that we have been given the general tone and the note of secrecy.[ED 331]These suggestions are apt enough... (shrink)

This article addresses three interrelated concerns: the pervasive nature of technologically induced impatience, a theological understanding of divine patience, and, finally, a suitable response to techno-impatience by way of engagement with the art and practice of holy habit. As we have experienced faster flows of information, and larger amounts of information through which we must sort, we have become less patient people. This loss of patience continues to produce a new kind of personal and communal disquiet on an impressive (...) scale. To address concerns with techno-impatience, arguments will be drawn from scriptural and theological concepts of divine patience. These concepts prompt us to rediscover, and reinvent, a richer understanding of patience as an individuated spiritual virtue. Accordingly, a corrective to the exacerbating effects of technologically induced impatience will be offered: namely, the explicit spiritual discipline of practicing holy patience. (shrink)

Our understanding and praxis of spiritual formation is only as sound as our theology of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, there is a common shortcoming that leaves our theology of the Spirit less than fully capable of rendering an adequate account of the Holy Spirit's agency in transforming a person into the likeness of Christ. Theology of the Holy Spirit commonly emphasizes victorious and genteel themes while failing to articulate adequately that the Spirit is a direct agent (...) in transformative suffering. Some of the Comforter's most important sanctifying work is exceedingly discomforting. This article focuses on these less palatable aspects of the Spirit's work in an attempt to tell a fuller story about the Spirit. By adding often-neglected dimensions and textures to our theology of the third Person, we are more capable of articulating the full range of the Spirit's role in formation. (shrink)

A brief outline of L.P.Karsavin's theory of personality is presented, which reconstructs the system of key concepts of this theory and traces its evolution through Karsavin's work. The system is analyzed in its relation to the two basic paradigms of European personalist thought, the anthropological paradigm developed in Western metaphysics, and the theological paradigm created by the Greek Church Fathers and practically not used in European philosophy. The conclusion is drawn that Karsavin's personalism returns gradually to the theological paradigm and (...) via the works of Vladimir Lossky it stimulated the contemporary renaissance of this paradigm in Orthodox theology. (shrink)

This book brings together academic scholars from across various religious traditions to reflect on the beauty they find in traditions other than their own. They examine these aspects and reflect on how they inform and constructively assist with rethinking their own religious worldviews and practices. Each scholar investigates the various implications, questions, insights, and challenges that are generated in the process of doing so. Traditions discussed include Ásatrú Heathenism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, LDS Mormon Christianity, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, (...) Sikhism, Sufism, Western Buddhism, and Zen Mahāyāna Buddhism. Instead of focusing only or primarily on the theory and practice of interreligious dialogue, this book presents living examples of learning from other religious traditions, identities, and persons. (shrink)

Christians all over the world celebrate the Eucharist as an important aspect of their faith. Arising from Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30 that persons who eat the Lord's Supper unworthily bring judgment upon themselves, some churches in Nigeria restrict the Communion to supposedly holy members. This article examined the text with a view to appraising this attitude towards the Communion. It applied the historical exegesis and the analytical approach. The article found that the restriction of the Eucharist to (...) selected members of the congregation is counter-productive and self-defeating in that many Christians are denied the opportunity to partake of it. Paul's view of judgment upon participants derived from his Jewish perception in which affliction was always seen as divine punishment. Furthermore, at its inception the celebration of the Communion does not reflect the idea that it was meant for only holy people. In view of this, and the fact that the Jewish perception need not apply in the modern and scientific world, the work concluded that the mainline churches in Nigeria have to review their attitude towards the Communion such that all Christians are encouraged to participate in it. While laying emphasis on reverent and loving behaviour at the Lord's Table, the idea of the Communion causing illness and death should be completely jettisoned. CONTRIBUTION: This article is a contribution to New Testament Theology and Christian ethics. The proposal to make the Eucharist more accommodating is significant for congregational harmony in the church in Nigeria. (shrink)

Prophetic speech serves as an important way to engage with a world in need of change, but prophetic speech might not always serve the person or community that uses it. After outlining the potential problems of prophetic speech, this essay presents the tradition of holy folly as an important alternative means of engagement and critique. This essay suggests that this once critical tradition should be attended to again in order to inform what it means to think about and (...) perform Christian ethics. After presenting a background of holy folly and after categorizing critical elements of folly’s modes of being and engagement, the essay offers a couple of ways through which elements of folly might be appropriated in the current day by those who cannot fully live the life of the holy fool. (shrink)

The Anthropocene overthrows classical dichotomies like technology and nature and a new class of beings emerges: hybrids. The transitive status of hybrids - which establishes an extra, separate, 'third' ontological category, going beyond the dichotomy between nature and technology - constitutes a significant problem for environmental philosophy and philosophy of technology since they traditionally focus on either 'nature' (natural entities) or 'artefacts' (technological objects). In order to reflect on the ethical significance of hybrids, a classification of different types of hybrids (...) is required. Such a classification is provided by this article, based on insights from both environmental philosophy and philosophy of technology. After explaining why a new class of beings emerges in the Anthropocene, and reflecting on the one-sidedness of philosophy of technology and environmental philosophy in their focus on either technology or nature, we propose a new classification of hybrids in this article that provides a new starting point for reflections on the moral significance of hybrids in environmental philosophy and philosophy of technology. (shrink)

What are we to make of the New Christian Right’s loss of political influence and the rise of the Tea Party and libertarianism more broadly? Rather than imagine a coalition of resentment as does William E. Connolly, this paper argues that several key religious ideas of protestant fundamentalism have become secularized and now function as a political theology that privileges the personal and marginalizes the public arena. American fundamentalism shares several characteristics with protestant fundamentalism—even as it represents what might be (...) called a migration of the holy. (shrink)