Confronting fundamentalism: the dangerous God of "control and condemn" -- 1967: What the cake said -- God-talk 101: The art that is Christianity -- The Copernican turn of Christian humanism -- Quantum theology: the symbolic character of God-talk -- Theological weirdness (1): the symbolic claim that God is a person -- Poets as theologians: the moral imagination of Christian Humanist tradition -- Moses debates with a burning bush -- I AM v. I WILL BE: translation and the authority (...) of theologians -- Theological weirdness (2): the symbolic claim that God is necessarily impersonal -- What, then, can be said about God? (shrink)

Secular and religious values of psychotherapists influence the process of psychotherapy. The psychologist Allen Bergin has pointed out several major antitheses between values of secular psychotherapists and their religiously oriented clients. The present essay is a response to Bergin's antitheses, on the one hand, and to humanistic psychology, on the other, from the point of view of a Christian humanism. Karl Rahner's theological anthropology is proposed as one possible foundation for an explicit articulation of the relationship between psychotherapy and (...) religion, and as a means to address apparently divergent values of psychotherapists and religious believers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christian Humanism in the Age of Critical Philology:Ralph Häfner's Gods in ExileMartin MulsowHäfner's book is a monumental study and a milestone of German-language research.1 He delineates, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of the Christian humanism of European philologists in the era of criticism. Recovering an immense wealth of forgotten sources, the book reveals the complex interaction and tension between pagan mythology and Christian culture (...) in philological controversies. Though authors might denounce the pagan histories of gods as fabulae, they were constitutive for the productive and emulative reception of ancient Greco-Roman patterns in Renaissance and Baroque culture. How could the peculiar logic of this paganizing be handled? Was it advisable to have faith in the integrative power of Christian truth, which was capable of finding precursors or even proofs of one's own truth in pagan patterns, or should the pagan be selectively separated from the Christian? And what was the role of philology in this process? Did the growing expertise in criticism advance the process of dissociation of paganism and Christianity? Did it further new possibilities of synthesis in the spirit of Apologetics? [End Page 659]The reconstruction of these processes involves much more than what the book's very specific title suggests. It is a large-scale history of scholarship written from the perspective of the most important tensions that Christian humanism had to overcome in its final stage. From an Anglo-American perspective, this book contributes to recent reconstructions of ideas of early modern men of learning, as well as the growing number of studies on antiquarianism and the history of religion.2 The final stage of Christian humanism, the period of time covered by the book, begins in the late sixteenth century and ends in the 1730s, a point in time which Häfner presents, with some justification, as the end of an era.Hymnology and PolymathyThe study consists of three basic parts. The first one is the "Persistence of Orphic-Platonic Hymnology in Christian Humanism" ("Fortleben der orphisch-platonischen Hymnologie im christlichen Humanismus"). This topic, apparently very specialized and marginal, proves to be a key arena of early modern scholarship, an arena traversed by the battle lines between pagan tradition and Christianity as well as between poetry and theology. Were hymns inspired poetry? What kind of inspiration could and should be conceded to hymns to Jupiter and the sun? Of course, those humanists who reappropriated Orphism and Neo-Platonism were interested in this genre. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and even into the mid-sixteenth century, this was not yet a problem. However, the more philological consciousness (and confessionalization) evolved, the more the genre's scope was delimited. What scope remained? Häfner relates the problem to the revival of an "eclectic Platonism" in the wake of the Second Sophistic. This "eclectic Platonism," which was particularly influential from 1500 on, combined Platonism with rhetorics, and the claim of comprehensive polymathy with the joyful presentation of the findings of reading. In this respect, Apuleius and Aulus Gellius were two model authors for early modern polyhistors. We must include Martianus Capella as a continuation of the "Renaissance of the Second Sophistic into Early Christian Encyclopedism" [End Page 660] ("Renaissance der Zweiten Sophistik bis in die frühchristliche Enzyklopädie hinein," p. 18).Häfner's approach is starkly original and, in my opinion, highly productive for the current debates about early modern encyclopedism and "cultures of knowledge" that are sometimes deadlocked.3 Too frequently, polymathy is used synonymously for encyclopedism, which is often associated with modern concepts of systematic classification. Yet, according to Häfner, this is a misunderstanding. It neglects the playful elements and skillful rhetorical options of throwing questions out into the open rather than narrowing them dogmatically. Perhaps the only addition to Häfner's sources could have been Louis de Cressolles's Theatrum veterum Rhetorum, which, according to Marc Fumaroli in L'age de l'éloquence, marked the return of the Second Sophistic.4 The analysis of the work of Gerhard Johannes Vossius, a classical philologist who resided in Leyden and Amsterdam, is the first test for Häfner... (shrink)

A Companion to Medieval Christian Humanismexplores Christian humanism in the writings of key medieval thinkers. It explores questions pertaining to human dignity, the human person's place in the cosmos, and the educational ideals involved in shaping the human person.

Abstract. A possible consequence of the dialogue between science and religion is a revived religious humanism—a firmer grasp of the historical and phenomenological meanings of the great world religions correlated with the more accurate explanations of the rhythms of nature that natural science can provide. The first great expressions of religious humanism in the West emerged when Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scholars sat in the same libraries in Spain and Sicily, studying and translating the lost manuscripts of Aristotle in (...) the ninth and tenth centuries to understand his ethics, epistemology, and psychobiology. In our day, the science-religion dialogue—exemplified by interaction among psychology, spirituality, and psychotherapy—will best support such a revival if guided by the philosophical resources of critical hermeneutics (sometimes called hermeneutical realism) supplemented by William James's brand of phenomenology and pragmatism. Here, I develop primarily the contributions of Paul Ricoeur to hermeneutic realism and his unique ability to find a place for the natural sciences within hermeneutic phenomenology in his formula of understanding-explanation-understanding. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume treat aspects and manifestations of this cultural symbiosis, and they throw new light on authors and texts both more and less ...

The recent retrieval of Christian humanism by Charles Taylor and Nicholas Boyle invites further theological elaboration; in particular, to clarify the relationship between their humanist concern for the common good and their Christian desire for religious transcendence. Jacques Maritain provides some such elaboration by grounding Christian humanism on the doctrine of the Incarnation. This article complements that foundation through a consideration of the Thomistic doctrine of hope, which describes how the believer approaches God under the aspect of (...) the human good. Hope therefore includes, in a single virtue, the two potentially disparate elements of contemporary Christian humanism. Concluding reflections on recent interpretations of Vatican II and on religious fundamentalism give some historical substance to this theoretical claim. (shrink)

The author suggests that the intellectual life of Étienne Gilson constituted a new humanism, that Gilson’s scholarly work was part of a new renaissance, that a new humanism that Gilson thought is demanded by the precarious civilizational crisis of the modern West after World Wars I and II. He also argues that, more than anything else, Gilson was a renaissance humanist scholar who consciously worked in the tradition of renaissance humanists before him, but did so to expand our understanding of (...) the notion of “renaissance” scholarship and to create his own brand of Christian humanism to deal with problems distinctive to his age. The author shows the specificity of the Christian humanism that Gilson developed as part of his distinctive style of doing historical research and of philosophizing. (shrink)

Since the early 1980s, there has been renewed scholarly interest in the concept of Christian Humanism. A number of official Catholic documents have stressed the importance of 'Christian humanism', as a vehicle of Christian social teaching and, indeed, as a Christian philosophy of culture. Fundamentally, humanism aims to explore what it means to be human and what the grounds are for human flourishing. Featuring contributions from internationally renowned Christian authors from a variety of disciplines in (...) the humanities, Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism recovers a Christian humanist ethos for our time. The volume offers a chronological overview and individual examples of past Christian humanisms. The chapters are connected through the theme of Christian paideia as the foundation for liberal arts education. (shrink)

The new Christian humanism is not about concepts and theories. It is a mystical experience of the centrality of Jesus Christ, of His face of mercy, of love given and delivered. Love is the gift that we must accept and respond to with love, especially with an ethic of love that makes us stand in solidarity with nature, with each other, and with the poor in a special way. We are a gift that is communicated. We must use the (...) resources of science, technology, and educational advances without fear, but always looking at human beings as the goal of our action. Everything is summarized in an integral ethic of loving care, in which women are experts and especially women religious in the church . (shrink)

As an eminent practical theologian, Don S. Browning watched religious belief and practice interact with the larger culture for a long time, especially in regard to issues of personal and family well-being. As Alexander Campbell Professor Emeritus of Ethics and the Social Sciences at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, he also lived in the midst of currents and controversies in academic philosophy, theology, and other disciplines. As a result, his work is distinguished by its alertness to a (...) variety of endeavors including medicine and the sciences.From the vantage point of his years of work and thought, Browning perceived that certain critical interactions, social and intellectual, are currently .. (shrink)

At the end of his life, Stuart Hall called for the reengagement of Cultural Studies and Marxism. This paper contributes to this task. It analyses Stuart Hall’s works on communication and the media.The goal of the paper is to read Stuart Hall in a manner that can inform the renewal of Marxist Humanism and the development of a Marxist-Humanist theory of communication. This involves reconstructing elements of Hall’s approach, criticising certain aspects of his work, and through this engagement developing new (...) theory elements.The article’s analysis of Stuart Hall’s theory of communication and the media is conducted in four steps. First, the paper reengages and re-evaluates what Hall called the two paradigms of Cultural Studies: Structuralism and “Culturalism”/Humanism. It discusses the role of human agency in society. Second, the paper engages with Hall’s and Althusser’s notions of articulation and sets the notion of articulation in relation to the concept of communication. Third, it discusses the relationship between communication and work in the context of Hall’s works. Fourth, the article revisits and engages with Hall’s encoding/decoding-model in the context of digitalisation.This paper grounds a dialectical concept of communication that is based on the dialectic of articulating and articulatedness, the dialectic of work and communication, as well as the dialectic of communication in the public sphere and society’s power forcefields. It shows how a critical, dialectical theory of communication benefits from engagement with Stuart Hall’s works. The present work argues with, for, against, and beyond Stuart Hall in order or productively draw on ideas that emerge from this engagement. (shrink)

"Oser examines the twentieth-century literary clash between a dogmatically relativist modernism and a robust revival of Christian humanism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cervantes in Italy:Christian Humanism and the Visual Impact of Renaissance RomeFernando CervantesToward the end of 1569, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, Miguel de Cervantes arrived in Rome to serve as chamberlain to the young monsignor Giulio de Acquaviva, soon to be made a cardinal by Pope Pius V.1 The event marked the beginning of a six-year sojourn about which surprisingly little is known with certainty. From scattered semiautobiographical (...) references we can infer that Cervantes traveled widely and that he developed a particular fondness for Italy. We know for sure that he fought bravely against the Turks at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he received wounds that rendered his left arm useless for the rest of his life, and that he remained in service as a soldier, based in Italy, until his ill-fated attempt to return to Spain in 1575. Ten years later, in the dedication of his pastoral romance La Galatea to Ascanio Colonna, he reminded his dedicatee that the reverence he had for him did not only stem from having served under his illustrious father, the famous general Marco Antonio Colonna, but also from the many things that he had heard Cardinal Acquaviva say, "like prophesies," about him in Rome. There follows a brief encomium about the "noble virtues," "magnificence," "goodness," and "Christianity" that sustain the "clear and generous line" of the Colonnas, known to all for the "virtuous and heroic deeds" that have been their mark since time immemorial.2 Some of Cervantes's best lyric poetry dates from these years. In it, as in the rest of his work, the unmistakable mark of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Ariosto, and Bembo, to name but the most explicit ones, leaves us in little doubt about his genuine love of Italian literature.For good reasons, modern biographers have been loath to take these scattered [End Page 325] references too candidly. Can we, for example, assume that Cervantes had more than a very superficial acquaintance with the Colonnas and the Acquavivas? Could a writer still widely regarded as a self-taught, untutored mind realistically have attracted the favors of some of the most illustrious Roman and Neapolitan noble families? More pointedly, is it safe to take the varied and abundant observations about Italy scattered throughout his works as reliable reflections of his own personal experiences? After all, between the latter and the written page there is a time lag often approaching forty years. Add to this the weight of subsequent intellectual influences and of literary conventions, of novelistic invention and of the viewpoints of the characters themselves, and we are left on rather shaky ground. As Jean Canavaggio has remarked, it is not Cervantes the keen visual observer, but rather Cervantes the devoted reader of Boccaccio and the novellieri who brings Italy and Italian themes into his fiction. Even the memorable descriptions of Italian cities to be found in some of his novelas are rather formulaic passages, perfectly in tune with the rhetorical canons of the time.3Our topic, however, is not biography but intellectual history; and here we can afford to be more candid. There can be no doubt that many of Cervantes's descriptions have the unmistakable ring of genuine experience. Take Tomás Rodaja's arrival, "soaked, sleep-deprived and with bags under the eyes," in Genoa's "sheltered Mandraccio,"4 where he becomes acquainted withthe smoothness of the Trebbiano, the fullness of the Montefiascone, the strength of the Asperino, the generosity of the Greeks Candia and Soma, the grandeur of the one from the Five Vineyards, the sweetness and mellowness of the lady Vernaccia, the rustic touch of the Centola, while the lowly one from Rome dared not appear in the presence of such illustrious gentlemen.5Charmed by the gallantry of the Genoese, Rodaja leaves by land for Rome, "the queen of cities and mistress of the world." "Just as the size and ferocity of a lion can be gauged by its claws," Cervantes observed,so Rome's greatness became manifest by its broken marbles, its statues..., its fallen arches and ruined baths, its magnificent porticoes and large amphitheatres, its famous and sacred river whose waters... (shrink)

What is a person? This fundamental question is a perennial concern of philosophers and theologians. But, Christian Smith here argues, it also lies at the center of the social scientist’s quest to interpret and explain social life. In this ambitious book, Smith presents a new model for social theory that does justice to the best of our humanistic visions of people, life, and society. Finding much current thinking on personhood to be confusing or misleading, Smith finds inspiration in critical (...) realism and personalism. Drawing on these ideas, he constructs a theory of personhood that forges a middle path between the extremes of positivist science and relativism. Smith then builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and William Sewell to demonstrate the importance of personhood to our understanding of social structures. From there he broadens his scope to consider how we can know what is good in personal and social life and what sociology can tell us about human rights and dignity. Innovative, critical, and constructive,_ What Is a Person?_ offers an inspiring vision of a social science committed to pursuing causal explanations, interpretive understanding, and general knowledge in the service of truth and the moral good. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 5, Page 1029-1030, September 2022.

In this article, I demonstrate that the term ‘ubuntu’ has frequently appeared in writing since at least 1846. I also analyse changes in how ubuntu has been defined in written sources in the period 1846 to 2011. The analysis shows that in written sources published prior to 1950, it appears that ubuntu is always defined as a human quality. At different stages during the second half of the 1900s, some authors began to define ubuntu more broadly: definitions included ubuntu as (...) African humanism, a philosophy, an ethic, and as a worldview. Furthermore, my findings indicate that it was during the period from 1993 to 1995 that the Nguni proverb ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ (often translated as ‘a person is a person through other persons’) was used for the first time to describe what ubuntu is. Most authors today refer to the proverb when describing ubuntu, irrespective of whether they consider ubuntu to be a human quality, African humanism, a philosophy, an ethic, or a worldview. (shrink)

The task of this article is to outline foundations of a Marxist-humanist approach to communication justice, media justice, and digital justice. A dialectical approach to justice is outlined that di...