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This text lays out three distinct ways in which people who have been exposed to science are now responding to the following questions: “Does science rule out a personal God?” and “Is faith compatible with evolution?” The first kind of response claims that the natural sciences and religious faith are mutually exclusive. This is the conflict position. Its representatives include two main subgroups: (1) skeptics who believe that the natural sciences have made all religious claims unbelievable, and (2) people of faith who refuse to accept certain scientific ideas such as Big Bang cosmology and biological evolution. However, in the present text conflict refers only to scientific skeptics, those who claim that scientific method and discoveries now make religious faith and theology obsolete.A second type of response to the questions listed claims that science and faith are each concerned with different levels or dimensions of reality. Science and theology, according to this approach, ask completely different kinds of questions, and so it makes no sense to place them in competition with each other. The contrast approach, as we call it, maintains that there can be no real conflict between the claims of natural science and those of faith and theology. Contrast insists that faith and science are not competing for some common goal, so they cannot come into conflict with each other.A third approach is that of convergence. It might also be called “consonance,” “cooperation,” “contact,” or “conversation.” Convergence agrees with the contrast approach that religious faith and natural science are distinct ways of understanding the world, but it argues that the two inevitably interact. Convergence promotes this interaction. Its objective is to arrive at a synthesis in which both science and faith keep their respective identities while still relating closely to each other in a shared pursuit of intelligibility and truth. Convergence assumes that scientific discoveries matter to faith. In other words, scientific findings can make a significant difference in how we think about God and the meaning of our lives. Convergence wagers that science and faith, as long as they are not confused with each other, can together continue to a richer view of reality than either can achieve on its own.
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In the Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ, Numenius refines his definition of οὐσία step by step. He uses the word at first as a synonym of τὸ ὄν (15 F) and as another designation of being. Then, he associates it to the ἕξις when he refers to the specific οὐσία which possesses science (22 F): in all likelihood, this οὐσία is the intellect as the essence common to God and Man in the possession of science. Finally, Numenius gives οὐσία two aspects or sides which, in our opinion, represent two manners of conceiving the intelligible it constitutes: on the one hand, οὐσία comes from Being itself (the Good) and seems to represent the eidetic predicates or what we could name the “fundamental intelligibility”, a state in which the form is not determined yet, but which gives it the status of a real being ; on the other hand, οὐσία is the product of the second god and intellect and the determined aspect of the previous one, which makes it possible to distinguish the forms one from the other. In this last case, Numenius seems to name οὐσία more specifically ἰδέα, even if both words are elsewhere synonymous and used to refer to the two aspects previously mentioned according to the context in which they are employed. The paper presents the analysis of fragments 22 F, 24 F and 28 F from which we arrive at this interpretation. The distinction between two manners of conceiving οὐσία makes it possible then to discover two levels in the Being at the origin of each of them: Being itself (αὐτοόν which is the Good itself, αὐτοάγαθον) and the «second» or «just» Being, constituted by the good demiurge which is probably the “One who is good par excellence”.
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Review of: Izabela Jurasz - Vito Limone, Origene e la filosofia greca. Scienze, testi, lessico, coll. Letteratura Cristiana Antica. Nuova Serie 30, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2018
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The document The Cape Town Commitment: A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action document is one of the significant documents of evangelical Christianity that briefly addresses many important topics. One of such topics is discipleship. This article traces the theme of discipleship in the document and offers a theological reflection on the content and form of discipleship for contemporary evangelical Christianity. After introductory remarks and first part where the topic of discipleship in the document is addressed, in continuation, the article offers a theological reflection on the topic of discipleship. Hence, the second part discusses content and form of discipleship, while the third part explains the importance of discipleship arguing that discipleship (Matthew 28) is the channel through which God realizes the return of the original creational blessing that was promised to Abraham in Genesis 12. In the conclusion it is pointed out that if we want to take seriously the topic of discipleship from The Cape Town Commitment, the following is needed: a) to understand that discipleship is not after-school or extracurricular activity but a channel through which God wants to spread his redemptive blessing to all nations; b) in our local churches and academic institutions we need to return teaching by example, because various church or educational activities are part of the discipleship, but they are not a supplement for teaching by example; c) to redeem the term „Christian“ in a way that this term is only used for those who are „disciples.“
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Classical modern science posited the quantifiable world as the only one and consequently renounced the insights contained in the symbolic discourses of the revealed scriptures. The very idea that the self observing the so-called objective world can be excluded is inherently contradictory. Is observation of the external world in which the self of the observer plays no role even thinkable? A growing realisation of this across almost the full range of theoretical approaches to reality has led to introduction of the anthropo-cosmological principle. By contrast, contemporary philosphical and theological discourses often still deploy the modern constructs and modular language of scientism and consequently lacks insight into the potential of a postmodern deconstruction and reconstruction of our religious intellectual heritage. The talk will consider certain aspects of this question.
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What is the fate of philosophy in the age when the thought »is not in fashion«, and is not recommended neither? What is, then, the fate of theology in the age of widespreded religisation, i.e. de-secularization? There is no promising answer to these questions at sight for philosophers, as well as for theologists. But… is there a question that is more challenging in the age of overall corruption of the »philosophical«, the »theological«, and then the »political« itself? We are revisiting the thought of Walter Benjamin and his fragment »Capitalism as Religion« (1921). This is a part of his legacy that preserves revolutionary, messianic spirit of his philosophy (or, is it a part of his theology?). Sometimes, it could be reckoned that, in his case, we speak about »anti-philosophy«!? The heritage of Benjamin’s thought should serve us as some kind of plaidoyer for philosophy’s and theology’s redemption, by tracing something as post-metapysical politics. The paper follows the need of their interconnection, besides/beyond political theology.
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The sociological approach to the concept of creativity lacks some accuracy, since it is addressed from an a priori perspective and admitted without reflecting on what it means socially and culturally. In this connection, the present article tries to provide a specific description of the term from its genealogy and on the basis of the socio-cultural-historical context where it arises. More precisely, it deals with the idea conveyed by western myths, the narrative about the identification of the instituting generatrix forces or the procreative divinities that lie behind the birth of the cosmos, of the world, of society, of the earth, of gods, of humans, of animals, and of plants. Thus, from an interpretative examination of the myths about Mother Goddess, those about Biblical Genesis, as well as of Greek creation myths, an attempt will be made to draw a conceptual map that delimits the most defining features of creativity (1). The ultimate goal is to check whether such characters have survived to the present day (2).
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The concept of mystical experience is defined today as an experience of uniting with the Ultimate Reality, which is named as Absolute, God and Nothingness, in a pure and direct way. The aforementioned definition is relatively new since this concept had been used by Christian saints to mean “attaining religious truths” until about the 19th century. In the 19th century, mystical experiences were associated with psychosomatic illnesses and that mystics were considered as being part of deviant religious movements. By the 20th century, however, new academic debates emerged claiming that mystical experience was a universal phenomenon and that it could be understood independent of religion as a separate a phenomenon. Undoubtedly, William James (1842-1910) was the leading philosopher who uniquely contributed to these debates claiming that mystical experience, which had been accepted as a state of illness, was a valuable element of human experience. In an age where materialistic naturalism was rising and the understanding that science and religion contradict one another was prevalent, James asserted that the idea of an individual religion against materialism, which depends on mystical experience and does not conflict with the idea of nature in his well-known work, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. This claim of James is rooted in the objective/phenomenological analysis of mystic experience.In his work, James discusses various narrations of mystic experience as a phenomenon. James’s examination of firsthand mystical experiences includes two stages. Firstly, he determines four basic characteristics of mystical experience and creates a typology based on these common characteristics. These four characteristics of the mystical state of consciousness are ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity. James considers mystical experience with these characteristics as being the mystical consciousness of the Unseen Order. He comes to three conclusions regarding the experience as the mystic consciousness of Unseen Order: 1. Experience is real for the individual who experiences it. 2. It does not have an effect on the one who does not experience it. 3. These experiences are the explicit proof for the existence of the supernatural. James’s work has been considered significant for the reasons that it puts experience as the proof for the supernatural and makes the experience as one of the subjects of philosophy. With a holistic approach to James’ understanding, it becomes apparent that mystic experience has a special role in his philosophy. The current study focuses on James’ mystical experience analysis. The aim of this study is to examine how James’ explanations of mystical experience relate to his philosophy. The main claim of this paper is that James does not conduct an objective investigation based on phenomena as indicated in his research of mystical experience, but instead offers a philosophical explanation of mystical experience in the context of his philosophical system. Fort this purpose, the study consists of three parts together with an introduction. In the first part, James’s journey of thought until he wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience is discussed in relation to his studies of consciousness, his understanding of radical empiricism and pragmatism, and his orientation to religious studies. In the second part, his thoughts on mystical experience and his conclusions are discussed using his methods. And finally, in the last part, it is explained how James’s thoughts are the key determinants in determining the essential characteristics of mystical experience, in defining it as “the experience of consciousness”, in positioning it as the source of religious experience, and in interpreting the consequences of experience. Thus, this study shows that his interpretation of mystical experience, -although it is important as an effort to understand the phenomenon-, is a reflection of James’ philosophy of religion, rather than being a theory based on the inner dynamics of the phenomenon. While determining the features of experience and in his conclusions, James puts his philosophical system at the centre rather than the inner dynamics of phenomena. In the present study, it is also demonstrated that James uses experience with a specific meaning and reference and in this way of use, experience has no relation with God, the Absolute or spirit and thus experience has no intellectual quality and religion that depends on this ground has a thoroughly psychological and individual character.
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This article explores the oppositions and paradoxes of the representation of the story of Salome and John the Baptist in late nineteenth century French Symbolist poetics by basing the discussion on French dandyism and using Eliot Aronson’s concept of cognitive dissonance. It engages the literary and artistic representations of Salome in Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Á rebors, Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Hérodiade,” the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, artistic representations of Salome by Gustav Moreau, and the historical account of the death of John the Baptist by Flavius Josephus. I show how, in the late nineteenth century, French Symbolists reconciled issues between the “fallen institutions” of politics and religion by focusing on Salome and John the Baptist to illustrate the Dandy’s reconciliation and substitution of authority within Modernism.
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Complex and profound cosmological teachings have emerged in Islam on the bases of the Islamic sources but also on the bases of some indigenous worldviews of pre-Islamic societies. What makes the Islamic cosmology distinctly Islamic is the fact underlying the Qur’anic perspective that integrates and harmonises the borrowed concepts. The expression “Islamic cosmology” can generally be understood as worldview given in the Qur’an and the Hadith and is accepted explicitly or implicitly by majority of Muslims. More narrowly, it refers to the various theories of the universe that were developed by Muslim thinkers over the years. The author here presents some underlining premises of Islamic cosmological theories in attempt to illustrate the Islamic cosmos as viewed by the Muslim cosmologists. He relates about God and the universe, the two Arcs of existence. He talks about human beings within the cosmos as God’s vicegerents on earth keeping in mind that the fundamental aim of cosmology is to demonstrate how the divine attributes are manifested in macrocosm and in microcosm.
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Topics of the khilafat and Pan-Islamism were very much alive and popular in Muslim intellectual elite in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first half of the 20th century. Numerous works were written on these issues and many were translated from other languages with the aim of drawing the attention of general public with the purpose gaining their support for the concepts in matter. Of course, the views regarding these issues differed, but, nonetheless, the authors were quoting mostly same ayas of the Qur’an to which they gave their own interpretations. These issues reached the peak of popularity in 1924, when khilafat was abolished. What was achieved with this and what were the consequences thereof? How it was perceived in the Muslim world, especially amongst the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, what was the response, what solutions, primarily those that relied upon the first source of Islam, the noble Qur’an, were offered in attempts to resolve the situation? These are the questions that we attempt to answer in the present article.
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The text discusses certain loads of issues that are discussed in Religious pedagogy, such as its multivalent citations and pointing out the mistake of dogmatic theological understanding of understanding of its exclusive originality in Religious pedagogy. The article also presents this discipline as a source for a Transcendent inclination within Pedagogy as such.
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Abu Mu’in en-Nasafi said for Imam Maturidi that he is the best scholar who understood Abu Hanifah in both theoretical and practical laws of Islam (usul and furu’). That is why we can say that Imam Maturidi is the founder of sunni theology. Although he, in academic circles, earned his reputation as a mutekellim- a theologian after whom a school of theology has taken the name -Mathuridi’s school, he has, as a faithful follower of Abu Hanifa, directed his intellectual capacities towards three Islamic disciplines: (a) jurisprudence (usūl el-fikh); (b) theology (kelām) and (c) exegeses (tafsīr) – his work in this sphere is a tafsir bi diraye – Te’wilatul Qur’an. Thus, teachings and opinions of Imam Maturidi go all the way to Abu Hanifah wherefrom the silsilah (lineage) reaches Muhammad s.w.s. This is very significant because that lineage as well as Maturidi’s efforts to remain faithful to theological opinions and jurisprudence of Abu Hanifa demonstrate an unchanging and unanimous methodology in understandings of faith, starting from Muhammad s.w.s, then sahabies, tabiins and tabii-t-tabiins and all the way to the present day.
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Autor u ovom tekstu piše o govoru kao esencijalnom atributu Božijem koji se na različite načine manifestira: katkada kao bivstvodavna riječ Božija (kun), a katkada u obliku revelacije (Verbum Dei). I jedno i drugo predstavlja riječ Božiju za koju najprije treba sebe po mjeri Muhammedovog, a.s., standarda isprofilirati, da bi se mogla osluhnuti. Bog se u svom tvoračkom pregnuću, ističe autor, nikada ne ponavlja, to zato što su Riječi Božije nepotrošive, te nam se svijet u svakom trenu iznova podastire, mada mi nismo u stanju da to primijetimo. Baš kao što se Bog u dva trena nikada ne ponavlja, jednako tako naša srca u svakom trenu drukčije pulsiraju, u smjeru za koji se mi prethodno opredijelimo, te se, budući da su jedina dostatna primateljka Riječi Božije, shodno tome skupljaju ili šire.
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The Qur’anic narration about Adam a.s. as the origin of human kind is found in seven suras of the text: Al-Baqarah, Al- A’raaf, Al-Hijr, Al-Isra’, Al-Kehf, sura Taha and sura Saad. Each of these narratives contains its own methodology, context and particularity that distinct it from the other narratives but the core of these tales is common to all of the narratives and it points to one and the same incident. What is related concisely in one sura, is elaborated in another sura. All the mentioned suras are revealed in Macca, exept for the sura Al-Baqarah which is revealed in Madina. The Qur’anic suras revealed in Macca mostly relate to idol-worshipers, and those reveled in Madina are mainly addressing Muslims, people of the Book and munafikoons (hypocrites). Man that the Qur’an speaks of is marked by a perfect form, by Divine spirit breathed into him, by freedom of choice and by a capacity to learn, understand and progress. The Qur’anic style of narration and the truth revealed therein are the most apparent indicators of a super-natural character of the Qur’an.
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The Blessed Virgin Mary occupies a unique role in the history of salvation. This role is evidenced not only through the proclaimed dogma of the ecumenical and regional councils, but also through the religious consciousness of bishops, theologians and the entire people of God. The intention of this paper is to illuminate and demonstrate Šarić’s perception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her place and role in Christian tradition and Scripture, and his veneration of Our Lady and presentation of the Mother of Jesus to the faithful among the Croatian people, through his comments on the New Testament. In this paper, Šarić’s commentaries, which are of a popular and pastoral character, are compared with the commentary of the ecumenical New Testament, which enjoys the consensus of theologians and biblical scholars. The second and third parts of the paper show how the perception and veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, were actualized in the teaching service of the second Archbishop of Vrhbosna, Ivan Šarić, and at the end of the paper, concluding observations are made.
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This article catalogues the inauthentic strategies human beings employ to avoid confronting the inevitability of death. The identification of these inauthentic strategies provides the basis for considering two issues raised by “At a Graveside”, the third discourse in Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. Firstly, the article explores Kierkegaard’s notion of “earnestness” and his claim that it is only by learning to face death earnestly that human beings can live meaningful and worthwhile lives. Secondly, the article addresses the puzzle of the almost complete omission of Christian categories in “At a Graveside” by arguing that Kierkegaard has adopted an intentionally “this-worldly” strategy in order to avoid the Christian hope of an afterlife itself becoming an inauthentic strategy for addressing death. Christian categories can be introduced only after carrying out a preparatory non-Christian reflection on death, which creates the earnestness that is necessary if human beings are to live authentically in the face of the inevitability of death.
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“Stairways to Heaven: Klimakos and Climacus” is an investigation of an unusual instance in Kierkegaard’s use of names, an attempt to explain the fact that Kierkegaard, whose pseudonyms – generally speaking – cannot be linked to “real” people, made one exception, when he adopted the name Johannes Climacus, the Latin version of the Greek Ioannes Klimakos; and built a bridge between Klimakos – a historical Sinaite hermit (579-649) from Egypt – and his preferred pseudonym, Johannes Climacus – an anti-system Copenhagen student, poet, humorist. I believe that the author’s choice of his Climacus pseudonym, his use of the allegory of the mystical ladder to paradise, might be the result not only of historical facts and events contemporary to Kierkegaard, the prompting of providence, but also of a subtle mythical radiation that Kierkegaard was exposed to; that he was influenced by an unseen corpus of archetypes, religious and mythological motifs related to the idea of the purification of the soul through the body, and to that of a symbolic ladder of spiritual ascent, built in order to “facilitate the gods’ descent to earth, or ensure the ascent of the dead man’s soul”.
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I draw out from Kierkegaard’s work a critical perspective on evaluative frameworks that rely on a sharp distinction between agents and patients. In this perspective, human lives are shaped by complex entanglements of actions and sufferings. By abstracting away from this complexity, the agent/ patient dichotomy occludes important ethical phenomena. I focus here on one such phenomenon: ‘ambiguous guilt’. Ambiguous guilt arises from interdependencies between how individuals are passively formed, through what they suffer, and how they are actively formed as agents, through what they do. With reference both to the aesthetic perspective of tragic drama and also the religious idea of human sinfulness, I show how Kierkegaard’s work makes a case for our need for evaluative frameworks that remain properly responsive to experiences of ambiguous guilt.
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