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The notion of faith pervades the whole of Scripture, from Genesis to the end of ages, manifested both in God’s faithfulness to His word, from beginning to end, and in man’s response to the Creator. Faith as man’s answer is preceded or followed by the doubt that arises from the reduction to reasoning of human thought; it often stands in the way of divine revelations, of their acceptance as truths above rational knowledge. People tend to think that sooner or later they will doubt or have doubts about something they will later believe in.
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L’ouvrage de Clément d’Alexandrie, « Quel riche sera sauvé ? », est un commentaire sur le texte de Marc X, 17-31. Apparemment, ce n’était pas un discours prononcé devant son public. Le commentaire a été écrit pour les chrétiens riches d’Alexandrie, qui sont frappés par les paroles du Sauveur selon lesquelles « Il est plus facile à un chameau de passer par le trou d’une aiguille qu’à un riche de rentrer dans le royaume de Dieu » - se demandant s’ils peuvent être sauvés. Clément répond que la richesse en elle-même n’est ni bonne ni mauvaise, elle devient bonne ou mauvaise par rapport à son utilisation. Ce n’est pas la richesse qui est un obstacle au salut, mais les passions que la richesse les génère et les empêchent d’entrer dans le royaume de Dieu. Les riches ne doivent pas renoncer à leur richesse, mais à leurs passions.
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Thomas, l’un des Douze, n’était pas présent lorsque Jésus est apparu à ses compagnons apôtres (Jean 20 :24). Étant absent, il reste perplexe, découragé, désorienté et en même temps déçu par ce « veuvage ». C’est pourquoi, en guise de protestation, il pose certaines conditions, fixe des normes, fixe une série de tests : entendre, voir et ressentir. Il veut mettre ses doigts dans la marque des clous et la main dans la blessure causée est la lance du soldat qui a percé la côte de Jésus crucifié.
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L’apophatisme signifie le déni de toute imperfection en Dieu en surmontant tous les concepts qui ne peuvent pas comprendre Dieu, étant supérieur à Lui, mettant ainsi l’accent sur ce qui n’est pas Dieu. En ce sens, l’être de Dieu, étant avant tout être et toute dénomination, est avant tout ce qui peut s’exprimer à travers des concepts. Cependant, tant le cataphatisme que l’apophatisme sont submergés de manière absolue par le mystère ineffable et inconnaissable de l’être divin qui ne peut être défini par aucun concept, qu’il soit exprimé de manière affirmative ou négative. Mais la connaissance de Dieu ne devient pas irrationnelle, mais supranationale.
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In recent years, a number of Iraqi intellectuals have participated in a discourse on pluralism in Iraq that includes a call to address the traumatic collective experiences of the country’s ethno-religious minorities. Such a confrontation with the “wounded memory” of these minority groups – along with a rewriting of the modern history of Iraq to incorporate their stories – would be an important step in creating a new collective memory, one of cultural pluralism, that could lead to a true coexistence among all Iraqis. Since it is very difficult to carry out this process due to deep sectarian divisions within Iraqi society, literature provides an alternative cultural field for the deconstruction and reformulation of existing “master narratives”. The purpose of the article is to examine literary representations of the “wounded memory” of minorities in Iraq. The examples used here are related to the 1915–1916 Armenian genocide in the former Ottoman Empire and the 1933 massacre of Assyrians in the northern Iraqi village of Simele. They can be found in the following novels written in Arabic by Iraqi authors of Christian origin: Aṭ-Ṭuyūr al-‘amyā’ (The Blind Birds, 2016) by Laylā Qaṣrānī, Sawāqī al-qulūb (The Streams of Hearts, 2005) by In‘ām Kaǧaǧī, ‘Irāqī fī Bārīs: sīra ḏātiyya riwā’iyya (An Iraqi in Paris: An Autobiographical Novel, 2005) by Ṣamū‘īl Šam‘ūn, and Fī intiẓār Faraǧ Allāh al-Qahhār (Waiting for Farag Allah al-Qahhar, 2006) by Sa‘dī al-Māliḥ. This article is divided into three sections. An introduction is devoted to the aforementioned discourse. The second and solely descriptive section consists of three subsections focusing on literary characters who experience and/ or witness the tragic events and/or tell others about them. The third section contains concluding remarks and refers to several concepts formulated by researchers in cultural memory studies.
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Book Review: R. Alan Culpepper – Jörg Frey (eds.), The Opening of John’s Narrative (John 1:19 – 2:22), (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 385, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017)
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We learn from the texts of the Holy Scriptures and contemplations of the Holy Fathers that man was created in the image and likeness of God adorned with virtues. Resting in the Garden of Eden, the man's mind was set on contemplation of God, abounding in divine images. Dominated by the spirit, man was living in a particular state of joy and happiness. God shared him from His state of goodness, endowing him with all the spiritual and material sweetness. Man's fall into sin was a consequence of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, tempted by the cunning devil disguised in primordial snake. The expel of Adam from heaven identifies with the process of humanity restoration the heavenly Father started at the gates of the biblical garden, promising to the first inhabitants of the earth to help them find the way back to their lost home, by sending in this world the Redeemer.
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The hypostatic or personal union (enosis ipostatiki) is the wreath and the bondbetween man and God. The consequences of the hypostatic union form the objectof most of the hymns from the cultic treasure of the Eastern Church. Thetheandric person of our Saviour Jesus Christ is intrinsically present under oneform or the other in all the hymns of our Church. Kenosis represents one of theconsequences of the hypostatic union and a profound expression of God’ssupreme love for mankind. The Orthodox teaching - both in dogma and in divineservice - is against a radical kenosis that would nullify the sense of Jesus’Embodiment as overflowing of the divine energies in the world and in mankind
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Mediation is generally a terrestrial element. In heaven, we will see God face toface through the beatific vision. There will be no mediation because we will bethere face to face with God. However, in our present life, it has pleased God toreveal himself to us in a mediated way. He has done this through different meanswhich we call medium of God’s communication to the human person. Thismediation happens in the context of the world – in the existential categories oflife. Mediation takes place in this world – in our daily experiences. This agreesvery much with the existentialism of Heidegger but without neglecting thetranscendental categories of Kant.
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The central difference between the Orthodox teaching and the Catholic oneregarding the Church comes from the conception regarding its foundation. In theCatholic conception, the visible Church was founded before the Pentecost, on thetestimony of Saint Peter the Apostle, and at Pentecost only the invisible Churchwould have been added. The entire conception about the hierarchy, in the RomanCatholic Church, is strictly juridical. In reality, as the Orthodox theology testifies,the essence of the ecclesial hierarchy is charismatic, not juridical. This is whatthe great difference to the Catholic teaching consists in. The Eastern theologymakes no abstraction of jurisdiction and canon law, yet, jurisdiction depends ongrace, not grace on jurisdiction, contrary to what some Western Churchtheologians would suggest in certain works such as those belonging to theWestern Theology.
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As a prominent Church father, mystical theologian and incisive polemicist, St.Gregory Palamas has realized a «Summa Theologica» of his epoch, but one that hassurpassed not only the thinking of contemporaries, but remained, to this day, asynthesis of philosophical and theological knowledge, at least for the EasternChristianity. He pointed out with clarity the independence of theology fromphilosophy or from any other field of research. One of the most importantinstruments with a view to knowing God is prayer and Palamas began to write underthe pressure of defending the hesychastic method of prayer. He proves that truecommunion with God was possible through sanctification and that God's visionthrough prayer was a sign of this spiritual communion. In Palamas' very coherenttheological thinking, Christology corresponds to his anthropology, and both to hismysticism. St. Gregory strongly depreciated the value of intellectual effort,maintaining the primacy of direct illumination over scientific reasoning. Thus,prayer and asceticism engender love, which leads to illumination by God andparticipation in the divine life. He tries to make sense of mystical experience in thescientific and philosophical language of his day. Paradoxically, almost every attemptarrives at establishing that the spiritual cannot be grasped by man's naturalintellectual capacity, nor expressed in philosophical language. But the spiritual mancan be the partaker of this experience through the experience of grace, as divineuncreated energy, the true "face" of God accessible to human contemplation. TheArchbishop of Thessaloniki, who realized a synthesis of Science, Theology, andSpirituality outlines the relation between them as follows: Science explores the worldand leads to technological inventions; Theology interprets reality within theChristian framework, evidencing the glory of God as reflected throughout hiscreation; and Spirituality is the privileged path toward personal transformation. Thedebate about Palamism is likely to continue for some time. His version of theosis(deification) was enshrined in Orthodox teaching as a result of his canonization, butamong the intellectuals for whom it was intended it remained controversial, despiteits grandeur.
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The notion of divine image is generously described by the patristic literature,each of the authors trying to identify the content of this special characteristic ofhuman being, considered (in different positions) the defining element of thecreated rational being, indicating the possibility of opening to God not throughsomething external, but from the inside of the human being. Since when theyspeak of God, the Church Fathers do not consider the reality of the one being, butthat of the three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as whenthe question of the image of God is raised, they emphasize that this the image bywhich human nature is conformed is the image of the Son, or the image of theWord. In this article I set out to draw some points on this patristic feature of theEastern Fathers.
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Dnes prakticky nikomu nic neřekne jméno Karla Jäniga, duchovního správce – administrátora u kostela sv. Jana Nepomuckého na Skalce v Praze na Novém Městě. Narodil se roku 1835 na samotě Dobler u vesničky Bělá, nedaleko jihočeské Kaplice, v německé rodině myslivce na panství hraběte Buquoye. Vystudoval v Praze, kde se také naučil výborně česky. Znalost druhého zemského jazyka, jak se tehdy říkalo, mu otevřela cestu do českých vlasteneckých kruhů.
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This article is dedicated to synodal activities, that is, the celebration of provincial councils and diocesan synods, in the Czech lands. It shows that they were rather exceptional. This was caused both by the then legislation of canon law based on contemporary ecclesiology and by ecclesiastical-political circumstances, but also by the development of other structures of coordination and cooperation, especially the establishment of other advisory bodies of the diocesan bishop after Vatican Council II. Since the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law of 1917, only one proper diocesan synod has been held in Brno, in 1934. Further, after the plenary council of the Church in the Czech Republic (1997–2005), only one attempt was made for the diocesan synod in the Diocese of Ostrava-Opava, which resulted in an informal ‘Little Priestly Synod’ of 2013, which was the maximum attainable.
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6. února 2021 odešel na věčnost Mons. Václav Kulhánek, emeritní kancléř Biskupství českobudějovického, dlouholetý soudce Interdiecézního soudu a poté Metropolitního soudu v Praze. Zemřel zaopatřen svatými svátostmi v Domě sv. Františka ve Veselí nad Lužnicí.
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The review of: Dominique Henneresse: Ordres et décorations du Saint-Siège; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Stát vatikánského města, 2019, 554 s., ISBN 978-88-266-0241-7.
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