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Christian philosophers often use moral agents to explain the existence of evil. The fall of human beings can be used in explanations of moral evil, and some have posited the existence of angels to explain natural evil. The latter proposal, which has been labelled "the Satan hypothesis," has faced substantial criticism. Here, I do not dismiss the Satan hypothesis, but present cosmopsychism, the idea that the universe is conscious, as an alternative way of using moral agents to explain natural evil for those skeptical of the Satan hypothesis. After introducing cosmopsychism into this debate and outlining how it can be used instead of the Satan hypothesis, I consider how it can provide an explanation of natural evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the formation and characterization of early modern addiction through the interactions of mind, body, and will, focusing particularly on the work of the sixteenth-century Christian philosopher Pierre de La Primaudaye. In La Primaudaye's writings addiction is a wholly internalized behavior, the product of repeated interactions within the mind. Intended for the purpose of cultivating virtuous behaviors, these interactions could become corrupted, resulting in negative addictions formed between overwhelming passions, a clouded judgment, and an inflexible will. The specific types of addiction a person inclined toward were determined by a host of variables, including temperament, age, and gender. As this article reveals, in early modern accounts of addicted behavior young men were associated with lust and old men with contemplation, while women were considered more vulnerable to all addictions, virtuous and sinful. The image of addiction that emerges from this examination is one not of a disease or a disorder, but of a natural function of the body that could on occasion be led astray. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present article is to outline a pentecostal model of special divine action by combining the work of Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith and the pentecostal theologian Amos Yong. The past discussions in SDA can be characterized by a lack of pneumatology. Pentecostalism, on the other hand, is strongly committed to the active work of the Holy Spirit in the world today, beyond the Spirit's work in general providence. Thus, pentecostalism, with its pneumatological nature and commitment to SDA, will present us with a view of SDA which gives the Spirit a fitting role. If the pentecostal position proves itself a viable option in its conversation with the sciences, it will serve as a fruitful perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cauriensia: Revista Anual de Ciencias Eclesiásticas is the property of Instituto Teologico San Pedro de Alcantara de Caceres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the view of Romano Guardini, a Catholic philosopher, on the role of music in liturgy. The article says that Guardini believed in the importance of Gregorian chant in the transcendent nature of the liturgy and criticized those who sought only the aesthetic aspects of liturgical music, emphasizing that beauty has a solid foundation in truth.

Defining death as irreversible cardio‐circulatory arrest connects death with ability to resuscitate, raises ethical issues about heart‐transplants, and tells us rather when death occurs than what it is. I consider whether death is ceasing to exist, whether immortality is natural for human beings, and whether spatio‐temporal continuity is necessary for being the same person. That immortality is natural is alien to Jewish thinking in the Bible, where the idea of existence after death developed only with that of God's transcendent existence. Plato's definition of death as the separate existence of soul and body is grounded on his analysis of intelligence. Christian philosophers now accept that intelligence evolved out of sentience and sentience out of inanimate matter; so they may prefer the Jewish view that existence after death is a gift from God dependent on faith; Aquinas perhaps thought faith stands to natural intelligence much as natural intelligence stands to sentience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, one of the world's leading advocates for religious freedom shares what he has learned from three of modern history's greatest Christian political philosophers: 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, Dutch lawyer and statesman Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, and British apologist C. S. Lewis. The article offers practical principles with plenty of application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how the just war theory (bellum iustum) emerged from traditional concepts in Cicero and Aristotle, but developed significantly in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Just war theory borders on ethics, political and social philosophy, and theology. It was studied by Christian philosophers of medieval provenance, politicians, military commanders and lawyers. The basic premise of this doctrine is that war can be justified in moral terms. While human morality recognizes war to be a terrible experience, the just war tradition holds that it may be considered as a reasonable denouement. It can lead to the lessening of greater evils and the prevention of greater cruelty or violence threatening people and states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses French poet Paul Claudel's relationship with the Christian philosophers including Édouard Le Roy and Jacques Maritain of his time. Topics include the need to understand the Catholic revival to identify the relationships that Claudel had with the Christian philosophers; the Revolution and his desire to substitute a new Christian society for it; and awareness of the conflict between Catholicism and modernity and the same search for a solution.

The article begins by laying out two reasons why much of contemporary theology and scriptural studies are weak in their impact for Christ: these disciplines are often done in isolation from the broader cultural issues facing the church and their results are not presented as knowledge of reality. I argue that an important solution to this problem is for theological and scriptural scholars to appropriate the findings of Christian philosophy and do integrative work with Christian philosophers in their intellectual projects. Next, I state and illustrate four ways that Christian philosophy and philosophers can serve their colleagues in theology and scriptural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baumol's cost disease explains rising costs in education without corresponding increase in productivity. The philosophical meaning of it is in the phenomenon of relational labor that is at the core of education. Its productivity remains constant while cost increases. The total size of education as a non-progressive sector will continue to expand, while progressive sectors of economy will shrink. To avoid large social crises associated with defunding of public education, we must conceive of a cultural shift where relationality becomes the end, while learning—a means of education. The author uses the theory of Trinity developed by early Christian philosophers to construct a framework for such a shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the fundamental claim of on inscrutable beliefs, truth related to the singularity, exclusiveness. Topics include believes of Richard Dawkins, modern rationalists on expiation of religious beliefs in a world by the natural science; thought of William Blake on imagination related to true and unconstrained Christianity and framing of theoretical and practical models for the coexistence and communication of opposing truths by the embodied paradoxes.

An essay is presented on Donald W. Shriver's views on the ethics of forgiveness in politics, and other works. The author maps out the goals of this essay which include an overview of Shriver's main propositions, a critique of his thesis, and suggestions for areas of research by business scholars. Also mentioned is how forgiveness was demonstrated to Germany and Japan after World War II.

Copyright of Rocznik Teologii Katolickiej is the property of University of Bialystok and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At a 2011 meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, N. T. Wright offered four reasons for rejecting the existence of soul. This was surprising, as many Christian philosophers had previously taken Wright's defense of a disembodied intermediate state as a defense of a substance dualist view of the soul. In this paper, I offer responses to each of Wright's objections, demonstrating that Wright's arguments fail to undermine substance dualism. In so doing, I expose how popular arguments against dualism fail, such as (1) dualism is merely an unwarranted influence of Greek culture on Christianity, and (2) substance dualism is merely a soul‐of‐the‐gaps hypothesis. Moreover, I demonstrate that Wright himself has offered a powerful reason for adopting substance dualism in his previous works. In conclusion I offer a view that explains why the human soul needs a resurrected body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article elucidates a unique metaethical theory implicit in the work of several thinkers associated with the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. After positioning that theory within a broader landscape of metaethical positions endorsed by several prominent contemporary Christian philosophers and theologians, we address the concern that, when attending to the Euthyphro dilemma, the Restoration-inspired combination metaethical theory inevitably collapses into either an unalloyed divine command theory or an unalloyed natural law theory. In explaining how this sort of worry can be mitigated, we offer reason to think that the nonreductive, combination metaethical theory in question constitutes potentially fertile territory for further scholarly work in Christian ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African Initiated Churches (AICs) in South Africa developed and grew during the 20th century to eventually become representative of the majority of Christians in the country. Much of this growth occurred during Apartheid. The fact that AICs emphasized their independence from White control is significant for various reasons. However, this article mainly concentrates on the irony of the fact that AICs were for the most part regarded as heretical sects by White Apartheid ideologues, despite the fact that the 'Separatists,' as AICs were often described, would seem in retrospect ideally placed for potential appropriation within the context of Apartheid. Indeed, in the mid-1980s, a serious attempt at appropriation from the side of government did occur. The Afrikaner, primarily Dutch Reformed Church discourse, is considered focusing on the 1930s, the late 1960s to early 80s, and then the article gives close attention to the year 1985 when the State President P. W. Botha visited Zion City Moria, headquarters of the Zion Christian Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars who examine the possible influence of scholastic writers on Crescas' treatment of the existence of multiple worlds have thus far focused on Nicole Oresme's Latin and French works. It is proposed here that Crescas may have been influenced by Thomas Aquinas' treatment of the multiple worlds. More specifically, Crescas' first two arguments for the existence of multiple worlds, presented in the fourth treatise of Or Hashem, are compared with Aquinas' arguments in his quaestioon the issue in the Summa Theologica. Given that these arguments share a common structure and appear in the same order in both works, it is plausible that Crescas relied on by Aquinas. The differences between them can be explained largely by Crescas' desire to adapt Aquinas' proofs to suit his own treatment of creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature of the educational good as it appears in late antiquity, arguing that the ‘good’ variously promised by education is in a state of perpetual deferral. This extends the tradition of ancient Greek philosophy where wisdom is to be forever approached but never realised. Three exemplary cases are considered: the educational good as it appears under the auspices of the Roman tutor; as it is manifested in Christian baptismal practices; and as it is practiced in early Christian monasticism. To lure willing subjects into an educational relationship whose fruits will ultimately never be realised, the educator must respectively employ techniques of seduction, suspicion and diversion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Romanitas: Revista de Estudos Greco-Latinas is the property of Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Evolution as a theory is today proclaimed widely, accepted by many as a fact and is often reflected even in South Africa in prescribed textbooks for schools and universities. The main question to be discussed in this reflection is whether the idea of evolution always remains a mere theory. Does it not often, even unintentionally, eventually develop into an evolutionistic faith or worldview and thus would become to Christians an unacceptable worldview? Different contemporary secular thinkers openly acknowledge the dependence of their theory of evolution upon an agnostic or an atheistic faith and/or, vice versa, their evolutionary theory leading toward unbelief. Some Christian-reformed natural scientists (1) clearly rejected the hypothesis of evolution, including an evolutionistic worldview. Others (2), again including those from the reformed Christian tradition, are of the opinion that, after God (before time) created everything, reality unfolded or developed under His guidance. In the case of a third group of (3) Christian evolutionary scientists it seems as if the compromise or synthesis which they tried to achieve between their Christian convictions and their scientific hypotheses could not be achieved. Finally they had to choose in favour of the one or the other. A first article (cf. Van der Walt, 2016a) already discussed these varying and even clashing viewpoints among Christians. It focussed on the position of an earlier, well-known reformed theologian from the Netherlands (Abraham Kuyper) and a South African Christian philosopher (Hendrik Stoker). A second contribution on the same issue (cf. Van der Walt, 2016b) shifted attention to the viewpoints of three biologists from the reformed Christian circle, viz. Harry Diemer, Duyvené de Wit and Jan Lever. The first two of them may be regarded as representatives of position (2) above, while the third initially belonged to (2) but after about 1970 gradually developed towards (3). The present article follows Lever's thinking from about the seventies up to 2010. An increasing tension developed between his Christian belief in the Bible, and God as Creator and his zoological research according to an evolutionary paradigm. It gradually becomes evident that he ascribed such weight and even revelationary power to his scholarly results that it eventually clashed and overpowered his Christian worldview, replacing it with an evolutionistic world-picture or even a (semi-)evolutionistic worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hellenization of Christianity is a long-standing and notoriously contentious historiographical construct in early Christian studies. While it has been deployed in surprisingly fluid ways, most scholars associate the thesis with Adolf von Harnack, for whom it acquired a decidedly critical valence. The “Hellenic spirit”—a concept Harnack usually left undefined—constituted a threat to the undogmatic gospel of Jesus. Whenever this adversarial Hellenic spirit triumphed, as it inevitably did, it corroded an authentic living Christianity into an institutionalized, dogmatic religion. For many others, both before and after Harnack, the Hellenization of Christianity has signaled a similar narrative of decline. The teachings and way of life that marked an authentic Christianity often stood in a disjunctive relationship with Greco-Roman culture, especially its philosophies. The influence of the latter precipitated a debasement of Christianity, the ossification of its teachings, or more seriously, the infiltration of heresy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the author's reply to comments in response to his article in favor of British writer C.S. Lewis' apologetic Trilemma argument for the deity of Jesus Christ. The author believes that Lewis' argument as presented in the book "Mere Christianity" assumes without argument that Jesus claims to be God. According to the author, the main point of disagreement seems to be over how strong the case for Jesus' claims to deity actually is.

The article presents the author's reply to comments by Dolad Williams in response to his article favoring British writer C.S. Lewis' apologetic Trilemma argument for the deity of Jesus Christ. According to the author, Williams and Lewis take Jesus' professed authority to forgive sins as an implicit claim to Deity that Jesus later made explicit. The author believes that Jesus claimed to be merely the unique Son of God, Son of Man, and Messiah, which makes Lewis' Trilemma Argument a failure.

We may correctly say that Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most influential Christian-religious thinkers of the modern era, but are we equally justified in categorizing his writings as foundationally religious? This paper challenges a prevailing exclusive-theological interpretation that contends that Kierkegaard principally writes from a Christian dogmatic viewpoint. I argue that Kierkegaard's religion is better understood as an outcome of his philosophical analysis of human nature. Conclusively, we should appreciate Kierkegaard first as a philosopher, whose aim is the explication of human subjectivity, and not primarily as an orator of Christian orthodoxy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores connections between the psychic anthropology of C. G. Jung and that of Maximus the Confessor, a 7th-century Eastern Christian philosopher. Both saw the ability to fully bear one's experiences without avoidance through fantasy as a key to human health and the target of therapy. Maximus understood avoidance of experience as a partly conscious turning of the self away from God in order to create fantastic fields of control, and Jung understood the phenomenon as a movement of the unconscious motivated by involuntary reactions to shadow material. Both encouraged humans to fully embrace reality in each moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the merits of introducing undergraduates to the philosophical thought of Augustine by means of his short dialogue On the Teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of sociality in Fijian evangelical Christianity differ from the mainline Fijian Methodist church in being notably less integrated with relations of vanua and chiefly hierarchy, leading scholars to speculate as to whether such traditions are more individualised. Analysing teachings, hymns, worship styles and spatial arrangements within a prominent Fijian Pentecostal ministry, I explore how sociality is produced through the interaction of spatial, conceptual, and embodied processes. Competing dynamics of hierarchy and equality, connections and boundaries, are mobilised within an overall framework that emphasises individual moral authority and personal relationship with God. Through this analysis, in conversation with previous studies, this paper argues for a critical examination of schemes of 'egalitarian individualism' and 'hierarchical holism', which, through the influence of Louis Dumont in particular, have been prominent in studies of Christianity and sociality in Oceania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide-ranging contributions to this special issue point to the extraordinary variety of Christian adherence around the world. In the light of this multiplicity, it has become increasingly important to develop frameworks that will allow us to conceptualize Christianity as a multifaceted, labile, but nevertheless identifiable object. Drawing together the concept of affordances, as used by Webb Keane in his contribution to this issue, as well as what I call "audiences," this afterword outlines a comparative framework for the study of Christianity. This framework is focused on Christian adherence as a form of value creation, worked out in contested social space. I begin by applying this model to some of my own material from the Zambian Copperbelt, showing how Pentecostalism and the prosperity gospel afford claims on audiences that include God, the state, and the wider social world. I then turn my attention to the affordances and audiences that emerge in the articles collected in this special issue. I conclude by suggesting that the framework of affordances and audiences I have developed here helps to address one of the most vexing problems in the anthropology of Christianity, namely, how the subfield defines its object of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]