Reformation and the Secularization of Art

Gudbilledlighed og syndefald: Aspekter af Grundtvigs og Kierkegaards menneskesyn på baggrund af Irenæus

Being Human in God’s World: An Old Testament Theology of Humanity

How can we make theological sense of the resilience of the fear of witchcraft among indigenous Zimbabwean Christians? From the perspective of the transcendence and immanence of God, this article analyses the resilience of the fear of witchcraft among African Christians in Zimbabwe. The article uses results of a case study conducted in Zimbabwe in a congregation belonging to the Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) in the city of Bulawayo. Using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, the study affirms that many African Christians struggle to overcome the fear of witchcraft in their lives. Witchcraft is feared because it is primarily viewed as an evil power that destroys life. The article analyses the awareness of witchcraft, the experiences of witchcraft and the responses to witchcraft among Zimbabwean Christians. The article proposes that African Christians be grounded on the transcendence and immanence of God as a way of overcoming the enduring fear of witchcraft.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: A meaningful response to the fear of witchcraft in Africa requires a multidisciplinary approach including phenomenology of religion, Christian doctrines and practical theology and pastoral care. The immanence and transcendency of God in a context of fear of witchcraft must be unpacked in the light of insights from phenomenology of religion, African traditional religions, discipleship and pastoral care.

When Western Christianity came to Asia, it merged with Eastern religions and histories and developed very differently in different places. Today Asian women in each country build up very unique images of God. They practice Eastern forms of worship and liturgical rites, and do indigenized theologies. They simultaneously try to find their own ways of naming, imaging, believing in and communicating with their own God. Korean Christianity has inherited many images of God from Western Christian doctrines and theologies. However, when it meets and merges with Koreanized Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism, some of the images of God in Christianity are transformed and re-imagined in Korean women's social cultural and religious contexts. As an Asian woman, especially a Korean woman, I would like to introduce one of the many Asian women's theologies, Korean women's images of God. It cannot represent all Asian women's ways of doing theologies, but it will give some clues to show how Asian women do theologies in their own context. In particular, I will examine three images of God that demonstrate how Western Christianity and Eastern religions meet and are transformed in Korean Christian women's living contexts.

Abstract: In the city of Antioch-on-the-Orontes in 387 c.e., statues of the emperor Theodosius I and his family were destroyed by a crowd angered by a recent tax increase, resulting in a series of imperial punishments enacted upon the city. In the months after the event, two prominent residents, the pagan author Libanius and the Christian priest John Chrysostom, wrote (in the case of Libanius) and preached (in the case of Chrysostom) in response to the destruction of the statues and the ensuing punishments. This article focuses on the varied understandings of the power and presence of imperial portraits written into Libanius's and Chrysostom's texts. In contrast with Libanius's traditional understanding of the statue as a surrogate for the venerable subject it represented, Chrysostom instead argues that the living human is superior to the lifeless statue, as we are created "in the image of God" by the supreme artist himself. By marshaling Neoplatonic ideas and pagan critiques of statuary, as well as Christian doctrine, Chrysostom seeks to convince his congregants and later readers still attached to the imperial statue cult that the faithful, rather than graven images, are what matter. Writing in a period in which Christianity was ascendant, and in which some cult statues of the pagan gods were targeted for destruction, Chrysostom's homilies provide a unique window into late fourth-century conceptions of portrait statues, which though different from statues of divine subjects were potentially problematic sites of animation and veneration. Read closely against each other, Libanius's and Chrysostom's texts supplement our understanding of the factors behind the subsequent decline in the production and display of portrait statues, as well as changing ideas about three-dimensional representation in a Christian empire.

This paper argues that human uniqueness, as articulated through the imago Dei, needs to be grounded in a particular view of the Holy Spirit’s presence to humanity if it is going to be successful maintained as a Christian doctrine. Christian theology traditionally claims that humans are unique because they alone are made in the image of God, although interpretations of this phrase vary widely. First, this paper outlines and takes seriously the empirical and methodological challenges that dialogue with the natural sciences has brought to bear on this claim. Second, this paper shows the underappreciated historical importance of pneumatology and the concept of participation in theological anthropology. Third, this paper examines recent attempts to incorporate pneumatology (the study of the Holy Spirit) into science-religion dialogue. Here, I observe that, for all the disagreement and variety, these proposals all envisage a universal and indiscriminate divine presence. Last, this paper argues that Christian pneumatology needs to engage with the natural sciences more specifically on the issue of human uniqueness, and offers some ways forward for doing so.

This section will focus on the beliefs held for generations by the Colossians at the time of their exposure to the gospel by Epaphras. The idea of Christianity as an established religion at the time of the letter is an anachronism, not only in the Lycus Valley but also in the first-century CE.1 The first reason is because the prevailing mystery and myth religions that evolved through the previous centuries were at home there. Schweizer remarks that, “at the time of the Epistle to the Colossians an Apollo-Archegetes cult may have replaced that of the mother goddess.”2 Dynasties of deities were being worshipped as generations of Colossians were taught to believe in them. Houses, marketplaces, hills, and mountains were filled with images of gods and goddesses to whom they and their ancestors gave homage (see sections 2.1 and 4.1). The second reason is that the doctrines of Christianity were not yet fully established (see section 10.3). The third reason is that the transplanted Jews practiced a religion that not only preceded Christianity but also taught about God and that the way to him was the Torah. Into this arena, the writer of Colossians answers the call of Epaphras to build up the newly founded community.KeywordsImperial CultReligious AtmosphereMother GoddessEstablished ReligionGreek GoddessThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This chapter discusses scholastic theology that arose largely from the adoption of a quasi-Aristotelian model to deal with the legacy of Augustine to the Western church. The second and third of the catastrophic flaws in late medieval scholastic theology were even more directly linked to Augustinian thought than had been the epistemological debates. The second comes from De trinitate , where, in Books IX to XI, and then in Book XIV, Augustine is casting round for the image of God in human beings to which Genesis 1:26 refers. Once the synthesis of the Mosaic revelation, the Timaeus and Plotinus had been achieved, the expansion of Christian orthodoxy could be promoted through the successful importation into Christian apologetic of an upgraded view of human moral and spiritual potential. Keywords: Augustine; Marsilio Ficino; pagans; quasi-Aristotelian model; scholastic theology

Over forty years Professor Thiselton has contributed massively to English theological education by bringing together his philosophical training and his New Testament scholarship, and showing how the modern discussion of hermeneutics from Schleiermacher and Dilthey to Gadamer and Ricoeur can enlarge and enliven Christians’ theological understanding of Scripture. The 1920s German revival of interest in the theory and problems of interpretation, and its mid and late twentieth-century reception in France and North America, have been mediated in Britain by Dr Thiselton’s patient and accurate exposition of the key thinkers, his careful sifting of the uneven mass of modern publications, and his judicious pointers to how much a traditional Christianity can absorb from these debates while disputing those aspects of postmodernity most destructive of belief. So much of his work has been on the boundaries of New Testament exegesis and doctrine that it was natural for him to follow up his excellent exegetical commentary on 1 Corinthians by turning his well-digested philosophical resources to the doctrinal tradition. The result is a bulky work which remakes the case for appropriating this mainly European thought (pp. 3–173) before explaining the major themes in Christian doctrine from creation through anthropology and soteriology (six chapters) to Christology, the Holy Spirit, God as Trinity, Church and ministry, Word and sacraments, and eschatology (one chapter each). That distribution is indicative of Dr Thiselton’s Protestant background and commitment, but also signals the areas where his suggestions are most fruitful. A fine chapter on the image of God (ch. 11) is followed by two on sin: ‘The Hermeneutics of Misdirected Desire’, and ‘Toward a Hermeneutic of the Fall and Collective Sin’. Biblical perspectives and the history of doctrine are brought to bear in ways that will surely help clergy wondering what to say (or failing to say anything sensible) about sin today.

In the days of Thomas Aquinas, the problem of the relationship between science and religion emerged acutely because of the influx of the full Aristotelian corpus of writings into the West. The central intellectual problem of the day was to determine whether this powerful, systematic, and pagan worldview (comprising what we would now call both philosophy and science) was compatible with the central theological claims of the Roman Catholic Church. Prima facie, it did not seem that Aristotelian philosophy was compatible because on at least two key points it held views at odds with the Church: (1) the world had no beginning and (2) individual human beings do not each have intellectual and immortal souls.1 Thus the most developed science of the time seemed to contradict two central doctrines related to creation and rooted in the book of Genesis: (1) the creation ex nihilo of a world with a definite temporal beginning and (2) the special creation of man in the image of God as a rational and spiritual creature. It was one of Aquinas’s major intellectual achievements to show that there was no real conflict between Aristotelian science and Christian doctrine. He was motivated by the basic conviction that there could be no genuine contradiction between the proven truths of science and the revealed truths of the faith because both truths ultimately were rooted in God.

The aim of this study is to identify the excellent goods that are required for the project of forming a moral community in a business firm. Trinitarian theology is used to reflect on these goods. Though there is a massive gap between the way the triune community expresses itself and the way human communities do, the Christian doctrine that humans are made in the image of God, and therefore imago trinitatis, suggests that Trinitarian theology offers a pattern for moral community in a firm. The Persons of the relational Trinity express love through an I–Thou–We modality. The work of Martin Buber and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) on the I–Thou or interhuman relation is first discussed. It is then noted that Wojtyla goes further in contending that I–Thou alone does not in and of itself constitute a human community; it is only when a plurality of “I”s act together to advance the common good that we can speak of the “we” (the social dimension). It is argued that a correlational reading of social Trinitarian thought and Wojtyla’s personalist phenomenology indicates what is required in a firm aspiring to be a genuinely moral community—namely, both intersubjectivity (I–Thou relationality) and a social profile (the “we”). It is further argued that these modalities are actualized in a business firm through moral friendship, good will (I–Thou), and commitment to the common good (“we”). These are foundational stones of a moral community.

Even if ancient biblical writers did not have the philosophical training to have anticipated later Christian doctrines such as the transcendence or immanence of God, divine simplicity, even the doctrine of the trinity, postmodern Christians should not be constrained by those historical limits from reading the New Testament to arrive at robust, though sometimes complex, theologies of the nature of God and of what it means to say, in the 21st century, “I believe in God.”

Book Reviews Postsecular Catholicism: Relevance and Renewal, Michele Dillon, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 214 pages. Irish sociologist of religion Michele Dillon, based in the University of New Hampshire, has written a most timely book exploring how Catholicism negotiates the tension between the forces of tradition and those of change. Dillon’s enquiry is anchoredinthecontextofAmericanCatholicism,butmany of the tensions she writes about are also present in Australia, Latin America and Western Europe (including Ireland). She is asking how Catholicism can maintain public relevance and how it can engage with citizens, both religious and non-believers, in a search for the common good. She begins by outlining the context within which Catholicism operates. Modernity, with its commitment to reason, human equality, democracy and science, has resulted in a secular world and society, within which religions operate. But this, according to Habermas, is a ‘contrite modernity’, whose historical experience of the brutalities of two world wars is accompanied by contemporary failures like the exacerbation of economic inequality, the marginalisation of certain social groups (e.g. the poor, immigrants, refuges), the ecological problem, declining confidence in democratic political institutions and new strands of alienation reflected in the feeling of being ‘a stranger in one’s own land’. Dillon, again drawing on Habermas, argues that religions can help to rescue modernity from its dead-end. She posits a postsecular society and sensibility, which recognises that, while secularisation is the settled reality, religion has public relevance and culturally useful resources for addressing contemporary societal ills. Thus, postsecularity requires appreciation of the mutual relevance and intertwined pull of the religious and secular. This means that they need to speak with and not simply about one another. And in this dialogue they should be open, reflexively, to reconsidering their own assumptions and convictions in the light of those with whom they differ. For this ‘communicative openness’ to happen, since secularisation is the settled reality, religious arguments will need to be Studies • volume 107 • number 428 507 Winter 2018/19: Book Reviews translated into an accessible secular vocabulary. Dillon gives an example of what she means – religious participants could translate the Christian belief that Jesus died and was resurrected for the salvation of all people into the secular argument that all people have equal dignity (p.8). There have, of course, been challenges from the Christian side to the exigencies involved in this norm of ‘translation’ advocated by Habermas. One notes the ‘thin’ language of human dignity in the example given compared to the richness of the theological tradition on the death and resurrection of Jesus, grace and salvation. However Dillon herself – as she develops her thought – is clear that Catholic Social Teaching, for example, which is bi-lingual in speaking in specifically Christian language but then also in language accessible to all, fulfils the requirement of communicative openness. Translation, then, does not mean precluding altogether the original. Dillon notes that the notion of a contrite modernity resonates well with what might be called a contrite Catholicism. This contrition, which sometimes feels like defeatism, is down to many factors including the sexual abuse scandal, the ever-widening gap between church teaching on sex and gender and the lived experience of lay Catholics and the growth in the numbers of the religiously unaffiliated, especially among young adults. And so Dillon sees emancipatory potential for both modernity and Catholicism in this postsecular dialogue. The rest of the book is an exploration of how this dialogue is going and might go in the future, with indications of the steps Catholicism and modernity/secularism need to take to make it more fruitful. Dillon notes how the secular has already influenced Catholicism itself in its turn to ‘interpretive diversity’, personal conscience and discernment, and away from unquestioning acceptance of authority. She notes the incipient presence of a postsecular sensibility in Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI but sees Pope Francis as the one who most embodies this turn. Taking Christian doctrines like the incarnation and the immanence of God, and imbued with the Ignatian charism of finding God in all things, he is at home in discerning the presence of the Spirit in contemporary realities, in distinguished between what is of God...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an 8-session, spiritually-integrated intervention for female survivors of sexual abuse with spiritual struggles. Two clients (ages 39 and 49) participated in manualized sessions from the intervention, Solace for the Soul: A Journey Towards Wholeness©, with an individual therapist. An interrupted time-series design included daily measurements of positive and negative religious coping, spiritual distress, and spiritual self-worth, as well as comprehensive measures of spiritual well-being, religious coping, and images of God pre and post-intervention, and 1–2 months later. Both clients increased in positive religious coping, spiritual well-being, and positive images of God. In addition, ARIMA intervention analyses revealed significant changes during the course of the intervention (e.g., increased daily use of positive religious coping). Spiritually-integrated programs, such as Solace for the Soul, show promise in enhancing spiritual recovery from childhood sexual abuse.

The statistical estimates of the prevalence of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in the general population have increased dramatically in recent years. "Blasphemous" obsessions and religious compulsions dominate the clinical picture of many sufferers of OCD. Freud proposed that religion might be a contributing factor for many patients with mental illness. He hedged, however, that observation--something that many of his followers have not done. Others have noted the pathoplasticity of strict religious upbringing and images of God as vindictive or otherwise harsh. Only recently--since the 1970s--has much clinical attention been focused on this disorder by the other disciplines within the mental health community. The church, however, is ahead of the curve in diagnosis and treatment of scrupulosity. It has long been a concern for pastoral counselors--particularly pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic priests. Pathological religion influences OCD and pastoral counseling, the author proposes, can contributes to recovery.