Act Of God Research Articles

Knowledge, Attitude, and Adaptation to Climate Change in Ghana.

Climate change is a serious challenge to human existence. It threatens efforts towards the attainment of sustainable development goals and aggravates conditions that lead to health inequities and inequalities for vulnerable populations. The study aimed to investigate knowledge and adaptation to climate change among people in Ghana. A nationally representative survey of Ghanaian adults (N = 674) was conducted from August 1, 2019, to December 31, 2019. Results showed that 43.9% of the respondents understood the meaning of climate change. Respondents perceived the causes of climate change to include burning of fossil fuel, deforestation, natural events such as ocean currents, carbon emission from vehicles and industries, agricultural emissions of nitrous oxide from fertilizers, and an act of God. About 53.1% and 41% of the male and female respondents, respectively, had an encounter with climate change-induced natural disasters. About two out of five respondents (43%) were either afraid or confused about climate change. Distilled or maintained public drainage from waste (30.2%) and clearing drains (25.6%) was the leading adaptation strategies towards climate change-induced natural disasters. Training (30.1%), national radio (27.7%), and television (19.1%) were the preferred leading methods for receipt of global warming information. These findings provide useful insights for policy directions. The government of Ghana and other stakeholders should develop a communication strategy to increase and sustain publicity and education on climate change to the citizenry.

Creation’s autonomy and the action of God

Thomas Jay Oord has recently proposed that God’s relationship to the world and its human inhabitants is well described as one of uncontrolling love, and that God is constitutionally incapable of intervening unilaterally in human lives. Consequently, prayer for God so to act is misjudged and inappropriate. This article argues that this conclusion runs counter to the biblical record, which sees God’s relationship with the world as sustaining and upholding, but also allowing for specific willed actions. However, God has given the world functional autonomy, which would be abrogated by interventions too predictable or too attributable. It is proposed that intervention by God is real and not uncommon, but often of concealed and unprovable provenance. God’s self-limitation with regard to intervention is seen as consistent but chosen, in contrast to Oord’s proposal of an ‘essential’ kenosis.

Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative

Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative

“Acts of God” or Human Choices? An Ethical Reflection on “Natural” Disasters

The paper argues that, for the most part, disasters are not natural. Although natural hazards normally affect all residents of a geographical area, they are rarely affected to the same degree, given that social vulnerability is unequally distributed in most societies. Social vulnerability is causally related to the distribution of wealth, power, and social status in society, therefore, its distribution is a social justice issue. This paper also analyses the connections between climate change and the increased risk of climate disasters. Pope Francis’ “integral ecology” is proposed as a path to the future.

Soteriological Studies About The Concept Of Choice God According To Romans 9:6-16

God acts to choose a person or group and within a larger community, for a purpose or future of His own choosing. The main OT word for this word is bak-har (bak-har), which means to choose someone or something carefully, after carefully considering other possibilities. This word includes the mind, is very fond of the chosen thing, and sometimes receives pleasure from it. In the LXX and the NT the verb which corresponds to ba-khar is eklegomai. In ancient Greek this language was usually used in an active sense, and the biblical writers used it in a form meaning to choose for himself. (Hareomai) Haireomai, used of God's election in 2 Thess 2:13, and in Deut. 26:18 LXX, with the same meaning.
 The Hebrew verb (yada) (yada), meaning to know which is used for various ways of knowing, at least in the mind, containing and expressing love such as sexual relations, or confession on the part of one who believes in God is used in Gen. 18:19; Hos 13:5 concerning the election of God means knowing God in love. Likewise, the Greek word proginosko meaning “to know beforehand” is translated “He chose” in Romans 8:29.Election is a fully sovereign act of God; Allah is in no way obligated to choose anyone because everyone has lost his position before Allah. Even after Christ's death, God was still under no obligation to carry out salvation. Except that He had to keep the agreement He had made with Christ regarding the salvation of mankind. So, God's election is a fully sovereign act because there is no coercion from anyone.

Derecho de contratos y excepcionalidad: reaparición de instituciones y retorno a los principios en contexto de Covid-19

El presente trabajo analiza los efectos de la pandemia Covid-19 en el Derecho de Contratos, específicamente el incumplimiento objetivo y los remedios contractuales en contexto de excepcionalidad. Este estudio es de carácter dogmático y se utiliza el método analítico y comparado. Se parte por verificar si la pandemia Covid-19 constituye caso fortuito, para lo cual se analiza si dicho fenómeno y sus consecuencias reúnen los requisitos de externalidad, imprevisibilidad e irresistibilidad. A partir de esta respuesta se exploran remedios contractuales como la teoría de la imprevisión o la frustración del fin del contrato, su relación con el principio de pacta sunt servanda y la manera en que han sido evocados en la legislación emanada en emergencia, para lo cual se desarrolla un análisis comparado de la regulación del contrato de arrendamiento de inmuebles. Posteriormente se analiza la naturaleza de los principios como fuentes del Derecho y su aplicación en el derecho privado. Se concluye que el derecho por contratos en la excepcionalidad recurre a los principios, entendidos como racionalización de las reglas, lo que permite flexibilizarlas en búsqueda de soluciones a la complejidad.

Online Exhibitions during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the mid-1990s, when many museums were beginning to take their first hesitant steps toward building online personae, the worry still holding many back was that if a collection or experience were available online, in-person visitation would invariably decline (Anderson 1996; Cody 1997; Wallace 1995). In the 25 years since, that fear has largely been dispelled even as our technical ability to digitally capture and disseminate cultural collections has improved exponentially, even to the point that the online experience in some ways exceeds the in-person experience. Indeed, museums have moved far beyond the ability to show a few images of the major works in a collection, adding opportunities that mirror almost all the offerings of the in-person experience. But even this “Mona Lisa” effect has not driven in-person visitation down. Rather the opposite. Anyone who has elbowed through the crowds at many of the world’s best-known museums can attest to that. Indeed, having been among this ubiquitous press of people, I could not help but think on such occasions that it would take an act of God to reduce the numbers and improve the quality of viewing.

Legitimasi Islam: Sebuah Pembacaan Teoritis Tentang Wahyu Alquran

In the studies of the Qur’an, there is no central concept as that of the Qur’anic revelation itself. The revelation becomes a symbol for God’s unique communication to humans through human agency, called a prophet. Studies on the Qur’anic revelation by classical Muslim scholars have stressed much on its metaphysical aspects, while modern scholars like Toshiko Izutsu begin offering theoretical readings of the Qur’anic revelation as a linguistic concept, i.e., metaphysical communication expressed in a certain language system. By reviewing the existing studies, this article pays special attention to the sociological significance of the revelation. This study examines how revelation as an act of God arises in a setting of human history, and the extent to which it must correspond and dialogue with the values, institutions, and socio-cultural systems of its first audience. This study sees that the power of the Qur’anic revelation lies in its ability to build legitimacy and to integrate its first audience into a broader horizon that allowed them to participate in the contestation of religious discourse with older religious communities.

Style et idéologie. De la version longue à la version brève de la Vie de Jean l’Aumônier, due à Léonce de Néapolis

Abstract The changes in the short version of Leontios of Neapolis’ Life of John the Almsgiver are analyzed in order to evaluate their cause and to expose their literary character. It is shown that the saint’s oaths are suppressed due to a misunderstanding of a passage in the Prologue, and by respect of the Evangelical commandment. The short version also eliminates pagan concepts of fortune, emphasises the social hierarchy, the accordance between words and thoughts, the action of God as a cause of miracles, and avoids to name God as a reason. The short version raises the stylistical level of the text using the methods of the Metaphrast which is common in the 10th century. The textual tradition also allows to date it into this century. The long version is surely the original text, and the changes made to it show a cultural change between the 7th and 10th centuries.

A Response to Paul Griffiths’ Annihilationist Proposal

AbstractIn his recent influential theological work, Paul Griffiths, the esteemed Buddhism scholar and Anglican convert to Catholicism, proposes, among other things, that annihilationism is a viable option for Christians, including Catholics, despite apparent magisterial prohibition. He argues, in effect, that every creature must be naturally mortal because bodily, including the angels. Therefore, de facto immortal creatures are not immortal by nature, but by a positive act of God in addition to the creative act. Accordingly, it makes no sense to assert the existence of an eternal hell. Rather, since sin is fundamentally corrosive, those who opt to continue down the rabbit's hole of sin literally become nothing. Hell, then, is a no‐place and a no‐time. Hence, as long as the damned continue to exist, they have the opportunity for eventual redemption as for eventual self‐annihilation. Griffiths attempts to defend this thesis in dialogue with Augustine, in particular, to the neglect of Aquinas, except to argue that Aquinas’ own arguments for the natural immortality of the human soul are incoherent. I will argue instead that spiritual being exists, that it is naturally immortal, that Aquinas demonstrates both, and that even an Augustinian such as Joseph Ratzinger recognizes Aquinas’ theological insights and builds on them.

Flirting With Disasters: Do Firms Financially Plan Ahead for Disasters?

There are two types of disasters: natural (Acts of God) and technological (human-caused) disasters. I investigate whether and under which conditions firms are hoarding precautionary cash holdings to address natural disaster risk, technological disaster risk or both. The empirical analysis requires me to introduce a novel multidimensional risk measure for each type of disaster as early warning sign for possible future disaster strikes. Using these measures, I provide evidence that firms do not trade-off between these two types of disasters in determining their cash policy. Firms prioritize the preparedness of possible natural disaster strikes above possible technological accidents. The natural disaster related precautionary cash holdings hoarding policy is a long-term policy option that is funded by using external financing and focused on a few disaster types such as wildfires and landslides. Firms address only technological disaster risk by precautionary hoarding cash holdings when they are less internal financially constrained or in smaller countries by surface area.

Acts of God: Continuities and change in Christian responses to extreme weather events from early modernity to the present

AbstractScholars, activists and others increasingly acknowledge that religion—whether conceived in terms of ideas, rituals or institutions—can help us cope with climate change and make sense of extreme weather events. Churches provide moral lessons in times of crisis, they spread awareness of climate change and, through community ritual, religious institutions can nurture a sense of collective responsibility. Much has been written on how contemporary faith groups have understood and acted on climate change and extreme weather events. Yet this literature is often not historically rooted and makes only superficial reference to the complex relationships between climate, extreme weather and religion in the past. Without an historical awareness we cannot understand the extent to which present‐day religious discourses on the environment—from those articulated by “greener faith” advocates to fundamentalist skeptics—connect with how past societies understood climate and, more specifically, extreme weather events. A survey of the literature on Christian responses to extreme weather events, whether these be slow disasters (droughts) or isolated events (storms), suggests that histories that emphasize ruptures in attitudes to the natural world are problematic. Extreme weather events have long been regarded as omens and signs, and as divine judgments on sin. It is still thought that weather disturbances reflect disorders in human society. This literature survey introduces these continuities in Christian responses to extreme weather by ranging broadly across the English‐speaking world from early modernity, though special attention is given to current work on Anglophone settler societies.This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge

THE FIQH PARADIGM OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The paradigm of fiqh that is currently developing has not been able to answer the demands of sustainable development that has become a global agenda. The weakness of the fiqh perspective is because it uses the perspective of a third person who positions Al-Quran as the object of interpretation. This paper uses a second-person perspective and social system paradigm. These two perspectives form the fiqh paradigm of sustainable development. Based on this paradigm, the problems that become the priorities of sustainable development are understood as the excesses of dominating cognitive (subjective) relations that encourage humans to be individualistic and materialistic. This paper offers the importance of trans-cognitive (trans-subjective) relations that control recognition (subjective) relations and cognitive relations. Furthermore, in trans-cognitive relations, Al-Quran is positioned as a communicative act (speech act) of God to humans.

THE RATIONALITY OF CREATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY

Orthodox theology sees the rational world or the world through which the Reason after which all were brought to existence emerges as an extension of the common being of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. This does not in any way mean a form of pantheism, but rather the assertion of the world as rationality imprinted with the image of the Logos, the One that gathers and embodies the rationale of the whole existence. As the world is created by the Word through the word and man is the face of the Word, it results from here that the world is a means, a medium of dialogue between man and Word. By meditating and knowing the world and oneself in its rationality, man becomes acquainted with the Son, or in other words, he gets to know the world and oneself through the Son, and that is how man also reaches the Father, for he is made “after the image of” the Father; and everything is done through the Holy Spirit. Man is created by a special action of God following the counsel of the Divine Persons, which shows that man is created as a community hypostasis, as a dialogue hypostasis, a subject of communion, but following the pattern of the One who created him: man is imprinted with the community face of the Logos as perfect love. Man is created after the image of the Trinity and requires itself after the Trinity, this being shown both in the horizontal relationship of man with the fellow human beings and in the vertical one, in his permanent tension after the Personal Absolute. As the world is created by Word through the word, and man is the face of the Word, it results from here that the world is a means, a medium of the dialogue between man and Word. The present study highlights the importance of teaching about the rationality of creation in Orthodox theology, with reference to the inter-human relations, as well as to the spiritual life of man.

La teología de la creación a la luz de la ciencia

En las ultimas decadas, un grupo de cientificos y teologos ha abierto camino a la renovacion de la Teologia de la Creacion. En este articulo se defiende la necesidad de introducir modelos teologicos que resistan el dialogo con la ciencia y se apuntan algunas lineas de trabajo abiertas por dichos autores; la causalidad descendente como modelo de accion creadora continua, la posibilidad o no de acciones particulares de Dios, la relacion de Dios con la creacion a traves del tiempo. Encontramos en estos campos un ejemplo de como desarrollar el futuro de la Teologia de la Creacion, constituyendo en si mismos campos de estudio que necesitan mayor profundidad.

Acts of God? Religiosity and Natural Disasters Across Subnational World Districts*

AbstractReligious beliefs potentially influence individual behaviour. But why are some societies more religious than others? One possible answer is religious coping: individuals turn to religion to deal with unbearable and unpredictable life events. To investigate whether coping can explain global differences in religiosity, I combine a global dataset on individual-level religiosity with spatial data on natural disasters. Individuals become more religious if an earthquake recently hit close by. Even though the effect decreases after a while, data on children of immigrants reveal a persistent effect across generations. The results point to religious coping as the main mediating channel, but alternative explanations such as mutual insurance or migration cannot be ruled out entirely. The findings may help explain why religiosity has not vanished as some scholars once predicted.

Divine Violence and Divine Presence: Reading the Story of Uzzah and the Ark in 2 Samuel 6 with Slavoj Žižek

Abstract This article interprets the story of the outbreak of God against Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6 as an act of “divine violence,” a concept described by Slavoj Žižek in his book Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. In previous interpretations of 2 Samuel 6, the violence against Uzzah has been understood either as a punishment for a transgression, or as a capricious act of God’s power. Slavoj Žižek describes “divine violence” as violence, which is not a means to an end, and which irrupts from a position of vulnerability and impotence. By looking at the details of the Masoretic Text of 2 Samuel 6, it will be argued that the violence of God in this story should also be interpreted as divine violence: it lacks meaning as a punishment for transgression, and it stems from the vulnerability of God’s presence in the ark rather than from God’s transcendent power.

O CONCEITO DO BELO EM AGOSTINHO DE HIPONA

Estas reflexões têm como principal objetivo mostrar como a concepção do belo em Agostinho de Hipona é tributária da tradição platônico-aristotélica e das Escrituras. No que tange à primeira influência, a ênfase é colocada nas noções de simetria, de proporção, de forma, de unidade e, portanto, de belo. No que diz respeito às Escrituras, Agostinho considera em primeiro lugar o papel da criação e a ação de Deus no universo como o Ser a partir do qual todas as coisas se mantêm harmônica e proporcionalmente vinculadas entre si. Neste universo, ao pôr o acento sobre o homem como a imagem e semelhança de Deus, o teólogo explora igualmente o conceito de participação, que também remete a Platão e às Escrituras. O texto termina apontando para o paradoxo, tipicamente estoico, do apesar de, isto é, apesar do mal, existe o bem, apesar do feio e do desgracioso, existe o belo.

Progress and 'Acts of God' in the age of climate change virility

Notions of progress have changed over the last two centuries; however, attempts at improving living conditions have remained. Since there has been a change toward more urban living, notions of progress have changed from the collective to the individual. What are the implications of various notions of progress, especially when they are at odds with foundational collective articulations of the common good? The purpose of this article is to analyse the evolution of notions of progress and to discuss their most recent iterations in contexts of the Anthropocene. It is hypothesised that progress in the Anthropocene has generated a double awareness of plenty and scarcity. The argument is that planning professionals are severely burdened by their background, moral and ethical responsibility to think and lead collective transformations, which go beyond self. The key finding includes the identification of implications for professional planning practice.

Progress and 'Acts of God' in the age of climate change virility

Notions of progress have changed over the last two centuries; however, attempts at improving living conditions have remained. Since there has been a change toward more urban living, notions of progress have changed from the collective to the individual. What are the implications of various notions of progress, especially when they are at odds with foundational collective articulations of the common good? The purpose of this article is to analyse the evolution of notions of progress and to discuss their most recent iterations in contexts of the Anthropocene. It is hypothesised that progress in the Anthropocene has generated a double awareness of plenty and scarcity. The argument is that planning professionals are severely burdened by their background, moral and ethical responsibility to think and lead collective transformations, which go beyond self. The key finding includes the identification of implications for professional planning practice.