Augustinian Monk Research Articles

If Mendel Was Using CRISPR: Genome Editing Meets Non‐Mendelian Inheritance

AbstractOn July 20 this year, 200th anniversary of the birth of Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk who laid the foundations of genetics, is celebrated. His findings provided the stepping stone for rational crop improvement based on cross breeding and selection. While this approach contributed to the development of superior varieties, its potential is limited by genetic variability available within a species and its relatives. Even though physical and chemical mutagenesis enabled the induction of new genetic variability on a large scale, random mutagenesis did not allow targeting particular genome loci. This became feasible only after the development of genome editing tools in the beginning of the 21st century and the ability to precisely edit plant genomes opened a new era in plant research and crop breeding. Mendel probably did not consider a possibility of directly modifying genetic information and the advantages which genetic engineering can bring to society. However, the basic principles of inheritance he discovered are indispensable for any effort to develop improved varieties. In this review, recent advances in plant genome editing are summarized with emphasis on non‐Mendelian inheritance in the light of the need to produce more food for the growing human population.

The Conversion of Gottfried Rabe: Visual Propaganda and Conversion in Early Seventeenth‐Century Germany☆

AbstractThis article considers visual and textual descriptions of conversions to Lutheranism by focusing on the former Augustinian monk Gottfried Rabe, who delivered his revocation sermon in Wittenberg in 1601 and features on two woodcuts as well as on a commemorative medal. Through a close analysis of the visual tropes and symbolism in these under‐studied sources, broader questions about Lutheranism at the turn of the sixteenth century are raised, including the role of the University of Wittenberg, the positions of Martin Luther and the Czech reformer Jan Hus as role models of conversions to Lutheranism and the Catholic responses to such conversions at this point in time. The article argues that the different media promoted different images of Rabe, showing a range of possible interpretations of the conversion and its place within the different confessions.

Семантика и функция афоризма «Победи себя и победишь мир» в произведениях Ф. М. Достоевского

<p>The repeated usage of the aphorism “Win yourself and you will conquer the world” in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky emphasized his words. Using different linguistic means the Russian writer compiled the message of a moral character striving for conveying it to his contemporaries, now with irony by putting it into mouth of Foma Fomich and Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky (the characters of the novels <em>The Village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants </em>and <em>Demons </em>respectively), now as an admonition by including it directly and indirectly into “The Life of a Great Sinner” and the novels <em>Demons</em>, <em>The Brothers Karamazov </em>and <em>The Raw Youth</em>. The dictum “Win yourself and you will conquer the world” echoes also on some pages of <em>A Writer’s Diary</em>, where an ethical and philosophical feature of Dostoevsky<em>’</em>s journalistic style manifests itself to the maximum. Modern researcher B. N. Tikhomirov has put forward a hypothesis that the saying “Win yourself and you will conquer the world” is based on quotations from the New Testament. The writer distilled this sententia from the writings of Saint Tikhon. The author of this article wondering who this aphorism belongs to and where it derives from, supposed and proved that it comes from the 57th sermon of St. Augustine or from the treatise “On the imitation of Christ” (“Imitatio Christi”) attributed to the Augustinian monk Thomas of Kemp. A copy of this treatise was kept in the library of Dostoevsky. After analyzing the hypothesis of B. N. Tikhomirov and her own assumption, the researcher has made both a philological analysis and the content one. As a result, she came to the conclusion that both these assumptions are possible and do not contradict each other. Given the fact that Saint Tikhon was well familiar with the writings of Saint Augustine, both these sources complement each other in the study of the aphorism? Win yourself and you will conquer the world”.</p>

Autour d’un tableau méconnu du Louvre : Bertholet Flémal, François Chauveau, Sébastien Leclerc, trois artistes pour un commanditaire à l’heure de la révocation de l’édit de Nantes.

Anne le Pas de Sécheval est maître de conférences à l’Université Paris Nanterre. Sa recherche est actuellement centrée sur la peinture dans les églises de Paris et l’art religieux en France au xvii e siècle. Elle a publié en 2018 « Hardouin-Mansart et la genèse du décor intérieur du Dôme » dans l’ouvrage Saint-Louis-des-Invalides : la cathédrale des armées françaises dirigé par Alexandre Gady et Antoine de Romanet. Paraîtra en 2020 l’article « Philippe de Champaigne et Charles Le Brun lecteurs du livre d’Ézéchiel ? Réflexions sur la culture biblique des peintres au xvii e siècle » dans les actes du colloque international Mise(s) en œuvre (s) des Écritures 2 de l’École des Chartes. Université Paris Nanterre, 200, avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre Cedex.

IBN QAYYIM AL-JAUZIYYAH AND MARTIN LUTHER ON FAITH, RELIGION, AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN TIMES OF EPIDEMIC/PANDEMIC: AN ISLAMO-CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

In this article, I produce a comparative reading of ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyyah (1292–1350) and Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) texts on protecting the healthy and caring for the sick in times of epidemics and pandemics. I point out the similarities between them and assert that, while both scholars did not explicitly argue for quarantine or physical isolation and social distancing as a religious duty, they did indeed lay a robust foundation for us to do so in the context of COVID-19, with new knowledge and technologies. In the first half of the 14th century, the renowned medieval Islamic physician, jurisconsult and theologian from Damascus and student of Ahmad b. Taymiyyah (1263-1328), ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyyah, published Islamic guidance on the prevention of contagious diseases by enforcing physical social distancing and by means of quarantine in times of plagues in a manual of prophetic medicine “al-Tibb al-nabawī”. The date of this publication is significant, as it corresponds to the time of the bubonic plague or black death that came from “the east” and spread all the way to Europe, killing between 25-30 million people. About two centuries later, Martin Luther, German professor of theology, composer, former priest and Augustinian monk, and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, addressed the same subject from a Christian perspective. Replying to his former student, Johann Hess (1490–1547), who wrote asking for advice on whether the clergy might stay or flee a plague ravaging their city, Luther comes to a similar conclusion to ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyyah. Both scholars begin by trying to unite factions within their communities on the question of what was appropriate in the context of their religion. They then go ahead to outline practical measures for protecting the healthy and caring for the sick, with each rooting these in theological principles unique to his tradition.

Traducción, historia y turismo: relatos de viajeros por la España del siglo XIX. Alexandre Laborde y su Voyage pittoresque (1806), vertido a la lengua castellana por Juan Fernández de Rojas en 1807

En este trabajo se analiza la relación entre la literatura de viajes, el lenguaje relacionado con el turismo que se encuentra en un relato de viajes de principios del siglo XIX y la traducción. Este tipo de textos se puede considerar como un género híbrido que baila entre la literatura y la historia como fuente de estudio del turismo. Desde una perspectiva traductológica, este tipo de documentos brinda aportes interesantes para el estudio del turismo como fenómeno de la realidad moderna en donde confluyen historia, literatura y traducción, teniendo en cuenta que los libros de viaje son un compendio de experiencias directas, coetáneas a los hechos descritos, que poseen tres rasgos esenciales: son relatos reales, descriptivos y con predominio de la subjetividad frente a la objetividad. En este sentido, todo viaje se puede tomar en consideración desde una doble perspectiva histórica: (1) la interpretación de lo observado y experimentado, los lugares, los edificios, las gentes o las instituciones de los espacios visitados; (2) la capacidad de comprender la especificidad del momento histórico y cuya perspectiva deja su huella en el momento de la escritura. La obra que nos ha servido para demostrar estos principios es el Viaje pintoresco e histórico de España, de Alexandre de Laborde (1773-1842), que tiene fecha de 1807, un texto que parece ser el resultado de la traducción del primer volumen del Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Espagne (1806) de Alexandre Laborde, publicado en París en la imprenta de Pierre Didot. Sus cuatro volúmenes contienen un compendio de historia política y civil, muchos monumentos arqueológicos y más de 900 grabados gracias a la colaboración de grandes dibujantes y grabadores. El primer volumen sobre Cataluña tuvo una primera edición en español, muy limitada y prontamente desaparecida, materializada gracias a la Imprenta Real y dedicada a Godoy en calidad de mecenas. La traducción fue llevada a cabo por Juan Fernández de Rojas, monje agustino de la escuela poética salmantina y del movimiento ilustrado de finales del XVIII. A través del estudio de la obra en castellano en contraste con la francesa, se establecerán las ricas sinergias entre el turismo, la historia y la traducción.

On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood

On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood1 Thomas Joseph White O.P. The priesthood is traditionally understood to entail descending dimensions of mediation by which the priest conveys spiritual goods to us, and ascending dimensions, by which the priest helps lead us to God by his example and love of God. I would like to speak in this essay about each of these, internal to a historical narrative. The first part of the narrative begins in the Reformation and the second in our own time. Each is about crisis in the priesthood, and they come together in the consideration of the sanctification of the priesthood, for our own historical moment. I "To say this is to construct a new [and different] Church, [distinct from the Church of Jesus Christ]" ("Hoc enim est novam ecclesiam construere"). These words were spoken by Thomas de Vio Cajetan in October of 1518, in the course of public debate with the young Martin Luther, at a time when the Augustinian monk was still in communion with the Catholic Church. Earlier that year Pope Leo X had sent Cajetan as his representative from Rome to the Diet of Augburg, from which he was dispatched for theological dispute with the aspiring Reformer. Cajetan at the time was the Master of the Dominican Order, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, and archbishop of Palermo. He was a vocal promoter of reform within with the clergy and the curia, advocating for clerical asceticism and learning, himself pioneering early-modern commentary on Aquinas, while also favoring the emergence of Renaissance biblical [End Page 1] studies. He and Luther shared a common concern for the reform of the Church. The debate took place on October 12–15, approximately one year after Luther's promulgation of ninety-five theses, and two years before the publication of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which was to mark a more definitive break with Rome. The subject under discussion was the so-called power of the keys. How is it that the forgiveness of God is commuted to a penitent through the sacrament of confession? Does this depend upon the apostolic authority of the pope and the episcopacy as well as the juridical delegation of a priest who grants absolution? It was no accident that Luther raised radical questions on this front. Behind this specifically sacramental question stands a more fundamental issue of authority and the Church. Does God give grace to us through the descending mediations of the Church, and if so, how? As Cajetan saw at the time, the treatment of apostolic authority in one domain carries over logically into others. How one treats the sacrament of reconciliation touches immediately in turn upon such topics as the perennial truth of Catholic dogma (defined by the authority of the Church), the nature and number of the sacraments, and the nature of apostolic succession. In their debate with one another, Luther and Cajetan elaborated two vastly divergent visions of Christianity which anticipated developments in early modernity. Christendom stood in the balance. Luther for his part is finding his way in this early text toward the notion that justification occurs by faith alone, apart from works of the law or any mediations of sacramental agency. He claims against Cajetan that the classical tripartite of sacramental confession of sins, contrition, and ensuing satisfaction are not sufficient to procure forgiveness in Christ except insofar as they are accompanied by the penitent's inward act of faith in Christ, as well as—significantly—the subjective certitude that the sins which are being confessed have been definitively forgiven. He goes so far as to say that in the absence of certitude in my particular salvation by Christ for these sins, the sacrament leads not to salvation but condemnation. What is noteworthy about this, in context, is that there is no priestly mediation of the forgiveness of sins. The subject's interior judgment of his own righteousness before God by grace is the determining condition for the reception of grace, prior to and in a sense apart from any external rites and ecclesial measures of evaluation. Furthermore the individual sincerity of the subject in the act of faith is...

El servus/serva Dei El monje/monja (frater/soror) agustiniano

The article approaches the fiuure of the Augustinian monk taking as point of departure some of the Works of Saint Augustine, particularly the Regula ad servos Dei and sermons 354, 355 and 356, to show how Augustine from the initial anthropological category of homo interior-homo exterior –typical from the Latin Christian tradition–, he shifts, already in the Regula ad seruos Dei (probably around 400), to the category of homo spiritalis, in relationship to a spirituality of freedom under the grace of God. From this anthropological perspective, famulus/a seruus/a Dei (= the monk, the virgin) is considered not as “he who tames the flesh”, but rather as “he who loves spiritual beauty”, he who is born of Holy Spirit. The article points out how for Augustine, the monastery must be a place with an atmosphere of freedom and grace that gives life, “not as servants under the law”, but “as free men under grace” (reg. 3 8, 1).

The Daughter of the Word: What Luther Learned from the Early Church and the Fathers

Abstract All the major sixteenth-century Reformers knew something about the early church and used the early Fathers. As an Augustinian monk and professor of theology, however, Luther’s knowledge and use of the great Father was both deeper and more nuanced. While indebted to Augustine, Luther went further in defining what it meant for theology to be ‘scriptural’. He saw history as the interaction of God’s two regimes, and the church of every age as weak and flawed but conquering through the cross of Christ. This led him to a free use of the Fathers without being constrained to always agree with or imitate them. The comfort he received from the Apostles’ Creed in particular led him to appreciate the early creedal statements, and so it was natural for him to use them as models when formulating the new confessions required in his own day. The sixteenth-century heritage of written confessions of faith is a heritage under-appreciated but still vital for church bodies today.1

EVANGELICAL OBJECTS IN POLISH COLLECTIONS – ATTEMPT AT TYPOLOGY

The article discusses the legacy of Protestantism in Poland and the Protestant collections preserved in museum institutions in Poland. The author presents the collections of Evangelical artefacts amassed in various ways and forms and at different times, which thus constitutes a preliminary typology of the legacy of the Reformation. For simplification, she defines Evangelical objects as all objects which are part of the broadly-understood Protestant legacy. The spectrum of these objects is very broad, ranging from artefacts in traditional museum institutions, through sacred places, works of art, technical monuments, ephemera, cemeteries, to virtual collections of audiovisual and digitised legal instruments. The examples quoted in the text do not exhaust the subject, but evidence the vastness and richness of the legacy acquired as a donation after the Reformation movement initiated by the Augustinian monk Martin Luther.

From Reformation to Transformation: The "Age of Global Dialogue"

From Reformation to Transformation:The "Age of Global Dialogue"* Leonard Swidler Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, the Western world in the person of Martin Luther started on the road of Christendom's Reformation, which has led to today's unforeseen and amazing global transformation: the "Age of Global Dialogue."1 I want to look briefly at what happened back then, where we are today, and how we got from there to here. Then, we can ask ourselves what lessons might lie in this history for us today—and tomorrow. Many critical events took place around the portentous year 1517. Just twenty-five years before Luther supposedly banged his ninety-five theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Western Europe in 1492 in the person of Christopher Columbus discovered a whole hemisphere, and just five years after Luther's reformatory action, Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the world in 1522, definitively proving it not flat, but a globe. The year 1517 marked both the end of the Catholic Church "reform efforts" by the pope and the beginning of the "Reformation." Just five years earlier, in 1512, Pope Julius II called the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) in Rome to undertake a badly needed reform of the Catholic Church. Toward its end, two Augustinian monks submitted, and struggled mightily for, a comprehensive reform program for the Church. Tragically, in the end, it was not adopted. [End Page 479] Later in 1517, another Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, launched what has become known as the "Protestant Reformation." Among other immediate results, it splintered the Catholic Church of central and eastern Europe into multiple sects and spilled open massive sluices of blood and gore for the next nearly century and a half, finally just beginning to slow and coagulate only with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Of course, Luther had no such intention in mind. He was a very serious, relatively moderate product of the fourteenth–fifteenth-century religious Renaissance, which, among other things, had produced the recovery of the knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, leading to a much deeper understanding of the Bible (both testaments of which Luther eventually masterfully translated into German). That scholarly advance, plus the increasing availability of inexpensive Bibles—thanks to the new printing technology of Johannes Gutenberg (1554)—made the Bible of greater importance than ever before. Luther focused on this advance by beginning to answer the constant question: How do we as Christians know what to believe? His response was not by the customary Traditio, tradition, or by the Magisterium, the teaching authority, the pope, but by sola scriptura, "by scripture alone." For Luther, and his many colleagues, sola scriptura was not the only "sola." He also asked the question: How am I saved? Such a question might sound a little strange in our twenty-first-century secular age, but it was an overpowering question for Luther and many others. In fact, he was quite overwhelmed by it, thinking that even the good deeds he performed, such as prayer, almsgiving, etc., were ultimately sinful, for he feared that he might ultimately be doing them to "avoid hell and gain heaven"—rather than purely because they were good. As an Augustinian monk, he agonized endlessly over this—doubtless drawn into this spiritual abyss by the writings of his order's namesake, St. Augustine, who had a titanic spiritual battle with the Irish monk Pelagius over whether humans freely chose to do good or evil or were predetermined by God. Pelagius argued that, of course, we humans freely choose good or evil and appropriately earn favor or punishment, heaven or hell. Augustine, on the other hand, argued—and drew the great swath of subsequent Western Christians along with him in this teaching—that humans ultimately did not have free will; rather, God determined from all eternity that certain persons would perform morally good acts, and others would perform evil [End Page 480] actions. The former, God determined, would thereby go to heaven, and the latter, the great mass of humans—"massa damnata" was the term he used—were predestined by God for eternal agony in hell. It was with this towering doctrine of inherited fear that...

Remembering Johann Gregor Mendel: a human, a Catholic priest, an Augustinian monk, and abbot.

Johann Mendel (Gregor was the name given to him only later by his Augustinian order, Fig. 1) was born on July 20, 1822 to an ethnic German family, Anton and Rosina Mendel (Fig. 2), in Heinzendorf in the Austrian Empire at the Moravian-Silesian border (now Hynčice, Czech Republic).

The Death of Christ as a Focus of the Fifteenth-century Artes moriendi

The last request of the fourteenth-century Augustinian monk Hermann of Halle was to have Matthew’s account of the Passion of Christ read out loud to him.1 A hundred years earlier, Bonaventure reported that St. Francis, too, had asked on his deathbed to hear the Passion as recorded by John. As early as the twelfth century, a Ritual of the monastery of Augustinian canons in St. Florian decreed that the Passion be read to the dying.2 Clearly, the Biblical accounts of Christ’s suffering and death were deemed appropriate reading for the dying in the Middle Ages; presumably, they offered comfort to those confronting emotional or physical anguish—or both—in their final hours. The affective piety of the late Middle Ages made especially effective use of the Biblical texts by extracting from them the most emphatic or most moving elements for use in new types of literature on death and dying. In a series of Latin and vernacular texts known as Artes moriendi, fifteenth-century authors skillfully used details of Christ’s suffering to allay the spiritual agony of readers and listeners preparing for their own death. These Artes moriendi typically depict the visitation of a dying man by angels and demons, appearing in regular alternation to urge the moribund to repentance or to sin. Obviously, literary treatments of death and dying vastly predate the composition of the first Artes moriendi.3 But the repeated outbreaks of disease beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, coupled with what seemed to contemporaries to be ever more frequent experiences of war and famine

Michael Diller, Augustinerprior und evangelischer Prediger in Speyer, als Geächteter in Straßburg bei Bucer (1548/49) und als "Interimsflüchtling" in Basel (1549-1552)

Michael Diller, the Augustinian prior in Speyer, was something of an anomaly amongst the reformers of the Imperial cities in the south and southwest of the Empire. That difference stemmed in part from the particular status of Speyer within the Empire, and in part from Diller's own reticence and controversy-averse personality. Additionally, we know remarkably little of Diller’s background (he came from the diocese of Speyer) and of his education (he matriculated in Wittenberg in 1523); we remain uncertain about exactly when and where he entered the order. Diller is also unusual in that he retained his position as prior up until his banishment from Speyer. He proved particular effective as an evangelical preacher precisely because of his irreproachable behavior as an Augustinian monk. This study fills in some of the gaps in our knowledge of Diller’s life after 1548 and brings clarity to numerous ambiguities. We are now aware that in spring 1549, before fleeing to Basel, Diller found refuge for several months in Strasbourg with Martin Bucer (and Conrad Hubert) and he self-identified as Bucer's pupil by that date at the latest. This relationship explains why in 1552, on being appointed as court preacher by Otto Henry, Count Palatine of Palatinate-Neuburg, he had in his possession a manuscript of Bucer and why he recommended Bucer's writings be published, although not without reservation. And, finally, we now also know the dates of his involvement in the small town of Laufen, in the territory of Basel, and have evidence for the first time that while in Laufen he was married, as had become common amongst preachers; his wife was the widow of his predecessor.

The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550)

The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550)

Brave burgers dankzij de Bijbel - Leesaanwijzingen in Jacques Legrands Livre de bonnes meurs (c. 1404/1410

The succesful vernacular work Le livre de bonnes meurs (c.1404/1410) by the Augustinian monk Jacques Legrand undermines several historical commonplaces about the late Middle Ages: it made parts of the Bible accessible to laypeople in the vernacular (laypeople are even strongly encouraged to read the Bible); and the author openly criticizes the behaviour of the religious and political authorities. Le livre de bonnes meurs has often been characterized as a mirror of princes, but this article argues that it should rather be considered as a civic mirror, because it helped its readers to improve their personal lives, and it provided them with directions as to how they should behave in society. The author gives advice to all three orders of society (clergy, nobility, and working people), and, consequently, provides a mirror in which the reader can judge his or her own behaviour and that of others. Because of the central role of the vernacular Bible as a spiritual, moral, and practical guide, sacred scripture itself is also turned into a civic mirror.

Darwinian Disease Archaeology: Genomic Variants and the Eugenic Debate

INTRODUCTIONNotwithstanding his provisional hypothesis of pangenesis, Darwin never developed a plausible or reliable theory of the mechanism of inheritance. ' In 1 87 1 in The descent of man Darwin argued against the polygenic scientific racism of the nascent discipline of Victorian anthropology which asserted that different human races were separately created species.2 He argued alternatively for a common descent of humans from a monogenic ancestry and that differentiating characteristics such as skin, eye or hair colour were, like customs, knowledge and beliefs, the result of social rather than forces of change. He also argued that mental states such as sympathy, empathy and altruism were the result of evolution and were not exclusively human.3 Darwin's arguments about the evolutionary forces underlying human development created an opportunity for the emergence of Social Darwinism which embraced Herbert Spencer's theory of progressive social evolution depending upon the 'survival of the fittest'.4 Social Darwinism proposed that charitable preservation of the vulnerable would allow the 'unfit' to procreate leading to inevitable human decline. Darwin disagreed with the premises of Social Darwinism arguing that preservation of the 'unfit' demonstrated the evolutionary development of mental emotions such as compassion.5The influence of breeding and heredity upon human evolution and survival was analyzed using statistical correlation by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, who called his discipline Eugenics. Galton argued that Eugenics studied human heredity in order to manipulate human breeding to influence evolutionary 'progress'.6 Darwin admired the achievements of his cousin but his own theory of evolutionary natural selection contained no teleological progressive purpose.7Throughout the twentieth century eugenic interpretation of social change as the rationale for socio-biological engineering has stimulated a tide of philosophical, sociological and political critique.8 Current critics of evolutionary explanations of human consciousness and social organization argue that reductionist models of determinism and the politics of social and engineering are simply the most recent expression of eugenics in the twenty-first century.9 This critique contends that developments in genomic science will give rise to a society in which social discrimination will be determined by genetic heritage leading to new forms of social hierarchy dominated by artificially selected and genetically enhanced elites.10Contemporary human geneticists who hunt down the molecular ancestry of pathogenic disposition are twenty-first-century Darwinians using the theory of natural selection to understand variation in human disease susceptibility and drug metabolism. This paper will historicize the contemporary Darwinian disease chase in order to interrogate the radical debate it has stimulated about what the sociologist, Troy Duster, has called the potential for an unwitting biological reinscription of racist conceptualizations of race.11From the time that the nineteenth-century eugenist, E. J. Lidbetter, developed his method of genealogical-tree construction to investigate inherited 'traits',12 neither Darwinian ancestry hunting nor its radical critics have stood still. Throughout the twentieth century explanations of the relationship between human organic and social evolution have generated dynamic hegemonic conflict. An historical overview of twentieth-century eugenic debates is initially provided here to outline the context in which discourses on ancestry and race have shifted gears and directions in the last two decades.ANCESTRY OF EUGENICS AND BIOLOGICAL REDUCTIONISMFrancis Galton was born in the same year as the Augustinian monk from Moravia, Johann Gregor Mendel (1822-84), who produced the famous study of the inheritance of characteristics in sweet-peas which founded the science of genetics. …

Embodied Cross: Intercontextual Reading of Theologia Crucis (review)

Reviewed by: Embodied Cross: Intercontextual Reading of Theologia Crucis Paul O. Ingram Embodied Cross: Intercontextual Reading of Theologia Crucis. By Arata Miyamoto. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010. 150 pp. The author of Embodied Cross states his intention in the first sentence of his introduction: "This book aims to outline an intercontextual reading of theology of the cross . . . that flows across a global context," but in particular the context of Japanese Buddhism and, secondarily, Shinto tradition. Since Miyamoto declares this book is based on his doctoral dissertation submitted to the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago in 2009—and it certainly reads like a dissertation written for Lutheran theologians— it might be useful to begin with a general description of the meaning of "theology of the cross" and "contextual theology" in order to communicate Miyamoto's intention and conclusions to a wider audience. A major problem facing contemporary Christian theological reflection is the issue of power. The contemporary postmodern critiques of thinkers such as Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and particularly Michel Foucault assert that all claims to truth, including the claims of theology, are merely secret bids for power. Until the late nineteenth century, Christianity dominated the cultures of the Western Europe, not because Christian tradition is truer than other religious traditions, but because Christianity was culturally and politically more powerful than its rivals. The question is, where does power lie? How are clergy and church leaders to use their power? Such accusations have been strengthened by the sense that the church has often used [End Page 164] theology to legitimate its claims to domination. This style of theological reflection is the defining character of "theology of glory" (theologia gloriae), which generally asserts that: (1) God's ways can be generally understood by human reason; (2) God's favor is experienced in the circumstances of life, in particular, life's successes and victories; (3) God is pleased by sincere human self-effort; and (4) faith, meaning "trust," in the historical Jesus as the Christ is God's ultimate revelatory self-disclosure and is the only means of redemption, meaning Christianity is the only path to "salvation." Theologies of the Cross (theologia crucis) are quite different from theologies of glory. "Theology of the Cross" was first coined by Martin Luther to refer to theological reflection that asserts that the life, death, and resurrection of the historical Jesus on Easter are the only sources of knowledge concerning God and how God redeems human beings and the world. Luther first used this term in the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518, but he actually very rarely used it in his subsequent theological writings and preaching. Luther was an Augustinian monk at the time, representing his order, and first presented his theses that later came to define the Protestant Reformation. To perhaps oversimplify, in contrast to theologies of glory, theologies of the cross generally assert: (1) God's ways are paradoxical and hidden to human reason; (2) God's grace is manifested in the historical Jesus, particularly in his suffering, death, and resurrection; and (3) God is pleased only by the historical Jesus as the Christ. Lutheran theologians generally claim that theologies of the cross and theologies of glory are mutually exclusive. Contextual theology refers to analysis of the way theology has been conceived in particular contexts. Contextual theologians are concerned with the interaction between universal themes in theology and issues relating to the particular context in which theological reflection takes place. Christian theological reflection is required to take the cultural and religious pluralism of all human communities seriously. But the theological traditions of Europe and America tend to absolutize Western culture and political traditions. The problem is that any universal truth claim arising from the experience of a particular culture or community can only have particular value for that particular culture or community. Accordingly, Christian theologians unaware of the thought and beliefs of peoples elsewhere assert false claims to universalism. This is so because there is no completely universal perspective, since all human thought and beliefs are limited by particular cultural and historical boundaries. Even so, there can be openness to the universal. While theologians of glory object that theological reflection deals with...

GenEthics and religion

GenEthics and religion

El Cantar de los Cantares de Fray Luis de León : ¿Una traducción original?

The Romance translation of the Song of Songs by Fray Luis de León has received countless eulogies by scholars from different fields. The Augustinian monk's genius has proved even offensive. However, it seems unlikely that such a perfect rendering had been the first of its kind. Fray Luis was well acquainted with a long tradition of judaic-romance Biblical versions which shaped the basis of his own translation. The comparison that I offer in this article, if not exhaustive, is clarifying enough in that direction, and it leaves little room for doubt, in spite of the obvious discredit this could entail for the frequently praised originality of the translation by the Salamanca master. In any case — and I think this was his real accomplishment — the legacy to later humanists of that rare branch of knowledge, rooted in the most learned Judaism, was a task worthy of praise.