Christian Standpoint Research Articles

Sociology and Metaphysics of Technique by N.A. Berdyaev. To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Russian Thinker

The article examines the social philosophy of technique by N.A. Berdyaev, which he positions as Christian-personalistic-socialistic. Its main provisions are reconstructed, “metaphysical” and “sociological” aspects are identified. It is shown, firstly, that Berdyaev refers to metaphysics of technique as a criticism of the modern idea of man considering himself to be “homo faber” or a “tool-making animal”, which arose as a result of him violating the eternal order of values and idolizing technique. Secondly – that, according to Berdyaev, technique creates an ontologically “new reality”, which, in turn, determines the specifics of the modern “technical and economic” era. Thirdly, that a correct from a Christian standpoint, spiritualized attitude of man towards technique is a necessary and essential element of Berdyaev’s apocalyptic eschatology. Sociology of technique is interpreted by the Russian thinker as social philosophy and philosophy of history. In their light, on the one hand, the cultural and real-historical prerequisites for the emergence of the “technical” era are revealed — Berdyaev considers humanism and capitalism to be such, respectively — on the other hand, ways are proposed to overcome its essential flaws in the light of the personalistic-socialistic ideal of society. At the beginning of the article and at the conclusion the author emphasizes the relevance of Berdyaev’s philosophical ideas in the context of recent historical realities.

Lev Karsavin: Russian Religiosity and Russian Revolution

ABSTRACT This article examines the unique role of Russian intellectual and émigré Lev Platonovich Karsavin (1882–1952) in understanding “Russian communism” as a phenomenon deeply religious in nature. Trained as a historian, specializing in the history of European religiosity, medieval sects, and heresies, the young Karsavin studied the manifold ways in which religious and politics were interwoven. His experience with concrete historical–cultural research helped Karsavin, who became an active figure in Russian Orthodoxy during the First World War, to analyze the origins of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism. Finding himself in exile in 1922, Karsavin continued actively developing the theme of the “religious” nature of Russian Bolshevism, believing that this was the only path to overcoming it in the future from an Orthodox Christian standpoint.

The problem of free will in Eastern and Western Christianity

Modern interest in the problem of human free will is largely centered on artificial intellect and transhumanism concepts. However, within a physicalist framework, in contrast with medieval thought, this issue is not considered to belong to the area of metaphysics. The article describes historical features of Eastern and Western approaches to this problem. The contrast between the ancient worldview and the Christian standpoint is discussed, as well as the complicated issue of the autonomy of will in coordination with Providence, which demands antinomic combination of divine omniscience and the optionality of human choice. The nature of this antinomy was understood based on an incorrect description of spiritual and divine worlds by means of a language based on classical logic principles, which include empirical laws of rough matter. It is noted that in Western European tradition an attempt to go beyond the classical logic framework was made by Molinists in the doctrine of Middle Knowledge. The problem of the will in Eastern patristics was thoroughly investigated by Maximus the Confessor, who affirms that free will, unlike freedom of choice, is not actuality, but a certain goal for a person.

A Claim Forfeiting Its Own Right. Why Job Got It Wrong—and Why This Matters for the Rationality of Religion

The article aims to uncover a deep ambivalence in the figure of Job, as it is presented in the book of the same title, especially in the latter’s “poetry” or dialogue section. This ambivalence corresponds to and in fact emerges from what appears to be a pragmatic paradox: Job is in the wrong (i.e., guilty) in relation to God, precisely by claiming to be right (i.e., innocent); conversely, he can be and must be considered right, if and to the extent that he honestly renounces the latter claim. Accordingly, he cannot both be right (or wrong) and claim to be right or (or wrong)—a special case of what is observed, within epistemology, as an incompatibility of truth and assertibility conditions. In the present text, this core thesis is developed in four steps: the first introduces and briefly contextualizes the claim; the second tries to demonstrate that it provides at least sufficient means for making narrative sense of the book as a whole and, in particular, the controversy between Job and his friends; a third paragraph tackles the (philosophical and/or theological) presuppositions and implications of the thesis from a Christian standpoint, whereas the conclusion addresses the question of if and how the previous findings bear upon the rationality issue. Here, a final paradox emerges: that which would appear to be most rational from a Christian perspective (the task of sin consciousness) must be deemed humanly impossible to fulfill; considering the latter possible renders the task futile, hence irrational.

Exaltation and atrocity: why kenotic humility can’t justify divine concurrence of evil

ABSTRACT‘Exaltation views’ of humility are grounded on a kenotic view of humility, such that divine blessing comes proportionate to the extent to which an agent humbles herself. This article rejects exaltation views of humility which define humility kenotically, justify their arguments from a divine hiddenness perspective, and which conclude that divine concurrence with evil is justified as long as all humble believers eventually are exalted and blessed. Rather, I will contend that exaltation views misunderstand the meaning of both ‘humility’ and ‘exaltation,’ even from their own Christian standpoint. I ultimately offer an alternate response to the problem of evil based on an existentially grounded conception of ‘humility’ (a recognition of our need for others), which provides for a transmuted turn away from individual kenotic acts and toward community to transform those who suffer from atrocities.

ORTHODOX VIEW OF VICTORY AND DEFEAT IN WAR

This paper analyses the Orthodox view of victory and defeat in war, which meansthat, beside the shared Christian standpoint, it focuses on the peculiarities of OrthodoxChristianity of the issue. The Orthodox view is based on the ideas, beliefs and valuesfound in the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testament, and the teachings of ChurchFathers, Orthodox Church canons, hagiographic writings of Christian-Orthodox saints,opinions of Orthodox theologians and philosophers and the views and practices of localOrthodox Churches. The core of the paper is represented by exposition of spiritual andmoral aspects of war, the Orthodox view of the goal and purpose of war and waging war,and by solution of tensions between honest combat and victory in war.

Having Burned the Straw Man of Christian Spiritual Leadership, what can We Learn from Jesus About Leading Ethically?

In considering what it means to lead organizations effectively and ethically, the literature comprising spirituality at work (SAW) and spiritual leadership theory (SLT) has become highly influential, especially in the USA. It has also attracted significant criticism. While in this paper, we endorse this critique, we argue that the strand of literature which purportedly takes a Christian standpoint within the wider SAW school of thought, largely misconstrues and misapplies the teaching of its founder, Jesus. As a result, in dismissing the claims and application of SAW and SLT, there is a real risk that we lose the vital contribution of Christian thought, not least some of the timeless counter-cultural wisdom of Jesus which, we contend, offers a vital foundation to the practice of ethical leadership and business ethics in organizations. In proposing a way forward, two thorny issues which face all leaders are addressed: dealing with ego and closing the gap between what we say and what we do. The more we understand about the dynamics of human nature, the more we learn about the profundity of Jesus’ teachings. We then propose a number of ways in which Jesus-centred ethical leadership can be practised. Each is radical and each implies risk: both the personal risk of inner renewal arising from repentance as a doorway to personal integrity, as well as the risk of opposing unethical practices and promoting the excellence of core practices in the workplace.

Phillis Wheatley: A Muslim Connection

This essay contends that Phillis Wheatley’s work can be understood best by interpreting her work from an African Muslim rather than a Christian standpoint (as over two hundred years of Western criticism has done). To support this view, the article employs African Muslim slave demographics from the Americas, African Muslim slave statements and narratives, colonial historical documents, Wheatley’s biographical material, her poems, and Qur’anic references. As a result of this research, the essay concludes that the progenitor of African American literature probably was Muslim, and suggests ways that this perspective challenges mainstream—and even prevailing African American—criticism concerning Wheatley.

The Role of Affect in Theology and Public Life: A Review of Joshua Hordern's Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology

The Role of Affect in Theology and Public Life: A Review of Joshua Hordern's <i>Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology</i>

The Time of the Translator in the Ovide moralisé

With reference to Derrida and Benjamin, this article scrutinizes the complex time frame proposed by the processes of translatio in the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé. From the point of view of a divine timelessness, the Christian truths and doctrine articulated by the moralizing readings of the Ovide moralisé were always already awaiting revelation by the prudent work of a pious translator. The Ovide moralisé understands itself as having been summoned by the injunction to understand all creation, including pagan literature, from a learned, Christian standpoint.

In Praise of the Spiritual Turn

In Against the Spiritual Turn: Marxism, Realism and Critical Theory Sean Creaven sets out to reject Christian theism on materialist grounds. This paper critiques Creaven's argument from a critically realist Trinitarian Christian standpoint. His failure to engage with Christian theologians, philosophers and biblical scholars, on the a priori ground that since Christianity is inherently irrational Christian scholarship must also be inherently irrational, effectively locks his argument in a vicious intellectual circle. His self-imposed alienation from Christian scholarship generates an ideologically driven thesis of questionable academic integrity. This methodological failure is exacerbated by his preference for inductive and deductive reasoning over a critically realistic retroductive epistemology.

Культурное бессознательное и воскресение России

In the article the author polemicizes with the ideas of formalists, which claim the existence of a «law of destruction of meaning through form in the works of art. This views of this necessary deformation of the meaning are being put in the historical context of destruction of the Russian tradition in the USSR. The author emphasizes two periods of the deformation of the Russian tradition in the soviet culture and the opposition to this deformation in the works of Russian authors in exile: Bunin, Shmelev, Bor. Zajcev. The later have created in their works the conciliar (sobornaya) Russia. In the article theBakhtin's „vnenahodimost of the author is corrected from the Christian standpoint and the receptive mechanism of the resurrection of historical Russia is shown on the material of Bunin's texts. м

Christian Faith and Historical Jesus Research: a Reply to James Dunn

Historical accounts of Jesus by Christian theologians should normally be written from a Christian standpoint. When apologists adopt a non-believing standpoint a liberal protestant Christology is implied. The traditional Christian belief in the crucified and risen Jesus as the decisive revelation of God can be maintained either by setting historical descriptions of Jesus in the context of New Testament theologies, or by including in the picture, and explaining, his impact on his initial and subsequent followers.

Protecting One's Soul: A Christian Inquiry into Defensive Activity

Defense mechanisms are widely accepted as important psychological constructs. However, each theoretical community is obliged to reinterpret such complex constructs in light of its own ultimate framework and set of goods. For the Christian, this entails an examination of biblical and theological materials that bear upon the defenses. Søren Kierkegaard's work illustrates the possible fruits of original sin and Christian exploration of defensive activity. As is well-known, Freud and his followers developed an orientation to the defenses that is rich, but is also one rooted in secular, naturalistic assumptions. The article concludes with a discussion of some developmental, moral, and treatment implications regarding the defenses from a Christian standpoint.

The Call of Wisdom: Adult Development within Christian Community, Part II: Towards a Covenantal Constructivist Model of Post-Formal Development

Certain teachings in the Bible point to the need for post-formal thought structures. However, Christian post-formal development has features that distinguish it from modern post-formal development, primarily because of the divine and social dimensions of thought-formation in the Christian framework. From the Christian standpoint, true human understanding is composed by humans but derived from God; it is reconstructive. True human understanding is also rooted in the context of the Christian's communal, and personal, covenantal relation with God. Hence, the materials relevant to a Christian theory of early adult development point to a model termed “covenantal constructivism.”

?... for more and better religious education?

Mahner and Bunge argue that (1) ‘science and religion are incompatible’, in order to develop their thesis, that (2) ‘a religious education ... is an obstacle to the development of a scientific mentality’, and that therefore we should only teach our children (3) ‘how science explains the existence of religion in historical, biological, psychological and sociological terms’, and that (4) ‘religious education should be kept away from public schools ...’ I offer brief comments on each of these strands of their argument. ‘Religionists’, to use Mahner and Bunge's term, generally come from a specific stance so I shall make it clear, from the outset, that these remarks come from a Christian standpoint, even though many of them are much more widely applicable. Although I agree with some of the observations which Mahner and Bunge make, my conclusions are generally opposite to theirs on each of the four points.

All Under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue (review)

394 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 The Remote Country ofWomen is one of Bai Hua's major works. For ordinary readers, it provides fresh and entertaining reading. For those who wish to learn about contemporary Chinese culture and history, it gives a tangible picture of the life ofa unique Chinese national minority, and ofhow their culture is placed within the broader context of the mainstream Han culture. Jason Jiang University ofWestern Sydney John H. Berthrong. All Under Heaven: TransformingParadigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1994. viii, 273 pp. Hardcover $64.50. Paperback $21.95. This book is an attempt to think through the consequences of certain changes in the present global situation, particularly the historical growth of the concrete pluralism ofthe postmodern world, as these changes impact on Confucian-Christian dialogue. It is written self-confessedly from a Christian standpoint, and ultimately must be read as addressing itselfmainly to a Christian audience, a community committed in various ways to Christian identity and which is grappling with the issues of dialogue and pluralism in various ways. Thus, a reader from outside that community may find many peculiarities in the handling of certain issues, which are doubtless appropriate to the concerns ofthat community but perhaps less centrally so to those outside it. The book must be judged a solid and commendable attempt to struggle with these questions, and one that in places is willing to delve into some ofthe problems of comparative metaphysics in patient detail and with great seriousness, providing, on the way, some valuable insights. However, there are also considerable problems blocking the path of this admirable project. It is necessary before all else to register a complaint about the relatively trivial matter of editing. This book is badly in need of careful proofreading, for it is marred by far too many typos, ungrammatical sentences, and redundancies; at times it seems that a passage was copied with a computer "cut and paste" command and inserted verbatim in several places (e.g., pp. 113 and 128). Ultimately , these reach a saturation point where they begin to interfere with one's reading. ofHawai'i Press^e organizahon ofthe sections and the construction ofthe arguments is also sometimes harmed by what appears to be haste or carelessness, and the footnotes in particular often seem to be afterthoughts haphazardly appended. Reviews 395 The work is at its best, at its most informative and insightful, when it is dealing self-consciously with the meta-issues ofthe theory ofcross-cultural encounter , as in the first two chapters. Here we get a clear and well-presented review of the history ofthis issue in Christian theological circles, the factions presently concerned with it, and the author's own position, which consists of an openness to the inevitability ofpluralism not only in a metaphysical sense but also in a cultural sense, as predicated on his commitment to a process theology, constructed largely on the basis ofthe work of Charles Hartshorne. Berthrong is refreshingly up front about his own "ultimate concerns" and metaphysical position, and inspiringly forthright and unembarrassed in maintaining that a metaphysical beliefmust inevitably inform any scholarlywork, must not be shunned or repressed, and has a legitimate and central role to play. He schematizes the conception of the world that informs his work as consisting ofthe "triple thread" ofform, dynamics, and unification, based primarily on Whitehead's categories of eternal objects, creativity, and concrescence as creative advance into novelty, which are then, rather too unqualifiedly for this reviewer, correlated with the concepts of Ii, qi, and tian-ming or xing, respectively, in Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism. Here already we see that the author is actually structuring his argument on the basis of a theological vision which he takes to be shared to some extent by both partners in the dialogue that it is meant to mediate—a mixing oflevels which carries the danger ofan uncritical begging ofthe question —that is, assuming as fact what is meant to be proved. The author is writing as someone who has already taken both traditions seriously, has embodied in some sense their dialogue, and has emerged with his own synthesis, or with...

Kierkegaard and/or philosophy

By discussing The Concept ofAnxiety, often called Kierkegaard’s most difficult book, I wish to suggest his relationship to philosophy or, at least, to what he considered philosophy’s standpoint. Kierkegaard did not consider himself a philosopher but rather a Christian. It is the Christian standpoint he opposes to the philosophical standpoint, showing the reader by this opposition what characteristics he considers each to have. Kierkegaard’s Christian approach to the human condition is evidenced by his choosing anxiety as a fundamental concept. He explicitly links anxiety with a central Christian dogma. He says, ‘the psychological treatment of the concept of “anxiety”, but in such a way that it constantly keeps in mente and before its eye the dogma of hereditary sin’14.t His approach to the human condition locates a science-psychology-within the framework arising from a religious dogma. This is surely problematic. As always with Kierkegaard, there is the matter of standpoint; the question of which intellectual instrument-with, as he puts it, its ‘mood’-is, and how it is, appropriate. In contrast to the standpoint he has chosen, he says of philosophy or metaphysics:

Pointers Towards A Popular Church In Britain

Peru has a Left-wing daily paper called El Diario de Marka. On the day after Pope John Paul issued his encyclical Laborem Exercens the paper carried a cartoon covering most of its front page which summed up its view of the significance of the encyclical for the Peruvian situation. It showed a determined looking Pope John Paul carrying a banner which read: “Free Trade Unions, Right to Strike, Co-Ownership of the Means of Production and Just Remuneration, Social Justice”. He was bearing down on a rather smug President Belaunde who stood with a banner behind his back saying “Anti-Strike Decree” and thinking “Terrorist”.The fact that such a cartoon would even appear in a Left-wing paper, let alone cover most of its front page, indicates the importance of the popular church for the Peruvian Left. This was further underlined by the amount of space and the sympathetic coverage the paper gave the encyclical in marked contrast to that given by the bourgeois press. Nor is this simply a recognition of the large number of Christians who are trade union and political militants. Perhaps more important is the new image this has given the church and the consequent expectation that a papal statement on social justice would be a broadly Left-wing document.Occasions such as this serve to show just how significant is the popular church, both politically and ecclesiologically. Not only is it new to find large sectors of the church being the natural allies of political progressives but it is even more novel to find that this alliance has caused secular progressives to re-evaluate the meaning of Christianity itself and to come to expect that even some of its more conservative leaders must themselves be progressive if they choose to criticise society from a Christian standpoint.

Does Copernicus Help? Reflections for a Christian Theology of Religions

I want to consider in this paper a question that is looming large in the theology of most world religions, not least in the Christian tradition. The following discussion will be confined to the Christian standpoint, though I hope mutatis mutandis the main points will be seen to apply to other religious perspectives as well. Specifically then, this question can be ex–pressed in two ways. We may ask, (i) in the context of the contemporary dialogue situation, how is the committed Christian to regard the adherents of non–Christian religions? and (ii) what status do these alien belief–systems have with respect to the Christian faith–response? Both forms of the issue are often discussed it seems to me without due attention being given to an important distinction between them. So, at the outset, it will be useful to make one or two observations about this. First of all, it is inevitable, I think, that an evaluational factor is implied by both formulations. We are pondering a basically Christian assessment of religious traditions that are non–Christian, and any solution suggested which eventually eliminates a one-sided overall perspective will apparently put us in a dilemma. For, on the one hand, a Christian theology of religions will be expected to produce a Christian (and therefore evaluational) result; on the other hand, a finally nonevaluational solution seems unable to be called a Christian view of things at all. In the event of such a ‘neutral theology’ as the latter resulting (by no means a purely speculative question as we shall see), is the dilemma that becomes apparent a genuine one, or can it be resolved by a more stringent analysis of the relevant issues?