Christ's Way Research Articles

FATHER FIGURE IN VASYL STUS’ LYRICS

AbstractBackground. Literary study of Vasyl Stus’s lyrics doesn’t deal with conceptual meaning ofthe lyric’s hero psychical reactions to the realities of the world correlated with father’s andmother’s figures. Intimate and personal sense of relationship between a son and a father depictedin Vasyl Stus’s poems extrapolates on the different things, defines civil, patriotic and religiousfeelings. Though this sense destroys the “iconic” image of the poet it discovers worldview’sgrounds of the author’s consciousness, expends the opportunities to the interpretation.
 Purpose. The specificity of art presentation of the father’s figure embodied inautobiographic image of the father, in the images of the totalitarian leaders and God in VasylStus’s lyrics is studied.
 Methods. The question of the reflecting consciousness in lyrics concerns the field of theanthropological literary. The methodical complex of psychoanalysis is effective for the coverage ofthe mechanisms of the author’s consciousness’s emergence. The basic literary methods such asanalysis of images and motives, structural and semantic analysis need to discover artrepresentation of relationship between a son and a father in Vasyl Stus’s lyrics.
 Results. Ambiguous relationship with the father’s figure according to the son’s Oedipuscomplex is expressed in Vasyl Stus’s lyrics. Autobiographic image of the dead father complementedby son’s feelings of love, sad, shame, remorse is presented in the Stus’s poem “One hundred blackdogs have barked. One hundred dogs…”. Son’s feelings of love and respect are extrapolated for theimage of Stus’s friend I. Svitlychniy in the poem “I can’t do without Ivan’s smile…”. It’sremarkable, that sharply negative lyric hero’s attitude to totalitarian leaders, particularly toYo. Stalin, is implemented within the Cruel Father archetype and very often is transformed intoanti-colonial, dissident motives in Stus’s poems. Ambiguous relationship between lyric hero andGod in Stus’s collections “Creativity Time”, “Palimpsests” demonstrates such type of son’sOedipus complex as Christ Way and Prodigal Son’s Way leaded to submit to God-as-father orLucifer’s Way opposing His Power.
 Discussion. Father’s figure expresses wide autobiographic, civil, religious meaning in VasylStus’s lyrics. Ambiguous son – father relationship bases on the Oedipus complex, archetypes Fatherand Son and correlates with moral and ethic, patriotic and religious believes of the author’sconsciousness. Psychoanalytic view on Vasyl Stus’s lyrics expends its interpretative field.Keywords: Vasyl Stus’s lyrics, lyric consciousness, figure of a father, Oedipus complex,son – father relationship.

To Live a Life in Christ's Way: the Answer to a Truncated View of Transhumanism on Human Life

Abstract: The rise of transhumanism reopens the perennial question about the essence of being human, this time exposed to the intentional transformation of human nature through the advancement of modern technology. This transformation includes options from how to overcome certain biological limitations to the creation and expansion of a new global mind and deepening of human consciousness. The authors believe that living a life in Christ's way is the true answer to a truncated view of transhumanism on human life. First, they briefly present two basic ways of understanding transhumanism and its tenuous view of man and his life. Then they show how transhumanistic ideas can be a challenge to Christianity. In the final chapter, they offer a holistic understanding of Jesus Christ as the true human being and the true God. They also posit that Jesus Christ and the life of Christians in His way can be found as the answer to an abbreviated view of transhumanism on human life.

Muhammad in Contemporary Christian Theological Reflection

After briefly surveying the generally polemical pre-modern Christian views of Muhammad, this essay considers a range of recent Christian approaches. Daniel Madigan explores often unrecognized complexities involved in the question; he considers Muhammad's message a “salutary critique” prompting Christians to a fuller understanding of their faith. Hans Küng insists that Christians should recognize Muhammad as a prophet; Islam is akin to early Jewish forms of Christianity, whose validity should be recognized. Jacques Jomier and Christian Troll are respectful of Muhammad but argue that, if Christians call him a prophet, they effectively deny their own faith. Kenneth Cragg presents a “positive, critical position”, encouraging sympathetic Christian interpretation of Muhammad's achievement in his context, but expressing reservations about the “political equation” in his ministry and contrasting this with Christ's way of redemptive suffering. Cragg's approach is upheld against criticisms as an exemplary model of Christian theological engagement with Islam.

Mission from the Margins

Mission from the Margins

Book Review: Mission in Christ's Way: An Orthodox Understanding of Mission

Book Review: Mission in Christ's Way: An Orthodox Understanding of Mission

Orthodox Perspectives on Peace, War and Violence

Orthodox Perspectives on Peace, War and Violence

Serving God's Mission Together in Christ's Way: Reflections on the Way to Edinburgh 2010

AbstractThis paper argues that missio Dei theology must continue to provide the basis for an ecumenical missiology, provided certain problems are revisited, in line with themes of the 2010 Edinburgh study process. Among them is the need for emphasizing the vertical dimension of a transformative spirituality, somehow neglected in earlier ecumenical theologies. Only this will prevent an over‐estimation of humanity's capacities. Within a missio Dei theology the specific role of the church is to be reaffirmed: there is no way back behind integration, which remains a cornerstone of an ecumenical approach, provided it keeps a critical distance to dogmatic ecclesiologies that tend to hinder progress towards visible unity. The debate on gospel and culture has to be urgently taken up again, through a positive appreciation of syncretism and the related search for criteria in intercultural hermeneutics. This will lead to articulating pneumatological approaches to mission with Christologies. Indeed, the New Testament texts with the most universal horizon refer to Christ as Word or Wisdom and not to the Holy Spirit. The paper moves on to ask whether then the relevance of the biblical wisdom tradition should not feature more in missiology. It could provide fertile approaches to witness in a religiously plural and ecologically damaged world. Ecumenical mission should in future be shaped by wisdom as much as it has been by prophecy, and keep both traditions in creative tension.

'Mission In Christ's Way': The Way of Which Christ?

AbstractAll Churches and Missionary Movements in different parts of the world assert without hesitation that in all that they do, they follow the way of Jesus Christ. But the gross injustice in international economic dealings promoted by the so-called 'Christian Nations' in the world and the consequent widening of the gap between the rich and the poor in the world, the discrimination of people on the basis of creed, class, race and colour practised by many Christians and the power-struggle and corruption found in many local churches make the world wonder, the way of which Christ these Christians follow! The image of the Biblical Jesus is that of the Servant-leader, crowned with thorns, who emptied himself of all worldly riches, pomp and power and laid down his life as a ransom for many. Since the time of Emperor Constantine, this thorn-crowned servant Jesus is turned into a gold-crowned King, an anti-Christ with the face of 'Mammon', the idol of riches and power. Since one cannot worship God and Mammon at the same time, it is mandatory on the part of us all faithful Christians, to introspect ourselves and decide, the way of which Christ we want to follow.

CROSSCULTURAL EVANGELISM IN A POST‐COLONIAL TIME — A SWEDISH PERSPECTIVE

Evangelism - sharing the good news Any evangelistic activity has to seriously the cultural setting which the gospel is shared. Sharing the gospel, a mission in Christ's way is a sharing between brothers and sisters on the same level. The gospel should not be shared from above to the people below. of my best experiences of what evangelism is came through an old missionary Costa Rica when my wife and I were studying Spanish there. This wise and experienced man (I don't even remember his name) addressed the big group of missionary candidates, saying: All of who are going to serve as missionaries Latin America, above all learn to I have to admit that I became a bit confused, but he repeated the same sentence so it wasn't a mistake. I had left my country because I felt I had a calling to share the love of with people Latin America, and now this old man said I was there to receive! At that moment I learned an important lesson and on several occasions after that I have felt how wise this suggestion was: You cannot really share the gospel unless first receive, from of course, but also from your neighbours, listening to their experiences and learning from them. Evangelism could be another -ism, an ideology, like liberalism, conservatism, marxism or religious ideologies like hinduism, buddhism and others. Of course, Christian teaching has ideological implications but it is more than that, more than something like take it or leave it. The gospel is the truth, certainly, but it is more than that: Above all it has to be a personal discovery of the Son of God; it is receiving Jesus Christ personally. Most of us involved mission have discovered this, I think. of my friends Latin America, we can call him Carlos, had experienced many difficulties, even from the day he was born. His mother had left him with a relative when he was just a baby and he had grown up with this man. Carlos had low self-esteem and did not know real love, even if he had a wonderful wife and many children. When Carlos and his wife discussed their problems he always finished by saying: Algun dia llega mi noche buena! which means: One day my will come! His hope was this: Some day there would be a change his life, some day he would experience real joy, like the night when Christ was born. Carlos got his Christmas Eve and that was when somebody visited the village the jungle area where he lived and said that God so loved the world. . Carlos had heard about God's love before, the Catholic teaching, but this time the person who shared the gospel insisted on adding something like this: loves the world means that loves everybody and that means that he loves you, Carlos! This simple explanation changed everything - his personal life, his family life, his surroundings. He who had studied only month at school began to study the Bible and quickly learned to read like anybody else, even better! And he became an evangelist the right meaning of the word: He began to share the gospel with people from his own family, with his neighbours and people he knew the area. Many people received what he said as he was one of them and they had seen the change his life. The problem many of us face is to share the gospel a crosscultural setting. Times have changed and we as westeners have no right to go out by ourselves with the gospel to all places the world. Many western missionaries struggle with a complex from colonial times, and that has made some of us afraid and silent. The number of crosscultural missionaries from the west is continually decreasing, while the number from the south is constantly increasing. But there is no time for triumphalism, neither from the north nor from the south. churches we have to face another standard: that of the kingdom of God. That means that out of the development of missionary work, from dependency via independency, we have to serious steps towards a real inter dependency where we as brothers and sisters the world look upon each other as partners the most important of all missions: As the Father has sent me, I am sending you (John 20:21b). …

COMPUTERS AND CHANGE IN MISSION

One way to characterize the role of a computer professional working in a business enterprise is to call him an agent for change. Closely connected with this is the thought of a data processing project as a learning process: when computerizing the activities of a business, these activities should be understood in such a way that the change can lead to a renewal and result in new ways of operation, perhaps even open up totally unforeseen horizons. But what if the persons using the computers are people active in the church, and the business enterprise is a mission? Can these young freaks make winds of change blow through the old structures? Can they create something new in mission, in Christ's way, in the present networked world? In Christ's way in the networked world? The childhood of Christianity was spent in the Roman Empire, which was united by a common language and an extensive road network. The opportunities to spread the gospel of the kingdom of God throughout the empire challenged the first Christians to reach beyond the confines of their own local churches. Our faith is going to face the third millennium of Christianity in a situation closely resembling that of her childhood years. Again there is a challenge to reach an empire speaking one language and united by a network of routes. But in our day and age the empire is not confined within the geographical boundaries of the Roman Empire. The empire of today is inhabited by hundreds of millions of computer network users, who understand and speak the language of multimedia and who are connected with one another by rapid routes of data transfer. What, then, would Christ do in this situation? Would he learn the language of these people, and so enter their everyday life? Would he walk their highways and byways? There is no doubt in my mind that Christ is calling us to this very thing. (Only) youth know how to respond to the call Some years ago the Finnish Evangelical-Lutheran Mission (FELM) made the decision to take up this challenge. A group of about ten people started to plan a computer teaching programme based on a Bible translation project in Papua New Guinea. The guiding thought behind the effort was that it takes people to create a teaching programme that will awaken the interest of other people concerning mission. The first step was creating a game, in which the user takes on the role of a missionary facing the challenge of translating a Bible passage. The user then looks for the right words by moving around in a native village and uses his mouse to select the items on the screen that represent the words he needs for the translation. By means of animation the user experiences the flight to the village complete with nasty air pockets and engages in building a hut in the middle of the village. After completing the translation project the user listens to the Bible passage he has just translated in the local bine language -- spoken by his computer. In addition to this the user can get acquainted with the various phases and problems in translating the Finnish Bible. By clicking his mouse at the proper icons he can also learn more facts about Papua New Guinea. To us, the results of the combination of hard work and limited resources offered a pleasant surprise in the end. We felt that we had found a new way to reach today's youth. Working with thee first programme proved fertile beyond our expectations. New thoughts and ideas began to sprout, widening our horizons even more. Soon the original theme was expanding into a number of variations. As a background for the possible variations offered by data processing to mission we will now undertake a short excursion into those terrains of the mind, where a vision of these possibilities can be born. Excursion: Towards computer-aided mission? Some years ago my father, a pastor, voiced his concern over his son's choice of career: Are you sure you will be happy in that file room typing information into the computer? …

INCARNATION AND THE CHURCH'S EVANGELISTIC MISSION

In the ecumenical conversation about and evangelism in the last decade, there is frequent reference to doing and evangelism in Jesus Christ's way. In 1989, the World Council of Churches (WCC) convened its conference on world and evangelism in San Antonio under the theme, Your Will Be Done: in Christ's Way.(1) In 1987, an international grouping of ecumenical-evangelical missiologists and church leaders met in Stuttgart to consider the forthcoming San Antonio meeting. Their purpose was to think about the evangelistic of the church and to prepare a statement reflecting their insights for the 1989 conference. The result was a book entitled Proclaiming Christ in Christ's Way, Studies in Integral Evangelism.(2) In 1982, the WCC's Commission on World and Evangelism presented its major statement, and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation.(3) It contains a section entitled Mission in Christ's Way. The reception of this language can be traced around the world. In 1991, for example, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted a document on and evangelism entitled Turn to the Living God: A Call To Evangelism in Jesus Christ's Way,(4) which specifically refers to the WCC statement of 1982.(5) This imagery, doing and evangelism in Jesus Christ's way, indicates a broadening ecumenical consensus about the relationship between the incarnation -- the actual way in which the Word became flesh or the model of Jesus' life -- and the way in which the church goes about its mission. Such an approach (incarnational is apparently a twentieth century neologism) raises a lot of questions, particularly at a time when, in some quarters, the incarnation is itself the theme of heated debate. Therefore, it will be helpful to examine carefully what is occurring theologically when we talk about mission in Jesus Christ's way. When we go back before the appearance of the WCC 1982 document, and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation, we enter into a period of several decades in which most western mainline Protestant traditions tended to de-emphasize evangelism as the verbal proclamation of the gospel with the intent to draw people to personal faith in Christ. The focus was generally more upon the church's social witness and involvement with broad agenda of justice and peace. Often evangelism was redefined as an expression of social witness, so that the word was used for almost anything a mainline denominational agency wanted to affirm. The American Presbyterian version of this process is called by Milton J. Coalter the rethinking, retooling, and restructuring of evangelism, which he dates from about 1963 on.(6) Throughout this period, however, thinking and writing about the of the church never completely disavowed the centrality of the church's evangelistic mission, as awkward as that central tenet of our confessional tradition might have been for some. The emphasis upon incarnational evangelism emerged in various attempts to define the church's witness in ways that sought to include both verbal proclamation and social witness. This approach has now established itself in the concept of mission in Christ's way. It is a genuinely helpful way of thinking, which does not undermine the evangelistic ministry of the church, but rather strengthens it. The emphatic use of this incarnational imagery in the 1982 WCC document, and Evangelism; An Ecumenical Affirmation, shows that such language had achieved a notable ecumenical currency. Such statements emerge from long and difficult processes of drafting and editing which draw together representatives across the full spectrum of churchly traditions and cultures. When they finally agree, then we have language that we can use in the multi-cultural, world-wide church with some hope that we all mean the same things when we say the same words. The publication of and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation in 1982 was a signal event for the theology and practice of mission. …

Book Review: The San Antonio Report: Your Will Be Done: Mission in Christ's Way

Book Review: The San Antonio Report: Your Will Be Done: Mission in Christ's Way

Book Review: Proclaiming Christ in Christ's Way: Studies in Integral Evangelism

Book Review: Proclaiming Christ in Christ's Way: Studies in Integral Evangelism

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:AN OLD SOCIETY IN A NEW AGE: Arne Sovik is now retired after spending most of his working life as a missionary in China and on the staff of the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva.No Bird Flies With Just One Wing, edited by Franz Baumann.OF BRIBERY, NEPOTISM AND AUTHORITY: Klauspeter Blaser is professor of Systematics at the University of Lausanne.Korruption. Eine Herausforderung für Gesellschaft und Kirche, by Karl Rennstich.ONE MISSION – MANY CONTEXTS: Myra Blyth is area secretary for Europe of the World Council of Churches' Commission on Inter‐Church Aid, Refugee and World Service.Proclaiming Christ in Christ's Way: Studies in Integral Evangelism. (Essays presented to Walter Arnold on the occasion of his 60th birthday), edited by Vinay Samuel and Albrecht Hauser.

San Antonio and Manila 1989: “…Like Ships in the Night”?

In this article the two authors who participated in both the World Council of Churches Commission on World Mission and Evangelism conference in San Antonio, Texas, and the Lausanne II Congress in Manila report on similarities and differences in the two missiological events. They note the stronger evangelism focus at San Antonio where witness in deed and word are emphasized, and the greater concern at Manila with issues of social justice, the plight of the poor and oppressed, and women in the church. Despite differences in rhetoric and theological emphasis, there is much common ground around the themes “Your Will Be Done: Mission in Christ's Way” (San Antonio) and “Calling the Whole Church to Take the Whole Gospel to the Whole World” (Manila). The authors urge the leaders of both movements not to stumble over differences, but to plan and work together more closely in the future.

Book Review: Mission in Christ's Way

Book Review: Mission in Christ's Way

Book Review: Your Will Be Done: Mission in Christ's Way. Study Material and Biblical Reflection

Book Review: Your Will Be Done: Mission in Christ's Way. Study Material and Biblical Reflection