Divine Intervention Research Articles

Kausalitas dalam Sains dan Teologi: Perbandingan Pandangan Mu’tazilah dan Asyariyah

The Mu'tazilites believed in deterministic causality explained by human reason. Humans have freedom and are responsible for their actions. Ashariyah, on the other hand, believes in occasional causality controlled by God's will. Events in the universe are not connected and only happen because of God's will. Modern science, with its developments, shows that causality is not a simple concept. From classical physics to quantum physics, understanding of causality continues to evolve and challenge traditional thinking. The meeting point between theology and modern science lies in the question of God's role in the universe. Theologians' questions about miracles and divine intervention parallel physicists' questions about cause-and-effect relationships and the behavior of objects. This journal concludes that causality is a complex and multidimensional concept that requires understanding from various perspectives, including theology and science.

Understanding and addressing climate change impacts on cocoa farming in Ghana

It is an undeniable fact that climate change has negative effects on cocoa production and has thus led to reduced yields in Ghana. This has affected cocoa farmers living standards due to their high dependency on income from sales of cocoa dry beans. The study determined the causes, indicators, effects and mitigative strategies of climate change on cocoa farmers farms. Generally, 71.43 % respondents indicated, climate change was caused by deforestation whereas 26.79 %, especially female farmers, associated it with superstitious connotations. Similarly, 72.86 % of the farmers included shade trees on their farms as a mitigative strategy to climate change's effect. While two farmers abandoned farms, others (17.50 %) sought divine intervention. Marginal effects in M-Logit results revealed that, Education, Variety, Training on Climate Change, Radio and Shade trees were significant (p-value < 0.10), under various dependent variables on causes of climate change. Again, Gender, Education, Household size, Migration status, Credit, Farm age, Variety and Training on Climate Change were also significant (p-value < 0.10), under various dependent variables on farmers mitigative strategies to addressing climate change effects. Results imply the need to intensify climate change education to cocoa farmers, especially females, within the district to help achieve targets of SDG 13 as well as enhancing their living conditions.

Vietnamese Evangelicals and Pentecostalism: The Politics of Divine Intervention, by Vince Le

Vietnamese Evangelicals and Pentecostalism: The Politics of Divine Intervention, by Vince Le

Miracles and Divine Intervention during the Struggle between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania in Christian Narratives from the 14th Century

More than a hundred years of fighting between the Teutonic Order and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have left us with a considerable amount of narrative sources that allow researchers today to imagine the language of the Christians who fought against the pagans, and to understand their beliefs and propaganda measures. One little-studied question in this regard is how the Christian narrative tradition of the 14th century portrayed miracles and divine intervention during the struggle between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania. To address this question, the author of the article focuses on the chronicles of the Teutonic Order, which represented the idea of the Crusade to the Lithuanian lands, and therefore showed a strong need to emphasise the religious aspect of the whole military conflict. At the same time, however, she also draws on other surviving documents for comparison, including Lithuanian and Ruthenian narrative sources. The author argues that the accounts of miracles and divine intervention in sources from the Teutonic Order were influenced by the nature of the Order as a religious military corporation and the chroniclers’ need to explain the campaigns to Lithuania as a holy war. It was this need that led them to place a great emphasis on the depiction of divine intervention in the campaigns of the crusaders to help them.

Prophet and politician dining around the same table: God’s message in conflict?

The research problem in this article is the modern prophets who rub shoulders with politicians. The focus is on the prophets found in New Prophetic Churches (NPCs). These prophets seek favours as much as politicians seek favours that are divinely sanctioned by prophets. The objectives here include ensuring that God’s message is not conflicted because of this prophet–politician symbiosis. It warns Christians not to commodify faith in order to achieve some political ambitions. The foundation is laid on biblical teachings on prophets and prophecy. There are two identified categories of the Old Testament prophets. Those who feasted with the kings at dinner tables and those who suffered under the status quo. These were banished, exiled, always on a run, and sometimes beheaded. Real-world examples of modern politicians who visit prophets on a regular basis are offered using social media and literature evaluations as resources. These politicians do so for a variety of reasons, including seeking spiritual affirmation and expressions of appreciation, praying for divine intervention during times of crisis that may affect their political careers or performances, and eventually soliciting favours. These favours are sought in some ungodly exchanges with expectations of some kickbacks. The solution to this compromise is the calling for the revisit of application of doctrinal and ethical dealings in and by the church and the government. Theology’s task is to clarify to citizens the relationship between church and government. The debate between these two powers (prophet and politician) should continue towards amicable understanding. The church must redefine its political involvement to avoid being swallowed up, and to remain the salt of the earth and a light in the world.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article’s intradisciplinary implication is realised through the literature and social media platforms reviews to enhance social and some theological disciplines such as biblical studies, church history, ecclesiology and pneumatology. Social disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology combined with theological disciplines argue that prophets and politicians should not become bedfellows unless for enacting social justice and this to be done ethically without any compromise to morality.

Of agency, Allah, and authority: the making of a divine trial among Muslims with same‐sex attraction in Indonesia

AbstractThis article delves into the life stories of Indonesian Muslims who struggle with same‐sex attraction (henceforth SSA) and believe that their SSA is divinely foreordained as a test from Allah. I draw on seventeen months of ethnographic research in an online community called Yayasan Peduli Sahabat (henceforth YPS) which prescribes ways to live heterosexually to its members and clients with SSA. In this article, I argue that the members of YPS are exercising their agency when they try to discipline their sexuality and live as heterosexuals. In this way, this study contributes to the existing literature on the agency of illiberal religious subjects by discussing the extent to which agency is practised in the face of one's relations with the divine and human‐mediated religious authority. Drawing on these interrelated themes, this article conjoins anthropological scholarship on self‐cultivation, divine intervention, and religious authority. Instead of understanding Muslims’ lives through the shift from a self‐cultivation paradigm to the paradigm of divine intervention, I suggest that both paradigms are instructive and attending to them could elucidate how Muslims with SSA exercise their agency while continuing to be affected by the divine.

"I Love Every Part of You"

"I Love Every Part of You"

Exploring spiritual/religious coping strategies among mothers of children with severe or profound intellectual disability during genetic counseling in Brazil.

Parents use several coping strategies to deal with the challenges of caring for children with disabilities. This qualitative study explored the spiritual/religious coping strategies adopted by Brazilian mothers of children with severe or profound intellectual disabilities who were attending the medical genetics clinic for genetic counseling. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants, selected by convenience. Thematic content analysis was used to investigate the data. Five major themes were recognized: (1) spirituality/religion as a source of resilience; (2) surrender to God's plan; (3) a feeling of predestination; (4) children with a disability perceived/conceived as a blessing; and (5) pleading for divine intervention. Participants highlighted the ability to recover and adapt to bad circumstances and stressful events with God's support using spiritual/religious resources and practices. They attributed the cause and control of events in their lives to an external and transcendental source, showing themselves to be resigned to the condition of their child with a disability and his/her demands. The feeling of predestination appeared as a form of divine intervention as well as a way of attributing meaning to the situation. Their child with a disability was compared constantly to an "angel," a celestial being created by God to be a messenger and fulfill divine purposes. From the participants' perspective, these coping mechanisms appeared to have helped them adjust to the situation. Spirituality and religiousness have become crucial in cultures such as Brazil, where religious practices, often highly syncretic, are common. A more detailed and comprehensive understanding of how spiritual/religious coping strategies are mobilized during the genetic counseling process can improve the cultural competence of genetic counselors and help guide proposals for more effective clinical interventions.

Salvation Scripts: How Religion Matters for Women’s Desistance Narratives

Criminologists are increasingly interested in narrative mechanisms of desistance, and a growing body of research shows that many justice-involved individuals draw on religion in constructing desisting identities. However, evidence is mixed on precisely how religion operates in desistance narratives. Analyzing 48 in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated women in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, we suggest one qualitative mechanism by which religious narratives matter for desistance: salvation scripts. Building on and differentiated from redemption scripts, salvation scripts narrate a decisive divine intervention that steers women away from deviant behavior. This concept contributes specificity to the role of religion in desistance by explicating a mechanism by which formerly incarcerated women draw on spiritual sense-making to respond to gendered rhetorical punishment meted out by the carceral system. We conclude by exploring the implications of salvation scripts on women’s experiences of agency in the face of gendered inequalities in contemporary U.S. correctional punishment.

Instruments of Devotion in Close Bodily Contact – Jewellery, Costume Details and Other Personal Belongings in Relation to Late Medieval Piety

Summary Late medieval personal belongings such as jewellery, costume details, weapons and tools are sometimes provided with direct and indirect prayers for help and protection, images of Christ and saints relating to motifs in the church interior and in prayer books, and image composition giving associations to altar-screens and shrines. Taken altogether these objects explicitly have a devotional character, which has been further strengthened through analysis of written sources such as exempla and preserved more extensive prayers. This point towards the relevance of talking about these objects as instruments of small-scale and everyday devotion. People were in constant need of help and protection from everyday threats. By relating to preserved prayers and exempla from late medieval Sweden, the article shows that these objects with prayers and holy images were regarded as transmitting divine help, protection, consolation and blessing. Due to the small size and portability of the personal objects carried on the body, divine intervention could take place irrespective of time and space. Lived religion and everyday devotion could therefore be performed anywhere, including on the move.

А так ли был прав Крепелин? Попытка прояснить взаимосвязь между шизофренией и биполярным аффективным расстройством

Biological view of the development of mental disorders was described back in the days of Hippocrates in his humoral theory considering the brain as a place of origin of all emotions and therefore rejecting the earlier theories suggesting that psychic phenomena resulted from divine intervention. Later his ideas transformed to produce, inter alia, the Kraepelin’s allegation. Kraepelin described mental disorder as a “natural biological process” and suggested to divide mental disorders into two large groups, dementia praecox and la folie circulaire, based on this allegation. Differentiation was based on intellectual impairment that was more severe in patients with schizophrenia than in patients with bipolar disorder. Current research has revealed considerable clinical and genetic similarity of two disorders. However, in contrast to schizophrenia, the data of patients with bipolar disorder indicate no intellectual impairment. Furthermore, the risk of bipolar disorder is associated with higher premorbid IQ. Can we suppose that the genes that determine such cognitive differences are just genes and their mutations that determine lower IQ in the general population, but not the disease-associated genes? High efficacy of antipsychotics against both disorders is the other common phenomenon revealed in modern times. Modern antipsychotics that will be discussed in this paper show higher efficacy and safety.

The Book of Job and Pastoral Intervention in Crisis

This article uses the Book of Job as a starting point for guidelines on how to help people traumatized by various crises find purpose and meaning in life without imposition of pre-judged solutions. Using a loose analogy between a theological discussion in the biblical book and the modern theories of existential psychotherapy, it makes a point of showing how both methods may fail if they are ossified into ideologies. The proposed solution is in making room for a divine intervention that is outside the scope of the pastor’s or therapist’s experience. In the Book of Job, it is Job’s personal encounter with God. Psychotherapy may use the Lacanian notion of “the Other” to open up the client towards Transcendence. In times of trauma and crisis, people are vulnerable to all sorts of emotional and spiritual abuse. That is why the call for openness towards divine intervention must be cultivated within the limits of Christian spirituality.

Optimism at the End of Time: Jihadists' Struggles

ABSTRACT: Danish Muslims who have returned from jihad in Syria describe the Arab Spring as a miracle—a divine intervention that called upon them to radically change their lives. From one day to the next, they turned towards God and decided to travel to the Middle East to take up arms. According to the interlocutors, the miracle of the Arab Spring made them wake up to find themselves as part of the Muslim umma—the community of the last prophet Mohammed—that is, the prophet of the time of the end—but also to find that maybe the end of time had arrived and that they could choose to join the Great Battle between infidels and believers. Based on long-term fieldwork, this article investigates my interlocutors' practices of struggling in the way of Allah. Arguing against Olivier Roy's central thesis that European jihadists are violent nihilists, I contend that we need to reinstate God and the relation between divine determination and my interlocutors' agency to explain why jihadists act as they do. To understand this relation, I draw on anthropological studies of Islam and Christianity, as well as Agamben's distinction between "the time of the end" (messianism) and "the end of time" (apocalypse). My interlocutors believe that they live in End-times: they know that the world is about to end but they do not know when, and I suggest that it is exactly this gap that their jihadists' practices strive to bridge. Struggling to bring about what they believe is already God-given, I argue that jihadists are optimists, not nihilists.

Charisma and Surgery in the Middles Ages: The Example of Henri de Mondeville, Surgeon of Philip IV the Fair

Based on Henri de Mondeville’s treatise on surgery, this article focuses on his practice and explores the surgeon’s awareness of the concept of charisma and its implications for his professional activities. It seeks to demonstrate the medieval textual continuity of the concept of charisma, its relevance to medieval medical vocation and training, and the fact that charisms remained central to the act of care for this surgeon, who acted for the common good and in fear of divine judgment. This essay looks at possible limiting factors in surgical practice, such as theological issues concerning the body and soul, or the consideration of the notion of moral responsibility. Do charisma, faith, and divine intervention absolve the surgeon from such responsibility? This article will examine whether de Mondeville’s surgical practice was based on predefined principles and non-intervention in the natural order of things or if, on the contrary, the medieval surgeon was accountable for his actions and their consequences independently of divine grace, due to his making a reasoned choice in the context of an ethical approach. This analysis shows that the elements involved in medical decision-making rely on a moral basis, influenced by the Christian religion and normed by religious texts, but do not exclude recourse to an applied code of ethics for specific cases, reserving all freedom of action.

A Comparative Study of the Significance of Suffering in James 1:2-4

When individuals are confronted with challenging situations, they may contemplate whether the difficulties are the results of divine intervention or evil influences. Even more, they may also believe that the negative outcomes they are experiencing are the results of the sin they have committed. Rather than just assessing the impact of these trials on their lives, it is essential to consider whose perspective to adopt when dealing with adversity. Different religious and belief systems offer varying views on the causes of suffering and hardship. In this qualitative research, a comparative study is applied to examine several belief systems, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. As a result, one can gain insight into the origin of life’s difficulties and adopt a suitable mindset. The findings of this research can be particularly helpful for Christians, as they can better comprehend the role of suffering in life and cultivate a perspective that strives to be conformed to the image of God.

Medals, Rings, and Olympic Dreams: A Review Essay of Antonio Sotomayor and Cesar R. Torres, eds., Olimpismo

Medals, Rings, and Olympic Dreams: A Review Essay of Antonio Sotomayor and Cesar R. Torres, eds., <i>Olimpismo</i>

Sacralizing a Battlefield: The Religious Heritage of the Battle of Warsaw 1920

This article presents a process of creating religious heritage that goes beyond the “sacralization of heritage” or the “heritagization of religion”. It is grounded in the assumption that religious heritage may be an element of lived religion, while the strategies of managing the past (and of preserving and transmitting values) observable within Roman Catholicism all fit within the discourse of heritage. This text focuses on the heritage of the Battle of Warsaw developed in Roman Catholic religious practice. The battles fought in 1920 are also referred to as the “Miracle on the Vistula”, since the Polish victory in that confrontation is seen as resulting from a divine intervention. Such an image of the battle permeates its heritage, allowing the Roman Catholic Church to shape it in accordance with religious teachings. This article is based on fieldwork on the anniversary events of the Battle of Warsaw. It aims to illustrate how the battlefield may become sacralized, blurring the lines between religious practices and heritage. The haptically experienced materiality of the battlefield makes it possible to localize heritage perceived not only as the site of bloody conflict, but also as the scene of the Virgin Mary’s intercession and divine intervention.

MARILYN CHIN’S REVENGE OF THE MOONCAKE VIXEN AS TEXTUAL SYSTEMIC DESIRING MACHINE

Marilyn Chin’s one and only novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (2009), presents highly fragmented narratives that revolve around the lives of three female Chinese Americans of two different generations in the process of reaching their immigrant American dreams. Such narrative characteristics prompt an analysis conducted in this article which parallels the series of maneuvers of the trio with Deleuze &amp; Guattari’s systemic procedure of coup et flux (cut and flow). The aim is to show that the idea of assimilating American dream with the immigrant’s is a complex matter as it involves series of actions that compromise the two. The trio’s mode of action, the presence of textual divine intervention in the narrative fragments, and epigraphs from classical to popular texts encourage an analysis using narrative studies, focusing mainly on plot structure. In the context of negotiating Chinese American culture, this article argues that within the frame of tale of revenge, the process of reaching the immigrant American dream undergoes a series of endless systemic procedure of coup et flux. The negotiation process presented via uncertainty and series of transits in the novel thus causes endlessness that leads to an idea that the dream, the happiness, would never actually reach its definite ending point; it is merely a series of transits.

Front and Back Covers, Volume 39, Number 2. April 2022

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 2POLYCRISIS: FROM DIVINE INTERVENTIONTO HUMAN AGENCYThe front cover image is of Thanatos (Death), the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, astride a pale steed and followed by Hades (as depicted by Gustave Doré in 1868). It serves as a haunting reminder of crisis understood in religious terms. In Christian theology, the Four Horsemen were given divine authority to kill by sword, famine, plague and through the beast; four original strands of polycrisis (Revelation 6:7‐8). Other eschatological traditions speak of entangled immorality, meteorological phenomena, geological violence and the coming of messianic saviours before the End Time.As our world faces an unprecedented era of interrelated and overlapping crises, we increasingly place human agency at the centre of our explanations. Yet we need to understand their underlying power dynamics and complexity better. This collection of articles invites us to examine how certain events trigger deliberation and critique of what constitutes a crisis and whether we can still identify cause and effect in an increasingly interconnected world. From socioeconomic forces to ecological thought and the coexistence of divine intervention, contributors explore how markets, solidarity, faith and future planning shape our responses to unexpected events spiralling out of control.We shift from the ‘crisis‐chasing’ evident over the last two decades to a meaningful critique of emergent multiscalar events. We interrogate the usefulness of the developing polycrisis paradigm to understand better the interrelated endless crises afflicting our planet today.BEES IN CRISISMarch 2023, northeastern Bosnia. A bee forager seeks out this Pink Pussy Willow, an early spring bloomer whose catkins offer up a generous supply of pollen, fuelling the hive's spring development.For the honeybees, who rely on environmental signs, such as temperature, to ascertain the seasons and sync their nest affairs with the cyclical rhythms of local weather patterns, soils and plants, willow catkin blossoms signal the beginning of a new foraging year. Yet, in the changing climate, local weather is unhinged from the seasons, and ambient cues are increasingly ambiguous and untimely.Plants, whose life cycles are likewise synced with environmental cues, interpret the changing atmosphere and respond with vigorous physiological changes. Warming temperatures and changing precipitation regimes in the Northern Hemisphere induce shorter and milder winters, earlier dates of greening in the spring and later browning in the autumn. Such changes are recorded by satellite imaging and are readily evident to lay observers.How exactly the plants and their companion insects will respond is unknown. Biologists know that responses to the changing climate and extreme weather will be idiosyncratic because ‘biodiversity’, the world of living difference, entails a vigorous differentiation of signage and meaning in an emergency.The thing to do now is to attend to these ontologically plural, interspecies signs of the times with methods and theories that are open to the unexpected and unintimidated by either the ominous or the meaningful quality of the world we share.This volume presents a joint endeavour in thinking about crisis as an ethnographic concept and an embodied, existential experience of discomfort from which to begin an earnest response.

Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550 by Sarah Ann Long

Reviewed by: Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550 by Sarah Ann Long Leah Morrison Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550. By Sarah Ann Long. (Eastman Studies in Music.) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2021. [xxv, 350 p. ISBN 9781580469968 (hardcover), $125; ISBN 9781787449275 (e-book), price varies.] Figures, music examples, tables, notes, print and online appendixes, bibliography, chant and polyphonic composition indexes, primary source index, general index. The struggles of the past two years with COVID-19 cannot help but remind us of the devastating tolls of earlier pandemics, especially the episodes of bubonic plague that raged with chilling regularity during the Middle Ages. On the first page of her masterful study, Sarah Ann Long bridges a seven-century gap with the statement, "Plague epidemics affected everyone, forcing men and women of all walks of life to come face to face with their mortality. … One can imagine a certain [End Page 398] helplessness that people felt when confronted with this disease, causing them to routinely seek divine intervention from patron saints thought to have special protective powers" (p. 1). It is the devotion to these saints, specifically to the music and liturgy inspired by that practice, that provides the focus of Long's work. She examines fourteen liturgical books containing devotional music and texts produced between 1300 and 1540 for organizations in Paris and Tournai. Significantly, the books were not intended for monastic or cathedral use but rather for the various confraternities having a presence in these two cities. Confraternities, Long explains, were smaller institutions than the ecclesiastical communities that sponsored them. Purely devotional in purpose, their membership could be drawn from trades and professions, social groups, and religious laity, and included both men and women. The devotional material in the volumes pertains to four saints: Sebastian, Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria, and Nicholas, bishop of Myra. These were among the fourteen holy helpers—saints venerated together because their intercessions were believed especially effective against sickness and death—most often invoked in the environs of northern France for protection against the plague. Long lays out in detail the importance of confraternities to the rising trend of popular piety in the late fourteenth century, along with the development of devotional practices and their importance in sponsoring new music and texts for their services. It is in this last area that her study breaks new and important ground. Hers is the first to directly connect the confraternities of northern France as patrons to the composers of plainchant and polyphony in honor of these specific saints, as well as to describe the place the chants had within the devotional life of the organizations. The book is divided into five chapters, with a comprehensive introduction and a brief conclusion. Most of the content of each chapter is interrelated. Notes and bibliographic references are comprehensive and abundant (fifty-six pages of explanatory endnotes and twenty-six pages of bibliographic references necessary for understanding the notes) and together serve as an invaluable summary of scholarship pertaining to Mass and Office composition in late medieval northern France. There are six appendixes that are also integral to understanding the contents of all the chapters: three are provided after the conclusion, and three are available through a companion website that must be either downloaded or viewed online. In the engagingly written introduction, Long not only explains her goal—to demonstrate how liturgical books for confraternities mirror the popular devotional trend in northern France—but also outlines the importance of these confraternities and describes their relations with sponsoring institutions. She discusses the limitations of available sources, documents the structure and importance of the liturgy (and, consequently, liturgical books) to these societies, and chronicles the resulting development of specialized liturgies in response to the plague. Long describes a fascination with mortality, "which resulted in the production of new literature which circulated widely, first in manuscripts and later in print" and explains how her study of these fourteen books demonstrates "why specific chant melodies were chosen and how contrafacta were carefully crafted with an awareness of the theology they expressed" (p. 8). In her introductory discussion, Long also explains the important connection...