Divine Mission Research Articles

The Iran-Iraq War: A Reassessment

The Iran-Iraq war remains one of the longest conflicts in the history of the modern Middle East. The war would define Iran's foreign policy orientation, as the exigencies of the conflict conditioned its approach to the United States, the Arab world, and even Israel. Along the way, Iran's leaders made a series of mistakes and miscalculations that ensured a stalemated conflict. Subordinating strategy to ideology and misplaced hopes that Iraq's population would rise to welcome Iranians as liberators contributed to prolonging a devastating war. This year will mark the 30th anniversary of one of the most important and peculiar conflicts in the history of modern Middle East, the Iran-Iraq war. The Islamic Republic of Iran's ritual celebration of its martyrs obscures a more deliberate and dispassionate assessment of the conflict. Iran fought the war with remarkable disadvantages, as it lacked reliable allies, a dependable supply of arms, and superpower goodwill. Along the way, Iranian leaders perceived that they would be welcomed as liberators and believed that no detailed occupation policy was necessary. Still, the regime's ability to sustain an eight-year conflict reflected its resilience and ability to mobilize society and consolidate its power under duress. The state that was often viewed as a passing and transient phenomenon proved that it could deal with domestic challenges and international isolation while waging a total war. Iran's conduct in the war reflected its militancy and revolutionary fervor. This was not an interstate conflict fought for territorial adjustment or limited political objectives. At stake was a contest of ideologies and a competition for power. The clerics whose revolution had succeeded against great odds assumed that spiritual valor would compensate for Iraq's technological edge. Military planning and issues of strategy and tactics were cast aside for the sake of martyrdom and sacrifice. The war and revolution had somehow fused in the clerical imagination. To wage the war was a way of demonstrating one's commitment to the divine mission launched by the Imam Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. In one of the paradoxes of Iran, the war that Ayatollah Khomeini hoped would realize his ideological values ended up undermining the transnational mission of the state. After an inconclusive but costly struggle, Iran failed to defeat Iraq, transform the Middle East, or project its Islamist template beyond its boundaries. The Islamic Republic would now have to rest its legitimacy on factors other than its religious imperatives or revolutionary aspirations. A state that had so long resisted mundane considerations uneasily became another government preoccupied with providing services to its constituents and achieving its objectives within the prevailing international system. Redemption of God's Will On September 22, 1980, Saddam Husayn made the catastrophic decision to launch an invasion of Iran. The persistent border clashes, Iran's propaganda campaigns, and Saddam's opportunism finally led the Iraqi strongman to provoke one of the longest conflicts in the annals of the modern Middle East. Iraq's invasion initially scored impressive gains, as the city of Khurramshahr fell and the important industrial cities of Abadan and Ahvaz were besieged and isolated. Saddam flamboyantly proclaimed his desire to fight until every inch of usurped land was restored to Arab control, an unsubtle claim on the oil-rich Khuzistan province.1 Nonetheless, Saddam's ambitions outstripped his military acumen, as his forces soon encountered logistical difficulties resulting from poor planning and unexpectedly stiff Iranian resistance. Even at the early stages of the conflict, Saddam's misjudgments were becoming obvious, as the notion of Iraq's battlefield successes leading to a mass uprising grossly misunderstood the mood of the Iranian people. Moreover, the notion that a revolutionary regime claiming to be in command of a new epoch would quickly cede vast portions of its territory and resettle itself in a truncated terrain was a misperception of how militant leaders behave during times of national crisis. …

Theologia and Dispensatio: The Centrality of the Divine Missions in St. Thomas’s Trinitarian Theology

Theologia and Dispensatio: The Centrality of the Divine Missions in St. Thomas’s Trinitarian Theology

JINNAH'S VISION: AN INDIVISIBLE PAKISTANI NATIONHOOD

Quaid-i-Azam Muhamamd Ali Jinnah's vision envisaged a democratic country based on the tenets of Islam. His invocation of Islam was not to arouse clerics to mistake it for theocracy. Jinnah earnestly thought that Islam and its idealism had taught Indian Muslims the virtues of democracy as it envisioned equality, justice and fair play to everybody. In his broadcast to the USA in Feb 1948 he had hoped that the Pakistan constitution would be of "a democratic type; embodying the essential principles of Islam". He reaffirmed emphatically that Pakistan was not going to be a theocratic state- to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. Even the Objectives Resolution (1949), moved by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, recognized not the followers of a particular faith, but the people- all the people irrespective of whatever faith they may follow. It is a pity that the Objectives Resolution has been interpreted quite differently to suit vested interest.

Principles of Systematic Theology

AbstractThe Holy Trinity is the ontological principle of Christian systematic theology. Its external or objective cognitive principle is the divine Word, by which, through the prophets and apostles and with the illumination of the Spirit, God's incommunicable self‐knowledge is accommodated to the saints. The internal or subjective cognitive principle is the redeemed intelligence of the saints. Systematic theology is thus ectypal knowledge (derived from God's disclosure of his archetypal self‐knowledge), and a subaltern or subordinate science. Its matter is twofold: God, and all things in God. Accordingly, it is best arranged as a treatment of God in himself, followed by a treatment of the outer works of God, with a theology of the divine missions as the hinge between the two. This arrangement offers a synthetic and conceptual transposition of the primary language of Scripture.

Civil Religion, George W. Bush's Divine Mission, and an Ethics of Mission

This paper explores George W. Bush's presentation of a US mission in his two Inaugural Addresses and six State of the Union Addresses. This articulation of mission as a divinely ordained plan to bring freedom to the rest of the world is placed within the context of other presentations of the US mission by past presidents. This history of US mission is compared to a shift in US civil religion described by Michael E. Bailey and Kristin Lindholm in their article, "Tocqueville and the Rhetoric of Civil Religion in the Presidential Inaugural Addresses." The final section of the paper offers an ethical analysis of two aspects of Bush's divine mission. First, Bush's rhetorical use of "freedom" is examined and it is argued that his use of the term as an idea that is simple, obvious, and uncontestable is unavoidably manipulative. Second, Bush's notion of mission itself is critiqued in light of the lessons learned in the field of missiology. It is argued that Bush's mission is similar to the older model of Christian mission, a paradigm characterized by paternalism and exploitation. Suggestions from the field are offered that value mutuality and solidarity.

Manic depression and religious experience: The use of religion in therapy

In the article, I explore the use of spiritual strategies in the treatment of manic depression in religiously oriented psychiatric inpatients. Manic depression, a disorder primarily of mood, is characterized by bouts of mania alternating with depression. Religious themes and mystical experiences pervade the language of manic depressive illness, e.g., sensing one is God, being given a divine mission, receiving divine messages, having ecstatic experiences, and so on. Debate exists concerning the effectiveness of spiritual interventions in manic patients. I suggest that a trained religious leader may be able to work therapeutically with such patients, provided that two goals are kept in mind: emphasizing beliefs that facilitate positive coping and challenging irrational religious beliefs (i.e., beliefs that lead to negative coping). When examined psychoanalytically, patients’ religious symbols and beliefs reveal deeply held beliefs about themselves. In particular, splitting and idealization and devaluation can be seen in their religious belief system. The role of culture in promoting maladaptive belief systems must not be overlooked. In employing spiritual interventions in patients diagnosed with manic depression, potential dangers are imposing one's values on patients and overstating the importance of spirituality.

Bush’s Bible

George Bush, 43, leans on the Hebrew Bible’s fierce criticism, not only of ancient Israel’s external enemies, but also of its perceived enemies within. The language of righteous empire, of God being on our side and our having this divine mission, has carried the Bush Presidency through torture, carnage, and slaughter. Like the kings against whom the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel speak out, Bush has epitomized the dark side of power, a landscape where death abounds. Further, one wonders about the identity of the Jesus that Bush invokes. In my opinion, the gospel words have been rubbed away, leaving only the gold and glitter, revealing Jesus as an icon of royal power and triumph.

Socrates’ Response to the Divine in Plato’s Apology

Several recent interpretations of Plato’s Apology of Socrates portray Socrates as on a divine mission. Socrates, following his friend Chaerephon’s encounter with the Delphic oracle, would be obeying a divine command by living the examined life. This is odd because, as we know from the text, the oracle does not specifically tell Socrates what to do or how to do it. This paper argues that Socrates’ pursuit of the examined life is his reasoned and personal response to the oracle, which he accepts as divine but which does not provide him with any specific commands. Socrates is portrayed as providing a reasoned, not religiously inspired, response to the divine. As as result, there is no reason to doubt the compatibility of Socrates in the Apology with Socrates in the other dialogues, as some scholars have argued.

Back to a Way Forward: Jacques Dupuis' Trinitarian Christology and the Invisible Missions of the Word and Spirit

Jacques Dupuis' book, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, drew an enormous response from theologians, some of them very concerned by Dupuis' argument in terms of the universal presence and action of the Word and Spirit as “extending beyond” that of the risen incarnate Word, and his insistence that “a divine action of the Word as such remains, which extends beyond the human action of the risen Christ”. The aim of this essay is to examine the distinctly trinitarian elements of Dupuis' argument, in the light of the classical teachings regarding Trinity and Christology, for it is on the basis of his “trinitarian christology” that Dupuis grounds his theology of religious pluralism. The author argues that, while Dupuis' “trinitarian christology” points the way to a more positive appreciation of the salvific efficacy of non-Christian religions, he has confused rather than advanced an understanding of the operation of Word and Spirit in regard to non-Christian religions. The author argues that the classical notion of the divine missions, visible and invisible, a strange omission from Dupuis' argument, would facilitate the case he seeks to make, avoid some of the ambiguities that dog his case, and mute the key concerns which have been raised by reviewers.

God's Grace, Healing and Suffering

AbstractThis paper shows that people have always attempted to stamp out diseases and other misfortunes on earth through both spiritual and natural means. The approach adopted by the Lord in the Old Testament as Yahweh‐Rapha, wherein/ he was a powerful healer to those who obey him, was, in a way, a response to this. Healing was vital in the ministry of Jesus in the execution of his divine mission to save human life. However, scepticism towards divine healing began during the Enlightenment. The emergence of the Pentecostal movement in the 20th century sought to change this trend. However, there is a tendency among some practitioners of healing that makes it appear that healing is a sign of living right with God, while lack of healing, or suffering of any kind is a curse or a result of disobedience by a person or their progenitors. There are indications in the New Testament that Jesus was selective in his healing ministry, and that in the presence of the apostles not all people were healed. The Christian “lives between the times” of “the already” and the “not yet”, and thus is still exposed to physical afflictions, including any type of suffering. Prayer for healing must be seen as part of the means of dealing with a variety of manifestations of evil and frailty in human life. The place of suffering in the Bible needs to be brought to bear on the healing ministry.

Trinitarian Missiology: Towards a Theology of God as Missionary1

: This article explores the possibilities of using ‘missionary’ as an attribute of God, as has been done recently in some ecclesial discourse. To this end, it offers an exegesis of John 20:21–23 via expositions of Augustine's discussion of the divine missions in De Trinitate, Barth's account of election, and the Lateran condemnation of Joachim of Fiore, and a discussion of the relationship between trinitarian theology and the divine attributes.

Revisiting justice in the first four Beatitudes in Matthew (5:3-6) and the story of the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:21-28): A postcolonial reading

Reading the Gospel of Matthew from the perspective of postcolonial theory means taking the context of the Gospel seriously. The political and religious circumstances of Palestine under Roman colonization influenced Matthean redaction. From a this perspective, it can be argued that Matthew presents Jesus as a revolutionary leader whose divine mission was to challenge and overthrow the Roman empire and its local collaborators on behalf of the poor, the powerless, the afflicted, the hungry and the outcasts. His mission was to replace existing power structures with the universal, just and powerful kingdom of heaven on earth. The article argues that the story of the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:21-28) falls into this reality. She negotiates justice and righteousness on behalf of her demon-possessed daughter. Seen from the perspective of Jesus’ Beatitudes in Matthew (5:3-6), her encounter with Jesus helps him discover the wider scope of his healing mission, beyond geopolitical and cultural boundaries.

The beginning of ethics: confucius and socrates

The paper is an effort to better understand, through a comparison, how Confucius and Socrates initate their ethical inquiries that have laid down, respectively, the foundations of Chinese and Western ethics. Since both Confucius and Socrates claim to have a divine mission to undertake their investigations, the paper focuses on the issue about how religion and rational philosophy are related when ethics begins. It shows that both have serious religious belief, yet each has secular rational grounds for doing what he is doing. Finally, each philosopher has a different view about how human beings are related to the divine being, and the difference determines their different approaches to ethics.

Recovery from Dual Diagnosis

God was communicating through the graffiti scratched on the walls of an isolated cell in Georgia's Forsyth County Jail. Zooming thoughts connected key words left by previous inmates in a divine code only I could understand as a chosen apostle. The calming intoxication of the wine consumed prior to incarceration dissolved into endless euphoric ideas that exploded in my mind like the climatic conclusion of a fireworks show. I was on a divine mission. Being jailed was only a temporary detainment-persecution expected of a true messenger of the Lord.

Gideon—ein Anti-Held? Ein Beitrag zur Auseinandersetzung mit dem sog. 'flawed-hero approach' Am Beispiel Von Jdc. Vi 36–40

AbstractRecent scholarly investigations concerning the judges narratives tend towards a socalled 'flawed-hero approach'. Especially Gideon has been interpreted as a somewhat ambiguous figure. W. Bluedorn has argued that in Judg. vi 36–40 Gideon wants to cheat YHWH by forcing him to serve Gideon's own selfish desires. Contrary to Bluedorn's view it can be shown, that Gideon is honestly longing for guidance. He needs to be assured of his divine mission, without denying YHWH's sovereignty.

Sharia and control over territory: conflicts between 'settlers' and 'indigenes' in Nigeria

Introducing Islamic laws is a means of setting up claims over territory in which the will of Muslims reigns supreme. This has led to violent conflicts, especially in parts of the Middle Belt of Nigeria, where Muslim ‘settlers’ from the north, most of them Hausa and Fulani, have clashed with indigenous ethnic groups which are largely Christian and ‘traditionalist’. The call for Sharia is popular among the migrants, as it provides them with a divine mission: they have to assume supremacy over the local non-Muslim population in order to shape public institutions according to what they see as the will of God. The ‘indigenes’, however, have little interest in a religious confrontation. As ‘sons of the soil’, they want to defend their ancestral land against ‘foreign tribes’; they therefore emphasize ethnic, not religious, antagonisms.

A Trinitarian Ontology of Missions

AbstractBosed on the premise that nature and action are inextricably linked, it is contended that any con‐strual of missional theology as the church's participation in the missio Dei, cannot disregard the doctrine of the immanent Trinity. Four images of the Trinity are appropriated as theological maps for a critical and “thick”description of missions. The trinitarian paradigms characterising the three divine Persons as Source, Word and Love (emphasised by the Greek, Protestant and Latin traditions respectively) are used to counterbalance the contemporary bias toward a social Trinity, which draws its inspiration from the classical doctrine of perichoresis. In the processional model, God's transcendence secures a theocentric missiology, while the reciprocity of the Son and Spirit is correlated to incarnational and charismatic ministry. The linguistical paradigm points to our participation in the mission of the Word that demands both proclamation and action; the eternal dialogue within God prompts our continual hearing and speaking, in relation to God and the world. The dispositional image highlights the Spirit of love, who brings about mis‐sional spirituality, humility and unity, even as the loving embrace of the Father and Son leads us to participate in the sufferings of those at the margins. Finally, the perichoretic model of the Trinity points to the inseparability of the missio Dei and the imago Dei, being and doing, the self and the Other. The oneness of the divine mission implies an integral missional praxis that is rooted in the worship of this triune God.

Lionel Groulx and Franco-America

Recent work on the intellectual history of Franco-America (2) has revealed the richness and complexity of the Franco-American variant of traditional French Canadian nationalism, which scholars generally refer to as l'ideologie de survivance. Centered on Roman Catholicism, the French language and culture, and a loose conception of race francaise, this ideology was largely conditioned by the evolution of French Canadian thought. Indeed, the constant movement of French Canadian journalists, lecturers, priests, and nuns back and forth across the border, the large scale circulation in New England of newspapers, magazines, and books published in Quebec, and the presence of dozens of Franco-American students at any given time in the province's classical colleges more or less ensured that most French Canadian and Franco-American intellectuals would remain on the same wavelength until the sixties. (3) In effect, l'ideologie de survivance was forged not only by the numerous struggles that have marked Franco-American history, but also through constant contact with French Canada. Consequently, to better understand the evolution of Franco-American thought, one must also study the work of prominent French Canadian thinkers who showed a particular interest in emigrant affairs and whose work influenced the development of Franco-American discourse. This paper examines the Franco-American thought of abbe Lionel Groulx (1878-1967), (4) French Canada's most prominent intellectual of the interwar period. Groulx was not only a respected Roman Catholic clergyman, but also an acclaimed historian and novelist. After the Great War, he dominated the French Canadian nationalist movement for roughly twenty-five years. The abbe showed a great deal of interest in the affairs of the French Canadian diaspora. (5) Indeed, it is quite telling that his two novels, L'appel de race and Au Cap Blomidon, (6) are centered respectively on the struggles of Franco-Ontarians (7) and Acadians. He was also deeply concerned with the religious and cultural survival of Franco-America. Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Groulx gave several conferences in New England and published a number of texts about Franco-America. More importantly, he was widely read and influential within New England's francophone community. His ideas on Franco-American affairs are worth examining because they are fairly representative of the conservative French Canadian intellectual's attitude towards and relationship with Franco-America. Accordingly, the following pages will examine Groulx's reaction to French Canadian emigration to the United States, his conception of Franco-American survivance and nationality, and his influence over the evolution of Franco-American thought, in particular during the infamous Sentinelle Affair. Groulx and Emigration Like most French Canadian intellectuals of his era, Groulx condemned emigration to the United States. Though he would at times claim--generally while lecturing in front of Franco-American audiences--that emigration was part of French Canada's divine mission to spread Catholicism across the North American continent, he actually felt that the exodus weakened the French Canadian nation by dispersing its forces and slowing its demographic growth. Emigration was a national disaster. It drew French Canadians from their natural environment, rural Quebec, and exposed them to one of the worst elements of modernity: factory life in cosmopolitan and industrial American cities. An ardent ruralist, he was convinced that la civilisation technique expulse le sentiment religieux. (8) Indeed, any contact with the materialism and industrialism of American civilization threatened the faith and culture of French Canadians. Though the emigrant was not automatically lost to the nation, he was in grave danger of seeing his faith wane and his children commit apostasy. Indeed, emigration did not so much enlarge the nation as weaken it. …

JesusAppointshis Disciples as his Agents to Continue his Divine Mission According to John 17: 17–19

This article attempts to point out that John 17:18 (καθώς έμέ άπέστeιλας eίς τόν κόσμον καγώ άπέστeιλα αύτούς eίς τόν κόσμον) does not refer to the historical sending of the disciples by Jesus, but rather the official appointment of the disciples as his agents to continue his divine mission in the world. The historical sending of the disciples will take place at a later stage, in 20:21 (καθώς άπέσταλκeν μe ό πατήρ καγώ πέμπω ύμάς), after Jesus' resurrection. In order to prove this hypothesis the following aspects are considered, namely: The two complementary themes (Jesus' approaching departure and discipleship) in the Last Discourses, also mentioned in Ch 17, point to the continuation of Jesus' mission and converge in 17:17-19; the 'agency' concept in the Fourth Gospel constitutes the theological context in which the continuation of Jesus' mission is to be understood; a semanticlinguistic account and the theological understanding and interpretation of 17:17-19 approves the legitimacy of the abovementioned hypothesis. Finally, a comparison of 17:17-19 with 20:21 also proves that 17:17-19 refers to Jesus' appointment of his disciples to be his agents in order to continue his mission, while 20:21 refers to the historical sending of the disciples by Jesus.

Manchurian legacy: memoirs of a Japanese colonist

Kazuko Kuramoto was born in Dairen, Manchuria, in 1927, at the peak of Japanese expansionism in Asia. Dairen and neighboring Port Arthur were important colonial outposts on the Liaotung Peninsula; the train lines established by Russia and taken over by the Japanese ended there. When Kuramoto's grandfather arrived in Dairen as a member of the Japanese police force shortly after the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the family's belief in Japanese supremacy and its divine mission to save Asia from Western imperialists was firmly in place. As a third-generation colonist, the seventeen-year-old Kuramoto readily joined the Red Cross Nurse Corps in 1944 to aid in the war effort and in her country's sacred cause. A year later, her family listened to the emperor announce in a radio broadcast we shall have to endure the unendurable, to suffer the insufferable. Japan surrendered unconditionally. Manchurian Legacy is the story of the family's life in Dairen, their survival as a forgotten people during the battle waged by Russia to reclaim Manchuria, Nationalist China, and Communist China, and their subsequent repatriation to a devastated Japan. Kuramoto describes a culture based on the unthinking oppression of the colonized by the colonizer. And, because Manchuria was, in essence, a Japanese frontier, her family lived a freer and more luxurious life than they would have in Japan - one relatively unscathed by the war until after the surrender. As a commentator Kuramoto explores her culture both from the inside, subjectively, and from the outside, objectively. Her memoirs describe her coming of age in a colonial society, her family's experiences in war-torn Manchuria, and her homecoming to Japan - where she had never been - just as Japan is engaged in its own cultural upheaval.