Divine Origin Research Articles

The Problem of Evil and a Critique of Religious Reason

The author’s goal is to weigh capabilities of theistic reason in regard to the problem of evil, and two formats of reasoning in this regard are strictly differed, i.e. attempts at building theodicies (as universal, generally valid and transparent for all reasonable persons, both believers and nonbelievers, models of explanation of causes, dimensions and distributions of evils and sufferings in the world of the Divine origin and government) and defenses (counterarguments to atheistic inference of the non-existence of God from the abundance of sufferings in the world). The upshot is that while there is no doubt that the great multitude of evils and sufferings in the world are surely beyond reach of any theodicies, it is similarly doubtless that many sound reasons are suitable for countering atheist “evidential refutations”. Some new arguments are offered to counterbalance Rowe’s “friendly atheism”, Draper’s “hypothesis of indifference”, and Schellenberg’s “argument from hiddenness”, along with analysis of wishful thinking underlying all of them.

Costs and benefits of proliferation of Christian denominations in Nigeria

The unbridled proliferation of Churches in Nigeria has steered up concerns among adherents of religious faiths, onlookers and academics alike. Nigerian society today is undergoing significant constant proliferation of Churches which has brought not only changing values, but also source of solutions to people’s problems. The origin of this phenomenon could be traced to Martin Luther’s 95 theses which sparked off religious revolution in 16th century Europe. Following Luther, Zwingli and John Calvin started reforms in Switzerland; John Lawx in Scotland, also Holland and other countries witnessed the reform. This reform gave rise to the formation of the Lutherans, the Anglicans, and the Presbyterians. The Pentecostals and the independent Churches which proliferated at last also joined. In Nigeria some of them started to surface towards the end of the 19th century. Proliferation of Churches entails multiplicity of Christian religious groups with each founder claiming divine origin of his or her ministry. However, this study has established other factors rather than divine call for Church proliferation. The study has also tried to explore Church proliferation in Nigeria pointing out its costs and benefits and solutions were suggested on how to curtail the trend in order for it not to blow out of proportion.

La <em>ummah</em>, la <em>sunnah</em> del profeta y el califa: la visión sunita

El propósito del presente trabajo es encontrar la relación entre gobernantes, gobernados y la ley que los gobierna en los primeros años del islam.

Together on the way to the monastic church of Mīt Damsīs: Copts and Muslims at the mūlid of Saint George in medieval Islamic Egypt and beyond

ABSTRACTPilgrimage was a common practice in pre-Islamic and medieval Islamic times. A number of Christian shrines, churches, and monasteries, particularly those associated with the Holy Virgin Mary and Saint George, hosted Muslim visitors. Every year, both Christians and Muslims would gather to celebrate a saint’s feast. Whilst Bukhārī’s sahīh and several Islamic legal treatises banned this bida’ (innovation), the practice of Muslim pilgrimage to non-Muslim sites has vividly survived in the modern and contemporaneous Middle East. Exploring the ways in which historical events intersect with social practices, this article examines the religious and communal adaptation of the church-monastery of Saint George at Mīt Damsīs, located on the East Bank of the Nile in Northern Egypt. It looks at the mixing of both Muslims and Christians in the festival of Saint George and shows its spiritual dimension. The article finally demonstrates how Mīt Damsīs is representative of a distinct model of veneration and pilgrimage identity, and how individual Muslims’ piety in medieval Islamic Egypt and beyond embraced the concept of the divine origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Sacrifice as the Key to Understanding the Difference and Relationship Between the Priesthood of the Baptized and of the Ordained

Sacrifice as the Key to Understanding the Difference and Relationship Between the Priesthood of the Baptized and of the Ordained Matthew J. Albright (bio) I. Introduction A precise understanding of the common priesthood of the baptized, both in relationship to Jesus Christ and vis-à-vis the ministerial priesthood of the ordained, continues to elude us, as evidenced by the appearance of a modern clericalism and novel attempts at sharing the duties of ordained priest with the laity. The common priesthood and the hierarchical priesthood both descend from divine origin and are rooted in Scripture and Tradition. Yet, in response to the emphasis placed on the common priesthood by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council—in stark contrast to the historical experience in some places of a heavily cultic priesthood distant from the laity—there has been a frenzy of disparate interpretations. Some of these have stripped both ordained ministry and the universal call to holiness offered to all the baptized of their unique connotations. Rooted in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the life of the Church, the Priesthood of Jesus Christ himself becomes the source of the Christian understanding of priesthood and of the two manifestations of priesthood in the Church. The centrality of the life and ministry of Jesus, particularly his sacrifice on the Cross, is the core of the identity and experience of priesthood. Both in the sacred liturgy and in the life of costly discipleship, the sacrifice of Christ is manifest for the baptized and the ordained. The celebration of Christ’s sacrifice in the Eucharistic liturgy and the living out of the sacrificial dimension of discipleship is the key to understanding the priesthood of the baptized and of the [End Page 310] ordained. Properly understood, both priesthoods mutually support and nourish one another for the complete flourishing of the whole Body of Christ. In liturgy and in life, the disciple is defined by his sharing in the sacrifice of Christ. Pope Francis has been clearly emphasizing the importance of a personal encounter with Jesus as the foundation for all we are and do as a Church. To the members of the Society of Jesus gathered at the Church of the Gesù in Rome for the feast day of Saint Ignatius, Pope Francis delivered a homily using the emblem of the Society—the monogram IHS—to illustrate “the centrality of Christ for each one of us and for the whole Company, the Company that Saint Ignatius wanted to name ‘of Jesus’ to indicate the point of reference.”1 Jesus Christ is the point of reference for the life of the whole Church, for the life of every disciple and, in a particular way, for our understanding of priesthood. The Christian life is an encounter with Christ. Living the common and ministerial priesthoods is possible only when we understand the priesthood of Christ in which both find their origin. Pope St John Paul II spoke to the bishops of the northwest region of the United States on October 9, 1998 about the foundational role of the priesthood for understanding the proper role of the faithful in the sacred liturgy: “The sharing of all the baptized in the one priesthood of Jesus Christ is the key to understanding the Council’s call for ‘full, conscious and active participation’ in the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 14).”2 This is true not only for liturgical participation but for the whole Christian life. Our sharing in Christ’s life, in particular his priesthood, defines how we live out the call to discipleship and our own individual vocations. We will see how Jesus builds on the ancient priesthood and leaves behind a new participation in his eternal priesthood that is manifest in the life of the Church. II. Priesthood in the Old Covenant God spoke to his faithful people from ages past through the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; Moses and the Judges; the [End Page 311] Kings David and Solomon; in various and sundry ways through the prophets. In the Old Testament, “we can distinguish two forms of the reality of the priesthood.”3 First, “the non-specialized exercise of priestly functions” is “carried out by the...

THE VICISSITUDES OF THE HUMANITIES

The aims of the article: – to track the change of approaches to humanitarian knowledge; – to define possible ways of its development at the present stage. Methods. The methodology of the research is based on the content analysis of verbal and visual texts, and inductive techniques allowing us to generalize heterogeneous approaches. Results and scientific novelty. The author, having postulated a double objective to trace, on the one hand, how the attitude to humanities changed during centuries, and, on the other, to draft possible routes of further development, scrutinizes the concept homo duplex starting from the early renaissance period, when humanities were singled out of the common knowledge about the human being, when the component of meaning «down to earth, not divine» shaped the kernel of the field of knowledge, later named as humanities. This type of knowledge was opposed to the theology with its concept of the divine origin of man. The author attracts Leonardo da Vinci drawing to define the major research methodology of humanities. Further tackling the evolution of the concept from the homo duplex to homo triplex, the author proves that the dynamics of econceptualization owed to a great extend to the possibility to extrapolate methods of sciences onto humanities research. Touching upon the reason of vicissitudes and recent crisis in humanities the author points to the «doctrinal way of thinking» caused on the one hand by political situation and on the other hand by the «fine art» of turning humanities postulates into a dogma. To prove the point, the author attracts verbal and visual texts, as well as historical facts. Upon this basis the contemporary structure of the humanitarian knowledge is being scrutinized that rests upon the integration of humanities and neurosciences, the research kernel including brain, mind, language and subconsciousness. The author constructs the model of heterogeneous spheres, including biosphere, noosphere, technosphere, semiosphere, socisphere, and ethnosphere. Hence, a new paradigm of research approaches that rests upon «the anthropocentric trinity»: thinking (processing) individual+ self and world creating individual + an individual who communicates both with nature and computer. Practical significance. The proposed model of heterogeneous spheres enables to outline intersections variants of sciences and humanities thus defining new conceptual meaning of homo triplex.

Scriptures as Holy Objects: Preliminary Comparative Remarks on the Qurʾān and the Torah in the Medieval Middle East

Jews and Muslims have developed similar perceptions about the divine origins of their respective sacred scriptures, including their aural and graphic forms. How to transcribe the accurate and authentic text was debated and eventually prescribed in detail in each tradition, but ultimately each religion adopted a different strategy. The Jewish tradition—which distinguishes between liturgical reading and study—developed two discrete formats of the Pentateuch. The ancient form of the scroll with the text inscribed in scripta defectiva was reserved for liturgical use, while the newer codex, written in scripta plena with vocalization and cantillation marks, was accepted for all other purposes. Muslim scholars were less concerned with preserving an ‘authentic’ form, and gradually allowed massive embellishment of the basic script, and a wide variety of designs. The two traditions regard a few early copies of their scriptures, notably the ʿUṯmānī Musḥaf(s) of the Qurʾān and the Aleppo Codex of the Torah, as particularly awe inspiring and holy, according them the role of “master copy” on the scholarly level, and bestowing them the veneration due sacred relics, on the popular level.

A MAN AND HIS RIGHTS IN THE CONCEPTS OF ANCIENT REPRESENTATIVES OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND LEGAL THOUGHT

Emergence of the idea of human rights in V— VI centuries BC in ancient policies and emergence of the principle of citizenship became a major step on the way of humanity towards freedom and progress. The idea and practice of freedom and human rights was given to the world by the most famous of all ancient civilizations — Athens in the views of Heraclitus, Democritus, Protagoras, Antiphont, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, etc. Ancient Greek ideas about human rights formed as a part of mythological views that the polis or the citystate and its laws are of divine origin and are based on divine justice. Further development of sociophilosophical and political-legal concepts of human rights in Ancient Greece occurred in search and substantiation, along with the divine origin, of objective natural-legal basis for the existence of the polis, its laws and social existence of people. Natural-legal ideas of ancient Greek thinkers about freedom and equality of all human beings further developed in Ancient Rome, and especially in the philosophical and legal views of the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero, the ancient Roman thinker, philosopher and orator. In their teaching on human rights, the natural-legal idea of freedom and equality was extended beyond the narrow polis and ethnic framework and was expanded to all members of the humankind as fellow citizens of a single cosmopolitan state. According to the results of the conducted research, the author notes that the ancient thinkers, prominent representatives of philosophical, legal, and political thought of that time laid the foundations of the doctrine of human rights, which was further developed in the medieval beliefs of medieval representatives, especially in the views of the authors of the liberal world outlook of the New times. The English and American Age of Enlightenment, French bourgeoisdemocratic revolution have become a new important milestone and a new stage in theoretical development and practical realization of the centuries-old aspirations of people about their rights, freedom and equality of all people on the Earth.

Preface

Preface Michael C. Jordan Cistercian Publications offers a remarkable, newly translated book that provides a deeply Christian meditation on the liberating power of music, The Song That I Am: On the Mystery of Music.1 The author, Élisabeth-Paule Labat, OSB (1875–1975), was both a brilliant musician and a Benedictine nun who entered the abbey of Saint-Michel de Kergonan in 1922. In the true spirit of the contemplative and the mystic, Labat’s essay engages profoundly but also humbly with the transformative power of music that, assisted by grace, opens us to the call of beauty. Indeed, Labat’s essay presents a discerning account of the experience of beauty especially as achieved through listening to and performing music and a theologically well-grounded account of the Christian significance of beauty in the contemplative life. Labat positions the musical composer in relation to both the mystic and the saint while also emphasizing important distinctions. The great composer shares with the mystic a highly developed openness to the inner world and a realization that “our soul contains unexplored depths attuned to an invisible reality” (28). This depth is discerned not through our faculties of perception or knowing, but [End Page 5] is experienced as the origin of all of our faculties, as their source, and Labat draws upon a theologically informed sense of the spiritual center of the human person to acknowledge such a center as “a mysterious sanctuary where we are inseparably joined to God and maintained by him upon the abyss of void, posed as a living mirror of his life and being” (32). But she insists that we must not lose sight of the difference between the mystic and the composer or poet, even if the possibility exists that one person might in a remarkable instance be both mystic and artist. The mystic, through God’s love, has been, in Labat’s words, “conformed . . . to God’s nature” (30). Contemplative union with God through grace effects a renewal of the mystic that divinizes the faculties of knowing and loving, “leading them back through a kind of reflux in our innermost self toward the Father” (33). The mystic, like the saint, is transformed by grace through “the extravagant love of a personal God and by Christ’s redemptive incarnation” (77). The mystic and the saint cooperate with God’s grace and allow themselves to become a new creation, to live the life of Jesus Christ, to be molded or sculpted by the presence of God within so that they manifest the redemptive and creative power of God’s love in themselves and exhibit that power through their participation in love in the world. The artist shares with the mystic and the saint a deep attunement to the spiritual center of the human person, but the artist is gifted with the power of recognizing the affinities and resemblances throughout the created order that radiate from God’s creative love. Through this gift the artist can discern the levels of analogy, resemblance, and correspondence through which the inner unity of the created order and its connection to its divine origin can be artfully traced and sounded. The artist labors to bring these affinities to appearance in a painting, sculpture, poem, or musical composition, and it is the conformity of the work of art to the truth of the artist’s vision to which the artist aspires, and not the conformity of the artist’s self to God’s inner call. This is why a great work of art, and according to Labat especially [End Page 6] a great work of musical art, can enable us to follow the pathways embedded in the work of art that lead through the multiplicity of sensory and conceptual experience to the inner sanctuary in which God is mirrored. It is not through the artist—as personality transformed by Christ as occurs in our encounter with the mystic and saint—but through the work of art in which the artist manifests the human power of co-creation that we experience the beauty that brings us back to God. And this is why, I believe, Labat emphasizes as repeatedly as she does what I...

Religious Beliefs, PTSD, Depression and Resilience in Survivors of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake

BackgroundThis study examines relationships between religious beliefs regarding the origin of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and posttraumatic symptomatology as well as depressive symptoms and resilience among its survivors. MethodWe used convenient sampling to recruit participants (n=167). They completed six scales, which had been translated into Haitian Creole, including measures such as the Earthquake Experiences Exposure (EEE), the Peritraumatic Distress Inventory (PDI), the Peritraumatic Dissociative Experience Questionnaire (PDEQ), the PTSD Checklist (PTSD-CL), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD- RISC) ResultsAmong our participants, 51% were male, (mean age=30.5, SD=11.03), 92% (n=155) were believers in some sort of supernatural force and 65% (n=108) endorsed the earthquake as a natural phenomenon. There was significant difference in average scores at peritraumatic distress, PTSD symptoms and Resilience measures between those perceiving a divine origin and/or a punishment through the event and those who did not. Peritraumatic responses were best predictors for PTSD (β=.366, p<.001) and Depression symptoms (β=.384, p<.001). Voodoo adherents appeared to be vulnerable to depression, but reported superior resilience factors

Świadectwo Boga Ojca o Jezusie w Ewangelii wg św. Jana

The article addresses the issue of the witness of the Father about Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. The topic is inscribed in the very essential theological message of the Gospel of John, according to which Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God revealing the Father to the world. In two units of the Fourth Gospel (5:1-47 and 8:12-20) Jesus invokes the witness of the Father in order to prove his divine status. In the first passage Jesus argues that the witness of the Father about him is expressed by the witness of the people (John the Baptist), by Jesus’ works, and by the Scriptures. In the second passage he claims that the Father’s witness authenticates his divine origins, and that thanks to his status as the Son of God he is not subject to human judgment. In a third passage (12:20-36) examined in the article the voice of the Father coming from heaven gives the explicit witness confirming Jesus’ divine status and mission. The motif of the witness of the Father is strictly connected here with the theme of the salvific activity of Jesus in the world as a means of increasing the glory of God.

Plant species introduced by foreigners according to folk tradition in Norway and some other European countries: xenophobic tales or not?

BackgroundIn their quest to understand and interpret nature, people have frequently sought religious or divine origins for plant species and their characteristics. Less often, historical events or persons are involved. This study comprises eleven cases of the latter kind, all claiming that plant species have been introduced by foreigners or at least from foreign lands.MethodsBased on literature data and a few cases recorded during my own ethnobotanical field work, eleven European examples of pseudo-historical plant origins are presented here, including Cakile maritima, Cicuta virosa, Lathyrus japonicus, Leymus arenarius, Primula vulgaris, and Scopolia carniolica in Norway, Heracleum mantegazzianum and/or H. persicum in Denmark, Phoenix dactylifera and P. theophrastii in Greece, and Jacobaea vulgaris in Scotland.ResultsThe only common trait in these stories is that foreigner or at least foreign lands are claimed as sources of the plant species. In most cases, the “historical” explanations given in folk tradition are demonstrably at odds with reality. In those cases that involve poisonous or potentially harmful species (Cicuta virosa, Heracleum mantegazzianum and/or H. persicum, Jacobaea vulgaris), or the “useless” Phoenix theophrastii, with its inedible fruits, the stories may be interpreted as xenophobic, blaming foreigners for introducing dangerous or worthless species. The remaining examples merely suggest a search for exotic and seemingly rational, if erroneous, origins for plant species and stands that people considered strange and unusual.ConclusionThe spreading vectors assumed in folk tradition are correct and well documented, e.g. ship cargos (including goods and packing materials), which are responsible for introducing ballast plants and other anthropochores, and wartime activities, introducing a broad range of species (polemochores). They do not, however, apply to the species included in this study, which are either indigenous plants or introduced ornamentals. The foreigners appearing in the folk tales serve mostly as suitably exotic explanations for what is perceived “alien” plants.

Infant voices: embryonic and neonatal personhood in two recent French Catholic novels

There are almost no literary or artistic representations that take the unborn or neonatal infants as their subject. Two exceptions to this are Claire Daudin’s Le Sourire and Antoine Beauquier’s Pavillon 7: la révolte des embryons. What these novels share is the ambition to frame such subjects as full and complete persons. Thus in their distinct ways both novels engage with the familial, social and biological problems that arise when personhood is attributed to embryos or neo-natal infants. Their creation of an embryonic or infant ‘voice’ associates the dignity of such subjects with divine origins.

Peculiarità della funzione cautelare nel diritto canonico alla luce dei provvedimenti ex can. 1722 CIC

Contributo sottoposto a valutazione S OMMARIO: 1. Premessa - 2. Natura e tipologia dei provvedimenti cautelari ex can. 1722 CIC - 3. Le esigenze cautelari contemplate dalla disposizione del can. 1722 CIC - 4. Questioni interpretative sulle misure analizzate - 5. Funzione cautelare e diritto canonico. Abstract Specificity of the precautionary function in canon law in the light of the canon 1722 CIC measures In canon law, the existence of a precautionary function, under the competence of the Ordinary, can be deduced from an analysis of the measures mentioned in can. 1722 CIC. Such a function is specifically aimed at protecting the peculiar requirements of canon law, and it is strictly connected with the ultimate goal of the salus animarum . It also takes on unique characteristics as a result of the relationship which binds the faithful of the ecclesial community; such a relationship is due, in turn, to the divine origin of a legal system which members of a religious group participate in because of a sacramental investiture.

Defoe'sEssay upon Literatureand Eighteenth-Century Histories of Mediation

Questions of divine intercession and the human transmission of God's word were central to Enlightenment debates about what we would now call media. De foe's neglected Essay upon Literature begins as an argument for the divine origins of writing, but its focus on writing as God's git to humans gives way to a new kind of history, concerned with the development of human communications (oral tradition, writing systems, the invention of printing, and so on). By identifying histories of mediation, like Defoe's, as a distinct genre, we see new links between texts by such wildly diverse authors as Edward Stillingleet, William Temple, William Warburton, Adam Smith, and the Marquis de Con dorcet. Defoe's attempt to articulate an emergent area of intellectual inquiry and his understanding of literature as writing in general rather than as a subcategory of writing challenge us to think through our own generic classiications and hierarchies in the digital age.

Bach: Luther’s Musical Prophet?

It is impossible to read much theological analysis of Bach without encountering Martin Luther. The reformer's name is ubiquitous: he is given both as source and as ultimate authority for the theological ideas supposedly expressed in Bach's music. To cite just a few examples: according to two theologically minded interpreters of Bach, Lothar Steiger and Renate Steiger, Bach's church music "was theologically grounded solely on Luther's teaching about the Word of God and of the essence of music" (1992:15). Bach scholars even cite Luther's love of music and his assertions of its divine origin as the fundamental impulse behind Bach's work: Robin Leaver writes that the key to "opening the door on the whole world of Bach's innermost conceptions and ideas" will be found in "the writings of the reformer Martin Luther" (1978:30). Rather less approvingly, Richard Taruskin argues that Bach's church music "was a medium of truth, not beauty, and the truth it served-Luther's truth-was often bitter" (2005, 2:363). I imagine that few scholars today would go as far as Hans PreuB, who declared in 1922 that "Bach is Luther" (1922:15). However, most would agree that Luther provides a vital context for interpreting Bach's sacred music. Perhaps it is unsurprising that musicologists have turned to Luther when interpreting Bach. Despite many critiques of the hermeneutic method-such as that of Carolyn Abbate (2004)-musicologists still search out meaning in music by investigating a suitable "horizon of expectations" within which to situate music's meaning and affect historically. My own view is that hermeneutics is inescapable to most of us brought up within the musicological tradition; I tend to agree with Karol Berger's assertion, contra Abbate, that "we cannot help it: we are hermeneutic creatures through and through" (2005:497). Abbate argues for the privileging of the experience of performed music over its hermeneutic interpretation; Berger counters that, while aesthetic experience is indeed an important and under-appreciated part of academic study, the hermeneutic and the experiential cannot be so neatly separated. I side with Berger on this point: whether because of training, conditioning, or instinctive response, many-perhaps most-listeners to Bach's music seem to want to contextualize and understand their

The Rabbis and the Prophets: The Case of Amos

The Prophets of Scripture are subverted by the Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash. In the Rabbinic canon the writings of the Prophets are represented as a mass of prooftexts, made up of one clause or sentence at a time. Scripture’s prophetic writings cited in clauses and phrases in the Rabbinic canon thus lose their integrity and cease to speak in fully coherent paragraphs and chapters. So the Rabbis of late antiquity took over writings from what they recognized as remote and ancient times and of divine origin, and they re-presented selections of those writings in accord with their own project’s requirements, glossing clauses of the prophetic Scriptures but not whole, propositional discourses. This article illustrates how they did so, portraying the formal patterns of the Rabbis’ subversive glosses.

Katholischer Historismus? Zum historischen Denken in der deutschsprachigen Kirchengeschichte um 1900. Heinrich Schrörs – Albert Ehrhard – Joseph Schnitzer by Gregor Klapczynski (review)

LATE MODERN EUROPEANKatholischer Historismus? Zum historischen Denken in der deutschsprachigen Kirchengesthichte um 1900. Heinrich Schrors - Albert Ehrhard - Joseph Schnitzer. By Gregor Klapczynski. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag. 2013. Pp. 472. euro69,90 paperback. ISBN 978-3-17-023426-0.)Nineteenth-century German Catholic scholars could hardly disengage themselves from what Ernest Troeltsch referred to as the crisis generated by critical historical studies: Die Krisis des Historismus. For Troeltsch, the issue was, in no small part, how in the flux and flow of history one can establish normative values to direct one's life. But the broader issue on how to interpret history was a matter of significant importance and probed how history, truth, and value are related.Gregor Klapczynski's book is a slightly revised version of his 2012 dissertation at the Catholic Faculty of the Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat in Munster. He pursues this question among Roman Catholic historians: how can one understand and professionally pursue church history as an academic discipline, and can one do so without placing absolute claims of the content of tradition or doctrine, still neoScholastic in form, at risk? His strategy is to present three notable Catholic theologians-Heinrich Schrors (1852-1928), Albert Erhard (1862-1940), and Joseph Schnitzer (1859-1939)-considered to represent three positions in late-nineteenth-century Catholic thought in relation to what was perceived to be relativism.Klapczynski has provided criteria for his choices from a large field of otherwise excellent candidates: each of the three was attentive to both the theory and praxis of historical research; represents the right, center, or left of a spectrum that runs from conservative to modernist, i.e., relativist; was investigated by church officials for modernist impulses; and left a pool of sources adequate for substantive analysis.Chapter 1 sketches, in the context of the political and social changes that mark the period, the evolution of philosophies of history, from organic-idealist concep tions at the outset (a la Wilhelm von Humboldt and Leopold von Ranke, but also Johann Sebastian von Drey and Johann Mohler), to scientific-objective-realist aspirations by century's end. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 dedicate roughly equivalent amounts of space to the three figures, outlining their Lebenslauf, academic contributions, philosophies of history, intellectual interlocutors, and brushes with church authorities (only Schnitzer is excommunicated, primarily for a booklet challenging the divine origins of the papacy). …

Anthropological paradigm in the modern theology of german-speaking area

In this article the analysis of anthropological concepts which were formulated in the Catholic theology of the German-speaking area in the epoch after the Second Vatican Council is performed. The ideas of K. Rahner, E. Coreth, J. Ratzinger and W. Kasper are represented. The main idea expressed by these thinkers, is the presence of divine origin in the human spirit that defines human nature, completes the human essence and elevates man to the sphere of the transcendent and enables his/her connection with God

Comparative approach to human dignity and its impact on biological research

Nowadays, human dignity is the base of the human rights issues and the other rules on human rights have originated it. Hence, the study of the theoretical foundations of human dignity in both intellectual and legal system, it means that Islam and the west, facilitate understanding of the requirements and oppositions on human dignity in medical research. From an Islamic perspective, people for the reason of god’s inspire, is possessed of wisdom and authority, subsequently is responsible for his own spiritual dignity and any behavior that leads to the violation of the dignity is not worthy, while western look, human dignity itself and without divine origin, is the source of holiness and the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms and has not accept any obligation in this area, hence man in medical research is seen as a biological organism.