Form Of Idolatry Research Articles

Simone Weil and René Girard

Religion in the perverted form of idolatry/ideology is at the root of violence for Simone Weil and Rene Girard. For Girard, mimetic expresses the idolization of another and ultimately of the self: when the individual's expectations of achieving autonomy through another remain unfulfilled, he seeks a scapegoat. For Weil, everyone is subject to force as recipient or perpetrator of violence which is catalyzed by ideology, a form of idolatry. While Weil focuses on the idolatry of ideas, both writers agree that the subject's desire for absolute autonomy is the source of idolatry and violence. Furthermore, both presuppose suffering as the individual's driving force, seeking relief in idols or scapegoats; accepting this suffering by imitating Christ is the solution, freeing one from selfish, idolatrous desires.

Censuring Indulgence: Volpone's “Use of Riches” and the Problem of Luxury1

A literary criticism is presented examining how the theatrical production Volpone, by Ben Jonson, depicts avarice and luxury. The author suggests that the character of Volpone represents the negative aspects of luxury and comments on how Jonson presents a satirical view of the social effects of consumerism. She discusses how Volpone's greed distorts his perception of the character of Celia and characterizes Volpone's greed as a form of idolatry.

The Problem of Patriotism: A Psychoanalytic and Theological Analysis

In this article, I examine patriotism from psychoanalytic and theological perspectives, arguing that it is a deeply problematic form of love and devotion. After providing a brief overview of the discourse vis-a-vis patriotism, I depict the characteristics of a dominant form of patriotism (self-state) in the U.S. Given this, I argue that, while patriotism has a variety of forms, the most prevalent form tends toward tragic consequences and it is this tragic tendency that I depict from psychoanalytic and theological perspectives. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the extant form of patriotism in the U.S. represents a self-state that signifies an idealized, omnipotent, and imaginary identification, which is accompanied by and contingent upon a devaluation of the Other. Moreover, the dominant form of patriotic self-states is secured by weak dissociation, omnipotent thinking and, in most cases, a collapse of the symbolic equation. From a Christian theological perspective, patriotism signifies absolutizing the relative and contingent. This form of idolatry manifests a distortion of reason and will, which contributes to corrupted and corrupting forms of love and devotion.

Practicing the Religious Self: Buddhist-Christian Identity as Social Artifact

Practicing the Religious Self: Buddhist-Christian Identity as Social Artifact Duane R. Bidwell It is somewhat paradoxical to write or speak about identity formation in two religious traditions that ultimately deny the reality of any identity that we might claim or fashion for ourselves. In the Christian traditions, a person’s true (or ultimate) identity is received through God’s action and grace in baptism; to foreground any other facet of the self, or to anchor identity in anything but baptism, could be considered a form of idolatry. In the Buddhist traditions human identity is empty, woven not from an inherent or externally granted essence but through the interdependent arising of all things; 1 to cling to self and to identity as independent, enduring, immutable, or autonomous signals a mistaken understanding of reality.2 Indeed, as religious scholar Alice Keefe has written, “belief in the self as independent and self-existent is our fundamental delusion and root poison.” 3 Yet day by day most of us experience our identities, including our religious, cultural, and social identities, as neither empty nor erased. On the contrary: they seem to be inscribed with enduring meaning. Knowledge has been chiseled into them through our participation in the rituals and relationships of the world. At times the very fullness of our identities can feel on the verge of overflowing. This sense of dynamic presence and fullness causes our identities to serve as important (and perhaps essential) tools for negotiating the hurly-burly of experience and relationship in the mundane, finite, material world.4 From this perspective, our religious identities are social artifacts, entities and meanings formed in between, or on the margins of, biological selves that are related to one another through communities of practice.5 These communal artifacts may then be interiorized by individuals as resources that can be employed in or offered back to the world—performed, if you will—through particular (and sometimes disciplined) practices.6 The primacy of social process in creating and maintaining religious identity implies that community remains central to the process of fashioning the religious self in contemporary Buddhist and Christian practice. If this is true, it raises, of course, important questions about our understandings of ecclesiology and the nature of the sangha, theological anthropology and Buddhist understandings of the person. These questions [End Page 3] deserve to be answered, but they are too broad to be addressed here. My more modest intention is to contribute to generative conversation about religious identity formation by illustrating how my own religious identities as Buddhist and Christian have been practiced and performed as social artifacts in two particular instances. In a secondary sense, this essay serves as a reflection on pastoral work in a multifaith context, something “much needed in the Buddhist-Christian studies milieu.” 7 Given the diverse academic approaches to Buddhist-Christian studies, it seems wise to begin by describing my own background and approach. By training I am a pastoral theologian, someone who seeks to understand critically the richness and complexity of human experiences and then to respond with appropriate, faithful, and effective acts of care. The psychological meta-theory of social constructionism serves as a primary conversation partner for my work; it invites me to ask “not what goes on ‘inside’ people, but what people go on inside of.” 8 For pragmatic reasons I tend to utilize David Tracy’s mutual critical (or revised) correlational method,9 and in the dialectic between understanding human experience and responding to it, I privilege liberationist theologies and religio-ethical norms of justice, love, and wisdom. My practice as a spiritual director and pastoral counselor seeks to promote practices of freedom for all people.10 As a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) I am accountable to the Reformed tradition of Christian theology. My formal theological education occurred in the ecumenical context of a divinity school affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and at a diocesan seminary affiliated with the contemplative Anglican tradition. My informal training in Buddhist philosophy and practice occurred in the Theravada traditions of Southeast Asia, primarily through five years of participation in an immigrant congregation and weekly study with Thich Phap Nhan, a Vietnamese monk...

Beyond totem and idol, the sexuate other

The author interprets idolatry, totemism, sacrilege and taboo through her theory of sexual difference and her study of Eastern spirituality. She argues that the taboo on spirituality in Western culture has cancelled difference, resulting in our current forms of idolatry. Preserving difference, however, would allow the transcendence of the human other to exist. The task of learning to respect difference is central to human spirituality and spiritual progression. The article is a translation of “La transcendance de l’autre” in Autour d’idolatrie: figures actuelles de pouvoir et de domination, Ed. Bernard Van Meenen, Publications des Facultes Universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels: 2003.

The Triple Confusion of Utopia

Utopias arise out of a desire for perfection, and have often led to destruction and savagery. Why does enthusiasm for a transfigured community propel itself so rapidly into violence and evil? What unfathomable process causes the dream to transform itself into such a nightmare? Why do we bring on ourselves the evil that we abhor?

Contemplating God: YHWH and Being in the Theology of St Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas's treatise on God's essence, it is argued, contemplates Israel's God metaphysically. But Aquinas's purpose is a biblical one: encountering God through contemplating, with all available intellectual resources, God's names. Aquinas thus integrates his metaphysical reflection on the name 'I am Who am' into a rich account of YHWH, Moses, the Mosaic Law, and the relationship of Christians to the contemplative life enjoyed by Moses and sustained, against various forms of idolatry, by the Mosaic Law.

The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong by William C. Placher

The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong. By WILLIAM C. PLACHER. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Pp. 222. $19.99 (paper). ISBN 0-664-25635-X. Yet another book on the question of modernity? Yes and no. Although the latest book by William Placher, a student and editor of the late Hans Frei and well-respected theological writer in his own right, does deal with this topic, its quest is not to explain how or why modernity began, but rather to renew the battle between the ancients and the modems on a specific theme: how human beings should think and speak about God. In particular, Placher argues that at the dawn of the modern age in the seventeenth century, Christian theology lost its appreciation of divine transcendence, with its implications for the human knowledge of God. Placher does not suggest a wholesale retrieval of premodem theology of God, recognizing its support of oppressive social and cultural arrangements. Instead, through a detailed treatment of aspects of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin-an ecumenical "heroes gallery"-he hopes to demonstrate that these pre-Enlightenment thinkers knew something their modern successors forgot and that must be retrieved by contemporary theology. A set of interrelated questions focuses Placher's historical analysis: (1) how have theologians and philosophers thought about God? (2) how have they defined their language about God? and (3) what is God's relation to the world we experience and the lives we undertake? In each instance, he argues that premodern theologians possessed greater insight than those who first tangled with the Enlightenment. Placher summarizes what went wrong as a "domestication of God," an image he derives from a line by Thomas Hooker written while combating the doggedly undomesticated theology of Anne Hutchinson: "I know there is wilde love and joy enough in the world as there is wilde thyme and other herbes, but we would have garden-love and garden-joy, of God's own planting." In Placher's terms, God is domesticated when theology seeks a "clearly structured system ... in which God plays a rather carefully defined role and we can grasp the principles behind God's actions" (39). This is the sin of modern theology to the extent that it rejected the mysterious and uncontrollable God, and settled for one who could be contained within a bower well-tended by human hands. Prior to embarking on his historical project, Placher addresses the now common dismissal of "classical theism" and the ensuing call for a "postmodern theology." He argues that the identification of the God of classical theism as a distant, dominating, and decidedly patriarchal deity is a caricature indicative of a failure to do the hard work of truly understanding the thought of the leading premoderns, and to distinguish it from what followed. Moreover, while Placher applauds the sensitivity to divine transcendence 469 470 BOOK REVIEWS demonstrated by self-proclaimed theologians of postmodernity such as Mark C. Taylor, he finds that it is often at the expense of appreciating the epistemological repercussions of the self-revelation of the Trinity in the Incarnation of Christ and the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. Demonstrating a strong Barthian commitment, Placher insists that apart from divine self-revelation theology becomes a "form of idolatry" which seeks to bring the divine under human control (15). For insight into how one can speak of God in light of self-revelation, Placher suggests that close attention be paid to the efforts of Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. Admirably well-informed on current scholarship concerning the theology of Aquinas (particularly that which rejects any description of Aquinas as half philosopher and half theologian), he emphasizes Thomas's deep appreciation for the consequences the simplicity of God has for theological knowledge. Since God is a simple reality, he cannot be known by human reason, which attains truth by dividing and joining, distinguishing potency from act, and abstracting accidental qualities from essential ones. Yet, as a Christian theologian who believed God's revelation of Jesus Christ as "the way of truth" and eternal salvation, Aquinas recognized the necessity of saying something about God. His solution to the quandary of...

La persistencia de la visión andina de la muerte en el virreinato del Perú

Abstract/short description:
 The article describes the persistence of Andean system of beliefs related with death. It discusses the portrayal of death in colonial sources, namely the concepts disseminated by Christian missionaries. The "Mallquis" are an of Andean death related tradition. Mallquis are cults of the ancestors' skeletons. Such practices were regarded by the Catholic Church as a form of idolatry and the Church fiercely opposed them.
 Short description written by Michal Gilewski

The Nixon-Cronin Speeches: A Cold War Theology

My purpose here is to uncover and examine a theology that is sometimes explicit, but more often implied, in Richard Nixon's speeches delivered between 1953 and 1960, the original texts of which were written by a Roman Catholic priest, John F. Cronin. First I will survey the history of the association between Cronin and Nixon. Second, I will deal with the speeches themselves and the theology that often lay just beneath the surface. Finally, I will look at the practical consequences of this Cold War theology and the mission entrusted to its believers. The questions arising from this sort of study are legion. Given the history of American suspicion in regard to Roman Catholics, how did a Roman Catholic priest acquire such an influential position among early Cold War theorists- especially with Richard Nixon, a Quaker? Do Nixon's speeches presuppose a theological interpretation of world events? Is the Cold War theology of the speeches a genuinely Christian theology, or is it a form of idolatry?

Varro, Livy and Tertullian On the History of Roman Dramatic Art

At first sight the readers of this review may be surprised to find an article here which primarily deals with one of the most-discussed subjects of the history of early Roman literature. Still the author hopes that they will accept it as one more proof of the profit to be drawn from the interpretation of Christian authors for the investigation of problems of classic literature. In the discussion concerning the authority followed by Livy in his famous account of the evolution of Roman drama, and on the reality of the data mentioned in that account, 1 two passages from Tertullian's De spectaculis are frequently quoted; however, no attempt has yet been made2 for a more thorough investigation of the entire digression on the origing of the ludi which comprehends eight chapters (5-12) of this monograph. Hence it will be our aim, firstly, to examine the contents of this digression and to try to indicate its source, secondly, to apply the results attained at to the discussion of the sources of Livij 7,2 and of similar passages from Vergil (Georg. 2, 380) and Valerius Maximus (2, 4, 4). The 'antiquarian' contents of Tertullian's account may be summed up in the following way (I omit all 'purely Christian' digressions which without exception are due to Tertullian's wish to prove that the ludi are nothing but a form of idolatry).