Hand Of God Research Articles

A Cardiologist's View of Modern Cardiovascular Surgery

Several centuries ago, a cynical Gregory said of doctors: “Old men let their patients die, young men kill them,” and there are times when the first part could be paraphrased: “Physicians let their patients die,” the second part you can complete as you will. It is important to point out that the availability and acceptable risk of some surgical procedures may not be known to some physicians and the term “too ill for surgery” may be in grievous error. The remarkable resurrection of some patients with gross acute mitral or aortic regurgitation are cases in point. Be kindly to the physician as you continue to render him out of date; join with the physician in the support of basic research which may make much of the joint present labors unneeded. Remember that at the end of life, it may be more courageous to be accused of “doing nothing” (except relief of pain) than to forge ahead with dramatic surgical effort. In some instances, too, it is well to recall the old adage, “in the dying, surgeons need not hurry the hand of God.” I thus return to Ecclesiastes’ dictum “there is a time to be born and a time to die”—undoubtedly, then, when written, a reflection of passive fatalism, but in this age it would imply an active, sometimes agonizing human decision. I ask your indulgence for the chauvinistic and pejorative touches in my remarks and hope that the yoking together of many heterogeneous ideas will not cause immediate rejection reactions, and that such ideas may be better tolerogens than antigens for productive thoughts.

Living on the Left Hand of God

“Then the King will say to those … at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’” (Matthew 25: 34-45)

Ten Articles on the Freedom and Service of the Church

‘Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.’ (Heb. 12.2–3.)

The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity

The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity

The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity

The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity

Book Review: The Questions of King Milinda. Translated by T. W. Rhys Davids. 2 parts. Dover Publications, New York, and Constable, London. 1963. $2.25 each.; Alpha. By Charles H. Long. The Wisdom of the Serpent. By Joseph L. Henderson and Maud Oakes. The Two Hands of God. By Alan W. Watts. “Patterns of Myth” Series, edited by A. W. Watts.

Book Review: <scp>The Questions of King Milinda</scp>. Translated by T. W. Rhys Davids. 2 parts. Dover Publications, New York, and Constable, London. 1963. $2.25 each.; <scp>Alpha</scp>. By Charles H. Long. <scp>The Wisdom of the Serpent</scp>. By Joseph L. Henderson and Maud Oakes. <scp>The Two Hands of God</scp>. By Alan W. Watts. “Patterns of Myth” Series, edited by A. W. Watts.

: Alpha: The Myths of Creation . Charles H. Long. ; The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity . Alan W. Watts. ; The Wisdom of the Serpent: The Myths of Death, Rebirth, and Resurrection . Joseph L. Henderson, Maud Oakes.

: Alpha: The Myths of Creation . Charles H. Long. ; The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity . Alan W. Watts. ; The Wisdom of the Serpent: The Myths of Death, Rebirth, and Resurrection . Joseph L. Henderson, Maud Oakes.

Power and Principle: The Anglican Prayer Book Controversy, 1927-1930

By December, 1927, Church of England Prayer Book Revision was twenty-one years old. It had developed a mystique of its own. The hand of God was at once seen in its overthrow, and appeal to divine Providence does not seem far from some modern interpretations of the events of 1927-30. Anthony Howard thinks the episode reveals the Church of England “as the suffering servant of a secular state,” a curious view when the suffering Church's policy was so emphatically “‘not quite straight.’” The Liturgical Commission finds “the hand of Providence” in the failure of the bishops to carry their Book, or indeed to terminate the emergency created by this failure. Stephen Neill has another theory: that the compromises accepted in 1929-30 were, though illogical and irresolute, typical of the spirit of the nation—which had been engaged with consistency and tenacity in fierce controversy over the issue for several years before. The final proof of these appeals to national or divine wisdom is the assertion that the Book was a very poor Book anyway, though used very widely in the Church of England today.

BOOK REVIEWS

Journal Article BOOK REVIEWS Get access Patterns of Myth: Alpha—The Myths of Creation; The Wisdom of the Serpent; The Two Hands of God. By CHARLES H. LONG , JOSEPH L. HENDERSON , MAUD OAKES , ALAN W. WATTS . General Editor ALAN W. WATTS . New York: George Braziller, 1963. ix+264; viii+253; ix+261 pages. $18.00. ($6 per volume). AGEHANANDA BHARATI AGEHANANDA BHARATI Syracuse University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume XXXII, Issue 3, July 1964, Pages 277–279, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/XXXII.3.277 Published: 01 July 1964

The Eschatological Significance of Human Suffering In The Old Testament And The Dead Sea Scrolls

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the Old Testament and its cognate literature teach about human suffering something usually neglected by those who study this great problem: that human suffering is almost always connected with the life of a community, and sometimes with the creation of a community, under the hand of God.

THE TWO HANDS OF GOD*

THE TWO HANDS OF GOD*

The Concept of Complicity in Howells' Fiction

... he preached the old Christ-humanity ... and enforced again the lessons that no one for good or for evil, for sorrow or joy, for sickness or health, stood apart from his fellows, but each was bound to the highest and lowest by ties that centred in the hand of God. No man ... sinned or suffered to himself alone; his error and his pain darkened and afflicted men who never heard of his name. If a community was corrupt, if an age was immoral, it was not because of the vicious, but the virtuous who fancied themselves indifferent spectators. It was not the tyrant who oppressed, it was the wickedness that had made him possible. The gospel--Christ-God, so far as men had imagined him,-was but a lesson, a type, a witness from everlasting to everlasting of the spiritual unity of man.2

The Spirit of Protestantism by Robert McAfee Brown

BOOK REVIEWS 175 the majority of theologians do view it, as a rational proof of God's Existence . And when viewed as a proof of faith by faith, it might well be an occasion of the gift of faith, but also an occasion for ridiculing the faith. St. Stepkm'a Priory, Dovi?JI', Maaa. JOSEPH c. TAYLOR, O.P. The Spirit of Protestantism. By RoBERT McAFEE BROWN. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. Pp. 254 with indices. $4.50. In the Foreword the author prepares us for what is to come and answers the questions which such a title naturally suggests. Whose Protestantism? That of the age in which the salve of the conscience of the apostate friar and the avaricious prince become the confessions of Augsburg and Westminster ; that of earlier ages in the ideas of the Donatus, Pelagius, Acacius, Photius, Leo the !saurian, John Wyklif; that of our times, the religion of such varied ministers of a varied Gospel as Paul Blanshard, James Pike, Adam Clayton Powell, Norman Peale, Billy Graham, Bromley Oxnam, Dean Inge? He addresses liis book to perplexed Protestants, wishful pagans, Concerned Roman Catholics, inquiring college students and beleaguered Protestant ministers. He chooses as Protestantism the " shared convictions " of those inside the Protestant churches and, in the last analysis, what he himself believes. He ambitiously covers the whole of his field in three parts: past, present and future. In Part One he disposes of what he considers false images of Protestantism: that it is protest against something, that it is diluted Catholicism, that it is " believing certain things," that it is " the right of private judgement "; he then proposes that Protestantism was not a revolt, nor an economic, political movement but a religious revival of the full Gospel of the early church; he bravely sketches the denominations by genera, by theological attitude, and by ecumenical family; and then in ten pages expounds the spirit as " constant renewal·at the hand of God." ·The Second Part is a systematized presentation of the ideas and practices, which he thinks a good Protestant should hold on grace, faith, authority of Scripture , Sovereignty of God, Priesthood of Believers, worship and Sacraments. The Third Part entitled Ongoing Protestant Concerns deals with the relation of Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, to the doctrine of authority, to culture, to the world and with tensions within Protestanism. Twenty seven pages of notes which are simultaneously a rich and varied bibliography, and two indices complete the work. 176 BOOK REVIEWS This is a work of consummate art. Working with deceptive ease and honesty; ingenuous, ready to blame as well as praise; erudite, but never pedantic; didactic, but never prosy; fluent, urbane, but never glib; he has produced an image of Protestantism with a skill that the best among Protestant apologetes might wish he could match. To say as much is only fair, but to continue is difficult because a reviewer must have a point of departure. The Protestant insider and the Catholic outsider cannot reasonably evaluate Rev. Brown's Protestantism in the same way. And if the outsider is already disposed to be critical of Protestantism , then Rev. Brown's version will be subject to censure too. This outsider admires the skill with which the fundamental and insuperable barriers between Protestant and Catholic unity are detected and expounded, namely the notions of the Church and of authority, but he is disappointed and irritated at the many ambiguities, equivocations, gratuitous assertions, some of which are due to Protestantism, some of which are due to the author. For if the reviewer cannot abstract from his dogmatic commitments, neither does Rev. Brown, for all his sincerity, rise above his heritage. A great part of the charm of this book, and the favorable impression that it makes is due to the chaste, eirenic style. There is no innuendo, no emotion-loaded adjectives. Rev. Brown is not of the school of Luther, Foxe, or Blanshard; all is sweet reason. It is sad therefore to note one lapse. In the spirit no doubt of Protestantism, Rev. Brown consistently refuses to admit that the mother and head of all the churches should be called Catholic. For him Catholic means the full Gospel...

The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action

Over the last century and a half, the work of the Constitutional Convention and the motives of the Founding Fathers have been analyzed under a number of different ideological auspices. To one generation of historians, the hand of God was moving in the assembly; under a later dispensation, the dialectic (at various levels of philosophical sophistication) replaced the Deity: “relationships of production” moved into the niche previously reserved for Love of Country. Thus in counterpoint to the Zeitgeist, the Framers have undergone miraculous metamorphoses: at one time acclaimed as liberals and bold social engineers, today they appear in the guise of sound Burkean conservatives, men who in our time would subscribe to Fortune, look to Walter Lippmann for political theory, and chuckle patronizingly at the antics of Barry Goldwater. The implicit assumption is that if James Madison were among us, he would be President of the Ford Foundation, while Alexander Hamilton would chair the Committee for Economic Development.The “Fathers” have thus been admitted to our best circles; the revolutionary ferocity which confiscated all Tory property in reach and populated New Brunswick with outlaws has been converted by the “Miltown School” of American historians into a benign dedication to “consensus” and “prescriptive rights.” The Daughters of the American Revolution have, through the ministrations of Professors Boorstin, Hartz, and Rossiter, at last found ancestors worthy of their descendants. It is not my purpose here to argue that the “Fathers” were, in fact, radical revolutionaries; that proposition has been brilliantly demonstrated by Robert R. Palmer in his Age of the Democratic Revolution.

The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action

Over the last century and a half, the work of the Constitutional Convention and the motives of the Founding Fathers have been analyzed under a number of different ideological auspices. To one generation of historians, the hand of God was moving in the assembly; under a later dispensation, the dialectic (at various levels of philosophical sophistication) replaced the Deity: “relationships of production” moved into the niche previously reserved for Love of Country. Thus in counterpoint to the Zeitgeist, the Framers have undergone miraculous metamorphoses: at one time acclaimed as liberals and bold social engineers, today they appear in the guise of sound Burkean conservatives, men who in our time would subscribe to Fortune, look to Walter Lippmann for political theory, and chuckle patronizingly at the antics of Barry Goldwater. The implicit assumption is that if James Madison were among us, he would be President of the Ford Foundation, while Alexander Hamilton would chair the Committee for Economic Development.The “Fathers” have thus been admitted to our best circles; the revolutionary ferocity which confiscated all Tory property in reach and populated New Brunswick with outlaws has been converted by the “Miltown School” of American historians into a benign dedication to “consensus” and “prescriptive rights.” The Daughters of the American Revolution have, through the ministrations of Professors Boorstin, Hartz, and Rossiter, at last found ancestors worthy of their descendants. It is not my purpose here to argue that the “Fathers” were, in fact, radical revolutionaries; that proposition has been brilliantly demonstrated by Robert R. Palmer in his Age of the Democratic Revolution.

The Churches and the Confederate Cause

THE CHURCHES AND THE CONFEDERATE CAUSE Willard E. Wight any understanding of the attitude of the churches of the South toward the Confederate government must proceed from the basic principle which motivated their conduct throughout the war. According to this principle slavery was an institution sanctioned by God and given to the South as a sacred trust; therefore, those who opposed it, as the abolitionists did, were against the Almighty. Disruption of the Union was necessary in order to preserve slavery, God's work on earth; hence, the creation of the Confederate States of America was the work of Providence. All institutions ordained by God demand the unswerving allegiance of Christians; ergo, all Christians must support the Confederate government with unfaltering loyalty. This attitude was clearly enunciated by a Virginia Baptist congregation when it adopted the foUowing resolutions: Man is a moral, social and reUgious being. He is responsible for his example to the society in which he lives, as well as to the Creator for his social influence ; for all government is ordained by God; and if as a subject of government , he does what is injurious to the interests of that government, he is acting in violation of the laws of God, which require that all men be "subject to the powers that be." If therefore it is a Christian duty to obey a government which the subject had no power to form, or change, it is doubly a duty for aU Christian subjects of this government not only to yield a cheerful obedience to the constituted authorities, but to aid and encourage them in every effort to secure our social and religious freedom. Therefore Be it Resolved 1. That the war which the U.S. government has forced upon us, involving as it does, our social and religious freedom, must be met with unfaltering determination and an earnest cooperation of every Christian. 2. That all efforts to evade the operations of laws for the support of the war or to shun our lawful duty, are in violation of the Scriptures and manifest an unworthiness of our social and religious fellowship.1 A doctoral graduate of Emory University Dr. Wight is now on the history faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology. 1 Minute Book, Elon Baptist Church, Dover Association, 1857-1866, Meeting of July 6, 1863, Virginia Baptist Historical Society. 361 362WILLARD E. WIGHT Convinced that the new nation was the result of divine interposition, the churches were quick to give their blessing to the Confederacy. The Methodist Rio Grande Conference in Texas resolved in 1861 that "the government of the Confederate States of America is right; to it we owe allegiance and its fortunes we will share invoking Almighty God to uphold it in equity and Wisdom."2 The South Carolina Lutheran Synod recognized "the hand of God in the wisdom of its councils and the heroism of our brave defenders, which have enabled us to form a Government of our choice."3 The Goshen Baptist Association of Virginia resolved to "give whatever aid we can to the Confederate Government in carrying forward a war contemplating our deliverance."4 Because they realized that, in the eyes of many, war per se was not wholly consistent with the principles of Christianity, the churches took pains to proclaim the cause of tbe South a just cause. The declaration of the North Carolina Christian Conference that "the Southern Confederacy is not at all responsible for the war that is going on" was lukewarm when compared with the resolution of the Virginia Lutheran Synod that the "defensive war maintained by us against an invading foe, is just and righteous."5 With similar conviction the Middle District Baptist Association of the same state declared that "if ever a people drew the sword in behalf of a just cause, we are that people."6 Further endorsement of the cause of the Confederacy was made in 1863 by eighty-four ministers of the Gospel who issued an Address to Christians Throughout the World, published in Richmond in 1863. A non-political document, it was not promulgated in the name of any denomination , although signed by leading clergymen of the Baptist, Old School Presbyterian...

God’s Eternal Law

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. XXIII OCTOBER, 1960 No.4 GOD'S ETERNAL LAW AFTER St. Thomas lays down his definition of law in general , he proceeds to discuss the various kinds of law in particular. Chief among these, as their source and origin, is the eternal law of God. First he shows that the eternal law exists and then he investigates its nature. His proof that there has existed a law in the mind of God from all eternity is rather different from what we might expect. If it exists, it is evident that we cannot have intuitive knowledge of its existence, for no one can see what is in the mind of God but God Himself and the blessed in heaven, who enjoy the face to face vision of the divine nature.1 In this life, we can only reason to its existence from the things that we see around us, just as we reason to God's existence from the visible things around us. In fact, the final proof that St. Thomas gives for the existence of God, ex gubernatione rerum,2 is, as we shall see later, also a proof for the existence of the eternal law. 1 I-II, q. 98, a. ~- • Ibid., I, q. !t, a. 2. 497 498 JOSEPH COLLINS This is not the approach to the eternal law that we might have expected. We might have thought, for instance, that he would argue from the existence of human law to the divine law or that he would have argued from the existence of the natural law to the existence in the mind of God of a transcendent law which is the origin and explanation of all other laws. We might have expected him to adopt that line of argument because he teaches that natural law is a participation in the eternal law and positive laws, civil and ecclesiastical, are valid as laws only insofar as they are derived from the eternal law. When we examine the position a little more closely, we can see why he did not adopt that line of argument. It would have been tantamount to assuming what he wished to prove. That would certainly be so if he had argued from the natural law. For, the natural law is not really different as law from the eternal law. It is the eternal law as received in us. He approaches the problem from another angle altogether. He starts from something that is self-evident 3 and which is itself an effect of the eternal law, namely, God's government of the world. That the universe is governed by God, we gather from the wonderful order and harmony that reign, not only amongst things, but also amongst the multitudinous and vastly complex activity of things. The lower orders of being serve the higher, and all in their proper place and in their various ways conspire to promote the good of the whole universe. To direct and guide the works of creation towards this goal demands, as St. Thomas points out elsewhere,• a supervising intelligence and governing hand, which is the mind and hand of God. That is particularly so, when we consider that a large portion of the total universe is without reason and of itself cannot see the goal towards which it unconsciously moves. The alternative is to say that the unity and harmony of the universe are altogether due to chance, and such an explanation is ruled out by its own intrinsic impossibility. • Self-evident on the supposition that God exists. • Op. cit., I, q. lOS, a. 1. GOD's ETERNAL LAW 499 God's government of the universe, however, is only the execution in time of what his providence ordained from all eternity. His argument, then, is this: if there existed from all eternity in the mind of God a detailed scheme for bringing each individual creature to the goal for which it was created, that presupposes a still more comprehensive plan in the mind of God for bringing the whole of creation...

Romanticism, Existentialism And Religion

Thus Pascal sets forth the romanticist thesis that reason has nothing to do with the deep intimations of the worshipping soul. Religion is an affair of the heart, and the productive Source of all things cannot be comprehended by the exercise of the finite intellect. This doctrine foreshadows the Kantian dichotomy between phenomena and noumena: the understanding can legitimately operate only within the sphere of space, time and natural causality, as it knows nothing of the transcendental postulates of the moral life. In Kant's case, however, the opposition is worked out by means of a sustained and systematic analysis of man's faculties of cognition, and the intuitions of moral feeling are not without a rationality of their own. One might say that in Kant's view there is a logic of ethical sentiment as well as a logic of the scientific understanding, the former being practical, the latter theoretical. In the practical domain of morality the categories of the scientific understanding do not apply: the individual who acts from a sense of duty is free and immortal, besides being destined to receive rewards from the hand of God according to his deserts. The practice of the moral life therefore creates a sort of categoreal vacuum, the individual becoming a noumenon, emancipated from the shackles of the sensible world; from an empirical point of view, morality means self-transcendence.

Mother Therese Couderc

The year 1885 saw the passing of one of the great spiritual figures of that century: Mother Thérèse Couderc, Cofoundress of the Cenacle. Her contemporaries witness that at her death ‘there passed away a glory from the earth'—and Holy Church, agreeing with their verdict, will shortly proclaim her Blessed—a model of holiness for the whole world. How did she arrive at that shining sanctity which became so transparently evident as her long life drew to a closee It was simply by being a true Christian—through a complete surrender of herself into the hands of God, allowing him to do with her exactly as he pleased She was a woman of clear supernatural vision and good judgment. But at the age of thirty-three she was subjected to a series of misunderstandings, deposed from her office of Superior, deprived little by little of her title of Co-foundress, and she endured not only personal humiliation of the most painful kind, but the far greater agony of seeing the Cenacle pulled out of its right context and governed by one who possessed neither vision nor judgment.

Tercentenary of Nehemiah Grew (1641—1712)

NEREMIAH GREW will always be held in honour by botanists as the co-founder with Marcello Malpighi of the science of plant anatomy. It is true that in his ideas about plant cells he did not advance much beyond Robert Hooke, who, in 1665, figured and named these units; but, as regards knowledge of vascular structure, the position is very different. Grew and Malpighi not only initiated the study of the bundle system of the flowering plant, but also carried it to a surprisingly high level, considering, that they had to start from the very foundations. Grew's first book, “The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun” (1672), contains the earliest printed illustration showing vascular bundles as seen in section under the microscope. He followed up this work in 1673 and 1675 by treatises on the detailed anatomy of roots and of stems. Finally he brought all his results together, in 1682, in a splendidly illustrated folio, “The Anatomy of Plants”, which included improved second editions of his first three books, as well as much additional matter. The excellence of Grew's botanical morphology and anatomy has been recognized fully; indeed his reputation in this line is deservedly so great that it has tended to overshadow the other facets of his output. It seems worth while, therefore, in this, his tercentenary year, to direct attention to certain less specialized aspects of his scientific work. Grew's general attitude towards biology cannot be understood unless one realizes how deeply he was committed to a mechanistic view of the universe. It seems likely that Hooke, and also Descartes, had to some extent turned his mind in this direction, though in the seventeenth century such ideas were so much in the air that it is scarcely necessary to look for specific sources. It was owing to the mechanistic viewpoint of that period, that the microscope, for example, was hailed as an instrument which was destined to clear away all inconvenient mysteries. Hooke hoped that by the help of glasses “we may perhaps be inabled to discern all the secret workings of Nature, almost in the same manner as we do those that are the productions of Art, and are manag'd by Wheels and Engines, and Springs, that were devised by humane Wit”. Grew enlarges upon this analogy between the world and a man-made machine, and seems to find it entirely satisfying. He says that “all Nature is as one Great Engine made by and held in” the hand of God. He regards this engine as having been set in motion by the Great First Cause, to which all subsequent effects can be traced back; he considers that the original causation was all that was necessary, and that, in the normal course of events, no subsequent interference has occurred. “And as it is the watchmaker's Art,” he says, “that the Hand moves regularly from hour to hour, although he put not his finger still to it: so it is the demonstration of Divine Wisdom, that the Parts of Nature are so harmoniously contrived and set together as to conspire to all kind of natural motions and effects without the extraordinary-immediate influence of the Author of it.”