Idea Of God Research Articles

Sartre and God: A Spiritual Odyssey? Part 1

This two-part article examines whether Sartre's final interviews, recorded in L'Espoir maintenant [Hope Now], indicate a final turn to belief through an overview of his engagement with the idea of God throughout his career. In Part 1 we examine Sartre's early atheism, but note the pervasive nature of secularised Christian metaphors and concepts in his religion of letters and the centrality of man's desire to be God in Being and Nothingness. His theoretical writings seek to refute the idea of God, but in doing so God is paradoxically both absent and present. In Part 2 we assess his anti-theism and consider his final encounter with theism in L'Espoir maintenant, arguing that it is part of Sartre's long-term engagement with the idea of God.

Berkeley’s Metaphysics of Perception

In this reply, I use an act theory to explain divine ideas and Berkeley’s archetype–ectype distinction. I argue that divine ideas are acts of divine self-consciousness in reply to the objection that if divine ideas are acts, then for Berkeley they are acts without objects. The result is a much more plausible account of Berkeley’s archetype–ectype distinction than is available on representationalist interpretations. Lastly, while arguments from illusion are indispensable to representationalist theories, Berkeley’s rejection of arguments from illusion is evidence that he endorsed an act theory of ideas.

A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (review)

Reviewed by: A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age Michael A. Rosenthal Steven Nadler. A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age. Princeton, NJ-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011. Pp. xx + 279. Cloth, $29.95. Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise is a difficult book for the modern reader. Unlike the Ethics, whose geometrical form was supposed to appeal to all rational men, Spinoza wrote the Treatise as an intervention in a particular political and religious struggle in the Netherlands in the late 1660s. Steven Nadler uses his considerable knowledge of Dutch history and the broader philosophical context to guide the reader through the arguments of the book and explain the nature of the scandal it provoked. But while it is systematic, this is hardly a dry tome. Nadler begins each chapter with an anecdote—from Spinoza’s correspondence or reception of the work, or an apt parallel—that illuminates the intent [End Page 129] of the argument. Nadler uses these stories to reveal the often personal motivations of the philosophical arguments. Nadler begins with a discussion of the “theological-political” problem as it developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a problem that was felt acutely in the Netherlands. He also addresses the problem of the intended reader of the text and the kind of discourse that Spinoza employed. Unlike Leo Strauss, who made much of the distinction between the exoteric meaning intended for the multitude (vulgus) and the esoteric meaning hidden for the philosopher or potential philosopher, Nadler simply points out that the Treatise’s audience was broader than that of a specialized work like the Ethics, and so he had to be careful with his language. The entire second chapter is devoted to telling the story of Spinoza’s friend Adriaan Koerbagh, who wrote a book in Dutch inspired by his friend Spinoza and was promptly put in prison, where he died. The third chapter provides a clear exposition of Spinoza’s idea of God, his theory of knowledge, and the deflationary account of prophecy that is central to the Treatise. Nowhere are Spinoza’s radical intentions clearer than in his critique of miracles, and Nadler gives us a wonderful chapter that explains how Spinoza is willing to go beyond the positions of other contemporary natural philosophers, like Descartes, Huygens, Hobbes, and Boyle, to the outright refutation of the metaphysical possibility of miracles. At the same time, he shows us how Spinoza adopts the medieval distinction between general and special providence to the terms of his naturalistic system. Most of his earliest readers and later interpreters believed that Spinoza was trying to undermine religion, by revealing the superstitions that produce it, and replace it with a completely secular society governed by reason. Nadler presents a more nuanced view. In the chapter on Scripture, he shows how Spinoza tries to balance between reason and faith. If we attend to Scripture alone, we find that it does have a clear message, one surprisingly free of theological dogma: pursue justice and loving kindness in our actions. Nadler admits that while Spinoza’s goal is often to strip the theological aura from religion, his method is “not meant to rob the Bible of all its authority” (141). Instead, it gives the Bible a new authority, which is exclusively moral. Nadler does not neglect to discuss Spinoza’s political theory based on a modification of Hobbes’s idea of the institution of a state out of the state of nature. And he gives us a nice account, free of anachronistic distortions, of the heralded freedom of philosophizing with which Spinoza ends the work. Nadler himself chooses to conclude with a fascinating discussion of the early reception of the book and the outrage it provoked. It helps underscore the transformative potential that later generations of readers helped unleash. Of course there are a few points on which I would disagree with Nadler’s interpretation. He notes that Spinoza is highly critical of Judaism throughout the Treatise, but he neglects the sense in which the ancient Israelite state was exemplary to its mostly Protestant readers. Spinoza...

Augustine’s Moulding of the Manichaean Idea of God in the Confessions

Abstract The present study aims to ask whether Augustine utilised elements of Manichaean theology to give an account of and profile to the Nicene Christian doctrinal system. In the Confessions Augustine links his narrative of the encounter with the Manichaeans, right from the start, to an epistemologically grounded critique of their idea of God (conf. 3.10f.). Whereas the pagan myths can be assigned the function of referring to non-fictional and thus ‘true’ spheres of meaning, the motifs of Manichaean myth are empty forms (phantasmata) without any reference to reality, which they are supposed to explain. The paper argues that this anti-Manichaean critique of myth is the starting-point for a theory of knowledge of God which opposes the biblical imago dei to the Manichaean phantasmata and can thus be understood as having been conceptualised in opposition to Mani’s doctrine of God.

Angelina Branković – święta władczyni w hymnografii. Zarys problemu

The aim of this article is to present the idea of divinity of power on an example of the medieval service, dedicated to the Serbian despotess Angelina Branković. The image of a ruler and a concept of power presented in the text are based on the perception of Angelina as a participant and a heiress of the sacred tradition of Branković dynasty. The service has played an important role in the creation and strengthening of the ruler image in the spiritual culture of the Orthodox Serbs. In addition to strictly liturgical function, it also served as a way of transmission of the elementary set of national religious and political ideas. Hymnography dedicated to St. Angelina was a response to the social and religious needs to canonize the native saints who certify God’s care for Serbia in the period of slavery, strengthen the national spirit, contribute to stabilizing the situation in the country.

God in Ghanaian Pentecostal Songs

This essay is about implicit ideas of God in Ghanaian Pentecostal songs. It examines and discusses some selected songs or choruses sung by Ghanaian Pentecostal churches. Today these songs have ceased to be the prerogative of the Pentecostals; they are sung by all: Christian and non-Christian. The songs I examine in this paper reveal Ghanaian Pentecostal understanding and interpretation of the being and nature of God. The paper aims at demonstrating the naturalness of Ghanaian Pentecostal songs. It also reveals the synthesis of the Akan primal worldview and biblical understanding in the Ghanaian Pentecostal concept of God. Yet this paper demonstrates that Ghanaian Pentecostals show a clear discontinuity with the primal worldview when they subvert the mediatorial and salvific roles of the traditional deities and spirits with those of Christ and the Christian God.

FIFTY YEARS ON FROM HONEST TO GOD (1963) AND OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIAN BELIEF (1963)

Bishop John A.T. Robinson's Honest to God was exceptionally successful. In the decade following its publication more than a million copies were sold in seventeen different languages. Robinson was aware that numerous awkward questions were being asked about traditional Christian beliefs, which it was no longer possible to ignore. His purpose was not so much to question traditional ideas of God as to suggest alternatives for those who found them unsatisfactory (8). He wanted to convince such persons that an inability to believe what is stated in the Bible or the prayer book does not disqualify them from calling themselves Christians and presenting themselves at church. He speaks of traditional Christian beliefs, as stated in the New Testament, as a ‘language’ (24) and thinks that Christianity should be conveyed to people in a variety of languages. By employing, as he does, the language of such Christian scholars as Bonhoeffer, Tillich and Bultmann, an atheist may find himself able to call himself a Christian. But the old familiar language of the Bible remains more pleasing to most of God's children, particularly to his ‘older children’ (43), so we must not give it up, although he allows that it is becoming increasingly unpopular, so that without ‘the kind of revolution’ he is advocating, ‘Christian faith and practice … will come to be abandoned’ (123).

L’infinité divine chez Grégoire de Nysse : de l’anthropologie à la polémique trinitaire

Abstract In this article, I propose to call into question the opinion according to which the Contra Eunomium was a founding moment for the idea of God’s infinity in Gregory of Nyssa. I take into account two writings whose evidence on this subject was often neglected by most scholars of Gregory: De hominis opificio and De anima et resurrectione. I point out to the fact that virtually all the ideas related to the theme of God’s infinity are already present in these treaties. Instead of considering the Contra Eunomium as a breaking point in the intellectual developement of Gregory, I then suggest one should read it in the light and the continuity of his anthropological treaties.

Sartre’s Absent God

Sartre’s memoir Words turns on his mid-life realisation that, although he had abandoned belief in God, he had hitherto based his work on a religious model. From this point God no longer appears as a primary reference in his writings. This is in sharp contrast with the pervasive presence of God in earlier works, especially in his ontology and related reflections on ethics. In ontology Sartre was particularly concerned with the Cartesian idea of the creator God as ens causa sui. Adapting this to his own system, he uses the idea of causa sui to mark the absolute (but non-substantial) existence of for-itself being (consciousness) as separate from the uncreated plenitude of in-itself being. He then argues that the idea of God as a consciousness that founds its own being is an impossible synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself. The idea nonetheless remains fundamental for consciousness, for desire, which arises in response to lack, ultimately the lack of in-itself being, reflects an original choice that leads to constant striving towards the impossible goal of being God. This theme haunts the ontology from beginning to end. Sartre offers a system to rival Descartes or Leibniz, but adopts a quasi-religious framework of salvation in which, apart from the promise of a possible escape from ontological destiny, human beings are condemned to futility. In ethics he explores the idea of conversion from original choice to an authentic choice of freedom, but fails to break out of the closed framework set by the ontology.

Creatio ex nihiloin Palestinian Judaism and Early Christianity

AbstractRecent decades have witnessed a near-consensus of critical opinion (1) that the idea of God's creation of matter ‘out of nothing’ is not affirmed in scripture, but instead (2) originated in a second-century Christian reaction against Gnosticism's convictions about matter as evil and creation as the work of an inferior Demiurge. (3) Judaism's interest, by contrast, was generally deemed late and philosophically derivative or epiphenomenal upon Christian ideas. This essay re-examines all three convictions with particular reference to the biblical creation accounts in Palestinian Jewish reception. After highlighting certain interpretative features in the ancient versions of Genesis 1, this study explores the reception of such ideas in texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls and early rabbinic literature. It is clear that the typically cited proof texts from biblical or deutero-canonical books indeed do not yield clear confirmation of the doctrine they have sometimes been said to prove. Genesis was understood even in antiquity to be somewhat ambiguous on this point, and merely to say that creation gave shape to formlessness need not entail anycreatio ex nihilo. This much seems uncontroversial. Nevertheless, closer examination also shows that the Scrolls and the rabbis do consistently affirm Israel's God as the creator ofallthings, explicitly including matter itself. Graeco-Roman antiquity axiomatically accepted that ‘nothing comes from nothing’, which also meant the pre-existence of matter. To be sure, the conceptual terminology of ‘nothingness’ came relatively late to Christians, and even later to Jews. Yet the substantive concern for God's free creation of the world without recourse to pre-existing matter is repeatedly affirmed in pre-Christian Jewish texts, and constitutes perhaps the single most important building block for the emergence of an explicit doctrine of ‘creation out of nothing’. In its Jewish and Christian origins, therefore, the idea ofcreatio ex nihiloaffirms creation's comprehensive contingency on the Creator's sovereignty and freedom. This in fact is a point which has been rightly and repeatedly accented in both historic and modern Christian theology on this subject (e.g. by K. Barth and E. Brunner, J. Moltmann and C. Gunton). Well before its explicit articulation in dialogue with Hellenistic philosophy, the doctrine of God's creation of all matter was rooted in biblical texts and their Jewish interpretation, which in turn came to be refined and enriched through Christian–Jewish dialogue and controversy.

Experience and the Ultimacy of God: In Memoriam John Edwin Smith

Experience and the Ultimacy of God: In Memoriam John Edwin Smith

THE MAKER'S MEANING: DIVINE IDEAS AND SALVATION

AbstractThe divine ideas tradition played a valuable but often unrecognized role in the history of Christian theology. This article investigates the possible loss to theology by examining how the divine ideas permitted a unified theology of creation and salvation, centred upon the contemplation of all things in Christ. Interpreting examples from Origen to Aquinas, the article demonstrates that leading theologians understood the full truth of all creatures to be known eternally by God in the procession of the Word, by whose incarnation, death, and resurrection the creatures are redeemed.

God, the Future, and the Fundamentum of History in Wolfhart Pannenberg

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between Wolfhart Pannenberg's idea of God and his conception of history, with the intention of determining the precise nature of the link that, in his view, connects both philosophical and the theological reflection on the meaning of history.We shall first analyze Pannenberg's response to the traditional criticism of Christianity as an anthropomorphic projection of the human being. Then we shall pay attention to the features of any possible fundamentum of history. We will show that, according to Pannenberg, a transition from a philosophical into a theological consideration of history is needed in order to provide a rationally acceptable foundation for both the unity and the meaning of universal history.

Anselm's Argument: On the Unity of Thinking and Being

AbstractIn this article, I argue that at the root of the ‘ontological’ argument lies the notion that the idea of God is truth: in the idea of God, the meaning of the concept and the reality of the Being actually converge; the idea of God is God. After looking at a number of thinkers whose philosophical method is reminiscent of Anselm's I conclude that, while Anselm did not furnish a conclusive proof of the necessary existence of God, his argument shows how the question of the existence of God is one and the same with the question of the intelligibility and coherence of God and with the question of the intelligibility and coherence of reality.

Form and Universal in Boethius

Contrary to the claims of recent commentators, I argue that Boethius holds a modified version of the Ammonian three-fold universal (transcendent, immanent, and conceptual). He probably identifies transcendent universals as divine ideas, and accepts too forms immanent in corporeal particulars, most likely construing these along the Aphrodisian lines that he hints at in a well-known passage from his second commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge. Boethius never states the theory of the three-fold form outright, but I attempt to show that this theory nevertheless underlies and gives structure to what Boethius has to say on the topic.

Images of the Holy Trinity: Origins, Iconographis Features, Deformations

The history of the image of the Holy Trinity reveals that the interpretation of this Christian mystery posed and still poses a challenge Christianity has attempted to face during general meetings encouraging the publishing of theological tracts and enlightening artists as well as those who commission works of art. Meanwhile, artists have tried to depict the glory of one God in three persons, distorting the image to a greater or lesser degree. Christian images often attributed human qualities to theTrinity of God and bestowed Him with an anthropomorphic silhouette. Some of them went so far as to portray the three-faced Trinity revealing a three-theistic thinking, which was a complete diversion from searching for the image of God in three persons. However, in the Christian iconographic tradition it would have been an absurd thing to do. On the contrary, the majority of the images of the Holy Trinity are worthy of respect even though they do pose a problem that needs to be faced.The doctrine of incarnation enables the portrayal of the face of God the Son. In the Old Testament, God does not disclose His face, whereas in the New Testament He reveals the face of the eternal Incarnate Word, i.e. Jesus Christ. The Church permitted the depiction of both the human form of Christ and His biographic events. Around 730, John of Damascus quoted Basilius the Great and emphasized that image worshipping was not a pagan cult as it was not the matter that was being celebrated but rather that which was being depicted, thus “we honour not the sacred image, but the prototype of which the artistic object is only a reflection.” Subsequently, the latter phrase comprised the base of all defenders of Christian images and was often being repeated in order to prove that the cult of images was based on the worshipping of the depicted persons but not the depictions themselves. Christians followed the conviction that the Son was the consubstantial image of the prototype and that only the Son “is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and “the expressed image of his person” (Heb. 1:3). Thus, the Holy Spirit, in its turn, is also the image of the Son: “and no one can say “Jesus is Lord,” except the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). It is only through the Holy Spirit that we know the Son of God, God the Christ, and see the Father in the Son. By nature, the Word is the proclaimer of the thought, whereas the Spirit is the revealer of the Word. Therefore, only the Son is the living, true and everlasting image of the invisible God containing the Father in Himself, absolutely identical to the Father and only differing in that He has a cause. However, the christomorphic position has not always been gratifying, and it is sometimes thought that Latin Christianity went too far by depicting God humanly. According to French sociologists, such “human, all too human” (Nietzsche) images of God might have contributed to “discrediting” the very idea of God or even the “exculturation” of Christianity. Contemporary art has also been unable to find the means of depicting the Holy Trinity in such a way that both believers and non-believers would not consider it to be provocative. The problem will never be solved if all traditions, doctrines and disciplines, principles and facts, successes and failures in the field are not accepted.The article considers only some of the interpretation aspects of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The portrayal of the glory of God in three persons, iconographic interpretations and deformations have revealed that throughout the history of Christianity much effort has been made to express “clearly” the essence of the Holy Trinity, and yet the mystery has remained both a mystery and a challenge. As the result, the iconographic history of the Holy Trinity and all the related controversies allow us to reconsider the ontological status of its artistic image.

Towards a “U-turn” by the Churches: How (Not) to Possibilise the Future

Abstract How can churches (re)connect with people’s spiritual needs? The article starts by positing that churches have two focuses: the first is the moral and spiritual growth of persons, the second is social forms of life in which their moral and spiritual identity finds its goal and meaning. Next we examine how our social life forms are challenged by complexity and change in our society. This late modern situation is analysed with reference to two processes: globalisation (Zürn) and acceleration (Hartmut Rosa). Organisations like churches need to handle this complex, constantly changing new reality by making decisions based on an emerging future (Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer). This orientation to the future shifts the core questions facing the churches from what and how we are to who we are. Who are we as church leaders? As individual believers? As a community of believers? For answers to these questions we must look to the future, not the past. That is the theological challenge of a “U-turn” by the churches. How can leaders of organisations, more specifically churches, be open to the future that is waiting emerge? They have to exercise their human capacity to make the future possible. We then look at this capacity in the framework of the relationship between God and humans. I cite Nicholas of Cusa’s idea of God as the ground of possibility (the What-can-be) in the human capacity of possibilising (the what-can-be). This conceptual clarification enables me to consider how churches (and their leaders) should (not) set about possibilising1 the future of social life forms.

La revelación de la Trinidad inmanente en los Tractatus in lohannem de san Agustín

Against the hypothesis that Saint Augustin had attributed to pagan philosophers knowledge of the divine Trinity, thus admitting the possibility of knowing the Trinity without the Incarnation, this study shows firstly how the Bishop of Hippo had distinguished the idea of God the Father, both in the philosophers and in the Old Testament, from the idea of God, the Father of Jesus Christ. Secondly it shows how the author of the tractatus expouds on the passages in which the Evangelist speaks of the revelation of the Father on the part of Christ, in such a way as to highlight the specific nature of the Christian knowledge of God.

Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, and Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics in Gloria Anzaldúa—and Beyond

I felt a to be an artist, but an artist in the sense of a shaman - of healing through words, using words as a medium for expressing the flights of the soul, communing with the spirit, having access to these other realities or worlds.- Gloria Anzaldua, Interviews/EntrevistasIt is by now almost a commonplace among many feminist scholars to criticize or even reject the in poststructuralist thought, insisting that poststructuralism's intense focus on language removes thinkers from the embodied, material world. Adopting a dichotomous, oppositional stance and defining poststructuralist thought in overly simplified terms, these critiques are somewhat reductive and thoroughly immersed in the binary Eurocentric philosophical traditions they condemn.1 However, rather than criticize the critiques, this essay takes a different, more speculative approach. Drawing on indigenous theories of participatory language and Gloria Anzaldua's work, I develop a transformation-based writing practice that I call aesthetics: a synergistic combination of artistry, healing, and transformation grounded in relational, indigenous-inflected worldviews.2 1 focus especially on the physical dimensions of Anzaldua's writing, where the words she uses, the metaphors she creates, emerge from and connect with her subjects and have physiological and other material effects. Poet-shaman aesthetics represents an entirely embodied and potentially transformative intertwining of language, physiology/matter, and world. As I hope to demonstrate, aesthetics represents a linguistic indeed, but not the more commonly presumed turn away from material reality and our embodied flesh-andblood world.In aesthetics, words do not simply point to this externalized material reality in some correspondence-type mode. Words neither serve merely as a veil between ourselves and a more real (that is, more tangibly material) world nor create our reality in some poststructuralist approach (i.e., the I referred to above). My claim is far more extreme: in aesthetics words have causal force; words embody the world; words are matter; words become matter. As in shamanic worldviews and indigenous theories and practices - in which words, images, and things are intimately interwoven and the intentional, ritualized performance of specific, carefully selected words shifts reality - aesthetics enables us to enact and concretize transformation.Stories and metaphors are as real as dogs, cats, baseball bats, the idea of God, nuclear fission, human beings, the chair you're sitting on right now, Buddhism, and bricks. LeAnn Howe makes a similar point:I'm saying flat-out that speech acts create the world around us. And those are primary, foundational. We can look at verbs and verb tenses, especially in Choctaw, as a way of moving the mountain through the act of speaking. That speech act is as powerful as number theory to nuclear physics. Many non-Indians put all their faith in numbers, the power to add them up to create or destroy. Natives, I think, on the other hand, put our faith in speech. What is said. That's why if you speak of death to an individual or a thing, you make it happen. (Qtd. in Squint 2010, 219-20)In Indigenous philosophies, words are not simply representational; they are causal. Language can have material(izing) force.I borrow the term poet-shaman from Anzaldua herself, although she uses it only once - in the aptly titled Metaphors in the Tradition of the Shaman, where she describes her artistic vocation as a new form of shamanism. In this brief essay, drafted shortly after Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza's publication, Anzaldua explains that when she wrote her book, she was trying to practice ... in a new way:The oldest calling in the world - shamanism The Sanskrit word for shaman, saman, means song. In non-literate societies, the shaman and the poet were the same person. …

L’idée en peinture au XVIIe siècle

In a letter to Chantelou dated 22 December 1647, Poussin writes of a painting to be executed that he has found its thought, “I mean the conception of the idea, and the work of the mind was complete.” It follows that Poussin’s idea belongs to the theoretical component of painting, namely the composition, and the idea constitutes the represented object aimed at by invention, which converts a historia into a picture and whose procurement provides sufficient satisfaction to an erudite painter like Poussin. Idea is the end or aim of pictorial thought and the regulative means for producing the visible work. Beyond a then perceptible tension between an ideal, indeed a divine Idea, to which Félibien’s idea of the painter comes close in his first Entretien, and an agent or force of conversion of the discursive into the figural, idea belongs henceforth also to the theory of the art of painting, as is witnessed by the titles of works by Fréart or Roger de Piles (Idée de la perfection de la peinture, Idée du peintre parfait): such an idea is thus a regulated presentation of what the painter must do if he wishes to excel. It is no longer conceived or made visible by the painter, but by a kind of enlightened connoisseur, not yet called a critic, but who distances himself sufficiently from the art of painting to teach and to adjudicate good taste. Not only does idea then aid, not in the fabrication of good paintings, but rather in the evaluation of painting, as Roger de Piles underlines at the end of his opuscule introducing the Abrégé de la vie des peintres, but it could well be formative or constitutive of taste itself—a shift by which Idea comes, by the century’s end, to regulate not the production of works, but the judgments passed on them.