Abrahamic Research Articles

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature by Moshe Blidstein

Reviewed by: Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature by Moshe Blidstein Shira L. Lander Moshe Blidstein Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions New York: Oxford University Press, 2017 Pp. 294. $100.00. Most treatments of early Christian notions of purity privilege a spiritualized version of the concept. Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature challenges this over-generalization to demonstrate "that purity was open for negotiation" through methodically analyzing a vast corpus of securely-provenanced second- and third-century Greek, Syriac, and Coptic Christian texts, both canonical and non-canonical (5). Blidstein has written the most comprehensive treatment of Christian attitudes toward purity and defilement to date. Drawing on recent methodologies that understand defilement as "a biological reaction of disgust towards certain actions and substances" (7), the author employs a "heuristic consisting of 'battle' and 'truce'" to explain how early Christian purity discourse functioned (11). The truce perception portrayed purity and impurity as statuses in order to define "the borders of social groups, spaces, and times" (11). The more prevalent battle perception, by contrast, conceived of purity and impurity as competing moral forces, often aligned with other opposing pairs like "holiness and unholiness, saint and demon, righteousness and sin, flesh and spirit, out-group and in-group" (11). After providing a cursory overview of the historical context for purity discourses in the Greco-Roman East and Judaism in Part I, Blidstein devotes each chapter to various ritual practices which are grouped both chronologically and according to their continuity or discontinuity with prevailing Jewish and Greco-Roman concepts. Thus, diet and death constitute "Part II: Breaking with the Past," while baptism, eucharist, and sexual relations form "Part III: Roots of a New Paradigm: The First Two Centuries." "Part IV: New Configurations: Purity, Body, and Community in the Third Century" examines Christian traditions inconsistent with the trajectories delineated in previous chapters, Jewish-Christian communities, and Origen. In Part II, Blidstein argues that early Christian writers construed dietary- and death-related purity regulations as irrelevant, i.e., annulled by Jesus, in order "to differentiate Christian from Jewish" customs. By detaching the practices' ritual elements from their moral dimension, Christian eating customs, and to a lesser [End Page 133] extent burial rites, were constructed "as representing internal purity, powered by human agency and linked to questions of good and evil" (90). This battle perspective emerged as a chief weapon of anti-Jewish polemics. Other examples of the growing battle perspective appear in Part III. Blidstein demonstrates how baptism, construed as forgiveness of sins, "became a major site for addressing . . . the relationship between ritual and moral purity, between external action and the inner disposition" (131). Attitudes toward sexual purity, on the other hand, exhibit both battle and truce perspectives. Entailing both body and soul, sexual impurity extended beyond illicit sexual activity, as understood in both Jewish and Greco-Roman culture, to include "sexual contact as a whole, even inside 'legitimate' marriage . . . toward the de-legitimization of sexuality" (180). Thus, Blidstein concludes that the moral dimension of sexuality constituted a battle perspective, while the physical dimension constituted a truce perspective. Unlike the first two Christian centuries of baptismal and sexual discourse, in eucharistic theology, purity was understood as a prerequisite for participation rather than its result (148). Not until the third century is the eucharist understood as purificatory. Part IV examines baptism, sexual purity, and diet in what Blidstein terms "Jewish-Christian writings": Pseudo-Clementine literature, the Didascalia Apostolorum, the Cologne Mani Codex, and the Protoevangelium of James. This section also contains an extensive discussion of menstrual impurity in the Pseudo-Clementines. As in some rabbinic circles, menstrual impurity and male genital emissions are connected to demons, menstrual blood and emissions are polluting, and washing rituals serve purificatory roles on both the moral and physical levels (190–91, 196). In the Didascalia Apostolorum, by contrast, menstruation does not require purification because the Holy Spirit has entered a woman's body during baptism and driven out her demons once and for all (195). Blidstein concludes that water purification, including baptism, exhibits continuity with Jewish notions of purification due to the broader context of demonology. Blidstein concludes...

The Rabbinic Goy Takes Center Stage

The Rabbinic Goy Takes Center Stage Jeffrey P. García Goy: Israel's Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile. By Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi. Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions. Pp. viii + 333. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Cloth, $99.00. The development of a decade long havruta between Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi—a philosopher and talmudist, respectively—Goy sets out to address a "striking lacuna," namely, the category of "Gentile" in rabbinic literature or, more specifically, to "reconstruct the transformation of 'gentile' from 'people to non-Jew'" (p. 5). The primary contention of the volume is that the "Gentile" ()—a collective and individualized category for every non-Jew—as it appears in the literature of the Tannaim is novel to the rabbis and can only be seen in its embryonic stage in earlier discourses regarding Israel and its Other. The authors argue that the rabbinic as a category is a discursive formation that is part of a framework of shifting alterities attested in a nearly thousand-year corpus—if the earliest layers of the Hebrew Bible are dated to the eighth or seventh century BCE—that includes the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple literature, and the undisputed letters of the Apostle Paul (primarily Romans and Galatians). The study is not simply a terminological analysis of , , or the Greek parallel ἔθνος, ἔθνη, however, although it forms a "point of entry" of sorts. The authors are also concerned with the discursive goy that moves beyond the parameters of language. Their perspective is admittedly influenced by a modified version of Foucault's theory of discourse—drawing inspiration from Reinhart Koselleck1—so that the Tannaitic goy is thought to be a "basic concept" that is critical to their exploration. This is particularly key to their reconstruction of the goy from collective to individual. Accordingly, the work examines modes of othering and types of others. It also attempts a genealogical reconstruction that is presented simultaneously [End Page 473] on two axes, synchronic (Foucauldian archeological) and diachronic (Foucauldian genealogical). The synchronic axis pertains to what makes the Jew/goy division, as well as additional forms of Jewish alterity, possible. The diachronic axis, on the other hand, is the examination of the linguistic permutations that eventually result in the rabbinic . The book is structured as follows: Chapters 1 and 2 deal primarily with the Hebrew Bible; chapters 3 and 4 analyze Second Temple literature; chapter 5 addresses an apparent anomaly in New Testament discourse in which the "Gentile" appears as an individualized/collective other in the Pauline epistles; chapters 6 and 7 deal with rabbinic literature, in particular, the homogenization of biblical and post-biblical alterities, as well as the presentation of the rabbinic in both halakic and haggadic literature; and chapter 8 and the postscript form appendices of sorts that examine similarities between the "Gentile" and "barbarian" categories and the positing of where research should proceed from this point, respectively. Chapter 1, "Nokhri, Ger, and the Art of Separation in the Hebrew Bible," intends to show, in part, that otherness in regard to Israel does not begin with the term or with abstract otherness. Regarding the diachronic approach, the authors analyze two concepts in the Bible, (1) a collectivization of foreigners and its construction as an ethnic marker and, (2) the formation of a binary relationship between Israel and its others. Ophir and Rosen-Zvi argue that there is little to nothing that resembles the rabbinic , noting further that the term , which designates any number of people or nations—associated with land, language, kinship, and a particular god—does not mean "a collective of others." According to them, the Hebrew Bible utilizes a different strategy for alterity in regard to the Israelite nation that is attested in diverse terms but shows no evidence of the binary relationship that is evident among the rabbis. The bulk of the analysis of chapter 1 is to reconstruct two competing models that are associated with Deuteronomist (D) and Priestly (P) Sources, respectively. The chapter begins, however, not with the two models but by dealing with , as well as , which can refer to a masked unrecognizable Israelite who might otherwise be easily identified (e.g., Joseph...

Religious Couples Re-Storying After Infidelity: Using Narrative Therapy Interventions with a Focus on Attachment

Attachment-focused narrative interventions used with religious couples of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) dealing with the effects of infidelity is discussed in this article. With religious couples, the couple attachment bond is commonly harmed after infidelity. The attachment bond with God can also be affected with one or both partners. Partners who once felt close and connected with God can feel angry and distant because of infidelity. Since the Abrahamic faiths are narrative-based religions, and an attachment bond with God is essential, attachment-focused narrative interventions can help couples re-story their relationship with each other and with God. Attachment-based narrative interventions are also illustrated using case-examples to help practitioners collaborate with religious couples to co-author new narratives and journey toward empowered futures.

Opinions on the Legitimacy of Death Declaration by Neurological Criteria from the Perspective of 3 Abrahamic Faiths.

Traditional criteria to identify death may not fit all circumstances. This manuscript explores religious jurisprudence to ascertain whether death declaration by neurological criteria (DDNC) is accepted as a valid method by 3 Abrahamic religious traditions ie. Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism. Among Islamic sources (order of primacy), neither the Qur’an, Sunnah as reported in Hadith, Ijma’ (scholarly consensus), nor Qiyas (precedent-based analogy) clearly describe death determination criteria. Through Ijtihad (lowest level of Shari ‘ah), 5 of 6 identified non-binding fatwa support DDNC. Faith-based medical organizations are divided. Eleven of 13 surveyed Muslim-majority countries have laws supporting DDNC. Concern exists that premature death declaration could violate the Shari’ah concept of Hifz-An-nafs (saving life). As such, DDNC remains debated in Islamic circles. Among the 3 main sources of Jewish law (Halacha), the Torah (oral and written) does not clearly define death declaration criteria. Although Talmudic interpretations of Misnah Oholot 1:6 and Gamara Hullin 21a suggest a possible justification for death determination using neurologic criteria in some conditions, the bulk of mitzvot d’rabbanan (Rabbinic Law) rejects DDNC and adheres to cardiorespiratory criteria. Lastly, Catholic Church Cannon Law and the Holy Scripture recorded in Bible does not define death determination criteria. Following the Council of Vienne, Saint Thomas’s loss of integration view has predominated. In 2000, Pope John Paul II expressed tentative and qualifid support for DDNC, however the topic remains controversial. Despite dissenting opinions in each faith, DDNC is currently accepted as valid by many Muslims and Catholics, while rejected by Judaism.

Judaism, Christianity & Islam In Dialogue

While most studies on the Abrahamic religions focus on the community of believers, this paper explores aspects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that foster “peace within” for the individual believer. It brings all three traditions into conversation with one another and is grounded in the understanding that the believer must find inner peace before s/he can make peace with the larger world. Given that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a common spiritual ancestor Abraham, this study draws upon their theological narratives of the Creation Story, which highlights understandings of God and His relationship with humankind. For the believer, this relationship aids in the validation of others and fosters self-discovery in ways that lead to empowerment, helping the believer to find that small space in her wide-awake world where she can act.

Cognitive Empathy in the Works of Sam Harris

The article attempts to analyze unconscious cognitive empathy in Sam Harris’ discourse. Harris equates the theology of Abrahamic religions with ancient mythology. However, the expulsion of the Numinous into the sphere of the transcendent, made possible by monotheism, gave impetus to the study of nature and led to what Max Weber called the Disenchantment. This Disenchantment, firstly, led to the discrediting of ancient myths, and secondly, to the scientism of Harris and his like-minded people.

Phraseological Unit <i>Judgment Day</i> (rus. <i>Sudnyy den’</i>): Its History and Semantic Shifts in the Modern Political Discourse

The modern political discourse has actualized the word combination “sudnyy den’” (judgment day) known to many languages and cultures practicing monotheistic Abrahamic religions. The article analyzes the meanings of the phraseological unit in different discourses and its functions. It has been found that the unit “sudnyy den’” can perform the nominative function when it names one of the main Judaic holidays - Yom Kippur. The word combination becomes a phraseological unit with a characterizing meaning when it denotes a religious concept - judgment of the people in the end times. The article reveals and describes the differences in the understanding of the unit in the Christian (Orthodox) and Islamic Russian language discourses and shows the process of metaphorization of the unit in secular texts in which the actualization of the component “sud” (judgment) brings about the emergence of a new meaning of the unit not recorded in dictionaries (the phraseological unit begins to denote a vitally important event: the judgment day or the judgment hour is looked forward to as a moment of truth). Special attention is given to the semantic shift of the phraseological unit under the influence of films and computer games (elimination of the moral-didactic component, its substitution by salient visual images), and to the phraseological derivatives which have become urgent in the political discourse and are associated with the threat of a new world war.

Entre la vigilia y el sueño: soñar en el Siglo de Oro by María V. Jordán Arroyo

Reviewed by: Entre la vigilia y el sueño: soñar en el Siglo de Oro by María V. Jordán Arroyo Veronica Menaldi Jordán Arroyo, María V. Entre la vigilia y el sueño: soñar en el Siglo de Oro. Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2017. 326 pp. Entre la vigilia y el sueño draws on multiple Early Modern sources circulated among all three Abrahamic religions of the Iberian Peninsula, albeit with an emphasis on Christian material, establishing a dialogue between cultural understandings of dreams, preserved documentation of dreamworlds, and their fictional uses. The sources referenced in this work include inquisitorial records from both the Peninsula and the New World, chronicles, surviving medicinal, theological, and oneirocritic compendia, and literary representations in both novels and plays. María Jordán Arroyo sheds light on the fleeting and fragmented nature of dreams and consequential prophetic revelations, advancing contemporary understandings of the Early Modern Iberian psyche in an interdisciplinary manner. The book has six chapters, an introduction, conclusion, and bibliographical references of archives, manuscripts, and sources. As opposed to organizing the core chapters chronologically, Jordán Arroyo grouped each into three thematically divided sections: theory (chapters one and two), practice (chapters three and four), and literary (chapters five and six). Each chapter addresses the complex contradictions regarding the promotion and prohibition of dream analysis, prophecies, and documentation. When necessary, all primary source titles and materials (in Arabic, Catalan, English, French, Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Latin, and Spanish) are given in Spanish translation preserving a universal use of Spanish throughout, except for a few terms in their italics original followed by an explanation. Throughout the book, Jordán Arroyo shows awareness of the inherent limitations of her study. She states that her examples are meant to demonstrate a wide panorama to portray an inclusive nuanced look at past dreamers, healers, visionaries, and interpreters despite gaps in time due to censorship. In the first chapter, "Entre lo divino y lo humano," Jordán Arroyo addresses the belief in the prophetic power of dreams in the Early Modern period in Spain, and more widely within Europe, from a theological, supernatural, and scientific point of view. In establishing these distinctions, Jordán Arroyo treads both sides of the murky line between dreams or imagination, and foretelling or reality through nuanced interpretations of preserved angelic/demonic messages, magical intervention, and physical changes that both affect and are affected by dreams. These examples are drawn from Iberian and European authors, both Early Modern and Medieval, like bishop Lope de Barrientos, theologian Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo, Council [End Page 793] of Trent member Francisco Monzón, surgeon Bernardino Montaña de Monserrate, doctor Arnau de Vilanova and many more. Briefly, near the end of this chapter, the author also brings Sephardi and Islamicate voices into the conversation like Maimonides, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, and Gaspar Cajal—a Morisco medic and fortune-teller accused of making a demonic pact. The second chapter, "El arte de interpretar los sueños," mostly focuses the discussion and analysis on a previously-unknown dream interpretation manual initially written in Spanish from Salamanca containing influences from earlier Iberian Islamic material. Scholars do not know much about the circulation of this manuscript, however, the first few folios contain an annotation that places this text among those censured and prohibited by the Inquisition. After further contextualization of the contents with Andalusi and Islamic thought, particularly the role of dreams in the Hadith, Jordán Arroyo walks the reader through the manuscript starting with its prologue, overall content, and conclusion. In doing this, she outlines the complicated trajectory of reading, translation, and adaptation of restricted material in Iberia. This shows the overall persistence for survival among the public interest despite attempted censorship, prohibition, and control by both the Spanish monarchy and Christian doctrine. In her third and fourth chapters, "Entre la historia y los sueños" and "Sueños españoles de realidades americanas," Jordán Arroyo dives into the Inquisitorial archives describing and analyzing the specifics of the revelations and accusations of a late sixteenth-century woman from Madrid, Lucrecia de León, and a late seventeenth-century Mexican indigenous man, Diego Martínez de...

Salomé Kisses Kunala's Eyes: New Woman, Religion Making, and Varieties of Literature in Republican China

Abstract “Kunāla's Eyes” (1935), authored by the Chinese Catholic woman writer Su Xuelin (1897–1999), is a play that fuses the reinvented biblical legend of Salomé from modern Europe and the tale of Kunāla from the ancient Sanskrit/Buddhist text Aśokāvadāna. The play transforms Tiṣyarakṣitā, King Aśoka's Queen, who desires her stepson Prince Kunāla and has his eyes plucked out after having been rejected, into a new Salomé. In contrast to other Chinese rewritings of Salomé as the paradigmatic New Woman, the Queen is not a sadistic goddess whose vitality is to be channeled into either nationalism (in romantic-revolutionary national literature) or estheticism/consumerism (in transnational estheticist-decadent literature). The Queen is presented as in spiritual union with the Prince who becomes an itinerant monk. Thanks to the palimpsest nature of the play where two translation campaigns (of Buddhist texts for centuries since the early imperial period and of European literature in nineteenth and twentieth centuries) and three world literatures (Sanskrit, European, and Chinese) overlap, it participated in the Chinese making of religion and challenges the modern Western norms of secularism. Chinese secularism extols the spiritual as selfless devotion to some greater good and prioritizes not interiorized piety of the individual but collectivity and tradition.

SIKAP KEBERAGAMAN DALAM TRADISI AGAMA-AGAMA IBRAHIM

Researchs on Abrahamic religions found three religious attitudes which generate the theory of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. Those sort of religious attitudes are constructed by normative doctrines and historical experience of each religion’s adherents in interacting with adherents of other religions. Pluralism as a philosophycal system of thinking emerges as a response toward inappropriateness of monism and dualism theories. Besides, socio-theological response also emerges as various thruth phenomena. Therefore, the phenomena should be responded wisely.

“I am Mother to my Plants”

The tree stands as a sacred symbol in many faith traditions. Unsurprisingly, nature-based new religious movements are no exception. This article considers the manifestation of sacred trees in a number of religious traditions, including Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander spirituality, Abrahamic traditions, Ancient Egyptian religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Norse mythology, the Shinto faith, and nature-based new religious movements. After this initial section, I present the findings of a fieldwork project undertaken in 2016. Using the survey as a tool, this project enquired into the use of trees, plants, and private gardens among practitioners from nature-based new religious movements. This survey makes use of both quantitative and qualitative survey methods, having been distributed to various nature-based new religious movements in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Despite extensive tree lore, these survey results present the tree as a peripheral plant in the practitioners' everyday practice, with the garden as a whole being more critical than any single variety of vegetation.

ANTINOMICITY OF RELIGIOUS TRADITION

The article is devoted to the consideration of epistemological problems of religious tradition. The article fixes the antinomy of the model of the transmission of the Revelation in the Abrahamic religions. The author draws attention to the impossibility of interrupting the tradition due to the archithepic nature of its nature. As an example, the radical abolition of Judaic circumcision is analyzed as a decisive break with the main ritual of Judaism and its restoration as an act of initiation in Christianity. Thus, the interruption of the tradition of circumcision is fully preserved in Christianity, modifying only the form. The reverse process in the concept of religious traditionalism is also considered – the antinomy of the impossibility of transmitting Revelation in view of the epistemological and anthropological gap between the main agents of the religious tradition. The apostles understand Christ and therefore their writings are recognized as sacred, because Revelation is authenticated in them. But even the best of Christians understand the apostles, but even their writings are not fundamentally recognized as equal to the apostles. Although the authenticity of the Revelation reflected in their writings should not have allowed the canon to be regarded as fundamentally closed. The article reflects the problem of the ambivalence of the religious model of traditionalism. Since the emergence of Christian theology, a situation of double discourse has been revealed. One of them postulates the untouchable status of the corpus of the Sacred Texts, since the very necessity of possessing the Written Testament grows out of a premise about the fundamental abyss between God and man. The second discourse explores the perfect abolition of this relative distance by Jesus Christ. At the same time, scriptocentrism remains completely untouched. This antinomy provides Christians with the abovementioned epistemological problem.

Trialogue in an Interreligious Context: Reinterpreting the Dialogue Model of Martin Buber

AbstractIn this article it is proposed to reflect on the structures of all dialogue by using a Trialogue model: in the encounter between the dialogue partners the presence of a third dimension, Ultimate Reality, as well as the Ultimate Self of each of the dialogue partners are postulated and reflected upon. Trialogue, with this meaning, is a new model and is reinterpreting the core concepts used in the dialogical thinking of Martin Buber: I-It; I-Thou; and the eternal Thou. The concepts used in the Trialogue model are appropriate for an interreligious context: Ultimate Self and Ultimate Reality are concepts not limited to a specific religious tradition. Trialogue, understood as a universal type of encounter between persons, goes beyond the confines of Abrahamic traditions and a Western Enlightenment understanding of selfhood.

Religion, violence and abuse

Abrahamic faith-based religions are always regarded as peaceful. The question to ask is as follows: how do its followers use violent text in order to justify their action? This article analyses how extremists within these faiths abuse the text and use violence as a means of forcing non-believers into their faith. They claim that God often sanctions their actions of violence.

The African Philosophy of Forgiveness and Abrahamic Traditions of Vengeance

This papyrus suggests that penal abolitionism without forgiveness of the unforgiveable may be a license for self-help or vengeance. The papyrus offers a radical deconstruction of the essay, 'On Forgiveness', by Jacques Derrida, to reveal that contrary to popular misinterpretations, Derrida was demonstrating that forgiveness is more common in African traditions than in Abrahamic traditions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This papyrus goes beyond Derrida's examples from the recent history of South Africa and delves back to classical African civilization to demonstrate that the forgiveness of the unforgivable is indeed a long-running African tradition as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, among others, suggested. The papyrus ends with a call for people of African descent to apply this philosophy of forgiveness to one another and demand that the principle be integrated into public policy along with policies for reparations of historic wrongs.

Religion and Female–Male Ratios in India

The 2011 Indian census affirms that child sex ratios of Muslims and Christians (as Abrahamic religions) are “normal”, but those of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists (as Dharmic religions of Indian origin) are below par, due to increasing sex-selective abortion. One probable explanation could be that the scriptures of Abrahamic religions—especially the Quran—explicitly forbid female infanticide, a practice common in Pagan Arabia in the Middle Ages. Therefore, most of India’s neighbours, including Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Bangladesh, have normal child sex ratios and the epicentre of the problem of low child sex ratios in South Asia is now largely concentrated in India. Historical census data also suggests that this acute gender bias is perhaps a recent phenomenon as before the widespread usage of ultrasound technology for sex determination; sex ratios of Hindus were in fact better than Muslims in India.

Exploring the possibility for African traditional religion to be included in a reimagined scriptural reasoning model

In and among the many models developed for engaging in inter-religious dialogue was a model that became known as scriptural reasoning (SR). SR basically serves the purpose of being hospitable towards the Abrahamic religions. The current approach of SR, by virtue of its focus only on scripture as the basis of engagement, obviously excludes other faith traditions that possess no sacred scripture. One such religion is African traditional religion (ATR). As a result of this exclusion, this article intends to engage SR to consider reinterpreting imaginatively, or to use a synonym, to reconceptualise, its basis of only scripture as the primary source of engagement and as such to expand its basis to include religions with an oral-orientated tradition. This article explores such a possibility for the inclusion of ATR, as an oral tradition, to be considered as an equal partner in a reimagined SR or as a parallel model with similar guidelines and outcomes as found in SR.

Evangelicals and the Encounter with Islam: Changing Christian Identity in Multi-Faith Britain

Over the last fifty years, British society has changed from a Christendom model, where the default religious identity was Church of England, to a religiously diverse society, where religious identity is a significant marker for minorities in the population. Among Christians, strong religious belief and belonging is most likely to be expressed by those who identify as evangelical. In many parts of the world, and especially in the USA, evangelical discourse on the subject of non-Christian faiths, especially Islam, suggests profound antipathy to ‘other’ beliefs and sometimes hostility to their adherents. In contrast, evidence presented in this paper from a recent Evangelical Alliance panel survey suggests a range of nuanced viewsin the community of evangelical Christians in the UK. Although over 80% affirmed that Jesus is the only way of salvation, and 84% thought Christianity is the only path to God, more extended comments show that a wide range of views exist, from the paranoid or exclusive to a view that is tolerant and broadly inclusive. The paper will examine the associations between these views and various demographic and theological factors and seek to explain the data in terms of the patterns of contemporary everyday inter-faith encounters, with specific emphasis on the Abrahamic faiths, especially Islam. The situation is discussed in a framework of dynamics and stability, where religious contact between faith communities has both crystallized beliefs and identities and opened up new possibilities for alliances against the secular world.

Buddhism and Our Posthuman Future

New human enhancement technologies will radically challenge traditional religious understandings of the human project. But among the world’s faiths, Buddhists will have some distinct advantages adapting to and contributing to thinking about, a posthuman future. Buddhism and human enhancement have some affinities and some useful complementarities. In the Abrahamic faiths, humanity is divinely created with static capacities, while in traditional Buddhism, human beings routinely evolve into gods and superbeings. While Buddhism counsels against grasping, it has no objection to using medicine or spiritual technologies to live longer lives or achieve superhuman abilities. In Buddhist eschatology, human beings are expected to have 80,000-year lifespans in a future posthuman utopia on Earth. Modernizing efforts since the nineteenth century are also facilitating a Buddhist engagement with human enhancement technologies. Since the nineteenth century, many Asian and Western Buddhists have downplayed the superstitious aspects of Buddhism, arguing for its compatibility with science, and framing meditation as a human enhancement technology. In recent decades, Buddhist teachers have collaborated with neuroscientists studying the neurological and behavioral effects of meditation, so that meditation practices can be integrated with emerging neurotechnologies to enhance self-control, compassion, insight, and altered states of consciousness. These neurotechnologies will also increase the relevance of Buddhist psychology, which counsels that the illusion of a continuous, discrete self is the cause of suffering.

Moral objectivism and a punishing God

Many moral philosophers have assumed that ordinary folk embrace moral objectivism. But, if so, why do folk embrace objectivism? One possibility is the pervasive connection between religion and morality in ordinary life. Some theorists contend that God is viewed as a divine guarantor of right and wrong, rendering morality universal and absolute. But is belief in God per se sufficient for moral objectivism? In this paper, we present original research exploring the connections between metaethics and particular conceptions of God among religious participants. Study 1 shows that, when controlling for religiosity, age, and belief in God's loving characteristics, it is belief in God's punishing characteristics (specifically, the existence of Hell) that uniquely predicts rejection of moral relativism. Study 2 shows that followers of Abrahamic faiths are more likely to endorse moral objectivism when thinking of the Divine, regardless of loving or punishing characteristics. And Study 3 shows that priming for moral objectivism makes theists more likely to endorse God's punishing characteristics. A general picture is suggested by these data. For Abrahamic theists, God's particular characteristics are not germane to the question of whether his moral commandments are real and objective. And while theists strongly endorse God's loving characteristics, focusing on the objective nature of morality can highlight God's punishing nature, reminding theists that objective morality requires a divine guarantor of justice to enforce it.