Kind Of Faith Research Articles

Cycling the Mojave

Cycling the Mojave Kevin Honold (bio) There were times when I would talk to my bicycle or the sky. Usually, it was just a greeting or an observation. “Hello, moon,” I would say on its appearance, or, “That was a good ride, wasn’t it?” to my bicycle leaning into a bush. And whenever I spoke, my voice would startle me with its intrusiveness, and the words jarred like a casual profanity. John Van Dyke writes, in The Desert, You perhaps think to break the spell by raising your voice in a cry; but you will not do so again. The sound goes but a little way and then seems to come back to your ear with a suggestion of insanity about it. When I read those words, months after the trip, I felt comforted, and I knew that nothing John Van Dyke could do would ever lessen my love for him, though he’s been dead these hundred years. I don’t know why people take long bicycle rides. There are as many reasons as people who do it. A man in Needles asked me why I was cycling to Flagstaff and I said, without deliberating much, that sometimes I needed to kick the shit out of myself. I was surprised at how [End Page 59] readily he understood exactly what I meant, even when I didn’t. Some things we do without knowing why, but with a kind of faith that the purpose will be made plain with time, and we don’t examine the issue overmuch because few people care enough to question us about it anyway. Cycling is like that. California City, California, April, 2013 I packed a point-and-click camera, sunscreen, a pouch of Drum tobacco, an air pump, a water pack, headlamp, highway map, sleeping bag, bivouac tent, two long-sleeved shirts, one sweater, one pair of long underwear, knit hat, poncho, rain hat, a pencil and notebook, a ditty bag of toiletries, a multi-purpose bike tool, spare tube, tin cup, two pair of socks, two pair of underwear, electrical tape, binoculars, and a bird guide. For heating food and water I had an Esbit stove and thirty heat tabs. One tab heats a pint of water, enough for a cup of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. The Esbit stove is a German product, the same kind of stove that Wehrmacht troops carried into Russia in 1941. The tabs ignite readily in rain and wind. At Tony’s place in California City, laying out my gear on the bed in the spare room, I had to decide what to leave behind. This culling is both liberating and nauseating. You have to commit to doing without. A sleeping mat is nice to have, but you can sleep without one. A paring knife with a plastic handle weighs a fraction of a Swiss Army knife. I’m not certain but I would bet that Swiss infantrymen are not issued Swiss Army knives and I’m confident they don’t pedal the Alps with collapsible nail files and corkscrews. At night, Tony and I sat on the porch and talked about family and drank beer. He had recently returned to the United States from a yearlong assignment in Afghanistan, where he worked as a contractor at a remote base. He invited me out to California, guessing that I was feeling restless, and he was right, but that was an easy call, since most of us are restless most of the time. We talked about being middle-aged, [End Page 60] unmarried men without children. We talked about the twenty years that had passed since the Army, and the things in life that remained to be done. The things we might have done differently, the places we wished we could return to. He gave me an e-reader as a gift for the ride. He showed me how to use it and we loaded it with e-books. That gift solved a big problem. During past cycling trips I had carried too many pounds of real books. I hung around at his place a few more days, because it takes me some time to work...

Logosowy charakter wiary według Josepha Ratzingera – Benedykta XVI

According to Ratzinger, faith is not a blind theory or an outdated concept. Neither is it an intricate philosophical system. Instead, he defines faith as “finding a way towards wisdom, rationality and factuality; [that is] a way towards perceiving reality in full.” This kind of faith becomes a gate to the communion with God, Lord of history and Lord of the universe. Thus, faith is a personal and not a material category. It belongs to the world of personal and not material relations. “Faith is a decision to be with Lord, and to live with Him.” Nevertheless, the decision cannot be a blind choice. It must rest on Logos, so that it truly is a fact-based reality. Claiming that, Ratzinger discloses his great philosophical mind. He skilfully avoids fideism, subjectivism or irrationalism in comprehending faith. He can see faith as the highest level of existence of the mind, reason, will, love and man self-fulfilment in the Holy Trinity.

Waterboy

Waterboy Marjory Wentworth (bio) Waterboy for Taylor Waterboy sprung from the sea, return whenever you feel a longing for something luminous you cannot name. When turtles swim through your sleep follow them into the deep, though it is dark and difficult diving into those places of multiplying silence. Because your home was built on a narrow mound of sand held down by wandering vines, where turtles dig deep holes into the dunes for nests, the eggs they will abandon with blind hope and the kind of faith we all hunger for, return with flipper and wing, scales that sparkle near the sun-lit surface of the sea, to float beneath a blur of clouds, letting black sand spill slowly from your opening hands. [End Page 85] Marjory Wentworth Marjory Wentworth’s books of poetry include Noticing Eden, Despite Gravity, and The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle. She is the cowriter with Juan Mendez of Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights and the author of the children’s story Shackles. She is the poet laureate of South Carolina. Copyright © 2013 University of Nebraska Press

The role of the axis of spiritual orientation in the Christianization of Ukrainians

The question of why Ukraine became Christianized from Byzantium and what kind of faith she accepted - in general, Christian, Orthodox, or Catholic - is not new. We have the views that stand for any of these three assumptions. They are formed depending on the data of religious beliefs, political orientations, etc.

Faith as an Epistemic Disposition

This paper presents and defends a model of religious faith as an epistemic disposition. According to the model, religious faith is a disposition to take certain doxastic attitudes toward propositions of religious significance upon entertaining certain mental states. Three distinct advantages of the model are advanced. First, the model allows for religious faith to explain the presence and epistemic appropriateness of religious belief. Second, the model accommodates a variety of historically significant perspectives concerning the relationships between faith and evidence, faith and volition, and faith and doubt. And, finally, the model offers an appealing account of what unifies religious faith with other kinds of faith.

The Greater Glory: Thirty-Seven Years with the Jesuits (review)

Reviewed by: The Greater Glory: Thirty-Seven Years with the Jesuits Geoffrey B. Williams (bio) Stephen Casey . The Greater Glory: Thirty-Seven Years with the Jesuits. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2007. xii, 244. $34.95 In 1971 I met Steve Casey in my early years as a Jesuit seminarian. His community in Montreal was hard on younger members of the order. They represented a threat to the established ways of religious life. Steve Casey was an exception to that harshness. He was kind and supportive and he always provided a compassionate ear to our troubles. Looking back now I see that compassion rose also because he too was in trouble with his vocation. He was forty-five then. Steve Casey was twenty-one when he entered the Jesuits in 1947. He left in 1984, age fifty-eight. His memoir, almost exclusively about his early life and time in the Jesuits, was written when he was eighty-one, and is dedicated to his wife, Emelia. The book is part of the Footprint Series, dedicated to the life story of extraordinary Canadians. These help define the larger historical narratives in which they are situated. In this case Steve Casey's memoir charts the progress of one man's life through the self-enclosed world of Catholic religious life from the 1950s to the 1980s, within the context of a rapidly changing world. Casey notes, [End Page 367] [T]he old system that had lasted for 1500 years was changing - and to many, crumbling - and a new attitude, a new code of behaviour, a new culture, a new kind of faith, though not a new faith, were imperceptibly yet inexorably sweeping away the old and establishing themselves as the dominant world view in the Western world. His story presents a family background of tranquil domestic order, far removed from Freudian turmoil, teenage angst, or the chaos of the second European war of 1939-44. The sheltered life he leads - despite an encounter with a diocesan priest who tries to kiss him - continues when he enters the Jesuits, and the story depicts his appropriation of the rituals of that cloistered life detached either from an internal spiritual growth or a healthy relationship with the world outside that closed myth. Towards the end of his memoir Casey asks, 'Was there overall a kind of brainwashing that took place in the Jesuit order?' He answers, 'Not in the sense ascribed to fundamentalist Christian groups but it is quite true that the long immersion in the Jesuit way of life . . . created . . . a singular vision of life and its meaning.' For Casey the corrosive aspects of that closed world resulted in a depression in 1983. He went to a treatment centre, and then we read, briefly, of a repressed childhood, a mother's disapproving glare and sharp tongue, and of a constant desire to please. To belong, 'for thirty-five years in the order [he] kept his emotions bottled up, hardly knowing what they were.' He left the Jesuits and 'began a completely new life' with marriage. The movement in Casey's life is from a closed world - first family, and then religious life - through brokenness to an open myth with a newly discovered happiness in which he has 'no regrets over that life-altering decision taken over 20 years ago.' He has moved from one story, religious life, to another, marriage. The memoir is interesting for its depiction of a vanished world of religious ritual, now making its appearance again in forms of neo-conservatism. It shows the attraction of such a world where security substitutes for a lived relationship with God; where systems replace mystery; where exclusivity distorts community; and where the conventions of identity rather than relationships define who a person is. This memoir so compellingly depicts that closed world that in it we get almost no glimpse of the much larger life being lived outside this particular reading of the Jesuit myth. No Elvis, no Rolling Stones, no assassination of Kennedy, no Expo 67, no cultural revolution of the sixties, no cold war, no Vietnam. Casey's story shows not only an emotional life taken away, but also a social and a cultural...

Climate-Driven Evolution

There are several rather distinct traditions in the contemporary study of human evolution. One is the detailed study of anatomical differences among fossils. A second emphasizes classical ecology with detailed attention to ancient climates and environments and comparative biogeography. A third has a focus on behavioral ecology (i.e., what used to be called sociobiology). It appears to this outsider that these are not so much competing traditions as they are nearly independent and seemingly unaware of each other. They each have much to contribute, they are each prominent in particular current disagreements in the field, and they each have glaring weaknesses. Anatomical details are central to the literature on Australopithecines and their relatives, primates in Africa on the human side of the ancient chimp–human split from five to ten million years ago to about two and half million years ago when we start calling the fossils Homo rather than Australopithecus. The anatomists are also in the thick of debates these days about the hobbit, the small hominid remains found on the island of Flores. Details of the wrist are apparently critically important in distinguishing whether these creatures are derived from Australopithecines, from Homo erectus (perhaps having undergone island dwarfism), or are simply pathological dwarves. A weakness of the anatomical tradition is the treatment of anatomical details as if they were selectively neutral, mere traits that can be tabulated to generate answers by consensus. There is not much awareness of quantitative genetics. The behavioral ecology tradition emphasizes mating competition and intergroup struggles as the important drivers of human evolution. With roots in economics, comparative animal behavior, and the new population genetics of interaction started by W.D. Hamilton in the 1960s, social interactions themselves are the prime drivers of human evolution. For decades there has been a kind of faith that there was some ‘‘environment of evolutionary adaptedness’’ (EEA) in the past to which humans are well adapted and that if we could know about this EEA then we could understand human nature. The ecologists look to ancient environments, climate, and climate change to explain changes in the distribution of humans and related species in time and space. They see humans responding to the physical and biotic factors like geography, climatic shifts, the availability of exploitive technologies, or the availability of domesticates. In this literature, humans are members of communities, and these communities are like organisms evolving to become better and better at provisioning their members. This group or species view of evolution contrasts sharply with the implicit model of the behavioral ecologists in which reproductive competition between individuals within groups is the important dynamic. The Humans Who Went Extinct is firmly in the third, that is, classical ecological tradition. This admirable book is a summary and interpretation of human evolution from the first bipeds several million years ago to the earliest settled agricultural populations after the end of the Pleistocene. The title does not do justice to the scope of the book: there is only a weak focus on the extinction of the Neanderthals. It is an excellent summary of the classical ecological approach to human evolution with a dazzling portrayal of the relevant paleoclimatology, paleoecology, and biogeography. These traditions ought to be complementary; instead they are rather isolated from each other. The discipline would be enriched if we acknowledged that the narratives that each tells are models and that models should be evaluated and falsified with data. There are numerous situations where models from the ecological and behavioral traditions compete directly, and such situations ought to be exploited for direct tests of the competing models. Why did settled farming appear after the Last Glacial Maximum in several areas of the world, but never in the prior interglacial about 120,000 years before? The ecologists explain this in terms of geography and climate, the availability of domesticates, increasing demand from a larger human population, and a lot of chance. Some in the behavioral ecology tradition see settled agriculture as a consequence of the formation of regional polities with militias that suppress local raiding and warfare, leading to population growth, land scarcity, and increasing labor inputs into subsistence. These models could both be true or both false, but they ought to be tested as competing hypotheses. Finlayson C (2009) The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals died out and we survived. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. XI+273. ISBN (cloth): 978-0-19-923918-4. US$29.95. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000383.g001

Kant and the Power of Imagination (review)

Reviewed by: Kant and the Power of Imagination Daniel Guevara Jane Kneller. Kant and the Power of Imagination. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. viii + 172. Cloth, $91.00. Kant and the Power of the Imagination discusses some neglected literature from the early German Romantic period—one major text that Kneller discusses was not published (except partially in 1901) until the manuscript, lost for decades, resurfaced at an auction in New York in the 1960s. Kneller argues that this unduly neglected literature makes a productive and illuminating contribution to Kant’s program in the three Critiques. More particularly, she argues that it contributes to our understanding of the true philosophical potential of the role of the imagination in Kant’s theory, especially as he works the theory out in the third Critique. She makes her case in a slim volume, so she is necessarily selective. Her argument that Kant is closer to the early German Romantics (especially the extraordinary poet/philosopher Novalis) than is generally thought leans heavily, for example, on certain passages from the third Critique. On her interpretation, the first and second Critiques tend to give the imagination a second-class role (or worse) as a mental power. But there are crucial passages in the third Critique that seem to elevate the role of the imagination, by, for example, giving it the special power of exhibiting concretely certain ideals of pure reason. Thus one of the main results of Kneller’s reading, for Kant’s critical program, is that the imagination can provide a kind of intuitive content for the otherwise empty and problematic ideals of pure reason, such as that of the highest good in Kant’s practical philosophy. The content that the imagination can provide here is a feeling that the highest good is possible. The imagination contributes this felt content through judgments of beauty and sublimity: both types of judgment involve a feeling that indicates a kind of transcendence and purpose in otherwise purposeless and immanent nature, and thus a basis for our meaningfully striving to bring about the highest good in this world. This, the author argues, is an improvement on Kant’s official view that a kind of faith in God and immortality is needed in order for us to be motivated to strive for the highest good by the otherwise empty postulates of pure practical reason. It also bridges the chasm between feeling and reason commonly thought to exist in Kant’s philosophy of cognition, and serves likewise as a bridge to the Romantic emphasis on feeling in cognition. The literature selected for discussion from the early German Romantics is very interesting and suggestive, and made this reader want to see more. And Kneller’s book itself, in its interpretation of certain key passages from the third Critique, and of the selections from the Romantics, is interesting and suggestive, too. But the book tries to cover too much: among other things, it tries to cover (i) the view of the imagination in the three Critiques, (ii) the texts from the early Romantics struggling with and responding to the implications (as they saw them) of Kant’s Critiques, (iii) the relationship of these early responses to Fichte, and (iv) a wide range of other issues, including poetry’s relationship to philosophy. Kneller’s writing is clear and elegant and makes one wish, therefore, that she had concentrated her abilities on just one of the many topics she addresses. This would have allowed opportunity for greater attention to more or less purely philosophical issues, and for a more sympathetic treatment of the work of, e.g., Onora O’Neill and Christine Korsgaard. She opposes their view that theoretical reason is somehow subordinate to practical reason: [End Page 629] dependent upon the moral law as a law of autonomy. Kneller must oppose this view because she takes the third Critique to imply that there is no account of the unity of theoretical and practical reason. There is only, instead, a mediated connection in the exercise of the power of judgment, through its free play of the imagination and associated feelings. O’Neill and Korsgaard have produced “powerful and influential” theories, as Kneller herself...

Kierkegaard on Abraham's Tragedy: the Loss of Community

Contrary to traditional readings of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, which claim that Abraham gains his world back with Isaac, this article shows that Abraham in fact suffers a tragic loss inasmuch as he can no longer function as a complete human being. The ethical has forever been denied him by his act of absolute responsibility that renders him entirely irresponsible toward his community. It also shows that his kind of faith is not the kind of faith his followers are required to engage in, as shown in Works of Love, that in fact his kind of faith is considered reckless by another Kierkegaard psdeudonym.

Sulpicia: Just Another Roman Poet

Sulpicia:Just Another Roman Poet Carol U. Merriam Until fairly recently, Sulpicia was treated more as a novelty than as a poet.1 Scholars who regarded her as a female amateur writing verse in imitation of the male poets in her uncle's circle treated her poems as mere expressions of a woman's emotions, rather than as serious literature. It is therefore not surprising that the study of literary allusion, and indeed of other sophisticated devices in her verse, has been lacking. In fact, it has generally been suggested that this poet makes no literary or mythic allusions in her short poems. Hermann Traenkle, in his commentary on the Appendix Tibulliana, claims that Sulpicia shows little sign of the influence or awareness of other poets;2 C. Davies dismisses the elegies as "personal and non-universalised" and "in no way academic."3 And most recently J. R. Bradley has described Sulpicia's elegies as "lacking any display of erudition."4 The dismissal of Sulpicia as an author goes even further than this, and N. J. Lowe speaks of it feelingly: The case could easily be made that Sulpicia, more perhaps even than Sappho, has found her poems condemned by accident of gender to a century and a half of condescension, disregard and wilful misconstruction to accommodate the inelastic sexual politics of elderly male philologists.5 Lowe goes on to say that O. Gruppe's image of Sulpicia as an essentially artless, amateur poet is still widely invoked to apologize for stylistic oddities in the poems.6 A notable exception to this common dismissal of Sulpicia has been the opinion of D. Roessel, who believes that Sulpicia's choice of Cerinthus as the pseudonym of her beloved is a conscious allusion to the connection of bees and honey with poetry in earlier Greek poets, such as Erinna and Anacreon.7 J. F. Gaertner goes too far in this direction, presenting numerous parallels and antecedents for every phrase in [Tib.] 3.13, and thus seeming to indicate that Sulpicia's work is simply a pastiche constructed from what she has read.8 A more moderate appreciation is that of G. Luck, who at least believes [End Page 11] that "she must have read some of the authors prescribed by Ovid, and she handles language and metre well," but never ventures to identify any literary allusion in the poems.9 What I would like to do in this paper is to offer a corrective to this prevailing view of Sulpicia by identifying and exploring the importance of a specific, multilayered allusion in her work. Sulpicia's only introduction of a god into her poetry is the appearance of Venus in the first of the poems as they are arranged in the Tibullan corpus, [Tib.] 3.13: exorata meis illum Cytherea Camenis / attulit in nostrum deposuitque sinum. / Exsolvit promissa Venus ("begged by my Muses, the Cytherean has brought him and placed him in my lap. Venus has fulfilled her promises," 3-5).10 The double use of Venus, under two different names (Venus and Cytherea), indicates that Sulpicia has constructed a multilayered literary allusion, which serves to place her love affair in the context of the literary culture that other Roman poets are credited with understanding. First, we can see in Sulpicia's statements that Cytherea, begged by her muses, deposited Cerinthus in her lap (exorata meis . . . Cytherea Camenis, [Tib.] 3.13.3) and fulfilled her promises to the poet (exsolvit promissa Venus, [Tib.] 3.13.5) the same kind of faith in this goddess that characterized Sappho's relationship with Aphrodite. For when Sappho prays to Aphrodite for help in fragment 1 (, "Splendid-throned, immortal Aphrodite, clever child of Zeus, I pray to you," fr. 1.1-2), she expects positive results and help in her current love affair because she had always experienced them before ( / / , "you, blessed goddess, smiling with your immortal face, asked me from what I was suffering," fr. 1.13-15). Ovid suggested Sappho as an appropriate predecessor and model for a woman who writes poetry: ergo si remanent ignes tibi pectoris idem, / sola tuum vates Lesbia vincet opus ("Then, if any passion remain in your heart, the...

Blind Faith (review)

Reviewed by: Blind Faith Deborah Stevenson Wittlinger, Ellen Blind Faith. Simon, 2006 [288p] ISBN 1-4169-0273-2$15.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 Liz is saddened when her grandmother, Bunny, dies, but her mother is inconsolable: Bunny had been her best friend, her workmate, and the light of her life, to the point where fifteen-year-old Liz has felt invisible to her own mother. In her distress, Liz's mother finds solace in a local Spiritualist church that promises contact with loved ones who've passed on, a decision that appalls Liz's nonbeliever father. Meanwhile, Liz is becoming friendly with kids who've just moved in across the street, eight-year-old Courtney and sixteen-year-old Nathan, but they too are struggling under the shadow of family tragedy: their mother is dying of leukemia (a fact kept secret from Courtney), so they and their mother have returned to live with their mother's mother, from whom the family has been estranged. The attraction between Nathan and Liz seems more convenient than heartfelt, and the multitude of plot strands make for a somewhat bulky weave, but this is nonetheless an emotional story about grief: Liz's pain at being insufficient for her mother, Nathan's anguish at both his mother's deterioration and the abrupt changes thrust upon him, Liz's father's sadness at losing the wife he knew to a belief and practice he abhors, and Liz's mother's despair at losing the mother who had provided her sense of self. The exploration of spiritualism leans toward the skeptical view, since church attendants are plausibly misremembering vague and hesitant pronouncements as direct and significant hits, but there's also some thoughtful exploration of why such experiences may nonetheless have meaning and how various kinds of faith and spirituality can offer solace in the face of loss. The portrait of Liz's mother isn't unsympathetic, but it's stern, definitely allying the viewpoint with narrator Liz; many readers will appreciate that vicarious literary championing and wish they could echo Liz's dressing downs of her mother with their own parents. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

What Kind of Faith is Possible in Our Contexts?

What Kind of Faith is Possible in Our Contexts?

Zizek on Law

This essay outlines the theory of lawin the work of Slavoj Zizek. Zizek proceedsfrom the premise that law is internally,constitutively divided. Law is split betweenthe external social law and the obscenesuperego supplement. Superego is thenecessary, unavoidable underside of the sociallaws that hold together the community.Nevertheless, law can serve potentiallyliberatory ends. It can work as a repositoryfor aspirations for something better. Thus, thearticle argues that for Zizek what is beyondlaw inheres in law as a kind of faith. Theadvantage of Zizek's approach to law thus restsin the way it addresses the crime of law whileholding onto the hope animating law.

Journeys toward Hope: The Quest of Delbanco's The Real American Dream in the Autobiographical Writings of Anne Lamott and Kathleen Norris

CONCLUDING HIS MEDITATION ON HOPE, Andrew Delbanco reasserts "that the most striking feature of contemporary culture is the unslaked craving for transcendence." 1 In his next sentence, however, he amends this by telling his readers "[t]o this claim, it might be objected that we are witnessing resurgent orthodoxy among Christians" (Real 114). This implies that perhaps in some way this "resurgent orthodoxy among Christians" could slake that craving for transcendence. Earlier, he quoted Alexis de Tocqueville on religion, that it is "as natural to the human heart as hope itself" (Real 116). Tocqueville continues that "[i]t is by a sort of intellectual aberration, and in a way, by doing moral violence to their own nature, that men detach themselves from religious beliefs; an invincible inclination draws them back" (Real 116). Indeed, according to The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, that is exactly what Americans have done, "detached themselves from religious beliefs" even [End Page 124] while continuing the quest for hope and transcendence. Consequently, Delbanco reasons that "some kind of faith will reemerge. The question is, What will it be?" (Real 116). In preempting an objection to his claim, Delbanco may well have answered his own question. In at least two recent autobiographical works, those of Anne Lamott and Kathleen Norris, the protagonists have searched for transcendence, as if mirroring Delbanco's description of the course of our nation, and fulfilled Tocqueville's prophetic projection. Their narratives are also reminiscent of the first spiritual autobiography, The Confessions of St. Augustine, especially in the circular nature of their spiritual journeys and their emphasis on their relationship with Christ as a very present and active force in their narratives.

The Nature of Trust: From Georg Simmel to a Theory of Expectation, Interpretation and Suspension

This article undertakes a substantial theoretical reorientation of research into the concept of trust. Analysing key passages in the work of Georg Simmel, it is argued that the link between trust bases and a trustful state of expectation is much weaker than is commonly assumed. In particular, Simmel recognises a ‘further element’, a kind of faith, that is required to explain trust and its unique nature. His work has influenced key authors in the field such as Luhmann and Giddens, but the ‘further element’ that concerns the crucial, proverbial leap of trust is still underdeveloped. Hence, the article proceeds to conceptualise trust as a mental process of three elements that further research should embrace: expectation, interpretation and suspension. Expectation is the state (outcome) at the end of the process. It is preceded by the combination of interpretation and suspension. The former concerns the experiencing of reality that provides ‘good reasons’. It is recognised that current trust research already moves away from the rational choice model and allows for affective and abstract (moral) trust bases. However, any form of interpretation is limited and does not inevitably enable expectation. Therefore, an additional element (in line with Simmel) is introduced in this article: suspension. This is the mechanism of bracketing the unknowable, thus making interpretative knowledge momentarily certain. Suspension enables the leap of trust. Functional consequences of trust such as risk-taking, co-operation, relationships or social capital should not be confounded with trust.

The Nature of Trust: From Georg Simmel to a Theory of Expectation, Interpretation and Suspension

This article undertakes a substantial theoretical reorientation of research into the concept of trust. Analysing key passages in the work of Georg Simmel, it is argued that the link between trust bases and a trustful state of expectation is much weaker than is commonly assumed. In particular, Simmel recognises a `further element', a kind of faith, that is required to explain trust and its unique nature. His work has influenced key authors in the field such as Luhmann and Giddens, but the `further element' that concerns the crucial, proverbial leap of trust is still underdeveloped. Hence, the article proceeds to conceptualise trust as a mental process of three elements that further research should embrace: expectation, interpretation and suspension. Expectation is the state (outcome) at the end of the process. It is preceded by the combination of interpretation and suspension. The former concerns the experiencing of reality that provides `good reasons'. It is recognised that current trust research already moves away from the rational choice model and allows for affective and abstract (moral) trust bases. However, any form of interpretation is limited and does not inevitably enable expectation. Therefore, an additional element (in line with Simmel) is introduced in this article: suspension. This is the mechanism of bracketing the unknowable, thus making interpretative knowledge momentarily certain. Suspension enables the leap of trust. Functional consequences of trust such as risk-taking, co-operation, relationships or social capital should not be confounded with trust.

Hundred Years of Russian Pacifism

This paper offers a brief historical account of the pacifist movement in Russia. It reveals many interesting facts about Russia behind the Iron Curtain. The contribution of Leo Tolstoy towards the peace movement in Russia is an important highlight of the writing. It may be observed in the paper that almost every type of peace movement had been informed by some kind of faith in God or belief in spiritual principles. The author aspires for the revival of the peaceful and non-violent traditions in Russian culture, underpinned by Russia's spiritual potentials.

DOING CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY WITH JESUS IN ASIA

For Jesus faith is a matter of life rather than doctrine. For him it is not so much how you worship God in heaven as how you live with your neighbour in the word. Faith for Jesus is not a set of principles but the power of life. It is not even a creed to be recited but the moral power to do what is right and compassionate. It must be this kind of faith that compelled Jesus to concern himself with how we human beings ought to be related to one another and to reflect upon what we mean to God and God to us. And it is that faith of his which enabled him to respond to the distress and hope, pain and love in the hearts of women and men around him and to be in deep communion with God in trust and love. If this is his faith, this must also be his theology. Theology for Jesus could not have been something he did behind the back of his faith. Nor did he engage himself with faith as an object of theological reflection, an object that he could handle and manipulate at will, an object that he could mold to please the whims of his audience. Theology for him must have been his faith in action, faith that makes non-sense of much that makes sense in the word, and faith that makes sense of much that makes no sense in the world. How did he do it? How did he go about it? We must now turn to these questions, doing with him and learning to do our from him, that is, not in general, not in abstraction, but tested and developed in relation to particular issues in particular situations. To save life or to kill on the sabbath? (Jesus' of the sabbath) It was the day. Jesus, according to Mark's gospel, had been in the town of Capernaum on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. The whole town, with Jesus among them, were gathered at the synagogue for worship. There was nothing unusual in what they had to do on that particular day. By putting aside all their work and coming to the synagogue, they were doing what their forebears had done for centuries. It was their religious tradition and social custom. But they knew it was more than that. It represented the essence of their faith. It was the heart of their devotion. And it was the test of their loyalty to the community of men and women with unique history and special relation with God. No one had anticipated that this particular would be different from all the previous ones. Everything they should know and believe about the institution of the was to be found in the Torah (Law), their sacred scriptures. This is what is said about it in the second book of the Torah, called Exodus: Remember the day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work - you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or alien residents in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord the day and consecrated it.(1) Those gathered together in the synagogue, including Jesus, knew by heart this injunction on the sabbath. This was the theology of the in its most fundamental form. The had a deep theological root, going all the way back to God who created heaven and earth in the beginning of time. In their faith and theology, the was as old as God's creation. The is holy it has its origin in God. This is theo-logy in a literal sense of the word. Theology of the is an inalienable part of the of creation. As God created heaven and earth and all things in them, so God blessed the day and consecrated it. This sabbath command, of course, is inspired by the story of creation in the first book of the Torah. So God the seventh day and hallowed it, as the story goes, because on it God rested from the work that God had done in creation. …

Faith and Praxis in Theology

In this article the author examines the relationship between faith and praxis in theology. The contemporary trends that make this relationship crucial for theology are noted, and its implications for Christian witness are explored through a brief analysis of several “liberation theologies.” The development of the relationship between faith and praxis is traced in Latin American liberation theology, African Christian theology, Asian Christian theology, feminist theology in the United States, and Black theology in the United States. Finally, some observations are given regarding the kind of faith and praxis that is demanded of Christians who would give authentic witness today.

Twardowski – Rubczyński – Hempel. Religia jako humanistyczny element myślenia o rzeczywistości społecznej

This article offers an interpretation of the views of three thinkers who represent theoretical approaches to the social functions of religion. These are: K. Twardowski, W. Rubczyński i J. H. Hempel. The discussed views, which are characteristic of Polish philosophy, emphasize the import_ance or religion and all kinds of faith for shaping a human being who is open to “Others” and shaping spirituality based on altruism. The authors presented in the article have the highest respect for outstanding people who do not abandon themselves to passions, focus on the matters most import_ant for the state, promote sound patriotism and reject political nationalism.