Sinfulness Of Man Research Articles

Gemological and Spectroscopic Characteristics of “Jedi” Spinel from Man Sin, Myanmar

The price of spinel has sharply risen in recent years, and its market acceptance is extending. Among the many sources of spinel, Man Sin in Myanmar is the most famous for its bright neon pinkish red to reddish pink color, named “Jedi” spinel commercially. In this paper, spinel samples with the bright neon pinkish red to reddish pink from Man Sin in Myanmar were studied non-destructively with X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (EDXRF), Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR), fluorescence spectroscopy, a UV-Vis spectrophotometer and Raman spectroscopy. The results show that the samples from Man Sin in Myanmar are the magnesia-alumina spinels. The high content of the red-chromogenic element Cr, an intermediate content of V and Zn, and a low content of the chromogenic element Fe may be responsible for the distinctive neon color of the spinel samples. The presence of Ti may also serve as a basis for the identification of its origin in Man Sin in Myanmar. The fluorescence spectrum analysis of spinels shows them to have multiple excitation peaks in the region 600–800 nm, which are caused by the jump of Cr3+ between the 2E→4A2 inter-energy band lattice. The amount of Zn affects the fluorescence spectrum intensity of spinels. The higher the Zn content, the stronger the fluorescence intensity. The spinel structure is uncomplicated and four more obvious absorption peaks appear in the IR spectrum, and the direction of the absorption peaks is shifted if a homogeneous substitution of the AB2O4 structure occurs; the Raman spectra of spinel samples have four vibrational peaks at 100–2000 cm−1, 310 cm−1, 407 cm−1, 665 cm−1 and 763 cm−1, which has spinel species-identification significance.

PROTESTANTISM – REGULATION OF CONSUMPTION

In the article, the author examines the gastronomic culture and its regulatory function, expressed in the regulation of eating behavior and food consumption by people through the existence of prohibitions and permits. In particular, it is indicated that such tools, as a rule, find their place in religious canons (codes of rules).
 Speaking about the religious regulation of consumption, the author examines Protestantism and its currents and trends. According to the results of the study, it was revealed that within the framework of Adventism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc., there are tools for regulating food consumption that have a characteristic similarity with those in Judaism, Islam and Catholicism. Of course, Protestantism, being a denomination of Christianity, along with Catholicism, can borrow some rules and features. Meanwhile, drawing an analogy with these religions and confessions, we can talk about the existence of prohibited and permitted food, while in some areas of Protestantism restrictions are not as strict as in others.
 Religion, acting as a regulator of eating behavior, designates products originating from “unclean” and “pure” animals and birds. At the same time, in the Bible, the signs that make it possible to differentiate food have a symbolic meaning – “unclean” food sources symbolize mundanity, the impossibility of turning to God, the sinfulness of man.
 As a result, a gastronomic cultural layer is formed, within which the nutrition of believers, that is, the products they use daily, also taking into account national characteristics, not only have an impact on health, but also have a symbolic meaning of commitment to God, enlightenment, etc.
 According to the results of the study, the author formulated the factors that are important in determining eating behavior and consumption: a) symbolizing; b) cleansing; c) providing and d) adapting (relevant to the current situation of globalization of the world space and the technologization of life spheres).

Beliefs and Perceptions about COVID-19 among Students of a Higher Institution in South-western Nigeria

The on-going coronavirus disease outbreak is arguably one of the greatest public health challenges of our time. Being a novel disease discovered in December 2019, little is known about it. This study examines the beliefs and perception on coronavirus disease among students of an institution of higher learning in Southwest Nigeria. Two hundred and sixty (260) students were selected through a two-staged non-probability sampling method for the study. Data was collected using structured questionnaire which tested the general knowledge of respondents on the subject as well as their beliefs and perception about the disease. Even though 90.0%) of the participants have heard of Coronavirus as a pathogen, their knowledge of the associated disease was fair on the average due to misconceived notions probably because information was sourced majorly from unconfirmed sources such as word of mouth from family members (56.5%), print media (56.2%), social media (51.2%), television (50.0%), and to a lesser extent from school (43.1%), health talk (42.7%), hospital (35.8%), over the radio (30.8%) as well as posters and billboards (24.2%). These misconceived notions, despite their level of education, include but not limited to claims that disease can be transmitted through mosquito bite (33,5%) and believing that it is a consequence of man's sin (48.1%). Some doubt its existence (28.8%) while a sizeable number believes they cannot be infected (44.2%) and peradventure if infected, prayer and fasting can cure it (44.2%). We therefore advocates for an intense public enlightenment campaign.

ABOUT RECKLESSNESS AND NOT ONLY ABOUT IT (O.GOLDSMITH’S POETIC MINIATURES ABOUT LOVE)

The paper focuses on two poetic miniatures about love by the English writer of the XVIII th century O.Goldsmith. These miniatures embody the specificity of the writer’s manner and the main artistic and ideological tendencies of the time. That specificity finds its expression first of all in the mixture of different styles and pathos – serious and playful. All that scholars correlate not only with Goldsmith’s individual manner but with the aesthetic of rococo. The interest to Goldsmith’s art is growing nowadays. That is proved by an amount of investigations, dissertations appeared recently. But what concerns the Ukrainian literary studies one must admit a fair and sad conclusion of D Chik that the creative art of Goldsmith has not been yet a special object of investigation in Ukraine. Though his name and his works where always touched upon in the context of many Ukrainian investigations of the literature of the XVIIIth century. The priority of the Dnipro University school of the scholars studying the European literary XVIIIthe c. is certain. The both verses deal with the specific aspect of love located outside the borders of “legalized proprieties” but which are so attractive for the author’s attention due to many causes more than any other of the common “morally steadfast plots” about love. The poems are similar in an obvious two-sided depiction, in an exquisite playfulness which attributes them both with the style of rococo. Here the female’s or mistress’s qualities and properties are praised but they are those which according to the logic of things had to cause only conviction. And thus a demonstrated intention of moralizing turns into joke. The poems chosen for the analysis embody the author’ s idea about microcosm of a man’s existence where there are its own “crazy laws” and where it is possible to have fun and not to be pessimistic, according to D.Zatonsky’s judgment, in one’s reflection about “ sins of men’s attitude to the life”, and where it is possible “to reject decisively regulations and respectability”. All that, without any doubt, made Goldsmith a forerunner of Romanticism. The joking verses about love includes in themselves, as it is seen, much of what goes beyond the borders of the topic chosen by Golsmith. “A lovely woman” turns out to be a concretized image of a common recognizable man, one of those «good people all of every sort», for whom so often the writer appeals and whom he loves and sympathizes with so much. In investigating the diversity of a man’s essence Goldsmith revealed some common rules of existence and in different forms of his art the writer thought about that. In the paradoxical encounter of the serious and the comic in the plot of the poetic miniatures as well as in the style Goldsmith embodies in his own way his perception and adoption of a human being what he is with all his weak sides and faults. The playful component of the XVIIIth century writers’ poetry and Goldsmith poetry included is a sign of a free breathing of a poetic soul which rejects all stereotypes and “rules” as exhausted to the full. The idea of frailty of life and its finiteness no matter how lofty the man’s aspirations could be is transformed in the poetry of a great mockingbird. The poems quite contrary are full of life and life-affirming pathos. Not rejecting the very thought about man’s mortality Goldsmith calls for a life acceptance in all its appearances. And this call is embodied in the form of a mischievous game. Goldsmith’s conversation with his reader at that is a sign of a boiling vital energy.

Romans 5:12, Once Again: Is It a Grammatical Comparison?

Commentators have long noted and discussed the several difficulties of Rom 5:12. Among them is that, while the verse appears to open with a comparison (Διὰ τοῦτο ὥσπερ δι᾿ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἡ ἁμαρτία εἰς τὸν κόσμον εἰσῆλθεν …, “Therefore, just as through one man sin came into the world …”), the second part of that comparison is never clearly formulated. Instead, the verse seems to trail off with no obvious conclusion to the comparison (καὶ οὕτως εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους ὁ θάνατος διῆλθεν …, “and so death came to all men …”). Many have suggested that Paul simply lost track of his thought, and modern translations and commentaries typically accept the incoherence, translating “and so” and often concluding the sentence with a dash. However, this is not the only syntactic possibility. This article aims to supplement John Kirby’s discussion of the adverbial meaning of καὶ οὕτως (“even so”) in Rom 5:12, a translation that understands the verse to be a complete and cogent comparison. I will survey a broader range of linguistic evidence, taking note of the textual history of Rom 5:12 and will reconsider the contextual objections to this translation. I will show that syntactically and conceptually “even so” or “in the same way” is the best translation of καὶ οὕτως in Rom 5:12.

Romans 5:12, Once Again: Is It a Grammatical Comparison?

Commentators have long noted and discussed the several difficulties of Rom 5:12. Among them is that, while the verse appears to open with a comparison (Διὰ τοῦτο ὥσπερ δι᾿ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἡ ἁμαρτία εἰς τὸν κόσμον εἰσῆλθεν “Therefore, just as through one man sin came into the world …”), the second part of that comparison is never clearly formulated. Instead, the verse seems to trail off with no obvious conclusion to the comparison (καὶ οὕτως εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους ὁ θάνατος διῆλθεν “and so death came to all men …”). Many have suggested that Paul simply lost track of his thought, and modern translations and commentaries typically accept the incoherence, translating “and so” and often concluding the sentence with a dash. However, this is not the only syntactic possibility. This article aims to supplement John Kirby’s discussion of the adverbial meaning of καὶ οὕτως (“even so”) in Rom 5:12, a translation that understands the verse to be a complete and cogent comparison. I will survey a broader range of linguistic evidence, taking note of the textual history of Rom 5:12 and will reconsider the contextual objections to this translation. I will show that syntactically and conceptually “even so” or “in the same way” is the best translation of καὶ οὕτως in Rom 5:12.

Miłosierdzie jako podstawa rozwiązywania społecznego sporu o sprawiedliwość

The social dispute over justice that is in a great crisis, must not be limited to social and economical criteria only. This is proved by the elementary experience, since attempts to overcome injustice only on this level are not effective. The anthropological and personalist criterion is necessary here. Only this criterion allows one to integrally define a man – also in his relations with others – as a person. Also justice has a personalist character, and because of this it is not a value that is only added to a man. As such, it is also an objective value that has an obligatory character, which is difficult to justify, and the more so to make it come true, without the Christian Revelation. The event of Jesus Christ, with the preparation given in the Old Testament, shows man's sin as the fundamental source of injustice. This is why in an encounter with injustice only God's mercy is effective, as the only factor – through Jesus' paschal mystery – that overcomes sin. It is not tantamount to giving up justice, but to practicing it – as in Jesus' understanding surrendering to the criteria of justice is a necessary condition of mercy, so that the sin can be judged and overcome, and the man can be saved.

Tilgivelsens teologi i Det Gamle Testamente

This paper studies the Old Testament’s conception of forgiveness, which is characterized by its one-sidedness. According to the almost unambiguous testimony of the OT literature, only God can forgive. However, it is important to see God’s unreserved forgiveness against the background of his resentment at the apostasy and sin of man. At the same time the OT also weights God’s punishment and grace in favour of his grace. The paper also discusses the few OT examples of human forgiveness, noting them as remarkable exceptions which confirm the main thesis of the one-dimensional aspect of forgiveness.This aspect is due to the fact that the OT does not know the incarnationof God. It is not until the New Testament that there is a necessary connection between God’s forgiveness and the willingness of man to forgive his neighbour.

Honour Killing in Pakistan

Honour killing means killing a family or clan member in the name of family pride or protecting one's family’s honour. It usually consists of murder, committed by male family members against female family members who are perceived to have brought dishonor upon the family. Hundreds of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family honour. A man can kill a woman, claiming that she brought dishonor to the family; in Pakistan the term Karo-Kari has been traditionally employed as a label for the crime of double-homicide. A man, or a boy, and a woman, or a girl, are both killed usually by her husband, father or brother in what is characterized as a fit of rage when the killer sees or in many case just hear(s) or blame(s) both victims actively engaged in sexual activity. In this Article, I suggest that the legislatures amend the criminal law, that criminal and all relevant laws be strictly executed, that Jirgas and Punchayats verdicts should be frozen and be declared void as against the law and fundamental rights. And the practice of settling disputes by gifting girls as compensation and penance should be stopped with iron hands. Proper training of police officials is needed and finally, the mindset of the civil society must be changed so that women are not seen as commodities that can be traded as currency to pay for the sins of men in exchange of money, compensation or penance for crimes and settling of disputes, in order to prohibit such heinous crime.

Reconsidering "Dikaiōma" in Romans 5:16

Research Article| December 01 2007 Reconsidering Dikaiōma in Romans 5:16 J. R. Daniel Kirk J. R. Daniel Kirk Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Biblical Literature (2007) 126 (4): 787–792. https://doi.org/10.2307/27638468 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation J. R. Daniel Kirk; Reconsidering Dikaiōma in Romans 5:16. Journal of Biblical Literature 1 January 2007; 126 (4): 787–792. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/27638468 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveSBL PressJournal of Biblical Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Perceiving Animals, Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (review)

Perceiving Animals's final chapter on Richard Overton is a powerful example of why animals matter. For Overton the line between human and beasts was rather unclear. He contradicted Reform theology on two key points. He believed that the soul was wed to the body so that at death the soul dies, only to be resurrected on Judgment Day, and he maintained that animals were innocent creatures condemned to suffer because of man's sin but due to their innocence granted a place in heaven. In both cases the barriers that differentiate the human from the animal are leveled. For Overton, key human abilities of reason (humanism), conscience (theology), and science remain unnatural elements of culture unless they are regulated by education. With such a claim, as Fudge explains: "Overton is proposing that the qualities of human-ness become the substitutes for the human. There is an incomplete being which can be termed human, and this being is completed by learning which can, for Overton, as for humanist writers, be lost. The a priori human has disappeared from view" (153). With his belief in humanity as a state to be attained rather than granted, Overton considers political reformation crucial for regaining our prelapsarian humanness. Erica Fudge presents a similar logic throughout Perceiving Animals. Scientists, humanists, and theologians attempt to make distinctions and raise barriers between the human and the animal. Yet in each case they expose degrees of similarity rather than difference in kind between species. While the book focuses on early modern culture, it speaks to culture today. As we have less and less contact with animals in our daily lives and as the humanities reinforce anthropocentric constructions of the world, Perceiving Animals gives us an important reminder of the unstable distinction between ourselves and other living beings. [End Page 139]

The Popes and The Jews: From Gelasius I to Julius III (492-1555)

The Apostolic See and the Jews. Documents: 492-1404. Edited by Shlomo Simonsohn. [Studies and Texts, 94.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 1988. Pp. xv, 549.) The Apostolic See and the Jews. Documents: 1394-1464. [Studies and Texts, 95.] (1989. Pp. 551-1132.) The Apostolic See and the Jews. Documents: 1464-1521. [Studies and Texts, 99.] (1990. Pp. 1133-1624.) The Apostolic See and the Jews. Documents: 1522-1538. [Studies and Texts, 104.] (1990. Pp.1625-2116.) The Apostolic See and the Jews. Documents: 1539-1545. [Studies and Texts, 105.] (1990. Pp. 2117-2511.) The Apostolic See and the Jews. Documents: 1546-1555. [Studies and Texts, 106.] (1990. Pp. 2513-2948.) The Apostolic See and the Jews. History. [Studies and Texts,109.] (1991. Pp. x, 469, with 3 foldout maps. $79.00.) The Apostolic See and the Jews. Addenda, Corrigenda, Bibliograpby and Indexes. [Studies and Texts,110.] (1991. Pp. vi,176. $79.00.) A fundamental step toward a rapprochement with the Jewish People was taken thirty years ago by Pope Paul VI and the Fathers of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, when they assented to the promulgation of the Conciliar Decree Nostra Aetate (October 28,1965). The statement is concise and lucid. First the general principle governing our attitude to others of non-Christian religions: The Church, therefore, urges her sons to enter with prudence and charity into discussion and collaboration with members of other religions. Let Christians,while witnessing to their own faith and way of life, acknowledge, preserve, and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians, also their social life and culture. Then there follows the declaration referring explicitly to members of the Jewish faith: As this Sacred Synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock. Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses, and the Prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ-Abraham's sons according to faith-are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well cultivated olive tree onto which has been grafted the wild shoot of the Gentiles. Indeed the Church believes that by His cross Christ our peace reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself. Farther on we read in Nostra Aetate: Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by whomsoever. Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the source of every grace. In conclusion, the Conciliar Decree contains this final exhortation: Therefore, the Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against people or harassment of them on the basis of their race, color, condition in life, or religion. Accordingly, following the footsteps of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the Sacred Council earnestly begs the Christian faithful to `conduct themselves worthily among the Gentiles and if possible, as far as depends on them, to be at peace with all men and in that way to be true sons of the Father who is in heaven. …

Non Posse Peccare

In a Dutch weekly it was recently stated that man's moral powers are overestimated in the christian faith. The proponent of this belief, the Dutch–American philologist and philosopher Staal seems to me to be closer to the truth of this matter than his distinguished German colleague Nietzsche. The latter used to fascinate me as a young student with his devastating criticisms of christian culture and the christian view of life. According to Nietzsche, the christian religion has not too high, but rather too low a view of mankind: it wanted man to be ugly and evil; in this way it has succeeded in making man so. The insignificance, ugliness and sinfulness of man is the outcome of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone who is being told again and again how insignificant, bad and sinful he is, will end up believing it and behave accordingly. A not implausible theory, I thought at that time. However, as I see the matter now, I would support Staal rather than Nietzsche (supposing that my choice would be restricted to them). The christian faith has an optimistic view of man. Does it overestimate him? Does it attribute imaginary moral powers to him? Does it demand the morally impossible? A positive answer to these questions is not unreasonable if one does not want to go beyond a secular, evolutionist or sociobiological under-standing of man and does not take into consideration the affirmations of the Church.

The Sin of Man and the Love of God

The Sin of Man and the Love of God

The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne's Emblem Book

THE SCARLET LETTER: HAWTHORNE'S EMBLEM BOOK Donald Darnell* Illustrations by Betty Watson Three thousand miles and three hundred years separate the Italian original of the emblem of Aeneas carrying Anchises from burning Troy and the description of Dorothy, Catharine, and Ilbrahim from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Gentle Boy" (1832).· There is, however, more than a casual relationship between the highly formalized Renaissance genre on the left and the scene described by America's foremost allegorist. As a result of the conjunction of illustration and 'Donald Darnell is a Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has published a book on William Hickling Prescott and numerous articles on Prescott, Cooper, and Hawthorne in American Literature, South Atlantic Bulletin, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and American Transcendental Quarterly. He is currently working on an article on The Deerslayer. 154Donald Darnell passage from Hawthorne there is a striking similarity to the older form of the "emblem" with its divisions of motto, picture, and explanatory poem used collectively to expound some moral or ethical truth. Such passages are typical in Hawthorne's work, for he constructs the crucial scenes in his fiction as emblems. He found in the emblem, a form long associated with the exploration of moral and ethical questions, a highly appropriate device to structure his treatment of man's sin, fall, and moral growth. This is particularly evident in The Scarlet Letter, where a series of emblems develops the narrative and provides explicit interpretation of the novel's themes. Hawthorne's familiarity with the emblem tradition is now well established: he read The New England Primer, a type resembling the emblem book, and two of his favorite authors, Spenser and Bunyan, had incorporated the techniques of the emblematists into their own works.2 In 1947 Newton Arvin noted Hawthorne's link with the emblem and referred to him as an "emblematist" rather than as an allegorist or a symbolist.3 By the 1970s doctoral dissertations and articles in scholarly journals examined in detail the emblem's influence in Hawthorne's fiction.4 But even before the precise identification of Hawthorne's scenes as emblems, critics had been impressed by the strong pictorial-moral element in Hawthorne's work. In 1952 Richard Harter Fogle noted that "the framework of Hawthorne's fiction is customarily a doctrine, a belief, or a moral proposition which he proceeds to test by using his imagination."5 Earlier, F. O. Matthiessen, describing Hawthorne's scenes as "tableaux," found Hawthorne starting with a "dominant moral idea, for which his picture, like Spenser's, was to be an illustration."6 Especially pertinent is the comment made one hundred years ago by George Parsons Lathrop: Hawthorne "does not, like a playwright, reflect the action swiftly while it passes, but rather arrests it, and studies it, and then lets it go by."7 It is in this method of arresting the action of his story and of explaining its moral significance that Hawthorne reveals his kinship with the Renaissance emblem makers. Hawthorne's method is in fact emblematic in its most technical aspect; by understanding that method one perceives a closer conjunction of theme and form in his work. That Hawthorne was committed to the emblematic method throughout his fiction is evident from those scenes from his best stories. The "practical allegory" formed by Dorothy, Catharine, and IIbrahim ; the Reverend Mr. Hooper's deathbed vision of a black veil on every face; Edith and Edgar under the falling rose petals of the Maypole; Miriam's criticism of Guido's painting of Michael slaying the Studies in American Fiction155 dragon, all crucial scenes in Hawthorne's fiction, are also emblems. But his most extensive use of the emblem tradition appears in his novels, particularly The Marble Faun and The Scarlet Letter. In his commentary on The Scarlet Letter, Hyatt Howe Waggoner notes that "the novel is structured around the metaphor of bringing the guilty secret from the black depths of the heart out into the light."8 Given the number of emblems concerned with the revelation of guilt in the novel, Waggoner's reading underlines the emblematic quality of the work. Nowhere is this more...

The Nature of Human Nature

Controversial opinions about human nature perpetuate man's interest in what he really is. The present article develops a biblical model of human nature for a science of man. The essence of human nature is the Imago Dei which is spirit that consists of affective, cognitive, and moral domains. The model describes each domain, shows the effects of man's sin on each, and explains the results of the birth and baptism in the Spirit on each domain. The model also describes how the Holy Spirit, by means of an inner impression, assures the believer's conscience that his sins are forgiven, confirms to his mind that he is adopted into God's family, and ignites his emotions with love, joy, and peace. A Christian who emphasizes one domain of spirit to the neglect of the other domains violates Christ's perfect pattern of growth and becomes maladjusted.

ルーミーの宗教思想

Rumi's religious thought is based on the sufism developed by Ibn 'Arabi. The pivot of his thought is the idea of the union with God. According to his view, it is not the abstract thought separated from reality but the subjective and existential one. It is concerned with what the true and fundamental self of man should be. The idea originates from the Unity of God (tawhid), the basic doctrine of Islam. I think his idea occured when “tawhid” was earnestly and thoroughly sought.God is the only true Being. Beings other than God are nothing but Divine Manifestation (tajalli). The true Unity of God is found, I think, in Divine Act in the eternal Now which Rumi calls the “new creation” (khalq-i jadid). This Unity cannot be known by means of ordinary knowledge. Man can know it when he dies to his self. Dying to his self is “fana'”.Why must he die to self in order to know God? God gives man both body and soul (ruh, jan), the latter of which is one with God. Man is the only creature that is created to know God. Though everyone is created and given life at every moment by God, he separates from God before reaching fana'. It is the separation from God to live without knowing that fundamental fact. This is no other than the sin of man. Forgetting that God is his fundamental (asl), he regards his self as his own. Rumi names this self “nafs”. To regard his self as what is in and by himself is at the same time to set it up against God. That means to rebel against the Unity of God.The awakening of sin makes him a seeker (talib). The seeker must be guided by the master (shaykh, pir) who is one with God, for “nafs” remains in the seeker. The only purpose of this search is to die to his self. So he must make himself lower and lower. God pours his Love on the one who makes himself lower.Dying to self takes place in the very self, but it is not due to man's own act. Only Divine Love can do it. This is fana'. Man can reach the union with God at the moment of fana'. Therefore, the union never means that two kinds of being, God and man, become one by such means as fusion. We must regard Rumi's idea of union as the realization of the Unity of God, where man is dead and only God exists. At the moment of fana' he can know God and find his fundamental self which participates in Divine Act. He can find God nowhere but in his own fundamental (asl), his soul.But fana' is not the final stage. He must pass away from fana'. Passing away from fana' (fana' al-fana') is baqa'. In this stage he can realize the true unitive state. At baqa' he can live the life of his fundamental self and his life is one with Divine's. Rumi expresses this situation as “ham-dami”, which literally means “to participate in breath”. Man's every act participates in Divine Act.

The Nature of Man and the Christian's Self-Esteem

A great dilemma facing Christian psychotherapists is how to promote self-esteem without surrendering the Christian doctrine of the sinfulness of man. A healthy self-image and deep distrust of human nature seem antithetical. This article attempts to show that the frequently neglected Christian concept of man proves a valuable ally in building self-esteem and that the Christian doctrine of sin is not so undercutting to self-worth as supposed. In fact, the Christian concept proves far more consistent, helpful, and realistic than the views of contemporary psychologists.

Bultmann's Philosophical Troubles

These words were written by a preacher-theologian of grey hairs and very great learning: “‘In the fullness of time’ God sent forth his Son, a pre-existent divine Being, who appears on earth as a man. He dies the death of a sinner on the cross and makes atonement for the sins of men… What a primitive mythology it is, that a divine Being should become incarnate, and atone for the sins of men through his own blood” Since 1941, when those wartime words were written, Dr. Bultmann has checked his inclination to apply the term “myth” in wholesale fashion, but his demythologizing works continue to be widely quoted, and their claims can still produce annoyance in the reader and plain uncertainty over what to make of the term “myth”, with its unmistakable smell of something not wanted. In this paper I want first to look into Bultmann's use of that word, and then, by remembering some things from the history of philosophy, to replace that uncertainty if possible with a smile of recognition.

The Theological Basis of Digger Communism

The Diggers who broke the turf on St. George's Hill Sunday morning, April 1, 1649, have an importance far larger than the number of people involved would suggest, for their action was the first effort to bring into being a socialist Utopia. Their bold combination of theoretical and practical communism baffled their contemporaries, and historians ever since have failed to see them in the totality of their meaning.*** Were they simply hungry men, agrarian revolutionaries filing one more protest against economic and social injustice? Or were they religiously inspired men who used the most dramatic means at their disposal to portray the sinfulness of man and the possibility of redemption? The ambiguity of the Digger experiment has lent color to both explanations.