Spiritual Restoration Research Articles

DOSA ASAL DALAM TRADISI KRISTEN DAN RELEVANSINYA TERHADAP SAKRAMEN BAPTISAN

This writing attempts to explore the concept of original sin in Christian theology, which believes that every human inherits a spiritual flaw from the fall of Adam and Eve. The research highlights its impact on the relationship between humans and God, emphasizing the need for salvation through Jesus Christ as the Savior. The main focus is on the sacrament of baptism as a means of forgiveness of sins and spiritual restoration through a new birth in the Christian faith. Through theological analysis, this article discusses the role of emergency baptism, especially in restoring the relationship between humans and God. The author employs a qualitative approach to delve into the concept of original sin and its connection to Baptism. Based on the research findings, salvation through baptism is seen as liberation from original sin and an experience of a new birth. Therefore, emergency baptism in the HKBP church is deemed highly necessary.

Come As You Are?: Democratizing Healthcare Through Black Church-Telehealth Initiatives

Drawing from the phrase “come as you are,” which is frequently used in Black Churches to encourage and welcome people to church spaces for spiritual restoration and healing irrespective of their various social and economic dispositions, this Article aims to describe how telehealth partnerships with community organizations, such as Black Churches, can help democratize healthcare.
 In this project, I develop two models for Black Church-Telehealth Initiatives—a Telehealth Clinic on the Church’s campus and a Designated Telehealth Space with the requisite technology to facilitate telehealth encounters—to argue that Black Church-Telehealth Initiatives can help address certain social determinants of health, such as medical mistrust and the digital divide. The Telehealth Clinic would be a licensed medical facility where patients are assisted by medical personnel with seeing a remote physician via the appropriate technology (e.g., computer, video conference software, internet access, and medical devices to obtain certain biometric data). The Designated Telehealth Space, on the other hand, would be a room equipped with non-medical technology that is open to community members without access to the requisite technology for telehealth encounters.
 Black Churches are already important locations for promoting healthcare and can help further democratize healthcare via telehealth, if certain legal hurdles can be resolved. By exploring federal and state law and policy, I examine the legal barriers to telehealth expansion in general, and legal hurdles specific to these initiatives. This Article argues that federalism principles and widespread variation amongst state laws on physician licensure may make it more difficult to democratize healthcare via telehealth. Moreover, depending on the extent of the religious affiliation, Black Church-Telehealth Initiatives may fit into broader trends toward an increased alignment of healthcare institutions with religious organizations and their doctrines. Finally, legal and policy reforms are needed to address certain federal and state limitations on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, which may deter healthcare providers from collaborating with Black Churches to establish this Article’s initiatives. This makes the need for regulatory reform urgent. Indeed, as healthcare organizations partner with community organizations to expand access to telehealth, creative legal solutions will be required to subject those community organizations to important health laws and policies—including medical privacy and confidentiality laws—without stifling innovation and collaboration.

Ezekiel 14,10–11: ‘The Beatings Will Continue until Morals Improve’?

Abstract In Ezekiel’s argument about idolatrous inquirers and persuadable prophets (Ez 14,1–11), how – if at all – does the restoration envisioned in V. 11 relate to the punishment envisioned in V. 10? In this essay I will assess a variety of older arguments about the relation of V. 11 to the preceding verses. In light of its outlook and vocabulary, I will argue that V. 11 has been composed in light of other passages in the book that emphasize divine transformation in the process of spiritual restoration.

«Дама с камелиями» и «Мадам Бовари» в романе Ф.М. Достоевского «Идиот»

The article analyzes the place and role of two novels, The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils (1848) and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856), in Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (1868). It demonstrates how Dostoevsky introduces Dumas’ text in order to reflect on the falseness and destructiveness for the spirit of man of its key idea, which is the parallel between the compassion for fallen women that Dumas seeks to call for through the novel and the salvation of sinners by Jesus Christ. Besides, the article pays attention to the fact that Dumas considers the rehabilitation of such women, meaning the restoration of their social rights through marriage, the highest expression of humanity. It is shown that Dostoevsky, in his novel, reveals on a symbolic level that marriage in its earthly secularized form does not lead to spiritual restoration, as Dumas suggested, nor does it give real happiness. The article also analyzes the main ideas of Flaubert’s novel. It is argued that Dostoevsky specifically introduces Madame Bovary into his novel because it reveals the catastrophic situation of a corrupt world that has lost touch with God precisely through the image of marriage as a trap into which people fall because of deception. They seek in it a higher relationship; however, not obtaining it, they are devoured by their own lust and passions, which take hold in the absence of a connection with another level of being.

“The Land Is Mine” (Leviticus 25:23): Reimagining the Jubilee in the Context of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

The Jubilee tradition commemorates the release of slaves, the remission of debt, and the repatriation of property, a “day” of physical and spiritual restoration. The Jubilee tradition—originating in a constitutional vision of ancient Israel periodically restoring its ancestral sovereignty as custodians of the land—became a master symbol of biblical theology, a powerful ideological resource as well as a promise of a divinely realized future during the Second Temple period, when the Qumran community envisioned an eschatological Jubilee and the early Jesus tradition remembered Jesus’ nonviolence in Jubilee-terms. Jubilee themes can also be identified in ideals inscribed in the founding of America, the Abolition movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Civil Rights movement, and Liberation Theology. This study seeks to extend the exploration of Jubilee themes by adopting a comparative methodological approach, re-examining Jubilee themes in the context of the contemporary Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where the dream of Peace in the Middle East continues to play out in predominantly politicized contexts.

Prospero, the Divine Shepherd, and Providence: Psalm 23 as a Rubric for Alonso’s Redemptive Progress and the Providential Workings of Prospero’s Spiritual Restoration in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

In this essay, I argue that Psalm 23 serves as a thematic rubric through which to understand how Prospero’s machinations affect the progress of the redemption of King Alonso throughout the play. At the same time, however, recognizing Prospero’s moral complexities and deficiencies, I also argue that Prospero’s mercy toward and reconciliation with Alonso ultimately demonstrates the sovereign influence of a Providence beyond Prospero’s control—a Providence that works through charity and grace beyond Prospero’s initial intentions. This higher providential power, therefore, ought rightly to be seen as the ultimate shepherd of the play—one who works to affect not only Alonso’s but also Prospero’s spiritual restoration.

Paul Michael Kurtz: „Was wir von dem Siege erhoffen“. Eine Stellungnahme Hermann Gunkels zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs

Abstract In an opinion piece penned at the Great War’s onset yet apparently unpublished until now, the historian of religion Hermann Gunkel outlined the opportunities he saw for the German people in anticipation of their triumph. He believed this war could consummate what the Napoleonic Wars and the Unification of Germany had not. Gunkel hoped for true German unity, more liberal domestic politics, and spiritual restoration. Further still, he referred to a resurgence of piety on account of the conflict. On the Great War’s centenary, this documentation speaks to the mobilizing, nationalist activities of Gunkel in particular and of academicians and theologians more generally.

Faith-Based Social Services: Saving the Body or the Soul? A Research Note

Faith-based organizations might be ideal social service providers, claiming to transform clients' lives with holistic support while meeting immediate needs. While organizations have such goals, their success is impacted by constituencies with differing goals for the organization. Clients with goals not commensurate with an organization's may compromise its ability to attain its goals. Three questions are examined here: What are the goals of faith-based service providers? When asked what they think about the services, do clients share the organizational goals? Are organizations likely to meet either set of goals? Homeless persons patronizing faith-based soup kitchens were interviewed; service activities of organizations were observed. Clients' goals focused on survival in their current situation. Organizations' goals ranged from meeting clients' immediate needs to transforming clients through spiritual restoration. Congregations studied met clients' immediate needs. However, clients' accommodational goals were potentially problematic for organizations with spiritual goals.

Tropology in Practice: Alexander Neckam’s Solatium Fidelis Anime

The widely influential exegetical method of tropology, or moral reading, experienced a rise in popularity in the twelfth century. As a generation of scholars brought tropological discourse to a high degree of sophistication and subtlety, moralization flourished in sermons, commentaries, didactic treatises, encyclopedias, and bestiaries. In this article I look at the parameters of tropology by analyzing the hexaemeral treatise Solatium fidelis anime by a master moralist, the English Augustinian canon Alexander Neckam (1157–1217). I focus on the role of analogy in tropological discourse, the mechanism of moral progress, and the interaction of grace and merit against the background of accusations of Pelagian heresy. Neckam’s Solatium shows us that this often noticed but seldom studied method was an effective, living hermeneutic and didactic tool whose marked strengths and weaknesses offer invaluable insight into medieval psychology and understanding of the relationship between the created world and human progress toward spiritual restoration.

CREATIVITY OF CONTEMPORARY DIEVTURI GROUPS AS A CULTURAL POLITICAL DISCOURSE

CREATIVITY OF CONTEMPORARY DIEVTURI GROUPS AS A CULTURAL POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Through the Fire: Spiritual Restoration for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse, by Rick Meyer

Rick Meyer, co-founder of Lutheran Counseling Services, Inc., in Dallas, Texas, has written a self-help book for survivors of child sexual abuse and for those who wish to be their advocates. Using ...

Religious Universalism in Modern Japan: Unitarians as Mediators Between Intellectuals and the West

At the outset of the modern nation-state in the early part of the Meiji period (1880s to 1890s), Japanese intellectuals engaged in serious discussions concerning the spiritual restoration of the country. They envisioned areorganization of Japanese religious traditions that had fallen apart into various sects of Buddhist and Shinto traditions along with folk practices. As they sought to reorganize Japanese religious traditions with a more universalist outlook, the opinion leaders of the day, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Yano Fumio, Nakamura Masanao, Kato Hiroyuki, and Sugiura Shigetake were in sympathy with the Unitarianism that was introduced into Japan at that time. While they began to understand religion as a pillar of the modern nation-state, they expected that Unitarians would make contributions to social development and national unity as mediators with universalistic perspectives. Yet, their understanding of the Unitarian type of universalism was, by and large, intricately connected with nationalism.

The Role of Technology and Commerce in Spiritual Growth

The author presents the role of nature in our knowledge and love of God in the Greek Fathers and one major medieval theologian, Hugh of St. Victor. There is a very rich literature on the contemplative use of nature but a lesser known one that is an active spirituality. It focuses on technology and commerce and how their improvement is part of our restoration from the Fall. It thus connects earthly pursuits to religious motives and goals. It is non-Aristotelian, free of an anti-intellectual prejudice toward the mechanical arts and commerce. It distinguishes between the proper aim and the misuse of technology and commerce. The loss of this tradition was so complete that Francis Bacon is still regarded by most people as the origin of the notion that science and technology are part of our spiritual restoration after the Fall.

Thomas McGuane: Nature, Environmentalism, and the American West

The recent writings of Thomas McGuane show a particular interest in environmentalist concerns, examining the role played by inherited mythologies of the frontier in the ecology and politics of the contemporary American West. McGuane's explorations reveal complex and ambivalent responses to these subjects, in part liberal, radical and conservative.This essay will discuss these issues in relation to contemporary American attitudes to nature. The basis for my approach will be to assume that conceptions of “nature” are socially constructed, and that “nature” and “culture” are separate but mutually interdependent. The relationship between human societies and the natural world will therefore be considered as an ongoing process in which the term “nature” must not be wholly subsumed under that of “culture.” Environmental history is, as Donald Worster puts it, “a story of reciprocity and interaction rather than of culture replacing nature.”Thomas McGuane's writings tend both to repeat and to question what may be called “traditional” or “Romantic” attitudes to nature. In particular, he combines both aesthetic and utilitarian perspectives: nature as a scene of spiritual restoration through the appreciation of beauty, and as the object of technological mastery and control. In practice, these two approaches are historically interrelated, in that they are both responses to, and constructions of, nature produced within an urban capitalist society. As Walter J. Ong has argued, a necessary precondition for Romantic attitudes to nature is a society that has confidence in its capacity to dominate nature, through the use of the very industrial technologies such attitudes ostensibly reject.

Wagering Belief: Examining Two Objections to Pascal's Wager

This paper concerns two objections to Pascal's wager. The first claims that Pascal's recommendation to habituate oneself to believe in God is tantamount to religious brainwashing. I argue that this construal misses important aspects of what Pascal had in mind, which may render the habituation process a legitimate means to acquire new understanding. The second objection is based on the idea that a key assumption of the wager – that theistic belief is required for eternal felicity – is morally absurd. I argue that theistic belief, as Pascal understands it, is a necessary aspect for spiritual restoration, not merely an isolated belief in an imperious deity.