State Of Grace Research Articles

“New Creation:” Grace and Experiences of a Renewed Nature

In everyday life, one encounters many experiences of affliction that, for whatever reason, nature (ours or others’) cannot resolve. Yet, when nature’s finite resources are exhausted and hope seems in vain, humans often experience extra-ordinary moments of renewal and resolution—breakthroughs, remissions, insights, and conversions. We experience these moments in our natural existence; yet, we feel they cannot originate, cannot be attributed to nature alone. Rather, these experiences, called “graces” in Christianity, are attributed to a divine power acting in us. How do we come to describe these experiences in this way? Is it possible to formulate a general theory of these experiences as “graces”? Is there an “experience” of grace in general, a “state of grace”, which serves as ground and unifying experience for the “graces” we receive? Working from the Catholic theological point of view, this paper examines such experiences of affliction and renewal, as well as the basic Catholic framework schematizing them as found in the Bible and Catholic religious writings. In doing so, this paper highlights the theme of impossibility (absolutely or in context) underlying each experience, and broadly categorizes them as happening within three regions of human life: the external, ethical sphere, the interior self-relationship, and the vertical relationship to the Divine. In dialogue with theologians and phenomenological thinkers, general formulations of the experiences are placed within their respective spheres, and certain problems in the identification or interpretation of these experiences are identified. The paper then explores how the experience of a “New Creation” can serve not only as a label for the totality of these experiences, but also as a totalizing and overarching ground-experience of “grace” and an interpretive hermeneutic for graces in general. As a result, a graced moment of total personal “rebirth” or “recreation”, prevenient with respect to any personal co-operation or experiences of grace as grace, is identified as a potential ground for all other graces considered. Finally, this paper considers some potential implications of this account of grace for both Catholic thought and Phenomenology more generally.

From the President

To the AMWA Membership, I want to begin my first article as president with thanks. Thank you to the membership and the nominating committee for their trust; it places me in a state of grace. Shortly after being hired at UTHealth in 2009, I joined the American Medical Writing Association, and that is where I found “my people.” In this community, I have grown as a professional and as a human because of the amazing people who volunteer their time and expertise to this organization. I have been mentored by incredibly talented individuals, and I am honored to have served at the chapter and national level. I am now truly excited to begin my term as your president.

Church, Ostuni, and: Byzantine

Church, Ostuni, and: Byzantine Miriam O'Neal (bio) Church, Ostuni On the highest hill, above the sea,the Church of the Annunciationknown for its Bourbon flourishesand its frescoes of the cousins,Mary and Elisabeth. The story goes that when the Alliesbegan bombing the harbor, the faithfulrushed to the church to sandbag their saintsagainst concussion, but the less protectedcousin suffered, losing a portion of her arm—a chunk of her foot, parts of her halo flaked to dustthe priest swept up. In the dim of candles lit for nickelsto bless the dead, Mary gazes past usat her cousin's face and upturned wrist,the open hand that floats without its arm,the broken foot. Before the Angel spoke, Elisabeth had already toldMary her fate—a child, unexpected, loved.I remember my mother's sister knowing the sameof me—how she watched me from a distance,silent, smiling. That night, when the people of Ostuni ran up the hill,miles overhead each navigator calledlongitudes and latitudes to his bombardiers.As above, so below—in each pair of handsa crossing in every mouth, a prayer. [End Page 57] Byzantine When Saint Francis cut off Saint Clare's hairin a gesture of consecration, we might assumehis brothers bore witness to her state of grace,praying over her small body for her soul. But in the frescoes by Il Maestrodi Santa Chiara, the men don't watch.Like a bad family photograph, they look everywhere,as if a bird had flown in and surprised themjust as the aperture opened, and another birdcalled from a branch as it closed. Even Francis seems distracted.One hand holding scissors, the othera hank of Saint Clare's hair, he's looked away.As I traverse the circle of the crypt, I tryto coalesce that scene into some kind of meditation, but end each time, with a memoryof the night our neighbor, Carl, volunteeredto try to fit our family of fifteen into a singlesilver space. Each pop and hissof the Nikon's flash a small explosion. That day the same birds worked the air—my little brothers bug-eyed in every frame,and one sister who was clearly thinking sad thoughtswhile the youngest twisted on her toes in holey socksbetween our parents whose focus locked on the middle distance because they couldn't imaginehow to pose with their kids at Christmas.And in the lower left-hand corner of every proof,the grainy blur of our blonde lab's wagging tail. [End Page 58] Miriam O'Neal miriam o'neal's, The Body Dialogues (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020) was nominated for a 2020 Massachusetts Art of the Book award. A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, a Finalist in the 2017 Brian Turner Poetry Prize and the 2019 Disquiet International Poetry Competition, she lives in Plymouth MA. Copyright © 2023 University of North Dakota

Victorian Coral Islands of Empire, Mission, and the Boys’ Adventure Novel, by Michelle Elleray

Reviewed by: Victorian Coral Islands of Empire, Mission, and the Boys' Adventure Novel by Michelle Elleray Melissa Free (bio) Victorian Coral Islands of Empire, Mission, and the Boys' Adventure Novel, by Michelle Elleray. London and New York: Routledge, 2020, $160.00, $41.60 ebook. The primary subject of Michelle Elleray's Victorian Coral Islands of Empire, Mission, and the Boys' Adventure Novel is the mid-nineteenth-century boys' adventure novel set in the South Pacific. But, like "minute coral polyps," living organisms that "in building a coral structure" make recognizable "the barely visible," Elleray's generic focus brings more to the surface. "Collating pervasive but apparently small and minor references—to the formation of coral islands, the British child's missionary fundraising, the pious sailor, and the Pacific Islander Christian"—Elleray makes "visible the latent connections between missionary culture" and a popular, if specialized, literary genre (166). Elleray contends that not only was "awareness of the South Pacific and its missionary links … assumed knowledge for the mid-Victorian reader," but also that Victorians were fascinated by coral polyps (30). The subject of both scientific investigation and popular discourse, coral polyps signified "the accretive possibilities of small acts" (46), "the generative capacity of the ordinary individual" (39), "the value of work in the service of a greater [social] good" (43), and "God's divine order" (42). Mobilized by evangelicals in juvenile missionary periodicals and mid-century boys' adventure fiction set in the South Pacific, the cultural narrative of the coral polyp "enable[d] agency to be transposed to the child, the working-class sailor, [and] the Pacific Islander convert." This agency, however, was "constrain[ed] … to approved goals through the operations of adult supervision, class authority, and imperial control" (167). Elleray's interesting if overdetermined analogy between the coral polyp and the "socially marginal" organizes her reading of the Juvenile Missionary Magazine (1844–87), published by the London Missionary Society (LMS), and fiction by Frederick Marryat, R. M. Ballantyne, W. H. G. Kingston, and Robert Louis Stevenson (3). Her chapters consistently and smoothly build on each other. In addition to developing material in her introduction, chapter 1 demonstrates the ways in which the LMS established an "affective connection" between the child reader and the Pacific Islander (53); encouraged the child's investment in the sailor's spiritual welfare; and "enjoin[ed]" the child's "spiritual self-reflection" (58), since salvation was not "inherent in … ethnicity or nationality" (61). Marryat does these things as well, we learn in chapter 2, which explores evangelical mobilizations of "the globally mobile sailor" to better understand his importance in Masterman Ready (1841) (68). As the subject of evangelical outreach known as the Seaman's Cause, the sailor played an important role in the South Pacific. His "state of grace (or not) often formed Pacific Islanders' first interactions with Westerners, and [End Page 320] thus the perceived value (or not) of Christianity" (75). Though her focus is on Ready, Elleray notes that he is "led … to Christianity" by another sailor (82) and that a formerly enslaved African woman now working as a servant "transition[s] from nominal Christian to a person of deep and abiding faith" (90). From these working-class characters, the middle-class Seagraves learn "submission to God's will," which validates their position as "the appropriate administrators of imperial rule" (93). While this line of argument is convincing, Elleray's claim that the text "attempts the management of class tensions within Britain" that manifest in Chartism is less well developed (68). The "spiritual status of the working-class sailor" is also an important theme of chapters 3 and 4 (131). Reading Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1857) alongside "British documentary accounts of … Pacific Islander missionaries" and juvenile missionary periodicals, chapter 3 focuses on the often-overlooked second half of the novel (102). There, "the teacher," a Pacific Islander convert, "offers a model of muscular Christianity" (111), while Bloody Bill and his compeers illustrate "piratical savagery" (105). "The message" for the novel's "British sailor boys" and its "British child reader[s]" (115) alike is that "physical activity" must be balanced with "spiritual contemplation" (129), "humankind's propensity towards violence" must be managed "through a...

State of Grace: A Probe into Understanding Democratic Trust and Legitimacy Throughthe Eyes of the VPN (The Public Against Violence).

State of Grace: A Probe into Understanding Democratic Trust and Legitimacy Throughthe Eyes of the VPN (The Public Against Violence).

Aquinas, Sense Pleasure, and the State of Grace

AbstractThis essay uses Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae to argue that a person living in what the Catholic tradition calls the “state of grace” has a greater capacity to appreciate sense pleasure than one who is not. Aquinas believes sense pleasures conduce to good if reason elevates them and integrates them into a Christian's life. However, heightened appreciation of sense pleasure requires three conditions. First, the Christian must seek licit, reasonable pleasures that both satisfy external criteria and leave the person internally well-ordered. Second, he must attempt continual purification through asceticism, since the sense appetite tends to rebel against the guidance of reason. However, asceticism is not an end in itself, but it rather assists the Christian in integration that ultimately allows for a full, rightly ordered appreciation of sense pleasures. Third, the Christian must not seek sense pleasure as an end in itself but receive it as a gift and pledge of higher joys. Ultimately, the Thomistic approach toward sense pleasure is one of appreciation and integration rather than distrust. While a Christian might experience quantitatively less sense pleasure, his more integrated, qualitative experience is better.

Kevin BarryThat Old Country Music: Stories

BOOKS IN REVIEW semi-autobiographical novel. When asked in London by a young Palestinian student for advice about funding his education, Said mailed him a £1,500 check. His children teased him for having elitist taste in music. Unable to cope when his son, Wadie, was hospitalized with osteomyelitis, he fled to a concert. He saw a therapist his entire adult life. These are the delicious, humanizing details that sustain a compelling biography in part because they are not available in the subject’s own oeuvre. Brennan supplies these anecdotes in an altogether enthralling biography, but, much like reading Said, his focus on complex literary history can be exhausting. Nevertheless, Places of Mind is a masterful portrait that encourages readers to continue grappling with the complicated ideas to which Said devoted his life. Peter Krause New York Kevin Barry That Old Country Music: Stories New York. Doubleday. 2020. 208 pages. THOUGH NO GHOSTS move through its pages, Kevin Barry’s That Old Country Music is a catalog of hauntings. The characters who populate these eleven stories are bedeviled by phantoms: memories and possibilities, places they can’t forget, and people they really should. The resultant confrontations are chronicled by the Irish author with equal parts earthy relatability and offhand poeticism. Barry introduces his collection with a quote from filmmaker Jane Campion on “the romantic impulse,” characterized as both “heroic” and “foolhardy.” Several of Barry’s stories vividly evoke this tightrope walk. “The Coast of Leitrim” finds its underachieving-aesthete protagonist easing into an affair with a like-minded Polish émigré, then almost wrecking things through nothing more than petty insecurity . In “Saint Catherine of the Fields,” a middle-aged music scholar confronts his romantic failings while transcribing a folk ballad about a woman who, with her husband ’s support, enraptures and destroys an unsuspecting herdsman for “no more than a sport.” And in the titular tale, a young mother-to-be contemplates her destiny while waiting for her baby’s father, an exparamour of her mother’s, to return with the spoils of a petrol-station robbery. A raw form of self-discovery marks “Deer Season,” in which a country girl with a taste for Bolaño novels harnesses “the new soft rhythm of her power” to seduce a forestry worker into taking her virginity, running him out of town in the process. Two other stories offer alternate takes on notions of absorbing identity through others . In “Old Stock,” a writer inherits a country cottage from his satyrish uncle (“Cause of death: the west of Ireland”), then gets more than he bargained for when the house’s aphrodisiac properties begin to turn him into the old libertine reincarnate . Another elder bequeaths his self to the more willing protagonist of “Roma Kid,” who wanders away from her rootless family, is rescued from injury by a trailerdwelling pensioner, and slowly assimilates his home, his books, and his very way of being. Barry was once something of a nomad himself, boasting seventeen addresses by his midthirties, and an ambivalence about the itinerant lifestyle shades the narrator of “Extremadura (Until Night Falls),” a cynical wanderer washed up in western Spain, and the rich-pig mother and son of “Toronto and the State of Grace,” who crash-land in the narrator’s pub to reminisce about their rancorous ramblings as they drink themselves to metaphorical and (in one case) literal death. Even legends are not immune to the traveler’s travails in “Roethke in the Bughouse,” a fictionalized chronicle of the American poet’s unexpected institutionalization during an early 1960s pilgrimage to the coastal isle of Inishbofin. Yet no matter where we roam, our travels terminate the same way, a fact Barry examines in a pair of striking tales that grapple with the inevitability of death. The shaggy-dog-scented “Who’s-Dead McCarthy ” chronicles a man whose daily bread is the incessant sharing of the details of recent passings, simply because he finds the very notion of death “impressive . . . no one has the answer to it.” And a troubled small-town police sergeant aims to answer that yawning question in “Ox Mountain Death Song,” as he stalks the terminally ill scion of a clan...

Estado de graça

Este artigo parte da crítica elaborada por Pier Paolo Pasolini em alguns textos da coluna “O Caos”, publicada no semanário O Tempo, entre agosto de 1968 e janeiro de 1970. Depois, desdobra-se numa leitura de seu pensamento crítico entre a ideia de “estado de graça”, proposta por Christopher Domínguez Michael, e o conceito de “classe”, relido e expandido a partir de Walter Benjamin por Andrea Cavalletti.

The Salt-Point

This paper presents the medieval symbol of the salt-point, a dot in a square in a circle, as a functional blueprint for the emergence of the transcendent self—the person fully entangled with an inner yet higher authority that is experienced as a state of grace. Jung had intuited this self-organizing movement, individuation, through the metaphor of squaring the circle, a continual refinement of the chaotic solutio of bitter salts of experiences and memories toward an end point of coherence of body, soul, and spirit. The salt-point is explored through a fresh perspective of an emergent dissociability of time and psyche through the images of chaos, kronos and Ananke, Aion, kairos and Metanoia, and cosmos. The idea of a salt solutio of time is presented side by side with concepts such as probability and time salt crystals.

Lift Every Voice: Resonating Music, Words, and Legacy (Featuring The August Wilson Symphony) by Kathryn Bostic et al.

Reviewed by: Lift Every Voice: Resonating Music, Words, and Legacy (Featuring The August Wilson Symphony) by Kathryn Bostic et al. Patrick Maley LIFT EVERY VOICE: RESONATING MUSIC, WORDS, AND LEGACY (FEATURING THE AUGUST WILSON SYMPHONY). By Kathryn Bostic et al. Conducted by Lucas Richman. Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh. January 20, 2018. The very idea of “The August Wilson Symphony”—composed by Kathryn Bostic and given its world premiere by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in January 2018—seems an appropriate way to honor a playwright for whom music was so vital. The concept does court some danger: the music so influential to Wilson was the African American tradition of blues, full of danceable, popular rhythms, and far more at home in a smoky bar than a symphony hall. “The August Wilson Symphony” risks wrenching this African American bluesman playwright out of social and aesthetic context. Bostic and the orchestra, however, proved too deft to fall prey to that or any other pitfalls. Instead, the symphony and the program that enveloped it, Lift Every Voice: Resonating Music, Words, and Legacy, captured the soul of Wilson’s work and mission. Hosted by Phylicia Rashad and conducted by Lucas Richman, it was an evening that joined Wilson’s American Century Cycle in celebrating the struggles, triumphs, anxieties, and joys of black life in America, while also honoring the playwright who rendered that experience so vibrantly. Bostic’s symphony would open act 2 of Lift Every Voice after the evening’s first half skillfully established the program’s mood and investments. The Percussion Ensemble from the Pittsburgh Cultural Arts Collective opened the show with a drum call. Under the direction of Thomas Chatman, five drummers in African dress pounded out furious syncopated rhythms on dununs and djembes, frequently urging audience members to participate with call-and-response claps. Not only did the drum call signal to the audience that they were constitutive members in the collective efforts of Lift Every Voice, but it also importantly ushered Africa into Heinz Hall. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s home is a gorgeous space built in the tradition of European symphony halls, but Wilson was deeply concerned with the resonance of Africa in the experience of black Americans. This drum call made clear that Lift Every Voice would not lose sight of Africa. The next two sections of the program honored Martin Luther King Jr. during the week of his birthday. A lush performance of “Lyric for Strings” by George Walker, a favorite composer of Coretta Scott King, followed a stunning a cappella rendition of “Take My Hand,” reportedly King’s favorite hymn. Vocalist Anqwenique performed “Take My Hand” with power and nuance, flowing smoothly through a lengthy vocal register with arresting elegance. Rich-man led “Lyric for Strings” with confident grace. The composition is at once somber and honorific, like a eulogy focusing on moments of pleasure. An onstage photo slide show of Dr. King smiling, casual, and occasionally celebratory underscored the effect: this was a eulogy mindful of his important work, but concerned more so with his warm personhood. “Lyrics for Strings” features one moment of foreboding dread before returning for a joyful conclusion, reminding us on this night not to forget the tragedy and struggle inherent in King’s legacy. From elegy, the program moved to jazz with a performance of “Teenie Time”, a composition of orchestral swing by Jay Ashby honoring photographer Teenie Harris who hailed from the same Hill District of Pittsburgh as Wilson. Victoria Luperi’s clarinet lead the way as Alton Merrell’s ticklish piano danced around the song’s periphery. A slide show of Harris’s photos documenting life in the Hill District complemented the performance’s hometown warmth. With the inclusion of “Teenie [End Page 113] Time,” Lift Every Voice signaled again that it had no intention of bowing to pressures of European classical music; instead, this song employed a full orchestra in a secondary position, supporting the distinctively modern and American bopping jazz. Click for larger view View full resolution Kathryn Bostic, composer of “The August Wilson Symphony,” performing “State of Grace” with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. (Photo: Pittsburgh Symphony.) The mood shifted as Bostic took the...

The Infallibility of Canonizations: A Revisionist History of the Arguments

The Infallibility of Canonizations:A Revisionist History of the Arguments William Diem The Modern Consensus and the Prima Facie Problem Since the publication of De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione by Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV), a general consensus has emerged that formal canonizations of the saints are infallible papal acts.1 Indeed it is so commonly held that the New Catholic Encyclopedia simply asserts, without any note of either controversy or explanation, that canonizations are infallible declarations.2 More precisely, it is commonly held that, in canonizations, the pope infallibly [End Page 653] teaches that the one canonized is now in heaven.3 Yet, this position faces a rather significant objection. As Avery Cardinal Dulles notes, "it is difficult to see how [formal canonizations and the approval of religious institutes] fit under the object of infallibility as defined in the two Vatican councils."4 What he means is this: the two Vatican councils connect the Church's infallibility directly to the guarding and expounding of the deposit of faith handed down from the apostles. Hence Vatican II in Lumen Gentium teaches, "this infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals, extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded."5 So [End Page 654] much is uncontroversial: the Church's infallibility is linked directly to her office as guardian and teacher of public revelation. Now, we should note another uncontroversial point: that this infallible teaching authority extends not only to what has been directly revealed in public revelation—the primary or direct objects of infallibility—but extends also to those things that are necessarily connected with revealed truth by either a logical or a historical necessity. Defenders of the infallibility of canonizations—well aware that Christ revealed nothing about the fate of particular post-apostolic individuals—thus place canonizations among these secondary or indirect objects of infallibility. Hence, for example, Ludwig Ott writes, "to the secondary objects of infallibility belong … the canonization of saints, that is the final judgment that a member of the Church has been assumed into eternal bliss and may be the object of general veneration."6 But what necessary connection is there between a particular historical individual's beatitude and the faith? As Dulles notes, "it is not easy to see how the fact that this or that saint possessed heroic virtue is either a necessary condition or a necessary consequence of Christian faith."7 Now to complete the difficulties, we can consider the two lines of data that are examined leading up to a formal canonization and on which the determination of sainthood is ultimately made. Since the beginning of the practice of formal canonizations by the popes,8 two lines of investigation [End Page 655] have been carried out to determine sanctity: The first is an examination of the person's life, and the second is an examination of miracles attributed to the person's intercession. To the first of these, we must note that, while a thorough investigation of a person's life may give very good reason to determine that a person was holy and is now in glory, it is ultimately inconclusive insofar as we cannot read another person's soul.9 What's more, not even the individual can know his own state of grace with absolute certainty—the sentiment is clear in Paul: "I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Cor 4:4). Trent is explicit: "For as no pious person ought to doubt the mercy of God, the merit of Christ and the virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, so each one, when he considers himself and his own weakness and indisposition, may have fear and apprehension concerning his own grace, since no one can know with the certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God."10 Note carefully the distinction, in Trent, between those things on the one hand that are matters of divine revelation—the mercy of God...

Speaking to Body and Soul: Instructions for the Moravian Choir Helpers, 1785–1786

Speaking to Body and Soul: Instructions for the Moravian Choir Helpers, 1785–1786

The Making of Martin Luther by Richard Rex

Reviewed by: The Making of Martin Luther by Richard Rex Mark D. Tranvik The Making of Martin Luther. By Richard Rex. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. 279 pp. I am not quite sure what to make of this book. The pedigree of the author, Richard Rex, is exemplary. He is a professor of Reformation history at the University of Cambridge and a well-known authority on the English Reformation. He seems to work with ease in the original languages of the texts he cites. He rightly locates justification by faith alone as key to understanding Luther (ix). And yet the text limps along, for several reasons, as explained below. Rex's intention, stated in the preface, is a work of intellectual history because". . . all of our stories about Luther must be predicated first and foremost on his ideas, on his theology" (x). This appears to be a solid place to start and a refreshing change from the insistence in many quarters that history must begin from "below" with the result that ideas become merely a reflection of material conditions and therefore are not taken seriously. But the way Rex understands Luther's key idea gives one pause. As he traces Luther's theological transformation in the middle and late 1510s, Rex notes the Reformer's difficulty with Ockham's facere quod in se est, or the idea that God would give grace to those who "did what was in them." This notion is pastorally problematic because of the burden it places on people to do something to qualify for grace. For Rex, the key to understanding Luther's protest is his insistence on a sense of certainty in contrast to the uncertainty bred by Ockham's teaching: "What Luther showed was simply how much importance he now attached to attaining a sense of certainty about being in a state of grace. For him, any doctrine that did not produce such certainty was worse than useless" (82). Rex returns to the theme of certainty again and again throughout the book. He says at one point "that justification by faith alone is itself spiritual certainty" (94). It seems as if Rex knows the words but not the tune. The issue regarding justification was pastoral. And Luther did prize a sense of certainty or better, confidence, that came with faith. But Rex never makes clear that faith itself is not "certain" for Luther. The human heart is a storm-tossed vessel, prone to darkness, doubt, and temptation. What is certain for Luther are the promises of God. The pro me of the gospel is what anchors belief, [End Page 469] and it is why Luther could even refer to faith itself as "butter in the sunshine" (LW 40:251). Perhaps Rex could have spent more time with Luther's sacramental theology, especially some of the later writings on baptism. There he would have discovered the Reformer's emphasis on the external element was but the flip side of a view that saw faith itself as uncertain, wavering, and prone to change. Justification by faith involves real people, that is, sinners who doubt and equivocate. In other words, Rex's central thesis needs much more nuance. Another problem with the book is its pedantry. The tone at times is patronizing, as we are walked through complicated issues in Luther scholarship. (Were the 95 Theses posted? When did the Reformation breakthrough occur?) The reader is assured beyond all doubt that Rex knows the answers to these questions that have bedeviled generations of scholars. His arguments are somewhat persuasive but certainly not beyond the shadow of a doubt as he seems to suggest. In the end, I suspect that Rex lacks respect for his subject. There is very little in this work that humanizes Luther and virtually nothing about his sense of humor, which was just as large as his ego. The irony is that Rex's exclusive focus on Luther's ideas to the exclusion of who he was as a messy, breathing, and living human being results in an odd interpretation of the chief article, justification by faith. Mark D. Tranvik Augsburg University, Minneapolis, Minnesota Copyright © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly...

The “spirit” of the old communion chants

Abstract Byzantine music is the chanted prayer of the Orthodox Church left to us as a spiritual legacy by the holy masters of hymnography and hymnology ever since the early centuries. This music serves a precise purpose, i.e. to enhance the mood of prayer and to lift man closer to God. The Holy Liturgy, the mystical centre and the reference point of a man’s entire existence, represents man’s private meeting and communion with Christ, and the moment of this meeting is steeped in an atmosphere of meditation and inwardness created by a series of ample, slow, and vocalization-rich chants, called koinonika. It is a moment of ultimate inner appeasement and preparation. Early composers managed to capture this meditation effect in their koinonika, both through their compositional techniques and, especially, through an inner state of grace. However, in the 19th century, two phenomena became apparent: on the one hand, some of the new composers no longer succeeded in attaining the same ethos as the old masters, and, on the other hand (particularly from Ioan Popescu-Pasărea on), the music tastes of the time caused these ample chants to be replaced with simpler melodies, which, often, were even harmonized. This study has a threefold aim: first, it reasserts the fundamental role played by the koinonikon in the Holy Liturgy, by arguments that underline the ancientness of this practice as well as its survival in other Orthodox areas (such as Mount Athos and Greece). Second, the paper signals the publication, next year, of the first Romanian collection of koinonika signed by Byzantine and post-Byzantine composers (13th-19th centuries). Third, our study aims to show that these ancient chants have a special ethos, representing melodic as well as aesthetic archetypes and, par excellence, the true Classicism of Byzantine melos.

Opinion of mothers on medical and spiritual aspects of pregnancy and labour - qualitative tests

Pregnancy and labour have an important impact on woman’s personal and social life. In the first half of the 20th century in Poland, pregnant women used to be called “blessed”, “in the state of grace” or “at hope”. Those terms put greater emphasis on the emotional aspect of pregnancy than on biology. A development of modern medicine and a progress in highly specialized techniques in medical diagnosis have entered into the physiology of woman’s life - from family planning to pregnancy and labour. The medical approach to motherhood has highlighted the biological and technical dimension, and marginalized the spiritual space of these experiences. Motherhood is not only a biological and medical process, but is also experienced in the social space and has a deep, psycho-spiritual dimension. When motherhood is seen and experienced only at the level of a biological event, when it has a lack of spiritual depth, it might become only an experience of technical management of a child. In addition to the biological and medical sphere, that dominated the area of pregnancy and labour, there is also an emotional and spiritual aspect, which, sometimes, is hard to define. In the light of Personalistic Anthropology, anything that concerns the biological dimension of the human is inextricably linked to its spiritual dimension and vice versa. Therefore, the appearance of a human in space-time is also the beginning of his spirituality, that is understood as the ability to go beyond the sphere of biological Leeds.

Regulating cinematic stories about reproduction: pregnancy, childbirth, abortion and movie censorship in the US, 1930-1958.

In the mid-twentieth century film studios sent their screenplays to Hollywood's official censorship body, the Production Code Administration (PCA), and to the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency for approval and recommendations for revision. This article examines the negotiations between filmmakers and censorship groups in order to show the stories that censors did, and did not, want told about pregnancy, childbirth and abortion, as well as how studios fought to tell their own stories about human reproduction. I find that censors considered pregnancy to be a state of grace and a holy obligation that was restricted to married women. For censors, human reproduction was not only a private matter, it was also an unpleasant biological process whose entertainment value was questionable. They worried that realistic portrayals of pregnancy and childbirth would scare young women away from pursuing motherhood. In addition, I demonstrate how filmmakers overcame censors' strict prohibitions against abortion by utilizing ambiguity in their storytelling. Ultimately, I argue that censors believed that pregnancy and childbirth should be celebrated but not seen. But if pregnancy and childbirth were required then censors preferred mythic versions of motherhood instead of what they believed to be the sacred but horrific biological reality of human reproduction.

Sleep and theology: ‘An half adieu to the world’

The study of sleep has become a field of widespread interest. It engages many disciplines from neuroscience to sociology, philosophy to evolutionary biology. It features in the lifestyle sections of newspapers and websites often because of its connections with mental and physical wellbeing. Yet theology has, in the most part, remained silent on the subject, despite many Biblical references to sleep in both the Old and New Testaments. There is a theological story to be told about sleep − as a gift, and not an affliction − despite the unfortunate occasional conflation of sleep with sloth. It is a state of grace and not of sin. It refreshes and renews yet can never be earned; all we can do is to be in a posture of receptivity so that it falls upon us. Sleep is profoundly precarious and sometimes frustratingly elusive and is suggestive of the fragility and vulnerability of human existence. When it comes to us, sleep transforms our experience of waking life. The eschatological character of sleep points us to reflect on mortality and resurrection. This article argues that it is possible to speak of a ‘theology of sleep’, but that it is not to be found in a coherent body of teaching or theological exploration. Rather, a theology of sleep is found articulated in Christian practices such as the Office of Compline, the keeping of vigils and the Examen of Consciousness, and in evening hymnody and prayers before bed. The author will suggest that the word theosomnia encapsulates this understanding of sleep.

Blind Spot.

Understanding a disabled son's vulnerability as a state of grace.

Europe: Post-coffeehouse, post-museum, into the unknown

Coffeehouses and Museums One might say that, like a teenager, Europe has been experiencing identity issues, but in fact it suffers from old age. Culturally, Europe is a name without a place because it is everywhere; administratively, it is in a limbo because it is a structure of post-sovereign states which is not federal. When it discovered itself as an institution, as it did in 1957, and as a peace project, it lived in a state of grace; but this ended abruptly when the cold war was over. Eur...

Europe: Post-coffeehouse, post-museum, into the unknown

Coffeehouses and Museums One might say that, like a teenager, Europe has been experiencing identity issues, but in fact it suffers from old age. Culturally, Europe is a name without a place because it is everywhere; administratively, it is in a limbo because it is a structure of post-sovereign states which is not federal. When it discovered itself as an institution, as it did in 1957, and as a peace project, it lived in a state of grace; but this ended abruptly when the cold war was over. Eur...