Christian Theology Research Articles

POPULISME AGAMA DITINJAU DARI PERSPEKTIF TEOLOGI KATOLIK

This study is intended to critically elaborate Catholic Theology on Religious Populism, primarilly as articulated in the Encyclical Fratelli Tutti (On fraternity and social friendship), and its relevance to critically investigate politics of Religious Poapulism in Indonesia. Since the politics of Populism is corraleted with the politic of religious identity, this research then addresses the correlation of those two political phenomena. We utilize literer study as a method in exploring this study. After doing a biblical critical analysis, which in the Christian Theology considered as the biblical theology; we then investigate the Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, which gives an extentive account on Populism. Catholic theology, we are convinced, gives important contributions to the project of religious moderation and offers critical thoughts on religious populism: Religious Populism could endanger the democratic foundations, such as the recognizion of plurality, neglecting the richts of the marginalized and minority, and induces the crisis of humanity itself.

QUO VADIS HOMO: THE DIGITAL AGE AND THE METAPHYSICAL QUESTION

Everything in the created order is a sign of something else, namely the ontological and metaphysical belonging that man unconsciously longs for. Everything physical and conceptual is metaphysical at the same time. It indicates – as signs do – something beyond itself. There is a kind of metaphysical dimension of the digital world and, in this text, that is compared with the type of metaphysics Christian theology teaches and promotes.

Toughest of Loves

Some Christian theologians and philosophers maintain that God’s punishments are always (at least partly) motivated by redemptive love for those punished, even when these punishments are considerably severe (e.g., killings or damnations). However, advocates of such a conception of divine punishment face significant challenges. Perhaps most fundamentally, it is not entirely apparent how severe and loving features of divine punishment might be understood to fit together within a viable theological model. In this article this foundational issue is addressed. By culling resources from St. Gregory of Nyssa, the present aim is to proffer a contemporary model of divine punishment that naturally combines redemptive love for those punished with apparently harsh treatment.

Soteriological reflection on priestly Christology from an Akan perspective

The priesthood of Christ forms a key foundation upon which Christian soteriology is built. In the Akan traditional community where priesthood is a common religious institution, a proper understanding of the soteriological significance of Christ’s priesthood has the potential of making the Christian faith more relevant and meaningful. Nonetheless, there is inadequate scholarly attention given to this subject from an Akan perspective. This literature-based research was, therefore, conducted to contribute to the scholarly discourse about Christian soteriology by exploring how Akan traditional priestly tradition might enhance the Akan Christian understanding of the nature and relevance of Christ’s priesthood and sacrifice based on a theological study of Hebrews 9:11–14. This text has been chosen because it gives a clear expression the biblical perspective on the priestly sacrifice of Christ.As a work in the area of Christian theology, the article does not provide detailed exegesis of the text but explores theological themes that are relevant for the Akan appreciation of the priesthood of Christ. The main argument is that since the atonement of Christ is sufficient for holistic salvation, there can be no legitimate sacrifice for salvific purposes in any society. The article contributes to the contextualization of Christian theology in the Akan/African society.

Emotions in the Image of God? The Holistic Vision of Classical Christian Anthropology

In conversation with classical Christian anthropology, this article offers a holistic account of the human person in which reason, emotion, and desire are united in drawing humans to God, mutually informing life lived with a Godward orientation. First, I explore the ways several Christian theologians have construed the relation of reason and emotion in the pre-fall state. I give special attention to Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa. I then bring the themes of these accounts into conversation with contemporary accounts of emotion in philosophy and psychology. I conclude by arguing that the most persuasive accounts of Christian anthropology take the regulation of reason, emotion, and desire to be governed by relationship with God. A holistic walk with God requires the well-ordered collaboration of reason, emotion, and desire. In fact, the union of reason, emotion and desire expresses a creaturely reflection of God’s oneness and holiness.

Boethius's Definition of the Person in Context: Chalcedon, Tradition, and Consolation

AbstractAbstract: While Boethius's definition of the person, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’, plays a significant role in Christian theology and anthropology, its reception is by no means uncritical. In the last hundred years, virtually every element in it has been critiqued by theologians and secular scholars. Nevertheless, its context suggests that his understanding of the person is potentially far richer than supposed. This paper places Boethius's definition of the person in its historical framework and in the context of his own thought, especially Contra Eutyches and Consolation of Philosophy, in order to demonstrate that despite shortcomings, it represents a dynamic and holistic characterisation of the person.

Oedipus and Jesus: Psychoanalytic Readings of the Crucifixion

This paper outlines various theoretical formulations of the Oedipus complex, as elaborated in selected writings of Sigmund Freud, Paul Ricoeur and Hans Loewald and considers how these can be used to provide psychoanalytic interpretations of the death of Jesus as understood in Christian theology. It is argued that Freud’s interpretation of the death of Jesus fails to engage with the Trinitarian shape of the orthodox Christian narrative and as a result lacks resonance with believers. This paper therefore turns to the work of Hans Loewald in dialogue with Ricoeur and Freud, to provide a more contemporary alternative reading of the death of Jesus as presented in the Christian tradition. In providing oedipal readings of the crucifixion, this paper does not argue for or against the truth of the Christian narrative, but instead considers what psychological truths or wisdom can be found in the symbolism of the crucifixion.

Labora in Christian Theology: Exploring Its Significance in Relation to Blessings and Salvation

Labora in Christian Theology: Exploring Its Significance in Relation to Blessings and Salvation

One God – Many Religions? The Role of Negative Theology in Contemporary Interpretations of Religious Pluralism

The article discusses the role of negative theology in contemporary interpretations of religious pluralism in an analytical and synthetic way. One of such interpretations is the pluralistic theology of religion. In view of the problems encountered due to such a way of looking at religions, a different direction of interpretation is proposed in the article. Accepting the validity of the basic intention of negative theology, the author presents a thesis that a Christian theology of religious pluralism can be based on Trinitarian theology as a kind of “matrix” of religious experience. A systematic criterion was used in the elaboration of the subsequent steps: (1) The faces of transcendence, (2) The pluralist hypothesis, (3) Via negativa, (4) The limits of negation, (5) Experience and language, (6) The nature of transcendence, (7) Toward a Trinitarian interpretation of religious pluralism. The presented model of Trinitarian interpretation of religious pluralism can be called an integrative model. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to demonstrate certain similarities between the properties of the individual Persons of the Trinity and various ideas and concepts of Ultimate Reality found in different religions.

A Theological Framework Approach with Gentle Mentoring to Effectiveness Re-Evangelizing Pentecostal-Charismatic Congregations

The Pentecostal charismatic movement is growing very fast around the world in quantity. Christian doctrine has little meaning, so spiritual and social behavior becomes distorted according to personal feelings and lifestyles, becoming selfish or individualist. This study aims to show that re-evangelizing charismatic Pentecostals using a gentle attitude is very important so that the big picture of Christian theology can be conveyed and well accepted by them so that the understanding of doctrine and attitude of worship becomes correct. It used a descriptive quantitative approach with a sample of 258 respondents by conducting multiple linear regressions . The study used a quantitative approach with a sample of 258 respondents. The R square value derived from the Influence of Bible understanding and knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ on church behaviour was 52%; other influences were absent in this study. The F table value is 141,377 with a significance value of 0.000 or < 0.5%, indicating that there is a simultaneous influence between the variables of Bible understanding and knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ on the congregation's behaviour is significant. The t value obtained was 8,195 for the Bible understanding of church behaviour variable with a significance of 0.000 or <0.5%, meaning there is a significant partial influence. The t-table value for the variable understanding of the person of Jesus Christ is 12,057 with a significance of 0.000 or <0.5%, meaning there is a significant partial influence. Gentle personal re-evangelism presents the big picture of God's redemptive narrative.

Linguistic Interval as Spiritual Interplay: Przywara's “Dynamic Polarity” and Christian Language

AbstractThis article aims to reflect on how Erich Przywara's concept of the analogical “dynamic polarity” can contribute to contemporary discussions regarding the role of language in postmodern theology. By opposing Przywara to the philosophies of the likes of John Caputo and Jacques Derrida—in particular their concept of the khôra, and the former's “weak theology” —it intends to elucidate the possibility of an approach to language which remains in keeping with the Christian theological (and thus metaphysical) tradition whilst also engaging with standard postmodern criticisms typically leveled at it. Beginning with a prefatory examination of the themes of presence, absence, and distance as they appear in Christian theology and postmodernism, it then examines how the dynamic polarity may play a conciliatory role in harmonizing the two. It then continues to employ the dynamic polarity as a basis for various forms of language, arguing that it reveals an inherently relational, dialogic, and ultimately prayerful structure of receptivity, one which constitutes and emboldens difference, enlivening it as the theatre for a fruitful analogical interplay between self and other, cataphatic and apophatic, and more.

What Is Christendom to Us? Making Better Sense of Christianity in Global Politics

Abstract What is Christendom in international relations? We argue that Christendom does not equate to a long-lost historical empire but an enduring imaginary of a political order where government secures the church and the church ministers to government. Such imaginaries have taken a diverse range of historical and geographical forms, which have barely been explored in International Relations (IR). They may be state-centric or decentered. As intellectual historians of the discipline have demonstrated, international relations was founded on a Christendom ontology and theology, and then rapidly forgot that fact. One major feature of this forgetting is a narrow historical conception of Christendom—its equation with Latin Christendom—in contrast with the wealth of scholarship in the humanities, which has revealed various conceptual forms and discursive practices of Christendom from at least the fourth century CE to the present. The effect of this narrowness has been to confirm IR’s historical Eurocentrism and prevent it from exploring the international politics of Eurasian, Eastern Orthodox forms of Christendom, and signs of new imaginaries of Christendom emerging in the Global South. But such neo-Christendoms—which imagine government as re-centered on the church—raise the possibility of the emergence of modern variations of the legitimized violence associated with Latin Christendom. Alternative theologies of post-Christendom—imagining the church as politically active but decentered from government—indicate that such an imaginary is contested not just beyond but within Christian theology. The paper provides a new definition of Christendom and re-evaluation of its afterlives for the study of religion and theology in international relations.

Overcoming the Imperialist Seduction: A Polylogue Reading of Mary towards a Theology of Peace

The current war waged by Russia against Ukraine once again sheds light on the ambivalent role of religion in violent conflicts, and especially the use of religious figures for imperialist political strategies. In this context, Mary is of particular interest, as she serves in Christian history (and presence) as the Queen of Peace, but could also take on characteristics of a warrior goddess. I suggest that investigating the complex use and abuse of Mary for imperialist strategies in the context of Christian–Muslim encounters can give some hints for overcoming the ever-present seduction of theopolitical imperialism, especially with regard to the current developments in parts of (Orthodox) Christian theology. Thus, I will first outline the premises of a political theology dedicated to peace that can only be worked out in a permanent polylogue of religions. Second, a historical overview shows the deep ambivalence of Mary as a theopolitical figure, particularly in the context of Christian–Muslim encounters. Thus, it is even more surprising that, thirdly, a close comparative reading of the Qur’anic Maryam can help to overcome the imperial theopolitical seduction. Finally, I will draw some conclusions about a theology of peace with particular regard to our conflictive times.

Public Theology and Leadership Rudiments in African Christianity: The Expectations and Deficiencies in Ghana

Public Theology and Leadership Rudiments in African Christianity: The Expectations and Deficiencies in Ghana

Via Digitalis: From the Postdigital to the Hyperdigital

The way beyond the digital can be discovered, not outside, but rather in and through the digital at its highest point. Since its introduction, the postdigital has neither been adequately defined nor scientifically demonstrated to be indefinable. If, on the contrary, the postdigital can be defined by a conceptual and genealogical analysis as a circuit of reflections upon the essential rupture of the digital, then the way that, in the digital, we calculate in writing can, in the postdigital, be assumed into a hyperbolic reflection in and from its more originary creative source. In this theological critique of Maggi Savin-Baden and John Reader’s volume Postdigital Theologies, I prosecute three theses: first, the postdigital has failed; second, postdigital theology is incompatible with Christian theology; and third, for mystical theology, the hyperdigital is the truth of the postdigital. The postdigital is not ‘ineffable’ but rather only appears indefinable because of a prior and contestable refusal to analyse the digital, as it predicates the ‘postdigital’ of the plural ‘theologies’, and as it speaks past theology. Once, however, it has been analysed into a circuit of reflections upon the rupture of the digital, the truth of the postdigital can be discovered in the hyper-negative or apophatic judgements of mystical theology. This theological critique of the postdigital has thus been written to prepare the mystical way of the digital or ‘via digitalis’ to read the digital and the postdigital on a spiritual ascent towards a hyperbolic cybernetic grammar, which, following Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, should be named the ‘hyperdigital’.

The End of Time and the Possibility of World: Between Divinity and Nature

Eschatology is central to Christian theology: the significance of the death and resurrection of Christ is the promise of the “kingdom of God”. This paper takes up this idea in discussion with contemporary Christian theologians and discusses it phenomenologically by recourse to Husserl’s account of “horizon”. The horizon is both finite and infinite: always limited in its actualization but with an infinity of potential actualizations. This is explored with respect to time and its relation to the eternal, as well as the dispositions of hope and fear with respect to the eschaton. The final section draws these insights together in a discussion of the eschaton to understand the eschatological destiny of nature in a “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelations, 21: 1) and conceiving of eschatological justice as a harmony of horizonal perspectives.

The God of Chance and Purpose: Divine Involvement in a Secular Evolutionary World

The God of Chance and Purpose: Divine Involvement in a Secular Evolutionary World

Technē: Christian Visions of Technology

Technē: Christian Visions of Technology

Human Technological Enhancement and Theological Anthropology

Human Technological Enhancement and Theological Anthropology

Positive Psychology in Christian Perspective: Foundations, Concepts, and Application

Positive Psychology in Christian Perspective: Foundations, Concepts, and Application