Things Of God Research Articles

Principles of Systematic Theology

AbstractThe Holy Trinity is the ontological principle of Christian systematic theology. Its external or objective cognitive principle is the divine Word, by which, through the prophets and apostles and with the illumination of the Spirit, God's incommunicable self‐knowledge is accommodated to the saints. The internal or subjective cognitive principle is the redeemed intelligence of the saints. Systematic theology is thus ectypal knowledge (derived from God's disclosure of his archetypal self‐knowledge), and a subaltern or subordinate science. Its matter is twofold: God, and all things in God. Accordingly, it is best arranged as a treatment of God in himself, followed by a treatment of the outer works of God, with a theology of the divine missions as the hinge between the two. This arrangement offers a synthetic and conceptual transposition of the primary language of Scripture.

Values Parents Apply to Decision-Making Regarding Delivery Room Resuscitation for High-Risk Newborns

The aim of this study was to characterize parental decision-making regarding delivery room resuscitation for infants born extremely prematurely or with potentially lethal congenital anomalies. This was a qualitative multicenter study. We identified English-speaking parents at 3 hospitals whose infants had died as a result of extreme prematurity or lethal congenital anomalies in 1999-2005. Parents were interviewed about their prenatal decision-making. Maternal medical charts were reviewed for documented discussions regarding delivery room resuscitation. Subject enrollment was stopped when saturation of themes was achieved. Twenty-six mothers of infants were interviewed. All parents wanted to participate to some degree in decisions regarding delivery room resuscitation. Few parents recalled discussing options for delivery room resuscitation with physicians, and even fewer recalled being offered the option of comfort care, even when these discussions were documented in the medical chart. Parents did not report physicians' predictions of morbidity and death to be central to their decision-making. Religion, spirituality, and hope guided decision-making for most parents. Some parents felt that they had not made any decisions regarding resuscitation and instead "left things in God's hands." These parents typically were documented by staff members to "want everything done." The values that parents find most important during decision-making regarding delivery room resuscitation may not be addressed routinely in prenatal counseling. Parents and physicians may have different interpretations of what is discussed and what decisions are made. Future work should investigate whether physicians can be trained to address effectively parents' values during the decision-making process and whether addressing these values may improve physician-parent communication and lead to better postdecision outcomes for parents.

Reply to Stefano Di Bella

am most grateful to Stefano Di Bella for his very perceptive reading of my book. Di Bella's review is not only accurate and balanced but also captures some of the non-written thoughts and hesitations of its author. His critical remarks and his call for further attention to some of Leibniz's texts are well taken. I especially appreciate the critical spirit of his review for the point of publication can only be to subject one's work to careful examination. One can only hope to be read and criticized by careful and competent reviewer as Di Bella. Di Bella's review calls for some clarifications, which I shall attempt below. His review also made me see something that I didn't see as clearly in writing the book, and hence have not expressed as clearly as I should have. This point concerns Di Bella's outline of my project as a combinatorial reconstruction of the world. Di Bella describes my project in these words: The construction of world out of the material of simple concepts (or 'forms') is usually taken by interpreters as little more than program (if not dream), whose realization has proven to be far from linear one. Nachtomy's book, on the contrary, tries to take the idea seriously; it outlines, indeed, complete reconstruction of Leibniz's metaphysics from the bottom up - 'synthetically', we might say - i.e. from the material of possibilia in God's mind up to individual concepts/substances and further on to the world of bodies. Nachtomy is well aware of the different ontological levels and the crucial steps (if not gaps) one comes across when moving from one to another. He engages himself, however, in basically continuistic interpretation, providing rationale for all controversial steps (underline is mine). Most of this description is right on. I do have some slight reservations about some points of detail. But there is one central point that I'd like to bring out in this reply. My account is indeed continuous (and even bottom-up) in that it attempts to trace the construction of all possible individuals and worlds in God's mind from basic elements. It proceeds to describe how possible things are actualized and how the divine mental construction of possible things in God's mind bears on their realization as the individual substances that make up the actual world (and it bears great deal, I think). At the same time, my account points - or at least should have done so more clearly - to major point of discontinuity or, better, rupture. I

Norman Jewison and Melvyn Bragg’s Jesus in 1973 and Mark’s Gospel

Interpreting Norman Jewison and Melvyn Bragg’s film Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) as a passion narrative, I examined it by employing the four dimensions of the cinematic quest for Jesus movies that Barns Tatum suggested. This film parallels Mark’s Gospel. It adopts significant Markan motifs and themes such as “way (hodos),” “blindness of the disciples,” “servanthood” and “thinking the things of God.” It also employs Markan structure in the opening and the closing of the movie, and portrays Jesus, as well as other characters, as Mark does.

Protestant Theological Writings on Angels in Post-Reformation Thought from 1565 to 1739

This is an introductory survey of Protestant theological writings on the doctrine of angels expressed in systems of theology (primarily loci communes), treatises, and sermons produced during the post-Reformation era of scholastic orthodoxy. The topic has received little scholarly attention, but is of importance for the light it sheds on a significant theological era that is not well known for its prolific literary activity on angelology. It provides a frame of reference on bibliographical sources for this subject to scholars of historical theology, historians of Reformation, Renaissance and Enlightenment thought, and those with interdisciplinary interests.The Lord knows, we have weak Eyes, stammering Tongues, and trembling Quills; if we go about to speak or write of the deep and sublime things of God; And such, without peradventure, is the Doctrine of Angels1—Robert Dingley (1619-1660)

The Kingdom of God and those who have not heard the contents of Scripture

Article 2 of the Belgic Confession deals with the following issue: By what means does God make Himself known to us? The first part of Article 2 that echoes the teaching of Calvin via the Gallic Confession reads as follows: “We know Him [God] by two means: First by the creation, preservation and government of the universe, which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are characters (read: letters – MAK) leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says (Rom. 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse.” This article of 1561 agrees with Calvin’s Institutes of 1559 (1, V, 1) and the early Reformed Confessions before the Canons of Dordt (1618-1619). It seems as though, after Calvin, a doctrine of insufficiency regarding this first means of revelation gradually developed. In the Westminster Confession of 1647 this means of understanding God’s revelation (i.e by receiving God’s communication through the creation, preservation and government of the universe) was explicitly interpreted as insufficient. Man’s inherent ability to know God by means of his own mental capacity, the so-called light of nature, that remained after the Fall, was also regarded as insufficient. The issue of whether the interpretation of Article 2A had not been changed in the first century after Calvin should therefore be seriously considered by Reformed churches. Furthermore, the church of today, situated in a world that experiences such phenomenal scientific and technological changes, should ask what relevance Article 2A of the the Belgic Confession has for the church and the world.

I mercanti e il Tempio. La società cristiana e il circolo virtuoso della ricchezza fra Medioevo et Età Moderna (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 290 Giacomo Todeschini, I mercanti e il Tempio. La società cristiana e il circolo virtuoso della ricchezza fra Medioevo et Età Moderna. Bologna: il Mulino, 2002. 531 pp. A look at the table of contents and at the titles of the book’s chapters suggests what Giacomo Todeschini does in his new book: Chapter One,”Avere” (to have). Chapter Two, “Possedere” (to possess). Chapter Three, “Usare” (to use). And so on. In its subdivisions each chapter breaks the simple title down into instances of the title’s verb. The author confirms the impression made by his unusual chapter titles in his several pages of introduction (7-11). Todeschini examines the terms of economic relations in daily life rather than the theories that explain and systematize the relations. Out of those terms arose the discursive modes and the logical turns that led to contemporary economic thought. Discussions of economic questions today prescind from the inter-connectedness of religion and economics in the Middle Ages. And yet the relations among the economic agents of today and their role in society do have a past, and consequently a past that helps explain them. Todeschini sees that past in the words with which people in the Middle Ages handled things and conducted their daily business. Todeschini’s chapters consist of a steady stream of sensitive comments and insights into the daily life of centuries past (the “stimoli e suggerimenti” of his introduction), derived from the terms and references of economic discourse. He begins by reading the Church Fathers and listening to the early monks. He cites Clement of Alexandria (Chapter One, “Avere,” to have) to the effect that the ability to use things well justifies having them. Towards the end of the book he is marking the words of Wycliffe and Gerson, Bernardine of Siena and Beal. It readily becomes clear how much those speaking depend on past discourse. In Chapter Three, “Usare,” to use, Todeschini cites Gerhod of Reichersberg to the effect that only those who hold to God’s judgments can use the things of God’s creation well. Monks in particular exemplify the ability to use things while seeing beyond them. With such an entry into the economics of use, it is understandable that the author soon finds himself looking closely at the thorough parsing of use conducted by Franciscans at the end of the BOOK REVIEWS 291 thirteenth century. Although he does look at a passage or two from Bonaventure of Bagnoregio’s Itinerarium, Todeschini rapidly moves on to Peter Olivi. About Olivi he has much to say, in this as well as in the following chapters. Olivi not only talked at length about the way Franciscans were using things and should be using things; he did so while explaining the social sense and consequently the economic repercussions of such practices. Nowhere else does Todeschini find domestic talk about things linking with propositions about the marketplace as clearly as here. Olivi’s attention to the particularities of Franciscan practices helped him explain and encourage the different yet parallel practices of the Christian merchant. Elsewhere Todeschini has followed that line of thought into the merchant’s role in the dawning of a Christian society (in the book edited by A. Boureau and S. Piron, Pierre de Jean Olivi, Paris, 1999). In the course of his chapters Todeschini regularly refers to the effort made to integrate economic realities into a society consciously Christian. Although the book argues no thesis, that effort gradually assumes the role of the book’s basic narrative. In his chapter on restitution, he points to the many charitable foundations that arose in reparation for social harm done by usury (174). In that context he tells about the Chapel of the Scrovegni, in Padua, paid for understandably by a banking family. In the chapel Giotto painted the expulsion of the merchants from the temple. The fresco not only recalled the New Testament incident; it echoed as well the contemporary texts designating usurers as the worst of merchants, excluding them from the community of the faithful. (The book contains a reproduction of the fresco, as well as of fifteen other scenes of economic interest.) In his pages on...

Le Réveil Politique des Indiens Protestants de L'Equateur

The recent appearance of the indigenous evangelical movement on the Ecuadorian political scene (2000) is a historic fact that highlights two important aspirations of the Indian people. One is to recover the people's right to freedom and justice, and to reject all forms of exploitation and violence imposed by the current governing culture, modelled on neo-liberal economic principles. The other tendency that emerges from this movement is new forms of political organization based on a religious and ethnic identiy, from which has resulted a rupture from the ideological control of the North American missionaries, who maintain that participation in political activities is contrary to God's teachings and should consequently be seen as demonic. The division between “things of the world” and “things of God” forged by the missionaries has begun to be examined and questioned with respect not only to political activity, but also to indigenous culture and religiousness.

Women and literature in Britain, 1700-1800

Chronology List of illustrations Introduction 1. The power and the weakness of women in Anglo-Norman romance Judith Weiss 2. Women as lovers in early English romance Flora Alexander 3. Mothers in Middle English romance Jennifer Fellows 4. 'Clerc u lai, muine u dame': women and Anglo-Norman hagiography in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Jocelyn Wogan-Browne 5. Women in no-man's land: English recluses and the development of vernacular literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Bella Millett 6. 'Women talking about the things of God': a late medieval subculture Felicity Riddy 7. '... Alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch': laywomen and their books in late medieval England Carol M. Meale 8. Women authors and women's literacy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England Julia Boffey 9. Women and their poetry in medieval Wales Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan.

Luther's Theology of Glory

Luther's bold contrast between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross is often interpreted as the key passage unlocking the door to his entire thought. In the famous theses 20 and 21 of the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), Luther insists that only a theologian of the cross can comprehend.., the visible and manifest things of God, and can correctly call a thing what it is. 1 The knowledge of the Christian God is accessible solely at the place of God's deepest humiliation, the rock on which every human ambition for glory is shattered: in suffering and on the cross. 2 As the starting point for theological reflection, Luther's theology of the cross cannot be considered to exhaust all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ (Col. 2:3). 3 In this brief essay, I intend to show that, for Luther, a theologian deserving of this name can also be fascinated by the glory of the triune God. On the basis of Luther's explanation to the Creed in the Large Catechism, I suggest that Luther's theology of glory consists of two interwoven narratives of trinitarian glorification. Together, they can be illustrated as a double helix of glorification: God is glorified for who God is, as well as for what God does.

Women and literature in Britain 1150-1500 (review)

276 Reviews are again misunderstandings. For example, 'In the century before the discovery of the Cape route, Portuguese shipbuilders had adapted the refined maritime technology of Mediterranean Muslims to their own ships in the Adantic, . . . ' (p. 159). In fact the caravel was developed in the fifteenth century by the Portuguese from their own medieval sea-goingfishingboats and the carrack, which succeeded it on the routes to die Indian Ocean, was developed by the Italians from an amalgamation of the North-European cog with elements of their own medieval sailing 'round ships'. Muslim maritime technology contributed nothing to eidier die caravel or the carrack. When he draws attention to the limitations of the Portuguese impact on the indigenous states and peoples of die Indian Ocean, McPherson really needed to relate die discussion to the limitations of sixteenth-century shipping and artillery. He is aware that ' . . . Portuguese ambitions in the Indian Ocean were also curbed by shortages of manpower, shipping and capital.' (p. 165). However, it was not only small numbers of men and ships but the fact that, pace Carlo Cipolla, sixteenth-century artillery was simply too ineffective to eliminate competition that was instrumental. A discussion of the technology of maritime warfare is sorely missed in a book which is essentially focussed on die historical clashes of civilizations across the sea. Although the themes of this book are interesting, its limitations of research and structure are so severetiiatit is unlikely to 'live' for long. John H. Pryor Department of History University of Sydney Meale, Carol M. ed., Women and literature in Britain 1150-1500 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 17) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993; cloth; pp. 223; R.R.P. $99.00. Carol Meale explains in her introduction that the issue central to the essays in this collection is: ' . . . women's access to a written culture, and their ability, or lack of it, to use that culture for their own ends, independent of the male authority by which it was sanctioned' (p. 1). The authors address the nature of literacy and literature in their subjects' milieux and the roles women played in a range of literary genres, including romance, hagiography, and devotional works, as well as in the authoring, commissioning, and dissemination of texts. These are large and important questions that the Reviews 277 authors respond to with imagination and scholarship,resultingin a valuable collection of studies, fascinating in their insight and learned in their detail. The collection begins with three essays on the roles of women in romance: 'The power and weakness of women in Anglo-Norman romance' by Judith Weiss, 'Women as lovers in early English romance' by Flora Alexander, and 'Mothers in Middle English romance' by Jennifer Fellows. The following three focus on women as writers and readers of vernacular religious works: ' "Clerc u lai, muine u dame": women and Anglo-Norman hagiography in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries' by Jocelyn WoganBrowne , 'Women in no man's land: English recluses and the development of vernacular literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries' by Bella Millett, and ' "Women talking about the things of God": a late medieval subculture ' by Felicity Riddy. T w o essays which examine book ownership and literacy follow: ' "... alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch": laywomen and their books in late medieval England' by Meale, and 'Women authors and women's literacy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England' by Julia Boffey. An essay by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, 'Women and their poetry in medieval Wales', concludes die collection. The volume includes indices of manuscripts and of names and titles. Bibliographic details are found in each essay's end-notes, which in several cases contain a wealth oforiginal research. Many perceptive conclusions are drawn from the dual focus on women and literature. Just a few are Felicity Riddy's suggestion that it is the female protectors and disciples of Richard Rolle 'who in a sense socialise Rolle into writing his vernacular epistles' (p. 107), Bella Millett's observation that some texts imply 'a hierarchy of literacy, ranging from the clerici assumed by some of the untranslated Latin to the illiterate women who will need to have the book read to them, whether...

The Religious Authorities in the Gospel of Mark

Within the story-world of Mark, the religious authorities — the scribes, Pharisees, Herodians, chief priests, elders, and Sadducees — form a united front opposed to Jesus61 and therefore constitute, literary-critically, a single, or collective, character. If Jesus is the protagonist, they are the antagonists, and both Jesus and they exhibit a ‘root character trait’, that is, a character trait from which all other traits spring. Thus, Jesus, as the Messiah Son of God, is characterized as ‘uniquely related’ to God. As such, he is endowed with divine authority and ‘thinks the things of God’, which is to say that he views reality from a divine perspective. In contrast, the religious authorities are characterized as being ‘without authority’, which is to say that they ‘think the things of men’ and view reality from a purely human perspective. Consequently, the conflict between Jesus and the authorities in Mark's story is an extended clash over ‘authority’. Instead of receiving Jesus as God's Messiah and Son, they oppose him throughout his ministry.

The Faith of Republics: Perspectives on Religion and the RegimeThe Foundations of a Free Society. By Andrew R. Cecil Rousseau's Social Contract. By Hilail Gildin Citizen Machiavelli. By Mark Hulliung American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760-1805. By Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz

These authors agree that belief or opinion-religion in the broad senseis the foundation of a political community. The theme of civil religion is most obvious in the treatments by Mark Hulliung and Hilail Gildin; but both the documents provided by Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, and the lectures of Andrew R. Cecil belie any sharp distinction between church and state. The broad thesis is that the foundation and bonds of a community are belief. These questions follow: What kind of religion is characteristic of what sort of community? If, then and now, there is a characteristic rejection by Americans of the distinction between the things of God and those of Caesar, can one call the United States a liberal polity? Further: If a persistent current of opinion refuses to separate belief and politics, what are the chances for a faith at once common and liberal?

The Deep Things of God. Essays in Liberal Religion. By Sidney Spencer. George Allen and Unwin. Pages 118. Price 8/6.

The Deep Things of God. Essays in Liberal Religion. By Sidney Spencer. George Allen and Unwin. Pages 118. Price 8/6.

The Basis of Self-Realization

The sin-stricken body weighs heavily on the soul which by nature yearns to behold its Maker. Perhaps it is the consciousness of this clinging burden which causes a man to regard himself as another in endeavouring to express his own personality. Yet the divine figure of the Word Incarnate gives assurance that self-realization may be only reached by the self-abasement of all that is human in the presence of the Divine. At this point are placed in close opposition self-idolatory and the God-centred attitude towards life which is the main-spring of life’s worship. But who will deliver us from the body of this death?Divine revelation informs the erring mind that the culminating point in the Christian life is to be found in nothing less than eternal happiness which St. Thomas describes in no uncertain terms. But the life of grace, “semen gloriae,” is an eternal life since it holds within it the very roots of glory. It differs not in kind from that life at its apex where God is seen and all things in God, yet a ceaseless effort after spiritual liberty is demanded by a closer union with God in Christ.