True Christian Research Articles

Refuga legis ac Christi hostis e subtilis Commentator: Averroè nelle opere di Dionigi il Certosino

Denys of Rijkel (1402-1471), Carthusian monk, devotes a large part of his huge literary production to philosophy, which, in his view, is the lowest level of a hierarchy rising through scholastic theology and culminating in mystical theology. Philosophy adumbrates the superior modes of supernatural knowledge at a natural level. Since Averroes is certainly among the philosophers most cited by Denys, this article examines Denys’s attitude towards him and points out that it oscillates between a respect for Averroes as an authoritative representative of philosophic wisdom and a disapproval of the perfidious Averroes who denies the basic Christian truths. The essay first examines Denys’s invectives against Averroes, casting light on the philosophical reasons behind the rhetoric of the damned and impious Averroes; it demonstrates how thirteenth-century Scholastics influenced Denys’s approach to Averroes’s philosophical doctrines; finally, it reconstructs Denys views on two crucial noetic issues related to Averro...

Ambrose's Jews: The Creation of Judaism and Heterodox Christianity in Ambrose of Milan'sExpositio evangelii secundum Lucam

In recent years, the writings of Ambrose of Milan have enjoyed a revival of interest in historical and theological circles. The work of scholars like Christoph Markschies, Neil McLynn, Daniel Williams, and Marcia Colish has paved the way for a consideration of Ambrose's exegetical corpus, including his Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, as well. Readers both ancient and modern have generally remarked upon two of the commentary's features: Its derivative nature, particularly Ambrose's generous borrowings from other third- and fourth-century writers; and its pronounced anti-Jewish tenor. This article explores the latter aspect of Exp. ev. Luc. in light of the consistent rhetorical association of Jews and heretics, particularly so-called Arians, in Ambrose's commentary. Both groups are said to share a number of characteristics that Ambrose contrasts unfavorably with pro-Nicene Christianity. These include Jews' and heretics' “literary luxury” as opposed to pro-Nicene simplicity; their barrenness vis-á-vis pro-Nicene fruitfulness; and finally Jewish and heretical faithlessness in opposition to the Nicene faith that Ambrose constructs as the mark of true Christianity. Through a sustained examination of Ambrose's rhetoric in Exp. ev. Luc., this article seeks to uncover the framework Ambrose sought to create for his fourth-century audience by establishing and exploiting associations between Jews and heretics.

New Vistas: Blake, Swedenborg and Dante

ALTHOUGH William Blake's exhilarating thoughts in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, c.1790, ‘to [devout] Angels look like torment and insanity’, such ‘insanity’ represents ‘Infernal wisdom’ (plate 6, E 35).1 Blake's foregoing phrasing satirically re-directs Emanuel Swedenborg's The Divine Providence (para. 223, p. 223), published in English in 1790, a work annotated by Blake (E 609), in which hell's ‘Insanities’ are ‘called Wisdom’ by ‘fiery Devils’—evil spirits dedicated to ‘diabolical Love’, according to Swedenborg. Swedenborg in The Divine Providence (paras 35, 36, p. 50) earlier denounces hell's intemperate ‘diabolical Crew’, endorsing instead the ‘twelve’ moderating ‘Steps’ that lead to the ‘Palace of Wisdom’, an edifice signifying ‘Goodnesses’ and ‘Truths’ (p. 51). Therefore, one of Blake's correcting ‘Proverbs in Hell’ in The Marriage (pl. 7, E 35) stipulates that ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’ (my emphases). Accordingly, in a precept of The True Christian Religion (vol. I, note 388), translated into English in 1781, a work from which Blake frequently borrowed (see E 546), Swedenborg speaks of ‘infernal Horrors’ ‘occasioned’ by a ‘Dragon's Phantasy’ (p. 462), wherein ‘black [may] appear white, and white black’, and, therefore, an ‘expert in Metaphysics’ (p. 462) and ‘Inchantment’ (p. 463) is consulted. Thus, in the above cosmological venue in The Marriage Blake's ‘Angel’ attempts to subvert Blake's vision by ‘metaphysics’ (Blake's word, pl. 19. E 42), for previously Blake's ‘phantasy was imposed’ upon his Angel (pl. 20, E 42).2 Hence, in The Marriage (pls. 17–18, E 41) this sanctimonious Angel-‘companion’ explains that Blake's ‘eternal lot’ in hell is located ‘between the black & white spiders’, gigantic insect-constellations that revolved in the ‘infinite Abyss’.3

The Theology of Nazi Anti-Semitism in William Styron's Sophie's Choice

With regard to the representation of the Holocaust, William Styron's Sophie's Choice has occasioned much controversy. The central issue, as Alan L. Berger claims, is Styron's failure “to comprehend...

Feminism, Freethought, and the Sexual Subject in Colonial New Woman Fiction: Olive Schreiner and Kathleen Mannington Caffyn

Feminism, Freethought, and the Sexual Subject in Colonial New Woman Fiction:Olive Schreiner and Kathleen Mannington Caffyn Naomi Hetherington (bio) Toward the end of Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883), Lyndall writes to the father of her child, from whom she has separated, to refuse his second proposal of marriage. She tries to imagine a different kind of love from his that might call “into activity” the “higher part” of her nature (204). Though it is clear by this point in the novel that Lyndall is dying, she begins the letter confident of finding such love in the future and anticipates its transformative power: “One day—perhaps it may be far off—I shall find what I have wanted all my life; something nobler, stronger than I, before which I can kneel down. You lose nothing by not having me now; I am a weak, selfish, erring woman. One day I shall find something to worship, and then I shall be—” (247). Here, Lyndall breaks off. The letter remains unfinished and unsent upon her death. Its significance lies in Lyndall’s conflation of religious and sexual structures. Her failure to complete the sentence signals her inability to imagine herself, specifically her sexual self, outside of the Christian framework, which she rejected as a young girl. In attempting to reconfigure her desire for the “strong … stranger,” she falls back on the language of worship and finds herself wanting—sexually, spiritually, and morally (206–08). Given Lyndall’s defiance of the Christian strictures regulating women’s sexual behaviour by refusing to marry her child’s father, her difficulty in reconciling her sexual self with her disbelief is crucial to reading the narration of women’s political struggle for sexual autonomy in New Woman fiction. By the time Lyndall was designated the forerunner of the New Woman in the mid-1890s, freethought had become a literary signifier of advanced womanhood, partly because of Schreiner’s “poignant exploration of faith and its loss” in African Farm (deVries 196). As Jacqueline deVries points out, the close relationship between religious orthodoxy and patriarchy in Victorian fiction led New Woman novelists to challenge “both male dominance and received Christian truths” (196, original emphasis). Deliberately confronting religious authority, their fictional counterparts “helped to construct a feminist discourse on religion in which individual choice, rational reflection and doubt were central features in the expression of a feminist worldview” (196). However, Lyndall’s reliance on the language of faith to articulate sexual feeling suggests that this was an area in which feminism’s confrontation with religious [End Page 47] convention was not a straightforward victory. Rather than emancipating the female subject, religious doubt in these novels is used to configure a crisis of femininity in relation to contemporary anxieties about sexual reproduction and marriage. Conversely, the fictional role of the New Woman renders her a popular repository of religious and sexual uncertainty. As Susan Griffin puts it, “A nineteenth-century ideology that understood women as inherently more spiritual than men develops, in a period of growing doubt and secularization, into a focus on the female as a figure of loss” (214). By examining the role of religious doubt in two New Woman novels, African Farm and Kathleen Mannington Caffyn’s A Yellow Aster, this article provides one explanation for the imaginative defeat of its heroines that has preoccupied feminist critics.1 Lyndall is a particularly frustrating example because of the “gap” between her “speaking and acting” (Burdett 31). Brilliantly articulating the relationship between women’s sexual subordination to men and their economic dependency, she nevertheless agrees to run away with her lover when she discovers that she is pregnant. Fearing her dependence on him after the birth of their child, she sends him away before her confinement. The baby dies at three hours old and Lyndall succumbs to a chill caught at the child’s grave. Despite the utopian ending of A Yellow Aster, which recuperates its heroine for marriage and maternity, the force of her political speechmaking is similarly undercut by its context. Just as Lyndall tells her lover that she likes “to experience … to try” (Schreiner, African Farm 206), Gwen Waring accepts a proposal...

Adam’s escape: Children and the discordant nature of colonial conversions

The article traces the fundamental incoherency that structured the Danish Missionary Society’s work at a boarding school for low-caste ‘heathen’ children in South India in the 1860s and 1870s. Through elaborate disciplinary methods, the missionaries set out to Christianize and civilize the Indian children’s morality, social behaviour and bodily comportment. Yet, the missionaries’ perceptions of ‘the Indian child’ also reflected the contemporary bolstering of racial thinking in Indian colonial society, resulting in doubts whether Indian children could in fact become true Christians. This paradoxical endeavour shows how children became a site for the production of difference that sustained colonialism.

Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam by Akbar Ahmed

Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam by <i>Akbar Ahmed</i>

The Politics of Anglican Martyrdom: Letters to John Walker, 1704–1705

This article explores the political significance of past Christian suffering at the dawn of the Augustan era through an analysis of correspondence containing accounts of hardships endured by conforming clergymen during the English civil wars and Interregnum. The politics of martyrdom to be derived from letters to John Walker was grounded on the correspondents' conviction that their epistles conveyed accounts of sequestered clergymen and their families who had suffered for their profession of Christian truth. The persecutions that loyal clergy had endured during the 1640s and 1650s were signs that the Church by law established, both then and now, was the true English Church. Furthermore, as documentary witnesses to oral testimonies which identified the genuine sufferers for Christian truth within recent memory, the epistles themselves aspired to be martyrological relics.

Protestants: a history from Wittenberg to Pennsylvania 1517-1740

Acknowledgments. Introduction: Law and Gospel. 1. Foundations. Wittenberg and Rome. Swiss Protestants. Reformations. Geneva and Europe. 2. Kingdoms. Kings, Priests, and Prophets. Civic Protestantism. The Politics of Faith. 3. Communities. Biblical Utopias. The Pursuit of Purity. New World Protestants. 4. Dominions. Bonds of Communion. Christian Subjects. Protestant Environments. The Missionary Turn. 5. Revivals. Signs of the Times. True Christianity. The End of Reformation. Epilogue: Modern Protestants. Endnotes. Index.

Coleridge’s Colonial Interest in Abyssinian Christianity

Coleridge’s radical and colonial interests can be explored in his 1790 poems as sites of power and resistance. As a product of the complex discursive web of the 18th century, the Orientalist Coleridge could not act out of such historical forces as colonialism that had gone into shaping him and his poetry. Although he attacked European corruption and desired a revolutionary figure such as Mahomet to make a return to Abyssinia as home to true Christianity, Coleridge perpetuated the prejudice of Christianity’s superiority over Islam. Disillusioned by the French Revolution, Coleridge created Mahomet to replace Napoleon to pave the way to Abyssinia where true Christianity began. This study is an attempt to show that Coleridge’s radical interpretation of Mahomet, and desire for the Abyssinian maid and a Pantisocratic setting are all ideologically-shaped discursive practices within the context of 18th century colonialism. With such political elements as colonization in mind, a better historically-engaged understanding of Coleridge can be achieved.

Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature (review)

Re-examining Holocaust through edited by Aukje Kluge and Benn E. Williams. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2009. 396 pp. $89.95. As a middle school teacher preparing my Holocaust unit each spring I was always aware of the journey that this labor of love entailed. It was not just about lining up materials and activities, but also contemplating all newly available histories, stories, and personal remembrances. As decade of 90s progressed, more and more Holocaust resources became available. And while much of this material was created for use in classroom, much more was work of scholars who did and still continue to examine this watershed event. In one sense, Re-examining Holocaust through Literature reflects some of ways that Holocaust scholarship has evolved over past sixty years. But in another sense, this collection of scholarly essays edited by Aukje Kluge and Benn E. Williams asks us to reconsider a fundamental question: What counts as Holocaust literature? essays in this volume challenge us as educators to explore our notions of what we think we already know, as well as what these new perspectives can provide as we continue to rethink, remake, and reinvigorate our teaching of Holocaust. Part I, titled Mixing Genres, Histories, and Representation, approaches questions of genre and representation though analyses of literature and film. In Car cela devient une histoire: Representation of Holocaust in Imaginative and Collective Memoirs of Charlotte Elizabeth Scheiber examines work of Charlotte Delbo, a survivor who shares her memories through multiple genres, including prose, lyric poetry, and what Scheiber calls poetic memoir. In Peter Weiss's Die Ermittlung: Dramatic and Legal Representation and Auschwitz Trial, Scott Windham discusses audience response to Weiss's portrayal of Holocaust perpetrators in his 1965 play. Weiss's dramatic enactment of 1963-65 Frankfurt trials of former Auschwitz officers and guards drew on actual transcripts from trials at a time when majority of Germans preferred to cease investigation of past connections to Holocaust. Windham demonstrates how Die Ermittlung intertwines history and literature to provide competing representations of perpetrators, creating a collage rather than a final, normative judgment. Finally, in third of Part I, The Limits of Holocaust Representation in Arab World, Esther Webman explores how political landscape limits and complicates cultural representations. Surveying Arab literature and television in three different time periods, Webman analyzes their major themes and acknowledges those minor voices who have attempted to intervene in dominant Arab discourses. Part II of Re-examining Holocaust through Literature investigates how fiction and history work together to reteU stories of both those who Uved through experience and those who wrote about it after fact. Benn E. WiUiams takes a broad look at French fiction and then deals more specificaUy with novel, La cliente. His essay Varying Shades of Gray: Pierre Assouline at Frontier of Fact and Fiction, provides a compelling example of challenges of addressing actual history of die Holocaust by way of a fictionalized story. In Suffering, Heroism, and Healing Arrival of Savior: Holocaust in Evangelical Literature, Yaakov Ariel argues that purpose of much of this body of literature is to demonstrate that horrors of Holocaust were perpetrated by non-Christians, as true Christians would not have taken part in such inhumane acts. …

Wisdom in weakness

The paper explores the discovery of wisdom in weakness, through a shift from anguish over theodicy to an acceptance of challenging circumstances as granting privileged access to the deepest truths of Christianity. It begins with a novelistic narrative of a spiritual journey taken by St Francis of Assissi, which sets the agenda. The topics then covered include: human creatureliness, the wisdom of the cross and the wisdom of apatheia (passionlessness). Its climax is a reflection on 2 Corinthians 4.7–10, originally composed for the L’Arche communities.

‘The Changelessness of God’ as Kierkegaard's Final Theodicy: God and the Gift of Suffering

AbstractIn the midst of his final ‘attack on Christendom’, Kierkegaard published a short discourse devoted to James 1:17–21 entitled ‘The Changelessness of God’. Aside from providing a pleasant rhetorical anomaly at this juncture in his corpus, Kierkegaard's final discourse also introduces another surprise: a defense of the God who sits silently by and watches true Christianity disappear from Denmark. Kierkegaard's defense of God also accounts for Christian suffering – Christ's, the apostles' and perhaps his own – and it does so by creating a sharp division of reality between temporality and eternity, a division that echoes through from the earliest discourses on the same biblical passage. This article contextualizes ‘The Changelessness of God’ by tracing these developments and then continues to press the logic of Kierkegaard's construal of the relationship between temporality and eternity which ultimately leads to a rather problematic description of suffering as a necessary good and perfect gift from God.

Islam in Early Modern Quaker Experience and Writing

Islam in Early Modern Quaker Experience and Writing David Vlasblom (bio) From their beginnings in the mid-seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, offered a unique and often challenging perspective in the Western world as pioneers of both inter-faith dialogue and social justice issues. This paper will demonstrate that early modern Quakers were uniquely open to befriending and learning from Muslims and that this contact aided Quakers of the latter seventeenth and early eighteenth-centuries in challenging Western social norms, particularly with regard to Western slavery. Lessons learned from Muslims and the process of inter-faith dialogue outside of Western boundaries enabled Quakers enough distance and breadth of perspective to take unique ideological positions that ran counter to the powerful discourses of the West. Contact with Islam aided the early modern Quakers in thinking beyond the discourses of their English, Christian, Western culture and helped them to challenge oppression by presenting alternative models. The Quakers were much better suited than their fellow early modern English and Western European Christian religionists to learn lessons from other cultures because their religion did not prejudice them against Muslims and other cultures but rather encouraged dialogue. Elements of a culture of tolerance in early modern Islamic societies thus filtered through to the West through the pioneering work of the extremely influential Quaker movement. The Quakers adapted this seed of Islamic tolerance that was lacking in their own culture of seventeenth-century England, and they developed it in their own way into a worldview that would evolve with time to promote radical social activism. It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the direct links between early modern Quaker values of equality and tolerance and the largely Quaker-led reform movements of the nineteenth century including abolition of slavery, rethinking capital punishment and the enfranchisement of minorities and women. Nevertheless it is a premise of this paper that there is a strong continuity of ideology and that these later social movements were a logical outworking of early modern Quaker beliefs and values. While Islam was by no means the only force influencing early modern Quaker ideas, it was a vital ingredient because it presented the Quakers with a different set of cultural discourses with which they could begin their centuries-long challenging and overthrow of Western injustices. This paper will first explore the importance of Islam in forming the uniquely inclusive Quaker worldview in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; [End Page 1] secondly this paper will examine the influence of Islamic culture in early modern Quaker thinking on the issue of slavery, demonstrating how this intercultural and inter-faith exchange stimulated early Quaker social activism. Part I: Relationship with Islam Aids Early Modern Quakerism in Transcending Western Discourses This paper does not claim that Islam was the primary religious influence on the Quakers as they formed their worldview. It is beyond the scope of this project to consider the vast array of religious traditions and Enlightenment thinkers whose ideas filtered into Quakerism. In terms of religious traditions, the early Quakers certainly identified much more closely with the Christian Millenarian and Anabaptist traditions; and, more broadly, with Christianity in general and even Judaism. Derogatory references to Islam, Muslims and the Qur'an outnumber favourable ones in early modern Quaker writings. George Fox, the man who founded Quakerism in the middle of the seventeenth century, believed that Muslims were misguided1 and should be evangelized into Christian truth.2 Even so, Quaker openness to Islam was remarkable for its time. Extensive research of Quaker writings for this paper has failed to uncover any demonic imagery employed against Muslims or characterizations of the Qur'an as a wicked or evil book. As will be demonstrated below, there was an emergence among Quakers of a collective concept of Islam, or the "Turk," that was fundamentally different from the predominating English and Western perceptions. Overwhelmingly, Quaker writers found Muslim society to be morally equal to the Christian societies of Europe, and they often cited examples in which Muslims were acting in a more enlightened way than Christians. This section will demonstrate that early modern...

The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe (review)

Reviewed by: The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe Anna Sapir Abulafia The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe, by Jonathan Boyarin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 208 pp. $32.50 In this study Jonathan Boyarin examines the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century encounter between the Catholic Spaniards and the inhabitants of the Caribbean and Latin America within the wider context of medieval Christian-Jewish (and to some extent Christian-Muslim) relations in Latin Christendom. For the year 1492 did not herald an unprecedented new beginning. Rather, the actions and ruminations of the Spanish explorers and mendicant missionaries echoed many centuries of Christian engagement with Jews (and Muslims) in different parts of Europe. Christian-Jewish relations were especially wrought because of the built-in ambiguities of that encounter. On the one hand, Christianity had emerged from a Jewish cradle to supersede its progenitor; on the other, Christians and Jews continued to vie with each other as rivaling siblings drawing their credentials from the same texts, which each read in opposing [End Page 164] ways. Judaism was theoretically tolerated by Christian teaching, but it was tolerated not for its own sake; Jews were preserved to serve Christians through witnessing to Christian truth by adhering to the Hebrew Bible in which Christians found the prophecies concerning Christ. The fact that they lacked dominion and lived under Christian rule served Christians by showing them how God punished those who rejected Christ. Yet in the end all Jews would recognize Christ as their God and savior. All of this meant that Christian-Jewish relations consisted of a volatile mix of toleration and deprecation. Jews were valued but at the same time feared as ever-present markers of possible opposition to Christian authority. Jews who did convert were often suspected of contaminating Christian purity; baptism was seen as only the beginning of a life-long journey to Christian perfection. (This was true for Christians and Jews alike.) Jews for their part had continually to negotiate their positions with the lords in whose lands they resided, taking advantage of the ever-present gulf between religious theory and pragmatic reality. Recent studies have examined the different trajectories of the medieval Jewries of England, Northern France, Germany, Eastern Europe, and regions of the Latin Mediterranean. Just as there was not one homogeneous medieval Christendom, there was not one medieval Jewry. This is, of course, equally true of the very disparate Muslim world which confronted medieval Christians in many different guises and arenas. As the Normans conquered Sicily and as the Christian kings of Iberia expanded their territories into Al-Andalus, more and more Muslims came under Christian sway. In North Africa and the Levant, however, Muslims were powerful antagonists both respected and feared by Christian knights for their military prowess. Along the frontiers of Eastern Europe Christians faced the military threat of the Mongols and Tartars from the thirteenth century. There were other others than Jews and Muslims! Boyarin's repeated insistence on the need to accept that Europe in 1492 was not a monolithic Christian entity lacking awareness of non-Christians within and without its borders does at times come across as a struggle to unlock an open door. True, there are still plenty of examples in the literature which betray what most scholars would now consider an outdated Christo-centric approach, but serious work in this area has been engaging with the medieval non-Christian other for some time. Indeed David Abulafia's The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus, which must have appeared while this book was in the press, examines the explorations of Columbus within the context of medieval forays into the Canary Islands, and European engagement between Christians and Jews is used as an interpretive tool in an attempt to understand how the Spanish tried to make sense of the large populations of non-Christian peoples they encountered. [End Page 165] Boyarin's emphasis on the paradox between Christian universalistic endeavors to include ever more peoples within the Christian fold and Christian attempts to work ever harder to achieve Christian purity within Christian society is undoubtedly important. As Christian doctrines were...

Queer Systems: The Benefits of a More Systematic Approach to Queer Theology

Queer Systems: The Benefits of a More Systematic Approach to Queer Theology Ivy Helman Queer theology often struggles to convince many Christians of its message of acceptance.1 This occurs in spite of the fact that queer theology hopes to bring about a more just, humane and liberating manifestation of Christianity for all humanity, queers and non‐queers alike. Queer theology, it seems, needs to strengthen and develop itself as a theological discipline in order to have a greater impact. Among the many current theological disciplines now available, systematic theology could help queer theology do just that. Systematic theology has three salient characteristics that could strengthen queer theology’s arguments; queer theology could also benefit from an acknowledgment of its systematic tendencies. One characteristic of systematic theology seems to be a logical, coherent argument based on a unifying principle. Another salient feature appears to be the way systematic theology is an ordered, in‐depth investigation of a broad range of topics. Finally, the third characteristic of systematic theology that could benefit queer theology is the way systematic theology suggests exploring cultural and social components of society and reinterpreting Christian truth in a way that accounts for this context. This often means advocating for change in order to make the Christian message more suited to the times. One can acknowledge the first tendency of systematic theology—it appears to be a logical, coherent argument with a unifying principle— in the theories of three authors: Paul Tillich, A. N. Williams and Christine Helmer. Helmer writes, “System represents a partial or total comprehension by thought of the reality of particular entities or actions” (1). In other words, systematic theologians try to make sense out of the world around them. One can see the principle of coherence in Helmer’s writing. A. N. Williams suggests systematicity’s characteristic of being logical in his article for The International Journal of Systematic Theology entitled “What Is Systematic Theology?” Williams seems to argue that systematic theology is “simply theology which makes explicit that rationality and that relationality” (55). Williams suggests that all systematic theology has three key characteristics: coherence, relationality and rationality (41, 48 and 53, respectively). This emphasis on rationality could be interpreted as an emphasis on logic. In addition, one can see that Williams stresses coherence as well. Finally, a well‐known and oft‐cited author on systematic theology, Paul Tillich indicates the need for unity, what he calls a “method of correlation” (8). This unifying idea coordinates “questions and answers, situation and message, human existence and divine manifestation” (Tillich, 8). Tillich seems to be arguing for the need for systematic theology to unify its message as it addresses its many areas of interest. Systematic theology also seems to consist of an ordered, in‐depth examination of a variety of topics. In their definitions of systematic theology, Leo Garrett Jr. and Daniel Jenkins seem to agree on the significance of these systematic tendencies. Specifically Jenkins seems to stress the in‐depth inquiry into a broad range of topics. He believes ethics to be part of systematic theology (Jenkins, 108). Likewise, “… to be systematic, theology must include a statement of the nature of theological method, of the doctrine of the Trinity, of God and [God’s] attributes or perfections; of creation; of Jesus Christ, his person and work, and related to him, of Christian anthropology in terms of [hu]man[ity], sin and grace; of the Spirit and the Church” (Jenkins, 107). Jenkins’s list appears to be quite comprehensive in scope and seems to demand quite detailed theological work. There seems to be no part of Christianity that systematic theology can or should ignore. Garrett, in his book Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical and Evangelical, recommends that systematic theology concern itself with the relationship of doctrines to each other and an ordered presentation of material (3 and 16). Here, one can see a range of topics Garrett believes systematic theology should address. Likewise, in Garrett’s work, the reader can see the ordered characteristic of systematic theology. One could argue that the third salient characteristic of systematic theology seems to be its evaluation of contemporary society and its appeal for change. Here again one can see...

Newman, the Church of England and the Catholic Church

AbstractNewman was formed in the Church of England and all his major theological concerns were developed in an Anglican context. The rebuttal of utilitarian scepticism in the University Sermons; the ecclesial context of Christian faith and life in The Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church; the strong sense of mystery in Newman's epistemology and apologetic; the sacramental character of Christian truth are all significantly part of the Anglican inheritance that he took to the Roman Catholic Church. Furthermore Newman's early formation was ‘pre-Victorian’– he was engaged when writing his Essay on Scriptural Miracles with earlier debates with the Deists, as well as sharing in the rediscovery of the imagination that characterised Coleridge and the Romantic Movement. This paper explores these and other issues to show an important part of Newman's enduring Anglican inheritance.

Chinese Buddhism and the Threat of Atheism in Seventeenth-Century Europe

Chinese Buddhism and the Threat of Atheism in Seventeenth-Century Europe Thierry Meynard When the Europeans first came to Asia, they met with the multiform presence of Buddhism. They gradually came to understand that a common religious tradition connected the different brands of Buddhism found in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, and China. I propose here to examine a presentation of Buddhism written in Guangzhou by the Italian Jesuit Prospero Intorcetta (1626-1696) around the year 1668. This text was later edited by the Flemish Jesuit Philippe Couplet (1623-1693) and published in Paris in 1687, within an encyclopedia on Chinese thought titled Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (The Chinese Philosopher Confucius, hereafter called CSP). In the first part of this study, I shall introduce the background of the Jesuit encounter with Buddhism, first in Japan and then in China, as well as their literary production on the subject. Then, I shall examine Intorcetta's presentation of Chinese Buddhism, especially his understanding of the two faces of Buddhism: Pure Land Buddhism, which he categorized as superstition, and Chan Buddhism, categorized as atheism. These two notions of superstition and atheism seem contradictory, but in fact they are derived from Intorcetta's interpretation of the Buddhist theory of the "two truths." I shall conclude with an evaluation of Intorcetta's account. Because this early presentation of Buddhism exists only in Latin, I have inserted excerpts that I have translated. Historical Background of the Encounter with Buddhism Since the sixteenth century, missionaries have traveled to different regions of Asia and collected information about the religions they encountered, including Buddhism. They also exchanged information among themselves, asking questions of colleagues in order to confirm and complete information. The missionary reports were sent to Europe for their superiors and were sometimes published as such, but more often incorporated into larger works. [End Page 3] The First Encounter, from Japan to China Among the first reports reaching Europe about Buddhism were the letters of the Spanish Jesuit Francis-Xavier (1506-1552), who drew information from Yajiro, a Japa nese he met in Malacca in 1547. During his own stay of more than two years in Japan, in 1549-1551, Francis-Xavier had exchanges with monks and could progress in his understanding of Buddhism. His letters were very influential among the network of Jesuit schools in Europe, being copied and read at many venues.1 Other missionaries in Japan, like Cosme de Torres (1510-1570), Luís Fróis (1532-1597), and Baltasar Gago (1515-1583), went further in understanding Buddhism. Also, when, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Jesuit missionaries approached Buddhism in China, their understanding was already shaped by fifty years of knowledge gained in Japan. Just as in Japan, the China Jesuits were interested in Buddhism because it provided them with an indigenous vocabulary in which to express Christian ideas. Thus, the missionary was perceived as a kind of Buddhist monk. The symbolic identification with Buddhism went even further than in Japan, because for more than ten years in Guangdong, from 1579 to 1595, they adopted Buddhist dress and shaved their heads. However, as the missionaries deepened their understanding of the Buddhist doctrine, they realized that many tenets could not be reconciled with Christianity. Since they were greatly concerned about disseminating the orthodox faith and avoiding dubious theories, which they believed to be the tricks of the devil, they distanced themselves from Buddhism and became closer to Confucianism, whose discourse, which focused on moral life in the present world, did not directly conflict with the supernatural truths of Christianity. While Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607) and Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) had initially started interacting with Chinese culture by using Buddhism, later on Ricci abandoned this approach and started to use Confucianism as the main medium. In the Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), Ricci wrote for his Chinese readers a strong refutation of the Buddhist doctrine from the standpoint of Aristotelian philosophy.2 He criticized the concept of selflessness (wuwo) on metaphysical grounds, writing that everyone should draw their existence from an ultimate origin. In his Della entrata della Compagnia di Gesù e Christianità nella China (Entry of the Society of Jesus into...

John Henry Newman: One Step Enough for Me by Braambos

83 dvd rEviEw John Henry Newman: One Step Enough for Me. By Braambos. Kessell-Lo, Belgium: braambos@kerknet.be, 2010. $US 25.00 (includes postage to US). This 35-minute DVD advertises itself as a “documentary” that provides a “biographical portrait” of Newman’s life. It is an unusual documentary in that it depicts a pensive older priest,presumably representing Newman,whose reading and writing, whose meditation and prayer, are presented vicariously as those of Newman while the proficient voice-over of the narrator proceeds with outlining the main events of Newman’s life. Providing special interest to the narrative are the substantive interventions about Newman’s life and thought by Professor Terrence Merrigan, a theologian from the Catholic University of Leuven. The professionally produced recording presents the actor-priest with attractive backdrops of library and chapel settings, scenes of fields and streams along which he is walking, sketches and photographs of locales and buildings of significance in Newman’s life, together with a few of the time-honored portraits of Newman. Also interspersed throughout are fresh as well as familiar quotations read almost reverently in a voice different from that of the narrator. The overall audiovisual effect is a harmonious and engaging setting for serious reflection on the central issues of Newman’s thought and religious faith. The story begins with a brief sketch of the broad historical background of England at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It proceeds to speak of Newman’s boyhood and his relationship with his parents, especially with his father. Terrence Merrigan presents Newman’s “first conversion” at the age of fifteen as an occurrence that“likely lasted about six months”and was the fruit of a gradual process encompassing his illness, his father’s bank failure, contact with his early teachers, his prayer life and so forth. “Not some kind of intense religious experience,” says Merrigan, this was more like a profound insight, a personal realization about his particular relation to God and his individual responsibility as a man before God to seek truth and to live in accordance with it. Insight grows slowly for Newman. Foundational for the pervasive personalism of Newman’s thought, this early realization was deepened when he became aware of his excessively rationalist interests as a young Oriel fellow,a crisis again occasioned by illness and this time also by death, that of his beloved sister, Mary. Yet another such critical time in Newman’s life was precipitated by his grave illness in Sicily when he experienced through suffering the “feeling of God’s elective love” for himself personally as he recovered and set out on a new pathway in his life. The upshot of these times of personal crisis was to make Newman again and again aware of the importance of integrating humility, prayer and devotion with intellectual acumen and theological reflection— all in their necessary tension and right balance,which he saw as applicable as well to the Church in making the doctrinal truths of Christianity existentially real and living in practice. Newman became a Catholic after historical examination of the doctrines of the primitive church and their developments on the large field of time. Merrigan DVD REVIEW NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 84 emphasizes Newman’s sensitivity to the movement of history and,accordingly,to the central place of the doctrine of the Incarnation. God’s presence in space and time requires continual reinterpretation of Christianity, as the shape of Christian doctrine changes over time and different aspects of its message are highlighted. Human history is a developmental process;so then is human consciousness in its midst. Like insight, understanding develops slowly within the gradual unfolding of history. Oscot, Rome, and Dublin successively became Newman’s provisional homes as a new Catholic,an Oratorian priest and the champion of an educated laity prepared for the world. Back at Birmingham, Newman’s settled life was interrupted in 1864 by Charles Kingsley’s charges of dishonesty, then by his own widely applauded selfdefense , Apologia pro Vita Sua. Because Newman’s life was characterized by opposition and conflict, including that with ecclesiastical authorities, it was a surprise, and a capstone on his life, when Pope Leo XIII elevated him...

La théodicée développée sur le thème du larcin des Grecs: origine du mal, liberté et Providence chez Clément d’Alexandrie (Stromates I 17,81-87)

Clement of Alexandria deals with the origin of evil in his controversies mainly with heretics, and incidentally with pagans. The theory of the Greeks' theft of a spark of the Christian truth provides him with an excellent opportunity to tackle this issue. Indeed this theory implies defending God for allowing a crime to be committed, the consequences of which, namely the birth of philosophy, are perceived as harmful by Clement's adversaries. The Alexandrian launches, therefore, into a theodicy based on two connected and inseparable ideas. On the one hand he attributes the responsibility of evil only to the acting person (the Devil or a fallen angel in this case, or the human being in general) who is conceived as always free to choose and act as he will. On the other hand, Clement depicts Providence not only as the producer of only good, but also as the design which embraces the entire universe and whose ultimate end is to transform the evil committed by certain individuals into something beneficial to mankind as a whole. Besides the biblical quotations and the reminiscences of early Christian literature, Clement's demonstration exploits the arguments supplied by the philosophy which he primarily wanted to defend. To elaborate his theodicy, he uses Platonic and Aristotelian concepts as they have already been renewed within Stoicism and above all the Stoic discourse itself such as it was popularized in the first centuries. By making some decisive choices within this discourse, by integrating it into the christological framework and by reincorporating in it Platonic and Aristotelian views, Clement eventually proposes a specifically Christian definition of sin and Providence. The following article describes the polemical context as well as the way in which these definitions, developed throughout the Stromateis, are outlined in the seventeenth chapter of the first book.