Western Theological Tradition Research Articles

The mission and people of God: Rethinking theology and theological methodology in Asia

The 20th century brought unprecedented growth to the global church. With this growth came new and contextual forms of theology, as well as recognition of the limits of the Western theological tradition. However, compared with Africa and Latin America, Asian theology has been slow to develop in response to this shift, especially among conservatives and evangelicals. While several prominent names are often cited as representatives of Asian theology, their work has little impact on much of the Asian church, which is characteristically grassroots and conservative. Scholars continue to debate what Asian theology is and how to do it. This article explores some of the methodological implications of the global shift in theology, specifically for Asian contexts. It also identifies some of the hindrances to better and more relevant Asian theology: (1) a universal top–down approach to theology in Asia and (2) overly Western ways of thinking that have shaped the discipline. Finally, this article offers two possibilities for Asian theology going forward: (1) mission and the reality of God’s work in Asia and (2) the people themselves and the stories of God’s work among them.

Bridging the Divide: The Crucifixion in Endo’s The Samurai

Abstract This article situates Shusaku Endo’s novel, The Samurai, within postwar theological developments both within his Japanese context and as a consequence of the Catholic Church’s Vatican Council II. Read against this background, The Samurai demonstrates Endo’s wager that the symbol of the crucifix is translatable across cultures. His novel depicts the core Catholic belief that the crucifixion paradoxically reveals God’s Divine Love to humanity through an image of weakness and death, but Endo decentres the Western theological tradition of atonement to reimagine the crucifixion as a manifestation of Jesus’s solidarity and accompaniment with those who are rejected and unjustly oppressed.

The Gift of Reason: St. Irenaeus and John Paul II in Dialogue

St. Irenaeus as a western figure has a different exegetical account of Genesis which provides some of the foundational principles for his theological concepts of the ‘new Adam’ and recapitulation. The western theological tradition has instead taken the approach handed down by St. Augustine which is seen in St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. This article will describe the difficulties of Irenaeus’s view while also showing the faults of the Augustinian position as shown in John Paul II while comparing the fruit of both in order to develop a synthesis that can encapsulate the fruit of both positions.

Membaca Gerak Roh di Era Pasca-Kebenaran: Analisis Pneumatologis Video “Propaganda Anti-Islam” Robert Spencer

This paper aims to show the need to deciphere the movement of the Holy Spirit correctly in the post-truth era, where truth is determined by the dominant system, and not the correct system, as Michel Foucault said.<br />Through the views of Christian pneumatology in both Eastern and Western theological traditions, Asian context, media analysis and philosophy, this paper analyzes anti-Islam propaganda videos by Robert Spencer. The Holy<br />Spirit certainly didn’t blow on Spencer’s propaganda, because the Spirit basically unites and not divides (Galatians 5:21-23). In the Pentecost, the Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to be open and accepting differences in language and the aspects contained therein: culture, beliefs, and customs. The pneumatological views of Zizioulas, Jurgen Moltmann, Karl Rahner, Michael Welker, Clark Pinnock, and the Bishops of Asia emphasize that the Holy Spirit who is still moving contains the power that sustains and inspires people towards truth and peace. Hegel’s dialectical philosophy of the Spirit can be a way of thinking for the faithful to critically deciphere the movements of the Spirit through digital literacy. In the digital world, humans as “Hearers of the Word” are “Password Breakers”<br />who are critical in deciphering the movements of the Spirit.<br /><br /><strong>Keywords:</strong> Holy Spirit, Church, dialogue, post-truth, media

Toward Accessible Faith & Flourishing: Reconsidering Greek Intellectualism in Western Christian Theology

From its inception, the Western theological tradition exhibits a fascination with and appropriation of ancient Greek philosophy. This conceptual intertwining of philosophy and theology, as exemplified by Augustine and Aquinas, privileges rationality in the “natural order” and in the pursuit of virtue and human flourishing. Despite generative insights at the intersection of disability and theology in other aspects, the “enfolding” tendencies of a conceptual framework inherited from Plato and Aristotle relegate people with intellectual disabilities to the margins of human flourishing. Contemporary theologians vary in the extent of their adoption of these norms and ideals related to the natural order and human rationality. The future of disability theology must engage a “pastoral deconstruction” that questions these deep privileging tenants of the Western intellectual tradition if it is to welcome the richly embodied theological contribution of people with intellectual disabilities.

Presocratics and Other Living Beings

Advocates of the questioning of the dominant anthropocentric perspective of the world have been increasingly strongly presenting (bio)ethical demands for a new solution of the relationship between humans and other beings, saying that adherence to the Western philosophical and theological traditions has caused the current environmental, and not just environmental, crisis. The attempts are being made to establish a new relationship by relativizing the differences between man and the non-human living beings, often by attributing specifically human traits and categories, such as dignity, moral status and rights to non-human living beings. The author explores antecedents of the standpoints that deviate from the mainstream Western philosophy, in terms of non-anthropocentric extension of ethics, and finds them in the fragments of first physicists, which emphasize kinship of all varieties of life. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Democritus, in this context, considered certain animals and plants as sacred, i.e. they believed that they are, in a sense, responsible for what they do and that they apart from being able to be driven by a natural desire, being able to breathe, feel, be sad and happy, also have a soul, power of discernment, awareness, the ability to think, understanding and mind. Finally, the author believes that solutions or mitigation of the mentioned crisis are not in the simple Aesopeian levelling of animals and plants "upwards", but in an adequate paideutic approach which in humans will develop an inherent (bio)ethical model of accepting non-human living beings as creatures who deserve moral and decent treatment and respect.

Slave Christologies: Augustine and the Enduring Trouble with the “Form of a Slave” (Phil 2:5–7)

This essay finds in the thought of Augustine of Hippo a key moment in the development of a strand of the Western theological tradition I will call slave Christologies: theological accounts of the person and work of Jesus Christ that, drawing from the Philippians hymn (Phil 2:5–11), symbolically identify his body with the body of the enslaved, and in so doing, weave the order of slaveholding into the texture of Christian thought. I approach the political and theological implications of this tradition under the pressure of a twofold haunting: of the perennial, if hard to specify, interplay between ideas and forms of life, between the symbolic and the social; and of the contingent, specific historical afterlife of racial slavery which provides the conditions for contemporary Christian thought.

N.A. Berdyaev and M. Scheler: Philosophical and Anthropological Approaches to the Problem of Theodicy

The article considers the approaches to theodicy’s problem of Russian and German philosophers with clear religious orientation: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev and Max Scheler. However, for more explicit insight into our topic we found, the article provides the general overview of theodicy tradition (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz). Standpoints of these thinkers living in different epochs are linked by the steady belief in a reasonability of the world created by God. The main obstacle to acceptance of this argumentation is the problem of evil’s existence. The way of thinking that has the goal to demonstrate the world’s perfectness presumes either necessity of evil as a mean (for good’s revealing) or the evil’s insignificance or even its illusiveness, which is the result of “too human” perspective. Such ways of thought have become impossible since the second half of 19th century, when the concrete person’s experience (not a separated from it thought) had been recognized as a main source of philosophy. In Russian culture, this attitude became widespread after F.M. Dostoevsky, in German culture – after F. Nietzsche. Berdyaev and Scheler inherit the impulse of their thought. Distinctive feature of religious philosophies of Berdyaev and Scheler (compared to early Christian and Western philosophical and theological traditions) is conceptualization of the assertion of God’s need in human being, for God is in the process of becoming, is in the inner move toward full self-realization. And human being, who is capable to adopt or to reject the God’s “call,” is the crucial stage of God’s formation. For this tradition of theodicy, exactly human creative act and the direction of this act have the main role in world history.

GRASPING FOR GOD IN THE MATERIAL: A MEDITATION ON LUTHER’S THEOLOGY OF CREATION AND ACCOUNT OF SIN AS CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

This essay explores the potential contribution of Martin Luther to the current thinking around the ecological crisis. In particular, I argue that Luther's understanding of sin should be brought into consideration in order to understand why humanity struggles to change its various courses of action vis-a-vis the ecological crisis. The essay examines numerous ecologically conscious critics of the Western theological tradition and identifies merits and shortcomings in their thinking, and I bring Luther forward to address such shortcomings. I finally turn to elements of Luther’s creation theology in order to open up potential paths forward for thinking through the ecological crisis.

Recovering the Reformation’s Ecumenical Vision of Redemption as Deification and Beatific Vision

Abstract The beatific vision is widely perceived as a Roman Catholic doctrine. Many continue to view deification as a distinctively Eastern Orthodox doctrine incompatible with the Western theological tradition, especially its Protestant expressions. This essay will demonstrate that several Reformers of the first and second generation promoted a vision of redemption that culminates with deification and beatific vision. They affirmed these concepts without apology in confessional statements, dogmatic works, biblical commentaries, and polemical treatises. Attention will focus on figures in the Reformed tradition though one could produce similar surveys for the Lutheran and Anglican branches of the Reformation as well. John Calvin will receive extended treatment because some scholars dispute whether he affirmed deification. This essay presents important evidence thus far overlooked which should settle the question.

Can Palamism Be Accommodated to the Western Theological Tradition? A Few Considerations on “The Real Problem”

Can Palamism Be Accommodated to the Western Theological Tradition? A Few Considerations on “The Real Problem” Antoine Lévy O.P. SCHOLARSHIP ON Gregory Palamas and Palamism often gives the impression that dismissing Western theology is the price that has to be paid in order to acknowledge the genius of the Orthodox tradition. One should therefore wholeheartedly welcome a book that has the explicit intention of bringing the teachings of Palamas one step closer to the Western Christian universe. From this point of view, one must salute Norman Russell’s approach in Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age.1 As the author goes in search of a “real Palamas” hidden behind denominational controversies, he scrutinizes a considerable amount of scholarship for the benefit of nonspecialists. Readers will find an abundance—sometimes an overabundance—of observations related to known but also to much less well-researched elements of historiography on Palamas and Palamism. The courage of an attempt at such a vast synthesis certainly deserves commendation. This does not mean that the results of this attempt are immune to criticism. As I set forth my reservations in the pages that follow, my hope is that this critical analysis of Russell’s book will eventually shed some more light on an ancient but still unsolved theological issue. [End Page 625] The argument of Russell’s book could be roughly summarized as follows: modern historiography on Palamism has presented Palamas’s doctrine as incompatible with Western—mostly Catholic—theological tradition on biased ecclesiological grounds; actually, when examined in itself, this doctrine has much to offer that could be integrated into the Western theological tradition and enrich it. In the first part of the book, “The Historical Reception of Palamite Theology,” Russell recounts— or “deconstructs,” as it is no longer fashionable to say—the steps that have given the Palamite controversy its current configuration. In the second part of the book, “Raising the Larger Questions,” the author delves into the texts of Palamas himself, explaining them in the light of the controversies of the time, as he goes in search of a “real Palamas” who would be more acceptable to the Western theological tradition. Russell’s narrative of Palamas’s Rezeptionsgeschichte consists of three moments. (1) After the definitive vindication of Palamas’s theology in Byzantium (Tomos of 1368), a long period of almost complete silence ensued, neither Orthodox nor Catholic theologians showing themselves keen on reading his works and discussing their content. (2) The “problem” was revived by Martin Jugie in his articles on Palamas and Palamism for the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, but it was instrumentalized because of considerations pertaining to Church politics. Jugie’s desire to see the “Greeks” come back into the Catholic fold “made” Palamism into a theology incompatible with the Western tradition, identified with the vessel of Truth. On the opposite side, Orthodox theologians such as Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff built on Jugie’s conclusions, arguing that this incompatibility proved the superiority of the Orthodox tradition over the Catholic one, and justified the rejection of Catholic efforts to assimilate “Oriental Christianity.” (3) More contemporary theologians and scholars on both sides seem to oscillate between two mutually exclusive positions: a rediscovery of the dimensions of Palamas’s theology that could eventually be received in the West, and a more radical interpretation of this teaching that continues to pit the Latin West and the Byzantine East against each other. [End Page 626] Let us review Russell’s narrative step by step. I. The Long Historical “Silence” Russell takes the silence into which the discussions around the teaching of Palamas fell as a fact that does not require special explanation.2 Is it not natural that one would discuss a dogma before it is officially proclaimed rather than after? For instance, after the homousios-theology got the upper hand over Arianism at the end of the fourth century, the thrust of theological discussions shifted to Mariology and Christology in the fifth and sixth centuries. But is the silence that Russell has in mind this kind of silence, namely, the silence that follows a dogmatic victory? Russell dedicates much attention...

Looking Back at the Evolution of James Cone’s Theological Anthropology: A Brief Commentary

Reverend Dr. James Hal Cone has unquestionably been a key architect in defining Black liberation theology. Trained in the Western theological tradition at Garrett Theological Seminary, Cone became an expert on the theology of Twentieth-century Swiss-German theologian Karl Barth. Cone’s study of Barth led to his 1965 doctoral dissertation, “The Doctrine of Man in the Theology of Karl Barth,” where he critically examined Barth’s Epistle to the Romans and Church Dogmatics. His contemporaries and more recent African American theologians and religious scholars have questioned the extent to which Karl Barth’s ideas shaped Cone’s Black theology. The purpose of this brief commentary is to review the major ideas in “The Doctrine of Man” and Black Theology and Black Power, his first book, to explore which theological concepts Cone borrows from Barth, if any, and how Cone utilizes them within his articulation of a Black theological anthropology and Black liberation theology.

Theosis in die Oosters-Ortodokse en Westers-Protestantse teologiese debat

Theosis in the Eastern-Orthodox and Western-Protestant theological debate: All major religions agree on one theme, namely they strive to provide an answer regarding the relation with their God. A good relation to God is the way of salvation, because the question about God is an acknowledgement that a human being needs to be in union with God. Some questions and answers are only possible in the relation between God and humankind. The well-known saying from the letter to the Romans (1:17), is typical of such a relation formulated in the Western Protestant debate in forensic style. From the Eastern orthodox theological debate, theosis is used in accordance to what the church father Irenaeus meant: ‘God became human that we might become divine’. This article gives a definition of theosis, sketch the historic background of the concept, discuss salvation in the Western theological tradition, and pays attention to a theosis scriptural basis. Furthermore, attention is also given to Martin Luther and theosis as an indication that his view of salvation was much closer to theosis as was readily accepted in the Western theological debate since the Reformation of the 16th century.

In Counterpoint: Diaspora, Postcoloniality, and Sacramental Theology by Kristine Suna-Koro

Reviewed by: In Counterpoint: Diaspora, Postcoloniality, and Sacramental Theology by Kristine Suna-Koro Chris Ángel In Counterpoint: Diaspora, Postcoloniality, and Sacramental Theology. By Kristine Suna-Koro. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2017. 308 pp. The author is a Latvian-American theologian and a Lutheran pastor, currently teaching at Xavier University Cincinnati. In this work, she is among the first to bring into conversation the sprawling worlds of postcolonial thought and sacramental theology. To this conversation she brings dozens of other contemporary voices, many female, many from Asia. Among the strongest influences on her work are Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Mayra Rivera, and Kevin Irwin. Suna-Koro argues that traditional Western theology, including sacramental theology, is tainted (though not irretrievably) by its association with the violence perpetrated under the imperialism of centuries past. This has affected not only how Christians view sacraments, but also how they view salvation and the relationship of God to humanity. Thus, the Western theological tradition needs to be critically re-examined, which she calls a ressourcement (10). She perceives multiple crises in the church and in the world: a “sacramental crisis” of growing disenchantment with ecclesial rituals, the planetary ecological crisis, and the crisis of widespread injustice. Sacramental theology and postcolonial thought should address these crises; Suna-Koro argues that, done responsibly, each includes an ethical dimension as well as an ecological dimension. She proposes a sacramental worldview which is not limited to denominational or ritual boundaries. To this end, she proposes creation as an ursakrament. Further, she is especially interested in non- dominative relationships, particularly through the metaphors of hybridity, Third Space (a concept from Homi Bhabha), and counterpoint (from music). These metaphors propose relationships that respect the integrity of each participant, that allow for ambiguity, and that are responsive and reciprocal. For example, in her chapter on the Lord’s Supper, she aims to explore how the Lord’s Supper can “model a synergistic imaginary of sacramental power, empowerment, and agency for liberative change—a certain kind of ‘transubstantiation’ ” (257). She draws [End Page 473] on Luther’s writings and the Formula of Concord, specifically the idea of unio sacramentalis, the sacramental union of Christ’s body and blood with the bread and wine, which she sees as representing a hybrid relationality. Acknowledging the historical baggage of “tran-substantiation,” she wants to reclaim the term to discuss change, “an emancipatory matter in postcolonial perspectives” (266). Suna-Koro makes important contributions with this challenging work. She is an extremely careful writer, with precise diction and expansive citations. Her exploration of the complicated definitions of post-coloniality and related terms is especially helpful. Still, there are few concrete examples in her work, save a few details from her experience of the diasporic Latvian Lutheran church. The complexity of her thought makes this a difficult work to approach, perhaps best for specialists or advanced graduate students. Chris Ángel University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana. Copyright © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc

Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought by Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod

Reviewed by: Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought by Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod Thomas Michael (bio) Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod. Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 245 pp. Hardcover $115.00, isbn 978-1-350-08253-3. In the late 1980s, David Hall and Roger Ames first began to champion what they saw as the radical differences between Western and Chinese thought, which they presented with the provocative claim that Chinese philosophy was a tradition without transcendence. Their claim established an enduring framework within which professional research in the field has largely been directed. Regardless of whether their claim is right or wrong, one of its major consequences was to depict Chinese philosophy as, among other things, profoundly nonreligious in the common understanding of the term. This view is also in keeping with more long-standing cultural claims, often coming from the West, that China is a godless civilization, at least with respect to a transcendent creator god, and Chinese philosophy is currently treated as a tradition of respectable naturalism. Not only has this interpretive framework been adopted and absorbed by the greater part of recent scholarship, but there is also a steady stream of academic writings explicitly devoted to considerations of the absence of transcendence in China, sometimes discussed in terms of Chinese metaphysics. The new work, Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought, co-authored by Joshua Brown and Alexus McLeod, is a recent addition to this growing body of literature. However, it is systematically directed at dismantling the claim that China is without transcendence, and it does so by primary reliance on a comparative methodology that seeks to overcome this othering of Chinese civilization as fundamentally different from that of the West; they write, “Our argument, then, is against the dismissal of non-naturalism and transcendence as adequate and helpful ways of understanding early Chinese philosophy” (p. 2). Early Chinese philosophical texts are relentlessly practical and typically written in a comparatively minimalist style that relies more on terse historical or natural allusion than prolix speculative reason. The theological thrusts embedded in their arguments are rarely given free expression and must be deduced indirectly. The outstanding feature of Transcendence and Non-Naturalism is its success in bringing depth and clarity to these sorts of indirectly articulated and semitheological claims concerning transcendence in early Chinese thought that scholars who deny its existence normally disregard or overlook. The book [End Page 161] accomplishes this through its comparative methodology that teases out various conceptions of transcendence at play in the thought of some of the heavyweights of Christian theology, including Augustine, Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius, and John Scotus Eriugena. These figures are used in the attempt to modify current understandings of transcendence in Chinese philosophical works in order to compel a rethinking of the claim concerning the absence of transcendence in early Chinese thought. Chapter 1 (together with the Introduction) discusses the current state of Western scholarship with respect to the pervasiveness of the claim about the absence of transcendence in early Chinese thought. It plainly lays out that in place of transcendence, contemporary scholars in the field normally approach early Chinese philosophy as a strict naturalism. They go on to state that their examination will focus on the Chinese concepts of tian (heaven) and dao and explore certain well-known passages from early Chinese writings to re-evaluate their specific philosophical orientations to transcendence or naturalism. Chapter 2 examines modern understandings of transcendence and naturalism. It argues that common understandings of transcendence are based on the conception of different ontological spheres of reality, or what the authors refer to as “contrastive transcendence,” and that they are the direct product of Enlightenment thinking and, more particularly, deism. They recognize most scholars of early Chinese philosophy as “modern naturalists (who) presuppose a historically unique (even novel) conception of transcendence . . . this deistic conception of transcendence and nature is, in fact, not representative of how transcendence typically functions in non-naturalistic traditions” (p. 2). The authors then begin their discussions of premodern conceptions of transcendence from the Western theological tradition to which they return throughout important sections of the work. They argue...

The Double Character of Cuban Protestantism and Philanthropy

In Cuba and the United States, Protestant institutions exist that are both reflective and nonreflective about their culture’s influence on belief and practice. The case of Cuba sheds light on how Christian churches and voluntary associations operate in an authoritarian regime. Despite the tension and enmity that have typified Cuba’s geopolitical relationship with the United States since the colonial days, cross-cultural Christian philanthropic partnerships exist. The “doble carácter” (double character) of Cuban Protestant churches has grown out of both collaboration with, and resistance to U.S.-style evangelicalism (Arce Valentín 2016). Adaptations of liberation theology, adopted among Cuban Christians, provide an influential counterweight to the mighty Western theological and philanthropic tradition (González 2012). The nature of this engagement influences Cuban civil society, the survival of the Cuban regime, and provides an extreme case for cross-cultural philanthropy worldwide. This socio-historical account utilizes the data collected from personal interviews with Cuban Protestant leaders, primary sources found in the library at the San Cristobal Presbyterian Seminary and Cuban theological journals, and a qualitative analysis of literature on Cuba, Protestants, missions, philanthropy, nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and civil society.

Imaging Nothing: Kierkegaard and the Imago Dei

When considering what makes the human being uniquely human, or how it “images God” within the created order, Søren Kierkegaard does not turn to Genesis 1:27, the privileged passage of the Western theological tradition. He turns instead to Matthew 6, a passage in which the reader is instructed to “consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.” In several rounds of “upbuilding discourses” on this passage, Kierkegaard develops an “apophatic” approach to the imago Dei. The imaging of God that the human being is called to enact does not consist in any self-possessed capability, nor does it set the human being at the top of a hierar chically ordered creation. Rather, the human being images God only when it “becomes nothing” through an unconditional affirmation of existence that lets go of the need to posit a “tomorrow.”

Classical Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering

In the Western theological tradition, nonhuman suffering was not perceived as a “live” problem until the early modern period. Constrained by classical theism, the early modern figures of René Descartes, Anne Conway, and G.W. Leibniz developed three distinct approaches to animal theodicy based upon their unique reconceptualization(s) of the world. These three approaches, (1) denial of animal suffering (Descartes); (2) cosmic fall and vale of soul-making (Conway); and (3) necessary suffering of creation (Leibniz), remain the prevailing theodical options with respect to animal suffering in contemporary theological reflection. In light of the limitations of such theodicies, an engagement with the Christian theological narrative provides a framework for revisiting classical theism in relation to animal suffering.

PRESOKRATSKE ANTICIPACIJE NE-ANTROPOCENTRIZMA

Zastupnici dovođenja u pitanje dominantno antropocentričke vizure sveta sve glasnije postavljaju (bio)etičke zahteve za novim rešavanjem relacije između ljudi i drugih bića, govoreći da je sleđenje zapadne filozofske i teološke tradicije uzrokovalo sadašnju ekološku, i ne samo ekološku, krizu. Novi odnos pokušava se uspostaviti relativizovanjem razlike između čoveka i ne-ljudskih živih bića, pridavanjem, često, ne-ljudskim živim bićima specifično ljudskih svojstava i kategorija poput dostojanstva, moralnog statusa i prava. Autor u radu istražuje antecedente stanovišta koja odstupaju od glavnog toka zapadne filozofije, u smislu neantropocentričkog proširenja etike, i nalazi ih u fragmentima prvih filozofa prirode, u kojima se apostrofira neka vrsta pomešanosti telesnog i duševnog elementa, odnosno srodstvo svih varijeteta života. Pitagora, Parmenid, Empedokle, Anaksagora i Demokrit su, u tom kontekstu, određene životinje i biljke smatrali za svete tj. bili su na stanovištu da su one, u izvesnom smislu, odgovorne za ono što čine i da, osim što mogu da se pokreću po prirodnoj žudnji, da dišu, osećaju, budu tužne i vesele, imaju i dušu, moć rasuđivanja, svest, sposobnost mišljenja, razum i um. Najviše kontroverzi, po mišljenju autora, izaziva namera da se u savremenom ambijentu, koji je ne samo temporalno nego i duhovno udaljen od presokratske epohe, opravdano staranje o zaštiti ne-ljudskih živih bića pomeša sa pokušajem uvlačenja životinja i biljaka u područje par excellence ljudskog moralnog fenomena. Njima se, u tom kontekstu, pokušava priznati nekakav moralni status odnosno pripisati zajedno sa ljudima slične ili identične emotivne, duhovne i intelektualne karakteristike. Teškoće se, konačno, ogledaju u tome što jedna takva (bio)etika ne može postaviti i opravdati moralne principe koji bi se odnosili samo na životinje i biljke, s obzirom da se i dalje ispravno smatra da je čovek jedino živo biće koje može moralno delati.

The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Western Theological Tradition: Underdeveloped or Misunderstood?

The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Western Theological Tradition: Underdeveloped or Misunderstood?