Innovative Catholicism and the Human Condition gives an anthropological account of a progressive religious movement in the Roman Catholic Church that is attempting to reconcile religious conviction ...and reason, and, ergo, modify the human condition. Investigation is given to a representative group of this movement, "Innovative Catholics," who are endeavouring to maintain the momentum for change which began in the 1960s and 1970s. They now find themselves caught between traditional notions of religion and a secularised society, while trying to reconcile these polarising forces to find a pathway forward. While ethnographic fieldwork for this research was conducted in Australia, this movement is to be found across the Western world. The research is framed by the question posed by Jürgen Habermas, who asks whether the democratic constitutional state is able to renew itself, and recognises a benefit in learning from religion. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, subsequently Pope Benedict XVI, responds by asserting the need for a common ethical basis and limits on reason. This latter position, however, remains problematic for Innovative Catholics who are conscious of history and culture. The research explores how Innovative Catholics, who in taking the middle position, inform this dialectic on secularization through their ideas and practices about the human condition.
Clothed in the Body Hunt, Hannah
2012, 20160523, 2016-05-31, 2012-07-01
eBook
Hunt examines the apparent paradox that Jesus' earthly existence and post resurrection appearances are experienced through consummately physical actions and attributes yet some ascetics within the ...Christian tradition appear to seek to deny the value of the human body, to find it deadening of spiritual life. Hunt considers why the Christian tradition as a whole has rarely managed more than an uneasy truce between the physical and the spiritual aspects of the human person. Why is it that the 'Church' has energetically argued, through centuries of ecumenical councils, for the dual nature of Christ but seems still unwilling to accept the full integration of physical and spiritual within humanity, despite Gregory of Nazianzus's comment that 'what has not been assumed has not been redeemed'?
Dating back to 1785, the Moravian “Instructions for the Choir Helpers” contain detailed advice for the spiritual counselors of the men, women, and children in Moravian congregations on ...how to address concerns about one’s body and soul. In this volume, Katherine Faull presents an annotated, translated edition of the original German manuscript.
In monthly “speakings”—regularly scheduled dialogues between the choir helper and individual church members to determine whether the congregant could be admitted to communion—men and women received spiritual guidance on topics as varied as the physical manifestations of puberty, sexual attraction, frequency of intercourse, infant care, and bereavement. From their founding in 1722, the Moravians were remarkable for their positive evaluation of the body; they held that the natural manifestations of masculinity and femininity were integral elements of spiritual consciousness. The “Instructions for the Choir Helpers”—which were highly confidential at the time and passed on only by permission of the church administration—reflect that philosophy, providing insights into an interpretation of the body as a holistic system that should be cared for as a vessel for the spirit.
A unique resource for scholars of religious history, gender studies, and colonial American church history, Faull’s translation of this fascinating set of documents provides an unprecedented glimpse into a period of foundational change in Moravian history.
Children of God Newey, Edmund
2012, 20160523, 2016-05-31, 2012-11-01
eBook
Children of God uncovers the significant, but largely unnoticed, place of the child as a prototype of human flourishing in the work of four authors spanning the modern period. Shedding new light on ...the role of the child figure in modernity, and in theological responses to it, the book makes an important contribution to the disciplines of historical theology, theology and literature and ecumenical theology. Through a careful exploration of the continuities and differences in the work of Thomas Traherne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Charles Péguy, it traces the ways in which their distinctive responses to human childhood structured the broader pattern of their theology, showing how they reached beyond the confines of academic theology and exercised a lasting influence on their literary and cultural context.
Early Christians spoke about themselves as resident aliens, strangers, and sojourners, asserting that otherness is a fundamental part of being Christian. But why did they do so and to what ends? How ...did Christians' claims to foreign status situate them with respect to each other and to the larger Roman world as the new movement grew and struggled to make sense of its own boundaries?Aliens and Sojournersargues that the claim to alien status is not a transparent one. Instead, Benjamin Dunning contends, it shaped a rich, pervasive, variegated discourse of identity in early Christianity. Resident aliens and foreigners had long occupied a conflicted space of both repulsion and desire in ancient thinking. Dunning demonstrates how Christians and others in antiquity capitalized on this tension, refiguring the resident alien as being of a compelling doubleness, simultaneously marginal and potent. Early Christians, he argues, used this refiguration to render Christian identity legible, distinct, and even desirable among the vast range of social and religious identities and practices that proliferated in the ancient Mediterranean. Through close readings of ancient Christian texts such as Hebrews, 1 Peter, theShepherd of Hermas, and theEpistle to Diognetus, Dunning examines the markedly different ways that Christians used the language of their own marginality, articulating a range of options for what it means to be Christian in relation to the Roman social order. His conclusions have implications not only for the study of late antiquity but also for understanding the rhetorics of religious alienation more broadly, both in the ancient world and today.
Humans are created in the image of God, yet by choosing to rebel against God we become unfaithful bearers of his image. But Jesus, who is the image of God, restores the divine image in us. At the ...intersection of theology and culture, these essays offer a unified vision of what it means to be truly human and created in the divine image in the world today.
Bioart or transgenic art is a new and rapidly developing form of artistic activity that uses genetic engineering techniques to create a new and unique form of life. The article explores the creation ...and manipulation of life through the examples of three types of transgenic art projects: works by Eduardo Kac, performance, and the creation of semi-living organisms. The main aim of the article is to present the phenomenon of bioart against the background of fundamental dogmatic truths concerning creation and man, and then to draw theological conclusions. The addressed issues concern interspecies boundaries, bioartists’ interference with life, and man’s place in the world. An analysis and reflection of this kind reveals the transcendental nature of life in terms of its creatureliness in relation to God, places fundamental truths at the forefront, refers to theological and biblical terminology, and shows theological anthropology as the most appropriate place to understand the essence of life.
What does God's creation of humanity through the process of evolution mean for human flourishing? The emerging field of evolutionary psychology remains controversial, perhaps especially among ...Christians. Yet according to Justin Barrett and Pamela Ebstyne King it can be a powerful tool for understanding human nature and our distinctively human purpose. Thriving with Stone Age Minds provides an introduction to evolutionary psychology, explaining key concepts like hyper-sociality, information gathering, and self-control. Combining insights from evolutionary psychology with resources from the Bible and Christian theology, Barrett and King focus fresh attention on the question, What is human flourishing? When we understand how humans still bear the marks of our evolutionary past, new light shines on some of the most puzzling features of our minds, relationships, and behaviors. One key insight of evolutionary psychology is how humans both adapt to and then alter our environments, or niches. In fact, we change our world faster than our minds can adapt-and then gaps in our fitness emerge. In effect, humans are now attempting to thrive in modern contexts with Stone Age minds. By integrating scientific evidence with wisdom from theological anthropology, we can learn to close up nature-niche gaps and thrive, becoming more what God has created us to be.
Black theology tends to be a theology about no-body. Though one might assume that black and womanist theology have already given significant attention to the nature and meaning of black bodies as a ...theological issue, this inquiry has primarily taken the form of a focus on issues relating to liberation, treating the body in abstract terms rather than focusing on the experiencing of a material, fleshy reality. By focusing on the body as a physical entity and not just a metaphorical one, Pinn offers a new approach to theological thinking about race, gender, and sexuality.According to Pinn, the body is of profound theological importance. In this first text on black theology to take embodiment as its starting point and its goal, Pinn interrogates the traditional source materials for black theology, such as spirituals and slave narratives, seeking to link them to materials such as photography that highlight the theological importance of the body. Employing a multidisciplinary approach spanning from the sociology of the body and philosophy to anthropology and art history, Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought pushes black theology to the next level.
InJews, Gentiles, and Other Animals, Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Talmud's most scandalous tractate, to uncover the hidden architecture of this classic ...work of Jewish religious thought. She proposes a new way of reading the Talmud that brings it into conversation with the humanities, including animal studies, the new materialisms, and other areas of critical theory that have been reshaping the understanding of what it is to be a human being.
Even as it comments on the the rabbinic laws that govern relations between Jews and non-Jews, Avoda Zara is also an attempt to reflect on what all people share in common, and on how humans fit into a larger universe of animals and things. As is typical of the Talmud in general, it proceeds by incorporating a vast and confusing array of apparently digressive materials, but Wasserman demonstrates that there is a whole greater than the sum of the parts, a sustained effort to explore human identity and difference.
In centuries past, Avoda Zara has been a flashpoint in Jewish-Christian relations. It was partly due to its content that the Talmud was subject to burning and censorship by Christian authorities. Wasserman develops a twenty-first-century reading of the tractate that aims to reposition it as part of a broader quest to understand what connects human beings to each other and to the world around them.
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