What is the proper relationship between human beings and the more-than-human world? This philosophical question, which underlies vast environmental crises, forces us to investigate the tension ...between our extraordinary powers, which seem to set us apart from nature, even above it, and our thoroughgoing ordinariness, as revealed by the evolutionary history we share with all life. The contributors to this volume ask us to consider whether the anxiety of unheimlichkeit, which in one form or another absorbed so much of twentieth-century philosophy, might reveal not our homelessness in the cosmos but a need for a fundamental belongingness and implacement in it.
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.
...in the reading of Thomas, “rather than simply focusing upon the question, ‘what is human eikon?’ Gregory depicts the human eikon in her day-to-day existence; this involves struggling with the ...‘world,’ ‘flesh,’ and the ‘devil’” (154). The book is structured in five chapters, which seem to retrace a tale in three acts: (a) the origins, in which the doctrine of creation “in Christ” is expounded: (1) “Being an Image of God,” (2) “Jesus Christ, the Identical Image”; (b) the development, in which we see how human reality differs from the purely spiritual: (3) “Creation of the Image of God”; (c) the decisive test, thanks to which vulnerability and the eikon’s restoration emerge in sequence: (4) “The Image of God and the Devil,” and finally the overcoming of the conflict in the happy ending: (5) “Theosis and the Divine Image.” ...ontology and soteriology are united in the vision of the human eikon as a participation in the “identical Eikon” that is Christ.
The concept of fiṭra (primordial human nature or natural disposition) plays an important role in Islamic theological anthropology. It is first and foremost a scriptural concept, being present both ...within the Qur’an (Q. 30:30) and the Hadith (especially the hadith ‘every child is born upon the fiṭra …’). The primary sense of fiṭra is that the devotion to God characterizing the ethical monotheism of Islam is in some sense an inbuilt capacity or inclination of the human being. The key texts of Islamic scripture relate fiṭra to the purity in belief and practice associated with the Abrahamic legacy and the Prophet Muḥammad’s renewal thereof. Though the impact of early controversies concerning the divine decree can be felt in some of the related hadiths and their theological reception, the prophetic core is free from strong predestinationism. There is a significant dividing line in the Islamic theological tradition over whether to link the interpretation of fiṭra to a metaphysical primordial covenant between God and all human beings (usually connected to Qur’anic verse 7:172) or if emphasis is to be placed instead on human natural capacities within the world. In the former case, the human religious experience is fundamentally one of recall and return, whereas in the latter it is one of instinctual and intellectual realization. This difference in interpretation impacts the epistemic dimension of fiṭra, its role in knowing God and making moral valuations, as well as the way that it is framed within the social lives of Muslims.
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.
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.
Children of God in the World is a textbook of theological anthropology structured in four parts. The first attempts to clarify the relationship between theology, philosophy and science in their ...respective approaches to anthropology, and establishes the fundamental principle of the text, stated in Vatican II's Gaudium et spes, n. 22, "Christ manifests man to man." The second part provides a historical overview of the doctrine of grace: in Scripture (especially the teaching of the book of Genesis on humans 'made in the image of God', as well as Paul and John), among the Fathers (in particular the oriental doctrine of 'divinization' and Augustine), during the Middle Ages (especially Thomas Aquinas) and the Reformation period (centered particularly on Luther and the Council of Trent), right up to modern times. The third part of the text, the central one, provides a systematic understanding of Christian grace in terms of the God's life present in human believers by which they become children of God, disciples, friends and brothers of Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit. This section also provides a reflection on the theological virtues (faith, hope and charity), on the relationship between grace and human freedom, on the role of the Church and Christian apostolate in the communication of grace, and on the need humans have for divine grace. After considering the relationship between the natural and the supernatural order, the fourth and last part deals with different philosophical aspects of the human condition, in the light of Christian faith: the union between body and soul, humans as free, historical, social, sexual and working beings. The last chapter concludes with a consideration of the human person, Christianity's greatest and most enduring contribution to human thought.
This research guide introduces scholars to the field of Reformed theology, focusing on works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the English language. Martha Moore-Keish explores ...twenty-one major theological themes, with attention to classical as well as current works.
Called the "Confucius from the West", the Italian Jesuit Giulio Aleni presented in the final years of the Ming dynasty the biological and sensitive dimensions of the human soul under the form of a ...fascinating dialogue.
Theological Anthropology, 500 years after Martin Luther gathers contributions on Martin Luther's views of human existence and human beings, as well as Orthodox perspectives on Luther's insights and ...on key themes of Christian theological anthropology.
