Michel de Certeau's keys of political discernment in May 1968: The theological-spiritual assumptions that informed his tools of analysis

This article seeks to identify the theoretical tools that supported Michel de Certeau's political discernment during the crisis of May 1968 in France. De Certeau's ability to elucidate the novelty and complexity of this event is linked to the intertwining of his experiences as a historian, traveller (voyageur), and Christian (specifically a Jesuit). De Certeau's articulation of a 'theology of difference' allowed him to construct the intellectual and spiritual tools that enabled a lucid discernment of May 1968. Through this theology, derived from negative theology, de Certeau made the experience of faith operative at a moment of cultural crisis. The article also analyses possibilities involved in the ‘rupture’, that is, the fracture that is implied in modernity; in the notion of an event that highlights the deficiency of language, its incapacity to establish ‘a truthful communication’ in society; and the recognition of the poetic dimension of speech, which is capable of interweaving speech and action. The May 1968 event invites these elements mutually to redefine themselves.     

ERNAN MCMULLIN ON CONTINGENCY,COSMIC PURPOSE,AND THE ATEMPORALITY OF THE CREATOR

This article reviews, and offers supportive reflections on, the main points of Ernan McMullin's provocative 1998 article, “Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution,’’ reprinted in this issue of Zygon. In it he addresses the important science‐theology issue of how the Creator's purpose and intention to assure the emergence of human beings is consonant with the radical contingency of the evolutionary process. After discussing cosmic and biological evolution and critically summarizing recent solutions to this question by Keith Ward, John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Alvin Plantinga, and others, who presuppose in different ways that God is subject to time, McMullin compellingly argues for the traditional position, that God is unconditioned by time, and this enables God to work purposefully through contingency, randomness, and chance just as easily as through law‐like regularity.     

THEOLOGY FROM A FRACTURED VISTA: SUSAN NEIMAN'S EVIL IN MODERN THOUGHT

Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman's account of the intellectual trajectory of modernity, employs the trope “homeless” to articulate deep difficulties that affirmations of divine transcendence and of human capacities to acknowledge transcendence face in a contemporary context thoroughly marked by fragmentation, fragility, and contingency. The “hospitality” of the Incarnation, which makes a fractured world a place for divine welcoming of the human in all its contingency and brokenness, is proposed as locus for theological engagement with Neiman's appropriation of a Kantian sense of hope as the readiness to resist evil in a world seemingly bereft of welcome.     

The 2014 Agreed Statement on Christology of the Churches of the Anglican Communion and the Oriental Orthodox Churches: a Catholic review

This article discusses the sources of the 2014 Agreed Statement on Christology, which include not only the 433 Formula of Union and the teaching of St Cyril of Alexandria but also some language from the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Second Council of Constantinople (553), and the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681). It also examines the rejection of Eutychianism and Nestorianism, as well as the Anglican Christology represented by Richard Hooker and the firm connection drawn between the hypostatic union and Christ’s work of salvation. The article also presents the text in comparison and contrast with two Christological declarations shared by the Roman Catholic Church and the Coptic Pope Shenouda III (1973) and the Assyrian Church of the East (1994).     

In the Presence of Love: The Pneumatological Realization of the Economy: Yves Congar's Le Mystère du Temple

Abstract:   Yves Congar's The Mystery of the Temple develops many of the themes that will be more fully worked out in his later pneumatology, particularly I Believe in the Holy Spirit . Considered against its context, Congar's pneumatology can be seen to be central to his particular strategy of ressourcement. In particular, Congar deploys pneumatology to preserve the theological connection between Christology and ecclesiology, and so offers a version of 'Spirit Christology' which avoids the pitfalls usually associated with such a position. This use of pneumatology in Congar's vision can be traced back to his account of the particular hypostasis of the Spirit in the immanent Trinity.     

Correlation between Changes in Stress-Induced Corticosterone Secretion and GR mRNA Levels

The current study was conducted to determine the potential relationship between stress-induced corticosterone secretion and corticosteroid receptor mRNA levels after 5 days of intermittent stress. In particular, we were interested in the rate at which animals terminate a stress response, and how this termination may be altered by repeated stress. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to either 5 days of restraint stress or 5 days of an unpredictable stress paradigm. Restraint-stress induced corticosterone secretion was measured on Days 1 and 5 in both groups, and animals were killed on Day 6. Glucocorticoid receptor (GR), and mineralocorticoid (MR) mRNA levels were determined using in-situ hybridization techniques. Five days of restraint stress caused an habituation of the plasma corticosterone response to stress measured 60 and 90 min post-stress initiation; this pattern of corticosterone secretion was not observed in the animals subjected to unpredictable stress. Five days of either stress paradigm did not alter MR mRNA levels measured within the hippocampus or GR mRNA levels within the hippocampus or the medial parvocellular division of the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (mpPVN). However, an individual's GR mRNA levels measured within the CA1/2 region of the hippocampus and the mpPVN were significantly correlated with the degree of habituation of the corticosterone response to stress measured on Day 5. This suggests that an increase in the rate of termination of the stress response and levels of GR within the hippocampus and mpPVN may be functionally related.     

Action and emotion in everyday life

This study of naturally occurring behaviour employed a "beeper technique" to investigate the actions carried out by 152 subjects in eight different groups, viz. adult students, employed students who were also parents, unemployed, art students, doctoral students, alcoholics, retired people and a control group. Actions were sampled for seven subsequent days, five times per day between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. at randomly selected occasions. Each action was rated on a number of variables, shortly after it was sampled (median delay approximately 10 min). Some of the findings were: Time allocation corresponded well with national estimates. Being under situational control was highly aversive. Instrumental and consummatory orientations correlated positively. The background variables were, on the whole, only rather weakly related to action ratings, but it was found that women and retired persons tended to report a higher level of well-being.