The Soul of Trans‐Humanism

Abstract: This article tackles the question: how should Christian theologians think about the human soul in light of the challenges posed by the new emphasis in brain‐mind identity in neuroscience and trasn‐humanism? Ways of improving human nature through medical therapy, genetic enhancement, and trans‐human cybernetic immortality are explored; and their assumptions are correlated with a spectrum of Christian theories of the soul such as substance dualism, emergent dualism, nonreductive physicalism, and materialism. Finally, the article concludes that the human person should be thought of relationally, and the dimension that is decisive for resurrection is the relation of the soul to God.     

Eternal Life in Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith

This article advocates that some form of personal immortality is not only taught in F.D.E. Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre but is also necessary for the coherence of the same work. The combination of a naturalized account of redemption, a commitment to universal salvation and the realist observation that some never know Christ in this life causes Schleiermacher to posit a certain but content‐free afterlife to account for the discrepancy.     

The Trinity in Christian‐Muslim Conversation

Abstract :  Christians need to recognize more fully the force of Muslim arguments on behalf of the oneness of God against the doctrine of the Trinity. Christians could benefit from the Islamic concept of shirk , proscribing the association of something that is not God in the honor and respect due to God alone. Christian trinitarian theology may be improved thereby; and certainly Christian‐Muslim conversation will be enriched.     

The Apostolic Faith Mission

The Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) is a classical Pentecostal church born in May 1908, influenced by the April 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. It was also born two years before the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. Between then and now, the AFM followed a lone mission and evangelism journey outside the World Missionary conferences and the conferences on World Mission and Evangelism. Although the AFM grew from South Africa to six continents, its growth was encumbered by racist and colonial perspectives of mission and evangelism. Its first wave of missions was led by Indigenous South Africans at the Revival in Doornfontein and those from the neighbouring countries who worked in mines in South Africa. The second wave included organized missions by white South Africans, who unfortunately had to pull back from Southern African countries because of intensified struggles for liberation. The third wave was by local congregations that formed hubs for missions to specific countries (India and Pakistan). The fourth wave was by Zimbabweans who left their country because of difficult economic conditions. The isolation of the black churches in South Africa based on the influence of apartheid policies allowed black members to develop their own local ecumenical perspectives, which enabled them to have a broader understanding of mission and evangelism. This helped the church to move into the ecumenical world following the unity of the church.     

Closer to the Shifting Ground: The Rise of Relationship in God‐Talk

Abstract :  The article argues that God‐talk has changed significantly over the last fifty years and identifies the rise of the notion of relationship (reflecting postmodern dissatisfaction with modernity) as a key factor in this change. That factor is cited in Trinitarian studies, the Creator's relationship with and to the creatures, the science and religion conversation, the connection with context, and the increasing recognition of the adjectival character of theology. In closing the author looks ahead to further relational work in soteriology, anthropology and metaphysics.     

The Atheist Surge: Faith in Science,Secularism, and Atheism

This essay examines the recent publication of seven books that attack faith, belief, and religion and affirm atheism; inquires why they are appearing now; explores the meaning of atheism; and examines the history of atheism in the Western tradition. It is suggested that all people have worldviews (whether they are aware of them or not), including the atheists, and that cases can be made for most worldviews, but that no worldview can be proven to anyone who does not already affirm it. Therefore atheists are in the same situation as believers in other worldviews.     

Calvin in the Context of Lutheran Consolidation1

Abstract

This study investigates the perception of Calvin and his theology in the polarizing domain of confessional reinforcement, and what image of him was formed and conveyed by the heirs of Wittenberg theology and later Lutheranism respectively. Historical circumstances and associated theological issues are taken into account, with a three-phase model emerging. Its interfaces are marked by the Zurich Consensus (1549) and by the experience of electoral Saxon ‘crypto-Calvinism’ in the 1570s. Drawing on the relevant sources, the article highlights issues specific to Lutherans in the interaction with Calvin and his doctrine. It shows how Calvin, who in the pre-confessional period was regarded as a distant kindred spirit, became increasingly discredited on the issuing of the Zurich Consensus and by the interventions of Joachim Westphal; how, apart from heated discussion between both sides on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, christology increasingly took centre stage, accentuating the lines of demarcation; and finally how relatively late on admittedly, the person of Calvin himself (if not his personal integrity) also became the focus of polemics and apologetics.     

"Our Most Serious Deficiency-Disease"–Reason, Faith and the Rediscoveryof Sensibility

The essay addresses the complex cultural historical claim that with modernity the earlier unity of reason and sensibility underwent a dissociation that has important consequences for our current predicament and for our present understanding of the relationship between reason, faith and sensibility. Three case studies (Géza Ottlik, T. S. Eliot and Blaise Pascal) are examined in order to establish the nature of the divide and provide an archaeology (with the help of Pascal) of one of its first conceptualisations as well as of an early attempt to heal the growing fissure between what is termed by Pascal as reason and the heart. The second part examines current thought concerning the need to enlarge the narrow Enlightenment conception of reason and the recent call to re-envision its theological contours. The argument is then made that the same procedure should be applied to the theologically long-neglected domain of human sensibility. Theology is registered as also being accountable for internalising and perpetuating the cultural dissociation due to its failure to preserve the traditional theological contours of affectivity and its naivety in leaving the exploration of this domain entirely to the competence of secular philosophy.     

The Great War and Christian Faith: The Firsthand Accounts of Three Priests in France

In this essay I explore three firsthand accounts of religious faith from The First World War: Forsaken by Private Orr, The Letters of John Ayscough to His Mother, and The Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier Priest 1914‐1919, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. These three priests provide us with a glimpse of how faithful people responded to very challenging situations. Private Orr came into the war as an ordained priest, but lost his faith after two years of fighting. Monsignor Ayscough worked mainly with wounded soldiers, offering them pastoral care in many different settings. Teilhard de Chardin served as a stretcher‐bearer on the frontlines of many fierce battles, earning the respect he would need to talk to soldiers about their faith in the moments just before they went ‘over the top.’ In a concluding section, I try to draw out some implications of their stories for pastoral care today.     

He Came down from Heaven: The Preexistence of Christ and the Christian Faith – Douglas McCready

Book reviewed:
He Came down from Heaven: The Preexistence of Christ and the Christian Faith , Douglas McCready, InterVarsity Press 2005 (0-8308-2774-9), 348 pp., pb $26.00     

The God Who Believes: Faith, Doubt, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ – Christian D. Kettler

Book reviewed:
The God Who Believes: Faith, Doubt, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ , Christian D. Kettler, Cascade 2005 (1-59752-188-4), xiv + 194 pp., pb $24.00