Discipleship and Spirituality from a Christian Perspective

Spirituality is an important aspect of being a human. One may approach this topic from a purely psychological or religious perspective. In this paper, it is argued that spirituality as defined from a purely psychological perspective is inadequate to capture the depth of this human experience because it misses the core of spirituality—discipleship. Following Foster’s (1998) Streams of Living Water, it will be argued that discipleship is the core of Christian spirituality, and each of these streams provides an important context for fostering one’s relationship to the transcendent.     

Five Attitudes Toward Nature and Technology from a Christian Perspective1

Challenged by Lynn White's sharp criticism of Christianity's responsibility for earth's ecological crisis, both Ian Barbour and Philip Hefner have proposed theological anthropologies based upon the imago Dei that supports an ecological ethic. Russell, while supporting the ecological ethic, turns not to anthropology but rather to eschatology and the proleptic vision of a new creation.     

Socio-cultural invisibility and belonging: Latin American migrants in the north of England

This paper explores the multiple and simultaneous senses of belonging of Latin Americans in the north of England, a sparse migrant population characterised by a high degree of socio-cultural invisibility, i.e. lack of official recognition and limited cultural/ethnic organisation. It draws on a project conducted with 10 Latin American and Latino British families (totalling 30 adults and dependent children of 8–18 years of age) and 14 other informants and stakeholders in the Yorkshire and Greater Manchester regions. The paper analyses the senses of everyday belonging of the adult participants and the role that conditions of socio-cultural invisibility play in their experiences. Significant here are the lack of ethno-cultural local spaces and reluctance to embrace pan-ethnic identifications, which bring to the fore the relevance of other local social contexts and of transnational ties as sites of everyday belonging. It is argued that by paying attention to the emotions and emotional compromises that constitute migrants' senses of belonging, it is possible to develop nuanced insights into the diversity of ways in which migrants experience processes of incorporation and combine bonds to sending and receiving societies.     

“Towards a Global Vision of the Church”

After the publication of The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) in 2013, the major task and challenge for the Faith and Order Commission's Study Group II has been the progress of the multilateral ecumenical dialogue on ecclesiology. The two subgroups of Study Group II have been working in close cooperation with each other, focusing on two major ways to achieve this progress. The focus of Subgroup 2 has been to harvest the fruits of the official responses to TCTCV. This is being done by the collection and analysis of the official responses to TCTCV, the identification of some key themes and issues that emerge from them, and the evaluation of how they point to the next steps. So far 74 responses have been received; however, geographically speaking, there has been essentially no response from the global South (there have been no responses from Africa, no responses from Latin America, and one from Asia); and, denominationally speaking, roughly 10 percent of the responses come from churches or streams that have not been part of the “traditional” ecumenical movement. Nevertheless, the latter regions and denominational families are crucial: they represent the largest and fastest‐growing part of global Christianity, and thus it is impossible to have a really “universal” and contemporary‐sensitive approach to ecclesiology without substantial input from them. Many of them have also not always been clearly or strongly part of the ecclesiological conversation before TCTCV, and thus it is even more important to include them from now on, and be enriching the multilateral ecclesiological conversation with their contributions as well. Hence, the focus of Subgroup 1 has been to broaden the table of ecclesiological dialogue, by getting into more and wider conversations with ecclesiological perspectives from regions (especially from Asia, Africa, and Latin America), denominational families (e.g., evangelical, Pentecostal, Independent churches, etc.), and forms of being church (e.g., movements, new monasticism, online churches, etc.) “which have not always been clearly or strongly part of discussions on the way to TCTCV, and whose understandings of ecclesiology we want to discover and to enter into dialogue with” (Caraiman minutes, p. 55; cf. Krakow report p. 1).     

The influence of relational complexity and strategy selection on children's reasoning in the Latin Square Task

The present study focused on children's deductive reasoning when performing the Latin Square Task, an experimental task designed to explore the influence of relational complexity. Building on Birney, Halford, and Andrew's (2006) research, we created a version of the task that minimized nonrelational factors and introduced new categories of items. The results of two experiments conducted with school-aged children yielded an apparent dilution of complexity effects and suggest that specific inferential strategies can reduce the relational complexity that children need to process. A theoretical account is proposed emphasizing the influence of adaptive selection of strategies that mediate processing capacity constraints in reasoning development.     

Ecclesiology and Missiology: Reflections on Two Recent Documents from the World Council of Churches

In 2013 the World Council of Churches published two important documents, one on the church and one on mission. Beginning with the conviction that ecclesiology has to be missiological and missiology ecclesiological, this article reads each document from the basic perspective of the other. This reading is followed by a constructive critique from the author's perspective as a Roman Catholic missionary ecclesiologist.     

The Networking of Differences That Makes a Difference: Theology and the Unity of the Church

Abstract : What does the church mean when it confesses through the Creeds its oneness? My aim is to reflect on how and why theology needs to bring to the fore a hidden dimension in the discourse on the unity of the church, that is, its tendency to fall into a “solid” and “totalizing” disciplinary technology, i.e., an ideology. I will approach the theme following these basic theological pointers: (a) a biblical primary symbol as it emerges to unveil a new existence and practice—Paul's metaphor of the body in 1 Corinthians 12; (b) a secondary symbol through which the church understood itself to be lodged—the trinitarian understanding of being as a communicative relationship; (c) the regulative principle of law and promise as guiding a discursive practice that supports different levels of decentering and centering that signals a breakthrough of the eschaton—Luther's understanding of law and gospel. These overlapping theological dimensions allow a different metaphorization of the oneness and unity of the church.     

Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists

Early Muslims wrote extensively about human nature and called it Ilm-al Nafsiat or self-knowledge. In many cases, their works seem to be the original ideas for many modern day psychological theories and practices. What is interesting however is that a lot of what the early scholars wrote was blended with Islamic philosophy and religious ideas. This paper covers major contributions of prominent early Muslim scholars to psychology and outlines the challenges faced by today's Muslims in adapting to the Western theories. It also offers a few recommendations on the indigenization of psychology for Muslim societies interested in seeking the Islamic perspective on human behaviors.     

Ethics of Globalization and the AIDS Crisis from a Jewish Perspective

This essay explores what Jewish ethics has to say about globalization in relation to the AIDS crisis. Special attention is paid to the consequences in affirming current intellectual trends to transcend traditional limits in both society and thought for rethinking traditional Jewish values. The discussion proceeds from two presuppositions. The first is that there is an intimate connection between ethics, science, and politics. The second is that the history of Jewish ethics involves three distinct forms that are generally correlated but rarely identical in content and moral judgment. These three forms are law, wisdom or virtue, and covenant. The discussion considers related issues of accidental connections in time between the bubonic plague and Zionism and between AIDS and homosexuality in relation to moral–theological issues related to divine providence and distributive justice.     

Reading Education and the Limits of Reason from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Factor structure and behavioural correlates of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised [PCL-R] in a Brazilian prisoner sample

The present study examines the reliability, factor structure, and criterion-related validity of Hare (2003) Revised Psychopathy Checklist [PCL-R] in a Latin American forensic context. Brazilian male inmates (124) were administered the PCL-R, along with relevant subscales of an inventory of normal personality [Personality Factorial Inventory], an intelligence scale [Standard Progressive Matrices], and a semi-structured interview based in DSM IV. Criminal offence records were obtained from prison files. Several theoretical factorial structures for the PCL-R were tested and compared. A bifactor model with three factors, one general factor reflecting the overlap across all items, and two independent subfactors reflecting the unique covariation among particular groups of items, shows the better fit. Overall scores on the PCL-R correlated with the number of criminal offenses committed by participants. No significant correlations were found between PCL-R scores and personality or intelligence measures. It was concluded that the PCL-R is a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of psychopathy in the Brazilian male forensic population.     

Intentionality and Presence: On the Intrinsic Of-ness of Consciousness from a Transcendental-Phenomenological Perspective

This paper discusses the nature of consciousness?? intrinsic intentionality from a transcendental-phenomenological viewpoint. In recent philosophy of mind the essentially intentional character of consciousness has become obscured because the latter is predominantly understood in terms of ??qualia?? or the ??what-it-is-like-ness?? of mental states and it is hard to see why such subjective ??feels??, of all things, could bestow states with objective reference. As the paper attempts to demonstrate, this is an inadequate understanding of consciousness, which should instead be defined in terms of presence. Consciousness essentially takes place as presence-of, i.e., consists in something coming to appearance. This presence-of is not only a fundamental, irreducible phenomenon, but also in a radical sense un-naturalisable. Naturalism only knows ??nature??, as the world of objects, and the question of intentionality then seems to be how certain inner-worldly objects can be ??representations?? of other inner-worldly objects. In fact, no object is ever intrinsically ??about?? anything. This is exclusively the nature of subjectivity qua consciousness, which is not an object alongside other objects but rather exists as the manifestation of objects.     

Breaking up with Jesus: a phenomenological exploration of the experience of deconversion from an Evangelical Christian faith to Atheism

This study examines the experience of deconversion from an Evangelical Christian faith to Atheism in the UK. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six participants and the data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The resulting superordinate themes emerged: Process of Deconversion; Post Deconversion Issues; What Helped and Did Not Help. The findings are supportive of similar research conducted on deconversion but are from the UK, rather than from a largely American, perspective. The underlying reason for deconversion is found to be cognitive dissonance and, as such, deconversion is a rational and intellectual process. Helping professionals need to convey a non-judgemental attitude, being understanding, sympathetic, supportive and kind.     

生态伦理视野中的儒道思想

儒道二家提出的生态伦理思想构成了传统伦理生态文明观的核心,他们在生态环境问题上表现出的智慧和远见卓识,直至今日令我们赞叹不已。这些深邃的思考既展现了圣人先哲独特的生存智慧,又为我们提供了应对现代生态挑战可资借鉴的思想资源。只要我们充分利用儒道传统生态伦理观的优势和长处,并及时赋予新的时代内容,对实现人类与自然的和谐相处、建立现代生态文明是大有裨益的。     

Comparing choice and questionnaire measures of the acceptability of a staff training procedure

We compared questionnaire and choice measures of acceptability while evaluating effects of staff familiarity versus unfamiliarity with the system used to monitor performance during a training program. Staff members rated both monitoring formats equally favorably on the questionnaire, whereas when given a choice, they frequently chose the familiar format and never chose the unfamiliar format. These results suggest that traditional questionnaire evaluations may not be sufficiently sensitive measures of acceptability relative to choice measures.     

Results of a Citation Analysis of the Career Counselling Field from an African Perspective

The study examined research and trends in career counselling published in selected professional sources during the period 1980–2010. Citation analysis was used in this study to investigate documents which were indexed in the Web of Science related to career counselling. Career counselling and related keywords were used jointly in the search for documents. There were a total of 730 documents judged to be relevant to the field of career counselling and were citation analysed. The number of citations related to the career counselling field has been increasing continuously since 2000. Research publications on career counselling are projected to increase for both South African authors and the authors of other African countries.     

从"历史先天"来看福柯的知识考古学

该文试图考察福柯的自律的话语理论并反思考古学的症结。文章从“历史先天”这一关键词出发,阐述福柯的知识考古学如何将对话语的实证描述和探索话语构成的先天规则结合起来,从而保证其在对话语的形式分析的同时,超越传统哲学深陷其中的三对矛盾：“经验-先验”、“我思-未思”、“本源的隐退-回归”。围绕着“陈述”的三个特性,我们可以看到福柯为此所做的努力,即打通共时与历时之隔,经验与先验之分,实现结构主义和实证主义的联姻。文章最后指出这种自律的话语理论的症结所在,认为福柯并没有如愿以偿地跳出“有限性解析”的窠臼。     

Well-being and Spirituality from a Korean Perspective: Based on the Study of Culture and Subjective Well-being

Criteria for well-being and spirituality are culturally bound. In this article, therefore, the notions of well-being and spirituality were reconsidered from a Korean perspective. Two major conceptual approaches that pertain to “subjective well-being” research in social psychology provide the methodological framework for this study. While “bottom-up” approaches focus on how external events and situations influence happiness, “top-down” approaches center on diverse variables within an individual and his or her culture. Noting the cultural differences between American and Korean self-construals (i.e., independence vs. interdependence), the author argues that Koreans need to construct “top-down” approaches to both well-being and spirituality. Reviewing Robert Emmon’s concept of “spiritual intelligence,” the author also suggests an integrative model for spirituality and well-being in Korea.     

论理性事实与隐默之知--从一个新的视角看康德与孟子的区别

近年来,牟门弟子李明辉先生以理性事实和隐默之知为基础诠释康德与孟子,引起了学界的广泛关注.本文谨对这个问题进行初步的探讨.我的基本观点是:我承认在康德和孟子学理中都存在着理性事实和隐默之知,但这不仅不能消弭反而更加彰显了康德与孟子之间的不同.