Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary

Book reviewed:
Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary by Francis Xavier Clooney (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) xiv + 264 pp. Reviewed by Michelle Voss Roberts Graduate Division of Religion Emory University 687 Cather Court Stone Mountain, GA 30088 USA     

Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary

Starting from the context in which there is an increasing emphasis on ecclesial revitalisation and churchplanting, the analytical model of the Australian National Church Life Survey (NCLS) research is introduced and described in its background and characteristics. The model shows particular interest in a specific church profile which is created based on local church surveys. The article describes the profile, examines the theological concepts and argues for in-depth empirical research in a Dutch context concerning the use of the profile.     

Mary Mary,Quite Contrary

Philosophical Studies -     

Touching the Virgin. On the politics of intimacy in Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary

This paper is guided by a conviction common to Godard and Merleau-Ponty: namely, that the special power of art is its ability to show up for us the invisible, what was previously unseen, and thereby to shape intimately, to transform, our own perceptions of the world. Art can thereby bring us into a more intimate contact with reality. With reference especially to Godard's film Hail Mary, the paper argues that Godard distinguishes between two ways of approaching the human body: on the one hand, it can be approached as prostituted thing – which has the effect of developing in the prostituted person a kind of absence to herself and to others, a dispossession of herself and an anesthesia to her own and others' affective life. On the other hand, the human body can be approached as sacredly human – in which case we will touch that body very differently, expressing our presence to its embodied divinity precisely by withdrawing our touch and leaving space for its own desires. It is proposed that Godard's filmmaking aims at precisely this kind of withdrawal and letting be, and that thereby he awakens his viewers to, makes them more intimate with, the sacred in the human.     

The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms: Miracles,Monotheism, and Reason in Spinoza

Spinoza insists in the Theological Political Treatise that philosophy and theology are two separate kingdoms. I argue here that there is a basis in the psychology of the Ethics for one of the major components of the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Under the kingdom of theology, religion's principal function is to overcome the influence of harmful passion that prevents people from living life according to a fixed plan: people can live according to a fixed plan because they can obey. Through a series of arguments I show that Spinoza takes obedience to arise through devotion; devotion to associate with ideas of miracles and imaginative monotheism; and these ideas to be imaginative ideas of singular objects. On the psychology of the Ethics, ideas of this sort, although highly irrational, nevertheless give minds a power to resist harmful passion similar to that of ideas of reason. Although problems remain for the interpretation of the doctrine of the two kingdoms, this argument shows that Spinoza's psychology grounds his claim that theology, although different from philosophy, can help us to live well.     

Monotheism and the Spirituality of Reason

In this paper I propose a cognitive interpretation of the emergence of monotheism. I first distinguish between two fundamentally different conceptions of representation: one intuitive, which favors an analog model of rational cognition, and one discursive, which favors a digital model. While both Hellenism and Judaism may have been instrumental in setting civilization on the path to reason and law, it is the discursive or digital conception of God as a single universal Judge, I argue, that provides the foundational axiom of the moral logic of the Hebrew Scriptures. That is, in monotheism, God came to be represented differently.     

The Mother-child Relationship as an Archetype for the Relationship between the Virgin Mary and Humanity in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation

Following the work of Stevens Rogers (2002), this article starts with the premise that humanity can be seen as a child growing in changing relationship with his or her mother. With Jesus representing humanity, the relationship between a mother and a child can be an archetype for understanding the changing relationship between the Virgin Mary and humanity as narrated in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. With the Annunciation by the Angel, the Boy Jesus in the Temple, the wedding at Cana, and Mary at the foot of the cross as developmental stages, this article shows the changing relationship between humanity and the Virgin Mary. Pierre M. Balthazar is a student in the PsyD program in Clinical Psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology.     

Irigaray and the Sacrifice of the Sacrifice of Woman

One of the problems with a superficial reading of “Belief Itself” and “Women, the Sacred, Money” is that Irigaray is too easily understood as merely saying that woman is the hidden victim of sacrifice and that one is called to reveal this hidden victim. While this is an important aspect of Irigaray's work, a more radical interpretation is opened up when it is read alongside the work of Lacan and ?i?ek. Irigaray's work disturbs the traditional discourses on revelation, sacrifice, and woman on one level while at the same time reinforcing their most extreme ramifications.     

Mary,dogma, and psychoanalysis

Why does Mary hold her prominent place in Catholic theology to the extent that five specific dogmas have developed around her? Psychoanalytic theory suggests dogma arises out of the psychic needs of people and psychic needs of people are expressed in dogma. The early views of Erich Fromm, a disciple of Freud, are presented to demonstrate that Marian dogma arose from the psychic needs of the people. The views of both Catholic and Protestant thinkers are presented, as well as theological and psychiatric views.     

Eudaimonism,Virtue, and Self‐Sacrifice

This essay introduces some of the key topics at stake in the ongoing controversies about the place of eudaimonism in Christian ethics and theology. Whether and in what way a person should seek her or his own happiness and flourishing has been a central question in ethics for centuries. Here I summarize the contributions the essays in this focus issue make to that conversation, and conclude by briefly sketching a Neoplatonist approach to eudaimonism that may offer a way to build on the insights and concerns articulated in the focus essays.