HOPE,A MODE OF FAITH: AQUINAS,LUTHER AND BENEDICT XVI ON HEBREWS 11:1

In articulating a theological account of Christian hope faithful to its objective character, Pope Benedict XVI summons the authority of Thomas Aquinas, citing his comments on faith and hope as those terms occur in Hebrews 11:1. Benedict sets off Aquinas's understanding of hope‐filled faith's objectivity by placing it in contrast with Luther's apparently more subjective interpretation of faith in Hebrews 11:1 as conviction. Closer analysis of both Aquinas and Luther, however, suggests a greater overlap in their exegetical conclusions, opening the way for a more nuanced appreciation of a virtue whose living possession and exercise, as the rest of Spe Salvi confirms, involves both objective and subjective dimensions     

Priesthood and the Epistle to the Hebrews

Current controversies about the ordination of women have shown the need for a re-examination of what the Christian Church means by priesthood. This article looks at the Epistle to the Hebrews' contribution to our understanding. To that end it focuses on the institution of priesthood in its first-century Jewish context and shows the use made of it by the author of Hebrews in his presentation of Christian faith.
Section 1 emphasizes some all-important differences between the NT's use of the language of priesthood and ours. Not least, it nowhere uses "priest" to designate Christian ministers. All the more striking, therefore, is Hebrews' depiction of Jesus as "high priest".
Section 2 discusses Judaism' Day of Atonement ceremonies – Hebrews' dominant cultic model. In the comparison drawn between Christ's death and exaltation with these rites, he becomes not only the high priest but also the expiatory victim.
As far as Judaism' cultic institutions are concerned, however, Jesus was not and never could be a priest, since he was of the tribe of Judah rather than Levi. Hence Hebrews appeals to Melchizedek. How this non-Israelite model is used by Hebrews to subvert the whole notion of priesthood as caste is discussed in section 3.
Finally, in section 4 Isaacs concludes that for Hebrews there is no longer a role for an ongoing priesthood, since Jesus has definitively achieved access to God, which was its raison d'être . Melchizedekian high priesthood is unique to Christ; neither inherited nor transmitted. Hence, unlike other NT authors, for Hebrews even the church as a corporate body is not a priesthood. As its closing chapters show, in this Epistle the cultic model gives way to the more inclusive one of pilgrimage.     

The Cross

ABSTRACT

My aim is a philosophical understanding of sacrifice, and especially of the Christian conception of sacrifice. Initially distancing myself a little from the strictly ritual notion of sacrifice, I work with a concept of sacrifice as 1) a voluntary choice (2) to forgo or lose or give away (3) something costly, perhaps supremely costly, (4) as an expressive action, where (5) what is so expressed typically is or includes devotion or loyalty to something exalted. I consider three historical examples of political sacrifices, sacrifices made for a cause, and three literary examples of personal sacrifices, sacrifices made by one person for another. I note that in the Christian context it is very common for sacrifices either political or personal to be taken to be imitations of Jesus’ sacrifice as presented in the New Testament, and ask therefore how we are to understand that. My conclusion is that Jesus’ sacrifice can be seen as involving both a political and a personal aspect—but that in fact, it can only be made as intelligible as may be by understanding it, as the Letter to the Hebrews does, in ritual terms.     

Why Bother With Hebrews?

Few, if any, present-day undergraduate degree courses in Theology include in their syllabus a study of the Epistle to the Hebrews or other New Testament writings other than the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. The result is in effect that we create a canon within a canon.
This paper, originally read at a postgraduate seminar, gives reasons why Hebrews in particular should not be neglected.
Hebrews provides evidence of the diversity of early Christian tradition, for example, with its teaching that it is impossible to be re-admitted to the community of faith, having once abandoned it, and with its unique use of Israel's day of Atonement rites in its presentation of Christ. Moreover, the very genre of Hebrews merits particular interest.
Hebrews also evidences a Christian community which has yet to break with Judaism. Its thoroughly Jewish background illustrates for students of the New Testament the necessity of knowing the Jewish Scriptures as well as the writings of the New Testament. Moreover, a study of the Epistle could make a constructive contribution to present-day Jewish–Christian dialogue, even if in the past it has been enlisted on the side of a thinly-disguised anti-Semitism.
Finally, Hebrews (e.g., with its depiction of Jesus as sacrificial victim and as High Priest) brings the student face to face with the metaphorical character of much of the language of the New Testament – a form of language which is not to be taken less seriously than other kinds of language; and in this case, Hebrews' Day of Atonement metaphors issue in new insights – in an innovative theology of access to God.
For this and other reasons, the study of Hebrews has an important contribution to make to theology degree syllabuses.     

The Logic of Faith

Faith, though considered by many as desirable, is notoriously difficult to define. 'Faith' may mean that a person has appropriate self-esteem, or confidence based upon a rational assessment of capabilities, potential, etc. But we also think it desirable that a person should have a kind of confidence about the value of living that is not at all based on any kind of propositional truth. In this article I will consider the meaning of faith, particularly of the latter kind, with reference to: (1) meanings of faith; (2) forms of language, since the language of religious belief expresses some kind of evaluation or attitude; and (3) criteria of appropriateness. There is nothing particularly virtuous in believing what evidence assures us on other grounds to be the case. If faith were taken as a disposition to believe things to be true without any evidence, it would be a vice. Faith is a virtue in the sense of being able and willing to make loving and trustful investments in the world, to formulate appropriate pictures of it, adopt certain attitudes towards it, and evaluate it in certain ways.     

The Epistemic Value of Affective Disruptability

In order to explore how emotions contribute positively or negatively to understanding the meaning of complex socio-culturally specific phenomena, I argue that we must take into account the habitual dimension of emotions – i.e., the emotion repertoire that a feeling person acquires in the course of their affective biography. This brings to light a certain form of alignment in relation to affective intentionality that is key to comprehending why humans understand situations in the way they do and why it so often is especially hard to understand things differently. A crucial epistemic problem is that subjects often do not even enter a process of understanding, i.e., they do not even start to consider a specific object, theory, circumstance, other being, etc. in different ways than the familiar one. The epistemic problem at issue thus lies in an unquestioned faith in things being right the way they are taken to be. By acknowledging the habitual dimension of affective intentionality, I analyze reasons for this inability and suggest that being affectively disruptable and cultivating a pluralistic emotion repertoire are crucial abilities to overcome this epistemic problem.

     

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND THE RATIONALITY OF FAITH

This paper evaluates the role that evolutionary psychology can play in examining the rationality of faith in the Christian sense. It is argued that because evolutionary psychology enables us to understand human nature, it can help us understand what faith is. I argue that faith is not a universal human instinct that all religions tap into. Rather, we must understand how the early Christian community used the basic building blocks provided by human nature in a particular way. It is argued that it is a misunderstanding of the nature of faith to assert that faith is intrinsically irrational. However, evolutionary psychology cannot tell us whether or not faith is rational.     

Reading Their Book of Faith: North American Muslims and Their Interpretations of the Qur'an in the Post 9/11 Era

Abstract :  This article seeks to provide an overarching view of the North American Muslim conversation about interpreting the Qur'an in a post 9/11 world. While most Western critiques of Islam focus on reading the texts of Islam, the author argues that one must also listen to the contemporary intra-Muslim conversation about their own text, in order to faithfully understand the Muslim perspective. In this conversation, the author provides evidence for a plurality of social-political views among Muslims and notes that the post 9/11 North American context is alive and well with such faith conversations.     

Speaking after the Phenomenon: the Promise of Things and the Future of Phenomenology

Phenomenology speaks not directly of phenomena but rather of the appearing of phenomena. In so speaking it moves from the level of things with generic or proper names to the level of universal terms. In speaking and thinking the phenomenon Phenomenology comes “after” in the twofold sense of being too late and desiring for that which is to come. This paper explores this place of phenomenology with respect to the relation of faith and reason, the manner of speaking phenomenologically and the affective and temporal situation of experience. Drawing on the pre-modern concept of the transcendentals and on an account of emphatic consciousness of things, this article argues that the future of phenomenology is as a form of metaphysics which remains focused on experience and the “promise” of things that guides and structures perception.     

Highway bridges and feasts: Heidegger and Borgmann on how to affirm technology

Borgmann's views seem to clarify and elaborate Heidegger's. Both thinkers understand technology as a way of coping with people and things that reveals them, viz. makes them intelligible. Both thinkers also claim that technological coping could devastate not only our environment and communal ties but more importantly the historical, world-opening being that has defined Westerners since the Greeks. Both think that this devastation can be prevented by attending to the practices for coping with simple things like family meals and footbridges. But, contrary to Borgmann, Heidegger claims further that, alongside simple things, we can affirm technological things such as autobahn bridges. For Borgmann, technological coping produces things like central heating that are so dispersed they inhibit skillful interaction with them and therefore prevent our being sensitive to ourselves as world-disclosers. For Heidegger, so long as we can still relate to non-technological things, we can affirm relations with technological things because we can maintain both our technological and the non-technological ways of world-disclosing. So Borgmann sees revealing as primarily directed to things while Heidegger sees it as directed to worlds. If Heidegger is right about us, we have more leeway to save ourselves from technological devastation than Borgmann sees.     

The ethics of belief and two conceptions of christian faith

This article deals with two types of Christian faith in the light of the challenges posed by the ethics of belief. It is proposed that the difficulties with Clifford’s formulation of that ethic can best be handled if the ethic is interpreted in terms of role-specific intellectual integrity. But the ethic still poses issues for the traditional interpretation of Christian faith when it is conceived as a series of discrete but related propositions, especially historical propositions. For as so conceived, the believer makes claims that fall within the province of an intellectual discipline, history, that requires evidence and rules of procedure for the adjudication of such claims. It is noteworthy how few Christian theologians and philosophers of religion deal with the issue in these terms. Alvin Plantinga is a noteworthy exception and his views are examined and criticized because, among other things, his conclusion is that any believer without having any training in biblical languages or historical studies can know that the New Testament narratives are true. The article then considers a second conception of Christian faith in which this conflict does not arise. One finds it in the works of Schleiermacher, Wittgenstein, and, surprisingly, in the conception of faith found in the early writings of Karl Barth.     

Reasons and Justifications for Considering Pregnancy Among Women Living with HIV/AIDS

Despite the risks associated with pregnancy, available data suggest that HIV-infected women are no less likely to become pregnant than uninfected women. To understand HIV-infected women's reasons for wanting to have a child, focused interviews were conducted with a predominantly minority sample of 51 HIV-infected women in New York City. They were noted to actively weigh both the potential risks and benefits of their pregnancy decisions. Women reported three major reasons for wanting a child: (1) her husband/boyfriend really wants children, (2) having missed out on raising her other children, and (3) believing that a child would make her feel complete, fulfilled, and happy. Women also reported several justifications which they believed offset the risks of pregnancy, including: (1) other HIV-infected women were having healthy babies, (2) feeling optimistic about having a healthy baby due to the prophylactic effects of AZT (zidovudine), (3) having faith that God will protect the child, (4) being young and "healthy" will prevent transmission, and (5) feeling that she is better able to raise a child now. These findings suggest that to make fully informed pregnancy decisions, women should be encouraged to explore their reasons for wanting pregnancy, as well as discuss the potential risks.     

Faith,Belief and Fictionalism

Is propositional religious faith constituted by belief? Recent debate has focussed on whether faith may be constituted by a positive non‐doxastic cognitive state, which can stand in place of belief. This article sets out and defends the doxastic theory. We consider and reject three arguments commonly used in favour of non‐doxastic theories of faith: (1) the argument from religious doubt; (2) the use of ‘faith’ in linguistic utterances; and (3) the possibility of pragmatic faith. We argue that belief is required to maintain a distinction between genuine faith, pretend faith, and fictionalist faith.     

THE REVOLUTIONARY VISION OF WILLIAM BLAKE

It was William Blake's insight that the Christian churches, by inverting the Incarnation and the dialectical vision of Paul, have repressed the body, divided God from creation, substituted judgment for grace, and repudiated imagination, compassion, and the original apocalyptic faith of early Christianity. Blake's prophetic poetry thus contributes to the renewal of Christian ethics by a process of subversion and negation of Christian moral, ecclesiastical, and theological traditions, which are recognized precisely as inversions of Jesus, and therefore as instances of the forms of evil that God-in-Christ overcomes through Incarnation, reversing the Fall. Blake's great epic poems, particularly Milton (1804–08) and Jerusalem (1804–20), embody his heterodox representation of the final coincidence of Christ and Satan through which, at last, all things are made new.     

Faith, Reason, and Worldviews

This critical review of Responses to the Enlightenment focuses on the relationship between faith and reason as advanced by Hendrick Hart and William Sweet, respectively. It does so in the context of Enlightenment critique of faith, from which both Hart and Sweet seek to salvage religious faith. While faith as trust is admitted to be performative (Hart), faith is also belief with cognitive content (Sweet). However, faith and reason, as I contend, stand in a dialectical relationship between the need for commitment and understanding at the root of religious as well as secular traditions or worldviews.     

Exposing Mammon: Devotion to Money in a Market Society

Abstract : The recent financial crisis has exposed the extent to which the contemporary global economy is driven by credit. Yet credit is the obverse of debt, and where overspending threatens instability through an increasing debt spiral, austerity measures also threaten instability through reducing growth, also leading to an increasing debt spiral. Humanity is increasingly exposed to the force of money, which is created as debt with a given expiration date. Yet to place our credit or faith in the power of debt itself is to place faith in a world of shadows, in estimations of the value of things as perceived by others or market prices. Redemption from debt involves a restoration of our capacity to judge intrinsic values rather than mere prices.     

4~7岁儿童对生物目的指向性的认知发展模式

采用结构式访谈法,通过计算机模拟真实情景的动画方式,系统探查4~7岁儿童在目的指向性维度上的本体区分、因果认知发展模式以及在此维度上的朴素生物学“理论”的形成。结果表明：（1）4~7岁儿童在目的指向性维度上进行本体区分的认知发展模式,经历了从低到高的4个发展水平,即目的论模式——基于动物模式——基于生物模式——基于本体区分模式;（2）4~7岁儿童对目的指向性的因果认知与本体区分表现出一致性发展模式,表明学前儿童在目的指向性维度上逐渐形成了朴素生物学“理论”;（3）5~6岁是儿童对目的指向性认知的快速发展期,领域知识对儿童的认知发展具有明显的促进作用,但是受年龄和领域任务的影响     

Do You Have the Heart to Come to Faith? A Look at Anti‐Climacus' Reading of Matthew 11.6

In Practice in Christianity, Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonym, Anti‐Climacus enters into an extended engagement with Matthew 11.6, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me’. In so doing, he comes to an understanding that ‘the possibility of offense’ characterises the ‘crossroad’ at which one either comes to faith in Christ's revelation or rejects it. Such a choice, as he is well aware, cannot be made from a neutral standpoint, and so he is led to propose that it is ‘the thoughts of the heart’ (i.e. a person's disposition) that constitute the pivotal factor in determining whether or not God will reconcile a person into the Christian faith. In this paper, I discuss Anti‐Climacus' interpretation of Mt. 11.6 and consider his reasons for interpreting a person's predisposition as being so decisive for faith.     

Epistemic presentism

Commonsense functionalism is taken to entail a version of the extended mind thesis, according to which one’s dispositional beliefs may be partly constituted by artifacts. As several opponents of the extended mind thesis have objected, claiming so can generate a cognitive/knowledge bloat, according to which we may count as knowing the contents of trusted websites, even before looking them up (!). One way to retain commonsense functionalism, but avoid the ensuing “cognitive/knowledge bloat” worry is to introduce epistemic presentism—the view that there are no dispositional beliefs and that we can only believe, and thereby know, things in the present. Independently of the above problem, epistemic presentism can be further motivated by shedding light on two central epistemological questions: (1) how to understand the distinction between doxastic and propositional justification and (2) how to interpret the closure principle. The view also aligns with strong intuitions about what we may take ourselves to know, what the relation between action and belief is, and what may count as part of our minds.