Dialectical Displacement and Redeployment of Attachments in the Kenotic Mode of Conversion: The Leaving Behind of Anton Boisen in Psychosis

This paper introduces a kenotic theory of conversion that builds from simple attachment to childhood experience of peak states to encompass dialectical stages of development: Priming, Decentering, Reflection, Encounter, Denucleation, Emplacement and Discipline. Thereafter, the dialectical mode gives rise to the mature phase of conversion—the continuing integration of the religious worldview through Metamorphosis and Embassy. The conversion theory is illustrated by an interpretation of a dialectical set of experiences of Anton Boisen. I interpret Anton Boisen’s conversion from a 19th Century Christianity that was wedded to religious and racial manifest destiny to that of a reborn Christian living with the 20th Century’s experience of evangelical and evolutionary universalism. Boisen’s clinical desolations (“psychosis”) and adoption of vocation (“change of allegiance”) suggest his conversion counterposed the instinctual with the higher order ideals he struggled to embody—a dialectical negation of his younger static and triumphalist Christian cultural identity that developed into a more integrated, expansive, and inclusive view of the human family and deepening allegiance to the ordinary, underserved, and growing population of the mentally suffering.

How philosophy and theology have undermined bioethics.

This essay begins by distinguishing among the viewpoints of philosophy, theology, and religion; it then explores how each deals with "sin" in the bioethical context. The conclusions are that the philosophical and theological viewpoints are intellectually defective in that they cripple our ability to deal with normative issues, and are in the end unable to integrate Christian concepts like "sin" successfully into bioethics. Sin is predicated only of beings with free will, though only in Western Christianity must all sins be committed with knowledge and voluntarily. Without the notions of free will, sin, and a narrative of redemption, bioethics remains unable to provide itself with an adequate normative framework. Bioethics, and morality in general, remain a morass precisely because there has been a failure to translate Christian morality into fully secular and scientistic terms.     

Free will and the human act in seventeenth century Eastern Orthodox theology

This article analyses the doctrine of free will (autexousion) in the confessions of St. Peter Mogila and Dositheos II Notaras of Jerusalem. Free will is a central concept in Eastern Christian anthropology and these two monuments of theology represent how the understanding of the concept of free will developed in Eastern Orthodox theology in the context of the confrontation with Western theologies in the seventeenth century.     

In the light of the splendor: Veritatis Splendor and moral theology.

In the last 25 years, Roman Catholic moral theology has debated issues ranging from the sources of moral theology to the role of ecclesiastical authority in moral theology. In 1993, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor, which addresses issues in fundamental moral theology. The encyclical must be understood against the background of ongoing debates since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on birth control (Humanae Vitae). It is not clear what the impact of Veritatis Splendor will be. However, it seems safe to say that it will be deployed in debates about issues such as birth control, artificial reproduction, sterilization, and abortion.     

Theologian of sin and grace. The process of radicalization in the theology of Matthias Flacius Illyricus

Abstract

The execution in 1540 of the notable English evangelical, Robert Barnes, sparked a flurry of martyrological propaganda. Although much of this literature is well known to scholars of the Henrician reformation, at least one contribution remains obscure: a poem (1542) by the Pomeranian Humanist, Johannes Sastrow. If in line with Protestant portrayals of Barnes as a martyr, Sastrow’s poem, produced at safe remove from England, is unique in attempting primarily to cast Henry VIII as a despot comparable to the tyrants of classical antiquity. Both its context and content, crowded with classical allusions, reveal a young Humanist concerned not only to memorialize a friend and to condemn the ruler responsible for his death, but also to advertise his own skills as a budding Humanist. The poem is here contextualized, translated, and annotated for the light it sheds on the multiple uses to which early-modern martyrological propaganda could be put.     

A geo-literary analysis through human senses. Towards a sensuous Camino geography

The work is framed within the geographical rethinking of spatiality within narrative theories, in relation to geohumanities interest in creative writing. The main aim of the research is to experiment with a new geo-cultural approach to investigate pilgrims' cultural narratives from the book Camino Voices by Iain Dryden (2015), an original collection of pilgrims’ comments which are accompanied by a series of drawings by the author. Through a qualitative methodology based on the human senses as the interpretative criteria, I suggest an approximation to sensuous research in the social sciences in order to reflect upon the multisensory experience of the Camino. As a result, I discuss and propose a set of sensescapes that conduce to the conceptualisation of a sensuous Camino geography, by which I mean a new cultural interpretation of the emotions, feelings and sensations produced throughout the experience of the Camino.