The Spirituality of Justification

The doctrine of justification‐by‐faith has gathered enough dust on its shelf in the museum of antiquated doctrines. When we draw justification‐by‐faith out where we can take a good look at it, it glistens like a mirror. It reflects back to us human beings who we are. We are self‐justifiers. In the name of justice, we perpetrate violence. The pursuit of justice does as much damage as the pursuit of injustice, unfortunately. Like a mirror, justification‐by‐faith reveals who we are and announces that God justifies us by grace. This means we do not have to self‐justify. Liberated from self‐justification, the Christian is free to love for the sake of the beloved.     

Believe It Or Not: Religious and Other Paranormal Beliefs in the United States

Paranormal beliefs are often divided between those that are central to traditional Christian doctrine, such as the belief in heaven and hell, and those that are commonly associated with the supernatural or occult, such as the belief in ESP and psychic healing. This study employs data from a recent nationwide random sample general population survey to catalog the social correlates of paranormal beliefs and to examine the relationships between religious and other paranormal beliefs. The results indicate that standard social background factors do a poor job of accounting for who believes in paranormal phenomena and that the importance of specific background factors changes dramatically from phenomenon to phenomenon. The results also show that the correlations between belief in religious phenomena and other paranormal phenomena are largely insignificant. These findings call into question many prevailing theories about paranormal beliefs.     

Patrides,Plotinus and the Cambridge Platonists

ABSTRACT

Discussion of the Cambridge Platonists, by Constantinos Patrides and others, is often vitiated by the mistaken contrasts drawn between those philosophers and late antique Platonists such as Plotinus. I draw attention especially to Patrides’s errors, and argue in particular that Plotinus and his immediate followers were as concerned about this world and our immediate duties to our neighbours as the Cambridge Platonists. Even the doctrine of deification is one shared by all Platonists, though it is also here that genuine differences between pre-Christian and Christian exegesis can be found. All, it can be said, hope and expect to join ‘the dance of immortal love’, but Christian Platonists had a deeper sense of God’s ‘humility’ in His Word’s material and temporal manifestation. Not Olympian Zeus but the Crucified Christ was their preferred image of divine involvement, and their better guide to heaven.     

Works of Love in a World of Violence: Kierkegaard,Feminism, and the Limits of Self‐Sacrifice

Feminist scholars adopt wide‐ranging views of self‐sacrifice: their critiques claim that women are inordinately affected by Christianity's valorization of self‐sacrifice and that this traditional Christian value is inherently misogynistic and necrophilic. Although Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love deems Christian love essentially sacrificial, love, in his view, sets significant limits on the role of self‐sacrifice in human life. Through his proposed response to one who requests forgiveness, “Do you now truly love me?” Kierkegaard offers a model of forgiveness that subverts traditional ideals of the self‐sacrificing and submissive woman while keeping love central. The question asserts self‐love, involves redoubling and double danger, and expresses a refusal to imitate Christ's suffering. I propose a reading in keeping with Grace Jantzen's vision for a feminist philosophy of religion, which reads against the grain and “seeks to break through to new ways of thinking that may open up divine horizons.” My reading is further supported by Kierkegaard's contention that everything essentially Christian bears a double meaning. In light of the subversive potential found in the discrepancy between apparent love and actual love, as well as the duty to name the sin of one who has behaved in an unloving manner, I argue that Kierkegaard's philosophy of love resists simplistic understandings of self‐sacrificing love.     

Does Hell Still Have a Future?

The vexed and ever‐controversial question of hell and the possibility of its final realization is the subject matter of this article. The current fading of belief, or at least serious interest, in this traditional aspect of Christian teaching is the starting‐point for a brief historical survey of the meaning of the term in general and its meaning within Christianity in particular. The article argues for a retention of the doctrine, albeit shorn of some of its more flamboyant, traditional attributes, as being of lasting significance to the Christian understanding of salvation.     

Beliefs and Experiences of Bereaved Teenagers: some spiritual and moral issues

When people die it is quite common for the bereaved to think about where they have gone and to maintain links with them in some way. Traditional Christian beliefs about ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ may be revised and other ideas about spiritual continuity are often explored. This article will discuss responses from 94 11‐17‐year‐olds (38 males/56 females) regarding circumstances of and reasons given for a death; explanations and support; religious affiliation and belief in God; answers to the question ‘Why do people die?’ and ‘What happens after death?'; experiences of having a sense of the presence of the deceased; and personal qualities, attitudes towards other people and views of life. It will conclude by reassessing some of the moral and spiritual issues raised.     

ON HELPING ONE'S NEIGHBOR

Few people doubt that severe poverty is a pressing moral issue. But what sorts of obligations, if any, do affluent people have toward the severely poor? If one accepts the idea that one has some obligations to the severely poor there still remains disagreement about the magnitude of this obligation and when it obtains. I consider Peter Singer's influential “shallow pond” argument, which holds that affluent people have greater obligations toward the severely poor than ordinary moral judgments suggest. Critics hold that Singer's view is excessively demanding and therefore untenable. I thus turn to the parable of the Good Samaritan and Christian accounts of neighbor‐love to help attenuate this criticism. Drawing from Christian conversations on neighbor‐love, I attempt to demonstrate that accepting an obligation to assist does not necessarily result in one abandoning one's special relations, abnegating self‐regard, or no longer pursuing other non‐moral strivings.     

Divine timelessness: A coherent but unfruitful doctrine?

The author argues in this article that it is possible to have a consistent and coherent version of the doctrine of divine timelessness. Towards the objection that a timeless God cannot act it is defended that a timeless God can certainly act in the world and can love human people. In spite of the consistency and coherence of the doctrine of divine timelessness, however, the author has serious problems with the fruitfulness of this doctrine when it comes to essential practices of the Christian faith, such like seeking help from God, loving God, and prayer.     

The Origins and Resolution of Marital Discord from a Control Mastery Perspective

SUMMARY

This article focuses on individuals who grow up in proximity to suffering and/or possessive parents or siblings. It is not uncommon for such individuals to develop pathogenic beliefs that mitigate against them enjoying their lives, relationships, etc., while others are perceived as suffering or in need. Unconscious beliefs associated with survivor and separation guilt occasion maladaptive behaviors, i.e., undoing, spoiling, that prevent people who might otherwise yearn for success in the domain of work and love from achieving this. Often couples experiencing strife are unknowingly acting out such beliefs so as to maintain loyalty and allegiance with the discontented and/or needy parent or sibling. The task of therapy is to make these beliefs conscious so that they can be resisted and overcome.     

CREATED FOR EVERLASTING LIFE: CAN THEISTIC EVOLUTION PROVIDE AN ADEQUATE CHRISTIAN ACCOUNT OF HUMAN NATURE?

Christians who affirm standard science and the biblical doctrine of creation often endorse theistic evolution as the best approach to human origins. But theistic evolution is ambiguous. Some versions are naturalistic (NTE)—God created humans entirely by evolution—and some are supernaturalistic (STE)—God supernaturally augmented evolution. This article claims that NTE is inadequate as an account of human origins because its theological naturalism and emergent physicalist ontology of the soul or person conflict with the Christian doctrine that God created humans for everlasting life. Both the traditional Christian account of the afterlife and its modern Christian alternatives involve God's supernatural action and a separation (dualism) of person and body at death. STE can combine with several philosophical accounts of the body‐soul relation to provide an adequate Christian account of original human nature.     

Better Never to Have Been Born

The pro‐life paradox, as I call it, begins with a single claim endorsed by many American Christians: infants and young children are innocent in the sight of God because they cannot yet take responsibility for their spiritual well‐being. With this in mind, I argue that pro‐life believers have unwittingly fallen victim to a theological paradox in which their attempts to save the earthly lives of unborn children make it theoretically possible for said children to die an eternal death. On the one hand, many Christians trust in an eventual spiritual reckoning where God will separate the “sheep” from the “goats” (see Matthew 25:31–46), ushering the former into heaven while damning the latter to hell. However, those who cannot yet repent and seek salvation are not blamed for their spiritual failings. If they die, they go to heaven because they are too young and intellectually immature to know any better. But if dead children are spiritually blameless, then abortion practitioners have perversely and paradoxically saved millions of unborn souls by removing human volition (and thus damnation itself) from the equation and by making it possible for the unborn to experience the joys of heaven without the temptations of earth.     

Defining and Defending Social Holism

Abstract

This paper offers a definition of social holism that makes the doctrine non-trivial but possibly true. According to that definition, the social holist maintains that people depend non-causally on interaction with one another for possession of the capacity to think; the thesis is meant to be a contingent truth but one, like physicalism, that is plausible in the light of some a priori argument and some plausible empirical assumptions. The paper also sketches an argument in support of social holism, which connects with themes in a number of traditions, philosophical and sociological. The key idea is that people depend on socially shared dispositions and responses for the ability to identify – identify fallibly – the properties and other entities that they consider in each individual has to the course of thinking.     

The Break-Up Check: Exploring Romantic Love through Relationship Terminations

People who experience love often experience break-ups as well. However, philosophers of love have paid little attention to the phenomenon. Here, I address that gap by looking at the grieving process which follows unchosen relationship terminations. I ask which one is the loss that, if it were to be recovered, would stop grief or make it unwarranted. Is it the beloved, the reciprocation of love, the relationship, or all of it? By answering this question I not only provide with an insight on the nature of break-ups, but also make a specific claim about the nature of love. I argue that the object that is universally lost in all break-ups is a person with certain intrinsic qualities, who is in a relationship characterised by certain shared activities and recognized as romantic. That means that, at least in romantic terminations, the beloved and the relationship are not independent objects of grief. So, plausibly, they may not independent objects of value in love. Hence, those who state otherwise (within the property view and the relationship view) should face up to this objection coming from the study of break-ups.     

William Tyndale on Covenant and Justification

Abstract

This article offers a fresh interpretation of William Tyndale’s doctrine of justification with particular reference to his concept of covenant. It resists past scholarly attempts to resolve the apparent tension in his theology between faith and works in favour of either solifidianism or legalism. Instead, a close examination of Tyndale’s publications suggests that he maintained the gracious nature of justification without adopting justification by faith alone in the style of Martin Luther. Tyndale emphasized love for divine law as the essence of Christian righteousness. The gradual development of reciprocity in his concept of covenant came to undergird this formulation. Greater clarity with regard to Tyndale’s own theological position exposes misplaced comparison between Tyndale and Luther whilst encouraging the identification of views shared with Erasmus and the Swiss reformers consistent with certain trends in late-medieval theology.     

How Does a Loving God Punish? On the Unification of God's Love and Punitive Wrath

There are two influential and opposing theological paradigms concerning the relationship between God's love and punitive wrath. According to the first paradigm, which is here labelled the ‘divergent account’, God may sometimes punish an individual in a manner that is opposed to his love. Alternatively, there is the ‘unitary account’, according to which God's punitive wrath is an expression of love that seeks the creature's good. In the present article, an argument for the unitary account is provided, and a fresh way of understanding God's punishment therein is considered. The article proceeds as follows. In the first section, a dominant motivation for the divergent account is distilled through an examination of the writings of Emil Brunner. This motivation is then rejected and the unitary account is defended in the next section, in light of the New Testament ethic of love. In the third section, the work of Gregory of Nyssa and the contemporary philosopher R.A. Duff is utilized to develop a communicative theory of God's punishment, which illuminates and fortifies the unitary account. In the final section, the unitary account, together with the communicative theory of divine punishment, is applied to the doctrine of hell.     

The Spiritual Connection

SUMMARY

The spiritual connection between two people in relationship can bring a new perspective to interpersonal issues. When a relationship is based on authentic, congruent communication the process of owning projections and transforming negative emotions can free both people to love more wholeheartedly and to share the healing journey of spiritual awakening. This journey is an opportunity for growth and commitment to a shared purpose shifting motivation from fear to love.     

The Brest Bible: trinitarian and Christological issues

Abstract

The following article considers the theology of the Brest Bible translation. Some of the older researchers advanced the thesis that the translation and accompanying remarks implied concepts that undermine traditional trinitarian theology and Christology, leading to the claim that this Bible is sub-Reformed in character and conceivably antitrinitarian. This article aims to demonstrate that such an assertion is not supported by convincing evidence. It analyses both the main text of the Brest Bible and its marginal comments in terms of their theological character. It comes to the conclusion that both the trinitarian theology and Christology of the Brest Bible do not step outside Christian orthodox doctrine.