Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine – Harold Bloom

Book reviewed:
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine , Harold Bloom, Riverhead Books 2005 (1-57322-322-0), 238 pp., hb $24.95     

Faith Without Works: Jesus People, Resistance to Temptation, and Altruism

Students in a large introductory psychology class were given an opportunity to cheat on a class examination. Some time later, they were asked to volunteer to participate in a project designed to help mentally retarded children. On the basis of attitudinal and behavioral self-report measures, the subjects were divided into four groups according to religious belief: Jesus people, religious, nonreligious, and atheists. The four groups did not differ in frequency or magnitude of cheating, nor did they differ in committing themselves to performing the altruistic act. Females showed a significantly higher frequency of altruistic behavior than did males. Resistance to temptation and altruism were essentially unrelated to one another, and level of religiousness did not appreciably affect the magnitude of the relationship.     

Restoring the Image: Spirituality, Faith, and Cognitive Disability

There is a great deal of theological confusion within the church as to the level of participation people with profound cognitive disabilities should be allowed within the orders of the church. For some, sacramental participation without intellectual comprehension is dishonoring to God, while for others, lack of cognitive ability precludes any kind of meaningful spiritual life. This paper sets out some of the various positions and argues that faith and spirituality are not intellectual concepts, but relational realities. It is only in and through our relationships that any of us can learn anything about the divine. A relational understanding of faith and spirituality as outlined here offers the church the freedom to avoid evaluating a person's spiritual life according to intellectual criteria and to begin to find new ways of preaching the Word to those who have no words.     

The Strength to Cope: Spirituality and Faith in Chronic Disease

The lifelong management of a chronic condition requires considerable mental fortitude and commitment in social adjustment and adherence to medical advice. In examining strategies of adaptation, we draw on ethnographic research, including interviews with 69 people with type 2 diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease. We explore how they incorporate spirituality into their self-management routines, with positive impact on their health and wellbeing, and highlight the role of spiritual practices in supporting people with chronic conditions mentally, physically and socially, so encouraging personal responsibility for one’s health and wellbeing.     

Beyond the Isolated Self: Extended Mind and Spirituality

Extended Cognition is a theory from philosophy of mind that has its roots in the more general notion of Embodied Cognition. Embodied cognition understands all human thought as involving the body (not just the brain), and as always situated in particular contexts. Cognitive extension goes further to suggest that intelligent mental processes often include things outside the brain and body, involving interactions with other persons or external artifacts that significantly enhance cognitive capacities. Thus, while intelligence was once thought to be an attribute of a single individual’s brain, it is now understood to extend into processes outside the person within immediate interactive space. For example, smart phones or problem-solving groups expand cognitive capacities beyond what is possible on one’s own. This article explores the possibility of supersizing-through-extension spirituality and Christian life within the interactive space of congregations and religious communities.     

Beyond Co-Existence to Mutual Influence: An Interdisciplinary Method for Psychoanalysis and Religion

As the disciplines of psychoanalysis and religion find themselves in a heightened cross-disciplinary context, issues of methodology remain at the forefront. This article constructs an interdisciplinary method based on the image of psychoanalysis and religion as neighbors who border along an “intimate edge”—a space of simultaneously overlapping, yet distinct concern. Using what is termed a “hermeneutic of mischievousness,” this method maintains an interpretive location for that which preserves, transgresses, and transcends the disciplinary boundaries. The article concludes with a brief application of the method to the relationship between the “analytic third” and Christian trinitarian theology.