别尔嘉耶夫的神观念与创造论

传统神义论近代以来不断受到恶与苦难现实的严峻挑战,不少神学家和思想家开始对传统的神观念和创造论进行重新反思,别尔嘉耶夫作为俄国宗教哲学的杰出代表也对之作了积极的探索。他对传统神学全知全能、水恒不变的神观念进行了严厉的批判,指出这是人类理性客体化的结果,而将神视为精神与个性,并且特别强调神的爱与怜悯、痛苦与受难,强调神与人的相互依存,强调神对人的呼唤,神与人的相遇与交会。在对“从无创有”创造论的诠释中,他提出了“非被创造自由”的概念解释恶与苦难的来源,以避免传统神义论的尴尬。别尔嘉耶夫的神观念与创造论与过程神学和莫尔特曼等人的神学有相通之处,部分思想汇入了现代神学发展的巨流。     

Liturgy: Divine and Human Service

Liturgy has been the forum for the enactment of a diverse range of theologies, at times stressing the human, at times the divine. Following Emmanuel Levinas, this article understands the meaning of liturgy as ' a movement of the Same towards the Other which never returns to the Same .' Whether directed towards God, or expressive of human longing, the structure of liturgy is essentially ' for -the-Other.' This movement out of self is seen when one considers liturgy as the 'work of the people,' where 'work' is understood as Œuvre rather than travail . To say that liturgy is œuvre is to situate its significance not in the activity of the subject who has a concern to achieve or realise something through his own effort, but in the Other who inspires the work. The activism of travail finds its counter in the essential passivity of œuvre . By recognising this the horizontal and vertical elements within divine liturgy can be brought together in a mutually indispensable way. As essentially 'for-the-Other,' responsible service, which is at one and the same time divine service and human service, is at the heart of the liturgy. In liturgy we are drawn out of ourselves in a 'movement of the Same towards the Other which never returns to the Same' and which is positively experienced as responsibility. It is not that we first worship and then are called unto service in a movement out of self towards the Otherness of God and thereafter towards the Otherness of the other person. The movement out of self – liturgy – is at one and the same time worship and ethics, an ethical worship, in which justice is rendered both to God and to the other person.     

Minds and Bodies: Human and Divine

Does God have a mind? Western theism has traditionally construed God as an intentional agent who acts on creation and in relation to humankind. God loves, punishes, and redeems. God's intentionality has traditionally been construed in analogy to human intentionality, which in turn has often presumed a supernatural dualism. Developments in cognitive science, however, render supernatural dualism suspect for explaining the human mind. How, then, can we speak of the mind of God? Borrowing from Daniel Dennett's intentional stance, I suggest that analogical reasoning regarding the mind of God be abandoned in favor of an ontologically agnostic approach that treats God as an intentional system. In this approach, God's purposive action is an explanatory feature of the believer's universe, a real pattern that informs our values and beliefs about the world and our place in it.     

On the Incompatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

I argue that the simple foreknowledge view, according to which God knows at some time t ₁ what an agent S will do at t ₂ , is incompatible with human free will. I criticize two arguments in favor of the thesis that the simple foreknowledge view is consistent with human freedom, and conclude that, even if divine foreknowledge does not causally compel human action, foreknowledge is nevertheless relevantly similar to other cases in which human freedom is undermined. These cases include those in which certain human actions are logically, rather than causally, foreclosed.     

Divine Hiddenness and Divine Humility

If God exists, and if our ultimate well-being depends on having a positive relationship with Him (which requires as a first step that we believe He exists), why doesn't He make sure that we all believe in Him? Why doesn't He make His existence obvious? This traditional theological question is today much-used as an argument for atheism. In this paper I argue that the answer may have something to do with God's character, specifically God's humility.     

Divine Nature and Divine Will

This paper examines the relationship between God and those universals that characterize his nature. It is argued that God has sovereignty over his nature, even though he is not self-creating, and does not give rise to the universals that characterize his nature by any act of intellection. Rather, God is himself an act of rational willing in which all that is has its existence. Because the act that is God is one of free will, he has sovereignty over the features it displays, which include all that characterizes his nature.     

Creativity and Aging: Personal Journals and the Creation of Self

This article considers the writing of personal journals as a process through which an individual constructs a linguistic representation of one's self, with the self constituting a narrative. Rather than a fixed narrative, one's life exists as a narrative subject to revision and reinterpretation. Through journal writing, then, one constructs and reconstructs his or her identity. Berman finds the value in personal journals not only in the themes that surface but also in the creative process they reveal. In this article, he examines passages from five journalists that demonstrate this process of creating and revising meaning in one's life.     

The Concurrentism of Thomas Aquinas: Divine Causation and Human Freedom

The paper deals with the problem of divine causation in relation to created agents in general and human rational agents in particular. Beyond creation and conservation, Aquinas specifies divine contribution to created agents’ operation as application in the role of the first cause and the operation of the principal cause employing an instrumental cause. It is especially the latter which is open to varying interpretation and which might be potentially threatening to human freedom. There are different readings of what it is for the secondary agent to “act through the power of the principal cause”. Either the divine cause causes only the existence of the effect of the secondary cause, or it also causes the cause to operate in the sense that it determines its outcome. The latter seems to contradict human freedom. Both readings of Aquinas were developed in the latter half of the sixteenth century within scholastic philosophy and theology.