Women and Sin: Responses to Mary Elise Lowe

Responses to Mary Elise Lowe:
A Response to Mary Elise Lowe's Women Orientated Hamartilogies , by Paul Sponheim, p.229
Feminist Thinking on Sin: Thoughts on an Update , by MaryMcClintock Fulkerson, p.230
Women and Sin: Response to Mary Elise Lowe , byRosemary Radford Ruether, p.233     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Garry Wills, Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit James Puglisi, The Process of Admission to Ordained Ministry: Volume III, Contemporary Rites and General Conclusions     

Once More. . .

Short notices of reissued books:
Ken Parry (ed.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity
Rowan Williams, Arius
Colin E. Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth
Leszek Kolakowski, Religion. If There Is No God. . .: On God, the Devil, Sin and Other Worries of the So-Called Philosophy of Religion     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Spanish Versions of the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior Scale and the Illness as Punishment for Sin Scale in a Sample of Churchgoing Latinas

The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Spanish versions of the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior scale and the Illness as Punishment for Sin scale in a sample of churchgoing Latina women (N = 404). For the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior scale, confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the expected one-factor model, internal consistency reliability was good, and there was evidence of convergent validity. For the Illness as Punishment for Sin scale, confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the expected one-factor model, but on a revised seven-item version of the measure. Internal consistency reliability and convergent validity for this revised version were good. It is recommended that future studies use the Perceived Religious Influence on Health Behavior scale and the revised Illness as Punishment for Sin scale when examining these constructs among Latina women.     

Book Reviews

Dennis A. Jacobsen
Dennis A. Jacobsen Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing
Seyoon Kim Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul's Gospel
Christopher C. Knight. Wrestling with the Divine: Religion, Science, and Revelation .
Sallie McFague Super, Natural Christians
Stephen D. Moore. God's Beauty Parlor: and Other Queer Spaces in and Around the Bible
Patricia A. Williams. Doing without Adam and Eve: Sociobiology and Original Sin     

Sound and emotion in Milton's Paradise lost

This research was designed to test the hypothesis that Milton's poem Paradise Lost is meaningfully patterned with respect to sound. Thirty-six segments from 12 Books of Paradise Lost were scored (Whissell, 2000) in terms of their proportional use of Pleasant, Cheerful, Active, Nasty, Unpleasant, Sad, Passive, and Soft sounds. Paradise Lost includes more Active, Nasty, and Unpleasant sounds and fewer Pleasant, Passive, Soft, and Sad sounds than a representative sample of anthologized poetry. The way in which emotional sounds are patterned (e.g., the rise and fall in the proportion of Pleasant sounds across Books) suggests the presence of three narratives within the work: Sin and Salvation-Foreseen in Heaven (Books I-II), The Fall of Man (Books IV-IX), and Sin and Salvation-Foretold on Earth (Books X-XI). The poem analyzed had updated spelling, and the author's exact intentions when creating it are not accessible to direct investigation, for this among other reasons.     

REVIEWS

Book reviews in this article. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? by Norman Malcolm Logic and Sin in the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, by Philip R. Shields. D.Z. Phillips. Wittgenstein and Religion. Cosmopolis. The hidden agenda of modernity, by Stephen Toulmin Simone Weil's Philosophy of Culture, ed. Richard H. Bell     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
S. Mark Heim Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends
Alistair McFadyen Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin
Charles Miller The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae.
Stuart Murray Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition
Andreas Pangritz Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Frits de Lange Waiting for the Word: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Speaking about God
Mark Theissen Nation and Samuel Wells, eds., Faithfulness and Fortitude: In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas
Keith Ward Religion and Revelation ; Religion and Creation ; Religion and Human Nature ; Religion and Community     

Reviews

Book Review in this Articles:
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP AND INTERCOMMUNION. 10th Downaide Symposium, edited by John Kent
ST THOMAS AQUINAS: SUMMA THEOLOGIAE. Vol. xxxvii: Effects of Sin, Stain and Guil
AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION. A definition, by E. Boiaji Idowu
URHAM PRIORY 14000-1450, by R. B. Dobson
YOUTHQUAKE: The growth of a counter-culture through through two decades, by kenneth Leech
HE DESERT IS FERTILE, by Helder Camera
THE EMPTY MIRROR, by janwilem van de Wetering
THE WAY OF ALL THE EARTH, by John S. Dunne
THE OCCULT REVOLUTION. A Christian Medltation by Richard Woods
THE DEVIL, by Richard Woods
CULTURAL STUDIES 4. Centre for Contemporary Cultlural Studies     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Christ and the Spirit. Spirit Christology in Trinitarian Perspective by Ralph Del Colle
Winds of the Spirit: A Constructive Christian Theology , Peter C. Hodson
The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue by Paul McPartlan
Changing the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology by Mary McClintock Fulkerson
Plurality and Christian Ethics , by Ian S. Markham
The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology by Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki
Religion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in the World's Religions by Keith Ward
Power & Chrristian Ethics by James P. Mackey
Mystical Languages of Unsaying by Michael A. Sells
Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture by William C. Placher     

The original risk: overtheologizing ethics and undertheologizing sin.

The project of articulating a theological ethics on the basis of liturgical anthropology is bound to fail if the necessary consequence is that one has to quit the forum of critical modern rationality. The risk of Engelhardt's approach is to limit rationality to a narrow vision of reason. Sin is not to be understood as the negation of human holiness, but as the negation of divine holiness. The only way to renew theological ethics is to understand sin as the anthropological and ethical expression of the biblical message of the justification by faith only. Sin is therefore a secondary category, which can only by interpreted in light of the positive manifestation of liberation, justification, and grace. The central issue of Christian ethics is not ritual purity or morality, but experience, confession and recognition of our own injustice in our dealing with God and men.     

Valor terapéutico de las técnicas de terapia de conducta: una hipótesis de trabajo

Resumen

La literatura científica y la propia experiencia clínica nos muestra que las tánicas terapéuticas d la terapia d conducta son bastante eficaces. Sin embargo, esta eficacia no es cercana al 100%. ¿Por qué? Por otra parte, se puede constatar que una misma técnica es eficaz muchas veces en el tratamiento de diferentes trastornos, y al contrario, varias técnicas, diferentes entre sí, se revelan óptimas para el tratamiento del mismo trastorno. Sin embargo, todo ello no es constante a lo largo de diferentes casos. Este trabajo pretende reflexionar sobre todos estos aspectos y ofrecer algunas explicaciones del por qué de este estado de la cuestión. Posibles vías de investigación se sugieren a lo largo del artículo.     

Editorials

Can We Understand Sin?, by Ted Peters Evading Grace, by Thelma Megill‐Cobbler Thoughts of a Parish Pastor, by Elizabeth Purdum Pictorial editorial, by Dan Erlander     

WHAT SIN IS: A DIFFERENTIAL ANALYSIS

Sin is clearly evil, but what differentiates sin from evil? The idea that sin is moral evil is widely held, but important theological arguments have been posed against it. Theologians who reject sin moralism have, however, found it hard to distinguish sin from evil—partially because they share hidden assumptions with sin moralists. Helped by a philosophical theology of deep responsibility, I propound sin responsibilism: sin is culpable evil. This analysis of sin is open to multiple accounts of sin's relation to morality or theories of responsibility, and thus of sin's scope—but I defend a non‐moralistic, compatibilist sin responsibilism.     

Reviews

Books reviewed: Alan Jenkins, Rosanna Breen, and Roger Lindsay, Reshaping Teaching in Higher Education: Linking Teaching with Research Peter Horsfield, The Mediated Spirit Grace Hall McEntee, Jon Appleby, Joanne Dowd, Jan Grant, Simon Hole, and Peggy Silva, At the Heart of Teaching: A Guide to Reflective Practice Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt, The Virtual Student: A Profile and Guide to Working with Online Learners Leo G. Perdue, (ed.) Blackwell Companion to the Hebrew Bible Morna D. Hooker, Paul: A Short Introduction. Harold Coward, Sin and Salvation in the World Religions – A Short Introduction     

PÅ LIV OCH DÖD. OM DESTRUKTIVITET OCH LIVSVILJA

In October 1997, a conference on the future of psychiatry took place in Oslo, arranged by Einar Kringlen, a senior professor of psychiatry. University of Oslo. Richard Webster, the author of “Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis” was one of the two main speakers. One of Webster's central theses is that psychoanalysis is mostly a dogmatic, religious belief system, and not a scientifically founded enterprise. A panel was invited to comment on Webster's presentation. Siri Erika Gullestad, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Oslo, and psychoanalyst, was one of the panelists. In the following, her discussion of Webster's book is presented.     

BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON FALL AND ORIGINAL SIN

Abstract. The paper consists of an argument that goes as follows. Symbols and their elaboration into myths constitute Homo sapiens 's most primitive reading of the world and the relation of humans to that world. They are, in other words, primordial units of cultural information, emerging very early in human history, representing a significant achievement in the evolution of human self-consciousness and reflection. The classic myths of Fall and Original Sin, as well as the doctrines to which they gave rise, are further interpretations of this primordial information. The doctrinal traditions of the first four centuries of Christianity are surveyed. Three sets of data as interpreted by the biological sciences are offered as resources for understanding the biogenetic grounds of the experience that the symbols, myths, and doctrines of Fall and Original Sin seek to interpret. The conclusions to be drawn are that (1) the symbolic material is indeed commensurate with the scientific understandings, and (2) the scientific interpretations deepen our understanding of the symbols, while (3) the conversation between the symbols and the science once again raises certain perennial questions about human existence.     

SHORT NOTICES

Books reviewed:
Harold Coward, Sin and Salvation in the World Religions: A Short Introduction
Alan Race and Ingrid Shafer (eds), Religions in Dialogue: From Theocracy to Democracy
Melanie J. Wright, Understanding Judaism
Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture
K.A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland, Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ
John Holdsworth, Dwelling in a Strange Land: Exile in the Bible and in the Church
David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek (eds), Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue
Peter L. Berger, Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity
Andrew Pierce and Geraldine Smyth OP (eds), The Critical Spirit: Theology at the Crossroads of Faith and Culture
Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor, A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Popular Culture
Robert W. Jenson, On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions
David Knight, Science and Spirituality: The Volatile Connection
Natalie K. Watson, Feminist Theology
Tina Beattie, Woman
Burton Z. Cooper and John S. McClure, Claiming Theology in the Pulpit     

Spinozistic Pantheism,the Environment and Christianity

I am not a pantheist and I don’t believe that pantheism is consistent with Christianity. My preferred speculation is what I call the Swiss Cheese theory: we and our artefacts are the holes in God, the only Godless parts of reality. In this paper, I begin by considering a world rather like ours but without any beings capable of sin. Ignoring extraterrestrials and angels we could consider the world, say, 5 million years ago. Pantheism was, I say, true at that time. That is my qualified endorsement of pantheism. I then use the Sin premise, namely that we are capable of sinning, to argue that beings like us are not parts of God and I examine some consequences.     

Book Reviews

David G. Myers The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in a Time of Plenty Stephen G. Ray, Jr. Do No Harm: Social Sin and Christian Responsibility Ed. Uwe Siemon‐Netto One Incarnate Truth: Christianity's Answer to Spiritual Chaos Lee E. Snook What In The World Is God Doing? Re‐imagining Spirit and Power Dorothee Soelle Against the wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian Dorothee Soelle The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance Mark C. Taylor The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, Jennifer Tolbert RobertsAncient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History David Ratke Confession and Mission, Word and Sacrament: The Ecclesial Theology of Wilhelm Löhe