THEOLOGY FROM A FRACTURED VISTA: SUSAN NEIMAN'S EVIL IN MODERN THOUGHT

Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman's account of the intellectual trajectory of modernity, employs the trope “homeless” to articulate deep difficulties that affirmations of divine transcendence and of human capacities to acknowledge transcendence face in a contemporary context thoroughly marked by fragmentation, fragility, and contingency. The “hospitality” of the Incarnation, which makes a fractured world a place for divine welcoming of the human in all its contingency and brokenness, is proposed as locus for theological engagement with Neiman's appropriation of a Kantian sense of hope as the readiness to resist evil in a world seemingly bereft of welcome.     

Remaining in a situationally aggressive relationship: The role of relationship self‐efficacy

Relationship self‐efficacy (RSE) is the belief that one can resolve relationship conflicts, and it may lead victims of situational violence to remain in their relationships because they expect to minimize subsequent violence. Indeed, a longitudinal study of two samples of college students demonstrated that RSE moderates the effects of victimization on relationship dissolution; intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization was positively associated with dissolution among intimates low in RSE but was unassociated with dissolution among intimates high in RSE. Interestingly, although RSE was negatively associated with dissolution among victims, it was associated with experiencing less subsequent IPV in one sample. Ultimately, whether victims' RSE is adaptive may depend on the extent to which any minimization of conflicts eliminates violence.     

The 2014 Agreed Statement on Christology of the Churches of the Anglican Communion and the Oriental Orthodox Churches: a Catholic review

This article discusses the sources of the 2014 Agreed Statement on Christology, which include not only the 433 Formula of Union and the teaching of St Cyril of Alexandria but also some language from the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Second Council of Constantinople (553), and the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681). It also examines the rejection of Eutychianism and Nestorianism, as well as the Anglican Christology represented by Richard Hooker and the firm connection drawn between the hypostatic union and Christ’s work of salvation. The article also presents the text in comparison and contrast with two Christological declarations shared by the Roman Catholic Church and the Coptic Pope Shenouda III (1973) and the Assyrian Church of the East (1994).     

In the Presence of Love: The Pneumatological Realization of the Economy: Yves Congar's Le Mystère du Temple

Abstract:   Yves Congar's The Mystery of the Temple develops many of the themes that will be more fully worked out in his later pneumatology, particularly I Believe in the Holy Spirit . Considered against its context, Congar's pneumatology can be seen to be central to his particular strategy of ressourcement. In particular, Congar deploys pneumatology to preserve the theological connection between Christology and ecclesiology, and so offers a version of 'Spirit Christology' which avoids the pitfalls usually associated with such a position. This use of pneumatology in Congar's vision can be traced back to his account of the particular hypostasis of the Spirit in the immanent Trinity.     

What Would Jesus Buy: American Consumption of Religious and Spiritual Material Goods

This article examines an important and understudied part of the sociological study of religion: consumption of religious materials. We use data from the Baylor Religion Survey and present an initial look at which Americans read the Left Behind series, viewed The Passion of the Christ , or purchased religious paraphernalia such as "What Would Jesus Do" bracelets. Drawing on cultural consumption and religious capital research we explore class, demographic, and religious influences on consumption patterns. We find some support for each of these perspectives, which suggests that religious consumption is not a subset of cultural consumption nor of religious practice but is some combination of both.     

Correlation between Changes in Stress-Induced Corticosterone Secretion and GR mRNA Levels

The current study was conducted to determine the potential relationship between stress-induced corticosterone secretion and corticosteroid receptor mRNA levels after 5 days of intermittent stress. In particular, we were interested in the rate at which animals terminate a stress response, and how this termination may be altered by repeated stress. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to either 5 days of restraint stress or 5 days of an unpredictable stress paradigm. Restraint-stress induced corticosterone secretion was measured on Days 1 and 5 in both groups, and animals were killed on Day 6. Glucocorticoid receptor (GR), and mineralocorticoid (MR) mRNA levels were determined using in-situ hybridization techniques. Five days of restraint stress caused an habituation of the plasma corticosterone response to stress measured 60 and 90 min post-stress initiation; this pattern of corticosterone secretion was not observed in the animals subjected to unpredictable stress. Five days of either stress paradigm did not alter MR mRNA levels measured within the hippocampus or GR mRNA levels within the hippocampus or the medial parvocellular division of the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (mpPVN). However, an individual's GR mRNA levels measured within the CA1/2 region of the hippocampus and the mpPVN were significantly correlated with the degree of habituation of the corticosterone response to stress measured on Day 5. This suggests that an increase in the rate of termination of the stress response and levels of GR within the hippocampus and mpPVN may be functionally related.     

Action and emotion in everyday life

This study of naturally occurring behaviour employed a "beeper technique" to investigate the actions carried out by 152 subjects in eight different groups, viz. adult students, employed students who were also parents, unemployed, art students, doctoral students, alcoholics, retired people and a control group. Actions were sampled for seven subsequent days, five times per day between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. at randomly selected occasions. Each action was rated on a number of variables, shortly after it was sampled (median delay approximately 10 min). Some of the findings were: Time allocation corresponded well with national estimates. Being under situational control was highly aversive. Instrumental and consummatory orientations correlated positively. The background variables were, on the whole, only rather weakly related to action ratings, but it was found that women and retired persons tended to report a higher level of well-being.