Trauma and daimonic reality in Ferenczi's later work

Jung and Ferenczi made independent discoveries of an 'archaic' (Jung) or 'primordial' (Ferenczi) layer of the psyche that shone through the 'basic fault' in the psyche opened by childhood trauma. This paper explores those parallels through an extended vignette of Ferenczi's work with Elizabeth Severn, known as 'R. N.' in the Clinical Diary. A remarkable inner object known as 'Orpha' appeared in the patient's trauma experience and saved a seed of personality from total annihilation. Ferenczi's speculation about this 'daimonic' object is cited along with his discussion of a transpersonal immaterial reality that Orpha makes visible, and that links the patient's ego-experience with a spiritual/material unity not ordinarily available to consciousness.     

Wicked incarnations: Jesus,intra-action,climate change

To take incarnation seriously, Creation Care Christians, such as Douglas and Jonathan Moo, focus on Jesus’ divinity in incarnation. If the divine Jesus was fully flesh, then creation must be good. And if we do not take care of it, we are sinning, they reason. Laurel C. Schneider's promiscuous view of incarnation insists on a porous flesh, one that is materially entangled with the world. This is beyond Sallie McFague's model of the world as God's body. Applying Schneider's promiscuous incarnation, Mary-Jane Rubenstein claims that the world is God's body, and, as such, God does not transcend matter as Ernest Simmons suggests. For Catherine Keller, unknowable divine interdependence must move us to civic action. In the middle of this conversation, I offer the term wicked incarnations to make explicit the intra-action of divinity and the world in its incarnations. To take incarnation seriously is to acknowledge incarnations as a dynamism of divine and material forces, neither of which pre-exist their relationship. I join Keller in hoping that this moves us to care about and for the material world, its changing climate, and our intra-active relationship with nonhuman, divine presence.     

LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS ON THE COSMIC SELF–NEW AND OLD: A REFLECTION ON THE COSMIC SELF:

Abstract. Responding to Ted Peters's The Cosmic Self , the author finds parallels and dissonances between New Age assertions and traditional mysticism, East and West. The comprehensive consciousness and interconnectedness of life are addressed by various mysticisms in their search for spiritual realities. However, many of the most recent movements are distinguished by superficiality.     

FROM THE SENSES TO SENSE: THE HERMENEUTICS OF LOVE

Abstract. Drawing on philosophy, theology, comparative religion, spirituality, Holocaust studies, physics, biology, psychology, and personal experience, I argue that continued human existence depends on our willingness to reject nihilism–not as an expedient "noble lie" but because faith in a meaningful cosmos and the power of love is at least as validly grounded in human experience as insistence on cosmic indifference and ultimate futility. I maintain that hope will free us to develop nonimperialistic methods of bridging cultural differences by forming a mutually intelligible vocabulary that celebrates diversity, enters the worlds of others in respectful dialogue, and fosters a postmechanistic, organic, ecological, holistic, dynamic, interactive, open-ended model of reality. I lay the foundation for a "hermeneutics of love" to complement Paul Ricoeur's "hermeneutics of suspicion" and invite speculation on the ways science, technology, and society would be transformed if those "glasses of friendship" were widely applied.     

A CRITIQUE OF BOROWITZ'S POSTMODERN JEWISH THEOLOGY

Abstract. Borowitz's book is primarily a systematic response by a liberal Jewish theologian to his perceived challenges from rationalism on one hand and postmodernism on the other. It is within this context that Borowitz discusses issues of the relationship between modern science and Judaism. The first part of this essay is a summary of Borowitz's book. Here I locate Borowitz's place in the general discipline of Jewish philosophy and theology. The second part of the paper is a critique of Borowitz's discussion of postmodernism and liberalism. It is in this concluding section that the issues raised by contemporary science for Jewish religious thought are discussed.     

HAWKING ON GOD AND CREATION

Abstract. Although full of talk about God, Stephen Hawking's recent best seller, A Brief History of Time , apparently has little use for the traditional notion of God as cosmic creator. More precisely, Hawking seems to reject the idea that we need appeal, any longer, to the notion of creatio originans (originating creation). The reason is that he has developed, over the last decade, a cosmological model that avoids any beginning to spacetime and the universe, and so eliminates the need for a cosmic beginner. I criticize Hawking's model in this essay, arguing that either it is not intended to be construed realistically or that, if it is, the model is highly implausible.     

A MODERN LOOK AT THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

Abstract. In what follows, I review the modern theory of the origin of the universe as astronomers and physicists are coming to understand it during the last decades of the twentieth century. An unexpected discovery of this study is that the story of "cosmogenesis" cannot be completely told unless we understand the fundamental nature of matter, space, and time. In the context of modern cosmology space has become not only the bedrock (so to speak) of our physical existence, it may yield a fuller understanding of the universe itself.     

TOWARD A SOUND PERSPECTIVE ON MODERN PHYSICS: CAPRA'S POPULARIZATION OF MYSTICISM AND THEOLOGICAL APPROACHES REEXAMINED

Abstract. Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics , one of several popularizations paralleling Eastern mysticism and modern physics, is critiqued, demonstrating that Capra gives little attention to the differing philosophies of physics he employs, utilizing whatever interpretation suits his purposes, without prior justification. The same critique is applied and similar conclusions drawn, about some recent attempts at relating theology and physics. In contrast, we propose the possibility of maintaining a cogent relationship between these disciplines by employing theological hypotheses to account for aspects of physics that are free from interpretive difficulties, such as the ability to create mathematical structures with extraordinary predictive success.     

RELIGION AND THE THEORIES OF SCIENCE: A RESPONSE TO BARBOUR

Abstract. This paper offers a detailed response to “Religion and the Theories of Science” in Barbour's Gifford Lectures I. Topics include: complementarity, indeterminacy, parts and wholes, and Bell's theorem in quantum theory; metaphysical issues raised by relativity theory and thermodynamics, principally the problem of temporality and “top-down” versus “bottom—up” causality; design arguments and the origins of the universe in astronomy and creation; and God's action in the context of evolution and continuing creation. Areas of agreement and disagreement between Barbour and myself over philosophical and theological implications are presented, and endnotes indicate further areas of conversation.