The Market as “God”?

This article explores two lines of inquiry. The first is related to the production of human subjectivities in relation to market ideology and practices. What kinds of human subjectivities are produced when people worship the market as “God”? The market and its values of hyper‐competition become idols as people overly direct their energy toward earning and accumulating financial and social capital in order to find meaning and worth. Worshiping the market reflects a perverted anthropology. The second line of inquiry is related to the language of sacrifice intrinsic to both free market logic and Western Christian theology. Could Christian theology, even unwittingly, reinforce the problem of sacrifice in market logic, which justifies forms of human loss (such as chronic poverty) in order to promote long‐term economic growth and greater human wellbeing?      

Crossing the invisible line: De-differentiation of wake,sleep and dreaming may engender both creative insight and psychopathology

Writing about dreaming, the poet Raymond Carver said “I feel as if I’ve crossed some kind of invisible line”. In creative people, the “line” between wake, dreaming and psychopathology may be porous, engendering a de-differentiated, super-critical, hybrid state. Evidence exists for a relationship between creativity and psychopathology but its nature has been elusive. De-differentiation between wake, sleep and dreaming may be the common substrate, as dream-like cognition pervades wake and wake-like neurophysiology suffuses sleep. Chaos theory posits brain states as inherently labile, transient and dynamically unstable. Over and above transient dissociations, an enduring and, sometimes, progressive, de-differentiation may be possible. Evidence indicates that sleep and dreaming facilitate creative insight. In consequence, a mild to moderate form of de-differentiation may enhance creativity but if wake-like neurobiology permeates sleep this may disrupt sleep-dependent memory processing and emotional regulation. If de-differentiation is progressive and enduring, various forms of psychopathology may result.     

Depicting Caribbean Theological Libraries

Theological libraries in the Caribbean have suffered from invisibility, so this study aims to bring these libraries to the fore. It presents key features of the libraries and seeks to determine if these are influenced by the libraries’ denominational affiliation, geographic location, and size. Geographically speaking, the target area was twenty-nine Caribbean territories. Data was gathered using a questionnaire containing mainly open-ended questions in English and Spanish, which was mostly administered face-to-face. The general results are offered first: the number of libraries found, their geographic location—whether in the English, Spanish and Dutch-speaking Caribbean—their denominations, and their size. These results are followed by a more detailed presentation focusing on classification schemes, subject headings, automation, and staffing at the supervisory level. The findings are then analyzed by denomination, location, and size. The article ends with a discussion of the results, comparing theological libraries in the Caribbean with theological libraries in the United States, Asia, and Europe. The study concludes that denomination and location have not affected the findings; but size has to some extent. Also, in some areas, Caribbean theological libraries resemble those in North America, while in others they resemble those in Asia and Europe.     

Formation for the Whole Church: A New/Old Vision of Theological Education in the 21st Century

This article offers a proposal for a vision of theological education beyond the boundaries of training and teaching for traditional professional ministry roles. Particular attention will be given to the idea of education as formation and the shared role academic institutions have with congregations. Implications for reshaping definitions of student and faculty will be explored.     

THE IMAGO DEI: EVOLUTIONARY AND THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

This short article provides an introduction to a special section, consisting of six papers on human evolution and the imago Dei. These papers are the result of dialogue between theologians and philosophers of religion at the University of Oxford and the Catholic University of Leuven. All contributors focus on the imago Dei, and consider how this theological notion can be understood from an evolutionary perspective, looking at a variety of disciplines, including the psychology of reasoning, cognitive science of religion, paleoanthropology, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary ethics.     

IMAGO DEI AND HUMAN RATIONALITY

There is a pervasive trend in Western theology to identify imago Dei with human intellectual and cognitive capacities. However, several contemporary theologians have criticized this view because, according to the critics, it leads to a truncated view of humanity. In this article, I shall concentrate on the question of rationality, first, through theologies of Thomas Aquinas and contemporary Lutheran Robert Jenson, and second, in some branches of recent cognitive psychology. I will argue that there is a significant overlap between contemporary scientific interpretations of rationality and both a traditional Thomistic view and a contemporary ecumenical interpretation of imago Dei. Consequently, it is possible to give an account of imago Dei which takes structural features as central and which is in accord with contemporary science, without falling prey to the dangers that the critics of structuralism point out.     

A diasporic Christian theology: towards an eschatological understanding of theological education in post-communist societies

Christian theology amidst post-communist societies finds itself in a precarious situation as it seeks to emerge from the competing social imaginaries of its totalitarian Soviet past and the democratic capitalism of its future. To do so, eschatological hope will need to spring eternal as it seeks understanding by faith in love of the triune God and its diverse neighbours while reckoning with its diasporic status. As such, this programmatic article succinctly circumscribes the meaning (hope), message (faith), and mission (love) of a diasporic Christian theology with an ecumenical vision predominately for university theological education under post-communist conditions. It seeks to give reason for the eschatological hope within (meaning) that is fixated on the resurrected Christ in the Spirit (message) for the wisdom and flourishing of humanity (mission).     

Performing the imago Dei: human enhancement,artificial intelligence and optative image-bearing

If the imago Dei is not a taxonomic definition but rather something that is performed in context, what are the implications for questions of human enhancement and the development of artificial intelligence (AI)? The author considers Alistair McFadyen’s performative vision of the imago Dei, one that actively seeks humanity in concrete situations, in the context of human enhancement and AI, asking the questions, ‘Does becoming cyborg through human enhancement make us less bearers of the divine image?’ And, ‘Can AI ever be considered to be in the image of God?’ Briefly tracing the shift in perspectives on the imago Dei, before considering what a performance of the image might look like, the author proposes three performances that have significant implications for questions about what it means to be human. To be an image-bearer is not dependent upon human DNA or species membership, but on an optative performance of the imago Dei.     

From Walls to Windows: Using Barriers as Pathways to Insightful Solutions

The purpose of this study was to explore and develop a conceptual model for how individuals unlock insight. The concept of insight — the ‘out of the box’ or ‘aha!’ solution to a problem — offers a framework for exploring and understanding how best to enhance problem solving skills due to the cognitive shift insight requires. Creative problem solving (CPS) is inherent to a variety of performance realms including effective decision making, innovation, and organizational development; however, related processes of insight, innovation and creativity remain intangible. The model, based on a review of the problem solving literature, proposes that insight involves a five stage, cyclical process emerging as: primary appraisal of the problem, secondary appraisal based on prior knowledge, initial focus, problem representation, and solution generation when, if no solution is found, the cycle begins again. The research has implications for individual, team and organizational settings suggesting that performance on a wide variety of problems may be improved by utilizing an integrated focus rather than a barrier or goal focus alone.