Why Not Now? Karlstadt's Whether We Should Proceed Slowly and Avoid Offending the Weak in Matters that Concern God's Will (1524)

Abstract

Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt's Whether We Should Proceed Slowly [Ob man gemach faren soll] in 1524 was no best seller, and the work is often overlooked today. However, its author was a prolific publisher, especially of German tracts, in the early sixteenth century. His influence upon other so-called radical reformers remains yet to be measured adequately. Despite the fact that Gemach was written shortly before Karlstadt's expulsion from Electoral Saxony, its thesis resonated strongly with other writers who were disenchanted with the trajectory of reforms in Wittenberg after 1522. A careful analysis of Karlstadt's argumentation reveals a rigorous reliance upon Old Testament texts, and it represents the development of a position that holds the Christian congregation responsible for implementing reforms in worship that are mandated in God's commands. As Karlstadt's response to Luther's Invocavit Sermons (preached in March 1522 and published outside Wittenberg in 1523), Gemach shows what Gordon Rupp called Karlstadt's ‘best polemical writing.'     

The wisdom of hindsight and the limits of Humean constructivism

Ordinary normative discourse includes talk about the reasons for action we had in the past but only came to discover in hindsight. In some cases, we come to discover these reasons not because new information has come to light, but because our values have changed. Contemporary metaethical views, namely Street's Humean constructivism and Blackburn's and Gibbard's quasi-realism, have some difficulty accounting for these reasons and the claims we make about them. This difficulty hinges on the diachronic complexity of these reasons and claims. It cannot be the case that these reasons were constructed by the perspective we had in the past before our values changed. If there were no extant reasons in the past, then it would seem that our claims about them in the present cannot be true. Quasi-realists can account for the way in which reason claims purport to be true by appealing to a deflationary sense of truth and so can remain agnostic on the actual existence of these reasons. Nevertheless, Street argues that this agnosticism is inconsistent with the quasi-realists' naturalism that should have them reject the existence of such reasons. I argue that Street would suffer from an even more acute form of this inconsistency were she to account for reasons only discovered in hindsight. At best her view does no better than the view of her chosen rivals. At worst, it discounts reasons that are so central to our moral development that it fails to be plausible.     

Drive for muscularity and muscularity-oriented disordered eating in men: The role of set shifting difficulties and weak central coherence

Set shifting difficulties and weak central coherence are information-processing biases associated with thinness-oriented eating and body image pathology in women. However, little is known about the relationship between these processing biases and muscularity-oriented eating and body image pathology. We investigated whether set shifting and central coherence were uniquely related to the drive for muscularity and muscularity-oriented disordered eating in a sample of 91 male undergraduates. Participants completed the Wisconsin Card Sort Test, the Matching Familiar Figures Task, the Drive for Muscularity scale, and a modified Eating Disorders Examination-Questionnaire. Results indicated that set shifting difficulties and weak central coherence were both uniquely positively associated with the drive for muscularity, and that set shifting difficulties were uniquely positively associated with muscularity-oriented disordered eating. Results are discussed with regard to the male experience of body image and eating pathology, and in regard to muscle dysmorphia.     

A possible physiological correlate for mental flow

The relationship between mental flow and physiological coherence was investigated in three tasks. Coherence is a state defined by a particular pattern of low frequency heart rate variability (HRV), which has been related to optimal performance and positive mental states. Flow is a pleasurable performance-enhancing psychological state. In the first task, participants answered questionnaires. In the second, they played a coherence-inducing biofeedback game, and in a third, they played a flow-inducing videogame. HRV was used to measure coherence while flow was assessed using the Flow State Scales. The data revealed that coherence could be induced without flow and vice versa. More surprising, the correlations between flow and coherence were different in each of the tasks. We conclude that coherence and flow are discrete constructs despite their theoretical similarities.     

A changed perspective: How gratitude can affect sense of coherence through positive reframing

We hypothesized that gratitude would be related to sense of coherence via positive reframing, which is a process by which negative events or circumstances are seen in a positive light. We tested this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1 (N = 166) we found a strong, robust relationship between trait gratitude and sense of coherence above and beyond life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, happiness, and social desirability. Study 2 (N = 275) showed that gratitude at Time 1 predicted sense of coherence at Time 2, controlling for baseline scores. Positive reframing mediated the relationship between gratitude and SOC. Results are discussed in terms of their practical implications.     

From Noosphere to Theosphere: Cyclotrons, Cyberspace, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love

Two theme–setting quotations introduce this essay—that of Yeats's falcon, deaf to the falconer's call, adrift in space above the blood–dimmed tide, counterpoised to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's call to abandon old nationalistic prejudices and build the earth. With primary references to the thought of Teilhard, along with, among others, to Ewert Cousins, Andrew M. Greeley, Karl Jaspers, Marshall McLuhan, Ilya Prigogine, Karl Rahner, Leonard Swidler, David Tracy, and Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that the most crucial intellectual paradigm shift of the twenty–first century will challenge humanity to take the turn from uncritical attachment to rigid absolutism or atomistic fragmentation toward a sense of open–ended, off–centered centeredness and fluid connections—from a static to a dynamic model of reality. Central to my argument is the Teilhardian reinterpretation of the Christian metaphors of creation, fall, incarnation, salvation, and the eschaton in the evolutionary terms of the emergence of cosmic consciousness from the chrysalis of the world of the past—from chaos to order, from biosphere via noosphere to theosphere. Facilitated by the exponential growth of populations, collaborative research, science, technology, and global communication (most dramatically manifested by the Internet), this emergent understanding of what it means to be human can, first, foster the awareness that in humanity evolution has become conscious of itself, and then, gradually, precipitate the formation of “the global village” (the mystical body of Christ), as respectful dialogue replaces diatribe and the dualistic pugilism of Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” is gradually transformed into a nonadversarial mentality that values shared humanity and a common purpose. Thus, eons hence, empowered by love–energy, the transmutation of the human into the ultra–human can take the ultimate quantum leap into a yet higher dimension where spirit/energy is no longer in need of flesh/mass, and Earth can be safely left behind.     

Postwar Recovery to Stress Symptoms Ratio as a Measure of Resilience,Individual Characteristics,Sense of Danger,and Age

This study maintains that postwar resilience should be defined by the proportion of recovery from war adversity and level of postwar symptoms. We hypothesize first that four resilience-promoting factors will predict this measure of resilience. Second, these associations will be mediated by sense of postwar danger. Third, war-afflicted older people will be comparable to younger people on these variables. The sample included 829 Israeli adults who experienced the 2006 second Lebanon war. Results that have generally supported these hypotheses have been discussed in terms of the definition of resilience, the role of sense of danger in postwar adjustment, and the resilience of older people to war.     

Adding emotionality to seductive details—Consequences for learning?

According to the seductive detail effect, adding interesting but irrelevant information (i.e., seductive details) can be detrimental to learning success. In this study, it was explored within two experiments whether the valence of text‐based seductive details might affect learning outcomes differently. For Experiments 1 and 2, we pretested text‐based seductive details for their emotional valence (n = 32 or n = 25 students, respectively). For the main studies of Experiments 1 (n = 105) and 2 (n = 131), university students were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that varied with respect to the presence of seductive details and their emotional valence (no vs. positive vs. negative vs. neutral). Unexpectedly, results revealed in both experiments no seductive details effect and also no differences between the three seductive detail conditions for the used learning outcome measures retention and transfer. Possible reasons for these findings and their implications are discussed.