Where creeds meet incredulity: educational research in a post-utopian age

In contrast to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s classic warning, postmodern society in the United States seems increasingly influenced by metanarratives—religious metanarratives. This article examines the implications of this religious resurgence for educational researchers. It offers a competing analysis of the postmodern that draws on Harold Bloom, Slavoj ŽiŽek and others to identify the gnostic elements in contemporary religiosity, both in Europe and the United States. This competing reading of postmodern religiosity suggests a reframing of Lyotard’s paralogy—research that searches for instabilities in the framework of knowledge. Drawing examples from recent educational research, I will argue for ways in which researchers can better engage religion in their work.The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer who brought to his attention additional texts and debates about this highly interdisciplinary topic.     

THE STATUS OF THE ANOMALY IN THE FEMINIST GOD-TALK OF ROSEMARY RUETHER

Abstract. Scripture, the creeds, and tradition have provided the raw material that theology has attempted to refine. The contribution of much recent theology comes from new insight into these materials by women, blacks, and the Third World, often as examined by analytic tools derived from post-Christian ideologies. The theology of Rosemary Ruether stands out because of her choice of sources, among which she includes documents excoriated as heretical by what she calls the patriarchal orthodoxy of the early Christian church. Because of this it is useful to examine this type of theology in relation to other theological inquiries of recent years. The thesis of this paper is that, in her ability to incorporate source material hitherto regarded as heretical, Ruether has demonstrated the scientific character of this kind of theology.     

THE SPIRIT IN THE NETWORK: MODELS FOR SPIRITUALITY IN A TECHNOLOGICAL CULTURE

Can a technological culture accommodate spiritual experience and spiritual thinking? If so, what kind of spirituality? I explore the relation between technology and spirituality by constructing and discussing several models for spirituality in a technological culture. I show that although gnostic and animistic interpretations and responses to technology are popular challenges to secularization and disenchantment claims, both the Christian tradition and contemporary posthumanist theory provide interesting alternatives to guide our spiritual experiences and thinking in a technological culture. I analyze how creational, network, and cyborg metaphors defy suggestions of (individual) animation or alienation and instead offer different ways of conceptualizing and experiencing communion between the material and the spiritual.     

The Gnostic heritage of Heavy Metal

The religious impulse in early Heavy Metal music is fundamentally Gnostic. An ancient religious tradition emphasising the rule of evil and the remoteness of salvation, Gnosticism was integrated into hard rock music in the late 1960s. Early Heavy Metal musicians encountered Gnosticism as it had been absorbed into popular fiction and film, including especially the works of Dennis Wheatley and J.R.R. Tolkien. Prominent in giving Gnosticism musical form was the band Black Sabbath, whose first three albums in 1970 and 1971 pioneered the patterns of musical practice that would become the conventions of the genre. Heavy Metal’s alternately heavy and giddy affect, created via a synthesis of musical practices and complementary verbal and visual representations, brought Gnostic beliefs into meaningful intersection with the everyday lives of young blue-collar males in Britain and the United States, as they confronted the post-industrial age in the context of a waning sixties counterculture.     

Dismantling Gender

Abstract

While it may seem at first that a vast chasm separates ancient gnostics, those “heretical” early Christians active in the Greco-Roman world of the first centuries CE, and modern queer BDSM practitioners, one should note that what these two groups have in common is crucial: both believe gender to be oppressive and both act upon this belief in strikingly similar ways. This article presents a comparative study of the rituals employed by both groups, which were and are constructed in order to prescribe a way to gradually undermine the normative process of gendering. The comparison focuses on three interrelated issues: the motivation in each case to take part in the ritual, the transcendence towards which each ritual aspires, and the positioning of the subject performing the ritual in relation to the ritual objectives and efficaciousness. This comparison is meant to shed more light on these two extremely complex phenomena.     

哈纳克的《论马克安》

哈纳克是德国教会史家和神学家,自由主义新教神学的主要代表;而马克安是使徒之后奥古斯丁之前最重要的教会史人物。哈纳克学术研究的一个重心所在就是马克安,他穷一生心力研究马克安的结晶就是《论马克安》。本文从哈纳克的学术地位、马克安在灵知思想和基督教会历史中占据的独特的位置,以及《论马克安》的所阐述的义理等三个方面为中译本的《论马克安》作引介。     

TECHNO‐SECULARISM: COMMENTS AND REFLECTIONS

Abstract. I comment on some of the points made in John Caiazza's thesis on techno‐secularism and offer some of my own further reflections on the subject. Tertullian's rhetorical question about Athens and Jerusalem has universal relevance, not just for Western culture, and, notwithstanding the many positive contributions of science and technology to human culture and civilization, they may not take the place of religion of one kind or another in the foreseeable future. What is needed is to transform religions in ways that meet the challenges of a world drastically transformed by science and technology.     

Seven Sermons for Bringing the Dead Father Back to Life

This article tries to show how VII Sermones ad Mortuos were for Jung a pivotal text, leading him to a radical self-transformation. By venturing to allow the unknown to occur, Jung permitted the emergence of an organizing principle and also the evolution within himself of what was to come: a man, an oeuvre, a therapeutic method. This turning point, representing an epistemological fracture, is a crucial moment in Jung's life: the letting go of a paternal imago which imprisoned him, paved the way for a decisive transition to the symbolic function.