Discerning the Ministries of Women

In 1988, the historic Rhodes Inter-Orthodox Symposium on the Place of Women in the Orthodox Church encouraged, among other things, fuller participation of women in the life of the church. This article reports on the results of a study that solicited the views of Orthodox Christians regarding the participation of women in the life of the church. Nearly three-quarters of respondents clearly stated or intimated that they would like to see more opportunities for women to serve in the church. One-third of the respondents identified the issue of deaconesses in their essays. Responses here revealed a great diversity of experience, education, and opinion. Nevertheless, more than half of the respondents commenting on deaconesses showed an openness to this ministry. This may be a powerful measurement indicating that exploring the pastoral need for this and other ministries may well be long overdue.     

Longing for Life Extension: Science Fiction and Late Life

Rejuvenescence has long been a topic of legend and medicine. As the body became the property of medical science, speculative fiction asked how fantastic experiments with bodies would affect the life course. In science fiction, medical breakthroughs promise or threaten to forestall or even reverse the decline from midlife through old age to senility and decrepitude. Responding to debates over evolution, eugenics, and scientific experimentation with human and animal subjects, rejuvenescence novels such as Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire (1996) ask readers whether they desire long life or heightened quality of life; the consolations of age or the hungers of youth; short-lived intensity or perpetual ennui.     

Logotherapy and Pastoral Counseling

SUMMARY

An intensive study of Frankl's logotherapy reveals its timely relevance for pastoral counseling. The paradigm of logotherapy recognizes the spiritual dimension as the inclusive and encompassing dimension for comprehending and integrating human phenomena. Its hermeneutical phenomenological analysis introduces an understanding of personhood which affirms one's capacity to find meaning in life, indeed, even in suffering and dying. It is this unique spiritual capacity which conveys a renewed awareness of self worth and human dignity and assists persons in understanding themselves as fashioned in the image of God. Logotherapy provides a helpful counseling theory for pastors and laity engaged in older adult ministry.     

Democratic Moral Education and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

How far is Thomas Aquinas available for current discussions in political philosophy? While there are certainly things to be learned from him about our political preoccupations, the pedagogy of his moral teaching typically resists our familiar questions. This holds even when the question is put in terms that Thomas should recognize—say, as a question about the virtues appropriate for a democracy. Thomas not only gives different meanings to these terms, he moves political topics away from the center of theological attention and so organizes them very differently. A reader can notice these differences at many points but perhaps especially in the attention that Thomas gives in the Summa to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. His account of these gifts qualifies significantly what he says of virtue and suggests large limits on human agency, whether in ethics or in politics.     

The history and tradition of the Precious Blood of Christ in Mantua

The relic of the Precious Blood of the Passion of Christ is kept in the crypt of the Basilica of Sant’Andrea in Mantua. Venerated over the centuries by popes and emperors, it was, according to tradition, transferred from Calvary to Mantua by the Roman centurion (later saint) Longinus, who had pierced the side of Jesus to verify his death (John 19.34). This devotional tradition was corroborated by historical testimonials and miraculous facts. The soil soaked with the Precious Blood was hidden underground, for fear of desecration, and then found again in two subsequent retrievals (in 804 and 1048 A.D.). Due to its donation to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry III, a part of the relic finally arrived, through various vicissitudes, in Weingarten, a town now twinned with Mantua. Guardianship of the prestigious Christian relic rests in Mantua, with the Confraternity of the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.     

Most Precious Blood: pilgrimage and veneration of the relic in Weingarten and Mantua

This contribution reflects on the indissoluble connection between Christ and the Church which becomes tangible in his redeeming blood. It gives an overview of the papal teaching on the veneration of the Precious Blood and explores what the connections, parallelisms and differences are that exist between Mantua and Weingarten regarding the devotion to parts of the same relic.     

Finding a Language for Faith: Liturgy and Worship

The sacramental and liturgical texts in The Annotated Luther series (volumes 1 and 3) reflect Luther's ongoing concern for the faith life of the people. They also give us an insight into Luther's own struggle to find words (and, of course, practices) that reflect the fundamental insight of the Reformation: justification by faith alone. Luther refused to abandon ritual or a strict liturgical order even though it can so easily become, in the minds and hearts of believers, a work they must do. The freedom of the gospel does not dispense us from a liturgical order or from participation; in fact, for Luther, that freedom compels us to worship! This tension can be found within these writings as Luther searches for new words and redefines and/or reorients other words to express a spirituality of justification.     

SHOULD A CHRISTIAN ADOPT METHODOLOGICAL NATURALISM?

It has become standard practice for scientists to avoid the possibility of references to God by adopting methodological naturalism (MN), a method that assumes that the reality of the universe, as it can be accessed by empirical enquiry, is to be explained solely with recourse to natural phenomena. In this essay, I critique the Christian practice of this method, arguing that a Christian's practices should always reflect her belief that the universe is created and sustained by the triune God. This leads me to contend that the Christian should adopt a theologically humble approach to the sciences (instead of MN), with which she humbly acknowledges that special divine action is not discernible by empirical science. To further my critique, I consider three ways in which the practice of MN can be particularly problematic for Christianity.     

Spirituality and education; inner and outer realities

There is a persisting tendency in attempts to define spirituality, to adopt a dualistic point of view which sees the spirit as somehow impenetrably inner, innate and introspectively perceived, interacting with the outer world through the body. As well as a strong intuitive sense of the correctness of this philosophical point of view, it also is supported by psychotherapeutic perspectives that speak of the private inner being. In this paper I will argue that this view is logically, epistemologically, morally, and psychologically problematic. It will be argued that the concept of an inwardness to our mental life can be distinguished from the view of that life as interior. The perspective that we have of our inward selves is learned and conditional upon a sense of an outer self, functioning and communicating in the public world. Rather than an ego centric conceptualization of spirituality based on the idea of the spirit as inner and logically inaccessible, I we might adopt a sociocentric perspective in which the supremacy of the ego is dissolved in favour of an understanding in which we see ourselves as part of the social and natural outer world in which we exist.