DISPOSABLE BODIES,DISABLED MINDS,AND CHRISTIAN HOPE: RESURRECTION IN LIGHT OF TRANSHUMANISM AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

This piece brings into critical conversation Christian resurrection hope, virtual versions of transhumanism, and intellectual disability and demonstrates that Christian resurrection provides a more cogent hope for people with severe intellectual disabilities than transhumanism. I argue that transhumanist virtual futures are theologically problematic, as bodily resurrection is neither required nor desirable. It is particularly problematic for people with severe intellectual disabilities given the way they would be excluded from these futures. Disability theology also raises issues with the traditional notions of “healing” in the resurrection and the implications for the value and identity of persons with intellectual disabilities. Starting with these problems, I explore the nature of Christian hope, noting the inadequacies of a virtual transhumanist future with respect to both resurrection faith and intellectual disability, and address how resurrection hope can account for issues raised in disability theology, and so properly include people with intellectual disabilities.     

CONTRIBUTIONS OF TIPLER'S OMEGA POINT THEORY

Abstract. An attempt to discover what can be learned from the recent work of Frank Tipler on the Omega Point theory requires an analysis of his framework of understanding from scientific, philosophical, and theological perspectives. A critique of his crucial ideas, and of the salient points raised by some of his critics, can then be undertaken within the compass of his strengths. A critique of the critiques of Tipler's work allows one to evaluate the extent and limitations of his contributions.     

SOMETHING TO OFFEND EVERYONE: TIPLER'S VISION OF IMMORTALITY

Abstract. Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality provides abundant cause for intellectual offense—including challenges to physics, to theology, and, seemingly, to common sense. Few philosophical conundrums remain unaddressed. Still, the book is stimulating and well presented.     

Aquinas and the Virtues of Hope: Theological and Democratic

A prominent political historian has recently identified unwarranted optimism and unwarranted pessimism as democracy's “dual dangers.” While this historical analysis highlights the difficulties that accompany democratic hope, our prevailing conceptual vocabulary obscures the resources needed to address them. This essay attempts to recover these resources by excavating insights from Thomas Aquinas, who supplies one of the most systematic accounts of hope in the history of religious and political thought. By appropriating the conceptual structure of Thomas's theological virtue of hope, this essay reconstructs a democratic virtue that perfects acts of hoping in fellow citizens to achieve democratic goods and thereby enables citizens to respond properly to difficulties that tempt presumption and despair.     

感恩与大学生创伤后成长的关系：社会支持和希望的中介作用

采用病毒暴露风险问卷、感恩问卷、领悟社会支持量表、希望量表和创伤后成长问卷,以2168名大学生为被试,考察新冠病毒肺炎疫情期间居家学习大学生的感恩对创伤后成长(PTG)的预测作用及社会支持和希望的中介作用。结果发现,有41.61%的大学生出现明显的PTG;在控制了性别、年级、居住地和病毒暴露风险后,感恩可以直接正向预测PTG,也可以分别通过社会支持和希望的中介正向预测PTG,还可以通过社会支持和希望的链式中介正向预测PTG。本研究提示心理干预工作者,要关注疫情期间大学生的心理成长,可以通过提高大学生的感恩、社会支持和希望从而促进PTG。     

Hope,Social Support,and Postpartum Depression: Disentangling the Mediating Effects of Negative Affectivity

We examined the potentially mediating effects of negative affectivity (NA) on the hope–depression relationship among a sample of postpartum women. We also assessed the social support reported by these women and examined the possible mediating effects of NA on the social support–postpartum depression relationship. Correlational analyses of data obtained from women (N = 98) who had given birth in the previous 6 months revealed that NA did not mediate either hope or social support in the prediction of postpartum depression. Hope accounted for a significant degree of variance in postpartum depression. These data suggest that hope has palliative effects among women following childbirth and these effects are not nullified or explained by emotional predispositions.     

Alone with God

A patient deals with her cancer and its treatment through a life of the imagination, dreams and God. The author observes a toughness in her and strong feeling. She struggles to bear the aliveness of God as she wrestles with childhood memories of her own mother's death from the same disease. Prayers for her are experienced as sunbeam fibers and a kind of transfusion.     

Optimism, Pessimism, and Hope in Durkheim

In Book Two, Chapter (1), of The Division of Labor in Society (1984) entitled "The Progress of the Division of Labor and Happiness", Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) stages a provocative encounter between the attitudes of optimism and pessimism, an encounter that reveals certain problematic assumptions regarding the status of hope in relation to the project of binding oneself to life under conditions of anomie. Durkheim's theoretical assault on the utilitarian-based optimism of his day is accomplished against the backdrop of a critical pessimism that is shown to be equally untenable. However, his critique leaves the question of the status of hope in relation to the question of human happiness unclarified and ambiguously framed, even as Durkheim defends hope against the despair of pessimism. The essay concludes with a critical appraisal of Durkheim's partial critique of pessimism and a few observations regarding the links between memory, expectation, pessimism, suicide, hope, and happiness.     

Nurturing Faith for Action: Theological Education and Global Responsibility

Ghana hopes to parlay the financial promises of oil recovery into a better life for its people. If Ghana succeeds, it would be a model for the developing world. But Ghana's capacity to overcome poverty and support human dignity will be stronger if the rest of us who also hold that value commit more truly to it. As people of faith, as leaders of institutions, as educators, we face substantive questions about how our own actions, business decisions, and consumptive practices contribute to the larger issues of oil, consumerism, and planetary health. A course that asks not just Christian scholars and clergy, but leaders of theological institutions, church bodies, businesses, and others, to consider an ethical, paradigmatic shift toward a whole‐world ethic of well‐being is in order.     

Working with unrealistic or unshared hope in the counselling session

Hope has long been identified as an important therapeutic factor in counselling. Further, research evidence for the importance of hope to counselling practice and outcome is abundant. However, the field is only beginning to explicitly consider how hope can be effectively and intentionally practised. One of the most challenging dilemmas encountered by counsellors committed to working with this important therapeutic factor is that of so-called unrealistic hope. In this paper, we outline two real-life counselling vignettes illustrating unrealistic hope, and consider these scenarios alongside relevant scholarship and practice experience. Guiding principles and practices for conceptualising and working with unrealistic hope are offered as a means of beginning the conversation about this complex aspect of working with client hope.