bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Problem of Kant
Authors: Harris H. S. 
Published: August 2016

For years I have repeated to the students in my seminars the programmatic assertion that “Hegel was the greatest disciple Kant ever had.” My object in saying this has always been to remind them as forcibly as possible that for Hegel and everyone in his generation, Kant was the master of them that know, the German philosopher, the thinker who had raised German thought to a new level, and had given it a decisive primacy over the earlier achievements of modern (or ‘scientific’) Reason from Bacon and Descartes to Hume and Rousseau. For this reason alone, I wished to affirm, it was in the highest degree unlikely that Hegel's ‘speculative’ philosophy, his theory of the ‘Idea’, was a reinstatement of the ‘dogmatic’ tradition that Kant so decisively overthrew. On the contrary, the theory of the ‘Idea’ must be seen as that ‘completion’ of the Kantian philosophy of which Hegel spoke prophetically in a letter to Schelling when he was approaching his twenty-fifth birthday.It took Hegel several years to discover that Kant could not be ‘completed’ simply by the process of turning his revolutionary ‘insight’ into universal ‘Enlightenment’. At the time when he first appeared before the learned public as a philosopher in his own right Hegel was convinced (mainly as a result of his ten-year intimacy with Hölderlin) that “Truth is the whole”; and that a direct experience of that divine wholeness had actually been achieved by the poets of Greece (especially by those of Athens between the Great War with Persia and the Great Civil War). He was vividly aware that those same Greek poets were articulating the life of a world which had perished irretrievably.
The Actuality of Schelling's Hegel-Critique
Authors: Bowie Andrew 
Published: August 2016

In the English-speaking world it is not clear that any of the later Schelling's critique of Hegel has ever directly been part of serious philosophical debate, though its indirect effects, via the work of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and others, are often unconsciously present in contemporary debates. How this fact looks in terms of a Hegelian conception of the history of philosophy is a question that would require more space than I have here. What I want to suggest is that the confrontation with Hegel of the later Schelling, as well as some aspects of the earlier Schelling, open up conceptual issues which are present in contemporary philosophical reflections on modernity and post-modernity. This happens, however, in ways which have hardly become common currency in these reflections. The basis of my argument is the re-interpretation of Schelling's arguments by Manfred Frank.The main philosophical impetus behind the post-modern is the idea that the attempt to establish any essential identity between being and thinking, of which Hegel is usually seen as the classic representative, must be regarded as a metaphysical dream from which we must awaken, if we are not to miss the possibilities of the new time in which we are living. In this view the illusion of identity threatens to block our access to the diversity available if we realise that this illusion must be renounced. If it is true that the history of Western metaphysics consists in the attempt to articulate the presence of the infinite within the finite, then such arguments can be seen as making a certain degree of sense: once philosophy has achieved this articulation the consequence can seem to be a closure in which the new always reveals itself as ultimately the old.
The Wisdom of Solomon and the Solomon of Wisdom: Tradition's Transpositions and Human Transformation
Authors: Green Barbara 
Published: August 2016

ABSTRACTScripture offers readers not a prescriptive printout but a recital behind our experience, invites a transformative engagement between text and life. The main insight available from Wisdom of Solomon is that Wisdom, intimate of God and structuring element of all creation, saves her friends into Life, not without their collaboration; the alternative is Death. Processes of transposition and transformation are the hermeneutical key to the book, both as authored and as read. The book's few central claims shift from genre to genre and from section to section for fresh and illustrative presentation. Transformation is also the challenge offered to readers: reappropriate the heritage afresh and thus survive. The envisioned transposition implies not simply change but growth out of a profound fidelity to something valued. What is at stake in the book is the “mother of transformations”: the journey from life through death, either to Life or to nothingness (Death), but also the survival of the Jewish community in Alexandria in the first century C.E.
A Theological Ethic for Renewing Church-Labor Alliance
Authors: Lamoureux Patricia Ann 
Published: August 2016

ABSTRACTThe contemporary American labor movement is in a state of crisis. Not only is the membership base at a low-point, but a host of negative factors and obstacles to growth present enormous challenges for its future viability. In the past, organized labor has been most effective when there was a strong alliance with the Catholic community. Since the middle of the twentieth century, however, this association has weakened, and in some cases has turned to opposition. The premise of this article is that a renewed church-labor alliance could provide needed assistance to reinvigorate the labor movement while also advancing the social concerns of the Catholic Church in this nation.
Graced Encounters: Liturgy and Ethics from a Balthasarian Perspective
Authors: Steck Christopher 
Published: August 2016

ABSTRACTThe theological aesthetic framework of Hans Urs von Balthasar can be used to develop a “continuity” model for relating liturgy and the moral life: each supports the Christian's response of faith but in distinctive ways. The fundamental source of Christian faith is the graced encounter with Christ. For Balthasar, this encounter occurs narratively: our stories are invited into Christ's story where we discover a personal God calling us by name. Both liturgy and the moral life mediate the Christian's entrance into this salvific narrative; however, each does so by emphasizing a different aspect of it: liturgy underscores the eschatological fullness of the narrative; the moral life invites us into Christ's story at a point “between the times.” This different eschatological emphasis leads liturgy and the moral life to take on complementary roles in nurturing the Christian's encounter with Christ.
The Contingency of Solidarity: A Pragmatic Critique of Richard Rorty's Philosophy
Authors: McClure Joyce Kloc 
Published: August 2016

ABSTRACTPragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty articulates a view of the human person that is deeply at odds with a central assertion of Christianity: that human persons are deeply but not finally vulnerable to the conditions of their existence, and thus not wholly contingent beings. Because key elements of a Christian view of the human person, including a sharp appreciation of human vulnerability and the concept of freedom, as well as grounds for an overriding commitment to the well-being of all human persons are at stake, the author stresses the importance of addressing Rorty's pragmatist views. The author's argument is that Rorty's presentation of solidarity as the public response to human contingency fails on pragmatic grounds and she suggests an alternative view of contingency that can account for the creation of solidarity.
No-God: Reflections on Masao Abe's Symbol of God As Self-Emptying
Authors: Sabatino Charles J. 
Published: August 2016

ABSTRACTBuddhist thinking centers not on a transcendent God, but on the nothingness and emptiness of Sunyata. Nevertheless, Masao Abe's reflections on the symbol of God as self-emptying can enhance our understanding of what God means. Abe interprets the self-humbling and self-sacrificing act of Jesus as a manifestation that God has vacated the transcendence of otherness in becoming world. These reflections allow us to consider a religious perspective that centers not on God, but on world and the continuum of living-dying-relatedness that represents the reciprocal and mutual interrelatedness that is world. In being returned to world, we are invited to participate in the original and originating activity of God as giving of self in compassion to one another. God is to be experienced not as a transcendent center, but as the fundamental meaning of world and its context of interrelatedness.
Faith, Praxis, and Practical Theology: At the Interface of Sociology and Theology
Authors: Lawler Michael G. 
Published: August 2016

ABSTRACTThis essay is an exercise in practical theology, thetheologicalreflection arising out of and in response to the church's actual situation. Practical theology insists that it is not enough to analyze the church's actual situation with deductive, ahistorical theological principles, but that it is necessary, first, to uncover and, then, reflect critically on the actual situation to test it for the presence of the Spirit, relevance, and significance in light of the gospel. Practical theology grows out of the relationship betweentheoriaandpraxiswhich, for the church, is the relationship betweenfaithandpraxis. The essay argues that to recognize scientifically the church's actual situation and to perform the required theological reflection practical theology requires sociology.The essay explores, therefore, the relationship between practical theology and the data of sociological research. It also examines the theological realities,sensus fideiandreception, and explores their relationship to that data. The exploration is concretized theologically by a consideration of the sociological data and theology about two Catholic moral doctrines, divorce and remarriage without prior annulment and artificial contraception.A theologicalreflection on the actual situation of both doctrines and asociologicalconsideration of the data suggest the conclusion that a dramatic development and re-reception of both doctrines, in line with previous dramatic developments of doctrine in the church, is under way.
Preparing Teachers and Administrators for the Field of Religious Education
Authors: McBride Alfred 
Published: August 2016

A considerable complexity surrounds the preparation of teachers and administrators for the field of religious education. If it's teachers you are thinking of, then you must determine which level of teaching you will be preparing them for: Primary, Intermediate, Junior High, High School, College, Adult. (6 levels)As for administrators there are five constituencies out there: Chairpersons of religion departments in elementary schools, high schools, colleges, Parish Directors or Coordinators, Diocesan Directors.Certain essentials will be necessary for everyone. Religious content such as Bible, theology, liturgy. Humanistic content such as behavioral science (counseling, developmental, behaviorist psychology and religious sociology), educational theory, some poetry and film study, administrative theory (Barnard and Brucker)—this last, of course, only for administrators—and lastly, method.Most teachers and administrators are receiving plenty of religious content, a fair amount of behavioral science, not too much educational theory, practically no management skills, and virtually no method.From what I can see, the weakest parts of college and graduate school preparation programs are in the area of management theory and practical educational method. It is to this question of method I wish to direct my remarks.Prior to launching directly into the topic I want to note that a consciousness of Parish Community should be uppermost in these varying preparations. The territorial parish, for the foreseeable future, will be the basic unit of Catholic Church life. It is the fundamental structure wherein most religious teaching and administrating will go on.
Con Men and a Conned Society: Religion in Contemporary American Cinema
Authors: May John R. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractExperimental cinema aside, our culturally typical films are all visual stories. To discover a film's religious meaning, we must do more than interpret dialogue; the cultural context of the film and its overall structure as visual story must be analyzed. American culture has characteristically explored the religious question by exposing the demons in our lives. Thus, our cinema at its recent best has—in the mode of visual parable—been subverting the facile optimism of the American dream by revealing the evil within us and our institutions. It has done this most effectively and artistically, not in its blatant presentations of the demon as persona, but rather through the portrayal of human analogues of the demonic: the satanic heart in man and the pervasive presence of the con man in society.
Moral Development as Self-Transcendence
Authors: Conn Walter E. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractThis essay explicates a contribution of developmental moral psychology to religious ethics in the task of interpreting the relationship between religion and morality. It argues that a criterion of self-transcendence is implicit in the developmental perspectives of major psychological theorists, and from this that the same drive for self-transcendence which grounds religious experience also constitutes the dynamic factor in moral consciousness—that both authentic morality and genuine religion are expressions of a single radical dynamism of the human spirit.
Matthew 15:29-31: An Overlooked Summary
Authors: Ryan Thomas J. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractMatthew's adroit use of the summary passage at critical junctures in his Gospel to provide the reader with christological and ecclesiological insights has long been noted and the most important of these passages studied. However, for a number of reasons Matthew 15:29-31 has not been extensively probed. Ryan views this summary as the third in a triad of summary passages found between Matthew 11:2-16:20 concerned with the healing activity of an already rejected Jesus and the prophesied obduracy of the religious leadership which will culminate in the death of the Messiah-Son of God.
Why Teach Theology to a Catholic College Student Today?
Authors: Tripole Martin R. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractTheology has a problem Justifying itself to its students as well as to itself. Its proper role is to bring the student to a deeper Christian faith experience. Two methods for doing this are the “general religious experience” approach and the method which concentrates on the uniqueness of Christ and his message and an interpersonal encounter with him. The latter method is preferred, and has proven most useful in rekindling the faith among college students.
Which Catholic Theology?
Authors: Gray Donald P. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractCatholic Christianity entails a commitment to both identity and universality. These two polarities can be blended in differing ways. A traditionally ecclesiocentric form of Catholic belief, emphasizing identity, is presently giving ground to forms of belief that are more ecumenically sensitive, whether they adopt a Christocentric or a theocentric focus. Today Catholic theology is giving greater attention to the dimension of universality. Theological education in a college setting should be doing likewise.
Horizons on Christianity's New Dialogue with Buddhism
Authors: Knitter Paul F. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractA survey of recent Christian literature on the dialogue with Buddhism reveals a conversation which is new in both spirit and content. This article summarizes these new directions in five areas: (1) the methodology of dialogue; (2) the nature of the Ultimate and of religious language; (3) religious experience as an experience of selflessness; (4) the value and need of acting in the world, and (5) the unique, salvific mediation of Jesus and Gautama. In each of these areas, suggestions are offered as to how the new insights from the dialogue with Buddhism might aid in clarifying questions and incoherencies in present-day Christian doctrine and practice.
Graceful Work: Practical Theological Study of Spirituality
Authors: Wolfteich Claire 
Published: August 2016

AbstractThis article calls for closer conversation between two growing academic fields: the scholarly study of spirituality and practical theology. Practical theology investigates the contemporary situation as it relates to questions of faith, ministry, and public religious leadership. Practical theology loses its center when it neglects the critical study of spirituality. Practical theological study of spirituality can help to integrate the three dominant methods in spirituality scholarship: the anthropological, the historical-contextual, and the theological approaches. The integration of these three approaches promotes a mutually critical correlation between the Christian tradition and the contemporary situation. Reflection on the practices of ministry students and teachers further reveals the importance of practical theological study of spirituality, which should inform the practice of teaching, the conception of theological education, and the formation of ministry students.
Process Theology and Liberation Theology: Theological and Ethical Reflections
Authors: O'Connor June 
Published: August 2016

AbstractProcess theology, inspired by the thought of Alfred North Whitehead, and liberation theology, prompted by the experience of oppression in Latin America, are two distinct and separate forms of contemporary Christian theology that both provoke and compel our attention. Although they vary dramatically in the standpoints from which they speak, the audiences to whom they speak, and the languages with which they speak, process and liberation theologies nonetheless share some striking similarities of viewpoint that bear ethical import. The author thus details their positions on existence in community, freedom and creativity, and resonsibility for the future, as well as the differences noted above, and claims that it is on ethical grounds that their contributions are most profound and their potential impact most far-reaching.
Genre as Hermeneutical Instrument: Mary Gordon's Novels as Test Case for the “Catholic” Novel
Authors: Gerhart Mary 
Published: August 2016

AbstractWhether a book is a “good book” is a matter not only of taste but also of genre. The genre of every book sets up certain expectations which the reader must engage and assess in order to understand the text. The reader uses genre to differentiate among multiple ways in which texts “work.” Genre minimally enables the reader to avoid the uncritical expectation that the success or failure of a text depends on the presence or absence of a particular theme. Maximally, a generic analysis can suggest new ways of disclosing the religious significance of literary texts. Genre as hypothesis provides a heuristic method for interpreting a text by itself and in relation to others. Generic analysis overcomes the deficiencies of thematic analysis to show how Mary Gordon'sFinal Paymentssucceeds as an action novel andThe Company of Womenas an apologue.
The Death of God: a Symbol for Religious Humanism
Authors: Sabatino Charles J. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractThomas Altizer develops the theme of the death of God as an attempt to reverse the emphasis on transcendence which is central to a more traditional theology. He believes a theology of transcendence establishes a dichotomy between God and humanity which is unfaithful to the meaning disclosed in the Christ event. His concern is to interpret the positive aspect of God's death as an example of a self-giving which, by becoming empty, is able to stand open to all. By making use of themes from Buddhist thought, Altizer develops a richly paradoxical theology whose negations, when properly understood, hold within them even deeper affirmations.
The Feminist Turn in Ethics
Authors: Maguire Daniel C. 
Published: August 2016

Anyone who plies the noble art-science of social ethics (moral theology, Christian ethics), while taking no account of the feminist turn of consciousness, is open to charges of professional irresponsibility and incompetence. No. That is not an overstatement or an overblown rhetorical lead-in. The history of ethics is turning an epochal corner. To miss the turn is to be lost and useless.Feminism is concerned with the shift in roles and the question of the rights that have been unjustly denied women. But all of that, however important and even essential, is secondary. The main event is epistemological. Changes in what we know are normal; changes in how we know are revolutionary. Feminism is a challenge to the way we have gone about knowing. The epistemological terra firma of the recent past is rocking and as the event develops, it promises to change the face of the earth.The main impact of feminism will be felt in the area of moral knowledge. That, of course, is broader than ethics since all of the social sciences are heavy with moral assumptions and evaluations. Economics, politics (simplistically called political science), education, journalism, business administration, engineering, et al. are all intra-familial siblings of social ethics, although educational systems have treated them as separable strangers. (This mischievous separation, indeed, is a natural target of the emerging feminist consciousness.)
Recovering from Nuclear Codependence
Authors: McCormick Patrick T. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractWith the revolutions in Eastern Europe precipitating a radical transformation of the Cold War which has dominated East-West relations for the past half century, there is a need and an opportunity to examine anew the processes and structures of modern warfare. By constructing a model of the Cold War as an addictive system in which the Americans and the Soviets have cooperated as “nuclear” codependents in the addictive process of the arms race it may be possible to gain a more realistic (dynamic and systemic) understanding of the forces driving global militarism as well as some insights into the dangers which lie ahead as the United States attempts to withdraw and recover from this reality.
Resources for a Democratic Catholic Church
Authors: Bianchi Eugene C. 
Published: August 2016

AbstractThis article explores sources in the Christian tradition that can be helpful for re-shaping present Roman Catholic ecclesial polity. The underlying theme is that the Catholic Church, in order to enhance efforts at church reform, needs to re-structure itself from a monarchical polity to a democratic one. A theological subtheme argues that the monarchical polity is not mandated by the gospel, but is rather a creature of history. Furthermore, the monarchical polity is a root cause obstructing reform in specific areas. By selectinglocifrom early church history to the present time, democratic movements and ideas are highlighted as constituting an important part of Catholic history. Certain of theselocihave not yet been examined for their democratic potential. This democratic tradition can be a springboard for moving toward a democratic church in the twenty-first century.