bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Hemingway's Naturalism
Authors: Fitzpatrick Joseph 
Published: July 2007

In this article I shall attempt to place Ernest Hemingway in an intellectual tradition that continues to exert enormous influence on our civilization. The paradox of placing Hemingway, of all people, in an intellectual tradition will be dealt with in passing. What I wish to do straightaway is to say what I mean by an intellectual tradition; I shall then sketch the particular tradition I have in mind; the body of the article will be devoted to substantiating the thesis that Hemingway belongs to this tradition. By way of conclusion I shall say why I believe this kind of thesis, the establishment of which requires a combination of philosophical and literary analysis, is important.It is not all that easy to say what is meant by an intellectual tradition in the present context. It does not refer to a single, unified philosophical system but rather to a set or series of philosophical systems that hang together naturally because of certain assumptions or methodological principles common to all of them. It is a fairly loose mesh of ideas the various strands of which represent distinct lines of development but nevertheless interconnect and sustain each other in certain important respects. The three main strands of the tradition to which I shall assign Hemingway are empiricism, behaviourism and naturalism. It will be necessary to say briefly what each is or stands for and why they can be considered as amounting jointly to a distinctive pattern of ideas.Traditional British empiricism received its classical statement from David Hume and it is to Hume that I shall refer in outlining this philosophical option. The importance empiricism places on the senses and on sensations — what Hume calls ‘impressions’ — is vital. The contents of the mind are divided into ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’, and ideas are said to derive from impressions.
Rahner Retrospective: II—The Historicity of Theology
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

Karl Rahner, as we saw last time (New Blackfriars May 1980), believes that, however much of Barth’s work may endure, it has not settled the questions raised by Liberal Protestantism To that extent, then, Rahner sides with those who think that no amount of massive reaffirmation of classical Christian doctrine can ever dispense us from facing Bultmann’s programme of demythologization.Schleiermacher, who died in 1834, was the first theologian to face up to the problems of making sense of Christian faith in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. No doubt, by the close of the century, the movement he initiated had degenerated into mere accommodation of Christianity to the spirit of the age. Barth’s outcry, particularly in the 1921 version of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, was a necessary protest against critical methods in biblical exegesis which amounted to rationalism, and against an emphasis on religious experience in systematic theology which promoted subjectivism. The counterpart in the Catholic Church to Barth’s protest was the encyclical letter Pascendi issued by St Pius X in 1907 condemning Catholic Modernism on much the same grounds as Barth rejected Liberal Protestantism. Even allowing for the difference in literary genre, and ecclesiastical function, Barth’s commentary is obviously an incomparably richer human and Christian document, and of altogether greater intellectual distinction. The papal letter, as far as the doctrinal part goes, was apparently composed by Joseph Lemius (1860-1923), an extremely influential Roman theologian otherwise known best as an effective protector of Mercier’s reputation and of the kind of neo-Thomism he was promoting at Louvain, which others in the Vatican suspected (rightly, as it turned out) of being disturbingly open to ‘modem’ philosophy.
On Being So Placed
Authors: Theron Stephen 
Published: July 2007

One of the main points of crisis in modem civilization concerns, in my view, the relation of conscience and authority. Where these two are not simply taken to be polar opposites, neither tolerating the claims of the other, the one is often subordinated to the other. This may be right. Unfortunately what should then dominate is often made subordinate and vice versa. Thus Fr Eric D’Arcy writes:Of course, one of the elements of the decision which one’s reason ultimately makes will be the guidance of authoritative and skilled moralists whose standing we accept; but it has to be the individual’s judgment of conscience that this is an authority which we may safely accept. As Mr Hare says, other people cannot make decisions of principle for us unless we have first decided to take their advice or obey their orders (Conscience and its Right to Freedom, Stag edition p 216).D’Arcy goes on to quote Newman in support:Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink — to the Pope, if you please — still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards (Difficulties of Anglicans, 1910, vol 2 p 261).Now we may I think take these authors as referring here to a common, non-technical notion of conscience which, we might want to say, is our knowledge, either of what we ought to do or of the rightness or wrongness of what we have done, or merely the memory of an unambiguously evil deed. But here at once the difficulty would meet us of the erroneous conscience. If this is as much a conscience as a correct one is then it seems we cannot characterize conscience as knowledge, not even as our knowledge. It will only be a seeming knowledge of right and wrong, and a seeming only to ourselves moreover.
God: II Freedom
Authors: McCabe Herbert 
Published: July 2007

In the previous article, (New Blackfriars October 1980) I spoke of the radical questionableness of the universe and suggested that it seems anomalous to ask “How come?” about individual events or things or whole classes of things and yet refuse to ask this question about the whole world. The belief that such a question is unaskable is based, firstly, on the fact that we have no answer to it, and, secondly, on the fact that the language in which it is asked is exploratory; we are using words in ways that are stretched beyond their familiar use. I suggested that both these things are characteristic of the creative growing points of our understanding whether in science or in the arts. To assert the existence of God is not to state a fact within an established intellectual system but to claim the need for exploration; it is to claim that there is an unanswered question about the universe: the question “How come the whole thing instead of nothing?”By “creation” we mean the dependence of all that is, in so far as it is. We do not know what it is that it depends on, we do not know the nature of God. There is, as I suggested, a great gap between creation and making or causing in our familiar sense. Other causes bring things about in a “world without them”, (X is brought about in a world with an X-shaped gap in it). What is caused comes about in a world in which it is in some way potential, a world, for example, containing what can be made into it, but there is nothing within which resides the possibility of the whole world before.it is created. Creation is a matter of the existence of the world over against nothing at all.
The Concept of Divine Necessity
Authors: Davies Brian 
Published: July 2007

My purpose in this article is (a) to consider the value and the coherence of the concept of divine necessity and (b) to offer some suggestions about the way in which divine necessity might reasonably be understood. I shall argue that there are reasons for denying the value and coherence of one notion of divine necessity but that another way of understanding it is not incoherent. Secondly, I shall defend the view that belief in divine necessity can plausibly be understood as an item of negative theology, as a way of refusing to tolerate certain positive affirmations.Some philosophers have argued that belief in divine necessity amounts to belief that ‘God exists’ is a necessary proposition. As many recent writers have pointed out, however, there is more than one kind of necessary proposition. The kind which comes immediately to mind is, perhaps, that of logically necessary propositions. These are analytic, i.e. they are coherent and their negations are incoherent. But not all necessarily true propositions are logically necessary. There are, for example, propositions which are not analytic but which seem necessarily true when we think of what is picked out by the referring expressions used in them. An example is ‘The number which is the number of the planets is necessarily greater than 6’. The number referred to here is 9, and 9 is necessarily greater than 6. But the number which is the number of the planets could have been 4.It is not, then, helpful simply to say that belief in God’s necessity is belief that ‘God exists’ is a necessary proposition. One influential view of divine necessity is, however, unaffected by this fact.
What Happens When You Pray?
Authors: Davies Brian 
Published: July 2007

The topic of prayer is important to Christians and a number of recent books have been largely concerned with it. One of the latest is Hubert Richards’ What Happens When You Pray? a work that is likely to gain a lot of readers since Richards is now one of the most popular religious writers in Britain. Unfortunately, however, he is also somewhat misguided, and what follows is intended to say why. I do not want to write at length, and much of what I argue needs detailed development that I do not provide. But I still want to hold that more can be said of prayer than Richards allows. If you can begin to see why I am right, my purpose here will have been achieved.To put things in perspective, it ought first to be agreed that much of what Richards says is, in fact, correct. Take, for example, the following remarks on God:
There is a sense in which God is apart from our world, beyond it, ‘other’ than and ‘different’ from everything else in our experience. He remains the transcendent mystery, and if we don’t give expression to that sometimes, indeed often, we will make him into an idol in our own image and likeness, (p 43)All of that is thoroughly in order. We have to talk of God in words which are normally applied to objects in the world, and, in doing so, we can often make statements that are perfectly true. But God is not an intelligible subject possessing attributes. He is not a member of a class or genus, not a being among beings. As Aquinas puts it, God ‘is identical with his own godhead, with his own life and with whatever else is similarly said of him’.
Genesis and Patriarchy
Authors: West Angela 
Published: July 2007

The authors of Genesis, and other books in the Pentateuch, created their text by taking myths and stories that had arisen in various sections of their society at different stages of its development, and by means of a process of combination, re-arrangement and redaction, they re-wrote them to provide an interpretation suitable for their society in quite new historical circumstances. These circumstances were extreme — they were a people cut off from their homeland and their origins, exiles in the superior and sophisticated civilisation of imperial Babylon. In his account of the Creation and the Fall, the Yahwist historian (as scholars refer to this one of the two authorial narratives of Genesis) addresses himself to a people experiencing political subordination and alienation from the culture in which they are living. Hence, he takes up what would be an understandable preoccupation for them in such circumstances — a reflection on the origins of human culture.Juliet Mitchell, in her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism embarks on a project that, in some sense, resembles that of the Yah-wist historian. ‘All questions relating to the position and role of women in society’ she says, ‘tend sooner or later to founder on the bedrock of “where did it all start”?’ This, too, is a question about the origin of human culture, and what it implies for the subordinate position that women find themselves in. By taking Freud’s psychoanalytical myth of the origins of patriarchal society, together with Engel’s historical materialist account of women’s subordination in the institutions of the family, private property and the state, she re-appropriates for feminism two of the most important critical traditions of our society
Lonergan's Appropriation of the Concept of Praxis
Authors: Davis Charles 
Published: July 2007

One could say I was startled into examining Lonergan on praxis What startled me was the remark of Lonergan in his essay, “Theology and Praxis”, to the effect that to ask whether theology is a praxis “is to ask whether there are basic theological questions whose solution depends on the personal development of theologians”.Why should that have startled me? Because, as it stands, it establishes praxis as, first, simply a matter of consciousness, and, second, a function of individual development. Such a concept of praxis startles because it contradicts one’s prior expectation. Two key insights are operative in the modem, that is the post-Hegelian, problematic of the relationship between theory and practice, a problematic dominated by the thought of Marx. The first is that the human activity or praxis which fashions and transforms human beings and grounds the modes of human living is labour, that is, human action as a productive force. It is in acting upon nature to satisfy their material needs that human beings bring about modification in their own nature and develop varying forms of social order and modes of human thought and existence. In other words, the question of praxis is in the first place the question of the dependence of ideas or consciousness upon the productive forces and relationships that constitute the basis of every human society. The second insight behind the recent currency of the term “praxis” is that the activity or practice to which consciousness and theory are linked is social practice. In other words, the question of praxis is in the second place the question of the dependence of our thinking and our judgments, the formation of our consciousness and our production of theories, upon the historical development of human society and upon the place where we find ourselves in that society.
A Simple Argument for Faith: Requiring Reasons
Authors: Scarre Geoffrey 
Published: July 2007

A view very commonly encountered in contemporary philosophy of religion is that it is a mistake to expect that faith should be capable of rational defence. The roots of the conception of faith as lacking rational defensibility lie far back in the history of the Church (see for instance St Paul’s remarks on faith as foolishness in I Cor 1), but it is only in the last two centuries that deep pessimism has set in about the prospects of finding really convincing a priori or a posteriori arguments in support of faith. This slide from conviction that faith is rationally warranted has not, of course, been a wholly or even mainly negative phenomenon, for it has stimulated an awareness of commissive and emotional aspects of faith which is proving very valuable in the life of the Church. The importance and profundity of much recent writing about faith is something I have no wish to dispute; yet I want to argue that it is a mistake to represent faith as requiring no support from reason, and I shall urge we are only entitled to that faith we can defend.My argument is basically a very simple one — so simple indeed that many people will undoubtedly think that it cannot do justice to the complexity of the subject under discussion. The short response to those people is to say that they should not disregard the argument but refute it. To make the argument fully convincing, however, I shall discuss in some detail the theoretical basis which underlies it, and attempt to disarm various strategies for opposing or evading it. Finally, I shall describe a positive approach to the problem of finding reasons for faith.In its most skeletal form the argument can be stated: faith is, or essentially involves, propositional belief; propositional belief requires reasons; therefore faith requires reasons. This clearly stands in need of some fleshing out.
Grace and Persecution
Authors: Cassidy Sheila 
Published: July 2007

This essay is an attempt to illustrate the idea that the way in which God’s grace works in man is more obvious in a situation of persecution than in one of so-called peace, for in the former the contrast between good and evil, the graced and the graceless, is sharper and therefore easier to see.St Thomas Aquinas, the great thirteenth century theologian, defines that mysterious entity “grace” as a “share in the Divine nature”. Having read this we recognize that he has said both everything and nothing. In this life we perceive God only as “a dim reflection as in a mirror” (ICor. 13:12) and we can therefore know nothing of his nature, so we cannot catch hold of Grace and say “it is this”, or “it is that”. Granted the impossibility of talking about God, of finding words adequate to discuss his nature, we can nevertheless attempt to understand what happens to a man when he deliberately lays himself open to God’s action.“Christ is the image of the unseen God” (Col. 1:17).“He who has seen me has seen the Father”.
Reviewing and Realising
Authors: Primavesi Anne 
Published: July 2007

I was in Dublin a month ago when the city was galvanised by an exhibition of tableaux by Edward Kienholz. I use the verb deliberately. The tableaux were shocking, composed as they were in threedimensional assemblages to present a particular concept, and that concept worked out to the smallest detail. One of the most shocking was ‘The State Hospital’, and the following extract from Kienholz’s blueprint of the work gives some idea of the nightmarish experience undergone by the viewer, who has to peer in through a small grille:
“This is a tableau about an old man who is a patient in a State Mental Hospital. He is in an arm restraint on a bed in a bare room. (This piece will have to include an actual room consisting of walls, ceiling, barred door, etc.) There will be only a bed pan and a hospital table (just out of reach). The man is naked. He hurts. He has been beaten on the stomach with a bar of soap wrapped in a towel (to hide tell-tale bruises). His head is a lighted fish bowl with water that contains two live black fish. He lies very still on his side. There is no sound in the room.Above the old man in the bed is his exact duplicate, including the bed (beds will be stacked like bunks). The upper figure will also have the fish bowl head, two black fish, etc. But, additionally, it will be encased in some kind of plastic bubble (perhaps similar to a cartoon balloon), representing the man’s thoughts.His mind can’t think for him past the present moment. He is committed there for the rest of his life.”
Reflections on Torture –
Authors: Cassidy Sheila 
Published: July 2007

We have come together today as members of a Christian community because of our concern for the many thousands of men and women who are suffering persecution and torture throughout the world. Just as any divided family will forget its differences in times of crisis, so we are today united before God by that very problem.Part of the excitement and also the difficulty of being a Christian is that it is a continuing process of exploring what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Just when we think we have got it sorted out, something happens to upset our complacency so that we are left, a little bruised, saying “where did I go wrong”? The only thing to do when that happens is to go back to the Gospels and look again to see how Jesus did it. As Paul tells us “Christ is the image of the unseen God”. It is only by looking to Christ that we shall learn how to walk towards our Father.I would like, then, to explore with you for a few minutes the stance of Jesus Christ in the face of torture — what he taught his disciples and how he faced his own torture and death. By focussing on the man Jesus we should then be able to widen our gaze, to look beyond his death on Calvary, to the continuing crucifixion in our own time.The trouble about the gospels for many of us is that they become so familiar that they lose their impact; we cease to be rattled, unnerved, by what Jesus is saying. Take for example, Christ’s assurance to his followers that they would be persecuted. “You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake” (Mk. 10:18), “Brother will betray brother to death and the father his child ... You will be hated by all men on account of my name”.
Karl Rahner Volume Seventeen
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

Another one safely on the shelf, with only five more to come, and then all fourteen thick volumes of Karl Rahner's Schriften zur Theologie (1954-1980) will be translated into English, in some twenty-one slimmer and somewhat more manageable ones. This particular instalment is the second part of the volume which Rahner put together shortly after the celebration for his seventieth birthday (the volume itself was dedicated to his mother on her hundredth birthday).The only comparable oeuvre by a Catholic theologian of Rahner's generation would no doubt be that of Hans Urs von Balthasar, but the translation into English is lagging far behind.
God, the Living One
Authors: Schillebeeckx Edward C. 
Published: July 2007

When a Western European landed his plane among African natives who gazed unbelievingly at this enormous bird, he proudly remarked, “In one day I have covered a distance which used to take me thirty”. Thereupon the wise black chieftain came forward and aSked, “Sir, what do you do with the other twenty-nine?”Here we have the twofold possibility of man’s fundamental decision: on the one hand technological rationality, and on the other the question of the meaning of human action.The question also of the relationship between human hopes and expectations by self-liberation, and the God-given salvation: the question of God as connected with the context of mankind’s striving for liberation. The question of God-talk is intrinsically connected with the question of human integrity and wholeness in such a way that this question of identity cannot be solved in purely theoretical terms: it includes the question of a particular life-style — contemplative and political as well. Talk about God stands under the quest of our way of life; it is governed by the question of our real concerns in life.
The Church in Peru
Authors: Kirby Peadar 
Published: July 2007

Maria is 21 years old. She lives in a poor barrio in the suburbs of Lima and studies economics in one of Lima’s universities. She also works as a catechist in her local parish. “I think that in the past two years there have been great advances,” she told me, “the people now are very much more conscious than before”. She sees her work as a catechist as a preparation for what she calls “political militancy”. As an example of this she told me of a march which the catechists had been involved in a month before when 2,000 people went to the Ministry of Housing banging empty cups demanding a decent water supply for their area. “Us young people accept marxism, communism, without any problem”, she added.Senora Isabel lives in a nearby parish and at 79 has seen some more of life than Maria. When she first arrived in the area 19 years ago she used to make a meagre income by selling holy pictures of St Martin de Porres. Through the ‘hermendad’ or sodality of which she was a member she began to go along to meetings organised by a local priest. From there she progressed to be a member of the Movement of Christian Workers and for the past number of years has gone along to the annual summer schools in theology organised by the Catholic University. As her understanding of her faith changed so too did she begin to get involved in the struggles of the people.