bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Searching out the Holy Spirit via Earth's Elements
Authors: Bergin Helen 
Published: July 2007

Many attempts have been made in the Christian tradition to name or describe the Holy Spirit. We have heard the Spirit of God termed ‘teacher’ (Jn 14:26), ‘love’ (1 Jn 4:13), ‘gift’, ‘go-between’. Each of these descriptions is helpful and each is at the same time partial.In this paper, we wish to explore the Spirit of God (in Christian terms, the Holy Spirit) in relation to air, earth, fire and water. Interest in the four elements has an ancient recorded history, reaching back at least to the Greek philosopher Empedocles in the 5th century BCE. It has also had a history in anatomy and psychology. We note this in reference to the ‘four humours’ in Elizabethan literature. Today, study of the four elements has an impact on areas of astrology, health care and religious traditions. We will focus on the Christian story.We suggest that there is particular value today in linking the Spirit with four of earth’s elements, mindful always that such connections are analogical. We maintain that an awareness from our Tradition of the close links made between the Spirit and the elements can assist us not only to view the Holy Spirit anew, but can also remind us to respect more deeply the earth in whose elements we as human beings share. First, we will reflect theologically on each element in relation to the Spirit. Second, we will discuss the adequacy for pneumatology of such an understanding. We begin our study with a discussion of the element ‘air’.
The Dialogue of Metaphysics and Religion with Natural Science: Some Continental Examples
Authors: Booth Edward 
Published: July 2007

In a private conversation with an occupant of Rutherford’s chair of Physics at Cambridge University, I was struck by his distance from that overall association of metaphysics and religion which we take as normative, even though, at this moment, it is understandably diversified. “I am prepared to consider the possibility of mind—though most of my colleagues are not.” That British scepticism here is not aggressive conceals from many the intellectual distance that has grown up between science and religion; it also ensures that, despite the heroism of individuals who rise above the ethos, debate is in fact rudimentary; the anti-religionists consider the battle won. English culture and paideia have lost an overarching conception of their unity. That is not the case elsewhere.But when had this conception broken down? The background, but little known, work of Anneliese Meyer, from the Vatican Library, showed the anticipations of “modern” science in late medieval science. A.N.Whitehead saw the contribution which medieval scholasticism had made to a rational culture, including subsequent natural science. Both Descartes as the mechanist of man and animals and mathematician, and Newton as mathematician-mechanist of the Cosmos, kept their faith, as did Leibniz as mathematician-theodicean. “The Enlightenment”, about whose extent there is incomplete agreement, expressed itself in France in the unbelieving ideal of the Encyclopedic, in Germany in the religious rationalism of Christian Wolff. The position of Kant was not one of pure enlightenment. The last speculative endeavours to include natural science within an overall, complete philosophy including religion
Learning the Lesson of Love: The Poetry of Elizabeth Jennings (1926‐2001)
Authors: Gardner Timothy 
Published: July 2007

Elizabeth Jennings, who died in 2001 was ‘the most unconditionally loved poet of (her) generation,’ according to Michael Schmidt writing in the preface to her New Collected Poems’ This seems a slightly less generous accolade when Schmidt goes on to say that the other poets of her generation included Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, not themselves obviously loveable poets. One imagines that Larkin might have been rather disappointed to have discovered, posthumously, that he was unconditionally loved, whereas Elizabeth Jennings’ poetry seems to invite just this response. Indeed, so different is the poetry of Elizabeth Jennings to that of Amis and Larkin it is hard to imagine how she can ever have been seriously associated with them in the minds of critics. Whether The Movement ever existed at all has been much debated, but the mature Elizabeth Jennings that we find in New Collected Poems shows what a different trajectory she had followed from that of her laconic and wry contemporaries.New Collected Poems begins, like her Collected Poems and Selected Poems with a dozen poems from her first collected volume of poetry (entitled tentatively Poems). First and second are ‘Delay’ and ‘Winter Love’ which seem to set the tone of everything which comes after. They are short poems — the first consisting of two quatrains, the second of a sestet, almost two halves of a divided sonnet — which address two recurrent themes of Elizabeth Jennings’ poetry: love and time, more particularly the way in which the test of love is the test of time.
Creation From Nothing
Authors: Selman Francis J. 
Published: July 2007

Nearly all theories of the origin of the universe, from the early philosophers to contemporary scientists, presuppose the existence of matter. Thus they are accounts of the genesis, or generation, of the world rather than its creation. The first to say that the world was made by Mind was Anaxagoras (d. 428 B.C.). He saw that what drew things out of matter that was mixed up to begin with could not be material like it. But he presupposed the matter.When scientists today talk about the matter of the universe having zero magnitude and infinite density at the beginning, they seem to be running up against the idea of creation out of nothing. It is as though they recognise that the world came from nothing, yet they presuppose the existence of matter. But all matter has extension and no magnitude is quite zero. If there was matter in the beginning, it had a magnitude.There is a great deal of writing about creation at present, both within theology and in the dialogue between science and religion. This dialogue will only help us to see the truth if it works with a clear concept of creation. Amid all the views that are being put forward, it will surely be useful to look at what Aquinas has to say about creation. His patient analysis of the topic is closely linked with his philosophy of existence. He both drew on Avicenna and worked out his ideas in criticism of the Neoplatonic influences that the Arab philosopher included in his exposition of Aristotle.
Patrick Primrose: A Dominican in Seventeenth‐century Scotland
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

In August 1670 the Privy Council in Edinburgh considered reports that ‘Mr Patrick Primrose’ had been ‘used to say messe’ in ‘the house of Kinnairdie in the paroch of Aberchardour, within the shyre of Banff’. Indeed, ‘there is usuall resort publickly to masse every Lords day’; ‘four families of the heretours in the said paroch doe upon ringing of the bell goe to a roume in the said house where there is ane altar erected and preists doe officiat’. When the sheriff of Aberdeen had verified that Mass was being said, he was ‘to make inquyrie for the preist’ and ‘to apprehend and committ him to prison, and to seize upon any vestments or other popish ornaments made use of in their superstitious worship and service’. In November the Council discussed the priest’s capture; he was by then in the tolbooth1 of Banff. On 22 December, having been informed that he was a chaplain to the Queen, Catherine of Braganza, they set him free, on condition that he went into exile, never to return, ‘under the payne of death’, without permission of the King or the Council.Early in January 1671, being evidently too frail to travel, he was allowed to stay in Scotland until 5 February. On 4 March 1672, the sheriff of Aberdeen was instructed to back the bishop and clergy in their efforts to root out popery and quakerism, this to include demolishing the ‘superstitious monument erected upon the grave of the deceast Mr Patrick Primrose’.
Monica's Tears: Augustine on Words and Speech
Authors: Soskice Janet Martin 
Published: July 2007

The third volume of the Blackfriars Summa Theologiae, translated by Herbert McCabe, is entitled (I have always supposed by him) Knowing and Naming God. These words make a concise brief for the philosopher of religion. Of its two movements, knowing God seems at first glance the more demanding and critical, yet it is evident that for Aquinas and the Patristic tradition which preceded him, naming God was of equal difficulty and weight. In fact the two cannot be separated for to name one must, in some sense know which, for the early theologians, formed an almost insurmountable obstacle to our speaking of God.Augustine is continuously occupied with how we can know God, and with how we can name Him. It is the problem with which he opens the Confessions, for if we do not know what or whom we address then how can we call upon our Lord? To call upon we need a name, and a name involves definition and definition risks idolatrously presuming to know the divine essence.How shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, when by the very act of calling upon him I would be calling him into myself?The primary Biblical text for the naming of God for Patristic and medieval readers alike was Exodus 3. 1-14, the story of Moses at the burning bush. Moses, herding his father-in-law’s sheep, is addressed by God and in the negotiations which follow Moses asks the Deity for a name,And God said to Moses ‘I AM WHO I AM’ —you must say to the sons
Christology, History, and Frankenstein's Monster: The Evolution of the Historical Jesus in John P. Meier
Authors: McMahon Christopher 
Published: July 2007

In the first three volumes of his projected four-volume work on the historical Jesus, John P. Meier has articulated a position on the nature of historical inquiry that would exclude theological concerns from the pursuit of properly historical questions. For Meier, historical inquiry proceeds by means of a rigorous and commonly accepted methodology and finds confirmation in the emergence of a consensus among historians. Meier concedes that this methodology yields only a profile of Jesus’ ministry and death. This profile is a compilation of various pieces of an inherently incomplete puzzle, and to this extent, he compares the results of historical Jesus research to the popular image of Victor Frankenstein’s monster—a mass of assembled pieces, hardly identifiable as a “real” human being. When brought to bear on properly theological questions, this profile—this monster—exercises a negative function. Since the historical Jesus is a hypothetical reconstruction, it is not the object of Christian faith, but can serve as a restraint against flights of theological fancy and preserve the autonomy of the historian (or the historical critical exegete) against the encroachment of theology, or ideology.This paper contends that Meier’s practice of historical Jesus research goes beyond the narrow methodology and the modest goals he has articulated. While Meier has remained stridently faithful to his understanding of history and historical methodology, one can recognize, not massive shifts, but rather tensions, in his work, in particular, the tension between Meier’s formal statements on methodology and his performance of historical Jesus research. The paper will seek to advance the general discussion of the relevance of historical inquiry for the Christian faith by examining the work of John P. Meier on the historical Jesus and the manner in which that work has evolved through the publication of the first three volumes of A Marginal Jew.
My Beloved is Mine and I am His: non‐commensurable‐giving as a metaphor for the divine‐human relationship
Authors: Kevern Peter 
Published: July 2007

At the heart of Christian belief is a gift: the ‘free gift of God. . . in Jesus Christ our Lord’. The language of gift is peppered through the New Testament and constitutes one of its most distinctive features. It portrays an abundant and generous God who acts out of love, without expecting return, and whose generosity in no wise depends on our activity. Traditionally, this utter gratuitousness of God’s gifts has been cited and defended in connection with the doctrine of divine sovereignty: God’s gifts must be offered without expectation of any return, because to claim otherwise would be to imply that God desires something, and so lacks it in the first place.However, this affirmation is in some tension with another: that at the heart of Christian life is a response, in the worship and works of God’s people. While the image of a needy God is alien to Christian understanding, it is equally alien to the Christian understanding to postulate a God who does not want or intend a responsive movement from God’s people. Herein lies a dilemma for Christian theology: how to hold together such an exalted view of the necessary freedom and unconditionality of God’s gift with the maintenance of human responsibility and so capacity to respond?So Christians must at one and the same time preach that God gives freely; and that to love God is necessarily to serve God. This tension is a familiar and perennial one, beginning with the faith-versus-works controversy of the New Testament itself, and re-emerging regularly throughout Christian history.
Paradise and the Liturgy
Authors: Harbert Bruce 
Published: July 2007

Soon after the Second Vatican Council it became customary in our churches for celebrant and people to face one another during the Eucharist, whereas previously it had been more usual for everybody to face in the same direction. Considerable sums of money were spent in facilitating this arrangement, which was widely thought to be among the chief requirements of the ‘new liturgy’. For many, ‘mass facing the people’ has become, together with the use of the vernacular, the sine qua non of contemporary liturgy. Many priests will refuse to celebrate otherwise, many laity would not attend a mass celebrated otherwise. The reasons are surely ecclesiological: the reorientation of priest and people at the liturgy is seen as symbolic of the move from a pyramidal to a collegial model of church that the Second Vatican Council effected.Before the Council, for celebrant and people to face each other was a clear sign of affiliation to the liturgical movement. The pattern was rare in this country, especially among Catholics. An early example was the chapel of Queen’s College in Birmingham, built in 1938 but only opened for worship after the Second World War. At Queens the celebrant of the eucharist has always stood in the apse, facing the body of the church, and in doing so has faced west I have been told that Queen’s College chapel was the first built in England for the ‘westward position’, under the influence of the liturgical movement.The change was represented as a return to primitive practice, but this justification was based on a misunderstanding.
No tradition, no civilization
Authors: Navone John 
Published: July 2007

Having lived in Europe for the last forty years, I have enjoyed the experience of my historical and cultural roots. My residence of the last thirty-five years, for example, was constructed the year that the Church of Scotland was founded, that Madrid became the capital of Spain, and the tobacco plant was imported to Western Europe by Jean Nicot. The buildings in my immediate Roman neighbourhood are much older. The Colonna Palace, half a block away from my front door, was described by the Italian humanist Petrarch (1304-1374). The final discovery-scene of ‘Roman Holiday’ was filmed there.Living in Europe is living in a place where the stones speak; however, if you have not done your homework, you will not understand what they are saying. Returning annually for three months to the United States, I have the experience of what the anti-Western-Civilization lobby would call ‘freedom’ from the obscurantism and oppressive burdens of a democratic Christian—especially Roman Catholic—tradition. I can enjoy the ‘freedom’ of a world without history, tradition and roots, the world of what Vance Packard called ‘fun culture,’ the realm of a superior and untethered virtual reality. In short, I return to a place where both the educational system and mass media assiduously avoid the ‘homework’ without which we cannot hear or understand what the stones of our European heritage have to tell us.An expatriate American author and actor living in Rome expressed his dismay to me, as far back as the early sixties, about the cultural tabula rasa that radically handicapped young Americans for understanding or appreciating their Roman experience in churches where they had no idea of what the religious paintings and sculpture represented because they were culturally un-equipped for any meaningful experience.
Who Owns the Bible? A Judaeo‐Christian Argument
Authors: Neusner Jacob , Chilton Bruce D. 
Published: July 2007

The question, who owns the Bible, forms a way of framing a theological debate between Judaism and Christianity. They both lay claim on the same Holy Scriptures, and each insists that it reads those Scriptures correctly. Here is a way, then, of conducting an interfaith disputation on the truth of conflicting claims set forth by competing religions.Which Judaism, whose Christianity? By Judaism and Christianity we do not mean the public opinion of ethnic Jews and culture-Christians. Rather, we mean, the classical religious systems set forth in authoritative documents and practised by those who value those writings as holy. The Judaic claim on the correct meaning of Israelite Scripture conflicts with the Christian one.
The Response of Christianity and its Counter‐Claim
Authors: Chilton Bruce D. 
Published: July 2007

In asserting his four facts, Professor Neusner also puts pointed questions to Christianity, every one of them both serious and telling. Answering them involves spelling out the facts of revelation as they are perceived and taught by the Church.First, “Why should they even want to claim to own Scripture at all, if they do not keep important commandments that Scripture sets forth?” This question strikes accurately at a sensitive spot. During the second century a teacher in Rome, Marcion, insisted that the New Testament should stand alone as Scripture, and that anything connected with Judaism should be expurgated from the one Gospel he liked (Luke) and Paul’s letters. He has had pale imitators ever since, but the Church then and now has authoritatively rejected the idea that the Old Testament can be dispensed with.The letters of Paul, which Marcion made the basis of his views, undermined his position. The teacher whom the Church regarded as “the Apostle”, once its primary constituency was non-Jewish, himself emphasized that Israel has a permanent place in the history of salvation. Why should that be the case? Because, he said, from the Israelites came “the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (Romans 9:5). If you want to know what these things are, you need the Scriptures of Israel. Paul understands that all these gifts are only fully realized in the final gift of Israel: the coming of “Christ according to the flesh” (Romans 9:6).
Kataphasis, Apophasis and Mysticism in Pseudo‐Denys and Wittgenstein
Authors: Moringiello Scott D. 
Published: July 2007

While the resonances between classical Christian negative theology and the discourse of deconstruction have been explored for the last twenty years, there has been scant attention paid to the resonances between negative theology and the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. To be sure, theologians have shown much interest in Wittgenstein, but that interest often links Wittgenstein’s conception of forms of life to religious practice. Such writings have sought to view Wittgenstein in terms of philosophy of religion. In this essay, I am not concerned with Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion, but am interested in the connections between his writings on language and the view of language held in negative theology, specifically in the writings of the Pseudo-Denys. In the same way that Mark C.Taylor, John D.Caputo et al. see similar strategies at work in negative theology and in Jacques Derrida (specifically, the connection between apophasis and differance), I see similar strategies at work in Wittgenstein and Denys. I will argue that there are important points of intersection between the two, especially on the issues of the limits of reference in language, the necessity of communal understandings for meaning, and the view of the self within a community of shared practices and shared language.One word of explanation before I continue. In making Denys and Wittgenstein interlocutors, I am not saying they were interested in the same things. Denys was concerned about liturgy and how liturgy does or dries not praise God properly, and Wittgenstein was interested in how language works and how proper use of language frees us from philosophical problems.
Being Brought to Light
Authors: Parsons Susan Frank 
Published: July 2007

There is a certain urgency about the ethical today. Amid reports of the misery and injustice that seem to accompany all our human undertakings, and with increasing demand that it prove itself useful to an expanding range of unprecedented crises, the ethical is found to occupy a crucial place in contemporary thought. It stands at the point of a change, as our desire for a better world seeks the transformation of the one in which we find ourselves, and so it is to become the means by which we may be carried over from one situation to another, by which we are to make a difference. The ethical is to save us, and so the urgency of our salvation comes to rest in a particular and intense way on the salvation of ethics itself, saved and preserved for our sake, so that we might also be rescued and kept in safety and brought into the fulness of life that is to be ours. The enormity of this expectation of the ethical has become a kind of running theme through all sorts of contemporary discourses, assuming in many cases a force that would compel agreement without question, and at times erupting in expressions of disgust or even censure at those who would defy this logic. What else are we to do or think?There is a sense in which this ethical has become the last sounding of the thinking of being in the western tradition, taking on the now empty form of its hegemony, while that thinking of being itself is already known to be fraught with difficulty, and so pronouncing itself as the final grand narrative by which nonetheless our redemption is to be secured.