bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
“Not judge in one’s own cause” and the Nature of Ethics
Authors: O'Neill J.C. 
Published: July 2007

The principle “You can’t be judge in your own cause” is both selfevident and powerful. It is the principle that compels us to recognize that the ethical enterprise entails submitting to a higher judgment than our own first judgment. Moreover, it is the principle that commits us to conceding that ethical judgments are objective. Those two conclusions are accepted by many moralists. There is a third conclusion that, unless I am mistaken, follows just as inexorably as these two, but is rarely, if ever, accepted in modem discussions. If you can’t be judge in your own cause you commit yourself to depend on the praise and blame of a judge who is competent to judge your cause. The principle “Not judge in one’s own cause” entails an ethics of reward and punishment, because praise is a reward and blame a punishment.“Notjudge in one’s own cause”The principle “You cannot be judge in your own cause” is self-evident. It ordinarily applies in cases where I am in dispute with someone else over property: perhaps over ownership of land or fishing rights or the proceeds of a will. The principle is extended to cover issues such as the ban on an examiner from examining a relative, or a magistrate from presiding at the trial of a business associate.No one doubts the applicability of the rule in these relatively unproblematic cases. What could be easier, it might be argued (but never is) than discounting one’s tendency to severity or to leniency when examining one’s own child? Yet most moral dilemmas are far more difficult than property disputes and arguments over examination grades. Every dispute inevitably involves the “cause” of every disputant.
Awareness of Angels
Authors: Davie Ian 
Published: July 2007

Angelology may be unfashionable, but in recent years it has re-emerged in America, where it flourishes under a different name as the ‘Possible Worlds’ school of philosophy whose principal concern is with problems of ‘transworld identity’. In particular, its subtlest and most uncompromising proponent, David Lewis, has developed what he calls ‘Counterpart Theory’. This is a theory of modal quantification in which a close resemblance relation is substituted for strict identity, and it would seem to be a theory well-suited to provide a logical underpinning for what has been traditionally said of angels in their role as guardians. I have no reason to suppose that David Lewis would approve of the use to which I am about to put his Counterpart theory, and what I have to say should be regarded as no more than a modest footnote to the debate now being conducted in the stratosphere of symbolic logic with all the attendant ingenuity and zeal that once characterised scholastic disputations on the subject of angels.For example, Aquinas discusses whether ‘morning knowledge’ and ‘evening knowledge’ are the same for angels. He explains this Augustinian distinction as follows: ‘Their knowledge of the primordial being of things is called morning knowledge; and this is according as things exist in the Word. But their knowledge of the very thing created, as it stands in its own nature, is termed evening knowledge, because the being of things flows from the Word as from a kind of primordial principle, and this flow is terminated in the being which they have in themselves.’
Theology for a World Come of Age: The Meaning of Dietrich Bonhoeffer for Doing Systematic Theology Today
Authors: Knödel Natalie 
Published: July 2007

What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or simply pious, is over, and so is the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time: people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more.These words from a letter of the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer mark one of the turning points in the history of systematic theological thinking in this century.Hardly any other theologian has provided as strong a challenge to post-war theologians as Bonhoeffer. In this article I want to give an introduction to Bonhoeffer’s theology as a whole and his concept of ‘religionless Christianity for a world come of age’ in particular. Then, in the final section, I want to discuss the relevance of Bonhoeffer for doing systematic theology in the changing theological landscape of today.
John Henry Newman's Adoption of Baptismal Regeneration, and the Relative Importance of John Bird Sumner, Richard Mant and William Beveridge to his Development
Authors: Phipps David J. 
Published: July 2007

The commonly accepted opinion of Newman’s adoption of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration and rejection of Calvinism follows his account in the Apologia that it was Hawkins’ gift, in 1824, of
the ‘Treatise on Apostolical Preaching,” by Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, from which I learned to give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the.doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration.This statement in the Apologia is based upon a journal entry of August 1824:
Lately I have been thinking much on the subject of grace, regeneration &c. and reading Sumner’s Apostolical Preaching, which Hawkins has given me. Sumner’s book threatens to drive me either into Calvinism, or baptismal regeneration, and I wish to steer clear of both, at least in preaching.Undoubtedly, the Apologia continues to be an invaluable insight into the religious development of its author, but yet we need to be aware of its tendency to pass over the details of what was a very complicated and lengthy development.Newman divides his spiritual journey into four broad phases: Evangelical, Liberal, Apostolical, and lastly Roman Catholic. This has the great advantage that the broad sweep of his brush portrays the dynamic of his pilgrimage towards a definite goal, but this is at the expense of some of the background to significant changes in his life, for neither the Evangelical nor the Liberal stages of his progress were entirely unmixed with other strands of thought. In particular, the Apologia does not do justice to the whole spectrum of influences to which he was subject before he went up to Oxford.
The Mystery of Death Alterity and Affectivity in Levinas
Authors: Purcell Michael 
Published: July 2007

In years gone by, November was the month most closely associated with death. The month, which Ted Hughes appropriately describes as the ‘month of the drowned dog’, opened, having remembered All Saints, with the Commemoration of All Souls, the black draped catafalque in the aisle, the three Masses, and a hymnody recalling death’s pains and anguishes. Think of the words of the popular hymn, O turn to Jesus, Mother, turn, in which it was recalled that those who died,... have fought a gallant fight;In death’s cold aims they persevered;and, after life’s uncheery night.The arbour of their rest is neared.Death was cold; death was pain and loss; sickness unto death was struggle.Now, it seems, we have possessed death, we have brought it close and made it our own, not to be feared and fled from, but friendly and familiar. The theology of death has come of age and now faces death with that anticipatory resoluteness of which Heidegger speaks. Thanatology speaks the language of ontology. Subjectivity, formerly snuffed out in death, now appropriates, as integral to its own life, death, and reasserts its mastery. Mature in Christian faith, we have authentically managed to appropriate what otherwise we would rather forget. What I would like to suggest in this article is that this repatriation of death into life, rather than yielding death’s meaning, actually leads to a situation in which, as Blanchot says, we have lost death, and obscured its significance.
‘The Firmament Sheweth His Handiwork:’ Some Scientists' Reflections on Theology
Authors: Fuller Michael 
Published: July 2007

There still appears to be a firm view in the minds of many people that science and religion are somehow inescapably opposed to one another. On the one hand (such a view might allege), to be a scientist means that one can’t take religion seriously: on the other, to be a religious believer one has to sit light to many of the findings of science, either quietly ignoring them or perhaps even flatly denying their validity. Anyone saying that modern science and Christianity are quite compatible is often looked at askance, as though either his or her science, or his or her theology, or both, must be suspect. However, a growing number of theologians are now writing about the theological implications of science; and, in addition, some scientists are also providing more or less explicit comments on the theological implications of their work.This should not surprise us. In his recent book Art and the Beauty of God, Bishop Richard Harries makes the remark that ‘All works of art, whatever their content, have a spiritual dimension,’ in that they can provide us with comfort or solace. It is surely also true that all the sciences necessarily have a theological dimension, in that they all investigate one aspect or another of the material universe, and, Christians believe, that universe is itself, in some sense, the creation of God. We ought therefore to expect to discover something about the Creator in our analysis of the creation, whether we conclude, at one extreme, with the deists, that God somehow initiated the Big Bang and then abandoned the cosmos to get on with it; or whether we conclude, at the other extreme, that the universe may be regarded as being so intimately connected with its originator that it is reasonable to call it in some sense the Body of God.
Signs and Symbols of Sacred Reality in Old Testament Religion
Authors: Heskin Kieran 
Published: July 2007

In this paper, I propose to deal with various sacred realities that helped the people of Israel deepen their relationship with God over the years: die Aik of the Covenant, the desert Tabernacle, the Temple, the Sabbath and other feasts, the synagogue, religious meals and creation itself.Of all the sacred objects of Old Testament Religion, the one that must have ranked among the most sacred was the Ark of the Covenant. It was constructed at Sinai, according to the instructions of the Lord, from acacia wood (Ex. 25.10ff.). It was a box two and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide and one and a half cubits high. It contained the two tablets of the law (1 Kings 8.9), a jar of manna and Aaron’s rod (Ex. 16.33; Heb. 9.4). It was covered by a gold plate called the kapporet (die mercy seat) at either end of which, facing each other, there were cherubim. The Aik was not only a powerful symbol of the Sinai covenant, it was also a location of divine presence “There I will meet with you...”(Ex. 25.22).The cultures surrounding Israel provide some insight into the culdc thought that lay behind the construction of the Ark. In the Ancient Near East there was a custom whereby a treaty document was often placed in a container which served as the footstool for a deity. Thus the decalogue was placed in its container, the Ark, and this then became God’s footstool.The TabernacleThe aik was housed in the Tabernacle or the Tent of Meeting.
Sacraments and Society An Anthropologist Asks, What Women Could be Doing in the Church?
Authors: Douglas Mary 
Published: July 2007

The sacraments raise controversy at every turn, no matter which one of the seven we think of. There is no end to hot debate on pastoral issues.For example, why has Penance taken a back seat of late? Is it because we sin less? Or do we have less sense of sin? If so, why should it be so? Or are we more forgiving and therefore take it for granted that God is more forgiving? As to the Eucharist, why cannot any one receive communion, whether they are baptised Catholics or believing Christians or outright pagans? Would it not do them good, whatever their condition? Does Marriage really matter? Why does Ordination rule out Marriage? How often can the Last Sacrament be given? Why is Ordination the only gender-exclusive sacrament? I have left out Confirmation and Baptism, but we can ask why the Catholic Church institutes seven sacraments, while some Christian congregations just have Baptism, and others, Baptism and Confirmation, and some take everything in the world to be a potential sacrament?I want to take the last two questions together, women priests (why not?) and the seven instituted channels of grace (why seven?), together with the claim of the Church to be universal. Universal means standing above local bias, resisting temporary pressures, recognizing a passing fashion for what it is, and thus standing for permanent truths for all times and places. The universal Church is old, but not a fossil, she must develop; truth is revealed gradually, the doctrines have to be unfolded. I understand that the work of the Holy Spirit is to safeguard doctrine and practice.
Sacramental Language
Authors: Harbert Bruce 
Published: July 2007

We use the word figure in many ways. We speak of figure-skating, of cutting a figure, of a fine figure of a man, the fuller figure, a figure of fun, figuring things out, figures of speech and being good with with figures. These are all current senses. In the past, figure has had other meanings. When, in The Merry Wives of Windsor Mistress Ford encourages Mistress Page to ‘scrape the figures out of your husband’s brains’, she does not mean that he has been worrying about the mortgage, but that his head is full of mistaken ideas or fantasies.Figure comes from the Latin figura. In 1944 the German literary critic Erich Auerbach published an influential article entitled Figura. He showed the wide range of meanings that figura has in classical Latin, and how these developed further in Christian usage. Fran the earliest records, figura could mean ‘the shape of a thing’, just as we now speak of a person’s ‘figure’. But it could also mean a shape representing something else. Sculptors, for instance, make figurae of human beings; in our dreams we see figurae of people who are dead.Christian writers developed this second sense in a new and important way. For them, figura could refer to an object or event belonging to a particular point in time that represented something in the future. For Tertullian, Isaac, Joseph, Moses are all figurae of Christ2; the marriage of Adam and Eve is a figura of Christ and the Church3 (Theologians are familiar with this way of looking at history, though we usually call it by a word of Greek origin, typology.)
Lay Appropriation of the Sacraments in the later Middle Ages
Authors: Duffy Eamon 
Published: July 2007

Perhaps the most crucial single utterance of the Second Vatican Council, at least in terms of impact on our shared experience as Catholics, occurs at paragraph 14 of the Council’s constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. This was the first of the conciliar documents to be promulgated, and in many ways its most bloodily contested production. The paragraph in question runs like this:Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy, and to which the Christian people, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people” (1 Pet 2: 9, 4-5.) have a right and obligation by reason of their baptism.In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy the full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else, for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit. Therefore, in all their apostolic activity, pastors of souls should energetically set about achieving it through the required pedagogy.“Full, conscious and active participation”, pastoral energy and liturgical pedagogy: these were momentous notions, laden with an agenda whose implications were sketched out in the rest of the document, and which were embodied in the reforms which followed. The summons to “active participation”, indeed, a phrase which occurs sixteen times in all, was singled out subsequently as the main refrain of the document.
Augustine and Divine Simplicity
Authors: Rosheger John P. 
Published: July 2007

The doctrine of divine simplicity in its denial of any real ontological distinction between God’s substance and His attributes commanded a special place within classical theism, finding a forceful expression within Augustine’s metaphysic. However, the simplicity of God is a relatively neglected doctrine within current metaphysical and theistic considerations. This is somewhat strange considering the profound implications it has for theistic matters. Its tenets are inextricably linked to such theistic concerns as immutability, aseity, sovereignty, divine volition and necessity. As such, it is well worth our effort to devote careful attention to the Augustinian conception of God’s simpleness, confronting head-on its seemingly counter-intuitive assertion that there is not any actual distinction between divine substance and its qualities. We will want to first expound the relevant texts to Augustine’s teaching on divine simplicity. After its main features have been identified, our analysis will measure Augustine’s doctrine against some of the more serious contemporary objections.We initiate our exposition by asking: What is Augustine’s notion of divine simplicity? Augustine’s doctrine rallies around the claim that God is what He has (hoc est quod habet). He remarks, “What is meant by ‘simple’ is that its [the Godhead] being is identical with its attributes,...” (CD XI.10). To gain a fuller appreciation of this pithy formula, it is necessary for us to consider its wider context.Within De civitate Dei, Augustine begins the tenth chapter of Book XI by stating, “There is then one sole Good, which is simple, and therefore unchangeable; and that is God. By this Good all good things were created; but they are not simple, and for that reason are changeable.”
Ontology, Theodicy and Idiom – The Challenge of Nietzschean Tragedy to Christian Writing on Evil
Authors: Cane Anthony 
Published: July 2007

In this article I want to suggest that Christian theologising about evil cannot avoid the multifarious voices of those who have defined what is meant by the term “tragedy”, even where it seeks to reject this. This is to argue that the “tragic vision” articulates something important about human and worldly reality, and that theologising that does not acknowledge this will inevitably demonstrate it anyway in its own incoherence. This will be shown in relation to the writings on evil of St Augustine of Hippo and Donald MacKinnon, and finally it will be argued that the only possible “theodicy” lies in the area of Christology.I begin with the man who proclaimed himself the first “tragic philosopher”, Friedrich Nietzsche, who in his first published book, The Birth of Tragedy, produced the most radical and disconcerting (to Christian sensibility) account of tragedy I have yet encountered. Early in that work Nietzsche retells a fragment of Greek mythology, as follows:
There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest for a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him. When at last he fell into his hands, the king asked what was best of all and most desirable for man. Fixed and immovable, the demon remained silent; till at last, forced by the king, he broke out with shrill laughter into these words: ‘Oh, wretched race of a day, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to say what it were most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is for ever beyond your reach: not to be bom, not to be, to be nothing. The second best for you, however, is soon to die.
Zacchaeus Chance and Necessity
Authors: Ombres Robert 
Published: July 2007

A Sermon, written for the Internet series of weekly sermons by Dominicans, for the 31st Sunday of the Year: C. The Scriptural texts were Wisdom 11:22-2:2; Thessalonians 1:11-2:2 and Luke 19:1-10.
Does God play dice with the universe?Is everything the product of chance?Is necessity a one-way road along which we must travel?Why are some people given faith and others not?These are the kinds of questions that should jostle for attention in our minds as we consider today’s gospel. And yet at first sight the story of Zacchaeus up a tree could well seem just a charming and picturesque Oriental tale, told to make the simple point that Jesus leaves nobody out.Dwell a little longer on those questions that float in and out of our consciousness as we begin to reflect on the gospel. To read the Scriptures in the Christian assembly as part of the liturgy is not the same kind of activity as reading them alone at home. To start with, the Sunday readings are selected and combined for us. We come to the gospel story about Zacchaeus only after we have taken in the reading from the book of Wisdom. That first reading already releases large questions and cosmic issues into our consciousness:
In your sight, Lord, the whole world is like a grain of dust that tips the scales . . . Yet you love all that exists . . . And how, had you not willed it, could a thing persist?So, back to the gospel. Consider what might have been that day in Jericho.
Aquinas and the Act of Love
Authors: Nolan Michael 
Published: July 2007

Newmah's Anglican days made him acutely aware of how the language of Catholicism sounds strange in unaccustomed and indeed suspicious ears and how readily misunderstanding ensues. Infallibility is taken to be a claim to be right on everything, the Immaculate Conception is confused with the Virgin Birth, and the remission of sins becomes a permission to continue in evil ways. It is, he saw, a general problem in dealing with the unfamiliar, and he wondered what a hostile foreigner would make of the maxims of the laws of England. Might he not, reading in Blackstone's incomparable Commentaries that ‘the power and jurisdiction of parliament is so transcendent that it cannot be confined either for causes or persons within any bounds’, see a blasphemous claim to divine omnipotence? Might not the assertion that ‘the king can do no wrong’ seem an arrogant claim to divine sinlessness? In truth, of course, all that is meant is that in English law there is no higher authority than Parliament and that the King cannot be sued in his own Courts: nothing more. Newman could but ask the hostile foreigner to abide a while and abate his hostility.Aquinas, writing in a highly technical Latin and within a philosophy and theology alien to modern ears, is no less prone to be misunderstood, and the modes of misrepresenting him, often unwitting, are many. What he has to say about marriage and related issues has been the object of recent attacks: often he is read as if he were a Lutheran or Calvinist. It may be well to note some of these types of error before dealing with his own understanding in these matters.