bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Theological Integrity
Authors: Williams Rowan 
Published: July 2007

What makes us say of any discourse that it has or that it lacks ‘integrity’? Usually we can answer this in terms of whether such a discourse is really talking about what it says it is talking about. This is not necessarily to make a pronouncement on the integrity or otherwise of this or that speaker, who may or may not know that the discourse serves a purpose other than what it professes. It would be quite in order to say—as a Marxist might—that eighteenth century aesthetics was an integral part of the ideology of bourgeois cultural dominance, that what determined its judgments and strategies was a particular pattern of economic relations, without thereby saying that Johnson or Hawksmoor was a liar, or that Bach did not ‘mean’ it when he wrote ad maiorem Dei gloriam at the head of his compositions. Somebody perpetuating such an aesthetic today, when we know (according to the Marxist) so much about its real determinants, would be dishonest: they could not mean what an eighteenth century speaker meant because they know what that speaker (on the charitable interpretation) did not—the objective direction, the interest in fact served by the discourse. The discourse is without integrity because it conceals its true agenda; knowing that concealment robs us of our innocence, the ‘innocence’ of the original speaker; for we know too that speech cannot be content with concealment.Why is it so important that speech should not conceal its purposes? Discourse that conceals is discourse that (consciously or not) sets out to foreclose the possibility of a genuine response.
Revelation and Contemplation
Authors: Harvey Nicholas Peter 
Published: July 2007

An article under this heading, as part of a series on how God speaks to us, is presumably meant to presuppose that revelation and contemplation are two ways or contexts in which God does so. I want to suggest that the two are inseparable, and that they have much more to do with mundane realities than is commonly thought. To illustrate both points here is an extract from John M. Hull’s account of what it is like to be blind:This evening, at about nine o’clock, I was getting ready to leave the house. I opened the front door, and rain was falling.I stood for a few minutes, lost in the beauty of it. Rain has a way of bringing out the contours of everything; it throws a coloured blanket over previously invisible things; instead of an intermittent and thus fragmented world, the steadily falling rain creates continuity of acoustic experience.This seems to me to be at once a revelatory and a contemplative experience. It is also about something so ordinary that sighted people take it for granted, namely rain. Hull’s account of this moment provides an extraordinarily vivid example of de Caussade’s doctrine of the sacrament of the present moment:The rain presents the fulness of an entire situation all at once, not merely remembered, not in anticipation, but actually and now. The rain gives a sense of perspective and of the actual relationships of one part of the world to another....I feel as if the world, which is veiled until I touch it, has suddenly disclosed itself to me. I feel that the rain is gracious, that it has granted a gift to me, the gift of the world.
Death and the Christian
Authors: Sia Marian F. , Sia Santiago 
Published: July 2007

Someone once said that death is a tragedy only when we know nothing about it. If this is true, then just how much do we know of death that to die would not be a tragedy? If we had some idea what it is like to die, would there be less fear in us? Would we be less scared at the prospect of it since it would not be a plunge into the unknown or a leap into the dark?What is troubling about the moment of death, thereby causing much distress and anxiety, is that we all know that one day each of us will die; yet there is much uncertainty about death. Consequently, the thought of it grips our whole being, leaving us bewildered. Or could it be the parting with loved ones or perhaps leaving behind an unfinished task which makes death a sad and unwelcome moment? John Keat’s poem ‘Terror of Death’ certainly expresses the tragedy of being separated from loved ones or an uncompleted work. Maybe it is the fact that there is no turning back after—to use Alfred Tennyson’s words—one has ‘crossed the bar’ that terrifies. Dylan Thomas’s advice, therefore, is:Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.We are afraid that death may reveal our lives to have been a sham and it has rendered us powerless to change them.
Quod Vere Sit Deus: Why Anselm Thought that God Truly Exists
Authors: Davies Brian 
Published: July 2007

‘Behold, one night during Matins, the grace of God shone in his heart and the matter became clear to his understanding, filling his whole heart with an immense joy and jubilation’.What became clear to him? Almost all students of theology, and many students of philosophy, know that there is an argument for God’s existence called ‘the Ontological Argument’. Where is this argument to be found? The usual answer given is that it was first advanced by St Anselm (c. 1033—1109) in his Proslogion. Is the argument a good one? The usual answer is that it is not, and that Immanuel Kant (1724—1804) effectively showed why. In my opinion, however, these answers are wrong. In what follows I shall try to explain why this is so. The effort is worth while because it is important to know what Anselm did argue, and also because, as it seems to me, what he has to offer is much more cogent than what is normally attributed to him.We can begin by noting the nature of the argument attributed to Anselm by those who see him as the father of the Ontological Argument. It runs like this:(1) ‘God’ by definition is ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’.(2) If God did not exist he would not be ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’, for it is greater to exist than not to exist.(3) By definition, then, ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ exists. It would be contradictory to say ‘That than which nothing greater can be thought does not exist’.(4) God, therefore, exists.
Systemic Change of Real Socialism: A Point of No Return
Authors: Malfliet Katlijn 
Published: July 2007

After the political revolutions of 1989, the former eastern bloc countries, although at differing speeds and in a different order, started a process leading to the abolition of the basic principles upon which real socialism was founded. The identity of their social, economic and political systems is being qualitatively changedThe post-revolutionary system, however, is taking a long time to establish itself. The rather open nature of the new legal framework makes it difficult to forecast the final outcome of post-communist societies. Meanwhile, one can remark on the constraints that exist in the postcommunist period. Instead of thinking in terms of final results, it would perhaps be more helpful to start from the remnants of communism and to ask ourselves how sociopolitical realities can be matched with the new principles of democracy, market economy and capitalism. It is important to have a clear insight into the means that will be used to obtain real owners. These real owners are, as a matter of fact, a prerequisite for a capitalist system. Finally, an assessment has to be mack of the ‘moral climate’ in which transformation has to proceed.
The Christian Scene in the Mediterranean
Authors: Fisichella Rino 
Published: July 2007

In his Apologia Newman writesI think it would be a very serious evil, which Divine Mercy avert! that the Church should be contracted in Europe within the range of particular nationalities.The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent sweeping changes that have taken place in the political configuration of Europe force us to go beyond territorial concerns in our consideration of unity. More than simply a geographical reality, in fact, unity is something that encompasses history, culture and tradition, and which has in Christianity its first matrix.My subject is the Christian scene in the Mediterranean area, the ‘south’ of Europe. Our first task, therefore, must be to rid ourselves of those all too common prejudices which equate the ‘south’ with regress and cultural backwardness. After all, depending on one’s perspective, every country is always to the ‘south’ of another. To deal comprehensively with the situation of Christianity in the Mediterranean area in the short space allocated to me is practically impossible, and would require a knowledge of social and cultural phenomena which do not easily lend themselves to synthesis. Given my background, therefore, the analysis which follows has to be restricted to the Italian situation.The situation in Italy, however, is also one which does not easily lend itself to brief description. A great deal of space would be required even to sketch the background against which the current situation of Christianity has come to be created. I have decided, therefore, to concentrate on two areas: firstly, the general situation of the life of believers in Italy and, secondly, the situation of Italian theology. Taken together, these two perspectives should give some indication of the global condition of the country with regard to Christianity.
The Christian Scene in Eastern Europe
Authors: Vass George 
Published: July 2007

The fact that a Hungarian has been asked to contribute a paper on the theme of Christian hope in Europe’s future might suggest that a ray of hope for European Christianity is expected from the eastern edge of our continent: ex oriente lux. Can my message reassure the aging and, in many respects, decadent Christianity of the west?Many outward signs have indeed been pointing in this direction. I do not believe, however, that we can judge simply from the recent papal visit to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Though spectacular crowds on our television screens have an eminent value for religious propaganda, we in the west expect something more behind these scenes. My real task should therefore be a foray into the background of the east European landscape.My foray will be limited, since I do not trust myself outside the confines of my native Hungary. It will be uncertain, since I am going to speak of a situation reminding us of the very beginning: ‘...and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep’. At the same time we can feel that ‘the Spirit of God was brooding over the chaos’ which the last forty years of desert wandering ‘uncreated’ in a part of our common European homeland.
U.S. Women Religious and the Feminisation of Poverty
Authors: Maloney Susan Marie 
Published: July 2007

One of the most important social realities today, one which holds theological importance is the well documented and yet chilling fact of the feminisation of poverty. With the increasing global and national polarisation of poor and rich, the majority of the newly poor continue to be women and children. Overwhelmingly, women with children spend the major portion of their lives in a downward spiral, struggling for economic survival for themselves and their children. Politically, these same women hold little or no social power.This social reality of the feminisation of poverty in the USA finds its counterpart in the Catholic Church in the economic relationship between the institutional church and women, particularly women religious. In this articler I will first describe the social process of the feminisation of poverty. Second I will briefly demonstrate how and why U.S. congregations of women religious partake in this social process through their relationship with the institutional Church. Finally I will discuss what implications this has for the theology of religious life, for women and for the Church.
Columbus was not Eichmann
Authors: Navone John 
Published: July 2007

Christopher Columbus has been a target of revisionist debunking as the New World prepares for the 500th anniversary of the European discovery. Once praised as a superb seaman by Samuel Eliot Morison, Columbus has shrunk to an incompetent bumbler in Kirkpatrick Sale’s book, The Discovery of Paradise—a paradise, the author argues, that Europeans despoiled. Going further, other protesters hand up the equivalent of a Nuremberg indictment. What happened after 1492, thunders the National Council of Churches, was ‘an invasion and colonisation with legalised occupation, genocide, economic exploitation and a deep level of institutional racism and moral decadence.’ This is partly true, but by the same selective reckoning Jefferson was a Virginia elitist and a slave-owning plutocrat.In his New York Times editorial (June 26,1991), ‘Columbus Was Not Eichmann,’ Karl E. Meyer affirms that, despite their cruelties, Spanish colonisers were not simply war criminals; and, whatever his faults, Columbus was not Eichmann. That anyone would suggest otherwise tells more about our own self-righteous age than that of Columbus.Nobody can deny that the conquistadores thirsted for gold and glory, slaughtered Indians and imported African slaves. What needs to be added is that their excesses were searingly indicted by Spanish churchmen, notably by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas. His Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, published in Seville in 1552, remains the prime source for the worst horror stories of the Spanish conquest. His searing narrative, Meyer affirms, was seized upon by English Protestants to justify their own conquests.
The Gulf War and the Just‐War Theory: View from the Vatican
Authors: Dodaro Robert 
Published: July 2007

The Vatican’s case against military intervention by the US-led ‘coalition’ in the Persian Gulf was forcefully argued on the following grounds: 1) the destruction likely to be caused in the war would be entirely disproportionate to the not insignificant evil caused by Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, 2) there was every likelihood that noncombatant death and injury would be enormous, 3) there was from the start every likelihood that Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait could be secured through diplomatic activity and negotiations without resort to the application of military force. The ‘just war’ case for the Gulf War was therefore not met, as far as the Vatican was concerned, because the case for the war failed to meet the criteria of proportionate response, discrimination, and last resort. It is true that, in framing his own objections to the war, Pope John Paul II was chary of referring directly to the so-called ‘just-war theory’. But Peter Hebblethwaite’s comment that ‘John Paul is not much interested in the pros and cons of just-war theology’ fails to account for the extent to which the Pope’s arguments against the war fell within the traditional criteria.From the outset, the Vatican’s position was shaped by a few principles which, though broadly stated, remained constants in its attitude during the Gulf Crisis. A statement appearing in the Vatican’s official daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano (9 August) along with the first papal statement on the crisis (26 August) contained the seeds of Vatican policy as it developed over the following months.
Mass Media and its Effects on Just War Criteria in the Gulf War
Authors: Tirimanna Vimal 
Published: July 2007

It is often claimed that high technology won the Gulf War for the allies. However, a careful analysis of the ways in which the mass media was controlled after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would clearly indicate that it was not just technology which gave the allies their victory, but also the skillful media manipulationmedia. At the very outset of this article I would like to make it clear that not only the allies but the Iraqis themselves were guilty of media manipulation. Saddam Hussein used the media first of all to convince the predominantly Islamic Iraqi people that they were waging a Holy War’ against the western infidel. He attempted to portray the war as a religious affair, a cause of Allah’, hoping both to tap the resources of religious feeling throughout the Islamic world and to draw on the political capital of Muslims in the Middle East. Throughout the crisis he did not hesitate to match the tone of his rhetoric with that of President Bush.When the allies began their air attacks on Iraq on January 17, Saddam informed the nation that the enemy had declared war, by using the phrase: ‘the mother of all battles has begun !’ He assured his people, in graphic terms, that the enemy would be burned alive and buried in the desert sands. Throughout the war the Iraqi people were never given an accurate picture of events at the front.
Simplicity Itself: Milbank's Thesis
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

John Milbank's work is familiar to the assiduous reader of New Blackfriars, who will recall his two-part study of William Warburton, as well as his more recent essays ‘On Baseless Suspicion: Christianity and the Crisis of Socialism’ and ‘Religion, Culture and Anarchy: the attack on the Amoldian vision’. Although not incorporated materially into Theology and Social Theory, these essays open up related lines of investigation, and, having read them, one might not find his massive book so intimidating. It may be said, at least, that one might have been prepared for this venture into a post-Nietzschean theology which is also profoundly (Anglican) Catholic—an unlikely conjunction, one might have thought.The book’s dense scholarship and theoretical complexity are formidable, but, fortunately, in the title, the epigraph and the table of contents, we are offered three clues to the brilliantly simple thesis which it takes all the learning and argument in the rest of the book to expound and substantiate.A book entitled Theology and Social Theory in a series containing titles such as Theology and Philosophy, Theology and Politics and the like, would naturally be expected to bring together in a mutually illuminating way what everyone is likely to think of as two radically different disciplines, each with its own autonomous method and distinctive discourse—‘naturally’, that is to say, in the cultural environment of carefully protected academic specialisms which we inhabit and which the author means to disrupt. Theologians, peering through the machicolations of faith-engaging scholarship, would learn from sociologists about the ways in which ideas are shaped by social processes.
John Milbank's Divina Commedia
Authors: Ward Graham 
Published: July 2007

Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell of that wood, savage and harsh and dense, the thought of which renews my fear!(Inferno Canto 1, 3–6)The journey towards Milbank’s representation of Augustine’s Civitas Dei calls for an epic heroism, as it passes through woods dense with philosophical thought and over chasms of vertiginous intellectual argument. Dante, then, provides a description of one’s experience of reading Theology and Social Theory. But more significantly, he provides us with a key to its method. Milbank’s polemic is aimed at modernity, the invention of the secular story and modem political theology’s collusion with it. This modernity or secularity arose following late-mediaeval/Renaissance self-awareness. Assisted by postmodern strategies of reading, Milbank allegorizes secular discourses, deconstructs their secularism and reveals their dependence upon metaphysical and theological assumptions. By doing this he therefore embraces secular discourse (whose inception and invention ‘began at least in the eleventh century’ [p.432]) within a theological metanarrative. And that is why Dante is significant; John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory is a contemporary Commedia. This does not necessarily condemn it as a piece of late twentieth century nostalgia, a fin de siècle pre-Raphaelitism. But it means that the teleological goal of Theology and Social Theory is the recovery of a pre-modem (but not antique) theological perspective. Or, put in another (albeit Dantesque) way: this book provides a new allegorical depiction of the operation of charity [pp.425-6]. Such a reading of the book has several important corollaries, binding upon both John Milbank and his readers.
Saving Time: Thoughts on Practice, Patience and Vision
Authors: Williams + Rowan 
Published: July 2007

Theology and Social Theory is a book that prompts conversation on almost every page - conversation of both the ‘yes, and..and the ‘yes, but . kind, as well as something like a ‘no, but. . .’ on occasion. An adequate review would have to be a kind of gloss, a talmudic margin. It is no small tribute to Milbank that this work is so hard to discuss briefly. What follows is not a review, but a few fragments of this reader’s side of the conversation, assembled round a focal area of unease within an overall admiration for the learning and boldness of the enterprise. My title will hint at something of my discomfort: is Milbank’s commitment to history and narrative, to time as the medium of benign creativity and non-competitive difference, fully realised in his exposition? Does he ‘save time’ in a theological sense or only in the colloquial one of getting more expeditiously to his goal than the circumstances might seem to warrant?The project of reconstructing a Christian ontology by retelling the story of the Christian Church’s origins, so as to display it as the history that makes sense of all histories, is heralded as one of the indispensable moments in the rehabilitation of a properly theological critique of secular order (e.g. p.381). ‘The metanarrative. . . is the genesis of the Church’ (p.387). This is an intriguing and exhilarating prospect; I am not sure if it has been carried through. Christian universalism is opposed to the ‘orders’ of non-Christian antiquity—the Roman sacralisation of dominion, with its programmatic refusal of a properly common good, and the Jewish commitment to law as the defining structure of a common good, at least for one specific community.
The Problem of Evil
Authors: Davies Brian 
Published: July 2007

We are often told that there is something called ‘the problem of evil’. What is this supposed to be? And how should we respond to it?It is usually understood as a problem for classical theism (sometimes just called theism), supporters of which are commonly called theists. According to classical theism, God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and allgood. In the world around us, however, we discover a great deal of pain and suffering. We also find a great deal of moral evil—morally culpable actions (or refusals to act) which diminish both those who are morally bad and those around them. The problem of evil is commonly seen as the problem of how the existence of God can be reconciled with the pain, suffering, and moral evil which we know to be facts of life. And it has often been said that they cannot be. Thus it has been urged that the problem of evil constitutes grounds for disbelief in God.The argument here has taken two forms. First, it has been said that evil is evidence against there being a God—that evil shows the existence of God to be unlikely. Second, it has been held that evil is proof that there could not be a God. The idea here is that theists are caught in a contradiction. They cannot say both that there is evil and that God exists. Since they can hardly deny that there is evil, it follows that God does not exist.
Early Irish ‘Feminism’
Authors: Márkus Gilbert 
Published: July 2007

There is a tendency among critics of ‘patriarchal’ culture or religion to point to the high status of women in early Irish or other Celtic societies as a model for change, suggesting that these societies displayed what one might call ‘actually existing feminism’. The assumption appears in otherwise scholarly works. Thus Dillon and Chadwick:
It is indeed impossible to have any true understanding of either Celtic history or Celtic literature without realizing the high status of Celtic women.Elsewhere we are invited to ‘think of the superior place of women in early Celtic society’2. But what is the evidence for these claims?