bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Two Christianities
Authors: Corner Mark 
Published: July 2007

It sometimes seems as though everyone loves a Christian, and everyone wants more of them. From a dangerous, persecuted sect of the first century, whose strange practices of consuming their god and indulging in a communal agape produced the sort of ignorant criticism in the Roman Empire that Moslems and Hindus receive in much of the West today, Christianity has become most popular religion, chief determinant of public morals and compulsory faith of any budding British monarch. It is now commonplace to challenge the progress of the Christian faith from a subversive branch of Judaism to a world religion. The highpoint of that progress, the success of Christianity in becoming official faith of the Roman Empire, looks very different today. Did Constantine convert to Christianity, or did Christianity convert to Constantine? The degree of self-criticism implied in that question represents a profound challenge to the churches.I would like to suggest that there are two Christianities. The first is the faith that this government, in the form of the Bishop of London, the Prime Minister and Baroness Cox, is anxious to put onto every school curriculum. This Christianity encourages what seems to have become a vogue phrase in politics today, ‘good citizenship’. It supports pride in one’s national identity, respect for the institutions of state, and a type of concern for others harnessed to the sort of individual conscientiousness that volunteers for school governorships and neighbourhood watch schemes.
Women and the Human Paradigm: An Exploration of Gender Discrimination
Authors: Hannaford Robert 
Published: July 2007

The contemporary debate about the place and role of women in the Church is proving to be a painful and difficult business. Language itself contributes to the problems in the sense that certain tacit assumptions —overwhelmingly negative about women—are embedded deep in our talk about human persons. The answer is not to be found simply in tinkering with non-sexist language. The practical difficulties facing women are compounded by the fact that the language in which the discussion is conducted depends for its meaning on gender images that are implicitly discriminatory. The clue to this problem is to be found in certain key assumptions about the nature of human persons.The experience of intra-human discrimination has certain common elements. Those discriminated against are in one way or another denied rights accorded to other human beings, their needs are subordinated to those of others, and their behaviour tends to be interpreted in causal rather than psychological terms. What is characteristic about this experience is that it involves a refusal to treat those discriminated against as persons in the full sense of that term, for to recognize someone as a person is precisely to accord them certain rights, to take note of their needs, and to see them as subjects whose experience can only be adequately explained in terms of psychology. In this essay we shall attempt to uncover those features of our talk about persons that give rise to the possibility of discrimination and following this we shall consider the particular difficulties facing women.It has been customary for philosophers when analysing the concept of a person to begin by listing the kinds of things we say about persons.
Bullitio and the God beyond God: Meister Eckhart's Trinitarian Theology
Authors: Reynolds P.L. 
Published: July 2007

Our inquiry is about two aspects of Eckhart’s theology of the Trinity. One aspect (treated in Part I, which appeared in last month’s issue of New Blackfriars pp. 169—181) is his use of the notion of bullitio (‘boiling’) in the Latin treatises to explain personal procession and plurality within God. The other is the distinction in Eckhart’s German sermons between the Trinity and the undifferentiated Godhead beyond the Trinity.The conclusions drawn from the first part of this study were as follows:Bullitio is a metaphor depicting the generation of the Son from the Father. It also depicts the procession of the Holy Spirit, but this aspect is less developed in the texts we have considered. The metaphor represents an attempt to explain and to understand not only the nature of this generation but also the reason for it. I have argued that Eckhart, unlike Aquinas, allies himself with the tradition of a priori proofs of the Trinity. Bullitio is a metaphor for the self-diffusiveness of the good, and is related to Bonaventure’s notion of fountain-like fulness (plenitudo fontalis). Bonaventure finds in the latter attribute, which he regards as a property of the Father, the reason for plurality in God. There are no grounds to suppose that the idea of bullitio involves a distinction between God as Trinity and as the hidden Godhead.Ebullitio, the first moment, as it were, of the creative emanation from God, is rooted in bullitio, and these two ideas are linked by that of formal emanation. The generation of the Son is a formal emanation; it is also the formal cause of creatures, insofar as this cause is considered in abstraction from their efficient and final causes.
Sacrifice and Violence: New Perspectives in the Theory of Religion from René Girard
Authors: Davis Charles 
Published: July 2007

We live in a time in which the boundary fences between the various disciplines are being dismantled—at least as far as the social sciences and humanities are concerned. Take, for example, the work of Michel Foucault. Is it philosophy, history, sociology or political science? Again, where would one place the deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida? Under the guise of literary theory it has profoundly changed the enterprise of literary criticism, and some think it is finally bringing to an end the hegemony of historical criticism in the theory and practice of biblical interpretation. With a nod towards Thomas Kuhn we could say that across the social sciences and humanities there is a search for new paradigms.Students of that questionable discipline, called variously science of religion, history of religions, religiology, religious studies, comparative religion, or simply religion, are well used to a cloud of uncertainty obscuring the legitimacy, function and defining method of their academic project. About the only point of agreement is that the science of religion is not theology—and even that distinction is understood in different ways. Other questions abound. Is there a single science of religion, with a defining method, distinguishing it from such related sciences as anthropology and sociology? Or, is it a collective name for a group of sciences and disciplines with no single methodology? Is there a strictly empirical science of religion or is the study of religion essentially a hermeneutic discipline, demanding a methodology appropriate to one of the Geisteswissenschaften? One could continue along these lines, multiplying questions. Enough has been said to indicate what all its practitioners know, the uncertain status of the academic study of religion. By the ‘academic study’ of religion I mean that study when disengaged from the controlling authority and presuppositions of any particular religious tradition or organization.
Moral Conscience and the Experience of God
Authors: Stinnett Timothy R. 
Published: July 2007

I am making a systematic theological point about the relationship between moral conscience and the experience of God. While the same theme may be taken up as a moral theological question, my intention is to explicate in part the meaning of ‘God’ as implied by the Christian witness of faith, and so I am approaching the theme as a systematic theologian and not from the perspective of moral theology. That is, I intend to ask primarily about the significance of moral conscience for understanding our experience of God, and not vice versa.Clearly the phrase ‘the experience of God’ is systematically ambiguous, and I will argue that the term ‘moral conscience’ or ‘dictates of conscience’ is also systematically ambiguous, and that recognition of this ambiguity helps us resolve a cluster of philosophical and theological problems that accompany any assertion that moral conscience is a mode of the experience of God. (‘The experience of God’ is also grammatically an ambiguous phrase, of course. Here I will be using it as an objective genitive unless otherwise indicated.)My central hypothesis is that the experience of moral conscience is a primary mode of the experience of God, if not the most important mode. This hypothesis is hardly without controversy: at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when D.F. Schleiermacher argued against any simple identification of moral conscience and religious experience, it has been recognized to be complex and problematic. Schleiermacher wrote in 1799 that religion ‘must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs’ (Schleiermacher, 31).
Williams, Ward, and the Unity of Theological Language
Authors: Parvis Paul 
Published: July 2007

In the February issue of New Blackfriars, Rowan Williams explored the unity of theological discourse. He asked what criteria might be used in setting limits to pluralism—how we can go about deciding what should be allowed to count as a statement of Christian truth. He concluded that we must go beyond the domain of formal theological language and look to the way in which a theology becomes enfleshed: ‘the unity of Christian truth is perceivable to the extent that we can perceive a unity in Christian holiness’.The limits of Christian truth are perceivable as we engage in the hard work of spelling out the human meanings, the hopes and possibilities, carried in this or that theological utterance ... Does it... continue to offer intelligible roles for the living out of new creation? Does it conserve a hope for shared, unrestricted human renewal/liberation/salvation?I believe that, in an important though rather complex way, Williams is right, and in this article I would like to explore that complexity and to offer some observations on the understanding of Church which implies and is implied by that insight.One obvious criticism which could be made of Williams’ position is that it shifts the problem of unity rather than solving it. If ‘the unity of Christian truth’ is to be discerned through ‘a unity of Christian holiness’, this latter unity must be in some way recognizable. And that raises a question.On this view it is not particularly helpful to say, for example, that what unites Mother Theresa and Simeon Stylites is their shared Christian faith. Rather, it is the other way round. What holds the articulated faith of the fifth and twentieth centuries together is the fact that spending forty years on the top of a column and tending the sick in Calcutta somehow display ‘continuities of Christian patterns of holiness’. I would want to say that in the end it must be so. But how can we know?
The Changing Paradigms of Sin
Authors: Kelly Kevin T. 
Published: July 2007

Since my experience is probably typical of many Catholics, it might be a useful exercise to begin this paper by sharing with you my own personal journey through various understandings or paradigms of sin. I believe it has been a journey of healing, because my earlier understanding of sin was very crippling and has probably left me scarred for life.DISOBEDIENCE is the word which captures my initial paradigm of sin. While this model presumed an internal dimension to disobedience, the external dimension loomed far more important. Psychologically ‘disobedience to authority’ was the dominant notion. This was emphasized by the fact that the gravity of the sin was often determined by the commanding or prohibiting authority. Certain actions were commanded or forbidden under pain of mortal sin. Other actions, admittedly, were regarded as mortal sins because the ‘matter’ was grave in itself. Yet even here the determination of grave matter was sometimes a matter of decision by authority—no light matter in the area of sexual sin, for instance! In my teens I once had to write out 100 times: ‘Tintinabulum vox Dei est’. That says it all! The ‘disobedience’ paradigm, in the form I absorbed it, was individualistic, act-centred and voluntarist. It offered no help in developing a capacity for moral decision-making or conscience-formation.
Holiness and Sin
Authors: Baxter Anthony 
Published: July 2007

Do you, when speaking informally in your own words, talk of particular other people as ‘holy’, or say you desire ‘holiness’? Christians today vary widely on this—from omission of the word ‘holiness’, through assorted hesitations, to unselfconsciously terming certain others holy and voicing a wish to be holy themselves. People may often have deep down a lot more inklings regarding holiness than commonly become explicit. But faced here with an invitation to consider how ‘our perceptions’ of holiness relate to ‘our perceptions’ of sin, it is wise to note that initial reactions on the former front as well as the latter can prove less than clear-cut. In my own case, I tend to be fairly reticent in singling out specific individuals as markedly holy, while quick—amidst theologizing—to state that all are called to holiness, and that some growth towards it is widespread.The central ideas in this article are the possibility for humans of close relationship with God and alignment with God’s purposes; the primacy in this of God’s gracious outreach; yet the place also of human personal responsibility. These ideas lie at the heart of my account of holiness; and they help assessment of statements about holiness as ‘virtue’, or as ‘wholeness’. Notions of sin are correspondingly clarified. And light is thrown—so I think—on some issues evident during reflection on engagement within history, including in political arenas.From biblical times onwards, ‘holiness’ has been applied to certain collective referents: specially ‘People’ and ‘Church’. ‘Sin’ terminology too has had collective referents, whether defined religiously or by other social concepts. The immediate focus of this paper is on individuals, and ascriptions of holiness or sin to them. But such focus spans not just any particular individual’s private concerns, but also the individual’s stances vis-à-vis broad social affairs and structures.
Rites of Reconciliation
Authors: Harriott John 
Published: July 2007

When I set out to prepare this paper I was mildly disconcerted to discover that what I had in mind had already been done, and done brilliantly, by an American nun, Sister Kathleen Hughes R.S.C.J. You will find it in Reconciliation, a collection of lectures given by American theologians at Notre Dame in 1986, and I must express my warm appreciation of its excellence and my debt to its contents for stimulating much that I now wish to say.Sister Hughes’s argument was that any theological discussion of reconciliation should start from human experience, which she illustrates very broadly from both fiction and real life. It may be worth adding that the point applies not just to this one sacrament but to all. Every sacrament meets something lodged deeply in human instincts and widely expressed in human behaviour. It was not the sacrament that invented marriage. It was not the Eucharist that invented ritual meals celebrating the intimate bond between creator and creature, the gifts of creation, and human ties of affection. And so with the other key human experiences—entrance into life, entrance into adulthood, serious illness and death. The sacraments are not stuck into ordinary life like candles on a cake. They are the God-given, church-moulded, Christian ways of speaking to deep-seated human needs and instincts as familiar as the lines on our hand.
The Gift of Memory
Authors: Radcliffe Timothy 
Published: July 2007

Based on a talk given in London at a Pax Christi mdemnce on 3 September 1989 marking the 50th annivematy of the outbreak of World War II.We are told to remember the Second World War, but how? I was born just a few days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have no stories to tell of my own. Maybe that does not matter. Remembering something as awful as the War can only happen later, long after it is over. To remember is not just to sit back and let the facts surface. It is the creative business of putting things together, re-membering, so that we discover for the first time what it was really like. Robert Kee was a RAF bomber who kept detailed diaries of the war, but afterwards they did not turn out to be of much help: ‘For all the quite detailed evidence of these diary entries I can’t add up a very coherent picture of how it really was to be in a bomber squadron in those days. There’s nothing you could really get hold of if you were trying to write a proper historical account of it all... No wonder it is those artists who recreate life rather than try to recapture it who, in one way, prove the good historians in the end.’It is like the writing of the gospels. It took forty years before the disciples could tell the story of Jesus, and of how they betrayed him and ran away. It took about the same length of time that separates us from the Second World War before the disciples could cope with remembering what had happened, and so write the first gospel. Like them we are just getting to the point where we can begin to remember.
Bastille Day, the Bible, and Mrs Thatcher
Authors: Harvey Graham 
Published: July 2007

Last July, while in Paris for this year’s most widely-covered anniversary, Mrs Thatcher pointed out—correctly—that the French Revolution was not the first move towards Human Rights.Whether this was worth saying (especially during the celebrations of that Revolution) is questionable. Previous moves towards Human Rights had been countered either deliberately or by neglect, so that the French Revolution was perceived to be necessary, and some of the previous moves towards Human Rights cited by Mrs Thatcher had never had any effect in France. This, though, is not the only question, nor even the most important one.Among steps towards Human Rights, Mrs Thatcher cited the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. Now, were these in fact reall anything at all to do with Human Rights‘?Certainly, ‘I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage’—suggesting slavery is antithetical to people’s good and God’s desires—makes a good start in this direction. But ‘You shall have no other gods before me’ denies the Right to religious freedom. (I am not arguing that this, or any other of the Ten Commandments, should be abandoned. What I am questioning is whether this has anything to do with Human Rights.)
Render to God What Belongs to God
Authors: Rowland Christopher 
Published: July 2007

The forms for my Poll Tax registration are sitting in my kitchen as I procrastinate about how to deal with them. The whole process of registration and the tax to which it is a prelude seem so despicable that I would gladly decide at this point not to fill in the form and begin the process of non-compliance. When Ministers say that this tax is fairer than the present system I feel anger and also a sense of powerlessness. There seems to be little doubt about the injustice of a tax which charges the richest person in a locality the same as the poorest. Yet another part of me recognizes what a fruitless gesture non-compliance would be, seeing that the mechanism exists to sequester my resources: I will have to pay it whether I like it or not. Is there room for manoeuvre in responding to this injustice? How best can I work constructively to remedy this injustice when there seems to be little space for any alternative action?In situations like this there are two important tasks for me as a Christian. Firstly, I am determined to join with those who feel similar revulsion to this piece of legislation, with its regressive attitude to taxation and alarming implications for civil liberties. Secondly, while I have to renounce my desire for ready-made answers to my problem, whether in Scripture or Tradition, I must attend to what the Spirit is saying to the churches today, but use the necessary discernment to enable my path of discipleship to be in continuity with our ancestors in the faith. What I want to attempt in this article is to put on paper some of the clearing of the Biblical ground that enables me to continue the journey of faith and take into account this new challenge to our contemporary witness.
Towards a Theology of Scottish Liberation
Authors: MacLaren Duncan 
Published: July 2007

On Clydeside in Glasgow, beside the early 19th-century Catholic Cathedral, there now stands a substantial modern glass building reminiscent of an oil company HQ or international bank. It is the new Curia for the Archdiocese of Glasgow, a gleaming symbol that the Catholics ‘have arrived’. Inside, the presence of a portrait of the Queen alongside one of the Pope underlines the political message behind the concrete and tinted glass. Catholics in the West of Scotland have come out of their mental and physical ghettoes and now feel secure enough to take to task, in a much more critical manner than hitherto, the establishments which govern Scottish society.In one sense, it is amazing that the Scottish hierarchy, of all episcopal conferences, should take such a consistently radical stance, though I am sure most bishops would baulk at the phrase. The change was a long time in coming, in part because of the introversion of native Scottish Catholics and in part because the incoming Irish kept their heads below the parapet and concentrated on material improvements for their community. They faced considerable prejudice from a Presbyterian Scotland where the calvinistic version of the Reformation had taken deeper root than anywhere else in Western Europe. 1923 is not that long ago—the time when the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved a report on ‘The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality‘.It was little wonder that the Catholic bishops kept stumm on social issues.Yet lay Catholics, after 1906 and the emergence of the Catholic Socialist Society, gradually took an active part in Labour Party politics, breeding a mafia which is still strong in the City Chambers of Glasgow and other West of Scotland towns.
Aristotle on Excellence of Character
Authors: Urmson J.O. 
Published: July 2007

My main object here is to try to clear up some remarkably persistent confusions. What I am discussing is commonly called moral virtue. But since I believe that the translation ‘moral virtue’ frequently leads to misunderstanding of Aristotle’s views I shall use always ‘excellence of character’, which is, no doubt, an imperfect translation of ēthikē aretē, but less misleading than is ‘moral virtue’.Aristotle distinguished between three broad types of excellence that may be displayed by human beings; these correspond to the three levels of complexity that living things display, the least complex shown by all living things including plants, that shown by all animals and that shown only by human beings. The first is bodily excellence, comprising health, strength, good looks and the like; this is not of direct concern to the student of ethics. Of the other excellences of the soul there are two kinds, those of the irrational or, more properly, non-rational element in the soul and those of the rational element.Within the rational element of the soul Aristotle distinguished two main types of excellence. These we may call the excellences of intelligence, though they are commonly and absurdly called intellectual virtues. Of these excellences of intelligence one is theoretical; to have this excellence is to be good at such things as metaphysics and mathematics, which it is quaint to call a virtue. Like bodily excellence, theoretical excellence of intelligence lies outside our present scope.