Journal articles on the topic 'Divinity ; Theology ; Dalit Christian Theology'

"A Logos for Being and God. Heidegger’s Confrontation with Theology from the 1930s. II. Heidegger’s entire itinerary is characterised by the search for a living relationship with God, and thus for a Logos able to think and name the divine without objectifying its divinity. Getting into a dialogue with Western philosophers and theologians and distinguishing the fields of thinking, faith and science one from the other, since the 1930’s Heidegger claims that, if the traditional theology has seen God as the supreme being, metaphysics, on its part, has identified it with Being as such. According to Heidegger, the “onto-theo-logical” constitution of metaphysics has developed itself by means of the reception of the Jewish-Christian concept of an almighty God as creator. This process has led to the “fulfilment” of the “machination” in the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Heidegger speaks about the “poverty” of thought and about the consequent impossibility of building an ontology as well as a theology. Nevertheless, he still waits for the hint of a “last God”, in so far as he assumes that a renewed manifestation of the divine must be prepared through the “overcoming” of the “forgetfulness” of Being and God. Keywords: God, faith, thinking, theology, metaphysics. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG. Die Suche nach einem lebendigen Verhältnis mit Gott und deshalb auch nach einem Logos, der imstande sei, das Göttliche zu denken und auszudrücken, ohne es zu vergegenständlichen, prägt den ganzen heideggerschen Denkweg. Während Heidegger ein fruchtbares Gespräch mit Philosophen und Theologen der abendländischen Tradition führt und die Sachgebiete von Denken, Glauben und Wissenschaft voneinander abgrenzt, ab den 1930er Jahren vertritt er die Ansicht, dass die traditionelle Theologie Gott für das höchste Seiende gehalten habe, das wiederum von der Metaphysik mit dem Sein als solchen identifiziert worden sei. Die „onto-theo-logische“ Verfassung der Metaphysik habe sich gleichzeitig mit der Rezeptionsgeschichte des jüdisch-christlichen Begriffs vom allmächtigen Schöpfergott gestaltet, die in die Vollendung der „Machenschaft“ während der Totalitarismen des 20. Jahrhunderts gemündet sei. Heideggers Anerkennung der „Dürftigkeit“ des Denkens und damit der Unmöglichkeit, eine Ontologie sowie eine Theologie auszuarbeiten, hindert ihn daran nicht, auf den Wink eines „letzten Gottes“ zu warten, indem er durch die „Verwindung“ der Seins- und Gottesvergessenheit die Vorbereitung einer erneuten Erscheinung des Göttlichen bezweckt. Schlüsselwörter: Gott, Glaube, Denken, Theologie, Metaphysik."

In this article, I consider how an integration of Dalit theology and Indian Christian history could help Dalit theologians in their efforts to connect more deeply with the lived realities of today’s Dalit Christians. Drawing from the foundational work of such scholars as James Massey and John C. B. Webster, I argue for and begin a deeper and more comprehensive Dalit reading and theological analysis of the history of Christianity and mission in India. My explorations—touching on India’s Thomas/Syrian, Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal traditions—reveal the persistence and complexity of caste oppression throughout Christian history in India, and they simultaneously draw attention to over-looked, empowering, and liberative resources that are bound to Dalit Christians lives, both past and present. More broadly, I suggest that historians and theologians in a variety of contexts—not just in India—can benefit from blurring the lines between their disciplines.

The contemporary theological scene in India has distanced itself from the Sanskritic theological tradition because of its long association with Brahminical dominance in disenfranchising many Indian people groups. However, there is ample evidence that the Sanskritic tradition has also been used as a powerful Dalit-like theology form the “underside.” This article examines the contributions of Indian Christian theologians who used the Sanskritic tradition and explores the historic use of the Sanskritic tradition within the Indian tradition, both secular and sacred. The article urges Dalit theologians to reconsider the usefulness of the Sanskritic tradition as a contextual aid which may provide deeper foundations for a people's theology in India.

Abstract The question regarding the interconnection between the writings of those considered to have focused on a ‘Brahmanical’ way of doing Indian-Christian theology and those who have taken seriously the reality of the marginalization of the vast majority of Indian-Christians who come from the Dalit background and contributed to the emergence of Dalit theology is an important one. In his voluminous writings, has Panikkar overlooked or ignored the pathos of Dalits and failed to acknowledge the contribution of Dalit experience to the theological enterprise? This article is an attempt to read both Panikkar and Dalit theologians and ask as to whether at least some recognition of convergence is at all possible.

This study attempts to examine the origin of theology. In every religion, it is the most substantial element, because it is the intellectual discourse around the divinity and belief of that religion. We know the terms such as Christian Theology, Jewish Theology, Islamic Theology, Hindu Theology and so on. From here, howeover, it raises the question of what theology is intrinsically? Etymologically the term theology is in fact derived from the Greek whose people are the worshipers of the gods and do not recognize the conception of divinity as other religions do. How can it exist in these religions? From this historical-philosophical search it is found that theology in its generic meaning is defined as the discourse of the exalted supranatural being. It is born naturally in every society from time to time. It can take a variety of forms according to the religious tradition of its people, but in essence it is the discourse on the One who organizes and manages the universe.

The doctrine of God in Islam was built as a supreme tradition, in which infiltrate into mankind souls. For centuries, Islam is deemed as an outsider and a threat for Western Christian followers. Consequently, any actions are taken to devastate Islam from the earth. Philosophically, this study aims to fortify Islamic theology againts political attacks particularly in separating Muslims from the concept of monotheism. This study employs a critical analysis method, a concept of sharp reasoning to obtain truth. The theory used to reduce metanarrative and elements of deconstruction is the Imre Lakatos research program, in which Islam means conformity or compatibility, harmony and logic. In the core of Islam, monotheism means Allah is One. It has “protective shields”which are the Holy Quran, hadith[s], and the theory of causality. The results of the study argue that the construction of divinity in Islam is solid and powerful and leads to a failure of criticism.

This article analyses the social theology and practice of Scottish presbyterian missionaries towards hinduism in early twentieth-century western India. It reveals a radical contrast in Scottish missionary practice and outlook with the earlier activities of Alexander Duff (1806–78) in India from 1829 to 1864 as well as with contemporaneous discourse on non-christian religion and ethnicity which was prevalent at home in Scotland. The article argues that Scottish presbyterian missionaries selectively adapted and elaborated radical social theology from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Scotland to deal with the hindu socio-religious out-casting and economic exploitation that they experienced during their christian proselytisation in early twentieth-century western India. In particular, the article analyses the social theology of the United Free Church missionary Reverend Alexander Robertson, who lived and worked in western India from 1902 to 1937. Robertson sought to re-invent and apply radical Scottish social theology to the material development and religious conversion of Dalit or impoverished out-caste hindu populations in western India. The article also contrasts this Scottish missionary social theology and practice with the secular Edwardian Liberal ideas of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1871–1954), which Robertson's colleague and colonial administrator, Harold H. Mann (1872–1961) sought to implement towards Dalit people when he was Agricultural Chemist of Bombay Presidency after 1907 and Director of Agriculture for the Bombay Presidency in Pune from 1918 to 1927. In this context, the article argues more broadly that popular Orientalist discourse on non-christian religion and ethnicity at home in Scotland and perceptions of a subordinate Scottish relationship with the London metropole conceal the radical dimensions of Scottish identity within empire and the ways in which the interaction of radical practices between imperial peripheries like Scotland and India conditioned imperial development.

AbstractThis article investigates inculturation in the twentieth century in relation to the example and practice of the seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary Roberto de Nobili. Monastic and liturgical attempts at inculturation in South India are examined as well as the critique offered by Dalit Theology. There are four sections: (1) Outline and analysis of the practice of de Nobili, and its theological basis in the seventeenth century. (2) Analysis of the parallels between the praxis of de Nobili and various Christian sannyasi in the twentieth century, e.g. Savarirayan Jesudason, Ernest Forrester-Paton, Jack Winslow, Abhishiktananda, Bede Griffiths and Francis Acharya. (3) Evaluation of the practice, and its theological basis, of these sannyasi and other religious leaders in South India. (4) Investigation of the critique of Dalit Theology of these practices, and possible outcomes for future practice e.g. in relation to inter-religious dialogue.

Contemporary Neo-Confucianism, as represented by Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan and Tu Wei-ming, has a definite religiosity. They consciously draw a parallel between the Christian God-human relationship and Confucian Heaven-human relationship, and argue for the superiority of the latter. They characterize the Christian God as “pure transcendence”; in contrast, they embrace immanentism of the Heaven and assert the divinity of human nature. This article argues that these Confucian thinkers have a very distorted understanding of classical Christian theology. They cherry-pick some statements from the Neo-Orthodox theologians (such as God as Wholly Other), charge this God for its remoteness from us, and happily ascribe divinity to human nature. They are totally unaware that their immanentism is déjà vu to the Neo- Orthodox theological movement. The religious thoughts of Tang, Mou, and Tu, though in different degrees, resemble German liberal theology in many crucial ways, against which Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann (with the assistance of Otto and Buber) have successfully revolted. Instead of using Neo-Orthodox theologians as a foil, the future development of Neo-Confucian religiousness has much to learn from this theological movement.

The reemergence of immanentist spiritualities, from New Age spirituality to African traditional spiritualities, has been indicative of the twenty-first century. The influx of these spiritualities in the West has ripples of implications to Christianity. At the least, spirituality has been separated from religiosity, with some people identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). This work explores the triangular formulae of new spiritualities (the self, nature, divinity) to understand the intricacies of this divergence between religiosity and spirituality, and the implications for Christianity. It argues that theological negligence might not have directly caused the reemergence of many spiritualities, but it warranted the exit of many Christians into the new spiritualities. Through the appraisal of theological anthropology, natural theology, and spiritual theology, it suggests a reprioritization of Christian theology and a constructive relationship with the new spiritualities.

The first words of the inaugural issue of the Harvard Theological Review in January 1908 were those of Francis Greenwood Peabody, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and sometime Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, from 1901–1906. An ordained Unitarian minister, Peabo, as he was affectionately called by the undergraduates, was known most prominently around College haunts for having convinced the Corporation (the President and Fellows of Harvard College) to make Chapel attendance optional while he was Preacher to the University. More importantly, however, he was the main proponent of Social Ethics in both the College and the Divinity School and Harvard's own expositor of the Social Gospel some years before Walter Rauschenbusch made that term popular. Peabody was also a key professor of German thought and theology in the Divinity School.

In The Theological Project of Modernism, Kevin Hector of the University of Chicago Divinity School offers a nuanced and timely defense of what he sees as an unjustifiably maligned tradition in modern Christian theology. He focuses on what is commonly labeled the liberal or revisionist tradition, centered in its early stages on figures such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, G. W. F. Hegel, Albrecht Ritschl, Ernst Troeltsch, and, more recently, Paul Tillich. By carefully reconstructing key arguments from these thinkers, Hector shows not only how this trajectory hangs together as a tradition, but also how its animating impulse differs from what many critics have assumed. Hector's central claim is that this tradition is fundamentally concerned with a distinctive problem, namely, how to relate religious faith to a sense of one's life as one's own—or, put differently, how one's faith can be self-expressive. Hector labels this the problem of “mineness,” or the problem of “how persons could identify with their lives or experience them as ‘mine,’ especially given their vulnerability to tragedy, injustice, luck, guilt, and other ‘oppositions’” (viii). Hector argues that for his chosen thinkers in this tradition, faith—more specifically, faith in a God who is able to reconcile such oppositions—plays a crucial role in resolving this problem.

Abstract In this paper, I examine how Gianni Vattimo, in using the terms “weak thought” aims to promote caritas in intellectual life by converging, however paradoxically, Heideggerian Verwindung and Nietzschean nihilism with Pauline kenosis. In line with René Girard’s postulation that Christianity rejects the sacred, Vattimo classifies the idea of a transcendent divinity as Aristotelian rather than Christian, arguing that the Incarnation, as an expression of caritas and humility, is incompatible with the idea of divine transcendence. Based on this perception, Vattimo argues that Nietzsche’s dictum that “God is dead” carries the same philosophical meaning as the kenotic doctrine of the birth of God as man. Furthermore, Vattimo redefines the Heideggerian Verwindung, a subtle response rigidity in the structures of metaphysics, in terms of kenotic caritas. Vattimo’s hermeneutic work over several decades have enabled this improbable convergence of methodologies and worldviews, upon which he bases his argument that postmodernism, in its weakening of all transcendental axiomatic claims, may be understood to share the “desacralizing thrust of Christianity.”

This special issue of Harvard Theological Review is devoted to a critical discussion of fourth-century Christian trinitarian theology, a topic that is now in a significant new phase of scholarly debate amongst both historical and systematic theologians. The papers and conversation published here arose from a day-conference on 5 May 2006 at Harvard Divinity School, when a number of invited scholars and doctoral students from Yale, Chicago, Emory, Fordham, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, joined the students of the Harvard conference course, “Trinitarianism and Anti-trinitarianism: The Christian God in Dispute” (Spring 2006), for a day of shared papers and public debate. The immediate focus of the event was a roundtable on Lewis Ayres's important new book, Nicaea and Its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and that discussion—in extended format—now makes up the first part of this issue. Other papers from students then followed, supplemented by comments from senior members from the floor. In the second part of this issue, two of those original papers, along with two other specially commissioned pieces—on Gregory of Nazianzus and Augustine, respectively—extend and refine the debate outlined in the first part. This brief introduction will explain the wider significance of this ongoing debate about patristic trinitarianism, both East and West, and outline what this issue of HTR contributes to it.

In a recent article, Carl Mosser argues that deification is present in the theology of John Calvin. While his thesis may have ecumenical promise, there is little evidence to support it. Rather than understanding salvation as a communication of properties from Christ's divine nature to his human nature so that through Christ's human nature we may come to share in the divine nature, Calvin's position is that believers share in what is Christ's according to his human nature. The righteousness of Christ with which we are clothed is the righteousness of his human obedience as Mediator. Far from emphasizing a communication of properties from Christ's divinity to his humanity, Calvin's concern is to guard the full integrity of both natures.

AbstractThe current resurgence of Hindu fundamentalism in India is broadly situated in the search for a pan-Indian Hindu identity, and in the assertion of a pan-Indian "Hindutva" (Hindu-ness) that is claimed to be the true heritage of Indians. This discourse inevitably involves the demarcation of the "Hindu" from the "other" — minorities defined as less Indian, if not foreign. Historical grievances are constructed against them and used to justify attacks on them. These "others", however, have their own discourses, their own constructions of identities, and their own articulations of historical grievances; and these are not necessarily defensive, or reactions to the Hindu fundamentalist discourse. This paper discusses the nationalist discourse of Indian Christians during the anti-colonial struggles and in the post-colonial era; an era that contained not only a rejection of Western colonial domination, but also a critique of Western hegemony over Christianity itself. Included in this discourse are the celebration of indigenous Christian traditions on the one hand, and the "Inculturation" (or simply, Indianization) of Christianity in such areas as the liturgy and even theology. Ironically, however, this process, spearheaded by the "upper caste" Christian elite, led to an oppositional discourse of the subaltern "lower caste" Christians, who resent what they see as "Sanskritization" or even "Brahminization". They have attempted to formulate their own forms of inculturation, including a sophisticated Dalit Theology. This paper examines the dialectic of these discourses, situating these in their specific historical, local-global contexts.

Every religion has a concept of salvation based on transcendent values of the religion. Islam as a religion of revelation has the concept of salvation based on the messages contained Allah in the Qur’an and Hadith of the Prophet are valid. With reference to the ethical principles of Islam, the doctrine of salvation is the main point ranging in religion, with this principle, people feel the need to claim to believe and submit to the values of the revealed God. A person of faith is essentially aims to achieve safety, both in his life on earth and in the Hereafter. In the Catholic Christian religion also found a number of principles are the same theology that is taught about the importance of safety. In the book of the old covenant and new covenant be emphasized that the safety ranging point in the theology. In Islam and Catholicism, the concept of divinity is the same both believe in Almighty God (monotheism). Both believe that Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad. As the bearer of divine revelation. Although Islam to explain the concept of the deity in various contexts and meanings, while the Catholic meaning of salvation is placed in a variety of different verses, but the meaning remains the same.

Canon Professor Maurice Wiles (1923–2005) wrote this article in retirement. At the outset of his career he was an Evangelical (as his review of Barth, also reproduced in this centenary issue, indicates), but by the 1970s he had moved to, and continued in, a distinctly more liberal direction. A gradual realization of the ‘complexity of the issues involved’ in theology (and, not least, within the Bible) spurred this move, as this article suggests. His aim finally is to search for ‘an intellectual and moral basis for sharing conscientiously and wholeheartedly in the rich spiritual tradition of Christian worship, belief and practice, without blinding oneself to its faults’. As a young man Wiles was recruited to work on code breaking at Bletchley Park during the war. In maturity he held the Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford from 1970 until 1991. He also chaired the Church of England doctrine commission that produced the liberal report Christian Believing (1976) and contributed to the controversial book The Myth of God Incarnate the following year. Among his own books were The Making of Christian Doctrine (1967), The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (1974), Faith and the Mystery of God (1982) and, using his patristic skills, his late study of Arianism, Archetypal Heresy (1996). Editor.

The article presents a dialogue between Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow. It argues that a process metaphysic provides an alternative to the Christian liberation paradigm and could help feminists in religion to articulate alternatives to the concept of God as a dominant male other found in classical theism. A shared metaphysic could help feminists in different religious traditions to recognize common concerns and commitments, to guard against claims of uniqueness and exclusivity of religious traditions, and to engage with the complexities of diversity. Anticipating arguments against a feminist process paradigm, the dialogue addresses further questions: Is the idea of divinity as unfailing sympathy too good to be true? How do we explain bad things happening – is divinity evil as well as good? How does a process idea of divine sympathy differ from the traditional notions of God as love? Other issues considered are: self-sacrifice as love; the place of anger in a relational theology; co-creation and power with versus over. In conclusion the author suggests that the foundation of a shared spiritual feminist ethic would be understanding that life in the body is to be enjoyed by all and accepting responsibility to co-create a more just and harmonious world.

Nowadays, liberty of conscience as an inalienable right is a standard of demoliberal constitutionalism. It is an obvious component of a well-organized society and state. However, at the very beginning of its presence in the political discourse, it was more a product of Christian theology (the free conscience perceived as a gift of God) than a legal category; more an endowment of divinity than an intrinsic human value. In the contemporary, secularized world, our understanding of freedom of religion includes not only free exercise of religion but also freedom from religion. An increasing number of non-believers changes our expectations of the state that is obliged to protect the freedom of conscience of all citizens regardless of their beliefs. The goal of the article is to consider the difficulties faced by people with a theistic worldview in the reality of a state founded on the principle of ideological neutrality.

Abstract. The doctrine of God contains of unending discussion and special characterized by trinity, the main doctrine of Christianity, holds specific character, lays on soteriology and relates to the work of redemption. Furthermore, it plays significantly as an antithesis to other faiths, as the consequence, this Christian identity being a subject of dialogue in interreligious society, even within believers’ circle. However, this topic encompasses surround disciplines, including, specifically speaking, socio-politics. In the other side, Pancasila, a state ideology of Indonesia, occupies the faith of its citizens by accommodating the humanity-divinity relationship in a very sensitive way. This academic work intends to supply alternative perspectives to theology and socio-politics tension. Specifically speaking, evaluates any possibilities of dialogue between the doctrine of God in John Owen Thought and the first principle of Pancasila. The result of this research suggests numerical code as the possibility of conversation between them.

There is a new trend in the progressive quarter of American EvangelicalChristianity to form common bonds with Muslims. From this impulsestem books such as Miroslav Volf’s Allah: A Christian Responseand Carl Medearis’ Muslims, Christians, and Jesus: Gaining Understandingand Building Relationships, as well as organizations such as RickLove’s Peace Catalyst and Yale Divinity School’s Reconciliation Program.David Johnston’s robust Earth, Empire and Sacred Text falls withinthis trend (although these are by no means monolithic attempts and each must be evaluated on its own terms). As an Evangelical Christianwith an academic streak and extensive international experience, Johnstonis uniquely positioned to not only reach out to Muslims but alsoto educate his fellow American Christians. The book is an extraordinaryundertaking and may be considered a three-volume work collapsedinto one. Devout yet pragmatic, Johnston is prepared to engagethe reality of the world in order develop a theology that acknowledgesits own limitations. Johnston combines intellectual rigor with politicalactivism, while remaining theologically inclusive yet authentic ...

Living InteractionViggo Mortensen: Theology and Science. Beyond Restriction and Expansion. Munksgaard, Copenhagen 1989. With an English Summary. Dissertation, University of Aarhus.God and Nature. Is a dialogue between theology and science feasible? Edit. Viggo Mortensen. Munksgaard, 1990.Reviewed by William MichelsenIn his World Chronicle from 1812 Grundtvig attacked the sciences, especially chemistry and the mathematical method, for leading away from religion and theology, and the attack caused a conflict between him and the physicist H.C. Ørsted in 1814-1815. Nevertheless, in 1829, Grundtvig left for England with a letter of recommendation from Ørsted, which opened all doors to him in Cambridge. – In a letter, written shortly before his departure, to the botanist and politician /. Fr. Schouw, who was angry about his pamphlet "The Rejoinder of the Church”, 1825, Grundtvig used the phrase ”living interaction” about the kind of relationship he wished to see between scientists and theologians, irrespective of the serious differences of opinion that might separate them individually. In his theological dissertation about the relationship today between theology and natural science Viggo Mortensen uses the same phrase, but in an extended sense so that in his use it covers the obligation for theology and science to accept each other’s way of thinking and in particular the obligation for theologians to embrace an evolutionist view as well as the world picture and view of man of modern science.Like Doctor of Divinity Rudolf Arendt in the book "God and Nature", which contains the contributions of the critics at the public defence of the dissertation and other comments on it, the present reviewer is of the opinion that there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between a justified and an unjustified extension of scientific principles to apply also to the theological view of the world and of man. When for example Grundtvig refused to acknowledge the Copernican world picture, it was because it clashed with the "Mosaic-Christian view of life" which Grundtvig asserted. On the other hand, the "Mosaic-Christian view", as Grundtvig interpreted it, did not conflict with the notion of man as a being undergoing a development. However, he places all the emphasis on the historical development of human culture that depends on the language. And the occurrences of "fall" in human life as well as in nature as a whole which science explains as physical phenomena, are interpreted theologically by Grundtvig as deviations from the destiny of man according to the Bible: to be like his Creator.Thus - much in the manner of Grundtvig - the present reviewer does not find it reasonable to accept the "evolutionary epic", in which Viggo Mortensen epitomizes a modern neo-Darwinistic view of the world and of man, but will accept the cautious dialogue which K.E. L.gstrup entered into in his latest works before his death.So the present reviewer finds it justified for theology to accept scientifically verifiable results. But he does not find it reasonable for theology to embrace a world picture or a concept of man that changes the view that man lives on a globe and in a world which he did not create, and that he imagines a creator and a creation as described in the Bible. - The task of science, as Grundtvig claimed, is to describe and explain man and the world he lives in. Theology is the science whose task it is to describe and explain the religious ideas about the world and about man, contained in Christianity. And these ideas are not of a scientific character. Thus there are intrinsic boundaries between the tasks of theology and science, as indeed human life is limited by time and space.

AbstractThis article will investigate the context – in terms of both sources (by means of influence, transformation, or contrast) and ancient reception – of the concept of the ‘dynamic unity’ of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father (expressed in John 10:38, 14:10, and 17:21) in both ‘pagan’ and Christian Middle-Platonic and Neoplatonic thinkers. The Christians include Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, as well as Evagrius Ponticus and John Scottus Eriugena. The article will outline, in so-called ‘Middle Platonism,’ the hierarchical theology of a first and second God (and sometimes a third), and in Neoplatonism Plotinus’ three hypostases arranged in hierarchical order, which will be contrasted with Origen’s and the Cappadocians’ three divine hypostases that are equal – like those of Augustine. Thus, for Origen not only is the Son in the Father, as in a ‘pagan’ Middle and Neoplatonic scheme, but also the Father is in the Son, in a perfect reciprocity of dynamic unity. Origen subscribes to this reciprocity because, as I argue, he is no real ‘subordinationist’, but the precursor of the Nicene and Constantinopolitan line (the Cappadocians, especially Nyssen, developed and emphasized the notion of equality, bringing the three Hypostases of the Trinity to the level of Plotinus’ One, but the premises were all in Origen’s theology and his concept of the coeternity of the three Hypostases and their common divinity: Nyssen, like Athanasius, even uses Origen’s arguments in his own anti-Arian polemic, as we shall see). Origen interpreted Philo’s theology, also close to so-called Middle Platonism, in a non-subordinationistic sense, attributing to the Hypostasis of Logos/Sophia the various dynameis, such as Logos and Sophia, that Philo used most probably in a non-hypostatic sense.I shall also demonstrate how Gregory of Nyssa, significantly following Origen, in his work Against Eunomius used John 14:10a to refute the philosophical argument of Eunomius, who had a profoundly subordinationistic view of Christ with respect to the Father. Gregory’s solution is that neither the Father nor the Son are in an absolute sense, but both are in a reciprocal relation or σχέσις, what I shall present as Gregory’s own version of the ‘dynamic unity’ (in turn grounded in Origen). I shall also concentrate on the use that Gregory makes of John 17:21-23 to argue that the unity of the Father and the Son, and of all believers – and eventually all humans – in them, is substantiated by the Holy Spirit, who is seen as a bond of unity.I shall study how the notion of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father relates to the parallel statements in John 14:10, that Christ is in the disciples (and all believers) and these are in Christ – what I will call an ‘expansive’ notion of dynamic unity – and John 17:21, that just as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, so the disciples and all believers too should become ‘one’ in the Father and the Son. Here, as I shall argue, Middle and Neoplatonic henology (or doctrine of the One) comes to the fore as a possible background and interpretive lens at the same time. I shall show how Origen joined it to the unifying force of charity-love (agape), in turn a central theme in John, and how Evagrius, performing his exegesis of these verses, interpreted henosis or unification. A coda will explore the corollary of the Divinity ‘all in all’, which is not only a central tenet of Origen’s theology, but also of that of Proclus. It will be pointed out how this concept relates to the issue of the dynamic unity within the divine.

Muslim-Christian dialogue is an area in which Muslim interest and involvement has increased as greater numbers of Muslims have come to the West and settled and interacted with local populations. From the Muslim point of view the early dialogues with Christian missionaries in the colonial period largely consisted of apologetic reactions and defences against attacks on Islamic beliefs and practices. Today dialogue, at least in some areas, allows a sharing by participants of their respective ideals and world views in search of a common ground for peaceful co-existence and mutual respect. Since Islamic theology incorporates a position on the status of other religions which is based on the Qur'an, it is both more easy and in some ways more difficult for Muslims to dialogue with their neighbors. The broad themes of salvation and righteousness are clearly articulated, and it is the more specific issues which may remain points of contention. Those interested in Christian-Muslim dialogue may wish to examine a recent work Muhammad and the Christian by Kenneth Cragg, an Anglican Bishop who knows Arabic and is the author of a number of books on Islam. In this work, speaking as a Christian, Cragg attempts to formulate an appropriate "positive" Christian response to Prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an. In nine chapters. the major topics of which are usefully summarized in the table of contents, the author addresses themes such as: the role of Prophet Muhammad in history, the Islamic understanding of Muhammad, the role of the Sunna, and the contents of the Qur'an. The author focuses primarily on Islamic understandings of God and the Prophet rather than on traditional fields of Muslim/Christian controversy such as the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, the crucifixion, and so on. It is a work for those already knowledgeable about each religion since many complex points of faith are raised and discussed, occasionally with a subtlety verging on abstruseness. On the positive side, although the book is primarily addressed to the Christian reader, the Muslim who reads Cragg's reflections will at certain points be moved to reflect more deeply on the existential ...

Den teologiske modtagelse af Verdenskrøniken 1812[The Theological Reception of Grundtvig’s World Chronicle 1812]By Kim Arne PedersenTaking as its starting point William Michelsen’s characterization of the Danish literary and artistic Golden Age and of Grundtvig’s position in Danish intellectual life after the publication in 1812 of Kort Begreb af Verdens Krønike i Sammenhæng (A Brief View of the World Chronicle in Context, VK 1812), this paper analyses Grundtvig’s ensuing discussions with theologians up until 1815. Grundtvig’s antagonists all bore the mark of Enlightenment theology while at the same time each taking up a different position, and the analysis shows the need to rework Michelsen’s stylization of Grundtvig’s isolation after 1812 as a result predominantly of his antagonism to German idealistic philosophy.Grundtvig’s dispute with the vicar Johan Harder (1768-1831) is the first to be considered. Harder was characterized by a Kantian rationalism from which Grundtvig had dissociated himself after having read Kant’s treatise Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. In his correspondence with the curate Andreas Krag Holm (1767-1851), Grundtvig encountered a defence of the theological principle of accommodation, i.e. the idea that Christ in his earthly life had adapted himself to the notions of his contemporaries, originally forwarded by J. G. Zollikofer (1730-88).The most important discussion caused by VK 1812 is the one between Grundtvig and professor of Divinity Jens Møller (1779-1833), who stood for an early supranaturalistic theology of a Wolffian stamp combined with respect for the historical revelation. Grundtvig’s own historically based theology of revelation would seem to make a mutual approach possible, but Møller’s publishing of an article in his periodical Theologisk Bibliothek (Theological Library) by the Kantian-rationalistic supranaturalist H. G. Tzschirner (1778-1828) was cause for controversy. The fact that Møller admitted historical-critical reason to play an essential part in theology and did not assume reason to be determined exclusively by faith caused Grundtvig to criticize him, even though he acknowledged Møller as a fellow Christian. Thus, Grundtvig’s evaluation of Møller is reminiscent of his characterization in VK 1812 of the German supranaturalist F. V. Reinhard (1753- 1812).Grundtvig’s discussions with contemporary theologians place his controversies with writers influenced by idealism such as the natural scientist H. C. Ørsted (1777-1851) and the historian Christian Molbech (1783-1857) in a largercontext; in particular this is true in relation to Ørsted.Grundtvig was positive yet still guarded in his stimation of Kant’s setting a limit to human knowledge in Kritik der reinen Vernunft, but he rejected the concept of faith as based on the autonomy of reason as it had been proposed by Kant in his works on religion. Grundtvig’s sympathy for Kant’s assertion of the limits of reason might seem to bring him close to a Kantian supranaturalism, however, Grundtvig’s emphasis on the unconditional dependence of reason on faith separates him from the thinking of all other contemporary academic theologians. In his periodical Danne-Virke, Grundtvig stuck to this evaluation of Kant in an argumentation for reason as ruled by faith.

Abraham Miguel Cardoso was born to a crypto-Jewish family living in Rio Seco, Spain, in the year 1626. He left Spain with with his older brother Isaac in 1648. Abraham Cardoso has usually been discussed within the larger context of the Sabbatian movement, which he served as one of its major theoreticians. Until his death in 1706, Cardoso found himself almost constantly under attack by the rabbinical authorities in the cities where he tried to settle with his family, although he sometimes found local non-Jewish authorities who would offer him protection. He served for some time as the personal physician to the bey of Tripoli and later to the local potentate in Tunis. In the last decades of his life, after the death of Sabbatai Zebi, he engaged in bitter debates with other leading Sabbatians about the divinity of the Messiah. Cardoso rejected wholeheartedly what he saw as their adoption of a Christian messialogy. Gershom Scholem's analysis of Cardoso's theology as Gnostic has remained fundamentally unchallenged. Scholem saw in Cardoso's thinking the crystallization of what he believed was the latent antinomian Gnosticism within Kabbalah and especially within the later strata of theZohar, and he pointed to Cardoso's likely acquaintance with Gnostic ideas, filtered through the Church Fathers (read during theological studies in Spain), as the most significant factor in precipitating this crystallization (see expecially Scholem 1980, pp. 333–334; Scholem 1971a, pp. 65–74; Scholem 1971c, pp. 104–107).

AbstractAlthough declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute diff erence of the religious, or for "transcendence," returns with a vengeance. is difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that post-structuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche's sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation.

Arambam Saroj Nalini was born in Imphal, in the then princely state of Manipur, on June 2nd 1933. Her father was a well-known and respected educationalist and government officer. During the war years he was posted to Jiribam, where she received her first education, and later transferred to a convent school in Haflong. She proceeded to Calcutta University, where she became the first Meetei woman to obtain BA and MA degrees, majoring in Philosophy. While in Calcutta she enjoyed close friendship with Christian Naga students, and converted to Christianity. She was baptised at the Lower Circular Road Baptist church, whose minister, Walter Corlett had himself served in Imphal during the war years. The Christian faith was to become a dominant influence on her future life. She came to Britain in the late 1950s to study theology, and obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree from London University in 1961. Shortly after she married John Parratt. When their desire to work in India was frustrated they decided to work elsewhere in the developing world, initially in Nigeria, where Saroj became a tutor in philosophy at the University of Ile-Ife. When her husband was offered a research fellowship by the Australian National University she enrolled for a PhD in the Department of Asian Studies there, under the supervision of the eminent indologist A.L.Basham. Despite the frequent absences of her husband on field work in Papua-New Guinea and having to care for three young children, the bulk of the thesis was completed before she returned to Manipur for further extended field work in 1972. The doctorate was awarded three years later, one of her examiners being Professor Suniti Kumar Chatterji, who (unusually for the time) himself had a deep interest in India's north-eastern region. Her thesis was published in 1980 (Firma KLM, Calcutta) as The Religion of Manipur. It marked the beginning of a new phase in writing on Manipur by its rigorous application of critical methodology both in the collection and in the analysis of field data, and had considerable influence on younger Meetei scholars.

The World Picture and the View of Man in Grundtvig’s Hymns.By Peter Balslev-ClausenThis lecture for the Degree in Divinity at the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen is a summary of the writer’s studies in the hymns, written by Grundtvig over the years from 1810 to 1872, with a view to determining the overall view of human life and Christianity that constitutes their background. The lecture discusses central concepts in these hymns, taking the point of departure in the word, i.e., speech as expressing the fact that man was created in God’s image. Hymn-singing is seen as man’s reply to God’s address, partly in the church service, partly in the daily prayers, as it is evidenced by the hymn "Congregation of God, Sing Secret Songs of Praise to Our Creator" (Guds menighed, syng for vor skaber i l.n (1847)). This hymn was composed during Grundtvig’s work on a collection of popular ballads, and is modelled on the ballad about hr. Villemand, who, by playing his harp, forces the merman of the river to give his bride back to him.The lecture concentrates on the Mosaic-Christian view of the world and of man, considered, consciously, by Grundtvig to be the contrast to the scientific picture of the world and idea of man of his own age. It is claimed that the new world-picture as Grundtvig saw it, made impossible any notion of a connection between God and man, heaven and earth, creation and consummation, and that without this connection man would lose his identity and his companionship with others. Grundtvig, accordingly, retained the Biblical calendar.Especially after meeting his second wife, Marie Toft, in 1845, and the breakthrough for congregational singing of his hymns in Vartov Church on Christmas Day the same year, Grundtvig came to think of the woman and the human heart as the essence of human nature, in contrast to the rationalistic concept of man, which Grundtvig regarded as a product of Antichrist.Grundtvig was aware that his picture of the world and his view of man was not acceptable to the majority, at least not in the academic world. But he considered it necessary to maintain it, both for the sake of the Mosaic-Christian way of thinking and the Christian faith.The first five years after the meeting with Marie Toft were a turbulent time of regeneration in Grundtvig’s personal life, as it is reflected for example in the hymn "The Clouds Are Turning Grey, and the Leaves Are Falling" (Skyerne gråner og løvet falder). The crisis resolved itself in a new sense of wholeness in life, which is expressed in the series of adaptations of older hymns which did not acquire their final form until the 1850s, such as "O, Christian Faith" (O Kristelighed), "The Sun Now Shines in All its Splendour" (I al sin glans nu stråler solen) and "The Lord Has Visited His People" (Herren, han har besøgt sit folk).Since even today Grundtvig’s hymns are used as existential expressions of the lives of the congregation, the question arises whether they can still be used when his presuppositions no longer apply. Precisely by his strangeness, Grundtvig insists that his reader and participant in the hymn-singing is entirely responsible for acquiring an existential experience of a hymn, on the basis of the assumptions that belong to each individual and are determined by the time he or she lives in.

An Introduction to Islam by David Waines consists of three parts:“Foundations,” “Islamic Teaching and Practice,” and “Islam in the ModernWorld.” The author begins by characteristically painting the picture of pre-Islamic pagan Arabia on the eve of Islam’s advent. He discusses the role andsignificance the pre-Islamic Arabs accorded their pantheon of deities, as wellas the (largely inherited) moral codes that governed their conduct in tribalsociety. Waines neatly ties this into what follows, where he discusses thebirth of Prophet Muhammad, the event of the Qur’an’s revelation, and theopposition he encountered from his fellow tribesmen in Makkah. This is followedby an analysis of the Qur’an’s significance, its conception of divinity,and the content and importance of the Hadith as a source of guidance forMuslims. The section is rounded off with examinations of such topics as the first period of civil strife (fitnah) after the Prophet’s death and the interestingbody of literature devoted to Muslim-Christian polemics in earlymedieval Islam.The transition from the first part of the book to the second part is ratherfluid, for the second part is essentially an elaboration of the themes discussedin the first. With remarkable ease and accuracy, the author elucidatesthe historical development and main features of Islamic law in both its theoryand practice. Returning to his earlier discussion on the Hadith, here hebriefly outlines how its corpus came to be collected. Readers unfamiliar withthe main theological controversies that confronted Islam in its formativeyears (e.g., the problem of free will and the status of the grave sinner) willfind the section devoted to Islamic theology fairly useful.Waines goes on to explain some of the principle Mu`tazilite andAsh`arite doctrines, and outlines some of the ideas of Neoplatonic Islamicphilosophy, albeit through the lenses of al-Ghazali’s famous refutation.Surprisingly, the author does not address any of the major developments inIslamic philosophy post-Ibn Rushd, such as the important work of theIshraqi (Illuminationist) school (incidentally, the founder of this school,Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, was a contemporary of Ibn Rushd). The last twochapters are devoted to Sufism and Shi`ism, respectively. Although Wainesdoes misrepresent Ibn al-`Arabi’s metaphysics of Being by calling it a “system”(pp. 153 and 192), on the whole he presents the Islamic mystical traditionin a refreshing and informed manner. His section on Shi`ism is splendid.It is written with considerable care, and he effectively isolates the mainthemes characteristic of Twelver Shi`ite thought and practice.In the third and longest part of this work, Waines incorporates IbnBattutah’s travel accounts into the book’s narrative. This works very well, asit gives readers a sense of the diverse and rich cultural patterns that wereintricately woven into the fabric of fourteenth-century Islamic civilization.After reading through the section, this present reviewer could not help butmarvel at how the observations of a fourteenth-century traveler and legaljudge from Tangiers could so effectively contribute to a twenty-first centuryintroductory textbook on Islam. Additionally, Waines takes readers throughsome of the essential features of the three important “gunpowder” Muslimdynasties, devotes an interesting discussion to the role played by the mosquein a Muslim’s daily life, and outlines some of its different architectural andartistic expressions throughout Islamic history ...

150 Years of the Folk High School- Books around a JubileeBy Hans HenningsenWith the book »Rødding Folk High School 1844 - 1994«, Käthe Z. S. Pedersen and John Pedersen have provided an interesting contribution to the history of the folk high school. Thanks to Chr. Flor, the man behind the initiative to establish the school, Rødding Folk High School became an attempt to realize Grundtvig’s folk high school ideas from the 1830s more than any other school in the first hundred years of the folk high school movement. Among successive principals at Rødding it was above all Sofus Høgsbro who tried to continue Flor’s socially oriented line, but came up against difficulties from several sides. After the war in 1864, the principal and teachers decided to carry on the school at Askov, north of the new border.Another publication from the jubilee year is »Knowledge and Spirit - Ask Folk High School 1869 - 1994« by Thorkild C. Lyby, Doctor of Divinity. After the national disaster in 1864 folk high schools sprang up everywhere, some of them sustained, first and foremost, by the need of the peasants for education and social and political equality, others also by the revivals and the educational ideas of Grundtvig and Kold. The schools that were named after Lars Bjømbak, Viby near Aarhus, belonged to the first category. The »Bjømbak« schools did not have the spirit of the time on their side, as the Grundtvigians had. But politically, the »Bjømbak«s were more class-conscious than the Grundtvigians.The goal was the uprising of the peasantry. As this goal was gradually being approached, the justification for this type of folk high school disappeared. The Association of Folk High Schools in Denmark celebrated the jubilee with a publication by Professor Gunhild Nissen, Doctor of Pedagogics: »Challenges to the Folk High School«. The main view is that the folk high school, which should concern itself with universal matters, was hampered by the alliance with the peasantry and allowed itself to be restricted culturally by the Christian world picture as determined by the revivals. The folk high school proved incapable of opening up towards the young people of modem urban culture, and it failed when the democratic wave of the 60s included the question of student influence, which for example showed itself in the Askov controversy around 1970, which is dealt with in detail in the book.An important post-war innovation within the folk high school was Krogerup Folk High School, established in 1946. This is the subject of the book »Hal Koch and Krogerup Folk High School«, written by the former Minister of Economic Affairs, Poul Nyboe Andersen. Krogerup was a modem attempt to create a folk high school on the immediate inspiration of Grundtvig’s folk high school model. But Krogerup turned out to be a disappointment to its founder and first principal, Professor of Theology Hal Koch.In the political associations and youth organizations that Hal Koch had appealed to, tbe belief in the importance of a national community spirit and the enthusiastic faith in dialogue as the mainstay of democracy did not for long survive the War and the Occupation.However, nothing has contributed more than Hal Koch’s Krogerup work to the transplantation of Grundtvig’s idea of the dialogue and the national community feeling to the modem democratic society.

Kirke og menighed i Grundtvigs teologi og kirkepolitik 1806-61[Church and Congregation in Grundtvig’s Theology and Church Politics 1806-61]By Bent ChristensenFrom his 1806 work “Om Religion og Liturgie” (On Religion and Liturgy) and forthe rest of his life, N. F. S. Grundtvig was preoccupied with the substance andthe conditions of the church. In this paper, however, the latest text consideredis the final chapter of his book Den christelige Børnelærdom (Christian Childhood Teachings) (1861).The paper presents and analyses a number of statements showing whatGrundtvig understood by the terms “church” and “congregation” through threemain periods: 1. 1806-25 when Grundtvig by criticizing tried to clear the StateChurch of the Danish absolute monarchy of the current heterodox teachings andpractices. - 2. 1825-32 when Grundtvig had to admit that the battle was lost and that he himself was close to ending up as a separatist - 3. The years after 1832 when Grundtvig developed a freedom strategy based on the right of eachparishioner to choose another vicar or minister than the official incumbent ofthe parish (the so-called “sognebåndsløsning”).“On Religion and Liturgy” (written 1806 and printed 1807) was conceivedunder the State Church of the Danish absolute monarchy, a situation in whichit was not feasible to distinguish between the state and the church, nor betweenpeople and congregation. Grundtvig in his harsh criticism of contemporary clergy, however, was moving in the specific Christian dimension. He strove to change the state of things by criticizing them. In a poem dated 1811 he described in a strongly pentecostal and Apostolic perspective how he experienced his recent ordination and his future clerical calling.In his treatise “Om Kirke, Stat og Skole” (On Church, State and School)(1818-19), Grundtvig endeavoured to define the word and the conception of“church” and to examine the relationship between the church and the state. Heused the word “church” in a very broad sense, whereas he defined the Christian“kirkesamfund” (i.e. the community of Christians within the church) quiteprecisely.In his great poem Nyaars-Morgen (New Year’s Morn) (1824), Grundtvigfor the last time expressed his daring dream of a joint Christian and popular revival in Denmark, and in 1825 in the pamphlet Kirkens Gienmæle (The Church’s Retort) he used his “mageløse opdagelse” (i.e. his “matchless discovery”, as he termed it, that the confession of the Apostles’ Creed at the baptism is the only true basis for the authentic Church) for an attack on a heterodox professor of divinity. Grundtvig’s experiment to enforce true Christianity in this way was a failure. He lost the ensuing libel action brought against him by his victim, thus automatically, according to the Freedom of the Press Act of 1799, incurring life-long censorship.“Skal den Lutherske Reformation virkelig fortsættes?” (Should the LutheranReformation Really Continue?) (1830-31) represents Grundtvig’s last attemptto preserve the state church as a Christian community. From the autumn of 1831 until February 1832 he and his revivalist friends approached a separatist solution. However, the outcome was that on 1 March 1832 Grundtvig was granted permission to officiate in a Copenhagen church as a free preacher.From then on Grundtvig took on a radical freedom strategy. The state churchwas to be preserved as an institution embracing heterodox as well as orthodoxbelievers. This would be possible if the parish-defined obligations were abolished(the possibility of “sognebåndsløsning”) so that those Christians who did not feelconfident with the incumbent of their parish might choose to avail themselvesof the services of another vicar. This model was presented in two papers: OmDaabs-Pagten (On the Baptismal Covenant) (1832) and Den Danske Stats-Kirke upartisk betragtet (An Impartial View of the Danish State Church) (1834).Grundtvig could now, at one and the same time, be an orthodox Christianamong his co-orthodox supporters and engage in realizing the cultural programme presented in the comprehensive Introduction to his Nordens Mythologi (Norse Mythology) (1832). From around 1835 he was seized by strong optimism.In 1861 the final part of Den christelige Børnelærdom was published, subtitled“The Eternal Word of Life from the very Mouth of our Lord to his Congregation”.In it, Grundtvig took as a supposition the most radical version of a freechurch, i.e. one with a congregation of perhaps only a few thousand members.Above all, however, this was meant to legitimate that Grundtvig and his friendsremained in what was now, pursuant to the new Danish democratic constitutionfrom 1849, labeled the Danish People’s Church. With the possibility of secessionfrom the People’s Church, and after the passing in 1855 of the law legalizing“sognebåndsløsning”, there actually might be several good reasons to stay.Grundtvig now viewed the People’s Church as a state institution withroom for anything which could in any way be defined as Christianity, and indeedfor the true congregation of orthodox believers. Things never went so far,however. The 1849 Constitution states that the Evangelical-Lutheran Church is the Danish People’s Church. In practice, however—and to a high degree thanks to Grundtvig—there is a great liberality in the People’s Church, and those who desire so may break their ties to their parish and attach themselves to a minister they trust or even form their own elective congregation within the People’s Church.

Was Grundtvig’s New Discovery in 1832 A Tragic Event?By Bent ChristensenThe title of this lecture for the Degree of Divinity has been given its provocative wording by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen. In his thesis for the Degree of Divinity, published in 1987 and reviewed in Grundtvig Studies in 1988, Bent Christensen has described and evaluated Grundtvig’s attitude in the field of church policy over the years from 1824 to 1832, a critical period of time for himself, in such a way as to give the reader the impression that the writer regards the attitude taken by Grundtvig in the comprehensive Introduction to his ’’Norse Mythology”, 1832, towards the thoughtful people of his time, as a step backward compared to the attitude taken by Grundtvig in his great autobiographical poem, "New Year’s Morning", 1824, and in the preface to it. In this preface Grundtvig wrote that the goal which God "surely wants to be achieved" is "the revival of the heroic spirit of the North to Christian deeds in a direction suited to the needs and conditions of the time."In a book "The Land of the Living 1984", a series of lectures held in the 200th anniversary of Grundtvig’s birth, Professor Aage Henriksen proposed the view that the poem "New Year’s Morning” is the crowning achievement in Grundtvig’s writings. However, already in 1963 Dr. Kaj Thaning had advanced the idea that the Introduction to "Norse Mythology", 1832, was a decisive turningpoint in Grundtvig’s literary career since, from 1832 onwards, human life and the human world acquired an entirely different position and importance in his understanding of Christianity than was the case before that crucial year. Bent Christensen is inspired by both these writers, but adopts a critical attitude to Kaj Thaning.In part 1 of his lecture Bent Christensen describes the entire progress of his Grundtvig studies and the problem he has posed: What is it really that the Introduction has which was not already present in the inspiration behind the poem "New Year's Morning’? In the answer to this question he particularly emphasizes the sermons from 1823 to 1824, which are influenced by Irenaeus, and which are imbued with the thought that man was created in God’s image and has preserved this image of God also after the Fall. According to Bent Christensen they represent "a Grundtvig who is at least as good as the Grundtvig we got".Next he asks "if the ’Grundtvig of 1832* is in any way better than the ’Grundtvig of 1824’"? - Before he answers this question he presents a survey of the development from 1824 to 1832. He agrees with Thaning that "the deeds came to nothing". There was a general atmosphere of stagnation, but in the meantime the situation in the Church came to a head: members of a so-called "godly assembly" in Funen were positively persecuted. And at the University of Copenhagen the popular Professor H.N. Clausen propagated his "Protestant Christianity", diluted beyond recognition. In opposition to this, Grundtvig pointed to "the real Jesus Christ’s Church on Earth" and published his "The Rejoinder of the Church" against Professor Clausen’s latest book. "This was where the tragedy began. For instead of entering into an ecclesiastical discussion, Professor Clausen brought an action for libel against Grundtvig!" According to Bent Christensen the full extent of the tragedy was that the country had a state church which everybody had to be a member of, and which was bound to Lutheran Christianity, but in reality it also had a clergy whose leading circles represented a rationalism and idealism, which was completely at variance with Christianity. This was the situation which Grundtvig described as "the legal Hell", Bent Christensen says. He describes Grundtvig’s writings on church policy in this situation as a development consisting of 3 phases:1. The time from the discovery of the Apostles’ Creed in July 1825 and the Rejoinder in September 1825 until his resignation from office in May 1826. At this time Grundtvig thought that the anomaly could be redressed once it was clearly pointed out.2. The time from September 1826, shortly before the sentence was pronounced, until winter 1830/1831, when Grundtvig presented various proposals for church organization with a Christian state church, while those who did not want to join such a church could leave it in complete freedom of religion.3. The time from April 1831 when Grundtvig declared himself willing to be in charge of the organization of a free-congregation church, thus agreeing to the ’’amicable settlement” which, towards the end of February 1832, led to his permission to function as a free evensong preacher in Frederick’s Church.During the time up to this "amicable settlement”, Grundtvig had worked his way through the numerous drafts for the Introduction to his new ”Norse Mythology”, and in the process, according to Bent Christensen, ’’had managed to construct an entirely new model of church policy”, characterized by peaceful coexistence and competition between the real Christians and those Grundtvig called the "Naturalists”, "within the framework of what Grundtvig continues to term a ’’church”, but what is in reality a common, public religious service system". In the same year he drafted his proposal for "sogneb.ndsl.sning" i.e. abolition of the obligation to use the vicar in the parish where one is a resident, for all church ministrations.According to Kaj Thaning, Grundtvig had now finally "found himself, having learnt to distinguish rightly between what is "human” and what is "Christian”, so he could now call off the ecclesiastical controversy and instead throw himself into a cheerful effort to turn his new view of life to practical use”. ”In my opinion, I have invalidated this evaluation," Bent Christensen says. Grundtvig’s concept of Christianity was optimistic already in 1824, as was the factual distinction between the intrinsic value of life and the salient feature which is Christian salvation. The question now is what it was that Grundtvig managed to free himself from in the years 1831 to 1832. Bent Christensen’s thesis is that he 1) managed to free himself from the ecclesiastical controversy that he could not win, and 2) from the feeling of obligation to be in charge of an illegal organization of free-congregation churches which would isolate him from ordinary public and cultural life.In the context of church policy, Bent Christensen describes what happened with the Introduction to "Norse Mythology" as an emergency solution. - But is this the same, then, as "a tragic event”? - No, he answers. The tragedy was that Grundtvig’s dream from ’’New Year’s Morning” did not come true, but was on the contrary followed by the nightmare of the libel lawsuit and the church controversy. ”But there is another tragedy which we suffer from even today – namely the failure of influential circles to properly understand what it was Grundtvig found himself obliged to do in 1832, so that it has almost come to be regarded as the only right way to practise church organization! In that perspective what happened in 1832 may be seen as a tragic event, Bent Christensen claims in the conclusion of part 1 of his lecture.Part 2 of the lecture is a discussion of key passages in the two main texts, "New Year’s Morning” and the Introduction to ”Norse Mythology”. The intention is to show that the fundamental ideas in the Introduction (and in The Rejoinder of the Church) have been anticipated in the great poem from 1824: ’’Indeed, themythical-biographical descent of this poem through Danish history to the Land of the Living ... stands out as a great "a human being first!'"What the Introduction has ... to a fuller extent and in a clearer form than ’’New Year’s Morning" is the fully developed view of evolution and explanation and the scientific programme connected with it. Thus the Introduction provides a unique contribution to the understanding of what it means that the world exists, and that we exist in it as human beings!”In the concluding part 3 of his lecture, Bent Christensen poses the question "whether what happened in 1831/32 really and truly meant that Grundtvig gained himself, or whether it meant that he lost at least part of himself’. Like Aage Henriksen, Bent Christensen considers "New Year’s Morning" to be a culmination in Grundtvig’s writings, and incidentally the point from which Grundtvig’s comprehensive influence on the Danish people stems, and he sees the Introduction as a point, from where Grundtvig moves on by leaving something behind. Aage Henriksen blames Grundtvig that from being a personal poet he changed into a reformer. Bent Christensen asks instead "from the point of view of the church - whether it was after all the right programme with which Grundtvig attempted to save his dream that had been crushed by the outside world."The alternative he mentions is that Grundtvig could have left the Church with whoever wanted to follow him, and could have worked with unflagging solidarity on this basis for the public life of the people as well as for "universalhistorical scholarship". At least he did not have to make quite so much good fortune of necessity - with the tragic consequences for the Danish Lutheran Christian congregation’s self-conception that it has to this day.He concludes by emphasizing a passage towards the end of Grundtvig’s book, "Elemental Christian Teaching" (Den Christelige B.rnel.rdom), where Grundtvig imagines the situation that church and state were completely separated. In that case the Christians would have to establish their own educational institution for clergymen. But this would have to be a "Christian high school", i.e. a whole university. Bent Christensen finds there is good reason to turn one’s attention to this thought from 1861 - as well as to Grundtvig’s dream from 1824, when one seeks inspiration in Grundtvig.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not existed since the beginning of time. Hatem Bazian explores the roots of the conflict, locating the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project under the tutelage of British colonial efforts. Bazian’s text is a look at and beyond first-hand accounts, an investigation of and critical analysis of settler practice in relation to similar texts such as Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Alan Dowty’s Israel/Palestine, and Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Hatem Bazian’s Palestine…it is something colonial is not an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Readers should possess a basic understanding of the conflict and history of the region over the last century. Nor does this text provide the reader with an unbiased look at the timeline of events since the inception of the Zionist movement. Palestine…it is something colonial instead is a rich critique of the Zionist movement and British colonialism. It investigates the way British colonialism influenced Zionism and how Zionism adopted colonial ideas and practices. Bazian locates Zionism as a settler colonialist movement still at work today, which historically planned and systematically executed the removal of Palestinians from their land, with the aid of the United Kingdom and (later) the United States. Bazian examines Ottoman collapse, the colonization of Palestine by the British, Israel’s biblical theology of dispossession, as well as British colonial incubation of Zionism, Zionism as a Eurocentric episteme, the building of Israel through ethnic cleansing, and the Nakba, all of these culminating in legalized dispossession. Throughout the text, Bazian is able to tie each chapter to the present state of affairs and remind the audience of the trauma of a people forcibly removed. Bazian opens with the straightforward assertion that “Palestine is the last settler-colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19th early 20th centuries and still unfolding in the 21st century with no end in sight” (17). In chapter one, “Dissecting the Ottomans and Colonizing Palestine,” Bazian navigates the biased historiography of the fall of the Ottoman empire, linking the collapse of the empire to the colonizing forces of Europe which sought to ensure access to the newly discovered oil in the region as well as to Asia and Africa. Bazian masterfully steers the reader through the history of European intervention, and in particular on behalf of Christians as ethnic minorities in the Middle East. Europe is historically anti-Jewish; at the turn of the century, Zionism was determined to solve Europe’s “Jewish Problem” and maintain a stronghold in the Middle East, he writes. In chapter two, “Israel’s Biblical Theology of Dispossession,” Bazian explores the biblical roots of Zionist ideology. The chapter opens with a discussion of a contemporary Bedouin tribe being expelled in the Negev. Bazian writes that “the biblical text gets transformed into policy by the Zionist state, by which it then normalizes or makes legal the wholesale theft of Palestinian lands and expulsion of the population”(57) using legal documents such as the Levy Report. These policies create “facts on the ground” which lead to “legalized expulsions.” The Bible was central to the historical development of the European Christian supremacist idea of the Holy Land. The loss of the territory conquered during the Crusades ruptured this notion, a break “fixed” through Zionism. In chapter three, “British Colonialism and Incubation of Zionism,”Bazian begins to address British colonialism and Zionism as complementary. Bazian uses primary texts from British political actors of the time, such as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Balfour, to establish the anti-Semiticinspiration for British actions of the time. Bazian also successfully uses the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Sykes-Picot agreement to establish the double dealings of the British in the Middle East in the early twentieth century. Bazian uses many primary texts in this chapter effectively, though their organization could leave readers confused. Chapter four, “Zionism: Eurocentric Colonial Epistemic,” continues the themes of the prior chapter as the colonial influence is cemented. In this chapter, Bazian explores the subterfuge and the genius propaganda selling Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” along with “making the desert bloom”—as if the indigenous Arab people were not there. Bazian frames this chapter within the Zionist ideology of the peoples living in the land being only a barrier to a Jewish state in Palestine. Bazian uses primary sources (e.g., Herzl) to defend the assertion that the removal of the Palestinian people was always a piece of the Zionist plan. Bazian also includes Jewish critical voices (e.g., excerpts from the reporter Ella Shohat) to establish the European Jewish bias against the indigenous Arab peoples, including Sephardic Jews. Bazian that these biases and the effort to remove Palestinians from their land defined the early Zionist movement and the creation of the state of Israel in chapter five, “Building a State and Ethnic Cleansing.” This chapter draws extensively on primary sources: correspondence, reports, declarations, agreements, commissions, and maps. Bazian struggles to organize these rich resources in a clear fashion; however, his analysis matches the richness of the sources. These sources establish the “legalized” systematic removal of the Palestinians from the land by the Israelis in 1948. In chapter six, “The Nakba,” Bazian uses further legal documents and first-hand accounts to trace the forced removal of Palestinians. He pays homage to the trauma while critically dissecting the process of legalizing ethnic cleansing and peddling the innocence of the Israelis to the rest of the world. Bazian profoundly concludes his chapter with the story of a Palestinian boy who witnessed the mass executions of men and women of his village and marched away from his home. The boy, now a man, closed his story with poignant words that capture the horror of the Nakba: “The road to Ramallah had become an open cemetery” (241). After the land was emptied the new state of Israel needed to legally take possession of the Palestinian-owned property. Chapter seven, “Colonial Machination,” elaborates this process: “the State of Israel is structured to give maximum attention to fulfillment of the settler-colonial project and the state apparatus is directed toward achieving this criminal enterprise” (243). The name “Palestine” is erased as a name for the land and the peoples; former colonial and Ottoman laws were twisted to support a systematic theft of the land. Bazian concludes his book with a look to the future: “What is the way forward and Palestine’s de-colonial horizon?” (276). He lays out the options available for true and lasting peace, discounting out of hand the twostate solution as impossible due to the extent of the settlements in the West Bank. He also dismisses both the options of the removal of Palestinians and the removal of the Jewish people. He instead posits a way forward through a one-state solution, leaving how this is to be done to the reader and the people of Israel/Palestine to determine. Bazian has contributed a full-bodied analysis of primary sources to defend his assertion that Zionism has always been a settler colonial movement with its goal being a land devoid of the indigenous people. The organization of the text, the lack of sectioning in the chapters, and the technical insertion and citation of primary sources could be improved for clearer reading. Bazian thoroughly defends his thesis with tangible evidence that Zionism is something colonial, and has been something colonial from the start. This is a text that complicates the narrative of what colonialism is, what the State of Israel is, and who and what Palestine is, together establishing the book as required reading for understanding nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shelby Perez Master’s Divinity Candidate Chicago Theological Seminary

The Son of the Widow from Nain.By Kaj ThaningThis article intends to elucidate the distinctions that Grundtvig made in his world of ideas in the course of the years from 1824 to 1834, first between spirit and letter, church and church-school (1826-1830), and then between natural life and Christian life (in 1832). In His "Literary Testament" (1827), Grundtvig himself admits that there was a "Chaos" in his writings, due to the youthful fervour that pervaded his literary works and his sermons in the years 1822-1824. But not until 1832 does he acknowledge that "when I speak or write as a citizen, or a bard, or a scholar, it is not the time nor the place to either preach or confess, so when I have done so, it was a mistake which can only be excused with the all too familiar disorder pertaining to our church, our civic life, and our scholarship...", as it says in a passage omitted from the manuscript for "Norse Mythology”, 1832. (The passage is printed in its entirety in ”A Human first...”, p. 259f.)The point of departure for Thaning’s article is a sermon on the Son of the Widow from Nain, delivered in 1834, which the editor, Christian Thodberg also found "singularly personal”, since Grundtvig keeps using the pronoun ”1”. In this sermon Grundtvig says that those who have heard him preaching on this text before, would remember that he regarded the mourning widow as ”an image of the same broken heart at all times”, and her comforter, Jesus, not only as a great prophet in Israel, but ”as the living Being who sees us and is with us always until the end of the world”. Thodberg is of the opinion that Grundtvig refers to his sermon from 1823. Thaning, however, thinks that the reference is to the sermon from 1824. But Grundtvig adds that one may now rightly ask him whether he ’’still regards the gospel for the day with the same eyes, the same hope and fear as before.” He wants to discuss this, among other things ’’because the best thing we can do when we grow old is ... to develop and explain what in the days of our youth .. sprang up before our eyes and echoes in our innermost mind.” In other words, he speaks as if he had grown old. So Thaning asks: "What happened on the way from Our Saviour’s Church to Frederick’s Church?"Thaning’s answer is that there was a change in Grundtvig’s view of life. Already in his first sermon in 1832, he says that his final and truly real hour as a pastor has now arrived. Thaning’s explanation is that Grundtvig has now passed from the time of strong emotions to that of calm reflections. Not until now does he realize "what is essential and what is not". And in 1834 he says that our Christian views, too, must go through a purgatorial fire when we grow older. This is not only true of the lofty views of human life which, naturally, go through this purgatory and most often lose themselves in it. Here Grundtvig distinguishes between natural and Christian life which is something new in a sermon. Thaning adds that this purgatorial fire pervades Grundtvig’s drafts for the Introduction to "Norse Mythology" in 1832. But then, Grundtvig’s lofty views did not lose themselves in purgatory. He got through it. His view of life changed. (Here Thaning refers to his dissertation, "A Human First...", p. 306ff).This is vaguely perceptible throughout the sermon in question. But according to Thaning Grundtvig slightly distorts the picture of his old sermon. In the latter he did not mix up natural and Christian life. It is Thaning’s view that Grundtvig is thinking of the distinct mixture of Christianity and Danish national feeling in the poem "New Year’s Morning" (1824). But he also refers to Grundtvig’s sermon on Easter Monday, 1824, printed in Helge Toldberg’s dissertation, "Grundtvig’s World of Symbols" (1950), p. 233ff, showing that he has been captured by imagery in a novel manner. He seems to want to impose himself upon his audience. In 1834 he knows he has changed. But 1832 is the dividing year. In the passage omitted from the manuscript for "Norse Mythology", Grundtvig states explicitly that faith is "a free matter": "Faith is a matter of its own, and truly each man’s own matter". Grundtvig could not say this before 1832. Thaning is of the opinion that this new insight lies behind the distinction that he makes in the sermon in 1834, where he says that he used to mix up Christian life with "the natural life of our people", which involved the risk that his Christian view might be misinterpreted and doubted. Now it has been through purgatory. And in the process it has only lost its "absurdity and obscurity, which did not come from the Lord, but from myself”.Later in the sermon he says: "The view is no more obscured by my Danish national feeling; I certainly do not by any means fail to appreciate the particularly friendly relationship that has prevailed through centuries between the Christian faith and the life of this people, and nor do I by any means renounce my hope that the rebirth of Christianity here will become apparent to the world, too, as a good deed, but yet this is only a dream, and the prophet will by no means tell us such dreams, but he bids us separate them sharply from the word of God, like the straw from the grain...". This cannot be polemically directed against his own sermons from 1824. It must necessarily reflect a reaction against the fundamental view expressed in "New Year’s Morning" and its vision of Christianity and Danishness in one. (Note that in his dissertation for the Degree of Divinity, Bent Christensen calls the poem "a dream", as Thaning adds).In his "Literary Testament" (1827) Grundtvig speaks about the "Chaos" caused by "the spirits of the Bible, of history, and of the Nordic countries, whom I serve and confuse in turn." But there is not yet any recognition of the same need for a distinction between Danishness and Christianity, which in the sermon he calls "the straw and the grain". Here he speaks of the distinction between "church and church-school, Christianity and theology, the spirit of the Bible and the letter of the Bible", as a consequence of his discovery in 1825. He still identifies the spirit of human history with the spirit of the Bible: "Here is the explanation over my chaos", Grundtvig says. But it is this chaos that resolves itself, leading to the insight and understanding in the sermon from 1834.In the year after "The Literary Testament", 1828, Grundtvig publishes the second part of his "Sunday Book", in which the only sermon on the Son of the Widow in this work appears. It is the last sermon in this volume, and it is an elaboration of the sermon from 1824. What is particularly characteristic of it is its talk about hope. "When the heart sees its hope at death’s door, where is comfort to be found for it, save in a divine voice, intoning Weep not!" Here Grundtvig quotes St. John 3:16 and says that when this "word of Life" is heard, when hope revives and rises from its bier, is it not then, and not until then, that we feel that God has visited his people...?" In the edition of this sermon in the "Sunday Book" a note of doubt has slipped in which did not occur in the original sermon from 1824. The conclusion of the sermon bears evidence that penitential Christianity has not yet been overcome: "What death would be too hard a transition to eternal life?" - "Then, in the march of time, let it stand, that great hope which is created by the Word ... like the son of the great woman from Nain."It is a strange transition to go from this sermon to the next one about the son of the widow, the sermon from 1832, where Christ is no longer called "hope". The faith has been moved to the present: "... only in the Word do we find him, the Word was the sign of life when we rose from the dead, and if we fell silent, it was the sign of death." - "Therefore, as the Lord has visited us and has opened our mouths, we shall speak about him always, in the certain knowledge that it is as necessary and as pleasurable as to breathe..." The emphasis of faith is no longer in words like longing and hope.In a sense this and other sermons in the 1830s anticipate the hymn "The Lord has visited his people" ("Hymn Book" (Sangv.rk) I, no. 23): the night has turned into morning, the sorrow has been removed. The gospel has become the present. As before the Church is compared with the widow who cried herself blind at the foot of the cross. Therefore the Saviour lay in the black earth, nights and days long. But now the Word of life has risen from the dead and shall no more taste death. The dismissal of the traditional Christianity, handed down from the past, is extended to include the destructive teaching in schools. The young man on the bier has been compared with the dead Christianity which Grundtvig now rejects. At an early stage Grundtvig was aware of its effects, such as in the Easter sermon in 1830 ("Sunday Book" III, p. 263) where Grundtvig speaks as if he had experienced a breakthrough to his new view. So, the discovery of the Apostles’ Creed in 1825 must have been an enormous feeling of liberation for him – from the worship of the letter that so pervaded his age. Grundtvig speaks about the "living, certain, oral, audible" word in contrast to the "dead, uncertain, written, mute" sign in the book. However, there is as yet no mention of the "Word from the Mouth of our Lord", which belongs to a much later time. Only then does he acquire the calm confidence that enables him to preach on the background of what has happened that the Word has risen from the dead. The question to ask then is what gave him this conviction."Personally I think that it came to him at the same time as life became a present reality for him through the journeys to England," Thaning says. By the same token, Christianity also became a present reality. The discovery of 1825 was readily at hand to grant him a means of expression to convey this present reality and the address to him "from the Lord’s own mouth", on which he was to live. It is no longer enough for him to speak about "the living, solemn evidence at baptism of the whole congregation, the faith we are all to share and confess" as much more certain than everything that is written in all the books of the world. The "Sunday Book" is far from containing the serene insight which, in spite of everything, the Easter sermon, written incidentally on Easter Day, bears witness to. But in 1830 he was not yet ready to sing "The Lord has visited his people", says Thaning.In the sermon from 1834 one meets, as so often in Grundtvig, his emphasis on the continuity in his preaching. In the mourning widow he has always seen an image of the Church, as it appears for the first time in an addition to the sermon on the text in the year 1821 ("Pr.st. Sermons", vol I, p. 296). It ends with a clue: "The Church of Christ now is the Widow of Nain". He will probably have elaborated that idea and concluded his sermon with it. Nevertheless, as it has appeared, the sermon in 1834 is polemically directed against his former view, the mixture of Christian and natural life. He recognizes that there is an element of "something fantastic" sticking to the "view of our youth".Already in a draft for a sermon from March 4,1832, Grundtvig says:"... this was truly a great error among us that we contented ourselves with an obscure and indefinite idea of the Spirit as well as the Truth, for as a consequence of that we were so doubtful and despondent, and we so often mistook the letter for the spirit, or the spirit of phantasy and delusion for that of God..." (vol. V, p. 79f).The heart-searchings which this sermon draft and the sermon on the 16th Sunday after Trinity are evidence of, provide enough argument to point to 1832 as a year of breakthrough. We, his readers, would not have been able to indicate the difference between before and now with stronger expressions than Grundtvig’s own. "He must really have turned into a different kind of person", Thaning says. At the conclusion of the article attention is drawn to the fact that the image of the Son of the Widow also appears in an entirely different context than that of the sermon, viz. in the article about Popular Life and Christianity that Grundtvig wrote in 1847. "What still remains alive of Danish national feeling is exactly like the disconsolate widow at the gate of Nain who follows her only begotten son to the grave" (US DC, p. 86f). The dead youth should not be spoken to about the way to eternal life, but a "Rise!" should be pronounced, and that apparently means: become a living person! On this occasion Grundtvig found an opportunity to clarify his ideas. His "popular life first" is an extension of his "a human being first" from 1837. He had progressed over the last ten years. But the foundation was laid with the distinction between Christian and natural life at the beginning of the 1830s.

A workshop for theology, philosophy and other disciplinesThe proposal to start a workshop among theologians, philosophers and other specialists is connected to the view that foundational issues exist in every faculty and in every field of study. A distinction between theology as “divinity knowledge” and philosophy as “secular rational discourse” is set aside by explaining that both theology and philosophy are “sciences of faith”. Not one single discipline is without its bona fides and its foundational issues. Hence, the suggestion to pay continual attention to foundational issues in theology, philosophy and other concerned disciplines in an interdisciplinary workshop. Using the so-called multidimensional scope of science (empirical, methodological and dimension of meta-issues) the author argues that any scientific discipline is inextricably bound up with foundational issues. Some limitations and some advantages of scientific inquiries like logical critique, transcendental critique, and transforming of elements of truths serve as to deliberately further co-operation between specialists on common fundamental issues, on inadmissible/undesirable differences and on indispensable diversity. Several assumptions are presented, for example one’s own specialist field does not have the final word about common issues; that various specialists can learn from one another;Christian theology does not render Christian scholarship redundant in other scientific disciplines such as languages or philosophy. Special disciplines deteriorate in scientific quality whenever specialists tend to get rid of their inherent foundational issues,tend to keep quiet about them, or pass them on to philosophers.

In the preface to his book, Theology and Psychology, Fraser Watts, a lecturer in Theology and Natural Science at the University of Cambridge, states that he approaches “… the interface between theology and psychology by looking at each discipline from the perspective of the other. This includes a religious perspective on several current hot topics in psychology, such as evolution, neuroscience, and computer intelligence. I also consider theological topics like divine action, salvation history and eschatology, in each case using the psychological perspective in a different way”. By taking an interdisciplinary approach, Watts aims at proposing a psychology of religious experience. He considers theology to be the rational reflection on the Christian tradition. When exponents of this tradition are in dialogue with exponents of psychology, the focus falls on human nature. Watts admits that a certain lack of competence in one of the two disciplines can be a problem when working in an interdisciplinary way. However, he is willing to take the risk. Watts worked in psychology for 25 years and was also involved with a medical research council, before taking up a position at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.

The use of anointed objects among African Pentecostal prophets as instruments of taping the power of the Holy Spirit is analysed from a perspective of the personality and divinity of the Holy Spirit and the use of magical charms in African traditional religions (ATRs). The main question answered in this article is the following: what does the use of anointed objects among African neo-Pentecostal prophets reveal about the underlying understanding of the Holy Spirit? It is argued that the use of anointed objects to tap into the Spirit’s power treats the Spirit as an elusive power that is controlled magically. It is further argued that in Africa, the use of anointed objects resonates with the use of magical charms in ATR. The Christian reliance on anointed objects is challenged by looking at some aspects of the divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit. The significant contribution of the article lies in challenging African Pentecostals to relate to the Holy Spirit as a personal divine being instead of an elusive impersonal force that could be mastered only by anointed objects.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article uses the disciplines of systematic theology, ATRs and biblical theology to analyse the undermining of the personality and divinity of the Holy Spirit among African Pentecostal prophets by their using anointed objects as instruments of conveying the Holy Spirit’s presence and power in believer’s life and activities.

Holy Communion is one of the seven sacraments in the Catholic Church. With Baptism and Confirmation, they constitute the sacraments of Initiation. Similarly, with the Word of God, they constitute the two indispensable pillars upon which the Church is built. It is the “fount and apex of the whole Christian life” (LG 11). It is named Holy Eucharist because it is an action of thanksgiving to God. It recalls God’s work of creation, redemption, and sanctification. The Eucharistic elements, bread and wine become, by the prayer of consecration and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, Christ's Body and Blood through an act appropriately known as transubstantiation. The term emphasizes the conversion of the total substance of bread and wine into the entire substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. When the bread and wine are consecrated at Mass, they are no longer bread and wine; they have become instead the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in accordance with the words of Christ. The empirical appearances and attributes remain the same, but the underlying reality changes. Therefore, the doctrine of transubstantiation teaches without ambiguity that in the Holy Communion, the Body and Blood, together with the soul and divinity, of the Lord Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained. How is this understood and what is its implication theologically? In an attempt to elucidate this problem, this work seeks first to highlight the theology of the Holy Eucharist within the context of the ecclesiology of Communion, and second, through some theological themes: sacred memorial and sacrificial banquet; eschatological meal. The third and final part treats the theme of real presence under the rubrics of Transubstantiation. Keywords: Transubstantiation, Eschatological Meal, Memorial, Real Presence, Communion, Eucharistic conversion.

Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas is Professor of Religion at Goucher College where she holds the Susan D. Morgan Professorship of Religion. She is widely published in national and international journals and other publications. As a leading voice in the development of a womanist theology, Essence magazine counts Douglas “among this country’s most distinguished religious thinkers, teachers, ministers, and counselors.” Her groundbreaking and widely used book Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (1999) was the first to address the issue of homophobia within the black church community. Dr. Douglas has been a pioneering and highly sought after voice in regard to addressing sexual issues in relation to the black religious community. She has been very active in advocating equal rights for LGBT persons.Her latest book, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (2015) examines the challenges of a “Stand Your Ground” culture for the Black Church and all black bodies. Other books include The Black Christ (1994), What’s Faith Got to Do With It?:Black Bodies/Christian Souls (2005),and Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant (2012). Dr. Douglas is also the co-editor of Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection (2010).Douglas is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Denison where she earned a bachelor of science summa cum laude in psychology. She went on to earn a master of divinity and a doctoral degree in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary (New York City). Rev. Douglas was ordained at Ohio’s St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in 1985. She received the Anna Julia Cooper Award by the Union of Black Episcopalians (July 2012) for “her literary boldness and leadership in the development of a womanist theology and discussing the complexities of Christian faith in African-American contexts.”Rev. Douglas was an Associate Priest at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. for over 20 years. She currently serves at the Washington National Cathedral.