Showing papers on "Divinity published in 1985"

Darwinism and divinity : essays on evolution and religious belief

Abstract: Readers should find these essays a useful marker of how "Darwinism and Divinity" stood in the late-20th century, and an introduction to debates that are certain to continue for a very long time.

The evidence for Jesus : the impact of scholarship on our understanding of how Christianity began

Abstract: This book is an expanded version of public lectures given in Durham in 1984 in response to the London Weekend Television series broadcast that year entitled Jesus: the Evidence. The object of the series was to make a wider public aware of how New Testament scholars and historians of Christian origins have come to view the beginnings of Christianity, but even before it was screened, feelings against it in the churches ran high, and it has remained a focal point of controversy. So Professor Dunn, author of widely-used books including Christology in the Making and Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, set out both to put the record straight where he felt that the programmes had been misleading and to encourage his audience to take more seriously the critical questions that can be asked about the Gospels. His book centres on four main questions: Are the Gospels fact, fiction or what? Did Jesus claim to be the Son of God? What did the first Christians believe about the resurrection? Was earliest Christianity one church or warring sects? His answers to these questions provide an admirably lucid introduction to the present state of New Testament scholarship - and the evidence on which it is based. James D. G. Dunn was Professor of Divinity in the University of Durham.

Buddhism and Jungian psychology

Abstract: There has been a significant amount of commentary about C.G. Jung who was, on the one hand, thought to harbour anti-Semitic sentiment, and, on the other hand, a friend and teacher of many Jews. His school of psychology has had a large Jewish following throughout the world, including Israel. J. Marvin Speigelman uses the works of Jung to foster a dialogue between Judaism and Christianity. He demonstrates the parallels between Jung's thought and classic Kabbalistic views on the masculine and feminine aspects of divinity and all life. "Judaism and Jungian Psychology" is intended to supplement the work of Martin Buber and Eric Fromm in this area of biblical research.

Some Aspects of Seeing in Euripides‘ Bacchae

Abstract: Absent from Thebes at the first outbreak of Bacchic excitement, King Pentheus returns in haste, deeply troubled by reports of revelry on Mount Cithaeron and accounts of the captivating stranger who has led the Theban women astray (Ba. 212–38). When he meets the stranger he asks him about the appearance of the god (469,477) and the features of the rites (471) and complains that he cannot see the divinity who, the stranger assures him, is right at hand (500,502). Pentheus manifests great eagerness to see the Bacchantes with his own eyes, and it is by playing on this desire that the stranger lures him to Cithaeron and his death (810ff.)

Looking for God and Finding the Abyss: Bioethics and Natural Theology

Abstract: In all the world there are no Gods to speak to us face to face. For the most desperate petitions there is only silence. As the first Russian cosmonaut noted in his encounter with space, God was not to be found. Or if He (She) is, He (She) speaks clandestinely to the mystic and to the poet. While Thales saw that “all things are full of Gods” (quoted in De Anima A5, 411a7), the modern world reveals only the finite. Divinity hides. The Gods once brought rain and cured diseases. Now there is meteorology and pharmacology. The presence of the divine has been exorcized. There remain, however, numerous competing, once mutually antagonistic groups of interpreters of sacred texts and traditions who claim divine authority — for themselves, for such texts, or for the statements of long-dead founders who asserted that they had heard the very word of God. These modern religious groups possess often only the remnants of past political powers and structures through which they once wielded immense governmental authority and commanded intellectual attention. One might think here of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, versus its antecedent, the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, which possessed considerable intellectual authority and police powers.

The Career of John Abernethy (1680–1740) Father of Nonsubscription in Ireland and Defender of Religious Liberty

Abstract: The British theological world was stirred at the beginning of the eighteenth century by what the learned and staunchly orthodox Presbyterian historian James Seaton Reid has called “latitudinarian notions on the inferiority of dogmatic belief and the nature of religious liberty.” In the 1690s John Locke had published his Reasonableness of Christianity and Letters on Toleration , followed by John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious. In 1710 “Honest Will” Whitson, Sir Isaac Newton's successor as Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was expelled from the University for embracing Arian views. His departure was accompanied by rumors—long since substantiated—about his great predecessor's heterodox theology. Traditional theologians were shocked next by the appearance of Dr. Samuel Clark's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity which resulted in the author's arraignment before Convocation of the Church of England in 1714. The very same year John Simson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, was first tried before the General Assembly of the Scottish Presbyterian Church for teaching Arian and Pelagian errors. In 1729, after three more trials, Simson was suspended from his professorship for denying the numerical oneness of the Trinity. Fierce doctrinal contentions also began to occupy English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, erupting during the famous Salters’ Hall meeting early in 1719.

Salvation and the Divinity of Jesus

Abstract: 22 J. Moltmann, Politische Theologie Politische Ethik (Munich: Kaiser, and Mainz: Grünewald [1984], DM 28, pp. 196). Eng. tr. On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics (London: SCM Press). 23 H. Deuser and P. Steinacker (eds.), Ernst Blochs Vermittlungen zur Theologie (Munich: Kaiser, and Mainz: Grunewald [1983], DM 42, pp. 222). 24 Christlicher Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft, vols. 31, 35, 36 (Freiburg: Herder [1983-84], DM 54 each, pp. 400, 399,342).

The Anointing in Bethany and other Affirmations of Christ's Divinity on Duccio's Back Predella

Abstract: A new subject, the Anointing in Bethany, is proposed as the final missing scene on the short right end of Duccio's predella for the Maesta. This subject is rich in theological meaning and supports the underlying theme of the Ministry cycle: the revelation of Christ's divinity during his earthly mission. The back predella culminates in Christ's most powerful miracle, the Raising of Lazarus, which introduces the image of Mary Magdalen, the repentant sinner par excellence, who reappears in the Anointing, it will be demonstrated that Duccio used the emotionally charged image of this revered saint repeatedly throughout the Maesta to infuse his narrative with greater dramatic intensity.