Showing papers on "Faith published in 1973"

The formative period of Islamic thought

Abstract: Part 1 The beginnings: the Kharaijites Proto-Shi'ite phenomena under the Umayyads the general religious movement God's determination of events faith and community. Part 2 The century of struggle (750-850): the establishment of the 'Abbasids the attraction of reasoning the great Mu'tazilites. Part 3 The triumph of Sunnism the political background the maturing of Sunnite theology.

Faith healing. A study of personality and function.

Abstract: This is a study of 43 fundamentalist-pentecostal persons who experienced 71 faith healings. Each person was interviewed following a structured format to assess: a) life pattern prior to faith healing; b) life pattern subsequent to faith healing; c) medical history prior to and subsequent to faith he

Creeds of the churches;: A reader in Christian doctrine, from the Bible to the present

Abstract: Creeds of the Churches offers, in one comprehensive volume, the major Christian statements of faith from biblical times to the present. The third edition has been updated to include the Athanasian Creed, the London Confession, the Frankfurt Declaration, and the Lima Text, among others. A brief introduction to each creed explains its place in the developing theology of the Christian community.

African music in Christian liturgy: the igbo experiment

Abstract: One of the resulting effects of the Reformation in the Christian Church has been the making of worship more relevant to the masses of professed Christians. It has meant the employment of a vernacular which will be understood by the congregation, instead of a dead language comprehensible only to a few initiates who have spent years of apprenticeship in monasteries. It has also meant the use of tunes familiar to the worshippers, tunes in which they could join, whether in meek supplication, in holy adoration, or in hearty praise of the one who is, by faith, their Lord and Saviour. In an ever-evolving world, Christianity has continued to be a living faith by adapting to the changes of society through the ages. Contemporary Christianity continues to make changes to accommodate the philosophical attitudes of this nuclear age with its present- day ethics and ‘new morality’. As different parts of the world are brought closer together by means of modern technology and communications, other religions exert a steadfast if subtle influence on the codes and dogma of Christianity, and even Papal authority gets diluted in the process of ecumenical interaction between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations. Christianity, with its leadership, begins to view other religions such as Judaism and Islam with greater understanding and, in some cases, with unprecedented respect

The prayers and meditations of St Anselm

Abstract: Mostly written between 1070 and 1080, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury, the prayers and meditations of Anselm of Aosta created a tradition of intimate, intensely personal devotional works written in subtle and theologically daring prose. While the "Prayer to God" is based on the "Lord's Prayer", the "Prayer to Christ" is inspired by ardent private emotion and other prayers invest saints with individual attributes, with John the Baptist as the friend, Peter as the shepherd and Mary Magdalene as the forgiving lover, among many others. The meditations include a searching exploration of the state of the soul and a lament on the loss of purity, and the "Proslogion" discusses the mysteries of faith. With their bright imagery, beautiful language and highly original thought, the works of Anselm have secured a lasting place in both religious and secular literature.

The Cry of Sodom Enquired Into: Educational Analysis in Seventeenth-Century New England.

Abstract: CHARLES CHAUNCY knew he was striking a responsive chord when in a commencement address at Harvard in 1655 he drew on the Third Epistle of John to declare, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth." (1) The seventeenth-century Puritans who shook off the dust of the English Babylon and ventured into the "howling wilderness" of the New World clearly expected that this act of faith would insure the salvation of their children. The Scriptures told them this was so: as God promised Abraham, so he assured the inhabitants of the New Israel that he would "make thee exceeding fruitful," and "establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant. ..." (2) Hardly a complacent group, the Puritans understood very well that the "old deluder Satan" was abroad in New England and would do his utmost to thwart the salvation of as many souls as possible, even those of the children of the covenant. Thus, they promptly established regular public worship, encouraged family and community attention to the nurture of literacy, exercised controls over apprenticeship, and built schools and colleges-all actions designed, in part, to create the conditions most favorable for the reception of God's grace. In the end, the Puritans knew their difficult struggle would culminate in victory. They could afford to be optimistic; they had God's promise that grace was hereditary: God would honor his covenant and their children would be saved. But as Edmund Morgan has shown, the Puritans discovered much to their dismay that grace was not necessarily hereditary, at least not in New England. (3) Many children, even children of the elect, would not or could not demonstrate to their parents' or ministers' satisfaction that they had received in full measure the blessings of the new covenant. The reasons for the Pu-

The Prayers and meditations of St Anselm with the proslogion

Abstract: Mostly written between 1070 and 1080, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury, the prayers and meditations of Anselm of Aosta created a tradition of intimate, intensely personal devotional works written in subtle and theologically daring prose. While the "Prayer to God" is based on the "Lord's Prayer", the "Prayer to Christ" is inspired by ardent private emotion and other prayers invest saints with individual attributes, with John the Baptist as the friend, Peter as the shepherd and Mary Magdalene as the forgiving lover, among many others. The meditations include a searching exploration of the state of the soul and a lament on the loss of purity, and the "Proslogion" discusses the mysteries of faith. With their bright imagery, beautiful language and highly original thought, the works of Anselm have secured a lasting place in both religious and secular literature.

Faith and Revelation

Abstract: If it is true, as my argument has suggested, not only of systems of religious belief, but also of secular world-views and moral and political theories that they require and admit of rational justification, but are not, and ought not to be, accepted by their adherents in a merely tentative and provisional manner, the complaint that, by assimilating the religious case to these others, I have overlooked the committed character of religious belief, loses much of its force. No doubt the character of religious faith is in important respects different, but the resemblances should not be neglected.

“Whom Heaven Must Receive Until The Time”: Reflections on the Christology of Acts

Abstract: It is the task of theology in every age to discover formulations of belief which are both traditionally and genuinely meaningful. The Book of Acts presents Jesus Christ, absent since his ascension, yet powerfully present in a complex of ways, which may be catalytically provocative for the thinking of faith today.

Locke on Faith and Knowledge

Abstract: Given the fact that one of John Locke's main interests in writing the Essay lay in "the principles of morality and revealed religion ", at least according to his friend James Tyrrell, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to those sections in the Essay, and in the correspondence with Stillingfleet, on the relation between faith and knowledge. Commentators on Locke have tended to treat his views either as straightforward and unimportant, or as question-begging. Gibson acknowledges the centrality of morality and religion in Locke's interests, but has nothing to say on the difficulties that arise in fitting Locke's views on these matters into his epistemology.2 Aaron is content to summarize Locke without discussion of any kind. O'Connor claims that Locke has only one thesis-that faith is never logically justified-which he does not " openly draw ".3 Copleston comes to the opposite conclusion to O'Connor. " He admitted a divine revelation which gives us certainty about the truth of the doctrines revealed, since the testimony of God admits of no doubt."4 To support this Copleston quotes the following passage: " We may as well doubt of our own being, as we can whether any revelation from God be true ".5 But this does not support the thesis. Anyone who believes, as Locke did, that God is a perfectly truthful being will assent to the proposition 'Any revelation from God is true'. This last proposition is analytic for Locke and for all theists. But saying this does not settle the epistemological question of how anyone knows whether or not a particular proposition is revealed by God. Later on,6 Copleston allows that Locke's repudiation of enthusiasm requires that some sort of rational support is to be given for claiming that a proposition is revealed. What he does not make clear is that since the reasons Locke

People of the Covenant: An Introduction to the Old Testament

Abstract: This is a revised edition of a textbook previously published by Ronald Press, USA. It is intended as a text for introductory courses in Old Testament studies. The first contact with modern biblical scholarship can be extremely unsettling to students with conservative religious backgrounds. It often appears to them that the methods of such scholarship, e.g. in questioning the authorship and/or historicity of parts of scripture, contradicts their deeply held belief in the divine inspiration of scripture. This text is specifically designed to introduce modern scholarship in a positive way, and to demonstrate that this approach to scripture can support, rather than challenge, their faith.

Alexander Pope: Erasmian Catholic

Abstract: NANCY K. LAWLOR HAS ARGUED that Pope's Essay on Man is a serious attempt to reconcile natural with revealed religion. Believing that Pope as a Catholic would not undertake such a task "with no regard for canonical authority," and that Pope's Catholic education must have included "some familiarity with Thomist thought-either with the major works themselves or with simplified interpretations," Miss Lawlor finds specific applications of Thomist thought everywhere in the Essay on Man and believes the poem "fully consonant with the thought expressed in the Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles."' Further on I will show why I think it questionable whether Aquinas can have had so much influence on Pope. More important, however, are two assumptions Miss Lawlor shares with other students of Pope's religious views. The first is that Pope as a Catholic necessarily believed in a specific body of doctrine, easily discoverable by reference to Aquinas or some other source of Catholic orthodoxy. Behind this assumption lies another-that Roman Catholic teaching was as monolithic, as unified, as clearly defined a body of doctrine in Pope's day-or nearly so-as it may seem to have become in the next two centuries. Surely the place to begin is with Patrick Cruttwell's question what did Pope's membership in the Roman Catholic church "mean to his mind"? For Cruttwell, Pope is attempting to retain the Catholic faith "while rejecting all those things in it-or on its peripherywhich conflict with the demands of Augustan reason. He is rejecting, in particular, the clerical and the medieval-and that means, the orthodox theology of the Church." But what was the "orthodox theology of the Church" in Pope's day? Was it altogether "clerical and medieval" in any case?2 How important, to take a pertinent in-

Early Christianity and Pagan Thought: Confluences and Conflicts

Abstract: ‘What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What accord is there between the Academy and the Church? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who has himself taught that the Lord must be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with those who have brought forward a Stoic, or Platonic or dialectic Christianity. As for us, we need not be concerned to know anything but Jesus Christ, in quest of anything but the Gospel. Inasmuch as we have faith, we need not believe anything else.’ Such are the thoroughly uncompromising terms in which, about the year 200, Tertullian defined an entirely negative relationship—what he at least considered the utter incompatibility—of Christianity and pagan philosophy.

Asceticism and Mysticism

Abstract: It is a distinctive merit of both Paul Tillich and Martin Buber to have freed religion from its narrow theistic, or even denominational interpretation 1 long before the second Vatican Council ultimately ratified this idea. Tillich and Buber have thus thrown the doors open for a new, broader and more incisive sociology of religion whose subject matter continues to be religion but whose key notion is no longer religion but faith.

Abraham's Sacrifice of Faith: A Form-Critical Study of Genesis 22

Abstract: The obedience leitmotif complements the tension centered in the sacrifice and enables the good news of Isaac's salvation to stand as a reaffirmation of the patriarchal promise.

The Zen Critique of Pure Land Buddhism

Abstract: world, Pure Land Buddhist tradition (J6do-shiT and Jbdo-Shinshii) has often been viewed as standing in direct opposition to Zen Buddhism's teaching of "self-effort"l because of its stress on "other-power"2 as the prerequisite for salvation.3 Indeed, in China both traditions were found within the same monastery representing somewhat different patterns of discipline and meditative practice.4 Even in Japan during the twelfth century, when rather sharp divisions developed between the Pure Land tradition and the older Japanese schools of Buddhism because of H6nen's and Shinran's revolutionary emphasis upon nembutsu5 and faith as the unique and ultimately only means of salvation

The Christian Faith In The Doctrinal Documents Of The Catholic Faith ed. by J. Neuner, S. J., J. Dupuis, S. J. (review)

Abstract: This is the best part of the book and a necessary introduction to the problem of philosophy of nature in its relation to modem science, for science and philosophy had been considered to be the same discipline until the sixteenth century. Scientists were philosophers of nature, and philosophers of nature considered themselves scientists. Now, however, the majority of scientists and philosophers believe that science and philosophy are essentially two independent disciplines. This is paradoxical because even now it is difficult to perceive concrete scientific problems which are not, at the same time, problems of philosophy. True, the methodology of science is different from the methodology of philosophy, but both science and philosophy study the same subject matter, namely, the cosmos, man, and God. Hence the artificial dichotomy which started chiefly with Descartes and which has harmed philosophy as well as science. More than ever the insight of philosophy is necessary for the better understanding of science, and equally the data of contemporary science should be taken into consideration by philosophy if philosophy is to be worthy of its name. All the great scientists have been outstanding philosophers of nature. This book helps us to understand this historical conclusion. We must bear in mind that strictly speaking, the problem of science and philosophy is not a problem between scientists and philosophers but of philosophy and science as such. Hense it is crucial for the sake of clarity to set up the philosophical principles of the division and specification of the sciences as they are found in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. In this sense the book is somewhat incomplete. The author shows too much dependence on Vincent Smith and Charles De Koninck. Perhaps more explanation based on original sources would have improved the understanding of the philosophical principles involved in this thorny problem. The volume is recommended to all those who are seeking a brief historical and philosophical introduction to the philosophy of nature.

The analogy of experience : an approach to understanding religious truth

Abstract: Here are Princeton's Warfield Lectures of 1970. Are they hermeneutical fragments or mini-systematics? In the context of "faith seeking understanding," John E. Smith, Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale, proposes creatively interpreting the gospel by using common experiences to aid in understanding theological language. This attempt is founded on a familiar diagnosis of Christianity's current malaise, a re-evalutation of traditional uses of analogy, and an account of experience which relies upon pragmatism and radical empiricism to correct reductionistic views. Of greatest value is Smith's lucid explication of analogy; elsewhere this hastily-laid foundation rests in unstable philosophical and theological subsoil. Nodding to Hegel, Smith realizes his proposal will be judged by how it "works out." Experience must illumine such loci as God, man (sin), Jesus Christ (the atonement), and the church. "Sin" is clarified by reference to a basic misorientation of the self which erupts in flawed relationships. "God" is interpreted in terms of selfhood, i.e. a "center of intention," related to yet distinct from its manifestations. Jesus Christ "atones" by teaching and enacting a self-sacrificial love which overcomes retributive justice. Lastly, comparison and contrast with other human communities shows the church to be where the divine presence as Spirit unifies many selves. Each analogy is insightful and suggestive. But if "the truth is the whole," it must be noted that the analogies do not in fact function in the same way or with equal success for all four doctrines. It is doubtful that they could or should. Unfortunately, scant heed is given to how religious language actually did and does function in the community. Experiential analogies may help Christians understand some of their beliefs, but they do not provide Ariadne's thread for ventures in the labyrinth of systematics.