Showing papers on "Faith published in 1981"

The analogical imagination:christian theology and the culture of pluralism

Abstract: An essential addition to any serious theological library. David Tracy introduces his influential concept of the "classic," as well as his idea of the difference between analogical and other ways of viewing the life of faith. He looks at the culture of pluralism, examining the main differences in the world's theological doctrines.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Abstract: Offers a moving and humane approach to understanding life's windstorms.Raises many questions that will challenge your mind and test your faith regarding the ultimate questions of life and death.

How man makes God in West Africa: Yoruba attitudes towards the Orisa

Abstract: The idea that gods are made by men, not men by gods, is a sociological truism. It belongs very obviously to a detached and critical tradition of thought incompatible with faith in those gods. But Yoruba traditional religion contains built into it a very similar notion, and here, far from indicating scepticism or decline of belief, it seems to be a central impulse to devotion. The oriṣa (‘gods’) are, according to Yoruba traditional thought, maintained and kept in existence by the attention of humans. Without the collaboration of their devotees, the oriṣa would be betrayed, exposed and reduced to nothing. This notion seems to have been intrinsic to the religion since the earliest times. How can such an awareness be part of a devotee's ‘belief’? Rather than speculate abstractly, as Rodney Needham does (Needham 1972), about whether people of other cultures can be said to ‘believe’ at all, it seems more interesting to take a concrete case like the Yorba one where there is an unexpected–even apparently paradoxical–configuration of ideas, and to ask how these ideas are constituted. Only by looking at them as part of a particular kind of society, with particular kinds of social relationships, can one see why such a configuration is so persuasive. The notion that men make gods is by no means unique to Yoruba thought. It is present to some degree in a number of traditional West African religions, and in some, such as the Kalahari one, it can be seen in an even more explicit form than in the Yoruba one. A comparison may help to show how it is the constitution of social relationships which makes such a notion not just acceptable but central to the religious thought of the society.

The area of faith in Winnicott, Lacan and Bion.

Abstract: The area of faith is distinguishable from operations which primarily emphasize ego mastery and introjection-internalization processes. Faith is implicit in Winnicott's transitional experiencing and carried forward in object usage. In Bion faith is linked with openness to O or the (unknowable) ultimate reality of a session and is the operative principle of the psychoanalytic attitude. This paper emphasizes the play of faith in Winnicott's object usage and Bion's O. A certain faith is also required to tolerate the movement of meaning in Lacan's Symbolic order. Faith as a fundamental dimension is in tension with the defensive use of mastery and introjective-projective representational networks. In its various forms this complex tension is part of the structure of human life and constitutes the arena in which faith may evolve.

Virtues, rights, and manners: A model for historians of political thought

Abstract: The history of political thought is traditionally deeply affected by the study of law. In recent years, however, there have been some interesting undulations and oscillations. Modes of talking about politics which were strikingly remote from the language of the law have emerged into historical prominence; and though there are signs that the historiography of political thought is now moving back into what I shall argue is the law-centered paradigm under which it has traditionally been conducted, it is an article of faith with us all that the needle does not return to its starting point, and some modification of the paradigm is therefore to be expected. The title of this article is designed to circumscribe the modification which may have occurred. Consult any classical work on this subject – Carlyle or Sabine or Wolin – and we shall find that the history of political thought, at any rate from the Stoics to the Historicists, is organized to a very high degree around the notions of God, nature, and law. The individual is looked on as inhabiting a cosmos regulated by rational and moral principles, essential to its being, which are of the nature of nomos , and to these philosophically perceived or divinely revealed systems manmade bodies of jurisprudence are assimilated. God Himself is looked on as a lex loquens , and even His role as the author of inscrutable grace does not much detract from this image. Philosophy and faith become modes of cognizing and acknowledging law, with the result that jurisprudence gives access to all but the most sublime forms of intellectual experience.

Faith and Reason

Abstract: Introduction 1. The Nature of Belief 2. Rational Belief 3. The Value of Rational Religious Belief 4. The Nature of Faith 5. The Purpose of Religion 6. The Role of Creeds 7. The Comparison of Creeds Epilogue: Faith is Voluntary

Is Belief in God Properly Basic

Abstract: Many philosophers have urged the evidentialist objection to theistic belief; they have argued that belief in God is irrational or unreasonable or not rationally acceptable or intellectually irresponsible or noetically substandard, because, as they say, there is insufficient evidence for it.' Many other philosophers and theologians-in particular, those in the great tradition of natural theology-have claimed that belief in God is intellectually acceptable, but only because the fact is there is sufficient evidence for it. These two groups unite in holding that theistic belief is rationally acceptable only if there is sufficient evidence for it. More exactly, they hold that a person is rational or reasonable in accepting theistic belief only if she has sufficient evidence for it-only if, that is, she knows or rationally believes some other propositions which support the one in question, and believes the latter on the basis of the former. In [4] I argued that the evidentialist objection is rooted in classicalfoundationalism, an enormously popular picture or total way of looking at faith, knowledge, justified belief, rationality and allied topics. This picture has been widely accepted ever since the days of Plato and Aristotle; its near relatives, perhaps, remain the dominant ways of thinking about these topics. We may think of the classical foundationalist as beginning with the observation that some of one's beliefs may be based upon others; it may be that there are a pair of propositions A andB such that I believeA on the basis of B. Although this relation isn't easy to characterize in a revealing and non-trivial fashion, it is nonetheless familiar. I believe that the word 'umbrageous' is spelled u-m-b-r-a-g-e-o-u-s: this belief is based on another belief of mine: the belief that that's how the dictionary says it's spelled. I believe that 72 x 71 = 5112. This belief is based upon several other beliefs I hold: that 1 x 72=72; 7 x 2 = 14; 7 x 7 = 49; 49 + 1 = 50; and others. Some of my beliefs, however, I accept but don't accept on the basis of any other beliefs. Call these beliefs basic. I believe that 2 + 1 = 3, for example, and don't believe it on the basis of other propositions. I also believe that I am seated at my desk, and that there is a mild pain in my right knee.

A developmental perspective on religious orientation dimensions.

Abstract: L.B. Brown's model of religious faith posits two bipolar religious orientations (intrinsic-extrinsic and autonomy-observance) that represent a two-dimensional space in which a religious believer can be located. This paper proposes a developmental sequence within Brown's model. The psychometric tradition of religious orientations is combined with a developmental tradition. The developmental process is consistent with models by A. Maslow, L. Kohlberg, J. Fowler, and J. Loevinger. Religious faith typically springs from extrinsic motivations. Most religious adherents achieve the next level, "observance," or identification with a religious community and its creeds. Some progress to intrinsic religiousness, and fewer attain religious autonomy.

From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Early Modern England

Abstract: Robert Parsons, the Jesuit, compiled his account of the transition of English Catholicism from monopoly to minority status in 1599–1600, and called it ‘A story of domestical difficulties which the Catholic cause and promoters thereof hath had in defending the same, not only against the violence and persecution of the heretics but also by sundry other impediments among themselves, of faction, emulation, sedition and division, since the change of religion in England’. This version of Tudor ecclesiastical history supplements Nicholas Sander's attention to evil Protestants and politicians by an examination of the Catholic response to the Reformation. The Parsons story has two groups of villains, the bishops and the parish clergy, who betrayed their faith to hold on to their livings; it has two groups of heroes, who rescued the faith by their self-sacrifice, the Jesuits and the seminary priests they inspired, and the Elizabethan Catholic gentry; and it goes something like this. The early Tudor monopolistic Church was weakened by spiritual decadence and mere conformism, and its leadership divided by ambition and faction, so it could not resist the challenge of heresy.

The Worship of Jesus in Apocalyptic Christianity

Abstract: In the development of Christology in the primitive church, the emergence of the worship of Jesus is a significant phenomenon. In the exclusive monotheism of the Jewish religious tradition, as distinct from some other kinds of monotheism, it was worship which was the real test of monotheistic faith in religious practice. In the world-views of the early centuries A.D. the gap between God and man might be peopled by all kinds of intermediary beings – angels, divine men, hypostatized divine attributes, the Logos – and the early church's attempt to understand the mediatorial role of Jesus naturally made use of these possibilities. In the last resort, however, Jewish monotheism could not tolerate a mere spectrum between God and man; somewhere a firm line had to be drawn between God and creatures, and in religious practice it was worship which signalled the distinction between God and every creature, however exalted. God must be worshipped; no creature may be worshipped. For Jewish monotheism, this insistence on the one God's exclusive right to religious worship was far more important than metaphysical notions of the unity of the divine nature. Since the early church remained – or at least professed to remain – faithful to Jewish monotheism, the acknowledgement of Jesus as worthy of worship is a remarkable development. Either it should have been rejected as idolatry – and a halt called to the upward trend of christological development – or else its acceptance may be seen with hindsight to have set the church already on the road to Nicene theology.

The Origins of History

Abstract: A distillation of the thought and research to which Herbert Butterfield devoted the last twenty years of his life to, this book, originally published in 1981, traces how differently people understood the relevance of their past and its connection with their religion. It examines ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia; the political perceptiveness of the Hittites; the Jewish sense of God in history, of promise and fulfilment; the classical achievement of scientific history; and the unique Chinese tradition of historical writing. The author explains the problems of the early Christians in relating their traditions of Jesus to their life and faith and the emergence, when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, of a new historical understanding. The book then charts the gradual growth of a sceptical approach to recorded authority in Islam and Western Europe, the reconstruction of the past by deductive analysis of the surviving evidence and the secularisation of the eighteenth century.

Richard Hooker's Via Media Doctrine of Justification

Abstract: The "judicious" Richard Hooker (1554-1600) gave classic expression to the via media position of Elizabethan Anglicanism. He attempted to steer a middle course, appropriating what he considered to be the truths and avoiding what he considered to be the errors and excesses, between Roman Catholicism and the Magisterial Reformation (Lutheranism and especially Calvinism).' It has often been pointed out by scholars that Hooker sometimes inclines more in one direction than the other on certain key doctrines. For example, it has been said many times that his view of the relation of God and the world, of grace and nature, of faith and reason, is characterized by continuity rather than discontinuity, and that in this he was true to the medieval Catholic thought of Thomas Aquinas.2 But his view of justification has been said to be nearer to that of the Magisterial Reformation than to that of Rome.3 Joseph G. Devine has written a recent, important study entitled "Richard Hooker's Doctrine of Justification and Sanctification in the Debate with Walter Travers, 1585-1586."4 Devine's study has demonstrated, far more accurately than previous studies, that Hooker has

The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation

Abstract: Preface Prologue: the problem of ideology and the process of history 1. Context: the egg that Luther hatched 2. Family: religious experience and ideological commitment 3. Flock: cultivating the faith 4. Academy: indoctrination and disputation 5. Forum: the profession of law and the political man 6. Publicity: propagating the faith 7. Party: defending the cause 8. Ideology: an autopsy of social thought Epilogue: ideology and utopia Index of names.

Popular Disturbance and the Fall of Thomas Cromwell and the Reformers, 1539–1540

Abstract: On 28 July 1540 Thomas Cromwell went to execution, and two days later Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret and William Jerome, leading protestant preachers and the minister's proteges, were burned at the stake.1 These reformers were sacrificed to implicate Cromwell in apostasy, but their deaths were more than judicial murder; they died for making a reality of the conservatives’ old fears that religious radicalism would engender social disorder. With the coming of the Reformation issues of faith for the first time deeply divided the people, and the rift went beyond the schism between orthodox and reformed alone. Many who witnessed the confusion thought that ‘the devyll reyneth over us nowe’ and believed that ‘alle thys devysyon comyth through that ffalse knave that heretyke Doctor Barnys and such other heretiks as he ys’.2 The faction struggles in court and council which dominated the last years of Henry VIII's reign produced the shifting policies of reaction or toleration towards reform, but while political intrigue determined the incidence of persecution and decided the victims the events of 1540 were to reveal that Protestantism was spreading independently, thwarting the restoration of Catholic orthodoxy, whatever the policy of government. The religious history of London was inextricably linked with the feuds of contending factions at court in the confused months of the spring and summer of 1540, not least because many of the protagonists and persecuted were Londoners themselves. The tensions witnessed in the capital between orthodox and reformed, and popular disturbance there, underlay all the machinations in high politics and influenced the outcome.

Not by Preaching: Tocqueville on the Role of Religion in American Democracy

Abstract: Both Jack Lively and Marvin Zetterbaum comment on the paradoxical character of Alexis de Tocqueville's teaching in Democracy in America with regard to the importance of religious belief in maintaining liberal democracy. By concentrating on the political utility of religious belief to the point of indifference as to its content, they argue, Tocqueville undermines the very belief he finds necessary to the preservation of liberty. Moreover, how can the proponent of unrestrained freedom of the press and the enlightened rationalism of “self-interest rightly understood” advocate the creation of “social myths”? Both critics conclude that Tocqueville's position is untenable. I shall argue, on the contrary, that Tocqueville's argument is internally consistent. From a democratic perspective, Christianity represents an accidental historical heritage. By adapting to democratic conditions, Christianity can persist and even have important political effects, however. It provides an essential foundation for the individual and political self-restraint necessary to maintain liberal democracy, but it exercises its influence indirectly, through the wholly liberal means of public opinion in the context of a strict separation of church and state. Because Tocqueville sees a natural source for the simplified religious beliefs necessary to maintain a liberal democracy, he does not need to advocate the inculcation of “myths.” Popular faith alone does not secure the liberty of the individual in the United States, but in the absence of widespread religious belief, neither economic “individualism” nor liberal political institutions would either.

Two Traditions in the Study of Religion

Abstract: Glock, Charles Y. and Robert N. Bellah 1976 The New Religious Consciousness. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lofland, John and Rodney Stark 1965 "Becoming a world saver: A theory of conversion to a deviant perspective." American Sociological Review 30: 862-875. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge 1979 "Of churches, sects, and cults: Preliminary concepts for a theory of religious movements." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 18: 117-131. ainbridge, William Sims 78 Satan's Power: Ethnography of a Deviant sychotherapy Cult Berkeley: University in "Towards a theory of religion: Religious pres a commitment." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. in "Networks of faith: Interpersonal bonds press b and recruitment to cults and sects." American Journal of Sociology. Stark, Rodney, William Sims Bainbridge and Daniel Doyle 1979 "Cults of America: A reconnaissance in

Generations of Faith: The Christian Indians of Martha's Vineyard

Abstract: IN New England there was an Indian king that said he saw that there were many of their people of the Indians turned to the New England professors. He said they were worse since than they were before they left their own religion. And an Indian said, before the English came, that a white people should come in a great thing of the sea, and their people should be loving to them and receive them; but if they did hurt or wrong the white people, they would be destroyed. And this hath been seen and fulfilled, that when they did wrong the English they never prospered and have been destroyed. So that Indian was a prophet and prophesied truly.'

Faith Priorities of Pastor and Laity as a Factor in the Growth or Decline of Presbyterian Congregations

Abstract: Data from 204 Presbyterian congregations were used to assess the importance of various aspects of faith and theology for congregational growth or decline over a six-year period. Data included selfreports by pastors and laity plus ratings of each by the other. None of the faith priorities and theological views strongly correlated with congregational growth. The few weak associations that occurred were consistent with Dean Kelley's theories that conservative theology and avoidance of social action are conducive to growth. Measures of pastor-lay differences were unimportant except for differences between laity's ratings of their pastors and their self-reports on the question of social action.

Faith and Behavior: Religion in Introductory Psychology Texts of the 1950s and 1970s.

Abstract: Examination of text content reveals that authors do not reflect the increased interest in psychology/religion shown by other criteria.

Imago dei as Foundational to Psychotherapy: Integration versus Segregation:

Abstract: In the last issue (Vanderploeg, 1981), the concept of the Imago Dei was shown to be central to being human and as establishing human beings as essentially relational, called to relationship with God and with each other. God's election was seen as at the core of the Imago Dei and hence as a universal phenomenon. In the present article, the intrapsychic aspect of personality is also discussed as a third important relational aspect of the Imago Dei. The Imago Dei is seen as foundational to psychotherapy, providing both a ground for therapy and a mandate. The therapeutic relationship is understood as covenantal and as an affirmation of God's election, as it is a relationship in which clients are universally supported in enhancing their relationships, that is, the Imago Dei. The transpersonal, God-person relationship is also discussed, both as to how it manifests itself in therapy and how it can be dealt with therapeutically. Throughout, the focus is on questions which help therapists intergrate their faith wi...

A Critical Account of Some of Josef Albers' Concepts of Color

Abstract: Joseph Albers' bookInteraction of Color is widely influential but, according to Lee, has not received close critical attention. Lee undertakes to refute Albers' general claims about colour experience (that colour deceives continually) and to show that Albers' system of perceptual education is fundamentally misleading (Albers 'places practice before theory'). Four topics in Albers' account of colour are examined critically: additive and subtractive colour mixture, the tonal relations of colours, the Weber-Fechner Law and simultaneous contrast. In each case Albers is shown to have made fundamental errors with serious consequences for his general claims about colour and his pedagogical method. It is suggested that Albers' belief in the importance of colour deception is related to a misconception about aesthetic appreciation (that it depends upon some kind of confusion about visual perception). It is suggested that the scientific colour hypothesis of Edwin H. Land should be considered in lieu of the concepts held by Albers. Finally, there are implications for a reassessment of Albers' artworks that might follow a loss of faith in his colour concepts that seem to have been their foundation.

William Tyndale's Conception of Covenant

Abstract: ‘The right way, yea, and the only way, to understand the scripture unto salvation’, declared William Tyndale, is to seek in it, ‘chiefly J L and above all, the covenants made between God and us.’ For the Henrician heresiarch, the key to the reforming of England was the bible in translation, and the key to the bible was the idea of covenant. By the power of that idea he proposed to free England from the clutch of Rome: covenant would unlock scripture, cleanse it of popish corruptions and fit it to its work of reformation. Thus instructed, his countrymen would build their faith not on Roman sand but ‘on the rock of God's word, according to his covenants …’ Tyndale was not the first theologian to discover covenant in scripture, but he infused die concept with unprecedented energy: it became his cardinal principle of exegesis and the ruling element in his project of religious revolution.