Showing papers on "Revelation published in 1982"

To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought

Abstract: Acknowledgments Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the Midland Edition Auschwitz as Challenge to Philosophy and Theology I. Introduction 1. Introductions 2. Systems 3. Revelation 4. The Holocaust 5. "Foundations of Future Jewis Thought": Genesis of a Plan 6. "Foundations": From Plan to Execution 7. Napoleonic and Related Strategies 8. Language 9. Toward Future Jewish Thought II. The Problematics of Contemporary Jewish Thought: From Spinoza Beyond Rosenzweig 1. Introducting Spinoza and Rosenzweig 2. Baruch Spinoza 3. Franz Rosenzweig 4. Spinoza and Rosenzweig Today 5. Conclusion III. The Shibboleth of Revelation: From Spinoza Beyond Hegel 1. Rosenzweig on Hegel 2. Hegel on Judaism and Spinoza 3. Revelation as Shibboleth 4. The Basis of Hegel's Mediating Thought-Activity 5. Spinoza dn Hegel on Revelation 6. The Core of the Hegelian Mediation 7. Hegel's Mediation between Spinoza and Judaism 8. The Failure of Hegel's Mediation and Its Dialectical Results 9. The Move toward the Extremes 10. The End of the Constantinianism and the Turn to Dialogical Openness 11. Catastrophe 12. The Shibboleth of Revelation in Jewish Modernity IV. Historicity, Rupture, and Tikkun Olam ("Mending the World"): From Rosenzweig Beyond Heidegger 1. Spinoza, Rosenzweig, and Heidegger on Death 2. Historicity 3. Historicity and Transcendence 4. The Ontic-Ontological Circle 5. 1933: Year of Decision 6. The Age of Technology and the Age of Auschwitz 7. Unauthentic Thought after the Holocaust 8. The Spectrum of Resistance during the Holocaust: An Essay in Description and Definition 9. Resistance as an Ontological Categary: An Essay in Critical Analysis 10. Rupture, Teshuva, and Tikkun Olam 11. Historicity, Hermeneutics, and Tikkun Olam after the Holocaust 12. On Philosophy after the Holocaust 13. Concerning Post-Holocaust Christianity 14. Jewish Existence after the Holocaust 15. Epilogue V. Conclusion: Teshuva Today: Concerning Judaism After the Holocaust 1. The Problematics of Teshuva in Our Time 2. Rosenzweig after Heidegger 3. Yom Kippur after the Holocaust 4. The Message of Beit Ha-Tefutsot 5. The Sharing of Teshuva after the Holocaust Abbreviations Notes Index

1 & 2 Thessalonians

Abstract: The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship.

The god of faith and reason : foundations of Christian theology.

Abstract: How is it that Christian faith can be said to be in accordance with reason and at the same time to transcend reason? On the one hand, the concordance of faith with reason appears to reduce faith to rational thinking and to natural human experience; on the other hand, the difference between faith and reason seems to make belief unreasonable and arbitrary. In The God of Faith and Reason, Robert Sokolowski treats this theological difficulty not by speaking directly about faith and reason, but through an examination of the Christian understanding of God that focuses on God the creator and the world as created. In so doing, he demonstrates how the Christian concept of God preserves both the integrity of reason and the distinctiveness of faith. Sokolowski begins with a statement of the Christian understanding of God developed in terms provided by St. Anselm, in whose writings the issue of faith and reason surfaces in an historically significant way. He next brings to light the special character of the Christian understanding of God by contrasting it with the pagan understanding of the divine. While pagan and other natural religions see god as the most powerful part of the world, Christianity understands God to be separate from the world, not added to in any way by the act of creating it. This understanding of God and the world lies behind the belief in Creation, and is shown to provide the context for the other Christian mysteries, such as the Incarnation, Redemption, the Church, grace, and the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. The author also shows how the Christian understanding of God and the world helps clarify the difference between natural human virtues and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. In an appendix, he deals with the relationship between political philosophy and Christian revelation, and, through a discussion of the ideas of Leo Strauss, speaks of the place of politics and political reason in Christian belief. Throughout the book Sokolowski employs a method of theology based on phenomenology in order to show how the things of Christian faith differentiate themselves from the phenomena given to natural experience. With its insightful, straightforward arguments, The God of Faith and Reason is ideal for use in both introductory and advanced courses in natural theology, fundamental theology, Christian philosophy, philosophy of God, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics.

The Hidden Love Triangle in Mansfield's "Bliss"

Abstract: In her study of Katherine Mansfield's art, Anne Friis draws special attention to the style, which "hints and suggests rather than asserts. It is indirect, it is elliptic."' Mansfield abbreviates crucial thoughts or statements with 'dots and dashes, and "by the use of those punctuation marks she waives a mass of description and psychology."2 In her short story "Bliss" this technique is most apparent, perhaps, in a significant passage occurring just after Bertha Young has her first experience of sexual desire for her husband: "But now-ardently! ardently! The word ached in her ardent body! Was this what that feeling of bliss had been leading up to? But then then-" (SSM, p. 348).3 Only a proper understanding of the psychological meaning of the story's action enables us to complete correctly that final sentence. Previous critics generally seem to agree that "Bliss" embodies a provocative study in mood and feeling within a conventional love-triangle plot.4 The climax has been seen as Bertha's discovery that her husband Harry and her friend Pearl Fulton are lovers, a revelation which shatters her growing sense of marital bliss. In accordance with this interpretation, Robert Heilman identifies two main ironies: "Bertha's realization that her admired Miss

"By These Words I was Sustained": Bunyan's Grace Abounding

Abstract: A spiritual autobiography frequently creates its own structure; that is, the spiritual autobiographer documents and affirms the providential design he believes gives order and meaning to his life. Biblical narratives may suggest the paradigms on which the human models the description of his journey to his heavenly home and to his new identity as a child of God. The particular Puritan version of this structure became a specific generic paradigm, and in many ways, John Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1666) exemplified the classical Puritan conversion.' Bunyan's autobiographical selfpresentation in Grace Abounding certainly follows the traditional patterns of conviction of great sin, conversion through God's revelation and grace, and post-conversion trials and resolution, From the beginning until the point of the first and most important conversion, Bunyan stresses that his life followed a providential design. God allows him to attend school, to read and write; God judges him by nearly letting him drown. When he swore and blasphemed, he "wished with all my heart that I might be a little childe again, that my Father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing...."2 He records specific assaults on God's authority, and he is punished with terrible dreams and visions. God chastizes him for playing sports, particularly cat, a game with a piece of wood and a club. Providence also gives him blessings, such as a devout wife who eventually leads him to God. And through God's mercy he escapes death from an adder's sting, and from a musket bullet. Many readers have found the traditional providential pattern of spiritual autobiography a satisfying and complete description of the narrative structure of Grace Abounding. Among these is John 0. Lyons who recently stated that "the purpose of seventeenthcentury autobiographies is not self-revelation," and that the historical memoir and the more personal meditation were never combined.3 Other critics of Grace Abounding have granted the work a pivotal role in the history of the autobiographical act. William

Two Aspects of Babylon's Judgment Portrayed in Revelation 18

Abstract: As I have noted elsewhere, the book of Revelation itself contains a basic chiastic structure.' It becomes a matter of interest, therefore, to notice that in chap. 18 there also is a sort of chiasm-one that actually takes the form a-b-~-b'-a'.~ The introductory and concluding sections (vss. 1-3 and 21-24, respectively) closely parallel each other, for both contain a mighty angel's announcement of the fall of Babylon (heightened in the last instance by the angel's symbolic throwing of a stone into the sea), both describe Babylon's internal condition (prior to her judgment in the first instance and subsequent to it in the last instance), and both summarize Babylon's sinful activities and relationships with "all nations" and with categories of people (such as, "the earth's kings" and "the earth's merchants"). The next parallel sections in chiastic order are interludes that have the nature of appeals-in vss. 4-8 and vs. 20, respectively. We will analyze these particular sections in somewhat more detail shortly.

The revelation of the world of pupils

Abstract: (1982). The revelation of the world of pupils. Cambridge Journal of Education: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 175-185.

The Bible and the Hermeneutical Horizon: The Use of Scripture in Theology

Abstract: SOME YEARS ago I began work on a theological treatment of divine providence. I first published an article, "The Eternal Plan of Divine Providence." This was programmatic for fully rethinking the Christian faith concerning God's action in the world. Such a rethinking required, first of all, a study of all that Scripture has to say about God as Lord of nature and of history. Previous studies, in so far as they dealt with biblical material, considered only a very limited selection of texts designed to support a particular thesis that really originated elsewhere. They did not present a view that resonated to the faith of the believing community; for while they asserted firmly the power of God to achieve His purposes, they did not satisfactorily deal either with human freedom or with the presence of evil, especially moral evil or sin, in the world. Further, considerations of God's power finally overshadowed the reality of His universal love. In working on this study of what Scripture has to say about the divine action, it has become clear to me that a somewhat different way of dealing with the biblical data is called for than those commonly employed. This way does not reject or discount in principle other theological uses of Scripture; in fact, it gives them a new ground and support through a fresh look at the meaning of faith and revelation. In the present article I wish first to sketch briefly some of the other ways of using Scripture, then to describe the method I have come to employ, and finally to illustrate this by a summary presentation of the teaching of the Psalms on the divine action in the world.

Revelation through History in Recent Biblical Theology A Critical Appraisal

Abstract: The concept of revelation through history is not simply a passing theological fad or aberration, but belongs to the core of biblical religion.

Richard Selzer: The Rounds of Revelation

Abstract: The art of medicine has always been an art of reading and revealing. From the earliest Etruscan haruspices to the slides and cultures of SloanKettering, from the astral medicine of the Middle Ages to the green, pulsing cathode traces of twentieth-century monitoring devices, medicine has divined and advised, reading out the riddles of the body, interpreting its arcana, mediating the gap between man and man's own nature. It is a hermeneutic that draws back the fleshly texts that veil the workings and intimate meanings of the human organism. The GP's educated touch, the surgeon's knife, the pathologist's microscope are highly sophisticated tools of revelation, opening the body to understanding and, in times of illness, to the hope of cure. But this explication of the body's book, like other hermeneutics, is itself often veiled, shrouded in its own sophistication. The hard-won knowledge that directs the pathologist's eyes, the surgeon's wrist, and the GP's fingers also creates an order of initiates who can be reluctant to share the full revelations to which they are privy. The very instruments and procedures of medicine create a professional mystique that can distance nonprofessionals from their own healing. What profane observer would not be awed and deferential before the intricate tools, the gleaming machines, the elaborate purifications, vestings, and rituals that accompany the medical art? Behind these mysterious accidentals of medicine lie more substantive secrets. It may well be inadvisable, may even be impossible, for a physician to pass on his or her full knowledge of a patient's body to that patient. Sooner or later, every doctor faces the problem of how to

The Ecumenical Intentions of Pope John Paul II. The Third of the Four Quadrennial Lectures Under the Bequest of Judge Paul Dudley, 1750*

Abstract: In his third prescribed lecture out of four, for each of a Harvard student's year in College, Judge Paul Dudley, in parlous times for New England, with the Catholic French and their Indian allies a constant threat, asked that his Lecturer be mindful that the Seer of Revelation, carried away in the Spirit into a wilderness (17:3), saw a woman “and on her forehead was written a name of mystery: Babylon the great, mother of harlots” (17:5). He expressly identified “the Romish Church with that mystical Babylon.” The first Hollis Professor of Divinity, Edward Wigglesworth (1693–1765), gave the initial anti-Popery lecture in 1757, and he more than adequately fulfilled the Donor's intentions.

Yves de Vallone: The Making of an Esprit-Fort

Abstract: I Biographical.- 1 The Search for de Vallone.- 2 The Story of Yves de Vallone.- 3 The Calvinism of de Vallone.- 4 Predestination and the Quarrel with Jaques Bernard.- II "La Religion Du Chretien".- 1 Introduction.- 2 God.- God and Matter.- Atheism and Polytheism.- The Doctrine of the Trinity.- 3 The Soul.- The Nature of the Soul.- The Duration of Souls: Metempsychosis and Hell.- De Vallone and Spinoza. God and the Universe.- Occasionalism and Life after Death.- The Specific Identity of Souls.- Magic.- The World System of de Vallone.- Influences: the Anima Mundi, Nature and the "Grand Tout".- 4 Authority.- Reason.- Error.- The State, the Philosophes and the Common People.- The Jesuits.- "Bon Sens" and Conscience.- Sin and Punishment.- De Vallone's Theory of Human Psychology.- Can Any Sect Claim Religious Truth?.- The Religion of the Chinese.- Deism.- 5 Scripture.- Is Scriptural Revelation Worthy of God?.- The Style and Languages of the Texts of the Scriptures.- Who Wrote the Old Testament?.- The Authorship of the Books of the New Testament.- The Influence of Richard Simon.- The Character and Authority of the Prophets.- Spinoza and de Vallone.- The Sibyls.- 6 The Christian Religion.- The Person and Teaching of Christ.- Early Christology.- Contemporary Christianity.- III Conclusion.- 1 The Unorthodoxy of de Vallone.- 2 The Clandestine Manuscripts.- Cuppe, Meslier and the Militaire Philosophe.- The Three Impostors.- Henry de Boulainvilliers.- Nouvelles Libertes de Penser the Soul, Immortality and Freewill.- La Lettre de Thrasibule a Leucippe.- The Examen de la Religion: Rationalistic Deism.- The Character of the Philosophe.- 3 Conclusion.

Faith and History: A Critique of Recent Dogmatics

Abstract: A great deal of modern Protestant theology looks very much like an attempt to conduct a salvage operation which is designed to make clear how it is possible to retain belief in Jesus Christ, and at the same time remain intellectually honest. For the same sceptical challenge which faces the secular historian also faces the theologian. If Christians are correct in arguing that the locus of God's revelation to man is in Jesus of Nazareth, then in order to know about this supposed revelation, it is necessary to know about a period of time in the past; it is necessary to know the history of the man's life and actions. Theologians are therefore faced with the question: how, if at all, is it possible to bridge the logical gap between statements describing what Jesus of Nazareth said and did, and statements describing the evidence for what Jesus of Nazareth said and did. The solution found to this question by theologians tends to be determined by their conscious and unconscious philosophical presuppositions; just as it did in the examples discussed above of secular critical philosophies of history.