Pojęcie objawienia w Dei verbum

Was Joseph Smith a Monarchotheist? An Engagement with Blake Ostler's Theological Position on the Nature of God

Instead of directly addressing the theme of this conference, which begins with ‘Problems of spiritual awakening of a personality’, what is included herein is a potential solution to the problem. This paper is written from the author’s personal perspective, as an evangelical Christian. It provides material for each person to ponder and for reflection on well-being. The Bible, and particularly the Gospel of John, is interpreted using the Four Domains Model of Spiritual Health/Well-Being to support the claim that Jesus Christ is the paramount exemplar of spiritual well-being. This model proposes that spiritual well-being is reflected in the quality of relationships that each person has with self, others, nature and God. As Christ showed how to live in harmony in these four domains, which is the ultimate of spiritual well-being, his life provides a foundation for us to emulate. Christ not only showed us how to live in harmony with God, nature, others and self; he provided the way. Each person has the choice, whether or not to follow in his footsteps to achieve the ultimate of spiritual well-being – eternal life with God. If parents, pastoral carers, pedagogues, physicians, politicians and the populace, including pupils, cared for themselves and others in the same manner as would Jesus Christ, what a wonderful world it would be. We would not only be spiritually aware but fully awake.

If we set aside the Bible, and perhaps the Queste, Dante's Commedia (1307–21) may be called the first great work of Christian fantasy. The Bible is different: the 'fantastic' accounts there, whether of the Garden of Eden, the vision of Ezekiel, the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ or the Revelation of St John, are intended to be believed, even while they may also be allegorised. The events surrounding the fall may not, if such an event really occurred, have been those of the myth in Genesis; but that myth was intended as truth, in so far as the Bible was the revealed word of God, and was taken as truth in countless artifacts and writings at least for most of the 2000 years from the life of Christ — as, of course, was every detail of Christ's life. The vision of the Last Things granted to St John in Revelation may have been tailored to his mortal capacity and remoulded in his own memory, but his imagery has conditioned the way we think of such events: 'The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: who bare record of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.'1

For ancient authors, hope tends to be a dangerous thing. It can set us up for practical as well as moral failure. Elpis, the Greek word we translate as hope, is typically an attitude or emotion that is desiderative and goal-oriented, but it can also denote neutral expectation of evils as well as goods. The first author to treat elpis as an unqualified good, given a very specific object of desire (eternal life in Christ), is St. Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament. Before him, good hopes – including eschatological hopes expressed in other ancient mystery religions – had to be designated as such to be distinguished from bad hopes, which preponderate in Greek literature. But the ancients recognize good hope, foremost in the competitive strife that defines public life. Hope could be seen as a necessary motive, linked to confidence and courage. The ancient world, especially in Jerusalem and Rome, knew also hope in a future ruler, a hope more soteriological than political. Whatever hopes might be expressed for the city-state or empire, the philosophical schools of antiquity developed the case against personal hope and passionate agitation.

Christianity places a high value on one’s faith in Jesus Christ, and from this belief, one fosters a perception of LGBTQI people. The general patriarchal idea that the only true, biblical sexual orientation is heterosexuality is one of the elements contributing to the religious obstacle the LGBTQI face. Lesbian[1] spouses and their children are frequently subjected to animosity and rejection from members of the local community, where they choose to participate in religious activities. This is because lesbians and/or lesbian families depart from the so-called heterosexual norm. To analyse how the Christian church refers to homosexuality. I will use Michel Foucault’s philosophy on discourse and power as a theoretical underpinning to examine the preconceived concept of a fixed social hierarchy within the Christian church and society. The paper focuses on the biblical discourses that underlie lesbian identity. By highlighting how colonial impressions resulted in a homophobic reception of the bible, I argue for a positive reimagining between churches and the LGBTQI community and provide evidence that the Christian church and social hierarchies impact lesbian identity negatively through the implementation of the Biblical text and patriarchal ontology. [1] The term lesbian will be used to describe lesbian individuals with or without partners and children. Christianity’s emphasis on faith in Jesus Christ can shape perceptions of LGBTQI individuals. The notion that heterosexuality is the only biblically sanctioned sexual orientation, rooted in patriarchal ideals, presents a religiouschallenge for the LGBTQI1 community. Lesbian couples and their children often face hostility and exclusion from local religious communities, due to their departure from heterosexual norms. This article employs Michel Foucault’sdiscourse and power theory to examine how the Christian church and society maintain a fixed social hierarchy. Itfocuses on biblical discourses shaping lesbian identity and highlights how colonial influences have fuelled ahomophobic interpretation of the Bible. The argument advocates for a more positive relationship between churches and the LGBTQI community, asserting that the Christian church and social hierarchies negatively impact on lesbian identity through the use of biblical text and patriarchal views.

The hypnagogic effect of the milk in the Holy Bible

Despite the rampant popularity of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy novel series, Harry Potter is viewed by some Christian churches as an evil influence on children – popularizing witchcraft and magic; practices banned upon pain of death in The Bible. However within the Harry Potter story are symbols, images and themes that reflect a Christian influence. The biographical details of Jesus Christ and Harry Potter are also surprisingly similar. These observations compel us to ask whether there is a relationship between the two stories and to search for the historical roots of the shared elements. Did they originate with Christianity, or from a deeper, common source? I will argue that the key distinguishing feature between Jesus and Harry is the claim that Jesus was historical – a claim that may not be fully justified. My method of research will be historical, exegetical, and theological. To understand the underlying motivations surrounding this complex subject, a thorough literature review of the debate surrounding the historical Jesus, an introduction to ‘Christ Myth Theory’ (or the argument that the gospels are mostly a midrash of pre-existing mythological literature), and an examination of the evidence traditionally used in support of the historical Jesus are required. Specifically, I will focus on the early church controversies concerning the physical nature of Jesus Christ and the lack of agreement within the church communities over any indisputable facts regarding his life and death. Finally, I will raise examples of other mythological figures to demonstrate the universality of central biblical motifs.

In the Christian context, the resurrection of the dead is based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion, which forms the basis of the Christian faith that all people will experience resurrection at the end of time to face the final judgment. In the Old Testament, death is understood as the separation between body and spirit. After we die, our bodies will decompose and become soil again while the spirit will leave our bodies for the afterlife, also known as Sheol. There is also a belief in the resurrection of the dead, which is the physical return of the body from the dead. This belief is reflected in books such as Daniel and Isaiah, which state that at the end of time, God will raise the dead to eternal life or eternal punishment. This concept of resurrection affirms the belief in divine justice and restoration, where each person will receive reward or punishment according to their deeds. In Christian theology, the resurrection of the dead provides hope for eternal life as well as complete redemption, and simultaneously reminds the faithful of the importance of living righteously and faithfully to God's teachings.

Contemporary African theologians have taken a bold step to declare African Christianity a 'new religion' in its own right. Africans are called upon to be truly active agents and not fraudsters in their theology, Christian life, and welfare. Christian identity was racially determined and conditioned in apartheid South Africa. With more African countries having gained political independence from their colonial overlords, the issue of the relationship between Christianity and the state arose. Christians are identified and united together by the object of their worship, Jesus Christ. The identity of the religion-Christianity-is composed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Since Africa is defining Christianity and Christianity is defining Africa, there is confusion as to what really identifies them. The interpretation and portrayal of Christ, who gives Christians their own distinctive identity, in African contexts, should not unavoidably lead to a confused Christian identity.Keywords: African Christianity; alien fraudsters; apartheid; Christian identity; Jesus Christ

Prayer and Missionary Movement Beyond the Self John G. Flett (bio) INTRODUCTION1 This essay considers the problem and possibility of a mission spirituality. A significant tradition of mission spirituality exists amongst Catholic missionary orders, and Protestant contributions are by no means absent.2 However, in the main, these discussions focus on the link between spirituality and the particular missionary vocation—the spirituality serves this vocation. This article argues in a different direction. The missionary calling in question relates not to a separate vocation; it describes the Christian life as such. If we understand the Christian God to be missionary, as is the common ecumenical position (Ad Gentes §2), a corresponding missionary calling belongs to the being of a Christian. We find our identity in Jesus Christ as we, impelled by the Spirit, move beyond our closed histories and into the history of his mission to the world. The term "mission" is, of course, a contentious one within Western theological discourse. The rejection of a colonial past has included a related tendency to conceive mission not first as an external movement, but as an animus internal to the church. Mission, by this definition, becomes the witness of a community which builds itself up according to its spiritual practices and rhythms. Any externality, any movement of the church into the world, though not precluded, becomes contingent upon this internal dynamic. While a number of positive theological reasons might underlie this interpretive direction, one in particular stands out: we attempt to avoid the problem of missionary colonization by focusing on the spiritual life defined in relation to the church and its practices. There is, however, a counter argument to be made. Much mission theology of the latter half of the 20th century located the problem of missionary imperialism within Western ecclesiologies.3 That is, ecclesiologies which understood mission to be an external and secondary endeavor promoted a colonial mission strategy: mission replicated, in other places, those practices, rituals, and institutions deemed necessary to a proper spiritual witness "at home." Consolidating missionary witness within the church, in other words, produced an external mission method termed colonization. [End Page 246] To be sure, the logic is counterintuitive and counters much ecumenical discussion concerning the nature of the church, but it underlines a particular theological assumption: the prioritizing of worship and a corresponding spiritual life as essential over missionary movement as secondary and unessential. To address the problems related to this more or less firm binary, the following looks to the turning outward of the Christian spiritual life, and to develop better links between this life and its underlying missionary calling. This will be accomplished by using Karl Barth's treatment of invocation as the key act of obedience of the Christian. This understanding of prayer relates to his understanding of the active life and so to the issue of divine/human agency. Finally, the person of the Spirit and the spiritual life are explored. Throughout, prayer as the invocation of God moves the Christian and the Christian community beyond its closed history and toward the witness of the reconciliation of God found in Jesus Christ. THE PROBLEM OF PRIORITIZING OF WORSHIP OVER MISSIONARY MOVEMENT To develop this link between prayer and mission spirituality, it is first necessary to consider the relative ordering of Christian life and spirituality, with its rhythms and practices, over and above that of missionary movement. This ordering is especially evident when considering contemporary ecumenical accounts of the church and its witness. The logic begins with a notion of mission linked to the church's apostolicity and with an affirmation of the Christian community as the primary witness to the Kingdom of God. Grounded in the apostolic tradition, this community is constituted by a range of practices and led in a way derived from and reflective of the gospel. So defined, the processes of Christian formation and sanctification take center stage, and witness is the natural overflow of this proper inward action of upbuilding the Christian koinonia. Witness emerges as the consequence of a sustained process of enculturation into a Christian culture built up from a specific set of practices, symbols, institutions, and rituals, of a "prolonged catechesis" into these institutions...

While the history of philosophy is commonly seen as focusing on the problem of unity and multiplicity, the one and the many, an even stronger case can be made for regarding as essential the relation between what Plato calls “the same” (tō auto) and “the other” (tō heteron)—stronger, because when it is properly understood, the problem of the one and the many can be seen as derivative from that of same and other. How can we approach otherness without reducing it to the sameness of our own realm of will or understanding? The difficulty of philosophically addressing the other is traced throughout the history of metaphysics, with only Kierkegaard and Levinas taking seriously the problem itself, and neither arriving at a satisfactory resolution. It is concluded the solution to the problem of the other is to be found in ancient patristic thought, and ultimately in the Christian life—the life that seeks to participates in the self-emptying, self-giving life of the Holy Trinity—the life that gives itself away, abandons itself for the sake of the other, that the other may be, and that it might above all participate in the kenotic love through which the eternally same-in-other God creates and sustains the world, and re-unites it to Himself.

Wyclif’s theological doctrines are reasonably familiar and I do not intend to dwell upon them unduly here. They had their focus in his concepts of the Church, the Bible and the eucharisr, and they were the outcome of a singular combination of a metaphysics of realism—the belief in the reality of universal essences or natures, such as genera and species, and including being itself as the most universal essence of all—and an apostolic or evangelical view of Christian life, modeled on the life of Christ and his disciples, as one of purely spiritual mission and temporal renunciation. It was that combination which made Wyclif’s religious beliefs distinctive, and it is that which I wish to consider here.

Restoring the Church of Our Lady at Dordrecht in 1903 Jos.Th.J. Cuypers and town-architect H.W. Veth provided every window with stone tracery and montants again. The stained-glass which had been removed with most of the traceries during the 17th and 18th centuries was renewed as well. The general activities on the choir's both and the chapels' window-panes continually proceeded in consultation with the Government Committee which functioned as an independent consultative council to the Minister of the Interior. Dr. P. J. H. Cuypers being an important member of this committee this article makes researches into his influence on the choice of style and subject of these stained-glass windows. In the choir geometrically set up floral motifs and symbols of professions contrast sharply with the luxuriant intertwined leafs and tendrils in Dutch Art Nouveau style. Cuypers disapproved of the windows with the abstract rigid design (1903-04) because they were lacking in the simplicity and colour range of their medieval predecessors. The stained-glass windows in the Choir of Our Lady show stylistic differences as well. Designed by H. Veldhuis and executed by J.L. Schouten the three windowpanes in the Chapel of Jerusalem (1909) represent events from Dordrecht's history in a historizing-eclectic way after 16th/17th century paintings. Cuypers severely criticized subject and style as unfit to the history of the church which criticism was opposed by the chairman of the Restoration-committee Mr. J.C. Overvoorde. Cuypers being in favour of the mosaic-like character of the 12th and 13th century art of glass-painting, a note by J.L. Schouten, defends the picturesque appearance of these windows comparing them with the beautiful 16th century window-panes in the Church of St. John at Gouda which also describe monumental historical events. The same discussion reflects the argumentation on the choice of subject and style at a Protestant and a Catholic church. Cuypers considering transparency and decorativeness the most important characteristics of the art of glass-painting very much rejected their colour range and representations because they did not harmonize with the 15th century monument they had to adorn and complete. The artist has to adjust himself to the style of the monument in order to acquire harmony. Therefore the stained-glass windows of 1912 show a completely different style. Again designed by H. Veldhuis and executed by J.L. Schouten the window-panes in the Chapel of Meerdervoort show central themes of the life of Christ with appropriate symbolism and cross references to texts. Influenced by the oeuvre of contemporary Symbolists the medieval style of these window-panes has been stylized by geometrical forms and abstract elements. The window-pane in the Chapel of St. Pancras (1914) was designed by Cuypers himself although the execution rested with J.L. Schouten again. The confrontation of Pancratius with the Roman emperor has been represented within a classical setting which contrasts remarkably with the architectural framing of medieval motifs designed to harmonize with the building's style. The classical elements, the style and spatial illusion are highly representative to the - at the time already conventional - 19th century art of glass-painting. Thus the conflicting opinions and following choices and actions by Cuypers, Overvoerde and Schouten reflect Dutch problemacy on the art of glass-painting of about 1910. While discussion focused on the choice of the medieval, 16th/17th century or modern style results finally also show the confrontation of an elder and a younger generation both mostly following their own personal taste.

Jesus of Nazareth is said to be the sacrament of the saving grace of God and of man’s response to God in that grace. In himself Jesus is the encounter between God and mankind, the Immediator of man and God, the Word of God made world and history, man in his concrete dimensions and the total nexus of his relationships taken up into God. According to the apostolic preaching, in him alone, in his ‘name’ alone, is there the means of passing from a lethal situation into the possibility of survival. If men are going to pass from the world that is doomed to death, that can only be by entering into him, into his name, by in some way becoming him, by living out the biography of the one who, alone, no longer belongs to the dead past. Living it out, amongst other ways, sacramentally. Sacramentally we put on Christ, we are conformed to Christ, we are made one body, one spirit, with him.An old problem reconsideredSacramentally we enter upon the life of Christ by the rites of initiation, or rather by the single but modulated initiation-rite of baptism-confirmation. In those Churches where Christian initiation (rightly or unfortunately) has come to be divided into two rites separated by a more or less lengthy interval of time, there has always been a serious problem about how to speak of confirmation, a problem that has compromised attempts at an effective catechesis of the sacrament and, incidentally, often created something of an embarrassment in speaking of the place of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life. Only a very few theologians have felt able to deny that a baptized, unconfirmed person is a Christian.

The schism referred to in 1 John 2:18 had already taken place within the Johannine community, with specific reference to the divisions between members, about the identity of Jesus Christ. The author nonetheless uses different semantically related verbs for communicating the ‘message’ (1:5; 3:11) about Jesus’ identity, each one with a particular nuance: through ‘speech, declaring’ [ἀπαγγέλλeιν, 1:2, 3]; ‘proclaiming’ [ἀναγγέλλeιν, 1:5]; ‘confessing’ [ὁμολογeῖν, 1:9; 2:23, 4:2, 3, 15]; ‘testifying’ [μαρτυρeῖν, 1:2; 4:14; 5:6–11] and through ‘writing’ [γράφeιν, 1:4; 2:1, 7, 8, 12, 13 (2x), 14 (3x), 21, 26; 5:13]. In the last chapter of 1 John (1 Jn 5:5–12), the author’s testimony (in writing) that there is eternal life in Jesus Christ who is the Son of God culminates when he incorporates the fundamental testimonies of the Father, the Spirit and the water and blood to endorse this. The intention of this research is to determine conceivable spiritual experiences fostered among those early Christians when this message about Jesus as the Son of God, the Christ, was communicated to them through these activities (declaring, proclaiming, confessing, testifying) and confirmed via the testimonies of the Father, the Spirit and the water and blood.