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Artificial Intelligence (AI) isset to revolutionise global knowledge domains and biblical hermeneutics is no exception. At face value, in Zimbabwe, AI has been stigmatised as a humanistic and profane technological system with an immense propensity to cause general religious backsliding, degeneracy, vain philosophising and secularisation of the Gospel of Christ. This article isolated Colossians 2:8 as a lens to investigate the congruency of Artificial Intelligence to the pericope’s scope of ‘philosophy, vain deceit, tradition of men and rudiments of the world’. The Zimbabwean setting was used to examine whether the Colossian Christian Church’s philosophical aspersions bear any semblances to how AI is viewed among the clergy, theologians, Christian believers and academics of religious studies. The qualitative methodological paradigms of African Biblical Hermeneutics and Exegetical Method were employed in the study. The study mainly established that AI, like a tool in the hands of a workman, can either build or destroy, enhance or adulterate biblical hermeneutics depending on how it is viewed and used. Contribution: The article reflects on how the world’s most nascent technological development, Artificial Intelligence, impacts on biblical interpretation generally, but, more particularly, in the Zimbabwean context.

The pastoral role is a significant leadership function within the global evangelical church and is critical to the ongoing health, nurturing and spiritual development of the church and its members. There is limited literature and reflection on hiring for the church, yet the selection of a pastoral leader is more than an employment exercise as it involves important Christian values, perceptions and priorities of the church and the denomination. This article records a study on pastoral hiring process within a significant evangelical denomination in Canada. It uses a descriptive, multiple case-study approach involving four churches engaged in a pastoral search process. Findings revealed a convergence between church practices and typical organisational processes with pragmatic strategies for hiring decisions. In a secularising society of Canada, it is especially important that the church critically reflects on maintaining scriptural values on its hiring practices and not be shaped by the commercially driven business context to distinguish ethical practice and maintain its Christian witness. Contribution: This study provides new knowledge in the field of congregational studies on a much-neglected area of Christian practice, motivating for critical reflection and scriptural integrity within pastoral hiring processes.

The aim of this contribution is to reflect on the relation between religion and morality. An overview of the different theories of the origin of morality is provided. According to Blanchard, there are four traditional ways in which the origin of morality can be explained: (1) origin from nature, (2) origin from ourselves, (3) origin from culture and (4) origin from an objective moral law. The last instance creates the possibility for religion to be identified as the origin of morality. In reflecting on the relation between religion and morality one realises that the question that needs to be discussed is whether religion is indeed the provider of morality or not. It is also necessary to determine if religion is the guarantor for morality. The aim of this contribution is to reflect on the relation between religion and morality. An overview of the different theories of the origin of morality is provided. In reflecting on the relation between religion and morality one realises that the question that needs to be discussed is whether religion is indeed the provider of morality or not. It is also necessary to determine if religion is the guarantor for morality. What happens in a secularised society? Is it still possible for morality to exist in a secularised society? It is clear from an understanding of secularisation as differentiation – the separation of spheres – religion and morality can be separated and can exist independently in a secularised society. The influence of the evolution theory by Charles Darwin led to a new way of understanding the nature of morality. Some reflection on the influence of evolution on morality is presented here. One prominent recommendation resulting from this investigation is to emphasise that religion can provide the morals for morality. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This contribution reflects the intersection of anthropology, philosophy, religion studies and ethics. The discussion is based on a philosophical reflection on the relation between religion and morality.

Secularism is a very popular topic in social sciences and in theology. Father Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann (1921–1983) addressed this topic and raised many questions, which are still very relevant in today’s Eastern European context. He presented the distinctive vision of the Eastern Church, according to which all the solutions to overcome the actual crisis caused by secularism can be found by rediscovering the Liturgy of the Church as the primary source not only for theology but for all other aspects of church life. Contribution: The present article aims to discuss the whole problematisation related to the impact of secularism on orthodoxy and to present the highly topical solutions that Father Alexander Schmemann proposed for the survival of the Christian Orthodox ethos in the novel conditions of the postmodern world.

The objective of the article was to critique two cognitive strategies used by both proponents of Christian and secular moralities to justify an exclusionary relationship between them, thus contributing to the conflict between them. They are the cognitive strategies of foundationalism and incompatibilism. The objective was also to resume a critical discussion of these two strategies in Wentzel van Huyssteen’s publications. The method followed was, first, to provide a historical reconstruction of the relationship between Christian faith and the secular and, second, a critical analysis of Richard Dawkins’ foundationalist view of secular morality and Stanley Hauerwas’ incompatibilist view of Christian morality. Findings were that influential views of a positive relationship between Christian faith and secular morality are found in history, and that the foundationalist view of Dawkins and the incompatibilist view of Hauerwas are both untenable and contextually inappropriate. This led to the conclusion that there is no justification for the view that Christian morality and secular moralities necessarily exclude one another. The remaining challenge to find an alternative approach that would allow for a more positive relationship between these two moralities and provide guidance on adaptations they need to make was also identified. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The Christian ethical research undertaken in the article drew on research findings in the fields of Christian Ethics, Church History, philosophy, evolutionary ethics and psychology. Research results present Christian and philosophical ethics with the challenge to find an acceptable alternative for the problematic foundationalist and incompatibilist approaches.

What if language was an autonomous historical being? What if language’s use was not solely dependent on the intentions of the one who speaks? In this text I will test these provocative statements. Specifically, I will investigate whether language’s proclaimed historical independence can be traced in the usage of the concept of ‘secularisation’, and I will try to unveil the consequences of this operation. Contribution: Has Christianity abandoned the public stage in the ‘secularised’ and industrialised world? In this article I intend to demonstrate that this is not the case. The continuous operative presence of Christianity in our socio-political language is used as the model to prove this argument.

In pre-democratic – also pre-modern – times, religion had been at the centre of much of human life, filling the private as well as the public realm of people’s daily existence. However, with the change to democratic rule in major countries in the modern world (see, most influentially, Article 1 of the French Constitution after the French Revolution and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, influencing all other democracies in their wake), religion has for the most part reflexively been sidelined from public life. Or has it? Does religion not still hold a special place in law in democratic societies, but now in reverse? Firstly, whereas matters of religious faith had throughout the greater part of human history been included in matters of politics, it is now as a matter of course of law excluded, purposely so. Religion is thus still a ‘special case’, a unique aspect of humanity when compared to all other matters, in law as much as in politics and other aspects of public life. Secondly, in the post-secular cultural climate dawning across the world, matters of faith (religion, spirituality) are no longer as stringently excluded from public life, which impacts directly on how religion is touched upon in law, sociology, philosophy, music and other academic disciplines too. Our dawning post-secular age is bringing something new. Two scholars, who have been doing foundational work in this regard, have done so fully in parallel, not taking cognisance of the mutualities in their academic contributions. Otto in Munich, Germany, has been combining his two areas of expertise, the Pentateuch in the Hebrew Bible and the sociologist Max Weber, to indicate the trajectory through history of democratic impulses from Ancient Near Eastern founding documents into the current era. Benson in Sydney, Australia, has on his part been drawing on his expertise in law as practised in Canada and taught in Europe, South Africa and Australia to indicate how, in inclusively liberal democracies, law cannot justifiably be used to exclude religion from the public domain, as has been the usual modern case. Drawing together these parallel contributions, Lombaard places these initiatives within the emerging post-secular climate, which augurs a different way of being religious or non-religious, publicly as much as privately, in democratic societies in our time.

Secularism dealt with the known, whereas religion dealt with the unknown. The rise of secularism threatened the survival of religion. This was the thesis of Auguste Comte. He said there would be a time when the irrelevant nature and death of religion would be recorded. At this point, man would have been able to unravel most of the unknown around him, hence no need for religion. The article has as its aim to examine the flaws in Auguste Comte’s ideology on the existence of religion and secularism together. Using the descriptive phenomenological method of research, which allows for an objective analysis of the problem, it was discovered that, notwithstanding Comte’s theory, religion and secularism have continued to exist side by side since the 20th century to the contemporary 21st century because they are complementary. It was also discovered that religion exerts a force that cannot be silenced by an industrial revolution of the world. Religion provides the solution to man’s innermost needs which cannot be threatened with the rise of secularism.

It is now 49 years since Johan Heyns’s Sterwende Christendom? [Dying Christendom] was published (1969) in which he traced the history of secularisation and its impact on the theology of his time and 36 years since the publication (1982) of the first volume of his Teologiese etiek [Theological ethics] in which he discussed the impact of secularisation on ethics. In this article, the topic of the impact of secularisation on Christian ethics is revisited. Account is taken of research conducted on the secularising impact of modernisation since then. Although empirical research points to the fact that it is not true that modernisation inevitably leads to the complete demise of religious faith and ethics, and also not that there is today absolutely no room for religious influences in the different social orders, it does not mean that it is a case of business as usual for Christian ethics. It cannot be denied that modernisation has a significant effect on the shape of Christian ethics in the contemporary world. And it can also not be denied that in most contemporary liberal democratic societies, including South Africa, the public role of Christian ethics is restricted. Some of the challenges – and opportunities – present-day realities pose to South African churches and their members are identified and discussed. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: On account of the pluralising and fragilising impact of modernisation on Christian faith, the discipline of Christian ethics should today criticise the absolutising of Christian ethical beliefs and encourage Christians to actively support consensus seeking on moral values in the workplace and in society.

Some Victorian evolutionary thinkers, such as James Frazer, theorised that humanity’s mental stages are characterised by magic, followed by religion, culminating in science. Put another way, the notion of humanity’s encounter with the sacred in society will eventually retreat, giving way to secular conditions, and that science and rationality would triumph as a more persuasive means of satisfying human needs. In this first foray in explorations on spirituality and religion, this article asks what the fundamental differences between religion and spirituality are, and will examine the aspects of spirituality that are freely accessible and freely chosen and that are uneasy with religion, by looking at some of the constructed borders that result in religion becoming narrow, rigid, prescriptive and less attractive. The article then examines how the phenomenon of spirituality is creating new paradigms of consciousness. It draws on the literature on religion, spirituality, sociology and anthropology, and concludes that religion will not go away despite the efforts of secularisation.

The Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) is in transition because of the influences of the more recent South African epochs of democratisation, Africanisation and globalisation. The histories of these epochs extend over more than 20 years and have had a significant influence on the church. The Dutch Reformed (DR) Church changed institutionally because its place and influence within society changed considerably as a result of political and social transformation since 1994. The ongoing process of Africanisation that accompanies these transformations brings certain reactions to the bosom of the church via the experiences of its members. Most are Afrikaners being more inclined to westernised social frames of reference. Ironically, these people are more susceptible to the effects of globalisation, especially secularisation, which transposes the religious set-up of the DR Church into an open and individuated system. These developments pose major challenges to the DR Church in the sense that it has to reconsider how it approaches society, what it can contribute to the ecumenical church, why it is necessary to reflect on its denominational identity and what its academic, theological endeavours in these regards entail.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article has an interdisciplinary scope because the multiplicity of the present-day calls for interdisciplinary academic reflection. For the purpose of this article, Church Historiography helps to systemise recent ecclesiastical developments within the DR Church. To clarify the influences of these developments on the DR Church, sociological premises are incorporated to describe them within a broader social context. References to the conducted empirical study serve to explain respondents� (members of the DR Church) social and religious constructs regarding these ecclesiastical and sociological phenomena.

The concept of self-secularisation has been identified by Wolfgang Huber, bishop of the German Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), when he reflected on the context of the church in Germany. Self-secularisation however, is a worldwide phenomenon with effects in South Africa as well. After discussing the origin of the concept and its interpretations, the author tries to identify instances of self-secularisation within especially the Afrikaansspeaking churches, although not limited to them, in South Africa. The theological jargon comes under scrutiny, civil religion, the pluralistic society within which the church exists, the effect of emotionalism, the commercialisation of the church, the role of mass media and the phenomenon of infotainment, rationalisation and a lack of ethics are some of the elements identified and discussed. Finally the author attempts a correction by indicating what the church ought to do in order to counter the effects of self-secularisation.

This article deals with the importance of a missional approach to the funeral and bereavement counselling process in congregational praxis in the midst of a context of secularisation. The creation of a missional perspective on the funeral and bereavement counselling could support the nature and praxis of a congregation in a secular society, especially if the congregation finds its relevance in the expression of the missio Dei. The basic theoretical research for missional ecclesiology, which is the systematic study directed toward greater knowledge of the fundamental aspects of missional ecclesiology (National Science Foundation 1953:38), is based on the premise that God is the source of all missions. The expression missio Dei means to join God in the mission he is already busy with in the world. As the one who sends, God the Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit sends the church. The church only participates in the mission God is already busy with. It is a mission that uses both words and deeds and brings hope in the midst of tragedy. It is the hope of the kingdom of God and the incarnation of Christ that can already be experienced and expressed in the present. It is also the hope of the transformation of everything to form a new heaven and earth. Hope and mission can therefore not be separated. The concretisation of the expression of the kingdom of Christ in the world is hope, and a strong emphasis is therefore placed on mission as action in hope. Hope must be present where tragedy reigns, and the funeral and bereavement counselling can be used as a vehicle for this hope. Hope can then become an instrument of healing. The church can thus participate in God’s mission in the midst of tragedy and make an impact on society by taking on a missional character of hope.

In chapter four of his book, The unintended Reformation, Brad Gregory argues that ethical thinking since the 1500’s experienced a major shift in emphasis from the teleological concept of a ‘substantive morality of the good’ to liberalism’s ‘formal morality of rights’. He attributes it to the religious upheavals and ‘sociopolitical disruptions’ during the Reformation era. This article probes three elements of Gregory’s argument. Firstly, the article offers a critical assessment of Gregory’s depiction of the Reformation’s stance towards reason. It pays particular attention to the Reformation’s understanding of the effects of sin on the human being’s image of God, reason and the possibility for a shared social ethics. Secondly, this study scrutinises Gregory’s argument that the Reformation created an individualist notion of selfhood in contrast to the Roman Catholic communal notion of selfhood and thereby paved the way for modernism. Lastly, the discussion probes into Gregory’s claim that the Reformation’s ethical paradigm diverged radically from the Latin Christendom paradigm and that this contributed to the subjectivisation of ethics, by replacing a virtue ethics with a rights ethics.

What does the end of traditional metaphysical language about God mean? In conversation with New Testament scholar Andries Gideon van Aarde on his understanding of a postsecular spirituality South African New Testament scholar Van Aarde’s explorative search for a new direction in theological reflection is explicated in this article with reference to his discussion of Peter Berger and Charles Taylor’s contemporary contributions, which Van Aarde takes as vantage point to articulate the meaning of his ‘courage to be a religious person today’. The articulation of his ‘courage’ to pursue a post-theistic understanding of a contemporary Christian religiosity (read: spirituality) that is non-fundamentalistic, non-populist and post-secular is discussed. At the same time, the basic tenets of his explorations are indicated, being constituted – negatively – by a de-centering of the power of institutional religion and, positively, by the enchantment of a Biblical hermeneutics that does not emphasise a proposition-like and moral code-like reading strategy. Finally, his ‘new direction’, which finds expression in the articulation of a ‘spirituality of living faith’, is scrutinised. It exposes the shortcomings in his (individualistic) exposition within the new correlation of modernisation and pluralism, causing it subsequently to bypass the necessary contemporary outcome in social embodiment.

The existence of creation, especially of life, depends on the work of the third Person. In keeping with his nature as holy, the Spirit undergirds creation by providing separation and relatedness. This activity is, however, not of such a kind as to remove the measure of freedom that God gave through his selflimitation, and that is necessary for creation to occur. It is possible for individuals and society as a whole to ignore the Spirit, and for secularisation to occur. The action of the Spirit also underlies the new creation, which results in a distinctive society, the church, which is characterised by separation and relatedness. Through the church, the Spirit seeks to influence society as a whole by example without removing its freedom. To maintain the validity of this example, the Spirit also seeks to develop the church as a holy society, specifically counteracting the factors that produce secularisation in society.

This essay sets out to argue that postsecular spirituality is about the quest for hypergoods within today’s mass populist- and consumerist-oriented world. It shows that people who consider themselves to be spiritual not only have many values in their lives, but rank some values higher than others, with some being ranked as being of supreme importance, the so-called hypergoods. Such ethics has an interpersonal character, and in Christian circles this reopens the issue of biblical hermeneutics, especially the phenomenon of conflicting interpretations. Against the background of the various options of being religious in the secular age, the essay focuses on Charles Taylor’s view of the discovery of spirituality in a posttheistic world and his emphasis on the love of God and the ethics of justice as hypergoods.

The church must be concerned to make the correct response to its increasing impotence and marginalisation in Western society due to secularisation. Past reaction has been to accommodate to the changed worldview, even to identify with it. A more appropriate response is to be Christocentric, so as to reflect the action of God himself in the sending of Christ for salvation. This involved his kenosis . In this case the response of the church is its own kenosis. This is also appropriate as secularisation was possible through the kenosis of God. The kenosis of the church is not an acceptance of defeat, but on the contrary, just as the kenosis of Christ, it aims at a positive result, the transformation of society.

Recent decades have witnessed the acceleration of the process of secularisation, along with related effects in society such as a decline in morals. Christians must wonder why God allows this to happen. The suggestion is that this is a result of God’s selflimitation, kenosis, allowing a process of which He does not approve for the sake of human free will. Kenosis follows as a possible result of a distinction between the divine and the created world, which permits secularisation. This is generally seen as a result of the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment, with effects in industrialisation and urbanisation; all of these can be linked with God’s kenosis. However, secularisation must not be seen as inevitable, but as having been exacerbated by the state of the church. If the result is a refining of the church, it could eventually lead to a resacralising of society.

Following a previous article in this journal on various methods available to portray the history of scholarly thinking, especially philosophy (cf. Van der Walt 2013), this essay focuses on the consistent problem-historical method of the late professor Dirk H.Th.Vollenhoven (1892-1978) of the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In three main sections the method's origin, contours and the reactions it evoked are discussed. The first main part reveals that Vollenhoven derived his method from two German philosophers of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantian philosophy, viz. N. Hartmann (1882-1950) and R. Höningswald (1875-1947), who developed a "Problemgeschichtliche" historiography of philosophy, focussing on philosophical problems as they developed during the 2500 years of Western thinking. Hartmann and Höningswald, because of their late rationalist, neo-Aufklärung orientation, still believed in an objective, neutral approach in scholarship. They, therefore, rejected the upcoming irrationalist tendencies with relativist implications. Since Vollenhoven was a committed Christian, embracing the ideal of an integral, Scripturally-directed philosophy, he modified the problem-historical approach of Marburg, rejecting both its rational dogmatism and the opposing irrational relativism. The implications of his unique stance was, inter alia, that he did not view (as was the case with his contemporary German fellow-philosophers) the history of philosophy as a process of gradual progress, but instead from his Christian-religious orientation distinguished between pre-Christian (pagan) Greek philosophy, synthetic, Patristic and Medieval Christian philosophy and subsequent anti-synthetic, secular philosophy. In the second main section five criteria (formulated at the end of the previous article in this journal) are applied to test the validity of Vollenhoven's methodology. Firstly, he developed his analysis of the history of Western intellectual thought consistently from his own, integral Christian-religious perspective. This was possible because, according to him, religion of whatever kind is not restricted to an earlier period in history, one's private life, church or theology. Religion is not something a person "has", but what he/she "is", it is characteristic of being human - life in its entirety is religion. This stance enabled Vollenhoven to use the Scriptures (not in a biblicistic way, but as orientation) to enquire firstly, about a philosopher's idea of God, secondly, his/her view about normativity or law and, thirdly, about the thinker's perspective on ontic, anthropological and epistemological issues. Secondly, Vollenhoven also worked in a consistent historical way, starting his investigations with ancient Greek philosophy, the cradle of Western thinking. His integral Christian approach enabled him to determine in the "passion of the Western mind" its relationship towards God's threefold revelation. Accordingly, he divided the entire history, as already stated, into three main epochs: (1) pre-Christian, pagan Greek, Hellenistic and Roman philosophy (unaware of God's Word), (2) synthetic philosophy amongst the Church Fathers and Medieval philosophers (combining pagan and Christian thought patterns) and (3) subsequently both anti-synthetic, secular thought (from the Renaissance) and anti-synthetic Christian thinking (starting with the 16th century Reformation). Vollenhoven's division into these four main periods thus included his implicit critique of the "progress" of Western philosophy. Vollenhoven's method also passed the test of a third criterion, viz. in being consistently philosophical in nature. He synchronically distinguished about sixty-six different consecutive normative currents, responsible for the dynamic, ever-changing nature of theoretical thought. Fourthly, his method is also consistently problem-directed. He discovered and distinguished a vast number of ontological types (viewpoints about the structure of cosmic reality), starting from a few fundamental ones, moving to detailed anthropological and epistemological differences amongst philosophers, thus providing a diachronic view of history. Also in this regard his presentation of the history of philosophy and other disciplines included his implicit critique on various philosophical problems and their solutions. The outcome of the last (fifth) test applied is also positive: Vollenhoven himself as well as his followers applied the method successfully with valuable results - not merely in philosophy, but also in the history of, for example, aesthetics, psychology, dogmatics, mathematics, etcetera. In the third main part of this exploration seven points of critique levelled against the method are considered. (In each case a possible response is included.) They are the following: (1) Vollenhoven himself did not provide an always clear and final exposition of his method. (2) The method is considered as too specialised and complicated to be used, especially in teaching the history of philosophy to students. (3) It is biased by its one-sided Christian perspective. (4) It is (too) selective in nature, ignoring the personal and cultural backgrounds of Western intellectuals; (5) It has a tendency towards schematism. (6) The wide-ranging terminology it employs is too complicated. (7) Philosophical concepts are allocated dominant roles, while individual philosophies, philosophers and other scholars disappear in the background. By way of a few metaphors the final conclusion highlights the enduring value of Vollenhoven's method. The author has already applied it himself in articles in this and other journals and considers it as a viable method amongst the present confusion in the historiography of philosophy and other subjects. Since humilitas was regarded by Augustine as the main requirement for genuine philosophising - including a philosophia Christiana -Vollenhoven's unique method similarly should, however, not be regarded as the last and final word about the very difficult issue of how to portray the history of something unfamiliar and strange, called "philosophy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Church and society: a Christian-philosophical reflection The problem to be discussed is the role of the church in society. In spite of the fact that this was a topical issue throughout centuries, it has today – especially because of the increasing secularisation of the social environment – become a burning issue. It seems as if churches are becoming more and more marginalised, as if they have lost their relevance for broader societal life. This article, however, indicates that a major reason for the situation may be with the churches themselves, viz. a wrong conception about their own identity. From a Biblical-Reformational perspective this wrong view is first explained historically. It is followed by a systematic exposition of the church as a societal relationship. Such a Christian-philosophical analysis in no way harms, but rather enhances the uniqueness of the church. According to this philosophy of society the church no longer needs to be irrelevant. The contribution is concluded by indicating, on the one hand, how the church should not be involved in societal life and, on the other hand, how it should correctly be related to the other aspects of life.