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In recent years the doctrine of divine simplicity has become a topic of interest in the philosophical theological community. In particular, the modal collapse argument against divine simplicity has garnered various responses from proponents of divine simplicity. Some even claiming that the modal collapse argument is invalid. It is our contention that these responses have either misunderstood or misstated the argument, and have thus missed the force of the objection. Our main aim is to clarify what the modal collapse argument in fact says, and explain why the recent responses do not succeed. In order to argue our case, we will proceed in several steps. First, we aim to systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, articulate the Christian conviction that God is free to create any feasible world or no world at all. Third, argue that divine simplicity suffers a modal collapse and thus undermines God's freedom. Fourth, respond to potential objections to modal collapse. Fifth, we offer some concluding remarks.

This article recounts how Neo-Scholastic international lawyers navigated the complex political landscape of the 1920s and 30s, combining universalism, nationalism and religious belief. Participating in the contemporary re-engagement of Catholics with modern politics, they re-imagined the international legal order in Catholic terms. They argued that a universal morality, overruling the extremes of state sovereignty, was the only solid basis for just and stable global legal relations. While the contribution of Catholics to the establishment of the post-war world order and the rise of human rights is widely acknowledged, the interwar genealogy of these developments is not. Reading these thinkers' universalist legal tenets in conjunction with their political trajectories provides a relevant frame to understand the moral charge characterizing international law in the early years of the Cold War.

This paper argues for an interpretation of the real of presence of Christ in the Eucharist using relational ontology as the basic metaphysical theory. Relational ontology, in its one form, denies the existence of intrinsic properties so that things that exists are just instantiations of particular sets of properties that receive their essence from their relation to other things. If there are good reasons to accept relational ontology, it could potentially help one to solve certain problems in transubstantiation model, without giving up the idea of real presence.

This paper analyses an amazingly close analogy between models of generalised trinitarin logics on the one hand side and class hierarchies in the field of object-oriented programming on the other, thus linking philosophy of religion and computer science. In order to bring out this analogy as clear and precise as possible, we utilise a metaobject protocol for the actual implementation of the theological models. These formal implementations lead to the insight that the analogy can be pushed even further, and we lay bare and analyse the close relation between the theological notion of subordination of divine persons and precedence in structures of multiple inheritance. The implementation of theoretical godheads finally leads to new metaobject programming techniques, thus underlining the cross-fertilisation between theology and computer science.

Berkeley “argues with the learned and speaks with the vulgar.” I use his double maxim to interpret his ethics. My approach is new. The Sermons and Guardian Essays mainly speak to the vulgar and Passive Obedience and Alciphron reason with the learned. The reward of ethics is eternal bliss in a future state: religion and ethics are connected. I study a set of problems: resurrection, eternal life, happiness, benevolence, the goodness of God, and self-love. Divine bliss is unlike any earthly happiness. The idea of law does not support benevolence, even if it is a Christian duty and virtue. God is good, but how to prove it? The learned must study the complex theodicy problem; the vulgar need assurance based on their sensuous experience and fervent hope of eternal bliss. Self-love may be a vital issue to the learned, although the vulgar may not realize their need to overcome it. The main questions concern Berkeley’s two approaches to ethical problems: first, how do their topics differ, and second, are they mutually consistent?

This article argues that recent results of the cognitive sciences could make significant contributions to theological debates about free will, but they have been largely ignored by contemporary systematic and philosophical theologians. Recent work in cognitive psychology and moral psychology has to do with our intuitive and automatic patterns of reasoning in the domains of freedom and responsibility. This research will be relevant for many theological domains and has the potential to raise new issues and problems. The essay examines three such domains. First, the debate between intellectualist and voluntarist accounts of the will have been central in theology. Recent findings suggest that intellectualist accounts of the will have more intuitions on their side than has been previously assumed. Second, theologians have debated whether belief in free will is central for moral and political life. This question was pertinent during the Reformation when many of the reformers either rejected free will or presented truncated accounts of it. Recent results from moral psychology suggest that belief in free will has significant pro‐social and altruistic effects. Finally, the possible compatibility of divine determinism and free will is crucial for theological debates about sin, grace and God’s providence. Recent psychological results point in the direction of affirming that while most humans have strong intuitions about the incompatibility of free will and divine determinism, these might be based on a false inference. Finally, some new counterintuitive challenges about the manipulativeness of God are raised against the divine determinist position.

During the last decades it has been common to assert-especially in the field of science and religion-that the aims characteristic of religious practice determine the norms we should employ when evaluating its normative status. However, until now, this issue has not been properly investigated by paying attention to contemporary metanormative research. In this article, I critically examine how different popular theories of normativity relate to the proposed normative significance of the aims characteristic of religious practice. I argue that whether or not, and in what way exactly, the aims characteristic of religious practice are normatively significant is highly dependent both on controversial issues concerning the nature of religion, and on a number of controversial metanormative issues.

Abstract: This paper has three aims. First, it provides the historical background necessary to understand the nature of academic systematic theology as it is currently being pursued in Nordic countries. Second, it questions whether the current methods of analytic theology are able to fulfill the desiderata of Nordic academic systematic theology. To this end, I suggest a specific methodological solution. Lastly, I assess if analytic theology can remain theological when using this methodology.

Summary In this article, we will use contemporary analytic tools to make sense of the main arguments in the classic debate on free will between Erasmus of Rotterdam and the Reformer Martin Luther. Instead of offering another exegesis of these texts, we put forward an analysis that links this historical debate with contemporary discussions on free will and grace in philosophical theology. We argue that the debate was ultimately about how three theological core claims are related to one another: the Anti-Pelagian Constraint (humans are incapable of willing any good, in order to come to faith), the Responsibility Principle (humans are morally responsible in the eyes of God) and human free will. Erasmus attacks Luther by arguing that the Responsibility Principle cannot be maintained without free will, while Luther responds by arguing that Erasmus must reject free will, because it is in conflict with the Anti-Pelagian Constraint. Luther is then left with the dilemma of justifying the Responsibility Principle without free will – a task, which in our estimation, fails. In the concluding section of the article, we point out some continuities and discontinuities between the contemporary debate and that of Luther and Erasmus.

Although the majority of the Hebrew Bible prophets are men, their masculinity has rarely been examined. This article analyzes the masculinity of Jeremiah vis-à-vis traditional hegemonic ideals of masculinity. These ideals include sexual, physical, and inner strength as well as authority and persuasive speech. The book of Jeremiah values these traditional ideals but Jeremiah himself is not a hegemonically masculine man. He does not exhibit sexual strength since he is not married and has no children. He lacks masculine authority when he does not succeed in persuading his opponents. Whereas God shows masculine physical strength, Jeremiah does not defend himself against his opponents. Jeremiah also lacks inner strength when he complains to God in his so-called confessions.

In this article I formulate a skeptical argument against the possibility of adhering to the divine will in a non-accidental way. In particular, my focus in the article is on a widely embraced modal condition of accidentality, according to which non-accidentality has to do with a person manifesting dispositions that result in a given outcome in a modally robust way. The skeptical argument arises from two observations: first, various authors in the epistemology of religion have argued that it is often not possible to reason reliably about religious matters, and second, non-accidentally adhering to a given norm is often associated with reasoning about the requirements of the norm in question in a reliable way. In addition to pointing out the existence of the argument, I outline strategies in which religious thinkers could reasonably challenge it by denying that reliable reasoning about the requirements of divine will is necessary for adhering to it in a non-accidental manner. Hence, I argue that the possibility of non-accidental adherence to the divine will does not depend solely on whether it is possible to reliably reason about what it requires one to do.

Justin Barrett and Kelly James Clark have suggested that cognitive science of religion supports the existence of a god-faculty akin to sensus divinitatis. They propose that God may have given rise to the god-faculty via guided evolution. This suggestion raises two theological worries. First, our natural cognition seems to favor false god-beliefs over true ones. Second, it also makes us prone to tribalism. If God hates idolatry and moral evil, why would he give rise to mind with such biases? A Plantingian response would point to the noetic effects of sin. Such a response, however, would have to assume that God is restoring the minds of believers. This paper considers empirical reasons to doubt that such a process is taking place.

Summary This article considers the utility of a liturgical lens for locating and analyzing religion in the public sphere. Dominant paradigms in the study of religion tend to either dissolve the religious/secular distinction or base it on overly cognitive content. Drawing on the work of James K. A. Smith, the article outlines an approach which instead locates religion in embodied practices that shape human desire. I suggest the religious/secular binary is better conceptualized as a continuum in which liturgical intensity is the primary criterion of religiosity. A liturgical continuum better articulates the contested nature of public space and the religious aspects of political life.

In 2006, a Metal Mass—a regular Lutheran mass with accompanying metal music—was celebrated in Helsinki and created a controversy on several online forums. On the one hand, the focus was the appropriateness of metal music in the context of a Christian mass. On the other hand, the issue at stake was the appropriateness of Christianity in the context of metal music and culture. In this article, we concentrate on how the controversy over the boundaries of ‘good’ religion is constructed in discourse about the appropriateness of metal music in the context of a national church and its services. We argue that the controversy over the Metal Mass is a case of broader negotiation between the function and performance of religious actors in contemporary Finland, yet when it happens within a secularized context, the temporarily full pews turn out to be an anomaly rather than a sign of revival.

In the past two decades, scriptural reasoning (SR) has gained wide acceptance as a promising new method of interreligious dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims and is rapidly gaining attention all over the world. SR as interfaith dialogue between the Abrahamic religions emerged in an Anglo-American context in the early 1990s. The first long-term experiment of SR in China was carried out in Beijing from December 2014 to September 2015 as a cooperative project between the Minzu University of China and the University of Helsinki. This SR included the sacred texts of the Chinese traditions of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism alongside the canonical texts of Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant) and Islam. All the scriptural faith traditions of China were represented in this dialogue. The process of SR was carefully researched by Dr Li Huawei; the results show that it is justified to say that SR seems well-suited as a method of interfaith dialogue between the main faith traditions of China. We may assume that SR in China will have far-reaching influence in the future.

Summary This paper explores pastoral care as a common task of all Christians in the light of theology and philosophy of love in contemporary Finnish Lutheran theology. Pastoral care is about taking care of one’s suffering neighbours, which theologically is about love. The so-called Finnish school of Luther studies considered Luther as a theologian of love. Finnish theological ethics has concentrated on interpretation of Luther’s theology. Luther’s concept of love has been reinterpreted by Risto Saarinen with the idea of gift and recognition. Following Saarinen, and Jaana Hallamaa’s ethical theory of agency, the paper illustrates how the Lutheran idea of love can be based on agency, gift giving and reciprocity and so be understood as praxis in terms of Christian life. To conclude, the question of what makes caring Christian in nature, or pastoral care in other words, is explored in the light of faith as trust.

Michel Foucault acknowledged that the Reformation was a pastoral battle and a reorganization of pastoral power. He did not, however, analyze Protestantism much further. This article broadens the scope of critical research on Protestantism, focusing on Lutheranism. Preaching is a fruitful way to overcome overemphasis on confession. In this endeavor I apply Foucault's concept of "master's discourse." I argue that while, in Lutheranism, conversion through comprehensive soul-searching is an individual matter, at the same time it relies on technologies aimed at a collective audience, such as preaching. Since preaching is divine speech, the Lutheran priest wields enormous spiritual power: the preacher is the truth-teller and the subject is required to listen to and internalize the proclaimed truth, instead of confessing their sins.

Publisher Copyright: © 2021, Catholic University of Louvain. All rights reserved. In this article, the God’s relationship to time is viewed from the perspective of modern physics. The purpose is to examine new perspectives by introducing a theory of time that has been unexplored in contemporary theology. The paper begins with an analysis of the two competing views of God’s relationship to time: timelessness and temporality. They are reviewed from the perspective of the special theory of relativity. In contemporary theology, God’s timelessness is usually combined with the block universe theory, which is based on the concept of unchanging spacetime. God’s temporality is usually associated with presentism, which denies the concept of spacetime. This division reflects a central conflict in physics: the mainstream interpretation of the special theory of relativity treats time as unchanging spacetime, while quantum physics treats time as dynamic and flowing. To resolve this conflict between the ontologies of the special theory of relativity and quantum physics, the implicate order theory is introduced. The implicate order theory was developed by David Bohm (1917–1992), one of the most visionary physicists of the 20th century. After introducing the theory, it is applied to the context of God’s relationship to time. This produces interesting new opportunities for theological research.

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Given how central free will and moral responsibility are for theology, Christian theologians should not remain at the sidelines when scientists and philosophers debate recent empirical results about human agency. In this article, the core notion of free will is identified with the agent's cognitive ability to exert control over his or her actions thereby making moral responsibility possible. Then three scientifically inspired arguments for free will skepticism are outlined: the argument from eliminativism, the argument from determinism and the argument from epiphenomenalism. The remainder of the article explores novel responses to these arguments and draws some theological implications from them.

This paper proposes to reconsider agnosticism by taking a step onto a meta-level, investigating agnosticism not as an epistemic stance regarding the choice between theism and atheism, but as a stance toward the question concerning the cognitive meaningfulness and/or truth-aptness of religious discourse. It is argued that this &ldquo, meta-level&rdquo, meaning agnosticism may actually be an attractive articulation of a certain kind of religious attitude. While pragmatists like William James have claimed that (epistemic) agnosticism practically collapses into atheism, meaning agnosticism at the meta-level can in fact be a pragmatist position focusing on our human condition and its limits. Additional issues, such as the relations between agnosticism and the theodicism vs. antitheodicism debate regarding the problem of evil and suffering, are also briefly examined.

The Song of Songs communicates both aesthetic and emotional “meaning,” but the poem’s message in historical context should not be overlooked. After arguing that it is possible to translate poetry, this article suggests—as a dynamic equivalent in-text solution—“pleonastic” translation. Within the chosen skopos, this translation style adds pleonasms (synonymous adjectives) to metaphors to convey the most essential associations from the source text’s cognitive environment. Meanwhile, it honours the purposeful polysemy and the emphatic elusiveness of the poetry. Although the use of pleonasms spoils the original brevity of the Hebrew poetry, one can compensate for this by other poetic devices. Part 2 (forthcoming) exemplifies this with a translation of Song 7.2-6 (English 7.1-5) that is true to the poetic nature of the Song of Songs, its emotional expressions, and its register, while also rendering the metaphors intelligibly for today’s reader.

Building on general accounts of recognition and gift-exchange in the contemporary theory of recognition, this article examines the medieval philosophical psychology of gifts and love. It will show that medieval philosophically oriented theological texts, particularly the so-called spiritual literature, contain intricate discussions of the nature of the gift, as well as the dialogical formation of the self, both of which are central issues in modern recognition theories. The claim will be exemplified by an analysis of the spiritual treatise Soliloquium de arrha animae, or Soliloquy on the Betrothal-Gift of the Soul, by the twelfth-century theologian, Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141). The text manifests (1) the idea of the soul’s need to be individually loved; (2) the multilayered notion of the gift; and (3) various descriptions of the acts of recognition between the soul and God. Moreover, it serves as an example of a historical articulation of phenomena that have been interpreted in modern terms as a universal human need to be recognized individually as a person. Building on general accounts of recognition and gift-exchange in the contemporary recognition theory, this article examines the medieval philosophical psychology of gifts and love. It will show that medieval theologians like Hugh of St. Victor (d.1141) had intricate discussions about the nature of the gift, as well as the dialogical formation of the self, both of which are central issues in modern recognition theories. His treatise Soliloquium de arrha animae manifests the idea of the soul’s need to be individually loved; the multilayered notion of the gift; and various descriptions of the acts of recognition between the soul and God.

Summary It is usually supposed that biological design arguments (where biological complex order is seen as evidence of a Creator) are made obsolete by Darwinian evolutionary theory. However, philosopher Alvin Plantinga and others have defended the continued possibility of a rational “design discourse”, in which biological order is taken as a sign of God’s purposeful action. In this article, I consider two objections to design discourse: (1) a theological objection to biological design based on the problem of natural evil, and (2) the evolutionary objection, according to which evolutionary theory removes the justification for any biological design perception. Whereas Plantinga’s own response utilizes the arguments of the Intelligent Design movement, I argue in favor of utilizing “design discourse” as part of a theistic evolutionist view.

In this paper, we argue that Samuel Pufendorf's works on natural law contain a sentimentalist theory of morality that is Smithian in its moral psychology. Pufendorf's account of how ordinary people make moral judgements and come to act sociably is surprisingly similar to Smith's. Both thinkers maintain that the human desire for esteem, manifested by resentment and gratitude, informs people of the content of central moral norms and can motivate them to act accordingly. Finally, we suggest that given Pufendorf's theory of socially imposed moral entities, he has all the resources for a sentimentalist theory of morality.

This article examines the position of Joseph Ratzinger with regard to the classical question in the field of the theology of religions, the salvation of non-Christians. In criticism of a recent book by Ambrose Mong, it is argued that Ratzinger is not a soteriological exclusivist but an optimistic restrictivist inclusivist. As explained by Gavin D'Costa, restrictivist inclusivists allow for the salvation of non-Christians, though they do not regard non-Christian religions as salvific structures per se. While restricting the salvific activity of God to the human conscience or certain positive elements in non-Christian cultures, this kind of an inclusivist may still be a soteriological optimist, as proves to be the case with Ratzinger. Having examined the subjective and objective aspects of Ratzinger's inclusivism, namely the concepts of conscience and Stellvertretung (vicarious representation), the article shows that in the 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi the two lines of thought are combined by Pope Benedict XVI in a reinterpretation of the doctrine of purgatory, in such a way that 'the great majority' of people are believed to reach eternal salvation.

I argue that we should emancipate the problem of evil and suffering from theodicist assumptions that lead to a chronic non-acknowledgment of the sufferers’ experiential point of view. This also entails emancipating the problem of evil and suffering from the need to consider the so-called argument from evil. In the argument ‘from’ evil, evil and suffering are seen as pieces of empirical evidence against theism. This presupposes understanding theism as a hypothesis to be tested in an evidentialist game of argumentation. Such a presupposition already fails to acknowledge the depth and variety of both religious and nonreligious approaches to living with evil and suffering. One way of cashing out what moral antitheodicism amounts to is to analyze theodicism as a failure of recognizing others’ suffering. Furthermore, one way of cashing out what this mis- or nonrecognition amounts to is to analyze the unforgivability of evil. Focusing on recognition and forgiveness here can be understood as an attempt to...

The purpose of this article is to provide a broad overview and analysis of the evolution of natural theology in response to influential critiques raised against it. I identify eight main lines of critique against natural theology, and analyze how the defenders of different types of natural theology differ in their responses to these critiques, leading into several very different forms of natural theology. Based on the amount and quality of discussion that exists, I argue that simply referring to the critiques of Hume, Kant, Darwin, and Barth should no longer be regarded as sufficient to settle the debate over natural theology.

For many years, scholars have entertained the idea that monotheism appeared in Second Isaiah as a result of Zoroastrian influence. Since the issue of monotheism is inappropriate for either the Persian or the Judaean contexts, this paper argues that a more fruitful angle to pursue the Persian context of Isaiah is through analysis of the concept of creation. This paper takes the Achaemenid creation prologues in the Old Persian inscriptions as a comparator for the use of creation in Second Isaiah, and places these two in a broader ancient Near Eastern context of creation mythology. It is argued that both share distinctive features in the way creation is presented and understood. Given the novel and similar concepts visible in both corpora, it is argued that the vision of creation and form of yhwh as creator are the earliest attested instance of “Iranian influence” on the Judaean tradition.

The Reformation gave a strong impetus to a development which has made marriage and family the (Protestant) Christian norm and singleness the exception. This article examines ascetic ideals in early Christianity from the viewpoint of remarriage. While staying celibate was uncommon, the valorization of an ascetic lifestyle prevailed – as long as it represented “true” asceticism, based on free will, and not “heretical” asceticism, allegedly based on false grounds. It was not an easy task to harmonize some scriptural teachings to such ascetic tendencies. One of the problematic passages was the recommendation to let young widows remarry (1 Timothy 5:14). This article analyses reading strategies applied to this passage by three ascetically inclined authors, Tertullian, John Chrysostom and Epiphanius. In spite of their different geographical and historical situations and differences in their attitudes towards remarriage, their readings of this passage contain several similarities – along with some dissimilarities.

The influence of political and loyalty treaties on Deuteronomy is uncontested, but the exact nature and date of this influence is controversial. Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty contains many parallels, but Deuteronomy’s relationship with the treaties seems to be more extensive and complicated than a direct borrowing from one treaty. Although the clearest parallels can be dated to the monarchic period, the influence of the treaties on Deuteronomy can only be post-monarchic in origin. The influence of treaties is especially evident in covenant theology and exclusive monolatry. These ideas were introduced into Deuteronomy rather suddenly without a gradual Fortschreibung. It is not necessary to assume an inner-biblical influence on these theological ideas. More probable is a direct borrowing from treaty ideology and concepts. Behind these new ideas were scribes who had worked in the Judean royal court and been responsible for treaties. Having a deep understanding of such documents, they created revolutionary theological conceptions that were possible only after the older order and its main institutions had collapsed in 587 b.c.e.

This essay compares Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenological examination of the ”excess” of suffering to William James’s pragmatism, arguing that both thinkers develop an ”antitheodicist” criticism of theodicist attempts to render suffering meaningful. Their antitheodicism is ultimately based on their phenomenological recognition of the embodied character of human subjectivity and of suffering. The relation between involvement and detachment is then investigated as an issue concerning our ethically appropriate ways of attending to others’ suffering. These notions are also illuminated by some literary references.

Giles of Rome’s view of faith in the reportatio of his questions on book III of the Sentences (q. 38, d. 23) is founded on a likening of faith to rhetoric. The firm intellectual assent that characterizes them both is caused by the will, motivated by emotion, or affective bias. This paper argues that this is made possible by Giles’ move away from Aquinas’ position on the assent produced by rhetorical discourse, which Aquinas thought to be of little certainty, while Giles affirms that, based on the will’s natural control over the intellect, it can be as certain as faithful assent, and that the psychological process that produces it can serve as a model for that which produces faithful assent. The new function Giles gives to rhetoric underlines the evolution of thirteenth-century views on faith, as shown through a comparison of Giles’ view with two other doctrines of faith that use examples similar to the one Giles employs: those of Philip the Chancellor and Peter John Olivi. For the former, faith founded on affective bias is a typical example of non-virtuous faith, while for the latter, just as for Giles, it is the very model of virtuous faith.

The author reviews John Barclay’s book Paul and the Gift, considering it one of the most important theological books in recent years. He asks whether the so-called “perfected” gift always manifests an extreme and proposes that it can sometimes also visualize an optimal mean between the opposites. The author further compares Barclay’s concept of “incongruity” with the medieval view of meritum de congruo, arguing that that the latter can also represent such generosity which is typical of God’s gift.

Despite the Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, justification by faith is a troublesome doctrine to Catholics. Scott Hahn’s Romans is used to illustrate four inadequate ways of explaining (away) Paul’s doctrine of justification.

It is a common assumption that biological organisms appear as though they were designed. Prior to the Darwinian revolution, the order of biological organisms was often taken as a sign of their divine Creator. It is also commonly argued that Darwinian evolutionary theory as a good explanation for the adaptive complexity of biology reveals this appearance to be merely an illusion. However, in recent philosophical discussion several defenses of the compatibility of divine design and Darwinian evolution have emerged. These defenses insist not only that divine design and evolution are compatible, but even that biological organisms can continue to function as pointers to the Creator, even in a Darwinian cosmos. This article explores and extends these recent arguments. I analyze four different strategies for arguing that the wisdom of the Creator is apparent in biological organisms. The basic underlying assumption is that the products of some larger whole can reflect the rationality and designedness of t...

Methodological naturalism, the exclusion of the supernatural from the natural sciences, has drawn critique from both proponents of Intelligent Design and some philosophical naturalists who argue that the methods of science can also be used to evaluate supernatural claims. One principal objection to methodological naturalism has been what I call the truth seeking objection. In this article I develop an understanding of methodological naturalism capable of answering the truth seeking objection. I further also argue that methodological naturalism as a convention of science can be best defended by abandoning scientism. In this way methodological naturalism can be reconnected to the original theistic context in which it was first developed.

The “God of the gaps” critique is one of the most common arguments against design arguments in biology, but is also increasingly used as a critique of other natural theological arguments. In this paper, I analyze four different critiques of God of the gaps arguments and explore the relationship between gaps arguments and similar limit arguments. I conclude that the critique of the God of the gaps is substantially weaker than is commonly assumed, and dismissing ID´s biological arguments should rather be based on criticizing the premises of these arguments.

Reprinted in Eike Broch & Ana Honnacker (eds.), Das Böse erzählen: Perspektiven aus Philosophie, Film und Literatur, LIT, München, 2017, pp. 147-169.

This paper tackles the vexed relationship between the ethical and the legal in the patriarchal construction of marriage and spousal rights in Islamic interpretive tradition and its modern manifestations (i.e. contemporary Muslim family laws and conservative religious discourses). I approach the issue from two angles. First, I examine the work of selected Muslim women scholars from different countries, who since the late 1980s and early 1990s have been engaging critically with Islamic interpretive tradition, to unpack and critique patriarchal interpretations and rulings on marriage and divorce rights, and provide alternative egalitarian readings that are grounded in Qurʾānic ethics. Second, I shed light on how this patriarchal construction of marriage and gender rights impacts the lived realities of ordinary Muslim women and men. I focus on two national contexts: Egypt and Finland. I show-through analysis of courtroom practices in family disputes, marriage practices, and ordinary women’s understandings of the sacred text-that the exegetical and juristic construction of spousal roles and rights is increasingly unsustainable in the lived realities of many Muslims as well as becoming a source of tension on an ethico-religious level.

How does Philo of Alexandria depict the formation of a wise person? This article pays attention to the centrality of spiritual training in Graeco-Roman philosophy, and argues that Philo likewise regards the process of seeking wisdom as entailing mental practice. The analysis focuses on two passages of Quis rerum divinarum heres sit and Legum allegoriarum where Philo attributes lists of spiritual exercises to the figure of Jacob. As such, these accounts illustrate how Philo makes use of scriptural interpretation as he imagines the execution of a life dedicated to wisdom. The listed exercises are largely familiar from Graeco-Roman philosophical traditions, yet they coexist with and contribute to the performance of Philo's ancestral tradition. This mέlange of cultural elements suggests that Philo discusses Jacob's inner cultivation in order to enable his audience to grasp (one prospect of) how to lead a Jewish philosophical life in the Roman Alexandria.

It is no secret that Christian dogmatic theology adopted a generous number of its concepts from Platonist philosophy; by the time of the Cappadocian fathers, it was customary to talk about divine matters in Platonist terms. It is, however, much more difficult to track the Platonist influence during the formative centuries of Christianity. In the last decades, the academic community has gradually come to realize that research into the Platonizing tendencies of early Christian texts may shed new light both on their meaning and their historical context. This study advances along this path. Its focus is on the Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian sayings collection. The core hypothesis of the study is that Platonism in its “Middle” form had a significant impact on this text. An inquiry into the Gospel of Thomas with this particular viewpoint has not been done systematically prior to this dissertation. At least nineteen Thomasine sayings (i.e. one-sixth of the entire collection) were in some way influenced by the Platonist tradition: ● Sayings 56 and 80 make use of the Platonist notions that the world is a body and that every human body is a corpse in order to express a view of the world that is essentially anti-Platonist: the world is nothing but a despicable corpse. ● The opposition of the body to the soul portrayed in sayings 29, 87, and 112 presupposes a stark dualism of the corporeal vs. the incorporeal and appears to be indebted to Platonist anthropology. ● The Thomasine notion of being/becoming oua (sayings 11 and 106), oua ouōt (saying 4, 22, and 23), and monakhos (sayings 16, 49, and 75) has the closest parallels within Platonist speculation about oneness as an attribute of a perfect human, a perfect society, and God. ● The expression ōhe erat⸗ in sayings 16, 18, 23, and 50 reflects the Platonist usage of the Greek verb ἵστημι as a technical term for describing the immovability of the transcendent realm. ● Thomas 61 appropriates the opposition of being equal (to oneself) vs. being divided from the Platonist metaphysics of divine immutability and indivisibility. ● The imagery of the lion and the man in saying 7 portrays the struggle between reason and anger and is derived from Plato’s allegory of the soul, reinterpreted from a Middle Platonist perspective. ● The notion of the image in sayings 22, 50, 83, and 84 should be interpreted against the background of the Middle Platonist metaphysics, where the Greek term εἰκών came to designate both the model (= παράδειγμα) and its imitation (= ὁμοίωμα). These nineteen sayings and, consequently, the Gospel of Thomas as a whole bear testimony to the fact that, during the nascent years of Christianity, certain individuals acknowledged de facto that the Platonist tradition possessed theoretical principles, concepts, and terminologies that could adequately describe and convincingly explain the nature of ultimate reality. Although the Gospel of Thomas is neither the first nor the only early Christian text with Platonizing tendencies, it appears to be an important witness to the early stages of the process that eventually led to the formulation of Christian dogmas in Platonist terms.

The discussion on the Buddhist roots of contemporary mindfulness practices is dominated by a narrative which considers the Theravāda tradition and Theravāda-based ‘neo-vipassanā movement’ as the principal source of Buddhist influences in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and related mindfulness-based programmes (MBPs). This Theravāda bias fails to acknowledge the significant Mahāyāna Buddhist influences that have informed the pioneering work of Jon Kabat-Zinn in the formation of the MBSR programme. In Kabat-Zinn’s texts, the ‘universal dharma foundation’ of mindfulness practice is grounded in pan-Buddhist teachings on the origins and cessation of suffering. While MBSR methods derive from both Theravāda-based vipassanā and non-dual Mahāyāna approaches, the philosophical foundation of MBSR differs significantly from Theravāda views. Instead, the characteristic principles and insights of MBSR practice indicate significant similarities and historical continuities with contemporary Zen/Sŏn/Thiền and Tibetan Dzogchen teachings based on doctrinal developments within Indian and East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism.

This paper discusses the main lines of medieval Latin approaches to future contingents with some remarks on Marcin Tkaczyk’s paper “The antinomy of future contingent events.” Tkaczyk’s theory shows some similarity with the general frame of the views of Ockham and Scotus, the difference being that while medieval authors argued for the temporal necessity of the past, Tkaczyk is sceptical of the general validity of this necessity. Ockham’s theological view was that God eternally has an intuitive and immutable knowledge of all possibilities as well as whether they are ever actualized or not (Panaccio & Piche 2010). The content of God’s past knowledge attitude remains contingent before the free choice takes place because God’s knowledge could be different similarly as the truth-value of the proposition. While Ockham held that no past or present thing follows from future things as an effect follows from its cause, this causal link is defended by Tkaczyk. Later thinkers thought that the doctrine of the scientia media sheds light on this question; perhaps it is easier to understand than the retroactive model which is not contradictory but difficult to imagine, as Tkaczyk concludes his paper.

While a habitus can be described as a disposition towards a certain type of act, such a definition is not sufficient to encompass the diversity of uses the medieval thinkers made of this concept. It is the aim of this paper to examine the habitus of faith in the voluntarist Franciscan tradition in order to illustrate several of its functions and how these varied from author to author. Studying how the habitus of faith works for Bonaventure, Peter John Olivi and John Duns Scotus allows us to examine different takes on these functions and illustrates the variety of possible positions even within a tradition that emphasizes the freedom and agency of the moral subject above all. We will highlight three different capacities a habitus can grant: the capacity to pick out its proper objects, in the present case, the objects of faith; the capacity to elicit certain acts that without it would not have been possible or at least that would not have had the moral value the habitus grants them; the capacity to unite several powers in the performance of a given act.

Several philosophers and scientists have claimed that modern cosmology forces us to think that humans are insignificant from the cosmic point of view. This argument for atheism derived from...

There exist very different accounts about the attitude of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI to interreligious dialogue. Does interreligious dialogue aim at truth and intertwine with mission, or is it an impossibility that needs to be replaced with an intercultural dialogue about peaceful coexistence and common values? This article traces the complex history and relationship of these views from the 1990s, through the much-misunderstood letter to Marcello Pera in 2008, until Benedict’s retirement. Despite impressions to the contrary, Pope Benedict XVI’s commitment to interreligious dialogue remains firm.