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The article includes a literary review of scientific works devoted to the study of specific features of the motivational and personal sphere of mothers with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), published in a number of countries in Africa and the Middle East. The author describes the difficulties faced by mothers in the process of education and treatment of their autistic children in these regions of the world; provides statistics on the extension of autism among the child population in South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The article presents studies assessing the degree of influence of religious and cultural aspects on the parents’ perception of their "special" children in Israel and Somalia.

A preface to "Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought & Culture," is presented.

The article reflects on the cultural-historical aspects of the burial of suicide victims and its resonance in church funeral service. Topics include the discrimination against suicide corpse as suicide was seen as a failure of human hopes in life and as a sin; prevalence of a strict rejection of suicide in Christianity; and permission for burial and prayers for the suicide victims during the time of Councils of Merovingian and Carolingian books of penance.

It appears that Apollo's identification with the physical sun is predominantly understood in modern scholarship as a philosophical interpretation of a traditional religious belief. More precisely, it is often understood as an application of physical allegoresis on the tenets of traditional religion and thus attributed to a later stratum of Greek thought. A new evaluation of ancient evidence presented here reveals that the Apollo-sun identification was present in Greek ethnographic context from the earliest period and cannot be reduced to a philosophical reinterpretation of traditional myth and religion. At the same time, the authors interested in the interpretation of traditional religion in terms of natural philosophy were especially prone to use the Apollo-sun identification in their works, since it was able to provide substantial support for their hermeneutic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hermitism is one of the most singular manifestations of individual religiosity of the greatest religious traditions all over the world. This Paper aims to have a critical approach based on a modern viewpoint which identifies the religious and secular aspects in the uses that the Laws of Manu (Mānava-Dharmaśāstra) have upon the Hindu hermit’s modus vivendi (vānaprastha), how it is described and qualified according to the functions of secular nature it is assigned to in the ambit of varṇa-āśrama system, in order to see in these uses processes of rational plausibility according to practical purposes inherent to Vedic society; as well as meta-rational and religiously based explanations, with actions aiming to transcendental purposes according to the prescription of ritual injunctions and the search for spiritual benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Q. 4:34 was universally interpreted in premodern Qur'an commentaries and legal works as permitting a husband to strike his wife if she is guilty of nushūz, a term that was understood to mean some manner of disobedience on the wife's part. Thus, according to the traditional interpretation of the verse, a wife is required to show obedience to her husband, and the husband is placed in authority over his wife. In this paper I first engage in a close reading of the verse within its literary context, and re-examine the verse's gender hierarchy and the question of the wife's obedience to her husband. Second, I attempt to re-evaluate the key term nushūz in light of its use elsewhere in the Qur'an, in Jāhilī and early Islamic poetry, and in other early Islamic literature beyond the Qur'an commentaries and legal works. I argue that the evidence consistently shows that nushūz refers not to disobedience, but to a desire to leave one's husband, usually coupled with being involved with another man, and thus may be a euphemism used to refer to marital infidelity. Finally, I explore the relationship between Q. 4:34 and the rabbinic rules for the sotah, or wife suspected of adultery. As we shall see, there is a remarkable overlap in the legislation for the wife suspected of nushūz and the rabbinic sotah, suggesting that the two are addressing the same issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some religious requirements seem genuinely arbitrary in the sense that there seem to be no sufficient explanation of why those requirements with those contents should pertain. This paper aims to understand exactly what it might mean for a religious requirement to be genuinely arbitrary and to discern whether and how a religious practitioner could ever be rational in obeying such a requirement (even with full knowledge of its arbitrariness). We lay out four accounts of what such arbitrariness could consist in, and show how each account provides a different sort of baseline for understanding how obedience to arbitrary requirements could, in principle, be rational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healing and wholeness are common motifs in religion; even as there exist different conceptions of personhood, as well as ways and means of restoring a person to wholeness and wellbeing. This paper focuses on the influence of Igbo traditional worldviews and healing liturgies in the Sabbath Church in Nigeria. Utilizing a qualitative methodology, oral interviews, and participant observation, the paper examines the extent to which Igbo healing praxis has been incorporated into the healing liturgy and practices of the Sabbath Church. Using Our Lord's Sabbath Mission, an AIC in Nigeria, as a case study, how has the Sabbath Church valorized Igbo traditional symbols and religious categories in mediating healing? The insight resulting from this study is of great importance, particularly now that the demography of Christianity has shifted to the Global South. 摘要: 医治和整全是宗教中常见的主题: 即使存在有不同的人格观念，以及恢复一个人的整全和健康的不同方式方法。本文重点介绍了伊博传统世界观和医治仪式对尼日利亚安息日教会的影响。本文利用定性方法、口头访谈和参与者观察，考察了伊博治疗实践在多大程度上被纳入安息日教会的医治仪式和实践中。以我们主的安息日宣教机构，这个在尼日利亚的非洲本土教会，作为案例研究，安息日教会如何重视伊博传统符号和宗教类别来带来医治的？这项研究得出的见解非常重要，特别是现在基督教的人口结构已经转移到了全球南方。 Resumen: La sanidad y la plenitud del ser humano son temas religiosos frecuentes; a pesar de que existen diferentes conceptos de persona y maneras de restaurar una persona hacia el bienestar y la plenitud. Este artículo se centra sobre la influencia de la cosmovisión tradicional igbo y sus liturgias de sanación en la Iglesia del Sabbat en Nigeria. Se emplea una metodología cualitativa, entrevistas orales y observación participante para examinar hasta qué punto las prácticas de sanación igbo se han incorporado a la liturgia y prácticas de sanación de la Iglesia del Sabbat. Se emplea la Misión de Nuestro Señor del Sabbat, una iglesia africana autóctona (AIC por sus siglas en inglés) en Nigeria, como un estudio de caso para preguntar cómo ha valorizado la Iglesia del Sabbat los símbolos tradicionales y las categorías religiosas igbo en la sanación. La perspectiva obtenida por este estudio es de suma importancia especialmente ahora que la demografía del cristianismo se ha desplazado hacia el sur global. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The translation of Song 1:5a as "I am black and beautiful" in the NRSV racializes a passage that is not about race or ethnicity. It is the translator's version of cheap grace. Although the battle against racist language is ongoing, this verse is not the right battleground. Positive images of Africans fill the Hebrew Bible/Tanak/Old Testament, but misleading illustrations, translations, maps, and commentaries obscure them. Rather than misconstruing the plain meaning of Song 1:5a, we should highlight the vital role of Africans in the Bible and expose the cover-up in much past scholarship that minimizes it. The Shulamite is ethnically no different from her Jerusalemite sisters. This verse is more about class distinctions than ethnic or racial ones. Her brothers have forced her temporarily to do work considered lower class due to the sun's harmful effects. Nevertheless, nobody will dictate the terms of beauty, class, or honor and shame to her. Accordingly, a contextual rendering for Song 1:5a is: "I am burnt but beautiful." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that biblical genealogies are an important source for the way that ancients viewed and negotiated ethnic identity. Over and against a primordialist or constructivist view, a more flexible definition of ethnicity offers a stronger starting point for examining the genealogical genre. Ethnicity is a fluid discourse--a way of speaking to, from, and within individual and group differences in constant flux and under constant negotiation--mediated by claims of putative shared ancestral heritage. Our central claim is that biblical genealogies exhibit a strategic negotiation of identity that moves between two poles of ethnic fission and ethnic fusion. The evidence we examine in the first section suggests that there are numerous occasions when Israelites by biological birth were deliberately excluded from the genealogy. Furthermore, as the second section demonstrates, there are compelling cases when non-Israelite foreigners were included in spite of their differences. According to our analysis, the concept of ethnic fission and fusion explains how genealogies functioned to define ethnic boundaries at key moments in Israel's history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I defend an account of God's ineffability that depends on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental truths. I argue that although there are fundamentally true propositions about God, no creature can have them as the object of a propositional attitude, and no sentence can perfectly carve out their structures. Why? Because these propositions have non-enumerable structures. In principle, no creature can fully grasp God's intrinsic nature, nor can they develop a language that fully describes it. On this account, the ineffability of God is explained in terms of the inability of our language and mental capacities to grasp God as he really is. I will motivate my account by distinguishing it from a rival proposal. According to this rival, there are no fundamentally true propositions about God's intrinsic nature. I argue that this rival proposal faces problems that my account does not face. And unlike this rival and other accounts of ineffability, my account provides a fitting explanation of why God is ineffable. God is ineffable because the structure of his intrinsic nature is infinite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the television series Black Mirror's "Be Right Back". Topics include the depiction on how people through technology, attempt to experience resurrection; the showcase of trans humanist thoughts and resurrections reduces the person's consciousness and experience; and that Black Mirror depicts evangelism.

Berkeley argues in Passive Obedience that what he calls morality is based on the divine laws of nature, which God gave us and whose validity is like that of the principles of geometry. One of these laws is the categorical demand for loyalty to the supreme political power. This is to say, rebellious action is strictly impermissible and passive obedience is morally required: we may disobey but only in terms of action omission and then we must accept the penalty or punishment. This paper clarifies the logic of Berkeley's argument and evaluates the acceptability of his results, especially when he considers possible exceptions in the case of a tyrant, usurper, and mad prince. What should one do? We may 'sit still and pray for better times' and think of the day of divine judgement; is this enough when a citizen is under a tyrannical political rule? Can we trust the good will of magistrates, or expect God's help? Berkeley speaks of your moral duty to supreme power but in the last part of his treatise he also mentions the possibility of two competing princes, or no supreme power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a long-standing sociological interest in the relationship between religion and work. As protections for freedom of religious expression have played a more central role in the US and Europe, questions have been raised about the implications for people who are associated with heterogeneous workplaces. In this context, we consider the work-based practices of multinational groups of migrant workers who self-affiliate to a variety of religions and none. Our research employed non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with multinational groups of seafarers working on cargo vessels, as well as participant observation with seafarers and chaplains in ports. The findings indicate that religious beliefs offer solace and support to seafarers. However, they also highlight workers' desire for religion to be kept private on board in order to avoid interpersonal conflict. The findings have broader application in a variety of diverse environments where migrant and indigenous workers are employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade has seen a shift of rhetoric, where religious actors are presented not just as aberrations in the secular and democratic order, but also as significant players in the development of peaceful and diversified societies. However, experiences of extremist religious groups raise questions about the legitimacy of involving religious actors in these kinds of processes, in particular in relation to security, which according to a classical perspective is a matter of national and international security agencies. This paper analyzes the challenges relating to the inclusion of religious actors in security situations in East Africa, particularly those involving confrontations between religious actors, in which the concept of the "religious other" has a specific reference. The main finding is that religious actors have a contribution to make in relation to security and conflict involving religion and faith, given that security is understood in a broader sense than the classical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of orthodox ritual imperatives to alienate and render them ineffable, how are ancestors made present to and represented by their living kin, specifically during festivities? This article juxtaposes Divali's customary overtones of triumph over evil and darkness and cultivations of prosperity with additional, if not alternative, associations with mortality, mourning, and memory in a village in Tamil Nadu. In delineating the funerary and melancholic nuances of this "festival of lights," I demonstrate how—contrary to Hindu ritual norms—the deceased are not simply exiled to an otherworldly realm to be invoked only on discrete occasions. Instead, they continue to be part of a lingering intimacy and an everyday sociality that hinges upon cooking, eating, gifting, and sharing. Through the material infrastructure underpinning rituals and the casual routinization of remembrance, these villagers evoke, include, and continue to care for their deceased kin. The dead haunt festivities not as unwelcome ghosts or unexpected guests but as intensely longed for kin. In the process, an alternative and intimate theology of death, mourning, and remembrance emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the consensus that τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ (Phil. 2:6c) means 'equality with God' and denotes a status. Linguistic analysis, contextual considerations, and a thorough investigation of an inventory of 149 extant Greek references to divine equality (ἴσος /ἴσα + θεός) show that Phil. 2:6c means 'being (that is) in a manner equal with God'. Although it evokes well-known language for the status of rulers who received 'honours equal to the gods', it has a distinct, rarely attested, but Homeric syntax (cf. Iliad 5:441–2; 21:315), for which the closest parallel is Homeric Hymns 5, line 214. As such, it denotes a dynamic ontology, a mode of being expressed, or actualized, in Christ's incarnational self-transformation (vv. 7–8). The words also serve a creative affirmation and subversion of the middle Platonic distinction between 'being' and 'becoming' (as that was expressed in Plutarch and Philo): Christ exists and acts from 'being' (ὑπάρχων ... τὸ εἶναι v. 6) and is misperceived in the realm of 'becoming' (γενόμενος ... γενόμενος vv. 7–8). But, against the Platonists, he has a divine 'being' that 'becomes'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses traditional Indian and specifically Hindu concepts regarding masculinity, and comments on the masculine ideal represented by the god-king Rama, an avatar of the god Visnu. The importance of restraint, particularly sexual restraint, to masculinity is examined, and the tradition of seeking to renounce desire is commented on. A brief overview of challenges to this tradition from Tantric practice is offered, and the relationship between Hindu and Buddhist ideas of masculinity is explored.

This article presents a brief overview of episodes and ideas in the life and thought of Ana de San Bartolomé, which manifest a wide range of feelings: both her own and those of others. Some are positive and others negative; the latter must be overcome while maintaining freedom of decision. As a woman full of life, Ana shares in the feelings of others with deep empathy. While entirely dedicated to the service of others in her maternal endeavor, she will live and manifest their joys and sorrows and identify with their concerns. It seems she could not bear to see others suffer without giving of herself and showing her own feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious pluralisation entails interreligious contacts of different kinds and at various levels. At the same time, an increasing mediatisation affects the perception of and encounter with other religious traditions and their adherents. These relations between interreligious contact and media have not yet been subject to extended research from the study of religion perspective. This issue wants to fill this gap by presenting different case studies and systematising considerations on constellations of interreligious contact/dialogue/encounter and media: specifically (a) the influence of mediated discourses on interreligious contact, (b) media extensions of local and global interreligious dialogue, and (c) the digital – and especially social – media as a platform for interreligious dialogue or encounter. This introduction gives an overview on concepts, questions and topics of this field of research, drawing on the case studies within this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on interreligious dialogue mostly focuses on face-to-face meetings, however, it also takes place in other contexts. Among them is the huge space of interactive media, where adherents of different religious traditions meet, e.g., in interreligious groups on Facebook, boards or commentary sections – but so far little has been researched on this field. The article is an explorative attempt to sort the field of interreligious dialogue and encounter in social media, drawing on a comparative perspective on the field of offline interreligious dialogue. For this purpose, it first gives a systematizing overview of the existing research on interreligious encounter in social media as well as on (offline) interreligious dialogue, identifying key questions and issues on interreligious encounter. Examples from different social media platforms then allow conclusions about commonalities and differences between online and offline interreligious encounter and suggest crucial aspects to follow up on in future research on this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]