Suchergebnisse

"As there is neither recent nor updated scholarship regarding the connection between Leibniz' thought and protestant theology, this book, based on a wide cross section of Leibniz's writings including important new and unexplored material tackles the question from the point of view of the history of ideas showing that Leibniz' efforts in view of a confessional union especially the one between the Lutherans of Hannover and the Calvinists of Brandenburg were based on Leibniz' Lutheran religious convictions, and at the same time and to the same extent on his philosophical doctrines, especially those relating to the problem of substance and to the vexed questions of freedom, necessity, and theodicy. The book is organized in seven chapters and contains a separate introduction and conclusion. For sections on the eucharist and predestination especially, care is taken to present the philosophical counterpoints of these issues: substance and necessity. The section on Leibniz as historian of the sacred is intended to show how Leibniz, as opposed to Newton in particular, views sacred history and the place of God in it. It is meant to fill in the gap left by various recent studies on Leibniz as historian, which have not taken his position as historian of the sacred into account. The conclusion highlights the ways Leibniz's basically Lutheran nonorthodox theology coincides with his philosophy. This means inevitably that Leibniz was not a standard Lutheran but that the solutions he sought to the problems of confessional division were rather more philosophical than theological and that his view of sacred history was intended to vindicate his theodicy. Leibniz's unique integration of theology into philosophy proved satisfactory neither to theologians nor to many philosophers of his time"--

After the fall of the New Order in 1998, the Ulama Council of Indonesia (MUI) has been in the limelight for many of its controversial and conservative fatwa (legal opinions). Formed in 1975 by President Suharto, MUI was intended to serve as an institution to manage and discipline dissent, challenges and defiance by grassroots organisations. However, recent writings point to its changing character: Its fatwas are becoming more conservative; it is more assertive and powerful; and its fatwas, particularly the 2005 SIPILIS (anti-secularism, pluralism and liberalism), are deemed as contributing to violence towards minorities. This article reassess the scholarly conclusions and media reports made about the relationship between MUI, the Indonesian state and society. Examining MUI's attempt to define public morality as a case study, particularly its role in the 2008 pornography bill and efforts to "moralise" entertainment, the article argues that MUI is internally fragmented and weak.

Although an orphaned subject among scholars of religion, the theology of Thomas Hobbes is now among the most contested issues in Hobbes studies and the study of early liberal political theory. This essay maps the state of the question and offers a theological appraisal of it. In so doing it attempts to critique a leading reading of Hobbes's Leviathan by highlighting its attack on civil religion and endorsement of a biblical political theology. The relationship between Hobbes's political and theological views in Leviathan also receives sustained attention. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract"Political theology" is now a fixture within political theory's lexicon. Although Carl Schmitt'sPolitical Theology(1922) is identified as the contemporarylocus classicusfor the concept, that work's primary task is only to elaborate a "sociology of juristic concepts." Beginning in the 1990s, however, Schmitt's entire corpus has increasingly been interpreted as one motivated by "political theology" in a stronger sense—as political action based upon faith in (Christian) revelation. I challenge this thesis by (1) examining its history, (2) drawing attention to the many aspects of Schmitt's (mostly Weimar-era) work that are deeply at odds with this thesis, and (3) reexamining his (mostly postwar) remarks ordinarily cited to bolster the thesis. Ultimately, the core of Schmitt's thought lies elsewhere; returning to the purported father of political theology brings clarity to the bourgeoning discussion of this topic within the discipline.