Suchergebnisse

W. Matthews Grant's "Dual Sources Account" aims at explaining how God causes all creaturely actions while leaving them free in a robust libertarian sense. It includes an account of predestination that is supposed to allow for the possibility that some created persons ultimately spend eternity in hell. I argue here that the resources Grant provides for understanding why God might permit created persons to end up in hell are, for two different reasons, insufficient. I then provide possible solutions to these two problems, compatible with Grant's account overall, that help show why God might allow hell.

The article is based on the postmodern understanding about the collapse of grand narratives (Lyotard). One of the most significant grand narratives is the narrative about unidirectionality and irreversibility of development. Part of the roots of this narrative can be found in the ancient Greek idea of the inevitability of fate, Ananke, seen primarily as a necessity. In parallel to the ancient Greek thought, however, philosophical ideas in Ancient India and China were also developed. Therefore, the ideas of karma in Ancient India and the related idea of svadharma, as well as the Chinese ideas of min, the will of Heaven, and of dao, the path as a reservoir of possibilities, are presented in comparative terms. The aim by highlighting these various options is to reveal the possibilities for different readings of the contemporary situation.

Preliminary Material /David Fasenfest -- Introduction /David Fasenfest -- Chapter One. Americas Destiny And Calvinism /David Fasenfest -- Chapter Two. Americas Calvinist Destiny Identified And Specified /David Fasenfest -- Chapter Three. Economic System Of Calvinist Theocracy /David Fasenfest -- Chapter Four. Political System Of Calvinist Theocracy /David Fasenfest -- Chapter Five. Civil Society Of Calvinist Theocracy /David Fasenfest -- Chapter Six. Cultural System Of Calvinist Bibliocracy /David Fasenfest -- Chapter Seven. Calvinism Reconsidered /David Fasenfest -- Chapter Eight. Conclusions /David Fasenfest -- References /David Fasenfest -- Index /David Fasenfest.

Abstract: The broad contours of the doctrine of election and predestination from the second to the fifth centuries involve a decided shift from a fundamentally corporate conception to a fundamentally individual conception, from the election of the Church as a visible whole to the election of a hidden few, from election as the context of salvation to election as identified with salvation and destiny, from a fundamentally temporal and historical framework to a fundamentally eternal and ahistorical framework, from predestination being subsumed under election to election being subsumed under predestination, from an inclusive yet particular people to an exclusive aggregate, from the supposition of the historic and continuing election of Israel to the implicit denial of the election of Israel as a people, and finally from the Church as God's chosen nation to the Roman Empire as taking over or at least sharing in the political dimension of the Church's election.

Abstract: The broad contours of the doctrine of election and predestination from the second to the fifth centuries involve a decided shift from a fundamentally corporate conception to a fundamentally individual conception, from the election of the Church as a visible whole to the election of a hidden few, from election as the context of salvation to election as identified with salvation and destiny, from a fundamentally temporal and historical framework to a fundamentally eternal and ahistorical framework, from predestination being subsumed under election to election being subsumed under predestination, from an inclusive yet particular people to an exclusive aggregate, from the supposition of the historic and continuing election of Israel to the implicit denial of the election of Israel as a people, and finally from the Church as God's chosen nation to the Roman Empire as taking over or at least sharing in the political dimension of the Church's election.

AbstractTracing the story of Atiqa, a young Moroccan woman in her late twenties, and the revivalist imagination that informs it, I reflect in this article on how responsibility is imagined and reckoned with when human choice and action encounter the transcendental forces of destiny. Far from leading to an abeyance of responsibility in the face of worldly and transcendental powers, I show that it is precisely the idea of a divine predestination based on God's omnipotence and omniscience that triggers an ethical reflection on questions of choice, action, and consequence. Atiqa's story provides insights with regard to the notion of human responsibility under God's will. Revealing the relational dynamics of the encounter (and disjuncture) between human and divine intentionalities, it compels us not only to move beyond the emphasis on the embodiment of divine will present in the paradigm of self‐cultivation, but also to reconsider transcendence in current anthropological debates on ethics.

The article presents some contributions of Wittgensteinian philosophy to philosophical theology. For this, it is divided into two moments. The objective of the first moment is the clarification of the semantics of theological discourse. We will see that, according to Wittgenstein, the significance of this discourse depends, necessarily, on the connection of doctrines with performances; in other words, theological sentences are only meaningful when they are linked to the lives of language users from a practical and evaluative point of view and not merely theoretical. By not fulfilling this criterion, the doctrine would need to be rejected or rephrased (clarifying the concept of rephrasing is also the objective of the first moment). We will see that this, shall we say, theological method, can be found, mutatis mutandis, in both the first and second philosophy of Wittgenstein. The objective of the second moment is the discussion of a case study on the doctrine of predestination. This discussion will show us how Wittgenstein himself applies his theological method, clarified by us in the first moment of the article.