{"title":"Mani and Augustine: Collected Essays on Mani, Manichaeism and Augustine , by Johannes van Oort","authors":"C. L. de Wet","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10047","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81247125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/15743012-03001000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-03001000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135017881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward the New Testament Canon as Fourth-Century Invention","authors":"Robert D. Heaton","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10049","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholarship on the New Testament canon regularly relies on criterial and reception-historical methodologies to antedate the Christian scriptural collection well before its first advocacy as a “rule” of scripture in the 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius of Alexandria (367 CE). Pushing back against these narratives and associated tendencies, this article prefers a functional or forensic approach to the institution of a twenty-seven-book New Testament and highlights evidence demonstrating how the Athanasian episcopal canon was amplified, amended, and accepted in the Christian East and West in the decades following its promulgation. Against suggestions that the canon existed as early as the second century, this handling of data on the New Testament, a scriptural instrument set forth with authoritative and exclusionary intentions, fits the guidelines of creative discourse and historical redescription so as to credit Athanasius, in the fourth century, as the inventor of the canon regnant into the present day. Among other foci, tracing the fortunes of a subcanonical category of books shows the potential for new histories of familiar canonical evidence that may ensue, especially those that plumb the possibility of dissent to the Athanasian scriptural boundaries or augment our awareness of the place and value of such an established standard within institutional, monastic, academic, imperial, and even so-called heretical contexts in and beyond the fourth century.","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90520166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Salvific City","authors":"Thomas W. Martin","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10052","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This exploratory essay examines the cultural assumptions at the intersection of our multi-sensory lived experience in contemporary urban built environments, the impact of that experience on our imaginative world for our assumptions about a normative urban environment – what I call a moral imaginary – , how imagination guides urban construction, and the Christian West’s most normative utopian vision of urbanity, the New Jerusalem. This exploration takes place within an eclectic amalgam of theory focused on environmental ethics. The overall goal, using ecological hermeneutics, is to retrieve the voice of the Earth from beneath the streets of gold. Can the New Jerusalem be imagined as a city that offers salvation to the Earth?","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74719852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Your Brain Makes You Do It","authors":"P. Craffert","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10053","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article contains a critical reflection of the neuroscientific research of Benjamin Libet which claims that free will does not exist and that it is your brain and not you that takes decisions. The Libetian style research on free will is characterised by a conceptual reduction of free will, a perpetuation of dualistic thinking and the ontological emaciation of free will as a mechanistic action instead of as a complex process. The underlying philosophical and metaphysical assumptions of Libetian research is critically analysed with the verdict that it is not about free will and that it does not in any way addresses the complex nature of free will in humans. Viewed against an alternative neuroscientific perspective on free will, three astonishing features of these studies are highlighted in conclusion.","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85115758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“God” in Augustine’s Confessions","authors":"Johannes van Oort","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10048","url":null,"abstract":"When reading through Augustine’s Confessions, one notices a striking variety of descriptions of God. The aim of this paper is to discern and – as far as possible – to interpret these various descriptions. Our main focus will be on pivotal texts from Books 1, 3, 5, 6 and 7. They document how much Manichaean views played a part in Augustine’s quest, and how closely this quest was linked to his ideas about evil. Briefly stated, Augustine’s search went from anthropomorphic-spatial thinking about God to corporeal/material-spatial and even panentheistic ideas and then (mainly under the inspiration of Neoplatonic philosophy, i.e., in all likelihood Plotinus’s Enneads) to a strictly spiritual and non-spatial understanding. But in all this, Manichaean ways of thought and even concepts remained present until the end. A final conclusion draws out the significance of this study for conceptualising the formation of God/gods in the Christian tradition as well as in other religious formations.","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82937222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Under Caesar’s Sword","authors":"David L. Eastman","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10050","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In 2019, Cambridge University Press published an edited volume entitled Under Caesar’s Sword, the product of a three-year study on contemporary Christian responses to persecution in various parts of the world. As part of the overall findings, the project directors noted three primary methods of response: (1) Survival strategies (trying to avoid the attention of the persecutors); (2) Association strategies (building relationships beyond their own communities in order to create a broader network of potential support); and (3) Confrontation strategies (directly challenging the persecutors through various means including martyrdom, which Christians accept as an act of resistance). These categories provide a useful heuristic tool for reevaluating the discourse in some early Christian texts, including the apocryphal acts of the apostles and other texts related to martyrdom. This article employs the insights from Under Caesar’s Sword to explore examples of all three strategies from the earliest Christian centuries. However, not all strategies were equally appreciated in that time. Because suffering came to be so closely linked to Christian identity, survival strategies were sometimes critiqued as evidence of a lack of faith.","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74850778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editor’s Preface","authors":"Gerhard van den Heever","doi":"10.1163/15743012-03001001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-03001001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135017882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pondering Tibetan Buddhist Alterity in Peter Dickinson’s Tulku","authors":"F. Hale","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10051","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Peter Dickinson’s acclaimed English novel of 1979, Tulku, is primarily an exploration of the Tibetan Buddhist custom of discerning in children reincarnations of deceased spiritual leaders who are subsequently trained to assume positions of responsibility. This fascinating work also examines other dimensions of contemplative monastic Buddhism in a remote Himalayan setting, chiefly in a lamasery. On a broader scale, Dickinson addresses such themes as the supposedly peaceful nature of the national religion in question, relations between that faith and Christianity, the possibility of finding merit in religions other than one’s own, and the role of illusion in religious belief and practice. In the present article these matters are considered against the backdrop of evolving Western images of and attitudes towards Tibet generally, its form of Buddhism in particular, and the problematic practice of discovering reincarnated tulkus.","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80856155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Religion and Environment","authors":"Philipp Öhlmann, I. Swart","doi":"10.1163/15743012-bja10044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-bja10044","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Achieving ecologically sustainable societies necessitates fundamental social and cultural transformations. Religion has the potential to foster the required paradigm shifts in mindsets, behaviour and policy. Moreover, in many religious communities there is increasing engagement with questions of environment, climate change and ecological sustainability. This has led to an increasing corpus of literature engaging with the nexus between religion, environment, development and sustainability. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of recent ecological trends in religious traditions as well as the literature on religion and sustainable development and on religion and ecology. While an ecological turn is evident in many religious communities and has been well documented in the literature, it emerges that more research is necessary on the way that this phenomenon manifests in environmental action at individual and institutional levels.","PeriodicalId":41841,"journal":{"name":"Religion and Theology-A Journal of Contemporary Religious Discourse","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76543126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}