EXPLORING LOST DIMENSIONS IN CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM: OPENING TO THE MYSTICAL edited by LouiseNelstrop and Simon D.Podmore, Ashgate, Farnham, 2013, pp. 242, £60.00, hbkCHRISTIAN MYSTICISM AND INCARNATIONAL THEOLOGY: BETWEEN TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE edited

2015 ◽  
Vol 97 (1067) ◽  
pp. 124-125
Author(s):  
SANTHA BHATTACHARJI
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse

The Augustinian vision of humankind, on which so much Christian thinking about war is based, is false. Thanks to Darwinian evolutionary biology we know there was no original couple, Adam and Eve; there was no eating of the apple; there is no original sin. We are not innately depraved in this way. Morbid fatalism is inappropriate. The killer-ape vision of humankind, on which so much Darwinian thinking about war is based, is equally false. Thanks to updated Darwinian evolutionary biology, we know that we did not evolve in the violent ways often presumed, and that in major respects we are designed to avoid war. Culture, particularly agriculture, changed much of that and war became common. Changing this is not to go against our nature. Naïve optimism is no more in place. There is hope of more constructive engagement between Christians and Darwinians. On the Christian side, there are alternative theologies to Augustinian Atonement theology, notable Incarnational theology, not dependent on a literal Adam and Eve. On the Darwinian side, there are fresh empirical findings and interpretations, with truer understandings of human history and nature. Perhaps now, together, we can move forward the debate on the nature and causes and possible ending of human warfare.


Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-220
Author(s):  
Bernardo Manzoni Palmeirim

AbstractThe assimilation of phenomenology by theology (namely of Heidegger by Karl Rahner) exemplifies how a pre-existing philosophical framework can be imported into a theological system by being suffused with belief. Although one would imagine that the incommensurability between philosophy and religion would thus be overcome, the two disciplines risk to remain, given the sequels of the ‘French debate’, worlds apart, separated by a leap of faith. In this paper I attempt to uncover what grammatical similitudes afforded Rahner formal transference in the first place. Uncovering analogous uses of contemplative attention, namely between Heidegger and Simone Weil, I hope to demonstrate the filial relationship between existential phenomenology and Christian mysticism. I propose that attention is a key factor in both systems of thought. Furthermore, I propose that: 1) attention, the existential hub between subject and phenomena, provides a base for investigating methodologies, as opposed to causal relations, in philosophy and religion; 2) that the two attentional disciplines of meditation and contemplation, spiritual practices designed to shape the self, also constitute styles of thinking; and 3) the ‘turn’ in the later Heidegger’s philosophy is a strategic point to inquire into this confluence of styles of thinking, evincing the constantly dynamic and intrinsically tight relation between philosophy and theology.


1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Grace Jantzen

(1) If you would know God, you must not merely be like the Son, you must be the Son yourself.With these words Meister Eckhart encapsulates the aim of Christian mysticism as he understood it: to know God, and to know God in such a way that the knower is not merely like Christ but actually becomes Christ, taken into the Trinity itself. Eckhart speaks frequently of this in his sermons.


1908 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-365
Author(s):  
Chauncey J. Hawkins
Keyword(s):  

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