scholarly journals The Argument from Divine Hiddenness and Christian Love

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Jeff Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Divine Hiddenness ◽  
Christian Love ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Equal Concern ◽  
Conceptual Resources

In the paper it is argued that the conceptual resources of Christianity topple the hiddenness argument. According to the author, the variability of the divine love cast doubt on the soundness of Schellenberg’s reasoning. If we understood a perfect love as a maximal and equal concern and identification with all and for all, then a divine love would entail divine impartiality, but because of conflicts of interest between human beings the perfect, divine love cannot be maximal.

Divine hiddenness and the demographics of theism

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN MAITZEN
Keyword(s):  
Uneven Distribution ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Hiddenness ◽  
The World ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
Argument From Evil ◽  
Theistic Belief ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis ◽  
Awareness Of God

According to the much-discussed argument from divine hiddenness, God's existence is disconfirmed by the fact that not everyone believes in God. The argument has provoked an impressive range of theistic replies, but none has overcome – or, I suggest, could overcome – the challenge posed by the uneven distribution of theistic belief around the world, a phenomenon for which naturalistic explanations seem more promising. The ‘demographics of theism’ confound any explanation of why non-belief is always blameworthy or of why God allows blameless non-belief. They also cast doubt on the existence of a sensus divinitatis: the awareness of God that Reformed epistemologists claim is innate in all normal human beings. Finally, the demographics make the argument from divine hiddenness in some ways a better atheological argument than the more familiar argument from evil.

The Goodness of Home

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Marandiuc
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Middle Term ◽  
Human Love ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Theological Argument

The question of what home means and how it relates to subjectivity has fresh urgency in light of pervasive contemporary migration, which ruptures the human self, and painful relational poverty, which characterizes much of modern life. Yet the Augustinian heritage that situates true home and right attachment outside this world has clouded theological conceptualizations of earthly belonging. This book engages this neglected topic and argues for the goodness of home, which it construes relationally rather than spatially. In dialogue with research in the neuroscience of attachment theory and contemporary constructions of the self, the book advances a theological argument for the function of love attachments as sources of subjectivity and enablers of human freedom. The book shows that paradoxically the depth of human belonging—thus, dependence—is directly proportional to the strength of human agency—hence, independence. Building on Søren Kierkegaard’s imagery alongside other sources, the book depicts human love as interwoven with the infinite streams of divine love, forming a sacramental site for God’s presence, and playing a constitutive role in the making of the self. The book portrays the self both as gifted from God in inchoate form and as engaged in continuous, albeit nonlinear becoming via experiences of human love. The Holy Spirit indwells the attachment space between human beings as a middle term preventing its implosion or dissolution and conferring a stability that befits the concept of home. The interstitial space between loving human persons subsists both anthropologically and pneumatologically and generates the self’s home.

Love Divine

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Wessling
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
God's Love ◽  
The Creation ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Wrath Of God

This book provides a systematic account of the deep and rich love that God has for humans. Within this vast theological territory, the objective is to contend for a unified paradigm regarding fundamental issues pertaining to the God of love who deigns to share His life of love with any human willing to receive it. Realizing this objective includes clarifying and defending theological accounts of the following: • how the doctrine of divine love should be constructed; • what God’s love is; • what role love plays in motivating God’s creation and subsequent governance of humans; • how God’s love for humans factors into His emotional life; • which humans it is that God loves in a saving manner; • what the punitive wrath of God is and how it relates to God’s redemptive love for humans; • and how God might share His intra-trinitarian love with human beings. As the book unfolds, a network of nodal issues are examined related to God’s love as it begins in Him and then overflows into the creation, redemption, and glorification of humanity. The result is an exitus-reditus structure driven by God’s unyielding love.

El parecer de Agustín del amor como gracia, en la controversia con Juliano de Eclana

Augustinus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-142
Author(s):  
Mathijs Lamberigts ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Pelagian Controversy

During the Pelagian controversy, the precise relation between grace and free will was an important issue. Augustine emphasized the priority of grace over human beings’ free will after the Fall. Pelagians such as Julian of Aeclanum were of the opinion that such view annihilated human beings’ free will. Throughout history, time and again, scholars belonging to different schools and denomina­tions have discussed this issue at length. In this article, we concentrate on Augustine’s view on love as grace during his debate with Julian. We argue that one should broaden the scope of this question and pay attention to the role of divine love as an important and decisive factor with regard to the proper activity of grace in the redemption and liberation of human beings. Thinking the relation between human beings and God in terms of love is a help in order to overcome the unfruitful grace-freewill antinomy. In fact, such approach does justice to both the Scriptural sources of Augustine’s position and the bishop’s spiritual view on the topic under consideration.

A Metaphysics of Love

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Pattison
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Existential Phenomenology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Third ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Christian Love ◽  
History Of ◽  
Individual Existence ◽  
True Measure

The book is the third and final part of a philosophy of Christian life. The first part applied a phenomenological approach to the literature of the devout life tradition, focussing on the feeling of being drawn to devotion to God; the second part examined what happens when this feeling is interpreted as a call or vocation. At its heart, this is the call to love that is made explicit in the Christian love-commandment but is shown to be implied every time human beings address each other in speech. A metaphysics of love explores the conditions for the possibility of such a call to love. Taking into account contemporary critiques of metaphysics, Dante’s vision of ‘the love that moves the sun and other stars’ challenges us to account for the mutual entwining of human and cosmic love and of being/God and beings/creatures in love. Conditions for the possibility of love are shown to include language, time, and social forms that mediate between immediate individual existence and society as a whole. Faced with the history of human malevolence, love also supposes the possibility of a new beginning, which Christianity sees in the Incarnation, manifest as forgiveness. Where existential phenomenology sees death as definitive of human existence, Christianity finds life’s true measure in love. Thus understood, love reveals the truth of being.

scholarly journals What’s the problem, Mr. Smith? Shedding more light (than Heat) on Adam Smith’s view of man *

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Emmanoel de Oliveira Boff
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

Abstract Why has the “Adam Smith Problem” recently been discussed in the literature? Although most historians of economic thought regard the problem solved, these discussions cast doubt on this apparent solution. This article suggests that the “Adam Smith Problem” may originate from the concept of the human being developed by Smith in the “Theory of Moral Sentiments”: in this book, human beings can be understood as composed of an empirical and a (quasi) transcendental side, in the form of the impartial spectator. It is argued that it is the tension between these two parts which creates supposed inconsistencies between aspects of the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and the “Wealth of Nations” like, for example, the role of sympathy and self-interest in each of these books.

scholarly journals The Politics of Christian Love: Shaping Everyday Social Interaction and Political Sensibilities Among Coptic Egyptians

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
An Van Raemdonck
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
The Status ◽  
Christian Love ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Theological Study ◽  
Political Dimensions

Christian love has historically been subject of extensive theological study but has rarely been studied within anthropology. Contemporary Coptic society receives growing attention over the last two decades as a minority in Egyptian Muslim majority society. An important bulk of this scholarship involves a discussion of the community’s sometimes self-defined and sometimes ascribed characterization as a persecuted minority. Particular attention has gone to how social and political dimensions of minority life lead tochanges in Christian theological understandings This paper builds on these insights and examines how Christian love is experienced, and shapes feelings of belonging, everyday morality and political sensibilities vis-à-vis Muslim majority society. It draws from ethnographic observations and meetings with Copts living in Egypt between 2014–2017. It focuses on three personal narratives that reveal the complex ways in which a theology of love affects social and political stances. An anthropological focus reveals the fluid boundaries between secular and religious expressions of Christian love. Love for God and for humans are seen as partaking in one divine love. Practicing this love, however, shapes very different responses and can lead to what has been described as Coptic ‘passive victim behaviour’, but also to political activity against the status-quo.

“All Will Be Well”: Julian of Norwich's Counter-Apocalyptic Revelations

Horizons ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-210
Author(s):  
Christopher Denny
Keyword(s):  
Julian Of Norwich ◽  
Process Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Catherine Keller ◽  
The Church

To resolve the impasse between various competing apocalypticisms, I suggest the writings of Julian of Norwich exemplify an eschatology that incorporates features of what Catherine Keller calls counter-apocalyptic while avoiding the risks of deconstructionist theology. Julian faced an impasse as she struggled to reconcile the traditional apocalyptic claim of the church that some human beings were damned with her own revelatory experience that “all would be well.” According to the long text of the Revelation of Divine Love, in facing this crisis Julian did not abandon the belief in divine omnipotence. Like Keller's position, Julian's apophatic counter-apocalyptices chews understandings of Christiane eschatology as the simple disclosure of divine power and justice. Instead, Julian's counter-apocalyptic is founded upon the vulnerability of Christ's body. Julian's vision of Christ's kenotic love transcends the impasse between eschatological determinism and Keller's process theology, and his love establishes a stronger foundation for a truly liberating eschatology.

Divine Love in Classical Judaism

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Jacob Neusner
Keyword(s):  
Character Traits ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Human Emotion ◽  
Measure For Measure ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Human Kind

Classical Judaism depicts God in human terms. The human emotion of love is therefore imputed to God. Classical Judaism sees God and man as consubstantial, sharing in particular the same emotional traits. God has three major character traits, power, love, and justice. Power pertains to God’s creation, control of history, and imposition of morality on human kind. Love invokes the imagery of family. Justice means God metes out measure for measure. What happens to human beings responds to the actions of the person who is subject to judgment, and fairness governs. All relationships come to their final resolution in the resurrection of the dead and the judgment of humanity for eternal life or eternal death.

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