Divine Action and the Demonic

This chapter identifies the realm of the demonic as one area of theological inquiry in the wider topic of divine agency and divine action. It sketches the kinds of actions demons do and the kinds of agents they are. The chapter then looks at the nature of evil as it manifests in persons, and suggests we do not need church doctrine to know about the existence of evil beings. We all intuitively know that evil exists and in some cases this belief is verified by experience. The chapter suggests that demons are complex spiritual agents who oppose all things divine. It responds to four objections to this view and concludes.

Marx’s ‘Bonn Notebooks’ in Context

The following is a critical reconstruction of the collaboration between Bauer and Marx between 1839 and 1842. The turbulences in the period in question reveal themselves in Marx’s thought as well as in his relationship with Bruno Bauer. Correspondingly, Marx’s detours, false paths, dead ends and abandoned work are therefore made the focus of this study. The ambivalent initial relations between the two of them, which both made their collaboration possible and hindered it, clearly go back further than 1841, when Bauer was not yet an atheist and was still a proponent of church doctrine. This was the Bruno Bauer that Marx had come to know in the Doctor’s Club. We then meet Bauer the atheist at the end of 1839 or perhaps the beginning of 1840, as he was planning a comprehensive attack on orthodox theology and wanted Marx to fight on his side. This attack continued in Bauer’s Trumpet and in Hegel’s Doctrine.

Dayak Tunjung Cosmology and the Theology of Communio Sanctorum An Exploration of Contextual Theology in Synthetic Model of Stephen B. Bevans

The revelation of God through the history is being permeated in human beings’ culture. Eventually, its proclamation too brought in itself the culture elements. Since, the culture itself is holy, because it is exactly part of the revelation, and one culture can be in dialogue with other (s) one because God has taken the culture as a context for His own revelation. In missiology, theological reflection tries to further offer and define what the church has been doing since its presence, a practice of a contextual theological reflection. In this space of thought, the church doctrine on communio sanctorum will be in dialogue with a Dayak Tunjung cosmology, an effort to make a synthesis between theology and culture so that the two communities can live and grow together in their respective traditions. The synthetic model of contextual theology offered by Stephen B. Bevans will be used as a framework. The reflection will go to make a synthetic model of theology of Dayak Tunjung cosmology and communio sanctorum in its three categories, mainly cosmological, ritual, and communal life. God, through his Holy Spirit, continuously renews the human beings together with their whole culture aspects.

The Church of the Introverts. Why there are no longer such figures as John of Krondtadt among us

The article is devoted to the issue of contemporary church, perhaps the church of the recent times, to the issue of its parishioners and the characteristics of their psychological disposition, scope of reading, thought and ideas. Where is the marking line that divides them from the “secular life”, from “good laypeople” who also aspire to be moral? We see this marking line in the realization (awareness) of the conception of the sin and the use of this realization in everyday life. The root of difference between the “ecclesiastical traditionalists” and “ecclesiastical liberals”, that are connected with two diverse theologies and two diverse anthropologies, lies in the different attitude to the conception of sin. The traditionalists support the ascetic church doctrine that now more and more penetrates the parishioners’ life, and the liberals, voluntary or involuntary, absorbed the idea of the Man of the New Time, natural man, who due to the newest tendencies is gradually turning into an “unnatural man”. The disappearance of the concept of sin from the public conscience makes it impossible to deliver such sermons as the Saint Holy John of Kronstadt. The church and the laypeople tend more and more to talk past each other, the ecclesiasts turn more introvertive, unsociable and misunderstood by the world. Jesus Christ also spoke about this phenomenon: “If you were from the world, the world would love its own, but I chose you from the world, so the world hates you”. The tragic aspect of this saying becomes more evident in our time that has certain apocalyptic traits.

‘Russkiy mir’: Russian Identity as a Soft Power in the Balkans

The research is focused on different civilizational vectors of the Russian popular doctrine ‘Russkiy mir’(i.e. ‘Russian world’) and its impact on the Balkans. The author also pays attention to the Slavic ideological vector of Russia in the Balkans – Panslavism, the historiosophic vector of Russian Idea as European and Messianic at the same time, the spiritual identity of Russkiy Mir – the ‘Holy Russia’ and the religious identity of Russian Orthodox civilization. The Great Return of Russia to the Black Sea region after the reunification with the Crimea (2014) and the transformation of the doctrine ‘Russkiy Mir’ from an "reintegration strategy" into a geopolitical reality. The Crimea is also the terminus-ante-quem of the chronological period of ‘post-Soviet Russia’ (1991–2014). The reunification with the Crimean marks the end of the post-Soviet period for Russia as well as rehabilitation of its great power status, lost after the collapse of the USSR. The Belarusian and the Ukrainian points of view about the Russkiy mir concept are also identified by the term ‘East Slavic Mir’. The Bulgarian Orthodox identity, based on the Church Slavonic or Bulgarian medieval languages – from the other side, is the spiritual historical link to Russkiy Mir. It is almost impossible to render in English the difference in the spelling between the political idea of ‘Russkiy Mir’, which is spelled “Русский мир”, and the church doctrine of ‘Russkiy Mir’, spelled “Русский мiр”. So, the ‘i’the church doctrine will be highlighted and italicized ‘i’. Conceiving of ‘Russkiy Mir’ only as an ideology or as a geopolitical doctrine underestimates the spiritual vector of ‘Russkiy Mir’. The spiritual reality is not abstract, but is a field of serious historical, cultural and geopolitical clashes. The annexation of a spiritual territory is more painful than any other territorial or material loss. The attempt on the part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to violate canon law by assisting the Kiev authorities in favour of the schismatics (the Kiev Patriarchate) and against the Orthodox (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate) could lead to a split in Orthodoxy into the Slavic and the Greek ones.

Tarian “Langit-Bumi” Refleksi Pelayanan Bulan Bahasa dan Budaya di Gereja Masehi Injili Di Timor

The concensus of May to become the month of language in the service of GMIT reflected as a chance to express the identity of local comonity. The exploration through dance and pray constitue psalm and proverb chant in the format of the liturgy. In this format the value of the traditional as the identity of the local community conforotd with the ecclesiastic consencus and the consencus of the nation and state. The culture encounter of the local community need a dialetic media in order to convey the message of the humanityso it will be wedely accepted by the church community. Ethnographic accentuation are use this qualitative method. Beside the library research are use to analyze the result of the research. Through emancipation dialectic, GMIT within supotive reletion between themselves the local governmentsincerely give the local community the change to expessed themselves without worry persistenly as a impact of the contention betweenthe church doctrine and the value of the local tradition from the local community. Penetapan bulan Mei setiap tahun sebagai Bulan Bahasa dalam lingkup pelayanan Gereja Masehi Injili di Timor (GMIT) dimaknai sebagai wadah yang tepat mengekpresikan identitas masyarakat adat. Eksplorasi nilai-nilai kearifan lokal melalui tarian dan doa merupakan mazmur dan amsal yang dilantunkan dalam format tata ibadah. Dalam format inilah, nilai-nilai kearifan sebagai identitas masyarakat adat diperhadapkan pada konsensus gerejawi yang tentunya tidak bertentangan dengan konsensus bangsa dan Negara. Perjumpaan identitas masyarakat adat dalam format gerejawi membutuhkan media dialektika agar pesan-pesan kemanusiaan yang menjadi kekuatan masyarakat adat dapat diterima secara luas oleh warga gereja. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam tulisan ini adalah metode kualitatif dengan penekanan pada pendekatan etnografi. Di samping itu, pendekatan library research digunakan untuk menganalisa hasil penelitian yang telah dilakukan. Melalui dialektika yang emansipatif, GMIT dalam relasi yang saling menopang bersama pemerintah daerah secara tulus memberi ruang bagi masyarakat adat untuk berekpresi tanpa merasa gundah gulana sebagai dampak dari benturan doktrin gerejawi dan nilai-nilai kearifan masyarakat adat.

The Infiniscience of the hospitable God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: Re-interpreting Trinity in the light of the Rublev icon

Because of the impact of church doctrine and many documents explaining the official confession of many denominations in Christianity, Trinity was mostly defined in terms of static and substantial categories (the impassibility of God). The undergirding research assumption is that the latter reflects, in most cases, more abstract and rather positivistic metaphysical speculation than representing the vividness of God’s compassionate being-with as explained and revealed in the narratives of the biblical account on God’s graceful intervention with the frailty of human life. The relational dynamics between the Father, the Son and the Spirit should be revisited. In this respect, the Rublev icon on Trinity could help establish the circular and spiral thinking of divine perichoresis as modes of God’s unpredictable, but faithful, covenantal and redemptive encounter with human misery. Trinitarian thinking should be directed by hospice-categories rather than by personhood-categories representing ‘substance’. It is argued that the trinitarian interplay should be re-interpreted in terms of compassionate categories stemming from the passio Dei in theopaschitic theology. This approach should be supplemented by the bowel categories of ta splanchna in order to qualify the infiniscience of the JHWH-Godhead: the being of divine interventions in terms of verbing terminology.

‘The Demands of Justice Must be Stated before the Words of Peace Find a Receptive Ground, 1972–1976’

These years mark the bloodiest of the conflict with the highest number of deaths. Priests, women religious, and the Irish Catholic hierarchy continued to find their voice in condemning violence and, in private moments, acted as mediators between the British government and republican paramilitary groups. However, ecumenical efforts between Protestant and Catholic Church leaders at this time remained limited. The English Catholic Church hierarchy began to publicly condemn republican paramilitaries as the IRA started to bomb England. The death of IRA member James McDade, after a bomb he planted in Coventry exploded prematurely, marked the first major schism between English and Irish Catholic Church doctrine and practice. This set a course of confusion over the Church stance on issues of suicide and excommunication that continued for the rest of the conflict.

CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY A CRITICAL STUDY ON THE CONTRIBUTION OF SDA THEOLOGY TOWARD ECOLOGY

To date, the controversial publication of Lynn White Jr’s article, The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis (1967) ignites the fierce debate between theologian and academia in the field of religion and ecology about the guilt of Western Christianity toward modern ecological calamity. Meanwhile, as a Christian denomination that highly emphasizes on the second coming (the Advent) and the next life, Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Church doctrine is frequently accused as the reason why Christianity doctrine tend to put aside today’s environmental problem and more focused in the eternal next life. Though, at the same time, SDA Church also known for its emphasis on holistic life as well as one of the most advanced church in health and medical science. Given those handicap, the research tries to challenge those common perceptions about Christianity and ecology right into the heart of its criticism. By using literature-based research as methodology, this paper scrutinizes the doctrine of SDA church within the context of ecology as well as demonstrates how the SDA Church manifests its ecological doctrines. Furthermore, on wider discourse of religion and ecology, the explorations on SDA theology shows that rather than becoming a source of problem, the eschatological doctrine might become the driven-factor toward ecological practices nowadays.

The Text of the Jeremiah’s Text 1:5 and 7:18 in the Exegesis of Origen

В данной статье рассматривается экзегеза текстов книги пророка Иеремии (1, 5 и 7, 18) в сочинениях Оригена разных периодов его богословско-философской и эгзегетической деятельности. Эти тексты Ориген использует в качестве библейских свидетельств для обоснования трёх положений своего учения, взятых из платоновской философии: одушевлённости небесных светил, предсуществовании душ их телам, предвидении Божием. В более ранний александрийский период своей литературной активности Ориген в произведении «О началах» даёт им христианское понимание и даже пытается сделать церковным учением. В кесарийский период, напротив, он отходит от положений платонизма и рассматривает данные тесты Иеремии, в особенности Иер. 1, 5, с позиции церковного учения в традиционном библейском контексте, понимая их как свидетельства учения о божественном предвидении. В статье рассматриваются сочинения двух вышеуказанных периодов деятельности Оригена, в которые александриец, истолковывая Иремию, приходит к разным богословским выводам. При помощи данной методологии исследования автор статьи стремится показать эволюцию доктринальных взглядов Оригена и его экзегезы. This article discusses the exegesis of the texts of the book of the prophet Jeremiah (1, 5, 7, 18) in the writings of Origen from different periods of his theological-philosophical and exegetic activities. These texts Origen uses as biblical evidence to justify the three provisions of his teachings, taken from Plato’s philosophy: the animate of stars, the pre-existence of souls to their bodies, the foresight of God. In the earlier аlexandrian period of his literary activity Origen in the work «On the principles» gives them a Christian understanding and even tries to make the Church teaching. In the caesarean period, on the contrary, he departs from the provisions of Platonism and considers these tests of Jeremiah, in particular Jer. 1, 5, from the standpoint of Church doctrine in the traditional biblical context, understanding them as evidence of the doctrine of divine foresight. The article deals with the works of the above two periods of Origen, in which the Alexandrian begins to interpret these texts of Jeremiah, coming to different theological conclusions. With the help of this research methodology, the author seeks to show the evolution of the doctrinal views of Origen and his exegesis.