Journal articles on the topic 'God (Christianity) Wisdom'

Male images of God have alienated women from Christianity. This article explores themes which bring to life images for Christian women. The first is the tradition of wisdom-theology, followed by reflections on a new creation-theology and on a creation-spirituality.

The Sophia tradition was formed in European philosophical and religious creativity and was developed in the pre-Christian period by Plato. Then it was reflected in Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, the writings of prominent theorists of Christianity - fathers and teachers of the church, mystics of the Middle Ages. This tradition was reflected in the temple architecture and iconography of the Orthodox East, and took a systematic form of the doctrine of sophiology in the "philosophy of unity." The doctrine of Sophia the Wisdom of God is set forth in the biblical book of the parables of the Solomons, as well as in the non-canonical books of the Old Testament - the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach. In Ukraine, Sofia teaching has been known since medieval times and was a feature of Kyiv Christianity.

This review of Thomas John Hastings, Worshiping, Witnessing, and Wondering: Christian Wisdom for Participation in the Mission of God (2022), offers comments on its contextual and biblical foundations and engages it on the topics of Christian education, pneumatology, practical theology, and World Christianity. The review praises the careful research and crafting of the book and appreciates its clever use of triads to identify and integrate diverse approaches to Christian education.

AbstractExploring the emergence of creedal statements in Christianity about non-time before creation, called precreation rhetorolect, this essay begins with the baptismal creed called the Roman Symbol and its expansion into the Apostles’ Creed. These early creeds contain wisdom, apocalyptic, and priestly rhetorolect, but no precreation rhetorolect. When the twelve statements in the Apostles’ Creed were expanded into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the first three statements added precreation rhetorolect. God the Father Almighty not only creates heaven and earth, but God creates all things visible and invisible. Jesus Christ is not only God’s only Son, our Lord, but the Son is begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, and true God from true God. Being of the same substance as the Father, all things were made through the Son before he came down from heaven, the Son was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became human. With these creedal additions, a precreation storyline became the context for a lengthy chain of argumentation about belief among fourth century Christian leaders.

The research aims to reconstruct the expressive contribution of the philosophy of otherness to (re) thinking the status of Christian theology in Latin American lands, as well as the disenchantment of that kind of philosophy. First, it is about evoking the contribution of the wisdom of Love to think Christian theology otherwise in light of a broader background that re-establish the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Secondly, we intend to explain the impact of the Levinasian approach on the problem of God and its developments in our continent from a theological point of view. Without denying that theology has a discursive character, it is a matter of retaking what the Lithuanian-Frenchman philosopher evokes about the service to the love of the wisdom of love. And by way of conclusion, it is intended to propose some brief notes about the urgency of a poststructuralist turn of Latin American theology in function of the centrality of ethics and their respective languages in the manner of a Canticle of the Canticles.

The Old and the New Testaments are not only the word of God and a source of wisdom that leads to salvation, but also a mine of knowledge and educational wisdom. One can speak of biblical pedagogy which in a sense is a synthesis of God’s wisdom revealed to the people of Israel and their educational experience which they gained in the centuries of their existence. Both the Old and the New Testaments, in their entirety, are a source of this pedagogy adopted by God with respect to the Chosen People as a whole and as individuals. For the educational practice of Christianity, the basic code of ethical norms contained in the Ten Commandments, i.e. the Decalogue, is of particular importance, applying to all believers. These are the rules of conduct that provide the basis in the formation and education of a new person. One cannot understand the principles of education based on the teachings of Jesus Christ without exploring the educational tradition of Israel and comprehending the pedagogy contained in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ did not reject this tradition. He used it to build on it, revealing its much broader and deeper perspective. The biblical pedagogy continues to be valid also in the conditions of the modern world.

Natural degradation is not merely a competition between ecology and economy. The destruction of nature is closely related to religiosity and human relationships to fellow human beings, the environment, and God. Ecotheology becomes a self-criticism of the classical doctrines of Christianity, which are considered to exalt humankind as the "crown of creation"� and marginalize non-human creatures as commodities of economic value for human interests. Ecotheology seems to have talked too often about damaged nature, or even extinct plants or animals, and forgetting the other side of the bountiful biodiversities, which is the holy beauty of nature. Ecotheology needs to ponder that God, the Holy Grandeur, who manifests the cosmic wisdom in the beauty of all creation, is enough for all.

The Logos in Christianity and the Maiden who personified the Spirit of God within Baha'u'llah van be equated as one and the same eternal reality. Christians have often noted the similarities between the Logos and the personified image of wisdom (or Sophia) in Proverbs and the deuterocanonical books. In many ways, both the characterstics of the Logos and the image of Sophia can be seen combined in the feminine personification of the Most Great Spirit in Baha'u'llah's writings. This article examines some of the corollaries between these three expressions of divine emanation.

In Western theism, different attributes have classically been ascribed to God, such as omnipotence, omniscience, wisdom, goodness, freedom and so on. But these ascriptions have also raised many conceptual difficulties: are these attributes internally coherent? Are they really compossible? Are they compatible with what we know about the world (e.g. the existence of evil, human freedom, the laws of nature etc.). These traditional questions are part of the inquiry on God’s nature as it is carried out in contemporary philosophy of religion. Another part of this inquiry is constituted by theological and philosophical questions raised by more precise or particular religious conceptions of God – e.g. the doctrine of Trinity in Christianity, or other specific credentials about the right way to understand God’s perfection and absolute transcendence in Judaism, Christianity or Islam. In this issue, we propose to follow these two directions of the inquiry about God’s nature and attributes through historical and systematic studies, in the perspective of contemporary philosophy of religion and analytical theology. While the three papers specifically dedicated to the problem of the Trinity pertain mainly to the second part of the examination (the conceptual analysis of specific credentials and theological doctrines), the three others offer new perspectives and arguments on traditional questions about God, like the problem of evil, perfect goodness, or the problem of divine perfection and God’s freedom.

In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel propounds three interrelated theses:(1) The radical continuity of religion and philosophy:The subject of religion as of philosophy is the eternal truth in its objectivity, is God and nothing but God and the explication of God. Philosophy is not worldly wisdom, but knowledge of the non-worldly, not knowledge of the outer substance, of empirical being and life, but knowledge of what is eternal, of what God is and what emanates from his nature. For this nature must reveal and develop itself. Philosophy therefore explicates itself only by explicating religion, and by thus explicating itself, explicates religion … Hence religion and philosophy collapse into each other; philosophy is indeed itself religious service [Gottesdienst]. (Hegel 1986c: 28)(2) The view that philosophy renders in conceptual form the essence of what Christianity consists in and thus transcends the merely subjective vantage-point of faith:In philosophy religion obtains its justification from the thinking consciousness … Faith already contains the true content, but it still misses the form of thought. All previously considered forms — feeling, representation — can have the content of truth, but they themselves are not the true form which makes the true content necessary. Thought is the absolute judge before whom the content needs to prove and justify itself, (ibid.: 341)(3) Philosophy alone shows Christianity to be rational and necessary:This vantage-point [of philosophy] is therefore the justification of religion, especially of the Christian, the true religion; it apprehends [erkennen] the content in its necessary form [nach seiner Notwendigkeit], according to reason; at the same time it also knows the forms in the development of this content. (ibid.: 339)

In an age termed by some as the “Capitalocene,” Christianity and the biblical text are sources for developing alternative economic imaginations that respond to the contemporary ecological crisis. Noting the economic inequality and ecological destruction common to both first-century Palestine and twenty-first-century global capitalistic societies, this article draws upon world-ecology theory and offers an ecological-economic reading of the parable of the “rich fool” (Luke 12.13-34). I argue that the assumptions of neo-liberal economic ideology often determine our interpretation of this text. In contrast to the rich fool who lives beyond ecological limits and disconnects himself from his community, Jesus offers ravens and grasses as teachers of ecological wisdom: redefining “wealth” and what is required to be “rich towards God.” The article concludes by discussing how translation choices may assist readers to see the economic-ecological dimensions of this text.

This paper examines a discussion about ecology focus on Batak Christian Protestant Church's view and action. The study's reason is based on what the church said about ecological problems in their faith declaration. Furthermore, looking Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) litigates connected to ecological action case in Indonesia. Methodology in this research is literary, looking at the book, internet, and faith confession of the HKBP. Gathering the data and then analyze is the approach used to discuss the issue. This study traced that the HKBP has mentioned ecology in their faith confession. In their view, HKBP argues that God created man in his residence and place of work in this world (Gen. 2:5-15). Therefore, they oppose any environmentally damaging activities, such as burning and cutting down trees in the forest or wilderness (Deuteronomy 5: 20; 19-20). This creed is based on the Word of God as recorded in the scriptures. They also have been activated to protect nature, for example: develop livestock waste into alternative energy (biogas); planting trees in Peak Dolok, Balige North Sumatera; statings local wisdom. Christianity realizes that ecology issues are also part of their problems. What has been done by the HKBP be a positive thing. This action is a good activity for Christianity in Indonesia. Even though we cannot deny the ecology problem is our common problem.

This study explores the ways the symbolic aspects of the consecration of altars are manifested in 17th–21st century Siberian Orthodox churches. I focus on altars of Sophia the Wisdom of the Word of God, and the Holy Great Martyr Barbara of Heliopolis. Sources include diocese registers published in the early 1900s, 17th century documents, works of Old Russian literature, church indexes, and the “Temples of Russia” (temples.ru) database. On the basis of a neurosymbolic approach to completely record reference data, a conclusion is made that the consecrations of altars dedicated to Sophia Wisdom were elitist, whereas altars in the name Holy Great Martyr Barbara were rare, but were re- energized in the late 20th and early 21st century, after this saint had become the patroness of Russia’s strategic missile forces. Specific cults of saints have a chance to re-emerge when biographical or historical events of a local, regional, or state level come to be associated with episodes in the history of Christianity and hagiographic vitae. Everyday life is thereby linked to a religious context, and numerous repetitions account for the fact that consecrations of altars become traditional. Temples become material symbols, and memorial dates relating to saints turn into verbal symbols functioning as mental labels.

The article considers dynamics and carries out comparison of significant valuable guidelines of Christianity and Buddhism which form the basis of theological conceptions if these world religions and demonstrate ideological and moral priorities of people professing these religions. The issues under consideration are of relevance as the problem considered in the article and reacquired results of the survey reveal the difference in the mentality of people confessing definite religion and as a result can remove difficulties arising in the process of communication of people sharing different religious views. The aim of the carried investigation is to identify values forming the basis of the two of the world’s principal religions. To determine causes and main directions of historical dynamics of the pointed values as well as influence of the values of a certain religion on the society’s functioning. In the process of conducting research the following methods were used: semantic and content analysis method, conceptual analysis and discourse analysis. The study showed that the following values can be referred to traditional Christian values: faith, good (kindness), love, mercy, modesty, forgiveness, purity of morals, God. At the present stage of social development Christian values have undergone changes, and at present such values as life, truth, and good have come to the fore. Besides, modern Christianity refers to values such notions as patriotism, freedom and family values. Buddhism historically refers to the category of values the guidelines determining foundations of human life: correct views, correct intentions, correct speech, correct behavior, correct lifestyle, correct efforts, correct attention. At the present stage of social development modified values of Buddhism come to the forefront: cleansing the mind and developing wisdom, compassion, the law of karma and rebirth. In modern Buddhism, values present complex concepts implying that a person has particular moral qualities. The results of the study showed that Christian values have been kept unchanged, while values of Buddhism have been subject to changes under the influence of changing historical conditions.

The question about how religious pluralism should properly be understood from the Catholic point of view has been asked since the outset of Christianity. It was also formulated in the context of A Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb. The present article gives a theological interpretation of the sentence included in the Abu Dhabi document: “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.” It argues that this passage should be understood correctly within the inclusivist paradigm that recognizes and confers to non-Christian religions and to religious pluralism a status de iure without jeopardizing the foundations of Catholic faith: the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church. In conclusion, the question concerning the application of the assertion to the case of Islam has been explored.

The ‘Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together’, co-signed on 4 February 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayeb, states: ‘The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.’ The article presents the starting points of correct hermeneutics of this statement. It points out that it is a positive reformulation of the anti-discrimination human rights declarations, which list the criteria according to which people cannot be discriminated. It shows the compatibility of the statement with the Quran, which presupposes a plurality of successive and graded revelations of God and religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It then represents the reactions with which Catholic theologians responded to the statement: the accusation of the Pope of heresy; the claim that while God’s creative will has instilled a natural religion in human beings, it does not positively seek a plurality of religions; the claim that non-Christian religions are an evil by which God allows to achieve greater good; the claim that all religions are wanted by God’s Providence in what is true, good, and beautiful in them as the preparation for the salvation of man in the encounter with Christ. In the end, it discusses the idea of St. John Paul II, who, for several years before the creation of the Abu Dhabi declaration, combined this last idea with the work of the Holy Spirit.

The article analyzes the medieval interpretations of biblical images of Sophia of the Wisdom of God, Eve, Virgin Mary. Their role of women's inclusion in the social order of the Western European Medieval Society in the religious-cultural model is considered. The activity of women in religion, politics and science has been steadily increasing, but the society, at least in modern times, continues to broadcast ideas about the woman which are most clear and in detailed in the religious and cultural heritage of Christianity. They all relate to those ideas that contend with the idea of a woman's low capacity for intellectual activity, unprofessionalism, immaturity, and passivity, which are conditioned by "feminine nature". If, in the context of medieval religious culture, such perception was related to relevant socially predetermined functions that were actively promoted by the Christian church and supported by the specific religious space of that era, then women's ministry in the Christian church, based on women's biblical images, exemplifies the strengthening and propagation of the Christian faith.

Summary Dogmatic debates in early Christianity shaped philosophical discourse just as Greek philosophy offered the conceptual tools to engage and, accordingly to crystalize early Christian practice, into a formal system of belief. Thus, in the recently-published The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics, Johannes Zachhuber notes that “Patristic thought as a whole can be identified as a Christian philosophy.” Following suit – though not without nuance – this paper suggests treating Patristic scriptural exegesis as an exercise of speculative philosophy, as evidenced in Augustine’s interpretation of the figure of the cross at Eph 3.18, where the cross progressively becomes a simple yet compelling paradigm of divine manifestation. This paradigm can be framed according to Augustine’s mature articulation of the ‘ontological principle’ of manifestation in s. 165: “From the depth which you cannot see rises everything that you can see.” By engaging in scriptural exegesis, within a gestalt where Wisdom, sacred and profane alike, merge in the incarnate God manifest in Christ, Augustine articulates unprecedented philosophical principles.

Michael Gillespie's Theological Origins of Modernity provides a historically grounded and philosophically ambitious, at times even provocative, account of the deep unity of the modern tradition. The book is more historical than most works of political theory, and exhibits a healthy freedom from received wisdom about who the important thinkers are and about what they might have to say. Yet it would be quite wrong to read this book as a simple history: it is also—perhaps even primarily—a philosophical diagnosis of the present. Gillespie's thesis, stated far too crudely, is that the familiar Enlightenment story of an age of reason preceded by an age of darkness, superstition, and religion is far too simplistic. We late moderns, too, have thoughts about first things and divinity; but we hide the enduring presence of those thoughts and questions from ourselves by the pride we take in having overcome the atavisms of theology. Gillespie argues that, so far from being wholly novel, those thoughts are in fact the descendants of the theology of late medieval nominalism. Where others speak of the secularization of Christianity, Gillespie prefers to speak of the transference of divine attributes from God to man or nature.

Abstract Till We Have Faces is profitably read at three levels: for its surface story, as a crime drama, and as an exploration of the theological mystery of grace. By transposing the myth of Psyche into the mystery genre, Lewis prepares the reader for Orual’s unreliability as a narrator and lures the reader into the novel’s theological depths. Part Two of the novel contains a series of visionary labors which Lewis borrows from Lucius Apuleius but recasts as feats achieved jointly by Orual and Psyche. The theological reading in this article finds textual support for rereading Part One of the novel as depicting Orual, by grace, unknowingly performing Psyche’s labors. Read thusly, the novel is a working out of Lewis’s belief that God can change the past—that grace can reach back into our histories and retell our story. By ascribing to the mutability of the past, Lewis sidesteps the dispute among various branches of Christianity over whether prevenient grace (the grace that pursues us prior to conversion) is both irresistible and salvific. An examination of four sources of grace in Orual’s life (love of beauty, love of wisdom, religious practice, and bereavement) reveals that what would have been common grace in her life becomes salvific as it leads to her redemption. This exposition also shows the novel’s indebtedness to the many classical Greek sources to which Lewis alludes within it, as well as its affinity with some of the ideas of Simone Weil.

In his Christianity as Old as the Creation Matthew Tindal has reduced Christian religion to the natural religion. His reduction was the last stage of purification of Protestant religion from its supernatural elements. This whole process was taking place in England between 1534 and 1730. The main conclusion of this English deist sounded: the revealed religion was the only repetition of the eternal natural religion, based on the law of nature and human reason. Simultaneously he claimed that any Christian proprium (specific Christian content) did not exist in relation to any other non Christian religion. In this article I put this problem through critical assesment, making analysis of Tindal’s argumentation and confronting it with (to some degree) Thomas Becconsall views, expressed in his The Grounds and Foundation of Natural Religion. In contrast to Becconsall Tindal understands the nature of man in another way. This latter rejects the opinion that human nature was burdened with certain moral ineffectuality. According to it human being is more prone to misdeeds than to good deeds. In Christian religion it was possible to explain by the original sin and its hereditary effects in the history of mankind. Matthew Tindal rejects this Christian dogma. In reality he understands man’s existence in the state of pure nature and with reason acting without limitations. It corresponds to the situation of man before the Fall into the original sin. But Tindal is not any atheist. He is convinced of God’s existence as the Creator of the world and people. The reason of human beings participates in the light of Divine Wisdom. Thus cognition of God and human moral duties are possible (in practice) by intellectual effort directed to the sensible creatures only. This kind of rational investigation is characteristic for methaphysical cognition. In fact, there is small step from deism to atheism. English Enlightenment, based on the enlightened reason, was initially deistic character, afterwards on the Continent (especially in France) it quickly assumed atheistic form. In considerable degree it was possible owing to English deists like Matthew Tindal. They draw the ultimate conclusion from the plurality of Protestant denominations.

فلسفة الأخلاق والقيم، عبد الوهاب جعفر، الإسكندرية: دار الوفاء لدنيا الطباعة والنشر، 2013م، 267 صفحة. الإنسان ومكانته في فلسفة هارتمان الأخلاقية، محمود سيد أحمد، الكويت: مكتبة آفاق، 2013م، 200 صفحة. التلمود البابلي، الأردن: مركز دراسات الشرق الأوسط، 2012م، 20 مجلد، 7100 صفحة. التلمود: الذكر، الصلاة، الدعاء، تفسير الأحلام، ليلى إبراهيم أبو المجد وعلاء تيسير أحمد، القاهرة: مكتبة مدبولي، 2011م، 529 صفحة. الدِّين والسياسة والأخلاق.. مباحث فلسفية في السياقين الإسلامي والغربي، السيد ولد أباه، بيروت: دار جداول، 2014م، 312 صفحة. كيف لم أَعُدْ يهودياً: وجهة نظر إسرائيلية، شلومو ساند، ترجمة: أنطوان شلحت، رام الله:مدار- المركز الفلسطيني للدراسات الإسرائيلية، 2014م، 124 صفحة. ماذا فعل الإسلاملنا، تيم ولاس ميرفي، ترجمة: فؤاد عبد المطلب، بيروت: دار جداول، 2014م، 264 صفحة. بحثاً عن المقدَّس.. البعث والأصولية، حمود حمود، بيروت: دار جداول، 2014م، 336 صفحة. Islamic Ethics: Divine Command Theory in Arabo-Islamic Thought (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East), Mariam al-Attar, Routledge, Reprinted Edition, November 2012, 220 pages. Living the Ethics and Morality of Islam: How to Live As A Muslim, Ali Unal, Tughra Books, February, 2013, 226 pages. Mircea Eliade: Myth, Religion, and History, Nicolae Babuts (Editor), Transaction Publishers, April 2014, 223 pages. Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (After Spirituality: Studies in Mystical Traditions), Moshe Idel Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, Second edition, March July 2014, 284 pages. The Wisdom of the Talmud: a Thousand Years of Jewish Thought, Ben Zion Bokser, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, September 2014, 218 pages. The Jewish Position on Other Religions, Sina Cohen, S Research Publications, March 2013, 102 pages. Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife: Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam [3 volumes], J. Harold Ellens (Editor), Praeger, July 2013, 838 pages. God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason, John Walbridge, Cambridge University Pres, September 2013, 228 pages. A Fresh Look at Islam in a Multi-Faith World: A Philosophy for Success through Education, Matthew L.N. Wilkinson, UK- Routledge , November 4, 2014, 304 pages. Islamic Ethics and Moral Philosophy in the Global Business Environment, Shahina Qureshi, USA- Idea Group, (September 30, 2014), 339 pages. Ethics in Islam: Friendship in the Political Thought of Al-Tawhidi and his Contemporaries,Nuha Al-Shaar, Culture and Civilization in the Middle East, 304 pages. The Cry of the Conscious Behind the Religion: A Book about Facts and High Thoughts, Utthor Purush, XLIBRIS, July 29, 2014, 272 pages. للحصول على كامل المقالة مجانا يرجى النّقر على ملف ال PDF في اعلى يمين الصفحة.

The thesis of this essay is that the central postmodern challenge is to recover stable, objective normative standards that presuppose cultural renewal and liberal arts education building on the classical paideia of educating the whole person. Humans possess an innate moral sense that requires nurturing and developing to encompass both résumé and eulogy virtues as proposed by David Brooks’ The Road to Character. Wisdom-seeking traditions aim at self-mastery, but need tempering by neo-Kantian epistemological modesty to eschew utopias in their quest for transcendence, recalling the Augustinian conception of humanity’s fallen nature, the need for community, the aspiration for good works in the City of Man, and the soul’s yearning for redemption and salvation in the City of God. The essay concludes with the “Angel Initiative” as an example of practical wisdom that reflects Brooks’ humility code, the wisdom-seeking traditions’ emphasis on the Way, and Christianity’s promise as “a religion of second chances.”

THE AGE OF AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity by Jason Thacker. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Thrive, 2020. 192 pages. Hardcover; $22.99. ISBN: 9780310357643. *There are not yet many books that engage with artificial intelligence theologically. Jason Thacker's The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, written for a general audience, provides an important start to much-needed theological discussions about autonomous and intelligent technologies. As an early effort in this complex interdisciplinary dialogue, this book deserves credit for its initial exploratory efforts. Thacker's book also points to the larger and more complex territory requiring further exploration. *Thacker, creative director at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and project lead for their "Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles," is eager to draw attention to the pervasive and disruptive presence of artificial intelligence in our lives. While some may be distracted by images of AI that are speculative--the utopian Commander Data or the dystopian Terminator--many have not given much thought to the actual forms of AI that are part of our lives already, such as recommendation systems and digital assistants. "AI is everywhere," Thacker says; "And we aren't prepared." To help the unprepared understand AI, Thacker provides an orientation to current AI developments and explores the wide-ranging impacts of these on self-understanding, medicine, family, work, war, privacy, and the future. Along the way, he recalls biblical wisdom about old moral problems and imperatives, such as what the Ten Commandments prohibit and what Micah 6:8 prescribes (doing justice, loving mercy, and journeying attentively with God). He also offers a number of familiar biblical assurances, such as not being afraid and trusting in God. *All of this is helpful, to an extent. Thacker's major conclusions about AI are that we should not let our creations--our artificial agents--supersede human agency, and that we should not place too much hope in technology, for it alone cannot save us. Both of these are important points, although neither is very controversial nor necessarily theological: transparency is called for in many AI ethical frameworks, and we are well into a period of technological disenchantment. *Thacker starts The Age of AI by asking two significant questions. First, what does it mean to be human? Thacker looks to Genesis 1, which states--three times--that God created humans in the image of God. Clearly, this is an important theological claim; it is also a very complex one. There are various interpretations of what it means to be created in the image of God, and this is only the first chapter of the biblical narrative. Thacker emphasizes a functional interpretation of Genesis 1: We are called to work to glorify God. Elsewhere, however, Thacker shifts to a more essentialist interpretation that emphasizes human dignity. He asserts that our dignity does not come from what we do and that "nothing in this world defines us" (p. 117). But what about the work we are called to do in and for the world? *Another challenge of beginning in Genesis 1 is what happens in Genesis 3--humanity's rebellion against God. Thacker claims that "the image of God in us was not lost" (p. 19), though he does not address the extent to which this image was corrupted. For Christians, what is most important is Jesus's redemption and transformation of that fallen image. What does the image of God in Christ, the new Adam, reveal about the future of humanity? *Questions raised by Thacker's answer to his first question carry over into his answer to his second question, what is technology (including AI)? For Thacker, technology itself is morally neutral: "What's sinful isn't the sword but how people choose to use it" (p. 20). Given Isaiah's eschatological image of swords beaten into plowshares, many would argue that the sword is part of a system of weaponry and warfare that is immoral and must come to an end. Going beyond Isaiah, Jacques Ellul concluded that the biblical city, as an image of the technological society, must ultimately be destroyed: the city is an autonomous, multi-agent system with a diabolical power that exceeds the power of the human agents who created it. (Ellul almost seems to suggest that there is something like a rogue AI in the Bible!) Ellul goes too far with this, missing the good in the city and the transformative power of new creation over sinful systems, but he rightly points to the deformative power of technology. Thacker acknowledges that technology profoundly changes us and our world, positively and negatively, but he seems to suggest that humans can easily remain in control of and essentially unchanged by it. *Thacker's emphasis on Genesis, "where everything began," appears to close off any discussion about evolution and its insights into the role of technology in our emergence as a species. Indeed, the archeological record reveals that the use of simple stone tools shaped ancient human bodies and brains. Technology not only preceded the arrival of Homo sapiens, it shaped our understanding of what a human being is in form and function. Furthermore, throughout human history, technology has continued to change us fundamentally. Consider, for example, Walter Ong's insight that the technology of writing restructured consciousness. From the perspective of evolution and cultural development, technologies have been shaping and changing what we are from the beginning. *Thacker critiques Max Tegmark and Yuval Noah Harari for conflating evolution and cultural development, but that misses their interest in how humans might continue to outrun natural selection through innovation--a path our species has been on for many millennia, at least since the agricultural revolution and the creation of the complex artificial environments we call cities. As controversial as they may be, Tegmark and Harari point to how a deeper historical and philosophical understanding of technology enables us to explore questions about the holistic transformation of humans and human agency. *Thacker's view of technology encourages pursuing "technological innovation to help push back the effects of the fall" (p. 70). He worries that we might be tempted to "transcend our natural limitations," although it is not clear how far we are permitted to push back against the corrupted creation. He also fears "the people of God buying the lie that we are nothing more than machines and that somehow AI will usher in a utopian age" (p. 182). Educating people to resist being reduced to the status of machines (or data or algorithms) should be a learning outcome in any class or discussion about AI. As for ushering in a utopian age, this is one way of describing (in a kingdom-of-God sense) the Christian vocation: participating with God in the new creation. And perhaps AI has a role in this. *Thacker is absolutely right that we need a foundational understanding of who we are and of what technology is, and his answers provoke a number of questions for further exploration. The Bible reflects a rich interplay between human technological and spiritual development, from Edenic agriculture through Babelian urban agencies. And, as a technology itself, the Bible participates in these developments through its origin, nature, and function to mediate divine agency that transforms human agency. The biblical narrative makes it clear that we are not going back to the primordial garden in Genesis; we are moving toward the eschatological city, New Jerusalem, imaged in Revelation--"and what we will be has not yet been revealed" (1 John 3:2). How we understand the relationship between technological transformation and the transformation of all things through the new creation deserves much more attention within Christian theology. *With AI, it is clear that we are facing an even more profound restructuring of our lives and world--and of our selves. Rather than looking back to the imago Dei corrupted in the beginning, Christians might find it more generative to look to the imago Christi. As N. T. Wright powerfully argues in History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology (SPCK, 2019), the new creation inaugurated through the resurrection of Jesus provides a radically new perspective on creation. This includes us and our artificial creations. While Thacker believes "nothing will ever change fundamental aspects of the universe" (p. 168), some of us may imagine AI participating in the new creation. *For someone just beginning to think about AI and Christianity, The Age of AI might be a good place to start. But more needs to be read and written to explore the theological and technological questions this book raises. *Reviewed by Michael J. Paulus Jr., Dean of the Library, Assistant Provost for Educational Technology, and Director and Associate Professor of Information Studies, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA 98119.

TO THINK CHRISTIANLY: A History of L'Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement by Charles E. Cotherman. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020. 320 pages. Hardcover; $35.00. ISBN: 9780830852826. *How do Christians studying at secular universities, where religion is either ignored or attacked, achieve an integral Christian perspective on their areas of study and future careers? Charles Cotherman presents a first-rate history of one way that Christians have sought to answer this question, namely, in establishing Christian study centers on or adjacent to university campuses. *The Christian study center movement (CSCM) in North America arose to teach and guide Christians in how to think and behave Christianly in all areas and professions of life, by drawing upon the insights of biblical and theological studies. Cotherman defines such a study center as "a local Christian community dedicated to spiritual, intellectual and relational flourishing via the cultivation of deep spirituality, intellectual and artistic engagement, and cultivation of hospitable presence" (p. 8). He rightly contends that the roots of the CSCM movement are found in two institutions: L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland (founded 1955) and Regent College in Vancouver (founded 1968). In Part 1, Innovation, he presents the history of these two institutions. *In chapter one, Cotherman gives an account of the birth and development of L'Abri under the leadership of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. As missionaries to an increasingly secular Europe, their encounter with its culture, art, and philosophical ideas led Francis to contextualize the gospel--as an evangelical Presbyterian minister rooted in the Reformed faith--in an intellectually honest fashion to people influenced by this culture. L'Abri's ministry was so effective because of two other equally important features: the practice of a deep spirituality amidst the rhythms of everyday life, and the practice of relationships in a hospitable community, both of which Francis and Edith were instrumental in shaping. As more people visited L'Abri and were helped in their faith or accepted the gospel, it became known in the wider evangelical Christian world. This gave rise to branches of L'Abri being established in other nations, and to Christians seeking to establish communities on university campuses that embodied L'Abri's intellectual, spiritual, and relational strengths. *In chapter two, Cotherman presents the history of the rise of Regent College and its progress toward financial and academic stability at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The first principal, James Houston, played a key role in attracting good faculty and in shaping the curriculum to educate laypeople in the Christian worldview for their secular careers. It provided students with a strong sense of community and vital spirituality. Regent also sought to be a witness to and partner with the university by purchasing property on the campus and by obtaining university affiliation. With the decline in enrollment for lay theological education in the 1970s, Regent survived by offering the MDiv degree (1978), attracting new students preparing for pastoral ministry. When other attempts at establishing Christian colleges and Christian study centers were initiated at other universities, Houston served to encourage and guide such ventures by drawing upon Regent's experience. *Inspired by the vision and community of L'Abri and by the success of Regent College, Christians ministering at other university campuses sought to establish "evangelical living and learning centers" on or near the campuses of state universities (p. 91). Part 2, Replication, gives an account of three such CSCM ventures: (1) the C. S. Lewis Institute (initially at the University of Maryland, later in downtown Washington, DC); (2) New College, Berkeley; and (3) the Center for Christian Study at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Cotherman also includes in this section a chapter on the history and progress of Ligonier Ministries under the leadership and teaching gifts of R. C. Sproul (initially in Pennsylvania, then in Orlando, Florida). Although originally modelled after L'Abri as a lay-teaching retreat center in a rural setting, Ligonier's move to Orlando marked a shift to a ministry focused on Sproul's teaching gifts in (Reformed) theological education that concentrated on video and print materials. The history of Ligonier is clearly the outlier here. Perhaps Cotherman includes it because it began as a retreat center for students, but it gradually became focused on general lay theological education, especially after its move to Orlando. *The three Christian university learning centers all began with grand visions of providing university-level education to aid students, studying at the large universities, in formulating a worldview to enable them to integrate their Christian faith with their academic and professional education. Although these three sought to become free-standing colleges with high-quality faculty, to teach courses during the academic year, and in summer study institutes, the challenges of raising funds, attracting full-time faculty, and finding permanent facilities resulted in all of them having to scale back their plans. The Lewis Institute turned its attention to relational learning, eventually establishing regional centers in eighteen cities; New College, Berkeley, became an affiliate, nondegree granting institution of the Graduate Theological Union, being the evangelical voice there; and the Center for Christian Study shifted its focus to being an inviting and hospitable place for study, formation, and relationships in its building on the edge of the campus. All three found that replicating a Regent College was a much more difficult project than they had originally thought. *Cotherman notes that all four attempts of the CSCM, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, ran into the new reality: American Christians were not willing to take a year off their careers to study for a nonaccredited diploma. Students were more interested in getting degrees that had financial payoffs. The most successful venture was the Center for Christian Study, which used the building it purchased as a hub for various Christian ministries at the university, and as a center for hospitality to Christian and non-Christian students. The Charlottesville Center became a catalyst for the formation of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers across North America. This included not only the three university centers mentioned above, but also numerous others that had arisen on university campuses. Many of the centers became convinced that "the path forward was more a matter of faithful presence through deeply rooted, engaged and hospitable relationships and institutions than it was about the apologetics or cultural bluster that had defined some aspects of the movement in its early days" (p. 252). *Cotherman's concluding chapter notes that the CSCM has largely focused on ministries of faithful presence and generous hospitality, with the goal of holistic flourishing at the universities that they serve. Such flourishing includes helping Christian students to cultivate the ability to think Christianly about current issues and their vocations as they engage the pluralistic ideologies, cultural practices, and neo-pagan practices on university campuses. Cotherman rightly observes that, while both L'Abri and Regent College inspired many to establish such centers, it was Regent that had played the prominent role as a model for those aiming to guide students and to interact with modern secular universities. L'Abri was focused around the unique community that the Schaeffers created and the giftedness of Francis and Edith, but L'Abri failed to interact with the wider academic world. In striving to be a Christian presence on campus, Regent was the appropriate model for the CSCM. *The details of the historical accounts in the book serve to remind the reader that, while grandiose visions and goals drove many in the movement, their reduced aspirations led to the CSCM being better suited to effective witnessing, appropriate educating, and faithful service to students and lay-people today. Any who would start such a Christian study center or who wonder how an existing one can survive should read this book and learn the lessons from the history of the ventures presented. Humility in one's plans and small beginnings are appropriate for any such ministry to avoid the mistakes of the centers presented. *While Cotherman touches on the rising antagonism to Christianity and Christians on university campuses, he fails to provide significant treatment of this new challenge that the CSCM faces. I think we can imply from this fine book that, as the CSCM movement adapted to the new realities in the latter part of the twentieth century, it can also adapt to the intensified attacks on the Christian faith in the twenty-first century. While the challenges ahead are great for Christian university ministries, Christian witness has the resources of the word of God, the wisdom of the Spirit, and the motivation of the gospel which continue to guide biblical discipleship and faithful witness. This historical survey by Cotherman can serve as an encouragement to campus ministry for our increasingly secularized western culture. *Reviewed by Guenther ("Gene") Haas, Professor Emeritus, Religion and Theology Department, Redeemer University, Ancaster, ON L9K 1J4.

The condemnation of Galileo Galilei, a milestone in the history of science, is interpreted as if the Catholic Church were an oppressive institution and against scientific investigation. However, much of what we are taught is nothing more than myth or legend, such as persecution and condemnation at the bonfire. In fact, far from persecuting him, the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church welcomed Galileo as a son and, moreover, it was the cradle of science and the university system, for being the institution that was most interested in cultivating knowledge, it was also the one that invested most in astronomy. Previously called natural philosophy, modern science was influenced by the priests of the Catholic Church, mainly by the Jesuits who were pioneers in astronomy. Priests like Nicolaus Copernicus, who started the theory of heliocentrism, Roger Boscovich, a Jesuit priest who gave the first coherent description of the atom giving rise to the first modern atomic theories, Gregor Mendel, who was the monk who performed experiments with peas, Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest who created the Big Bang theory. These and many others made great discoveries that made science take great leaps. Not discarding other civilizations and religions, pantheists, who brought a lot of wisdom, such as the Incas, Mayans, Babylonians, Egyptians, etc., but the Christian Church was the only one that reached to take science to another level, for it was based on the belief of a single God who had created all things with physical order and laws. Therefore, the objective of this work is to contest the idea that the Church is opposed to Science, exposing the difference between the two and aiming at scientific investigations carried out by priests. Concluding that this Christian institution did not persecute science, but made great leaps, did not burn scientists on the bonfire because of their ideas, did not delay science in the medieval and the conflict or divergence is the result of criticism made for the Church by Enlightenment thinkers and the story badly told full of fantasies.

In the article the author tries to analyze the representation of philosophical and anthropological ideas in the works of fraternal schools in the XVI–XVII centuries. It is noted that man was considered in the unity of soul and body as a microcosm and one that was created in the image of God. Self-knowledge was interpreted as a way of liberation from the burdens of the surrounding world, dependence on earthly sensuality. In particular, Stefan Zizaniy had a rationalist vision of the dogmas of orthodox Christianity. The work of Kyrylo Tranquillion-Stavrovetsky shows a neo-Platonist tradition associated with humanism. In accordance with the traditions of the Renaissance, the philosopher turns to the idea of double truth, considering wisdom from the standpoint of theology and practical philosophy of life. K. Tranquillion-Stavrovetsky, according to the Stoic doctrine, regarded man as a dual nature. But the philosopher also emphasized the unity of soul and body, because they are strongly interconnected. It is noteworthy that the scientist reveals the problem of soul and body from the Renaissance-humanistic moral-ethical and epistemological positions. Isaiah Kopynsky emphasizes that self-knowledge and cognition of the surrounding world does not occur through the study of nature and observation of natural phenomena, but, on the contrary, through immersion in your inner spiritual world through “smart deeds”. It contributes to the knowledge of the outside world, self-knowledge and knowledge of God. I. Kopynsky’s views are close to early Hesychast Byzantine theology. The anthropological views of the theologian are focused on the individual who takes an active part in the historical process. In his works, M. Smotrytsky also pays special attention to the transcendent nature of the human spirit, in particular, analyzing the question of the interaction of action and will. The author concludes that the philosophical and anthropological ideas of the fraternal schools were formed in the context of European philosophical culture and were a reflection of the cultural and historical features of the historical period we are studying.

Everyone knows that death is the inevitable end of man. What plagnes the mind of many,consciously or otherwise, is the question of what happens to man when he breaths his lastbreath. While some are of the opinion that after death comes judgment; a detenninant ofwhether one goes to eternal blissful domains, or into everlasting tonnent; depending onwhether he had lived piously or otherwise, while on earth. Another school of thought opinesthat the soul of the dead will reincarnate by taking abode in a new physical body, born as anew baby and live another nonnallife, whereby he/she has the opportunity to correct his/herwrong actions in the previous incarnation. While some are of the opinion that when the soulhas gathered wisdom, knowledge and understanding through several incarnations, it becomesone with the creator; others believe that reincarnation is a continuous process without neithera beginning nor an ending. The Y oruba of South-Western Nigeria, like most other Africans,believes that humans reincarnate in order to re-choose their destiny and fulfill their lifeambitions which they had no chance to achieve in a previous incarnation. An examination ofsome Yoruba traditional songs about death and what follows, show that they believe in 'a dayof reckoning' and the continuum of the life cycle. Reincarnation, generally speaking, isalways thought of, and discussed as a religious phenomenon, most probably because itborders on the super-natural; an issue to which only God; the creative force, has the totallycorrect answer. My bid in this study is to establish through self-confessed persons thatreincarnation is a reality, as against Majeed's (2012) summation that reincarnation as aphenomenon "serves the need of personality identity and as such, it is irrational". Aside fromthat, this study examines and concludes that the acceptance of the reality of reincarnation isnot peculiar to the Traditional Religion of the (African) Y oruba, it is a common nexus inother faiths, unlike what obtains in Christianity and Islam; the two officially recognized(foreign) religions in Nigeria. My exemplifications from Ay~ keji (The other world); aparticularly selected Nollywood film, is as a result of its direct relativity to the issue of thisstudy, which is pivoted around African indigenous thought system and philosophy.

Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)“I must plunge again and again in the water of doubt” (Wittgenstein 1e). The Holy Grail in the phenomenology of religion (and, to a lesser extent, the sociology of religion) is a definition of religion that actually works, but, so far, this seems to have been elusive. Classical definitions of religion—substantive (e.g. Tylor) and functionalist (e.g. Durkheim)—fail, in part because they attempt to be in three places at once, as it were: they attempt to distinguish religion from non-religion; they attempt to capture what religions have in common; and they attempt to grasp the “heart”, or “core”, of religion. Consequently, family resemblance definitions of religion replace certainty and precision for its own sake with a more pragmatic and heuristic approach, embracing doubt and putting forward definitions that give us a better understanding (Verstehen) of religion. In this paper, I summarise some “new” definitions of religion that take this approach, before proposing and defending another one, defining religion as non-propositional and “apophatic”, thus accepting that doubt is central to religion itself, as well as to the analysis of religion.The question of how to define religion has had real significance in a number of court cases round the world, and therefore it does have an impact on people’s lives. In Germany, for example, the courts ruled that Scientology was not a religion, but a business, much to the displeasure of the Church of Scientology (Aldridge 15). In the United States, some advocates of Transcendental Meditation (TM) argued that TM was not a religion and could therefore be taught in public schools without violating the establishment clause in the constitution—the separation of church and state. The courts in New Jersey, and federal courts, ruled against them. They ruled that TM was a religion (Barker 146). There are other cases that I could cite, but the point of this is simply to establish that the question has a practical importance, so we should move on.In the classical sociology of religion, there are a number of definitions of religion that are quite well known. Edward Tylor (424) defined religion as a belief in spiritual beings. This definition does not meet with widespread acceptance, the notable exception being Melford Spiro, who proposed in 1966 that religion was “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated super-human beings” (Spiro 96, see also 91ff), and who has bravely stuck to that definition ever since. The major problem is that this definition excludes Buddhism, which most people do regard as a religion, although some people try to get round the problem by claiming that Buddhism is not really a religion, but more of a philosophy. But this is cheating, really, because a definition of religion must be descriptive as well as prescriptive; that is, it must apply to entities that are commonly recognised as religions. Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, proposed that religion had two key characteristics, a separation of the sacred from the profane, and a gathering together of people in some sort of institution or community, such as a church (Durkheim 38, 44). However, religions often reject a separation of the sacred from the profane. Most Muslims and many Calvinist Christians, for example, would insist strongly that everything—including the ostensibly profane—is equally subject to the sovereignty of God. Also, some religions are more oriented to a guru-pupil kind of relationship, rather than a church community.Weber tried to argue that religion should only be defined at the end of a long process of historical and empirical study. He is often criticised for this, although there probably is some wisdom in his argument. However, there seems to be an implicit definition of religion as theodicy, accounting for the existence of evil and the existence of suffering. But is this really the central concern of all religions?Clarke and Byrne, in their book Religion Defined and Explained, construct a typology of definitions, which I think is quite helpful. Broadly speaking, there are two types of classical definition. Firstly, there are substantive definitions (6), such as Tylor’s and Spiro’s, which posit some sort of common “property” that religions “have”—“inside” them, as it were. Secondly, functionalist definitions (Clarke and Byrne 7), such as Durkheim’s, define religion primarily in terms of its social function. What matters, as far as a definition of religion is concerned, is not what you believe, but why you believe it.However, these classical definitions do not really work. I think this is because they try to do too many things. For a strict definition of religion to work, it needs to tell us (i) what religions have in common, (ii) what distinguishes religion on the one hand from non-religion, or everything that is not religion, on the other, and (iii) it needs to tell us something important about religion, what is at the core of religion. This means that a definition of religion has to be in three places at once, so to speak. Furthermore, a definition of religion has to be based on extant religions, but it also needs to have some sort of quasi-predictive capacity, the sort of thing that can be used in a court case regarding, for example, Scientology or Transcendental Meditation.It may be possible to resolve the latter problem by a gradual process of adjustment, a sort of hermeneutic circle of basing a definition on extant religions and applying it to new ones. But what about the other problem, the one of being in three places at once?Another type identified by Clarke and Byrne, in their typology of definitions, is the “family resemblance” definition (11-16). This derives from the later Wittgenstein. The “family resemblance” definition of religion is based on the idea that religions commonly share a number of features, but that no one religion has all of them. For example, there are religious beliefs, doctrines and mythos—or stories and parables. There are rituals and moral codes, institutions and clergy, prayers, spiritual emotions and experiences, etc. This approach is of course less precise than older substantive and functional definitions, but it also avoids some of the problems associated with them.It does so by rethinking the point of defining religion. Instead of being precise and rigorous for the sake of it, it tries to tell us something, to be “productive”, to help us understand religion better. It eschews certainty and embraces doubt. Its insights could be applied to some schools of philosophy (e.g. Heideggerian) and practical spirituality, because it does not focus on what is distinctive about religion. Rather, it focuses on the core of religion, and, secondarily, on what religions have in common. The family resemblance approach has led to a number of “new” definitions (post-Durkheim definitions) being proposed, all of which define religion in a less rigorous, but, I hope, more imaginative and heuristic way.Let me provide a few examples, starting with two contrasting ones. Peter Berger in the late 1960s defined religion as “the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as humanly significant”(37), which implies a consciousness of an anthropocentric sacred cosmos. Later, Alain Touraine said that religion is “the apprehension of human destiny, existence, and death”(213–4), that is, an awareness of human limitations, including doubt. Berger emphasises the high place for human beings in religion, and even a sort of affected certainty, while Touraine emphasises our place as doubters on the periphery, but it seems that religion exists within a tension between these two opposites, and, in a sense, encompasses them both.Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church and arch-nemesis of the conservative Anglicans, such as those from Sydney, defines religion as like good poetry, not bad science. It is easy to understand that he is criticising those who see religion, particularly Christianity, as centrally opposed to Darwin and evolution. Holloway is clearly saying that those people have missed the point of their own faith. By “good poetry”, he is pointing to the significance of storytelling rather than dogma, and an open-ended discussion of ultimate questions that resists the temptation to end with “the moral of the story”. In science (at least before quantum physics), there is no room for doubt, but that is not the case with poetry.John Caputo, in a very energetic book called On Religion, proposes what is probably the boldest of the “new” definitions. He defines religion as “the love of God” (1). Note the contrast with Tylor and Spiro. Caputo does not say “belief in God”; he says “the love of God”. You might ask how you can love someone you don’t believe in, but, in a sense, this paradox is the whole point. When Caputo says “God”, he is not necessarily talking in the usual theistic or even theological terms. By “God”, he means the impossible made possible (10). So a religious person, for Caputo, is an “unhinged lover” (13) who loves the impossible made possible, and the opposite is a “loveless lout” who is only concerned with the latest stock market figures (2–3). In this sense of religious, a committed atheist can be religious and a devout Catholic or Muslim or Hindu can be utterly irreligious (2–3). Doubt can encompass faith and faith can encompass doubt. This is the impossible made possible. Caputo’s approach here has something in common with Nietzsche and especially Kierkegaard, to whom I shall return later.I would like to propose another definition of religion, within the spirit of these “new” definitions of religion that I have been discussing. Religion, at its core, I suggest, is non-propositional and apophatic. When I say that religion is non-propositional, I mean that religion will often enact certain rituals, or tell certain stories, or posit faith in someone, and that propositional statements of doctrine are merely reflections or approximations of this non-propositional core. Faith in God is not a proposition. The Eucharist is not a proposition. Prayer is not, at its core, a proposition. Pilgrimage is not a proposition. And it is these sorts of things that, I suggest, form the core of religion. Propositions are what happen when theologians and academics get their hands on religion, they try to intellectualise it so that it can be made to fit within their area of expertise—our area of expertise. But, that is not where it belongs. Propositions about rituals impose a certainty on them, whereas the ritual itself allows for courage in the face of doubt. The Maundy Thursday service in Western Christianity includes the stripping of the altar to the accompaniment of Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me”), ending the service without a dismissal (Latin missa, the origin of the English “mass”) and with the church in darkness. Doubt, confusion, and bewilderment are the heart and soul of this ritual, not orthodox faith as defined propositionally.That said, religion does often involve believing, of some kind (though it is not usually as central as in Christianity). So I say that religion is non-propositional and apophatic. The word “apophatic”, though not the concept, has its roots in Greek Orthodox theology, where St Gregory Palamas argues that any statement about God—and particularly about God’s essence as opposed to God’s energies—must be paradoxical, emphasising God’s otherness, and apophatic, emphasising God’s essential incomprehensibility (Armstrong 393). To make an apophatic statement is to make a negative statement—instead of saying God is king, lord, father, or whatever, we say God is not. Even the most devout believer will recognise a sense in which God is not a king, or a lord, or a father. They will say that God is much greater than any of these things. The Muslim will say “Allahu Akhbar”, which means God is greater, greater than any human description. Even the statement “God exists” is seen to be well short of the mark. Even that is human language, which is why the Cappadocian fathers (Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Naziansus) said that they believed in God, while refusing to say that God exists.So to say that religion is at its core non-propositional is to say that religious beliefs are at their core apophatic. The idea of apophasis is that by a process of constant negation you are led into silence, into a recognition that there is nothing more that can be said. St Thomas Aquinas says that the more things we negate about God, the more we say “God is not…”, the closer we get to what God is (139). Doubt therefore brings us closer to the object of religion than any putative certainties.Apophasis does not only apply to Christianity. I have already indicated that it applies also to Islam, and the statement that God is greater. In Islam, God is said to have 99 names—or at least 99 that have been revealed to human beings. Many of these names are apophatic. Names like The Hidden carry an obviously negative meaning in English, while, etymologically, “the Holy” (al-quddu-s) means “beyond imperfection”, which is a negation of a negation. As-salaam, the All-Peaceful, means beyond disharmony, or disequilibrium, or strife, and, according to Murata and Chittick (65–6), “The Glorified” (as-subbuh) means beyond understanding.In non-theistic religions too, an apophatic way of believing can be found. Key Buddhist concepts include sunyata, emptiness, or the Void, and anatta, meaning no self, the belief or realisation that the Self is illusory. Ask what they believe in instead of the Self and you are likely to be told that you are missing the point, like the Zen pupil who confused the pointing finger with the moon. In the Zen koans, apophasis plays a major part. One well-known koan is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Any logical answers will be dismissed, like Thomas Aquinas’s statements about God, until the pupil gets beyond logic and achieves satori, or enlightenment. Probably the most used koan is Mu—Master Joshu is asked if a dog has Buddha-nature and replies Mu, meaning “no” or “nothing”. This is within the context of the principle that everything has Buddha-nature, so it is not logical. But this apophatic process can lead to enlightenment, something better than logic. By plunging again and again in the water of doubt, to use Wittgenstein’s words, we gain something better than certainty.So not only is apophasis present in a range of different religions—and I have given just a few examples—but it is also central to the development of religion in the Axial Age, Karl Jaspers’s term for the period from about 800-200 BCE when the main religious traditions of the world began—monotheism in Israel (which also developed into Christianity and Islam), Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. In the early Hindu traditions, there seems to have been a sort of ritualised debate called the Brahmodya, which would proceed through negation and end in silence. Not the silence of someone admitting defeat at the hands of the other, but the silence of recognising that the truth lay beyond them (Armstrong 24).In later Hinduism, apophatic thought is developed quite extensively. This culminates in the idea of Brahman, the One God who is Formless, beyond all form and all description. As such, all representations of Brahman are equally false and therefore all representations are equally true—hence the preponderance of gods and idols on the surface of Hinduism. There is also the development of the idea of Atman, the universal Self, and the Buddhist concept anatta, which I mentioned, is rendered anatman in Sanskrit, literally no Atman, no Self. But in advaita Hinduism there is the idea that Brahman and Atman are the same, or, more accurately, they are not two—hence advaita, meaning “not two”. This is negation, or apophasis. In some forms of present-day Hinduism, such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (commonly known as the Hare Krishnas), advaita is rejected. Sometimes this is characterised as dualism with respect to Brahman and Atman, but it is really the negation of non-dualism, or an apophatic negation of the negation.Even in early Hinduism, there is a sort of Brahmodya recounted in the Rig Veda (Armstrong 24–5), the oldest extant religious scripture in the world that is still in use as a religious scripture. So here we are at the beginning of Axial Age religion, and we read this account of creation:Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal.Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.All that existed then was void and form less.Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.(Rig Veda Book 10, Hymn 129, abridged)And it would seem that this is the sort of thought that spread throughout the world as a result of the Axial Age and the later spread of Axial and post-Axial religions.I could provide examples from other religious traditions. Taoism probably has the best examples, though they are harder to relate to the traditions that are more familiar in the West. “The way that is spoken is not the Way” is the most anglicised translation of the opening of the Tao Te Ching. In Sikhism, God’s formlessness and essential unknowability mean that God can only be known “by the Guru’s grace”, to quote the opening hymn of the Guru Granth Sahib.Before I conclude, however, I would like to anticipate two criticisms. First, this may only be applicable to the religions of the Axial Age and their successors, beginning with Hinduism and Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, and early Jewish monotheism, followed by Jainism, Christianity, Islam and so on. I would like to find examples of apophasis at the core of other traditions, including Indigenous Australian and Native American ones, for example, but that is work still to be done. Focusing on the Axial Age does historicise the argument, however, at least in contrast with a more universal concept of religion that runs the risk of falling into the ahistorical homo religiosus idea that humans are universally and even naturally religious. Second, this apophatic definition looks a bit elitist, defining religion in terms that are relevant to theologians and “religious virtuosi” (to use Weber’s term), but what about the ordinary believers, pew-fillers, temple-goers? In response to such criticism, one may reply that there is an apophatic strand in what Niebuhr called the religions of the disinherited. In Asia, devotion to the Buddha Amida is particularly popular among the poor, and this involves a transformation of the idea of anatta—no Self—into an external agency, a Buddha who is “without measure”, in terms of in-finite light and in-finite life. These are apophatic concepts. In the Christian New Testament, we are told that God “has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong…, the things that are not to shame the things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The things that are not are the apophatic, and these are allied with the foolish and the weak, not the educated and the powerful.One major reason for emphasising the role of apophasis in religious thought is to break away from the idea that the core of religion is an ethical one. This is argued by a number of “liberal religious” thinkers in different religious traditions. I appreciate their reasons, and I am reluctant to ally myself with their opponents, who include the more fundamentalist types as well as some vocal critics of religion like Dawkins and Hitchens. However, I said that I would return to Kierkegaard, and the reason is this. Kierkegaard distinguishes between the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. Of course, religion has an aesthetic and an ethical dimension, and in some religions these dimensions are particularly important, but that does not make them central to religion as such. Kierkegaard regarded the religious sphere as radically different from the aesthetic or even the ethical, hence his treatment of the story of Abraham going to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son, in obedience to God’s command. His son was not killed in the end, but Abraham was ready to do the deed. This is not ethical. This is fundamentally and scandalously unethical. Yet it is religious, not because it is unethical and scandalous, but because it pushes us to the limits of our understanding, through the waters of doubt, and then beyond.Were I attempting to criticise religion, I would say it should not go there, that, to misquote Wittgenstein, the limits of my understanding are the limits of my world, whereof we cannot understand thereof we must remain silent. Were I attempting to defend religion, I would say that this is its genius, that it can push back the limits of understanding. I do not believe in value-neutral sociology, but, in this case, I am attempting neither. ReferencesAldridge, Alan. Religion in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Polity, 2000.Aquinas, Thomas. “Summa of Christian Teaching”. An Aquinas Reader. ed. Mary Clarke. New York: Doubleday, 1972.Armstrong, Karen. The Great Transformation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.Barker, Eileen. New Religious Movements: a Practical Introduction. London: HMSO, 1989.Berger, Peter. The Social Reality of Religion. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.Caputo, John. On Religion. London: Routledge, 2001.Clarke, Peter, and Peter Byrne, eds. Religion Defined and Explained. New York: St Martin’s Press. 1993.Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press, 1995.Holloway, Richard. Doubts and Loves. Edinburgh: Caqnongate, 2002.Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1977.Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. London: Penguin, 1992.———. Fear and Trembling. London: Penguin, 1986.Murata, Sachiko, and William Chittick. The Vision of Islam. St Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, 1994.Niebuhr, H. Richard. The Social Sources of Denominationalism. New York: Holt, 1929.Spiro, Melford. “Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation.” Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Ed. Michael Banton. London: Tavistock, 1966. 85–126.Touraine, Alain. The Post-Industrial Society. London: Wilwood House, 1974.Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. London: Murray, 1903.Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991.Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. Nottingham: Brynmill Press, 1979.

They are like the grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; In the evening it is cut down and withereth... . So teach us to number our days, That we may get us a heart of wisdom. -- Psalms 90:5-6, 12 Funeral service workers in New Zealand have watched with interest the changes in our communities' approach to the experiences surrounding death and dying. Working closely with families, friends and communities and observing the human reaction to loss at a very close and often personal level allows Funeral Directors a unique view of the changes in religious, philosophical and cultural approaches to these events. The first observation must be that the end of life in the physical sense never indicates the finality the term 'end' seems to carry with it. More, the end of physical life would in almost all circumstances carry more connotations of beginning than of the finite. Religion has always endeavoured to put a framework around dying and death as a foundation for new beginnings either on the journey toward a higher plane or by suggesting that another form of life follows. The Christian viewpoint allows the dying human the experience of the natural fear of death and dissolution while still being able to state with conviction "Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46). Christianity, in common with Judaism, Buddhism and others, sees the end of physical life as the beginning of existence "secure, calm and happy, unaging, deathless, emancipated". Hinduism, through the Bhagavad Gita, teaches: "the wise do not grieve for the dead or the living. Never was there a time when I was not, nor when you were not... . Never will there be a time hereafter when we shall not be. As in this body, there are for the soul, childhood, youth and old age, even so there is the taking on of another body after death. The wise are not confused by this." As the influence of mainstream religion in New Zealand has diminished Funeral Service has observed the confusion that fills the gap left in the community where once belief, doctrine, philosophy and ritual provided an ordered and understandable approach to aging, dying and death in our communities. The strength of those beliefs did not prevent the natural human fear of death but provided support on the journey and a hope for the future once the death journey was complete. The nature of rituals for the dying and the ritual farewelling of the dead reinforced people's beliefs and provided that much-needed framework of support. Nor has it mattered much that the theological interpretation of the need for Funeral rite and the understanding of the general populace of that need have often been some distance apart. There appear to be few people who have adopted an "end" view which involves final dissolution of the organised being as being the end absolute. Amongst those who have no firm belief in an after life in the religious sense it is more common to observe an approach which looks to the resonance of the individual journey as providing a form of after-life. This resonance being through ongoing influence, be that in the major impact of their life or work upon future communities (e.g. Shakespeare) or in the somewhat less resonant journeys (of the masses) where the influence may be seen in contribution to the family, the community, the gene pool or by (as once heard at a Funeral as the celebrant struggled to find an appropriate phrase :-) "adding just a little to the advancement of the vastness of humanity". During the last millennial period, medieval man, driven by millennial movements that predicted the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ, or perhaps influenced by the harshness of life in times of plague, seemed to have a preoccupation with the state of preparedness of their own souls. Their fear of death being fuelled by fear of punishment, purgatory or hell. Funeral rites of the time reflected and reinforced this view. In Black robes the priest would offer prayers of intervention which beseeched God to have mercy on the souls of sinners. Mourners were warned that death required accountability. As the end of this millennium hovers we have not seen a real revival of Millennial second coming movements; the Y2K Bug being the closest thing we have to plague fear. It is understandable then that our personal states of preparedness are more about the laying in of bottled water and the preservation of the integrity of our electronically recorded fiscal assets than about the integrity of our personal ethics or the preparedness of our soul. Nothing profound in all of this, we live in a life-reinforcing, death-denying culture that tends to marginalise the experience of dying. In this culture of the individual dying, death and its aftermath is left to the individual. Society now provides only the choice of frameworks of support and any individual is free to choose from these. A religious death, a secular dying, a traditional funeral, a civil celebration, a direct disposal or, as is more common now, a postmodern borrowing, adaptation and short-term adoption of selected philosophies and partly recalled rituals. Whichever choice is made however, as much now as it ever was life's end remains less about 'end' and more about beginning. Where once we emphasised the mourning of the loss of one from amongst us, we now emphasise recovery and reconnection, the management of our grief following the loss. The 'after life' is ours not theirs. End, as dying, death and dissolution, has always been personal, the experience of the aftermath has always been personal and continues to be able only to be experienced in the personal. Our end like everything else around us has changed. We have discarded some, perhaps much of the societal, cultural and religious frameworks that surrounded our end in the previous millennium. We have yet to build a replacement framework. Presently we allow the individual to choose their support system for their end experiences and this includes the right to choose a pre-built framework, a custom-made framework or the choice of no framework at all. Should we build on this further? Perhaps it is enough, in a state that champions managerialism above all, that we each remain responsible for managing our own support systems right to the end. The end. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Michael C. Wolffram. "Ends and Beginnings: Observations on Changing the Approach to Our End." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/approach.php>. Chicago style: Michael C. Wolffram, "Ends and Beginnings: Observations on Changing the Approach to Our End," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/approach.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Michael C. Wolffram. (1999) Ends and beginnings: observations on changing the approach to our end. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/approach.php> ([your date of access]).

Volume 12 of the Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies (JJSS) introduces a grounding initiative: the inclusion of poems and visual art as forms of knowing that exist in conversation with the article form of scholarship. The proposal for this innovation emerged from reflection by members of the editorial board upon the presentations at the Jungian Society of Scholarly Studies’ (JSSS) conference on the theme of Earth/Psyche held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2016. The conference began with JSSS President Susan Rowland hosting an evening of poetry featuring the cosmology poems of Joel Weishaus and including poems written and read by a few attendees. During the body of the conference, a remarkable number of the speakers included either poems or visual art or both in their talks. To communicate their research concerning Earth’s relations to psyche, presenters repeatedly turned to art to share their knowledge. This volume harvests developed versions of eight of those presentations as articles and publishes them juxtaposed with poems and visual art selected by our journal’s new poetry and art editors. The juxtaposition is intended to spark connections—conceptual, emotional, kinesthetic, and aesthetic—between the complex analyses offered in the articles and the levels of consciousness stirred by the art. Perceiving such connections will affirm the overarching theme that the authors of the articles independently of one another claim as premise: the interconnectedness of being. In that spirit, I offer in this introduction a ample of points of connection between the articles. The topics of the articles address a range of subject matter: the impact of imagination, particularly the practice of active imagination, in transforming human consciousness and behavior, thus advancing planetary individuation; the synchronous relationships between body and earth in the healing modality of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy; the existence of a salt daemon working to increase harmonious relations between material, alchemical, and psychic levels of being; Christianity’s evolving relations to Earth and reclaimed approaches to scripture that enable Christians to participate in divinized creation; the psyche of a specific place, Cornwall, England, and the psychic image of a place, Santa Fe, New Mexico, including the shadow aspects caused by colonization; and the possibility of utilizing the common characteristics of large-group identities to integrate difference so as to develop conscience enabling constructive political action. Themes that resonate with one another in the various articles include imagination, the psychoid, the feminine, the body, and transformation. Not only is the present volume distinguished by the inclusion of poems and visual art; it also contains more narratives of personal experience than in the past. It has been the policy of JJSS only to publish personal experience if it supports a new idea, not merely illustrates an established one. That policy partially continues, but it turns out that examining the relations of Earth/Psyche has elicited the experiential in research in ways more numerous than illustration or support. Personal experience as numinous encounter initiates Susan Courtney’s discovery of the salt daemon and her subsequent research into parallels between physical salts, alchemical salts, and the psychoid nature of earth and psyche, research leading to her contributing to Jungian theory the idea of a salt daemon as an inherent movement of multi-faceted being toward bringing coherence to the ever unfolding series of incoherent states. Personal experience as numinous dreams leading to an understanding of his calling to speak for the psyche of a place motivates Guy Dargert’s exploration of the folklore and colonized history of the inhabitants of Cornwall and of the psychological dangers in the allurement of Cornwall’s beguiling beauty. Personal experience as numinous dreams, but also as embodied practices of active imagination, animates Ciuin Doherty’s call for collective understanding that all that exists, including each human being, is the current realization of over 13 billion years of the evolution of the universe. The ramifications of that understanding include reconceiving the import of individuation, recognizing that humans individuate not only for themselves, but also as expressions of planet Earth’s individuating through them. Understanding the permeability of personal experience, its unconscious connections with other beings and the environment through synchronicities capable of being made conscious enough for healing to occur, is given life in Jane Shaw’s article on the therapeutic power of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. Other authors refer to personal experience in more traditional ways. David Barton, in his article on the psychic image of Santa Fe, reports on experiencing the profound alterity of the Laguna Pueblo culture as he listened to Leslie Marmon Silko speak of rescuing a rattlesnake. Like Dargert, Barton acknowledges the shadow of centuries of colonization. He reports being told by young natives of their despairing sense of entrapment in New Mexico. Johnathan Erickson, concerned about negative attitudes toward Christianity’s teachings about the Earth, shares that his efforts to underscore the vein in Christian teachings that counters the scripture about human dominance over nature are motivated by his being the son of a Christian minister and of a mother with pagan leanings. Peter Dunlap offers his experience as an illustration of the psychocultural work he is hoping Jungian clinicians will engage in to bring the healing power of psychological understanding to cultural dilemmas. And while Nanette Walsh does not share personal experience of her own, she calls on the scholarship concerning the personal experience of women in Jesus’s time to argue for interpreting scripture in a way that divinizes the experience of female persons, a step toward knowing the divine in all creation. Writing about the psychological relations of Earth/Psyche apparently elicits the grounding of thought in personal experience, a grounding typically invisible in abstract scholarly communications. Personal experience obviously is the ground for art. Our journal’s call for visual art related to Earth/Psyche invited artists to submit commentary along with their work. Judging from the responses that we received, the artists whose work is published here experience artistic creation as transformation of matter with abstract implications: turning clay into a holding vessel like that of analysis (Kristine Anthis), turning chance happenings into a creation (Marilyn DeMario), turning disparate materials into an integrated piece (Diane Miller), turning reversals into continuity (S. Sowbel), turning visual metaphor into ensouling symbol (Heather Taylor-Zimmerman), and turning the relation of abstract numbers/concrete matter into paintings echoing the composition of our world (Lucia Grossberger-Morales). The poems on the theme of Earth/Psyche selected for this volume reflect the distinguishing power of individuation in their range of subject and style. Margaret Blanchard’s poems address the changing nature of the poet’s relation to the Earth over time; Judith Capurso’s not only challenge human assertion of dominance over the Earth, but also liberate people from the inflation of that dominance; Ursula Shields-Huemer’s haiku grace imaginings of the natural word through presence; Brown Dove’s poem juxtaposes shifting evaluations of idols and continuity of Earth’s rhythms; and S. Sowbel’s focuses attention on what does not get reborn in her rendering of generativity. Certain concepts are explored in more than one of the articles which suggests their inherent significance in considering the relations of Earth/Psyche. In particular, Jung’s relatively neglected concept of the psychoid receives thoughtful elaboration, especially in the articles by Courtney and Shaw. Shaw applies the concept in her explanation of the healing power of the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy treatment (BCST). Courtney provides scientific data connecting rhythms of the body to the environment. Shaw’s account of the intelligence of the body during the giving and receiving of a BCST treatment resonates with Courtney’s account of electrolytic solution and of rhythmic entrainment. Doherty also contributes to reevaluating the body in terms of its knowingness through his exploration of the perspective of right-brain knowing. The theme of the body’s intelligence flows directly from the premise of interconnectedness attributing psyche to Earth. Another thread through the articles concerns the way the interconnectedness of being is conceived. Courtney references Jung’s concept or Eros as well as British anthropologist Timothy Ingold’s conception of humans as a “‘relational constitution of being’ enmeshed in a planetary ‘domain of entanglement’ of ‘interlaced lines of relationship.’” Doherty connects Eckhart’s description of the divine as emptiness with the quantum physics description of the emergence and disappearance of elementary particles from and into nothingness to assert that creative intelligence is inherent in all being. Dargert proposes that places are infused with their own form of psyche through the existence of an enveloping continuum. Dunlap points to Jung’s idea of a superconsciousness in the unconscious. The authors writing about religion, Erickson and Walsh, see God as the source of being’s interconnectedness. Erickson traces the evolution in Western Christianity of an understanding that the Earth as God’s creation deserves care, an understanding receiving recent expression in Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home. Walsh through the concept of practical divinization attempts to rectify the omission of ecology, women, and psychology in traditional Christian practice of divinization. She links aspects of the historical lineage of the idea of person and Jung’s articulation of individuation to argue for knowing divine wisdom in all that exists. Most of the authors assert that integration of the feminine is key to addressing ecological crises, often specifying that by the feminine they are referring to Eros. Walsh, however, argues for redefining what the feminine is in terms of women’s experience and for using women’s imaginative works to understand the feminine. For example, she cites Annis Pratt who, after surveying over 300 novels written by women, concludes that transformation for women occurs through the “green epiphany,” that is, through their relationship with nature. Walsh’s article provides a significant counterpoint to traditional Jungian understanding of the feminine and of what it would mean to integrate it for the purpose of addressing our ecological crises. Finally, Peter Dunlap’s article grapples with how to bring Jung’s understanding of the collective unconscious to a psychocultural practice of confronting the capacity of large groups to degenerate into mass-mindedness. He argues for confronting that tendency by consciously applying techniques to help large groups develop a sense of shared identity capable of integrating difference, thus making possible development of conscience about relations to the rest of the world. His article shares recent social science research about how to attempt that process, including an illustration of his own experience of applying some of those techniques. His essay gestures toward the goal of bringing psychological knowledge into civic life to enable constructive political action, a goal implicit in the conference on the relations of Earth/Psyche and in this volume of JJSS issuing from it. Inez MartinezEditor

For some time, I have been concerned with uses and abuses of the future, how the exchange of temporally loaded language through conversation and text affects the pace, moods and behaviour of individuals, communities, cultures and civilisations. I am equally curious about Christianity which as a narrative structure begins with creation but awaits a conclusion. Whether it is religions announcing ten-point plans to attain paradise quickly, or cults encouraging group passes to heaven through suicide, it is the future end that counts. Whether it be ego-theologists -- as I prefer to call those pastors who proclaim the 'you are/they are god' creed -- scalping spiritual quick-fixes at the local entertainment centre, with a McDonald's-like serving of 'Would you like a blessing with that?', or the visiting soulwinner from New South Wales distributing 'Mark of the Beast' warning pamphlets, the future conclusion of the Christian narrative plays the lead. I cannot disguise my discomfort with the salvation franchises or merchants who market pre-fabricated responses to the Christian apocalyptic narrative, curiously shaped by contemporary circumstances, and who profit excessively from such business. Many times I wonder what dubious purposes their perception of the future is put to. Surviving Armageddon, it appears, can provide a diverse source of mobilisation for many. With such prominence in the everyday topics of public and mainstream dialogue, our age is the first historical period where the marginal phenomenon of apocalyptism has moved from the edge of society to its present-day popular near-centre. Money, I dare say, is made from such a shift. Ego-theologists are keen to boast the vices of contemporary society that are bringing apocalypse while conveniently offering the hefty-priced product that upon purchase will begin the process of surviving the end. It is no accident that the narrower the definition of salvation, the more specialised the rituals for attaining it, the qualifications for distributing it and the exclusivity for keeping it. Such restrictions place the power of salvation into the hands of a small number of people who make available -- upon specialised or ritualised request -- the means to lease it. I use the word lease because salvation is never completely settled. Instead, a symbolic contract is achieved between the franchise and the seeker in which salvation is conveyed to the seeker for a specified period but usually in exchange for membership and often mental and financial obligation. If the seeker breaks the contract, salvation is lost. Jehovah's Witnesses call this act of severance 'disfellowshipping' and the seeker is designated by continuing followers of Watchtower as an 'apostate', as one against the almighty creator. Many ex-witnesses are emotionally scared by this devastating, violent act of seemingly removing salvation. In this sense, a small elite using exclusive language and narrow definitions and who therefore monopolise the forms and the senses of achieving salvation habitually frame salvation and the rituals of being saved from a monstrous future. Who benefits and who is disempowered by the agenda being set in this manner? Why are only selected people able to lease directions to the road of salvation with maps that periodically imply the master planner has changed compass, be it the secular salvation from ecological doom or theological salvation from the damnable mark of the beast? Saving a person from the antichrist has today become a robust industry. Religious entrepreneurs proliferate their scriptural shandies and spiritual quick-fixes to the middle-class disheartened with the expertise of experienced confidence tricksters and the finesse of door-to-door selling. Subscribe to a local salvation franchise of the 'gospel of wealth' variety found marketing in the early morning hours of Australian televangelism and a continual stream of ministrations will arrive in the mail replete with US postage markings and external messages warning you and your postie: 'This envelope contains important information the devil hopes you will never find out!', 'Eight things you need to know before the new millennium', 'Has Y2K plunged us into a countdown to chaos? Don't panic -- prepare and trust God!' or 'Unleash the power of your faith!'. Content will vary across a range of marketable approaches. Two recent postings I received from the same franchise respectively presented a 4-5 page personalised letter requesting I purchase 'dynamic ministry materials' like Your Y2K New Millennium Survival Personal Library Kit for an appropriate 'seed harvest' of $165.99. This reflected fair market value, naturally, on 'powerful' items including The Antichrist: 666 video, a three audio tape set called End Time Signs and the Book of Revelation Comic Book. An explanation sheet was also included for explaining the rituals required to activate an enclosed 'miracle touch' 2-inch square cloth, apparently anointed -- touched in a supernatural way -- by a special class of persons self-identified as 'prayer warriors'. Some packages have reflected telegram-style formatting to 'emphasize the great URGENCY' felt by a pastor 'that many of you may be on the verge of falling apart or feeling absolutely overwhelmed by fear, anger, depression, rejection, worry' and who desperately require a newly-released 'powerful book of wisdom' to overcome personal tribulation and to successfully 'rebuke the devil'. Often, correspondence signed from the pastor displays these excesses of individual concern, claims of divine new revelation blended with unbiblical doses of numerological deduction. The accompanying letter to my Y2K Personal Request Sheet begins: 'Dear Jason, you are now reading a letter that had to be sent to you ... Yes, the Lord told me to prepare this ... He gave me a vivid, supernatural glimpse of the miracle difference this one letter could make in your life ... especially in this year of 1999 ... See it as your year of double fruitfulness'. What role does this type of 'future-thinking' and others play in Australian forms of hope and expectation? Can we establish a discourse of ethics regarding the use or abuse of future mythology? And how might we engage studies of the future in the historical and sociological disciplines which would see the future as itself: a theory with very particular ideological and metaphysical investments; an address to the present, transforming it into the fulfillment of the future we aim to aspire to; and, often, as a tool or weapon which has been waved about for some form of gain? To answer these questions requires us to place ourselves in a position to see something of the design and construction of contemporary futures as an invented thing with specific limitations. George Orwell's famous and relevant exploration of the future in 1984 is the story of Winston Smith's rebellion against the Party, of his hatred towards Big Brother and the thoughtcrime. On page thirty-four, Winston reflects on the perpetual state of war that has existed between Oceania and Eurasia: 'The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia ... But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness ... if all the others accepted the lie which the party imposed if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it; in Newspeak, "doublethink."' Transposing the direction of Orwell's commentary, from a control of knowledge about the past to a monopoly control of future mythology, provides more than just an occasional point. To paraphrase, I would like to suggest that: 'Who controls the future controls the present. And that all is needed is an unending series of victories over your imagination'. In futurespeak, that is, the language and discursive strategies used to talk and think about the future, I call this 'thinkphobia'. Alvin Toffler, in his successful sociological trilogy, describes the cultural fallout from overchoice and the dangerous discrepancies between society's technological accelerative thrust and the pace of our individual adaptive abilities. This peculiar state results in what Toffler defines as future shock; that is, an overload of our individual decision-making processes from the demands of choice that we simply cannot tolerate. Thinkphobia, as an analogy to thoughtcrime, is one step removed: it is the fear we develop of choice, of options in the future and it is not, I suspect, limited to doomsayers. For members of Watchtower (Jehovah's Witnesses), the present is probed only in the interests of the future and they project only one intended and necessary future, squashing coherent, intellectual responses to it, closing alternatives to active public and popular debate. The future as promoted by Watchtower is totalist, monocultural, and biblically sealed, closed to individual modification, to the extent that a handbook 'Reasoning from the Scriptures' can provide the dialogue that accompanies their knock at your door. But, I wonder, are the future-systems of our societies any different in their application? What I'm suggest here is that the secular billions of people today who are either implicitly or explicitly coerced to reckon the future and time in ways they did not choose is highly questionable. While we may scoff at the witness who has their dialogue mapped out and a sense of the future pre-structured for them, should we ourselves spend much time exchanging talk about things called the 'millennium' and the year 2000, encouraging other cultures to share our enthusiasm, much like a cultist would promote their pattern of future for emulating? In other words, when our societies are diversifying culturally, socially and intellectually, why is our concept of the future homogenising, almost, dare I suggest, in cultic mimicry? The approach of the year 2000/2001AD seems to evoke excess response from Christian groups throughout Australia. But can a culture of apocalypse or a cult of the future -- that is, a philosophically sealed community deriving identity from its expectation of doom in the future -- be limited to popular, extra-societal ideas of cult? A 'cult of the future' could be described as a community of people, which embraces a particular system of linear time reckoning as part of its cultural and/or social code, which encourages (either explicitly or implicitly) and sustains specialised activity as supplication to some qualitative or quantitative 'future'. A 'cult of the future', to draw from sociological literature, does not adhere to the possibility of unforeseen occurrence but rather devotes itself to a presumed unalterable and necessary future to which all current activity and thought seems conditional upon it. I wonder whether the term 'cult of the future' can be applied to a whole society and not just to the small evangelical cult based in the outer suburbs, which studiously awaits the end of the world. Can a cult of the future, traditionally applied to an unconventional extra-societal gathering, include society itself? How our societies conceive of the future may be different in content and style to evangelical and theological communities, but could the aim be similar? Whether it is a social reformer or a cult leader, is the process the same in the way future mythology is constructed? Could future-oriented systems conceivably sit alongside the systems of more controversial groups like Heaven's Gate or Jehovah's Witnesses as related efforts of installing pre-organised future-mythology into the mindset of a group of receptive people? To interrogate the monopolisation of future mythology by the leading mythmakers and the salvation merchants, whose greatest tool is the rumour of what we fear and whose largest assets are the hopes of seekers, is to begin reclaiming responsibility about the future. It is to reclaim meaning for an individual long-term present that would otherwise be lonely in the crowd of social, commercial and regulated short-term futures. Futures thinking should encourage us to ponder what part of ourselves goes on to the future and it should initiate a strong sense of responsibility to prospective generations: it should not invite us to consider what books or tapes to purchase in order to survive the various doomsday scenarios marketed at us. To interrogate the monopolisation of future mythology by the leading mythmakers and the salvation merchants, whose greatest tool is the rumour of what we fear and whose largest assets are the hopes of seekers, is to begin reclaiming responsibility about the future. It is to reclaim meaning for an individual long-term present that would otherwise be lonely in the crowd of social, commercial and regulated short-term futures. Futures thinking should encourage us to ponder what part of ourselves goes on to the future and it should initiate a strong sense of responsibility to prospective generations: it should not invite us to consider what books or tapes to purchase in order to survive the various doomsday scenarios marketed at us. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jason Ensor. "666 Ways to Ambush the Future." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.9 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/666.php>. Chicago style: Jason Ensor, "666 Ways to Ambush the Future," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 9 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/666.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jason Ensor. (2000) 666 ways to ambush the future. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(9). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/666.php> ([your date of access]).

This paper examines the hypothesis that the home-coming episode in St. Olaf’s Saga (ch. 32–34) in Heimskringla is an allegory based on homiletic symbolism. The episode is about Olaf’s return to his home in Norway after many years abroad and is one of the events that define the onset of his mission to control and Christianise Norway. Olaf arrives at his mother and stepfather’s home in a vivid, personal and detailed narration, imbued with action and excitement. It is harvest-time, and Olaf’s stepfather, Sigurdur sýr, king of Ringerike, is busy overseeing the harvest activity. He is walking around a field with two other men, dressed in a blue tunic and leggings, a grey cloak and a wide grey hat, a cloth over his face and a staff in his hand with a gilded silver cap on the top, surmounted by a silver ring. He is then summoned by Ásta – his wife and Olaf’s mother – to come home quickly as she has been informed that her son will be arriving soon. Sigurður puts on his royal outfit, including a scarlet robe, spurs of gold and a golden helmet, and goes home with thirty men. Meanwhile, Ásta and twenty others prepare a welcoming feast. She sends envoys to the neighborhood with an invitation to the banquet while the hall is prepared. Everything is just ready when Olaf arrives at his homestead with a retinue of a hundred men. He is greeted by Sigurdur, Ásta and the local crowd, and is led to the throne by his mother. The potential hagiographic nature of St. Olaf’s Saga, combined with the detailed narrative containing many potential symbols in the form of numbers, colours, artefacts and action, give a strong impression of allegory. There is a likely allusion to Mark 6:7 when Ásta assigns twelve people in six pairs to prepare the hall, and again when she sends four people in four directions to invite magnates to the event, echoing the angels in Mark 13:27 who were sent to bring the chosen ones from the four winds. The arrival of Olaf with his hundred men would seem to be a key event. The number 100 (or 120 if a long hundred is meant) is interpreted by Bede, for example, as a symbol of happiness of the elect in eternal life and directly associated with the biblical parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, which in Christian patristic tradition alludes to the Redemption, the restoration of humanity as the tenth celestial order, a key feature in the history of salvation. This number, one hundred, here associated with a saint, is flanked by many other potential symbols. One is that the combined flocks of Olaf (100+1), Sigurdur (30+1) and Ásta (20+1) make 153 people, a biblical number that has been associated with the elect in the heavenly land, i.a. by Gregory the Great. An examination of how other potential symbols group with Sigurdur and Ásta, reveals a consistent pattern. Sigurdur’s symbols associate him with heaven, the Trinity and the eternal word of God. Typological allusions associate Sigurdur and his staff with Moses and Judah, whose antitype is Christ, while the staff and the ring represent the Cross and the Church, respectively. Sigurdur also reflects the pilgrims in Emmaus, an iconographic motif based on Luke 24:13–53 that involves the resurrected Christ. On the arrival of Olaf, Sigurdur’s colours turn from blue, silver and grey to red and gold. This appears to indicate God’s word with full wisdom (gold), God’s love and the Holy spirit (red, which also signifies martyrdom). The transformation would signify the changes brought about by the advent of Christ (and his parallel, Olaf). Ásta is firmly linked to the four directions and the numbers two and four, which usually signify motherhood and earthly, missionary aspects of the Church, the Gospels and the evangelists. The home-coming episode was most likely understood as an allegory in ecclesiastical circles in medieval times. It uses symbols and images that relate to multiple iconographical features, focusing on escatological aspects of the history of salvation. The episode permits a coherent allegorical interpretation which equates St. Olaf with Christ as the Redeemer. Raudulf’s thattur, another short story about St. Olaf, incorporated in the longer version of his saga but which does not appear in Heimskringla, is also an allegory. Olaf is here placed centrally in an allegorical building modelled on a multidimensional cosmos, taking the symbolic seat of Christ in the Heavenly Jerusalem (Einarsson 1997, 2001, 2005). Both stories indicate a dedicated activity of creative allegorical writing intended to reinforce and nurture the veneration of the saint.