The Vedas are said to be not a human creation (apauruṣeya), but Revelation imparted to the Vedic sages who have put it down in inspired verses. Vedas’ words are therefore divine and eternal, and thus extensively praised. Vāc, the Vedic word, is eulogised in several hymns, among which Vāk Sūkta (X.125) is by far the most illustrative of all. In some teachings of the Upanishads, Vāc is equated to Brahman alongside other interpretations. When analysing the nature of the (...) word, centuries later, philosophers and grammarians refer to it as śabda, and no longer as Vāc, the latter remains somehow confined to a rather poetical and mystical reality. Yet, the idea of the eternal and divine character of the scriptures is superimposed on the Sanskrit language also, despite certain historical change remarks on the grammarians' side. In the 5th century CE, Bhartṛhari displays a genuine linguistic and philosophical thought of the folding and unfolding of Reality and its understanding as Word-Principle (brahman śabda-tattva). From an auxiliary science of preserving the correct forms of the Vedas, Sanskrit grammar acquires a hermeneutical role and empowers itself as a way to salvation, an idea supported by previous evidence of grammar's role in producing celestial happiness (abhyudaya), merit and righteousness (dharma). I seek in this paper to analyse and point out the strongholds that underpin Sanskrit as a divine language and how continuity and change coexist to support over millennia this undaunted approach. (shrink)

This paper shows how the authority of the poet in certain of Hölderlin’s later hymns depends on the remembrance of the sacred word. In the last three strophes of his “As on a Holiday,” the holy appears as the Kantian sublime: the divine intellectually elevates the poets while its overwhelming power makes them aware of human limitations. The poets’ physical act of accepting the word enables them to come to speech and signifies acknowledgement of limitation. But the (...) speaker’s illicit effort to enter the realm of the deities results in speechlessness. In poems “The Only One” and “Patmos” Jesus emerges as the mediator between the timeless realm of the gods and temporal world of humans. God’s word—articulated by the God incarnate—gives meaning to finite human existence. Through the commemorative inscription of the divine word, poets gain their voice and speak of human existence as being unto the departed gods. (shrink)

Sri Sai Baba, 1836-1918, spiritual leader from India.

This paper calls into question the growing tendency of quasi-absolutism within postmodern mainstream media discourse under the guise of objectivity. The tendency’s major aim is to ascribe more believability to its discourse by re-presenting that which it covers as the vehicle of objective truth to the mainstream audience. Two interweaving discourses have marked such objectivity: one in the form of indoctrinating and omnipresent narratives, which via effective propaganda become tantamount to ritualism, the other epitomised in the nostalgia for rationalisation, already (...) inherent in western positivist thought through the exponential increase of quasi-empiricism. Accordingly, what the media cover exists. What they do not remains in the order of myth. The article starts by rethinking objectivity within modern western academia, a discourse whose objectivity is already flawed from within. Then, with respect to human experience and media coverage, the paper concludes by raising the question of postmodern mainstream media’s substitution of religious quasi-absolutist narratives, be they secular or non-secular. Subjectivity thus emerges as the ultimate ground upon which our being may be legitimate. (shrink)

A word-concordance of 'The Life Divine' generated by computer.

This paper contrasts the apophatic tradition, which has been reinvigorated by the post-structural emphasis upon ‘unsaying,’ with the dialogical or speech thinking tradition represented by the Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, and his inimical dialogical partner, teacher and friend, Jewish apostate and post-Nietzchean Christian thinker, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. I trace the tradition back to Hegel’s critique of the dominant metaphysical dualism of his age, while arguing that the key weakness in Hegel’s argument is his privileging of reason above speech, and that his (...) contemporary J.G. Hamman understanding of the role speech in world-making had already supplied the supplement and direction that would be developed by Rosenzweig and Rosenstock-Huessy. I argue that although the apophatic accentuates certain dimensions of our experience that are not insignificant, when those dimensions occlude the sociality of religious practice and narrative, reality becomes mystified, as our more mundane reality, which is the very reality we live and die within, is relegated to something secondary and relatively unimportant, in extreme cases a kind of unreality. (shrink)

A common theological perspective holds that God does not deceive because lying is morally wrong. While Plato denies the possibility of divine deception in the Republic, his explanation does not appeal to the wrongness of lying. Indeed, Plato famously recommends the careful use of lies as a means of promoting justice. Given his endorsement of occasional lying, as well as his claim that humans should strive to emulate the gods, Plato's suggestion that the gods never have reason to lie (...) is puzzling. Our solution to this puzzle centers on the fact that, unlike humans, the gods are self-sufficient. Although lying is good for the souls of neither humans nor gods, human interdependency necessitates lies that will prevent material harms and maintain a just order. In contrast, the self-sufficiency of the gods makes it impossible for them to benefit from deception. (shrink)

This study examines the Verbum speculation of Nicholas of Cusa. The investigation concentrates equally on the concept of language that he inherited from medieval and Quattrocento sources and on the Christian theology of the Word that he wove together using his own resources and distinctive approaches. It includes a consideration of the resonances between Gadamer's hermeneutical theory and Cusanus's unfolding of a productive and rhetorically-oriented concept of the Word. The next section offers a detailed examination of the medieval (...) and humanistic sources for his theology of the Word, paying special attention to Albertism, Ramon Llull, and the role played by Heymeric of Camp. This study highlights a development in Cusanus's thought that takes place after 1450 towards a speculative synthesis of human ars through the semiotic appearance of the power and intentionality of the word. It is also argued that even in the late works Cusanus does not submit to the nominalist tendencies of the via moderna. A penultimate section offers a detailed study of the role of faith in the acceptance of the divine Word. Cusanus fuses the unformed discursive knowledge that is known by analogy with the formal certainty received through intellectual vision. Faith and speculative knowledge unite to lead the believer beyond the images that words convey to the unifying image of the divine Word. The last section reviews recent literature on language and theology in Nicholas of Cusa and indicates a path as to how research on the speculative thought of Cusanus and on intercultural theology could move forward together in the future. (shrink)

Theology usually appears to us to be dogmatic, judgmental, condescending, maybe therapeutic, or perhaps downright fantastical--but seldom enticing. Divine Enticement takes as its starting point that the meanings of theological concepts are not so much logical, truth-valued propositions--affirmative or negative--as they are provocations and evocations. Thus it argues for the seductiveness of both theology and its subject--for, in fact, infinite seduction and enticement as the very sense of theological query. The divine name is one by which we are (...) drawn toward the limits of thought, language, and flesh. The use of language in such conceptualization calls more than it designates. This is not a flaw or a result of vagueness or imprecision in theological language but rather marks the correspondence of such language to its subject: that which, outside of or at the limit of our thought, draws us as an enticement to desire, not least to intellectual desire. Central to the text is the strange semiotics of divine naming, as a call on that for which there cannot be a standard referent. The entanglement of sign and body, not least in interpretations of the Christian incarnation, both grounds and complicates the theological abstractions. A number of traditional notions in Christian theology are reconceived here as enticements, modes of drawing the desires of both body and mind: faith as "thinking with assent"; sacraments as "visible words" read in community; ethics as responsiveness to beauty; prayer as the language of address; scripture as the story of meaning-making. All of these culminate in a sense of a call to and from the purely possible, the open space into which we can be enticed, within which we can be divinely enticing. (shrink)

The problem of divine hiddenness has become one of the most prominent arguments for atheism in the current philosophy of religion literature. Schellenberg (Divine hiddenness and human reason 1993), one of the problem’s prominent advocates, holds that the only way to prevent completely the occurrence of nonresistant nonbelief would be for God to have granted all of us a constant awareness of Him (or at least a constant availability of such awareness) from the moment we achieved the age (...) of reason. Now, if that were the case, we might be faced with a difficult obstacle to the development of a proper, meaningful relationship with God: namely, since the experience of God would be so unutterably wonderful (at least for some), we could be at risk of coming to commune with God not from love of Him but for the amazing experience that that communion involves. In other words, given that mystical union with infinite perfection is, qua experience, inconceivably better than that of any drug, we might come to treat God as something analogous to a powerful narcotic, seeking the experience for the pleasure of the experience more than from any devotion. Since God wants to foster genuinely meaningful relationship with Him, He rightly delays granting us such awareness of Himself, even though that leaves open the risk that nonresistant nonbelief could arise. (shrink)

The title of this book can be understood in at least two ways. First of all, The Word of God and the Mind of Man is an exploration of the extent to which the human mind can receive and understand divine revelation, insofar as this revelation is understood to include the communication of truth. On a second and more fundamental level, the phrase the word of God recalls its classical context -- the prologue to John's Gospel and (...) the classical Logos doctrine of the early church fathers: all human knowledge is possible because of the unique human participation in the eternal Logos of God, Jesus Christ. - Preface. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Divine Person" as Analogous NameDylan SchraderThe position of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic school that human beings cannot name God and creatures univocally is well-known.1 This includes the term "person," which is predicated of the Trinity, of angels, and of human beings truly but analogically. In contrast, it might seem that, when speaking of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in respect of one another, "divine (...) person" must be univocal.2 [End Page 217]The seventeenth-century Discalced Carmelites of Salamanca (the Salmanticenses) thought otherwise. They argued that the ratio3 of "divine person" is common to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit not univocally, but analogically, and that this follows from established Thomistic principles.4 Their position makes for an interesting case study in religious language, as the Salmanticenses apply a highly developed material logic to the central mystery of Christian faith.Words, Concepts, and ThingsIn On Interpretation (Peri hermeneias), Aristotle explains that words immediately signify concepts and, by means of concepts, things.5 This so-called "semantic triangle" makes it easy to misunderstand univocity and analogy if we do not first determine how a particular thinker conceives of the relationship among words, concepts, and things. To discern how the Salmanticenses understood this relationship, it is most helpful to look to their counterparts, the Discalced Carmelites at neighboring Alcalá de Henares outside Madrid, commonly called the Complutenses.6 The Complutenses' Artium cursus [End Page 218] serves as philosophical handmaid to the Salmanticenses' Cursus theologicus, and is therefore essential for correctly interpreting the latter's claims about grammar, logic, and metaphysics.7To begin with the verbal element, this is how the Complutenses, following a fairly typical account, explain the difference between a vocal sound, a name, and a term: A vocal sound (vox) is speech considered simply as an audible phenomenon, the pure sound wave. A name (nomen) is a vocal sound that signifies something. A term (terminus) is a name insofar as it serves as one end of a proposition.8 Terms may be purely mental (as when a proposition is conceived of in the mind alone), or they may be spoken or written.Names and terms are useful precisely because they signify. The Complutenses define "signifying" (significare) as "representing to the knowing power something other than [the signifier] itself."9 A name or term points beyond itself so that something else can become known to the mind through that name or term.When it comes to spoken (or written) terms, a term is "common" (communis) if it signifies more than one thing. Common terms may be "non-transcendent" (non transcendens) or "transcendent" (transcendens). Common terms are non-transcendent if they are predicated of certain things (such as "man" or "animal"). They are transcendent if they are predicated of all things. Six terms are usually acknowledged to be transcendent: "being" (ens); "thing" (res); "true" (verum); "good" (bonum); "something" (aliquid); and "one" (unum).10 [End Page 219]Here it is necessary to distinguish first and second "intention" (intentio).11 The Carmelites take "first intention" properly to be the act whereby the intellect knows things in accord with what is in them as realities.12 This act of the intellect is the "formal first intention," while the thing known is the "objective first intention." A name signifying a thing in this way is a "name of first intention."But the intellect can also attend to those things not in accord with what is in them from their own perspective as realities, but instead with reference to their character as acted upon by the intellect itself. This act is called "second intention."13 An example of first intention is the intellect's knowing that "man is an animal," whereas an example of second intention is its knowing that "'animal' is a genus."The Complutenses stress that first and second intention are, properly speaking, acts of the intellect—distinct ways of attending to what it knows—even though logicians often use "first intention" and "second intention" as shorthand to refer to the objects of these acts.14 In fact, because objective second intentions (the objects of the intellect's second-intentional acts) are beings of reason... (shrink)

This article analyzes the past, the present, and the future of business institution in society in terms of its management approaches by using the framework of human evolution, and discovers a trend that explains three paradigms in business management that have been witnessed so far. Extending the trend, it projects another two paradigm shifts to take place in future, and establishes that the business management practice is going to evolve further where it will turn from its present status of ‘result-oriented (...) management’to ‘process-oriented management’ in terms of its focus, or in other words, it will evolve from ‘professional management’ to ‘ethical management’ in terms of its underlying philosophy. As a result, the business enterprise will evolve from its present form of economic organization to a humane organization, and further up to a divine organization. Expressed the other way round, the business institution that had kicked off as an industrial organization has got transformed to a human organization by now; however, in the future, it will further evolve to its final level of a divine organization. (shrink)

Divine temporality is all the rage in certain theological circles today. Some even suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity entails divine temporality. While I find this claim a bit strong, I do think that divine temporality can be quite useful for developing a robust model of the Trinity. However, not everyone agrees with this. Paul Helm has offered an objection to the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality based on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. (...) He has argued that this form of divine temporality entails Arianism. In other words, divine temporality suffers from an inadequate doctrine of the Trinity. In this paper I shall first articulate the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality. From there I shall develop some of the Oxford school’s theological benefits that help flesh out the doctrine of the Trinity, and assuage the charge of Arianism. Then I shall offer an examination and refutation of the Arian charge to divine temporality in order to show that the divine temporalist can maintain a robust Trinitarian theology. (shrink)

This brief article examines the features of the panentheistic cosmology of the Protestant theologian Arthur Peacock, with particular attention to the conceptualization of divine immanence in his theological system. In addition, it reveals the organic connection between the categories of “faith” and “miracle” in Protestant theology, and shows the place and role of a miracle in the theological constructions of panentheism. All main conceptualizations of the philosopher and theologian Arthur Peacock are reduced to the so-called “panentheism formula”, according to (...) which God is immanent in the universe, truly omnipresent, but his Being is not entirely reduced to natural, God is greater than nature and his Being surpasses nature. Having laid down the initial principles of his panentheistic cosmology, Peacock deductively deduces all the further key provisions of his concept, namely: the doctrine of the nature of the relationship between God and the world, the question of a miracle as a personal manifestation of the divine, etc. In the author’s worldview, the world acts as an arena and an instrument for achieving God of large-scale cosmic goals. However, in the ideas about the interaction of God with the world, the theologian also singles out the symbolic aspect, the main content of which is the initiative of God to reveal his Personality and demonstrate to man his divine nature. In other words, we are talking about the relationship of God with the individual and the human community, which reflects the creative essence of God and presupposes the existence of events that reveal important religious truths. In general, it should be recognized that the theorists of panentheism, including Arthur Peacock himself, made a significant contribution to the dialogue between religion and science, which was noted by researchers. However, wishing to preserve the intellectual respectability of their conceptualizations, the ideologists of panentheism bypass or extremely carefully and extremely correctly touch on individual complex problems of theology, the features of divine immanence, incl. and the question of miracle. All cases of the relationship between God and man, including the most extraordinary and super-intense experience of interpersonal communication, can, in their opinion, be more convincingly described in ordinary terms within the framework of their model of “downward influence” on the world, mediated by the components of this world. (shrink)

Mark Murphy argues that the property identity version of divine command theory, coupled with the doctrine that God has freedom in commanding, violates the supervenience of the moral on the nonmoral. In other words, they permit two situations exactly alike in nonmoral facts to differ in moral facts. I give three arguments to show that a divine command theorist of this sort can consistently affirm moral supervenience. Each argument contends that there are always nonmoral differences between worlds with (...) different divine commands. If there are such nonmoral differences, then there’s no conflict between divine command theory and moral supervenience. (shrink)

A central part of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation is that the Son of God ‘becomes’ incarnate. Furthermore, according to classical theism, God is timeless: He exists ‘outside’ of time, and His life has no temporal stages. A consequence of this ‘atemporalist’ view is that a timeless being cannot undergo intrinsic change—for this requires the being to be one way at one time, and a different way at a later time. How, then, can we understand the central Christian claim (...) that the Son of God ‘becomes’ human? This paper examines one such explanation, drawn from a brief remark by Brian Leftow: the Word takes on flesh by exhibiting modal variation with regards to the incarnation. On this account, a timeless God ‘becomes’ incarnate simply due to variation across logical space: at some possible worlds He is incarnate and at others He is not. Modal variation need not, therefore, require temporality: it only requires variation across possible worlds. I draw out the problems with Leftow’s modal claim under the heads of Ersatzism and Genuine Modal Realism about possible worlds, respectively. I argue that in both instances, Leftow’s desired cross–worldly variation of the Son’s incarnation cannot be achieved. (shrink)

Heidegger’s position on the relation of the holy and the divine to the truth of being and the possible signification of the word ‘God’ is internally related to his understanding of truth as a double-concealment. Formal indication holds the key to this internal relation. The question of how the deity enters into philosophy forms the framework within which these thoughts are developed.

Ian T. Ramsey (1915-1972) was former Bishop of Durham, County Durham, England, and also served as Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford University, He was also the author of Religious Language, Models for Divine Activity, and Words About God.

The problem of the Word in Christianity is one of the key, affecting the core of the dogma and pervading its practice. Theological thought gave answers, different from secular science, to questions about the functions of the word in God-knowledge and its role in the religious life of the individual and the Church. Any study of the language of religion can not ignore this experience. Our goal is not to assess the truth of the theological understanding of the (...) relationship between human language and Divine reality, but to trace the specificity of the Christian use of language as a means of religious cognition and the way of expressing the religious consciousness of believers, to analyze the Christian theological concept of the Word, the role of the word in Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and the truth of religious texts, the role and meaning of the word in the Christian religious tradition. (shrink)

The Christian faith holds out the promise of abundant life and yet many writers have exposed the ambiguities experienced from the words used when that faith is expressed or discussed or described. While there are many aspects to this exploration, this article investigates a set of words that are used to and for the divine because the one spoken of as the author of this abundant life is described in terms that limit the possibilities for too many people. This (...) article will draw on insights gained through the use of the discipline of psycholinguistics and extrapolate from these insights to offer a methodology for developing a language that expresses abundant life. (shrink)

Jean-Jacques Lavoie | : L’auteur présente un état de la recherche des critiques textuelle et des sources de Qo 2,25 et propose une analyse structurelle de Qo 2,24-26 ainsi qu’une analyse littéraire de Qo 2,25, afin de montrer que le propos de la péricope qui conclut la fiction royale est de nature théologique : rien n’est possible pour l’être humain — pas même pour le roi Qohélet! — sans l’intervention divine. Autrement dit, le Dieu qui donne est également celui (...) qui détermine les conditions de l’existence humaine, aussi bien celles qui sont heureuses et avantageuses que celles qui sont malheureuses et désavantageuses. | : The author presents the state of research regarding textual criticism as well as source criticism concerning Qo 2,25, and then offers a structural analysis of Qo 2,24-26, and a literary analysis of Qo 2,25, in order to show that the subject of the section that concludes the royal fiction is of theological nature : nothing is possible for the human being — not even for the king Qohelet! — without divine intervention. In other words, the God who gives is also the one who determines the conditions of human existence, both the happy and advantageous ones, as well as the unhappy and disadvantageous ones. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:484 BOOK REVIEWS faith. Yet faith-knowledge alone is insufficient to account for Jesus' extraordinary gifts as a teacher: for this we must appeal to a special charism along the lines of an infused knowledge. According to Torrell this knowledge is best understood by reference to Aquinas's mature teaching on prophecy: God equipped the prophets with an infused light (but not infused ideas) enabling them to communicate divine truths (...) to others. Likewise, God conferred on Jesus an infused light akin to that of the prophets, but with this qualitative difference: in him the lumen is a permanent feature of his cognitive life (a habitus), while it is given to the prophets only intermittently (per modum actus). The foregoing i;ummary will have served its purpose if it has conveyed to the reader some sense of the very rich historical, philosophical, and theological reflections that comprise this volume. The editorial team of the Revue thomiste is to be commended for the high caliber of this and the other special publications it has produced in recent years: the 1992 commemorative volume on the theological achievement of M.-M. Labourdette; th~ 1993 centenary index ("tables generales 1893-1992"); the Gilson issue of 1994; and most recently an issue devoted to Thomas Aquinas and the onto-theo-logy debate (1995). This reviewer eagerly waits for more. Fordham University Bronx, New York GREGORY M. REICHBERG The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan. By J. MICHAEL STEBBINS. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Pp. xxii + 399. $65.00 (cloth). Aquinas insists that the creator's primary intent is the "order of the universe," and Bernard Lonergan's dissertation on "operating grace" in Aquinas's writings managed to move beyond the stalemated discussion of "sufficient" and "efficacious" grace precisely because he displayed how any discourse about grace had to be connected with larger theorems of the creator's operation in creation. What speaking of the divine action called "grace" requires is a set of metaphysical skills adequate to speaking of the "order of the universe" as created. A tall order, whose scope the published edition of his dissertation-Grace and Freedom-so understated that its implications have been missed by many philosophers and theologians fascinated with such questions. Stebbins's careful reconstruction of that text reminds us of its daunting scope. And part of the reason it can do so is that he illustrates both the method and conclusions of Grace and Freedom through a later text which Lonergan had composed (in Latin) for a course on grace offered from 1947 to 1960: De ente supernaturali (which will appear in volume 16 [Early Latin Theology] of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, published by BOOK REVIEWS 485 University of Toronto Press). The significance of this collateral source is that it can profit from and respond to Henri de Lubac's epochal Surnaturel (1946). For those not familiar with Grace and Freedom, as well as some who thought they were, a list of Stebbins's chapters manages to convey the scope of Lonergan's achievement: 1. The Role of Understanding in Theological Speculation; 2. The Principal Instance of Supernatural Being: The Created Communication of the Divine Nature; 3. Thirteenth-Century Breakthrough (The "Theorem" of the Supernatural); 4. Supernatural Transformation of Human Activity; 5. Obediential Potency and the Natural Desire to See God; 6. Molinist and Bannezian Systems; 7. Theoretical Perspective on Divine Concourse; 8. Contingence, Sin and Divine Efficacy. As always, Lonergan must actively reflect on method while executing a theological inquiry, so Stebbins rightly begins with his insistence that such inquiry must be more than "just a networks of concepts; it is primarily an act of understanding" (xix)-Chapter 1. Then, following the expository order of De ente supematurali, he shows how Lonergan roots the supernatural in the theorems developed to speak of the natural: of creation itself. ("Theorem," as we shall see, is a favorite word of Lonergan's, intimating what it takes to move beyond our imaginations to a set of propositions able to articulate the metaphysical issues at stake.) Following the analogy of nature, we can see how the "two operations by which creatures... (shrink)

: Recently, Erik Wielenberg has developed a novel objection to divine command meta-ethics. The objection that DCM "has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible". This article criticizes Wielenberg's argument. Section 1 will expound Wielenberg's new "psychopath" argument in the context of the recent debate over the Promulgation Objection. Section 2 will discuss two ambiguities in the argument; in particular, Wielenberg’s formulation is ambiguous between whether (...) Wielenberg uses the word "obligation" in an objective or subjective sense. Section 3 will argue that this ambiguity undercuts the argument. If Wielenberg is using the word obligation in a subjective sense, his arguments do not show that that psychopaths "have no moral obligations". By contrast, if Wielenberg is using the word obligation in an objective sense, his arguments do not show that Divine command theorists are committed to denying psychopaths have obligations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fighting Words:Turnus at Bay in the Latin Council (Aeneid 11.234–446)Elaine FanthamUntil the publication of Philip Hardie's important new discussion "Fame and Defamation in the Aeneid: The Council of Latins" (1998), Virgil's extended treatment of the Latin council had passed a generation of relative neglect—neglect all the more surprising because the debate occupies a quarter of the eleventh book.1 But then the book itself is generally treated as a lowering (...) of tension, a diversion of focus from the heroic business of male combat to an exchange of rhetoric and the ancillary exploits of the woman warrior Camilla. And despite his long– standing interest in Virgil's Iliad (e.g., 1984), K. W. Gransden's recent commentary on book 11 (1991) shows little interest in Virgil's sophisticated narrative technique.Virgil's writing in this book is no less serious than in its neighbors, and deserves further scrutiny. The Camilla narrative has begun to receive its due, but the rhetoric of the extended council, which includes Turnus' longest speech and the second longest formal speech in the Aeneid, has usually been passed over as alien to the concerns of epic.2This is certainly not Hardie's approach, though it is motivated in part by the same negative attitude toward rhetoric. For him the debate is primarily a starting point for a more far–reaching inquiry into the [End Page 259] ways in which Virgil uses the secondary narrative of speakers to project dissonant versions of events the audience has already experienced, and, by thus casting doubt on their credibility, extends a further shadow of doubt over the narrative enterprise. He states his aim as "to resituate the place of rhetoric within the Aeneid, with especial reference to the most elaborate and most formal exchanges between human actors in the poem. The focus of... discussion is not so much on the formal markers of a rhetorical manner, as on the relationship between the truth–functions of rhetoric and of a supposedly authoritative epic voice" (1998, 243).Now Hardie would probably accept a definition of rhetoric fairly close to "speech designed to persuade." But his reading of the episode shows a mistrust not simply of its most clearly dishonest speaker, but of the entire debate. He opens with Virgil's summary, Illi haec inter se dubiis de rebus agebant / certantes (445–46). Yet insofar as the sphere of rhetoric (as opposed to logic) is, as Aristotle declares, what is debatable, the uncertainty or insecurity of the Latins' circumstances hardly entitles Hardie to damn the entire council as "hot air... just so much rhetoric" (244). It seems that despite his magnificent understanding of epic, Hardie has no sympathy for rhetoric.3 For him "rhetoric" is only the abuse of eloquence. He equates it with public speeches invalidated by the speaker's misreading of circumstances, by distortion of the speaker's own experience,4 by misjudgment swayed by emotion,5 or by misrepresentation to deceive the audience—whereas the only error of several of these speakers is human ignorance of the divinely ordained consequences. Not only Latinus, "careful to provide the optimal conditions for a faithful account by the envoys," but the honest Venulus and right–minded Diomedes are discredited along with Drances, as if no valid speech were possible in a political context. [End Page 260]Hardie has many acute and rewarding comments on the debate, but his major critical contribution lies outside it, reaching even beyond the framework of the Aeneid. The more restricted approach I originally adopted toward the Latin debate, while composing earlier drafts of this essay, does not seem to have lost its usefulness: it is even possible that Hardie's long–sighted vision has produced a distortion that needs to be corrected by a study with a shorter focus. As in the subtle intertextual study by Burke (1978), my point of departure here is the effect of Drances' speech not only on the behavior of Turnus, but on the audience's or reader's reception of Turnus' reply and assessment of his character.6To start, then, let us briefly review the form and content of the council, paying special... (shrink)

The divine ideas tradition played a valuable but often unrecognized role in the history of Christian theology. This article investigates the possible loss to theology by examining how the divine ideas permitted a unified theology of creation and salvation, centred upon the contemplation of all things in Christ. Interpreting examples from Origen to Aquinas, the article demonstrates that leading theologians understood the full truth of all creatures to be known eternally by God in the procession of the (...) class='Hi'>Word, by whose incarnation, death, and resurrection the creatures are redeemed. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relationship between the divine Word and the creatures uttered eternally with it, and attempts to unravel the consequences of this relationship particularly from the perspective of the verum, so that one can glimpse not only the origin of creation in the Word but also the truth of things considered in and from the Logos.

Paradiso 2’s sustained direct address warns readers unprepared for its complexities to “turn back to see your shores again…for perhaps losing me, you would be lost,” but then offers the “other few” who crave “the bread of angels” the promise of a marvel that would rival the deeds of the mythological hero Jason. I will argue that, by appearing to impose this choice on its readers, this direct address in fact activates the craving for the bread of angels (for who, (...) by obeying the interpretive imperative to make such a decision, would not also be one who thereby does choose to pursue the bread that is promised in return for this obedience?). In other words, the very act of interpreting the representation of readers as divided into those who are capable of allegorical interpretation and those who are not constructs and activates the will of a single readership for the Divine Comedy and, consequently, challenges us to provide an articulation of what it means even to read or to misread the Divine Comedy. (shrink)

This essay presents a version of divine command metaethics inspired by recent work of Donnellan, Kripke, and Putnam on the relation between necessity and conceptual analysis. What we can discover a priori, by conceptual analysis, about the nature of ethical wrongness is that wrongness is the property of actions that best fills a certain role. What property that is cannot be discovered by conceptual analysis. But I suggest that theists should claim it is the property of being contrary to (...) the commands of a loving God. This claim, if true, is a necessary but not an a priori truth. It also is a claim, not about the way in which some believers use the word 'wrong,' but about the wrongness that virtually everyone talks about. This position is distinguished from the author's previous views, and from a holistic development of the latter proposed by Jeffrey Stout. (shrink)

I argue that Jīva Gosvāmin’s (c. 1517–1608 ad ) concept of acintya and Thomas Aquinas’s (1225–1274 ad ) concept of mystery are similar. To make this case, I examine how each of them characterizes the nature of unity and plurality within the being of God, which is the issue of relations within a single object. I examine contemporary translations of acintya as it is used by Jīva, and I argue that mystery is a best translation because it addresses the ontological (...) and epistemological senses of the word. I examine contemporary accounts of mystery as it is used by Aquinas, arguing that they reflect Jīva’s use of the word acintya. This comparative study makes the case for similar approaches in Hindu and Christian scholasticism in regard to the use of reason to address the relational problem of simultaneous oneness and difference. (shrink)

The power of the word should be at its height when the spoken word is deemed authoritative, when speech is the master of discourse. This authority can be no greater than when the word derives from what the Greeks called “the more powerful (than us),” (hoi kreittones) or even, in monotheistic religions, from He who can be called – to use a term that avoids confusion – “the Almighty.” The mighty word is the divine (...) class='Hi'>word. The power of this word is a result of its divine origin. (shrink)

The article examines sin through the lens of forgetfulness, as both are phenomena situated between passivity and activity, and intricately linked in the biblical tradition. It shows how the propensity to forget God is rooted in a particular form of presence that is characteristic of YHWH. The narrative of the making of the golden calf is analysed for its potential to highlight the ‘predicament’ peculiar to the Jewish and Christian faiths: to seek a more palpable divine presence than that (...) in the word alone. The article explores this theme further by way of theologically juxtaposing the calf with the Agnus Dei and offering considerations on conscience, confession and the opacity of the Christian life. (shrink)

Ritual studies, a pivotal domain in the scholarly tradition of ancient China, occupy a crucial role in the exploration of humanistic and theological disciplines. Utilizing bibliometric analysis, corpus linguistics, and scientometric mapping, this paper examines a comprehensive dataset of 15,221 ritual studies articles spanning from 1916 to 2022, sourced from the CNKI database. The focus of these studies has traditionally been on ideological exploration, textual scrutiny, and archaeological verification, with a notable shift in the post-reform era from Confucian critiques to (...) authentication of ancient rituals, propelled by significant archaeological discoveries. Entering the 21st century, the field has broadened to intersect with intellectual history, philosophy, literature, and theological studies, reflecting an expanded methodological repertoire that includes ideological articulation, historical comparative analysis, and interdisciplinary exploration. This research introduces an innovative methodological approach by employing word embedding and semantic networks to delineate and trace underrepresented yet crucial research trajectories within the discipline. Through this semantic analysis, key scholars such as Kuang Heng, Cao Bao, Wang Chong, He Yang, Chen Li, and Chu Yinliang, along with cornerstone texts like the "Collected Commentaries on the Book of Rites" and "Illustrations of the Rites Classic," are identified as significant yet previously underexplored nodes within the academic discourse. This study not only sheds light on the evolution and current state of ritual studies in China but also highlights the profound philosophical and religious implications of these rituals in understanding the divine, the moral, and the human condition, thus contributing to a deeper comprehension of the spiritual and ethical dimensions that these practices embody. (shrink)

An unprecedented recollection -- A purportedly anonymous rhetorical flourish -- The major interruption in a minor key -- A taciturn commentary by the actual author -- An inconclusive word from the present reader.

This article considers how the new finds have affected one's view of Empedocles, and suggests how interpretation of that material might help solve some longstanding problems about the structure and content of Empedocles' writings. A basic account of the teachings of Empedocles would distinguish between two main components. On the one hand, there is a “Presocratic” physics, including a theory of principles, a cosmology, and a biology. On the other hand, there is a mythical law, clearly inspired by Orphic or (...) Pythagorean legends, which imposes on guilty gods a punishment consisting in their transmigration through a series of mortal beings. The purpose of this article is to show that Empedocles has the habit of referring to divine entities of his physical system both in a physical and in a mythological way and that his uses of the word daimon form part of this twofold language. (shrink)

The Baptist pastor John Gill believed the doctrine of eternal generation was vital to the Christian faith. While he firmly held to the doctrine of eternal generation, counting it as indispensable for grounding distinctions between the persons within the Godhead, he denied that the divine essence is communicated in generation. Generation, for Gill, entailed only the begetting of persons, and spoke to the ordering and personal relations between the Trinitarian Persons. As the second Person, the Son is from the (...) Father, but as God, he is of himself. This understanding of eternal generation flowed from Gill’s commitment to the aseity of all the divine Persons. According to Gill, each of the divine Persons fully possesses the essence without any communication of essence and without respect to their ordered subsistence. Each person equally, fully, and eternally partakes of the divine essence of himself. Gill’s affirmation of eternal generation was strengthened and elaborated by his understanding of the Son as the divine Word. Gill’s understanding of the Son as the divine Word incorporated the analogy of the mind, which was further understood by other Scriptural images and was further apprehended by the Son’s identification as Wisdom. Gill understood these analogies and names as mutually defining for understanding the nature of the Son of God. The central theological implications of this divine name, namely, the Son’s deity, eternality, and distinct personality, were all based on Gill’s reading of Scripture, most notably in the Gospel of John. (shrink)

In the Qur’an, human distinctiveness was first questioned by angels. These established denizens of the cosmos could not understand why God would create a seemingly pernicious human when immaculate devotees of God such as themselves existed. In other words, the angels asked the age-old question: what makes humans so special and different? Fast forward to our present age and this question is made relevant again in light of the encroaching arrival of an artificial superintelligence (ASI). Up to this point in (...) history, humans have exceeded other creatures in various respects; now a possibility has arisen that another entity, namely ASI, will exceed humans at least on the level of intelligence and power. In relation to the age of angels, pre-modern Sunni exegesis construed human distinctiveness along the axes of reproductive knowledge and stewardship. Both brittle, distinguishing markers will disappear in the age of the ASI. Conversely, a more resilient and creative Islamic response can be derived from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) views on God and the imago Dei. Inspired by the Akbarian perspective, this paper construes human distinctiveness in relation to a capacity to expansively respond to God’s love to be recognized, a response that relies on (a) imitating divine virtues that operate in counterintuitive and illogical ways, and (b) exhibiting fragility and lack rather than exceptionalism. ASI, while responding already in part to God’s love, needs to make strides towards these traits before it can answer divine love as commensurately as humans can. (shrink)

The Ālvārs are the seventh–ninth century Tamil poet saints whose works achieved the status of sacred canon in what became, after the time of the theologian Rāmānuja, the Śrīvaiṣṇava community and tradition of south India. Their poems are honored as excellent poetry, as expressive of the experience of the poets themselves and of their encounters with Nārāyaṇa, their chosen deity, and finally as revelation, the divine Word uttered in human words. This thematic issue of Sophia is interested in (...) investigating the transformations or adaptations that a human language — speaking, writing — undergoes when transmitting a divine message, a revelation expressed in human words. This essay suggests that exploring how traditions have thought and performed the divine in human language can be undertaken usefully; that spiritual charged poetry is a powerful medium of divine communication in human words that both fall short in speaking of God and yet, in that failure, speak eloquently; and that reading intertextually, even interreligiously, is a way to disclose powerfully that divine communication. This essay reflects on all this by studying closely verse 57 of the Tiruviruttam of Śaṭakōpan, the greatest of these poet saints. It aims to show how even the outside reader — ‘the pilgrim reader’ who is neither a native nor a tourist — can enter into the interpretive process and find, in the elusive poetic words, a point of access to the revelation of the tradition. Some brief comparison is made with the interpretation of the Song of Songs in Jewish and Christian commentarial tradition. (shrink)

In the initial verses of Seven against Thebes, Eteocles recognizes the need of pronounce the right words as one of his duties as leader and defender of the city of Thebes. The concerns of Eteocles for what ought, or ought not, be said towards an imminent attack comes from a perception of language as a divine form of the world which base itself on the belief among the Greeks that words have a numen in itself and leads, thus, to (...) a prophetic fulfillment. The aim of this paper is, therefore, reveal the contribution of the word to the defense of the city in Seven against Thebes, by Aeschylus. (shrink)

The starting point for thinking about divine command is the reality of God, the initiating and effecting word of God and the character of God, reflected in Scripture especially in regard to goodness and justice.The necessity of social interaction as context for divine command is reflected in several ways; among those mentioned here are the divine council, the covenant, and the incarnation, the word made flesh and living among us. The covenant is central to thinking (...) about divine commands as they are reflected in Scripture. It presumes a relationship between God and those commanded and is a voluntary association. Obedience to the divine commands results from the goodness of God and is only to the Lord. As such the ethic of command becomes also an ethic of response. Rather than being commands to be obeyed without reason or thought and only because they are commanded by God, the divine commands of Scripture and the law generally involve rationality and persuasion, teaching and interpretation. They chart a way of freedom. (shrink)