The article aims to give an overall overview of Saint Augustine’s attitude towards the Gnostic Christians Manichaeans. First a historical overview mainly based on his Confessions outlines Augustine’s acquaintance with the members of the manichaean church and his familiarity with their writings. Second the place of the Manichaeans in a considerable number of Augustine’s works is discussed. It is in particular in his many anti-Manichaean writings that the Church father displays his intimate knowledge of their myth and their doctrines. Third, (...) a summary is given of the research on the impact of the Manichaeans on Augustine. It is concluded that from his early years onwards to the very end of his life, the Manichaean Christians were a real and powerful force to him. (shrink)

After discussing the so-called Ham myth in South Africa, my focus is on the African church father Augustine (354–430). All texts from his immense oeuvre in which he mentions biblical Ham are reviewed in chronological order. In Against Faustus, the story of Noah and his sons is mainly explained as being Christological: Ham figures as a type of the unbelieving Jews who consented to the murder of Christ, but he is also a type of the Jews because he is ‘the (...) slave of his brothers’ carrying the books by which the Christians may be instructed. Later Augustine corrects his confusion of Ham with the slave Canaan. The story of Ham (and Canaan) is most extensively discussed in the City of God. Neither here nor in the Expositions on the Psalms, Ham is described as being black or a slave. The same goes for a number of his other writings. In Augustine’s late works Against Julian and Unfinished Work against Julian, he thoroughly goes into the question of why (although Ham sinned) ‘vengeance was brought upon Canaan’. Augustine perceives God’s prophecy: from Canaan stems the cursed seed [ semen maledictum ] of the Canaanites. Nowhere, however, he claims that Ham or his descendants would have been cursed to be black or that all of his offspring were condemned to slavery. Contribution: This article demonstrates that the Ham myth does not occur in Augustine. It argues that the ‘ mestizo ’ African Augustine might have been extra sensitive to questions of race and colour. (shrink)

John Calvin (1509–1564) started his career as a thoroughly trained humanist who possessed, in addition, a thorough knowledge of the Fathers of the Church. This article provides an overview of this particular knowledge. It also focuses on the use Calvin made of the patristic argument in both his instructive and apologetic writings. Some evident cases of Calvin’s misuse of the patres are discussed as well. It is concluded that Calvin’s special patristic knowledge gave his theology its special hallmark and still (...) links authentic Calvinism with the church’s catholic tradition through the ages. (shrink)

This article aims to analyse all the passages in Augustine’s City of God in which he either explicitly or implicitly makes mention of Manichaeism and its doctrines. It turns out that, even in his later years, Manichaean doctrines were at the forefront of Augustine’s mind, although essential elements of his own doctrines have a clearly anti-Manichaean background. A close reading of all those anti-Manichaean passages further discloses some fairly unique particulars, such as, for example, the Manichaeans’ use and interpretation of (...) John 8:44 and 1 John 3:8. (shrink)

The earliest Christians – all of whom were Jews – spoke of the Holy Spirit as a feminine figure. The present article discusses the main proof texts, ranging from the ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’ to a number of testimonies from the second century. The ancient tradition was, in particular, kept alive in East and West Syria, up to and including the fourth century Makarios and/or Symeon, who even influenced ‘modern’ Protestants such as John Wesley and the Moravian leader Count (...) von Zinzendorf. It is concluded that, in the image of the Holy Spirit as woman and mother, one may attain a better appreciation of the fullness of the Divine. (shrink)

Vorträge gehalten am Treffen der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft vom 2. bis 5. Januar 2003 in Heilsbronn bei Nürnberg.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mimetic Theory and Its Rivals:A Reply to Pablo BanderaRichard van Oort (bio)There are three ways to respond to a rival theory. You can ignore it, you can assimilate it to what you already believe, or you can assess its merits independently and then either reject it or adopt it as the better, more powerful theory. Let us briefly review these three strategies.1. Assuming you are already in possession (...) of a sufficiently powerful theory, a safe bet is simply to ignore the newcomer. Contrary to appearances, this is not a totally unreasonable strategy. Time is in short supply. Those in possession of a theory adequate to their purposes will naturally be hesitant to investigate a new one, the understanding of which may require considerable investment in time and imaginative effort. Better to let others do the risky and quite possibly foolhardy work of inventing and elaborating new theories. Chances are their attempts will fail anyway. Truly original ideas are hard to come by and, given this fact, it only makes sense to stick with what works rather than waste time on unfamiliar and unproven ideas.2. The second response is, on the surface at least, more gracious and benevolent, but this benevolence masks an intransigence quite as dogmatic [End Page 189] as the first. Thus we welcome the new theory into the fold, but with a view to assimilating it to what we already know. The new theory is not our rival but our friend. Rather than emphasize the differences, we point to the theory's similarities with our existing framework. The new theory is said to improve our understanding of one or two details, but these are held to be merely minor modifications and not at odds with what we hold to be fundamentally true. Thus the new theory is not really new at all. It is but another disciple of the old. Its claim to a place at the table is not at the head, as a rival leader and master, but alongside the other disciples whose collective task it is to disseminate the teachings of the one true master. This strategy is in fact extremely common and entirely understandable, from the viewpoint of both the adherents of the old theory and those of the new. For while the adherents of the old theory receive further confirmation of the superiority of their way of looking at the world, the adherents of the new theory receive a measure of respect by gaining access to an existing center of attention. As we all know, the mimetic attention space is by definition limited. We can't focus on everything at once, and sometimes the best strategy for a new theory is, so to speak, to follow the money. One piggybacks on the existing centers of attention. But the drawback is that the more one piggybacks, the less "new" one becomes.3. The third and final response is to take the new theory seriously as a rival center of attention. But this forces us into a genuine dilemma. For now we have to choose between theories that are accepted, for the time being at least, as equals in terms of their rivalry for our attention. But if both claim to be equally foundational, equally deserving of our attention to first things, then both cannot be equally true. One theory must come first; one must be superior to the other. But which?In a recent issue of Contagion, Pablo Bandera urges Girardians to adopt the third strategy when assessing Eric Gans's generative anthropology.1 We must recognize the theory's status as a genuine rival. Bandera believes that once the assessment has been fairly made, we must end up rejecting Gans's theory, at least insofar as it purports to be a theory of mimetic desire. The trouble is, Bandera claims, that most Girardians have adopted the second strategy, that is, they have simply assimilated Gans as a (slightly modified) version of Girard, without bothering to notice the very real differences between the two. The first strategy, complete ignorance of Gans's work, Bandera believes to be inaccurate as a description of the current situation. Indeed, he goes so... (shrink)

The U.S. stock market is one of the largest and most complex marketplaces in the global financial system. Over the past several decades, this market has evolved at multiple structural and temporal scales. New exchanges became active, and others stopped trading, regulations have been introduced and adapted, and technological innovations have pushed the pace of trading activity to blistering speeds. These developments have supported the growth of a rich machine-trading ecology that leads to qualitative differences in trading behavior at human (...) and machine time scales. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of comprehensive market data to quantify nonstationary dynamics throughout this system. We quantify the relationship between fluctuations in the number of active trading venues and realized opportunity costs experienced by market participants. We find that information asymmetries, in the form of quote dislocations, predict market-wide volatility indicators. Lastly, we uncover multiple micro-to-macro level pathways, including those exhibiting evidence of self-organized criticality. (shrink)

Episodic representations can be entertained either as “remembered” or “imagined”—as outcomes of experience or as simulations of such experience. Here, we argue that this feature is the product of a dedicated cognitive function: the metacognitive capacity to determine the mnemicity of mental event simulations. We argue that mnemicity attribution should be distinguished from other metacognitive operations (such as reality monitoring) and propose that this attribution is a “cognitive gadget”—a distinctively human ability made possible by cultural learning. Cultural learning is a (...) type of social learning in which traits are inherited through social interaction. In the case of mnemicity, one culturally learns to discriminate metacognitive “feelings of remembering” from other perceptual, emotional, action-related, and metacognitive feelings; to interpret feelings of remembering as indicators of memory rather than imagination; and to broadcast the interpreted feelings in culture- and context-specific ways, such as “I was there” or “I witnessed it myself.” We review evidence from the literature on memory development and scaffolding, metacognitive learning and teaching, as well as cross-cultural psychology in support of this view before pointing out various open questions about the nature and development of mnemicity highlighted by our account. (shrink)

BackgroundThe rise of Big Data-driven health research challenges the assumed contribution of medical research to the public good, raising questions about whether the status of such research as a common good should be taken for granted, and how public trust can be preserved. Scandals arising out of sharing data during medical research have pointed out that going beyond the requirements of law may be necessary for sustaining trust in data-intensive health research. We propose building upon the use of a social (...) licence for achieving such ethical governance.Main textWe performed a narrative review of the social licence as presented in the biomedical literature. We used a systematic search and selection process, followed by a critical conceptual analysis. The systematic search resulted in nine publications. Our conceptual analysis aims to clarify how societal permission can be granted to health research projects which rely upon the reuse and/or linkage of health data. These activities may be morally demanding. For these types of activities, a moral legitimation, beyond the limits of law, may need to be sought in order to preserve trust. Our analysis indicates that a social licence encourages us to recognise a broad range of stakeholder interests and perspectives in data-intensive health research. This is especially true for patients contributing data. Incorporating such a practice paves the way towards an ethical governance, based upon trust. Public engagement that involves patients from the start is called for to strengthen this social licence.ConclusionsThere are several merits to using the concept of social licence as a guideline for ethical governance. Firstly, it fits the novel scale of data-related risks; secondly, it focuses attention on trustworthiness; and finally, it offers co-creation as a way forward. Greater trust can be achieved in the governance of data-intensive health research by highlighting strategic dialogue with both patients contributing the data, and the public in general. This should ultimately contribute to a more ethical practice of governance. (shrink)

During the past decennium, one of the main issues discussed in research ethics has been focused on the care that should be provided to the control group in a clinical trial. This discussion is also called the standard of care debate . Current international research ethics guidelines contain a wide variety of standards for the standard of care—including the provision of the highest attainable, the best available, the best current, a proven , and an established effective treatment. In this article, (...) we systematically review the currently used standards and argue that none of the current standards is adequate to serve as a universal standard for the standard of care. Alex London has made a substantial proposal for a universal standard, but universally adopting his standard is problematic. In this article, we propose a revised version of London's standard. (shrink)

People who work and live in a certain moral practice usually possess a specific form of moral wisdom. If we manage to incorporate their moral intuitions in ethical reasoning, we can arrive at judgements and theories that grasp a moral experience that generally cannot be found outside the said practice. To achieve this goal, we need a legitimate way to balance moral intuitions, ethical principles and general theories. In the present contribution, we describe a version of the model of Reflective (...) Equilibrium, which we call the Normative-Empirical Reflective Equilibrium . RE provides a framework for ethical thinking that includes both moral experience and normative theory.After an outline of the model, we focus on the role of empirical research and illustrate how empirical data on moral intuitions can add to the comprehensiveness of the set of moral beliefs in NE-RE. Subsequently, we describe how coherence among the elements of an NE-RE can be understood and measured. Finally, we address an important question for any method of moral reasoning: what is the status of the outcome of the reasoning process? This is a matter of justification. We argue for a so-called good reasoning-justified outcome strategy in NE-RE. This strategy is built on a reasoning process in which the reason-giving force of each element is tested and weighed. The thinker has to work towards a coherent view in which only the elements with sufficient justificatory power are retained. If the thinker decides that the elements fit together into a coherent view, a reflective equilibrium is reached. NE-RE is an attempt to describe a model for moral reasoning that can profit from the moral wisdom present among experienced agents through the use of empirical research. (shrink)

It is often argued that clinical research should not violate the Kantian principle that people must not be used merely as a means for the purposes of others. At first sight, the practice of clinical research itself, however, seems to violate precisely this principle: clinical research is often beneficial to future people rather than to participants; even if participants benefit, all things considered, they are exposed to discomforts which are absent both in regular care for their diseases and in other (...) areas of daily life. Therefore, in this paper we will consider whether people are used merely as a means by being enrolled in clinical research. On the basis of recent studies of Kantian scholars we will argue that clinical research is compatible with the Kantian principle if the conditions of possible consent and end-sharing have been met. Participants are not used merely as a means if they have sufficient reasons to consent to being enrolled in clinical research and can share the ends of the researchers who use them. Moreover, we will claim that even if people are used merely as a means by participating in clinical research, it may not always be morally wrong to use them in this way. (shrink)

The precautionary principle is often invoked in relation to pregnant women and may be one of the underlying reasons for their continuous underrepresentation in clinical research. The principle is appealing, because potential fetal harm as a result of research participation is considered to be serious and irreversible. In our paper, we explore through conceptual analysis whether and if so how the precautionary principle should apply to pregnant women. We argue that the principle is a decision-making strategy underlying risk-benefit decisions in (...) clinical research, which can be applied to pregnant women. However, the current application is a strong one, leading to the promotion of absolute exclusion or, less often, absolute inclusion of pregnant women. In order to change this paralyzing situation, a shift toward weak precautionary thinking is necessary. Instead of automatic extreme precaution, a balance will be found between harms and potential benefits of including pregnant women in clinical research. (shrink)

The starting point of the present study is to investigate which environmental factors play a role in the media behavior of ethnic minority youth. To what extent do socio-demographic characteristics influence ownership and use of the media? We also address the role of religion, cultural origin and the cultural distance between ethnic minority youth and indigenous Dutch youth. Three numerically important groups of ethnic minority youth are discussed: Turks, Moroccans and Surinamese. In a survey conducted among Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese (...) youth aged between 12 and 19, residing in the Netherlands, we investigated which environmental factors play a role in the media behavior of ethnic minority youth. A control group of indigenous Dutch youth was established and likewise exposed to the variables under study. (shrink)

Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) have the potential to advance the conduct of clinical trials, but raise several ethical issues, including obtaining valid informed consent. The debate on the ethical issues resulting from digitalization is predominantly focused on direct risks relating to for example data protection, safety, and data quality. We submit however, that a broader view on ethical aspects of DCTs is needed to touch upon the new challenges that come with the DCT practice. Digitalization has impacts that go beyond (...) its direct purposes, by shaping behaviors, experiences, social relations, and values. We examine four elements of the informed consent procedure that are affected by DCTs, while taking these soft impacts of technologies into account: (i) informing participants and testing understanding, (ii) freedoms in relation to responsibilities and burdens, (iii) trust in participant-researcher relations, and (iv) impacts on the concept of privacy. Our analysis reveals that a broad view is key for optimal conduct of DCTs. In addition, it provides insight into the ethical impacts of DCTs on informed consent. Technologies such as DCTs potentially have profound impacts which are not immediately addressed by the existing regulatory frameworks, but nonetheless important to recognize. These findings can guide future practices of DCTs to foster the important values of clinical research in this novel approach for conducting clinical trials. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Over the past few decades the concept of (human) dignity has deeply pervaded medical ethics. Appeals to dignity, however, are often unclear. As a result some prefer to eliminate the concept from medical ethics, whereas others try to render it useful in this context. We think that appeals to dignity in medical ethics can be clarified by considering the concept from an historical perspective. Firstly, on the basis of historical texts we propose a framework for defining the concept in (...) medical debates. The framework shows that dignity can occur in a relational, an unconditional, a subjective and a Kantian form. Interestingly, all forms relate to one concept since they have four features in common: dignity refers, in a restricted sense, to the ‘special status of human beings’; it is based on essential human characteristics; the subject of dignity should live up to it; and it is a vulnerable concept, it can be lost or violated. We argue that being explicit about the meaning of dignity will prevent dignity from becoming a conversation‐stopper in moral debate. Secondly, an historical perspective on dignity shows that it is not yet time to dispose of dignity in medical ethics. At least Kantian and relational dignity can be made useful in medical ethics. (shrink)