Les écrits manuscrits ou imprimés du chirurgien accoucheur Jean-Louis Baudelocque et ceux de ses principaux rivaux, éclairent les enjeux de pouvoir et les stratégies d’occupation de l’espace pédagogique et éditorial dans le domaine obstétrical dans les années 1770-1780. L’établissement d’un stemma explicitant les modes de production des écrits de Baudelocque, puis l’analyse comparative de ces différents écrits, enfin celle des accusations de plagiat et des jugements contemporains portés sur son œuvre et sur ce qu’il doit à son maître Solayrés de (...) Renhac, permettent de comprendre la production par Baudelocque d’un savoir obstétrical propre associée à de nouvelles stratégies éditoriales. (shrink)

Les décisions politiques sur les risques environnementaux complexes font fréquemment intervenir des éléments scientifiques contestés. Il n’y a généralement pas de « faits » qui conduisent à une politique correcte unique. Les éléments de preuve qui sont intégrés dans les avis scientifiques destinés à une décision politique nécessitent une évaluation de leur qualité. En 2003, l’Agence néerlandaise d’évaluation environnementale a adopté une méthode standardisée, désignée sous le nom de « guide », dans le cadre de laquelle les principaux aspects de (...) la production et de l’utilisation des connaissances sont présentés grâce à une liste de contrôle visant à l’évaluation et à la communication des incertitudes. Dans cet article, nous présentons des résultats de l’application de ce guide à la controverse sur les risques des particules en suspension. La délibération active sur l’incertitude dans un contexte d’expertise entraîne un processus d’apprentissage commun entre les experts et les décideurs politiques, ce qui conduit à une meilleure prise de conscience du phénomène d’incertitude et de ses implications politiques.Policy decisions on complex environmental risks often involve disputed science. Typically, there are no “ facts” to support a single unequivocally correct policy. The evidence provided in scientific studies for policy-making decisions requires high-quality assessment. In 2003, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency adopted a standardized method, referred to as “guidelines”, whereby key quality aspects of knowledge production and use are presented in the form of a checklist for uncertainty assessments and communication. In this article, we present the outcomes of applying the guidelines in controversies on the risks of ambient particulate matter. In the policy–advisory context, active deliberation on uncertainty produces a common learning process for advisors and policy makers, which leads to a deeper understanding and increased awareness of the phenomenon of uncertainty and its policy implications. (shrink)

We model the forgetting of propositional variables in a modal logical context where agents become ignorant and are aware of each others’ or their own resulting ignorance. The resulting logic is sound and complete. It can be compared to variable-forgetting as abstraction from information, wherein agents become unaware of certain variables: by employing elementary results for bisimulation, it follows that beliefs not involving the forgotten atom(s) remain true.

In his three books J. Wentzel van Huyssteen develops a complex and helpful notion of rationality, avoiding the extremes of foundationalism and postmodern relativism and deconstruction. Drawing from several postmodern philosophers of science and evolutionary epistemologists who seek to devise a usable notion of rationality, he weaves together a view that allows for a genuine duet betweenscience and theology. In the process he challenges much contemporary nonfoundationalist theology as well as the philosophical naïveté of some cosmologists and sociobiologists.

A crisis looms over the scientific enterprise. Not a day passes without news of retractions, failed replications, fraudulent peer reviews, or misinformed science-based policies. The social implications are enormous, yet this crisis has remained largely uncharted-until now. In Science on the Verge, luminaries in the field of post-normal science and scientific governance focus attention on worrying fault-lines in the use of science for policymaking, and the dramatic crisis within science itself. This provocative new volume in The Rightful Place of Science (...) also explores the concepts that need to be unlearned, and the skills that must be relearned and enhanced, if we are to restore the legitimacy and integrity of science. (shrink)

Volume 24 of _The Annual_ opens with a memorial tribute to the late Merton M. Gill, a major voice in American psychoanalysis for half a century. Remembrances of Gill by Robert Holt, Robert Wallerstein, Philip Holzman, and Irwin Hoffman are followed by thoughtful appreciations of Gill's final book, _Psychoanalysis in Transition: A Personal View_, by John Gedo, Jerome Oremland, Arnold Richards and Arthur Lynch, Joseph Schachter, and Bhaskar Sripada and Shara Kronmal. Section II offers four papers from a major conference (...) on "Mind/Brain" held in Osaka, Japan. In addition to publishing two clinical papers by the Chicago analyst John Gedo, _The Annual_ introduces readers to two prominent Japanese neuroscientists whose work is relevant to psychoanalysis. Hiroshi Utena links brain development to the individual's freedom to make optimal adaptive choices, whereas Makoto Iwata outlines the modular organization of vision in the brain and then illustrates each modular potential by examining the paintings of four artists: Mondrian, Duchamp, Seurat, and Rothko. Kenneth Newman's sensitive consideration of analyst self-discourse as the outcome of successful management of the countertransference and Frank Summers' astute assessment of the place of self psychology in the history of psychoanalytic ideas are followed by three engaging and instructive studies in applied analysis: Elaine Caruth and Milton Eber's examination of Woody Allen's _The Purple Rose of Cairo _as a metaphoric depiction of the blurring of boundaries in psychotherapy; Frank and Annette Lachmann's study of the creative process of Henrik Ibsen as a self-transformational response to narcissistic injury; and W. W. Meissner's exploration of the role of shame in Vincent van Gogh's life and art. The volume concludes with a provocative contribution to psychoanalytic history: J. Bos's social-constructivist rereading of the _Minutes of the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society_ with an eye to illuminating why and how psychoanalysis changed during its early years. True to its distinguished lineage, volume 24 of _The Annual_ continues to broaden the conceptual, clinical, and historical vistas of its readers. Moreover, with its revealing reminiscences and substantive appraisals of Merton Gill, this volume becomes a fascinating marker in the very psychoanalytic history it helps recount. (shrink)

Volume 26/27 begins with publication of _The Annual's_ first prize essay, Samuel Abrams's "How Child and Adult Analysis Inform and Misinform One Another." This is followed by a series of papers originally prepared for a symposium honoring John E. Gedo. These papers span the clinical topics of obsessiveness, sublimation, dreams and self-analysis, and analyzability, and also delve into applied psychoanalysis and art history, with two studies of Vincent van Gogh and another of Alberto Giacometti. These papers not only convey the (...) impressive range of Gedo's own interests, but embody the high scholarly and clinical standards that Gedo has long held, both for himself and for the field in general. Section III offers original contributions to clinical analysis in the form of the consideration of the role of affective engagement in the analyst's "usability"; thoughtful assessment of the perils of parental projection in child analytic work; and comparison of a failed and successful supervision in the same psychoanalytic case. Section IV examines psychoanalysis and the arts, with two further studies of van Gogh, an analytic reading of Nabokov's _Lolita_, and more general examinations of psychoanalysis in relation to dramatic art and film analysis. The volume closes with two provocative scholarly essays bearing on the roots of psychoanalysis: the correspondence between Mabel Dodge and her analysts Smith Ely Jelliffe and A. A. Brill as a vehicle for reviewing the issue of extra- and postanalytic contact between analyst and patient; and an examination of Freud, Lacan, and the uneasy relationships among literature, psychoanalysis, and the female subject. Volume 26/27 offers readers a rich harvest of contemporary insights about psychoanalysis, including its history and evolution, its continuing clinical refinement, and its scholarly applications outside the consulting room. (shrink)

According to many realist philosophers of fiction, one needs to posit an ontology of existing fictional characters in order to give a correct account of discourse about fiction. The realists' claim is opposed by pretense theorists for whom discourse about fiction involves, as discourse in fiction, pretense. On that basis, pretense theorists claim that one does not need to embrace an ontology of fictional characters to give an account of discourse about fiction. The ontolog-ical dispute between realists and pretense theorists (...) is mainly a dispute in the realm of the phi-losophy of language concerning the status relative to pretense of discourse about fiction. Realists are persuaded that there is a sharp line between discourse in fiction and discourse about fiction while pretense theorists deny there exists such a line. I suggest that realists may have a wrong picture of discourse in fiction since, in many cases, discourse in fiction already contains many occurrences of discourse about fiction. Consequently, discourse about fiction, instead of ending fiction, should be regarded, following pretense theorists, as adding extra lay-ers of fiction. (shrink)

Volume 20 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_ ably traverses the analytic canvas with sections on "Theoretical Studies," "Clinical Studies," "Applied Psychoanalysis," and "Psychoanalysis and Philosophy." The first section begins with Arnold Modell's probing consideration of the paradoxical nature of the self, provocatively discussed with John Gedo. Modell focuses on the fact that the self is simultaneously public and private, dependent and autonomous. Alice Rosen Soref next explores innate motivation and self-protective regulatory processes from the standpoint of recent infancy research; her (...) notion of a lifelong two-track model of self and relatedness helps establish a normative baseline that can anchor psychoanalytic theory. George Mahl makes an interesting contribution to Freud studies in the form of a new chronology of Freud's works and the number of pages they contain in the _Standard Edition_. The section ends with Robert Galatzer-Levy and Mayer Gruber's "quasi-experiment about disgust." They test and disconfirm the hypothesis that disgust is an affective response to an abstract sense of disorder rather than a transformation of a concrete, bodily experience by systematically exploring references to concepts of disgust in the Old Testament. Section II, on "Clinical Studies," opens with Henry Smith's fascinating elaboration of Freud's notion of "screen memories" into a theory of screening that denotes the general process by which mental content is organized. He illustrates his thesis by invoking the "screen language" employed by a patient throughout her analysis. Ernest Wolf next explores the tension between being a "scientist" and a "healer" in Freud and his followers to illuminate struggles within the psychoanalytic movement and to help account for current attitudes toward abstinence, neutrality, and gratification. Kenneth Newman focuses on this same triptych of technical precepts. He argues, in the spirit of Winnicott and Kohut, that analysts can only alter the hostile internal environments of their patients by becoming "usable" objects and cultivating an optimally responsive analytic environment. A particularly rich collection of applied analytic studies forms Section III of the volume. Individual chapters focus on the childhood of Vincent van Gogh ; the psychological healing process depicted in George Eliot's _Silas Marner_ ; the self-psychological meaning of "blood brotherhood" in D. H. Lawrence's _Women in Love_ ; ecstatic mysticism in the 19th-century Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna ; the disintegration of the Tyrone family in Eugene O'Neill's _Long Day's Journey into Night_ ; and the nature and analytic significance of Freud's aesthetic response to Michelangelo's _Moses_. Finally, in Section IV, George Brook examines the commonsense psychological knowledge of everyday life, that is, the nonpsychoanalytic knowledge on which much of clinical psychoanalysis ultimately depends. Taken together, the four sections of Volume 20 of _The Annual_ offer an exciting overview of contemporary psychoanalysis. Section I highlights recent trends in psychoanalytic theorizing and the testing of psychoanalytic propositions; Section II explores the relevance of new theoretical perspectives to clinical work; Section III demonstrates the applicability of these new perspectives to psychobiographical and literary analysis; and Section IV provocatively explores the points of connection between everyday ideas and attitudes and the tenets of psychoanalytic practice. (shrink)

Volume 22 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_ begins with the provocative reflections of Jane Flax and Robert Michels on the current status and future prospects of psychoanalysis a century after Freud. Flax believes that analysis will not survive in the postmodern West if analysts cling to the medical model and the notion of analysis as a clinical science; Michels believes analysis will be revivified in the next century by reorganizing its training institutes within universities. A section on "Psychoanalysis and the (...) Visual Arts" includes John Gedo's probing examination of the inner world of Paul Gauguin and William Meissner's reflections on Vincent van Gogh as artist. Johann Michael Rotmann's examination of the transferential meanings of third-party payment within Germany's health insurance system is a timely consideration of issues that are increasingly salient for American analysts and therapists. A rich harvest of theoretical and clinical papers rounds out this volume of _The Annual_. In "A Time of Questioning," Leon Wurmser responds to the inner and outer challenges before analysis in a closely reasoned defense of the applicability of classical analytic technique to severely disturbed patients. Michael Hoit examines the noninterpretive, interactive aspects of the analytic relationship, arguing that the analyst's noninterpretive activities are intrinsic to treatment and must be incorporated into the theory of therapeutic action. In "Fables as Psychoanalytic Metaphors," Elaine Caruth describes some psychoanalytic metaphors contained within the lessons of the Aesopian fables, proposing that the fables address interpersonal and group conflicts that often involve moral issues. Wilma Bucci offers her "multiple code theory" as a new model of emotion and mind, based on current theory and research in cognitive science, that can account for clinical concepts and provide coherent framework for empirical research. And Ralph Roughton uses the case history of Laura to underscore the central role of repetition and interaction in the analytic process. Volume 22 will not disappoint readers of this distinguished continuing series. Like its predecessors, it is a thoroughly assembled collection responsive to the conceptual, clinical, and institutional challenges now before the field. (shrink)

Although its roots go back at least to Spinoza, religious naturalism is once again becoming a self–conscious option in religious thinking. This article seeks to (1) provide a generic notion of religious naturalism, (2) sketch my own “minimalist” variety of religious naturalism, and (3) view the science–religion dialogue from both of these perspectives. This last will include reflection on the nature of scientific practices, the contributions of religious traditions to moral reflection, and Ursula Goodenough's “religiopoiesis.”.

Religious naturalism encompasses thinkers from Baruch Spinoza, George Santayana, John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Ralph Burhoe to recent writers. I offer a generic definition of religious naturalism and then outline my own version, the “minimalist vision of transcendence.” Many standard issues in the science‐and‐religion dialogue are seen to fade in significance for religious naturalism. I make suggestions for our understanding of science, including the importance of transcognitive abilities, the need for a revised notion of rationality as an alternative to (...) extreme versions of postmodernism, the value of rational dissensus, and the education of appreciation. Finally, I suggest ways to interpret the religious traditions of the world by religious naturalism. (shrink)

. In my recent work I argued that the religion and sciencedialogue is most successful when done locally and contextually. However, I also argued against theology's epistemic isolation in a pluralist, postmodern world, and for a postfoundationalist notion of human rationality that reveals the interdisciplinary, public nature of all theological reflection. I now want to explore the possibility that, when we look at what the prehistory of thehuman mind reveals about the biological roots of all human rationality, some forms of (...) contemporary evolutionary epistemology may actually hold the key to understanding the kind of cognitive fluidity that enables true interdisciplinary reflection. Philosophically the religion and science dialogue benefits from this move when a postfoundationalist notion of rationality redescribes the dynamic interaction of our various disciplinary dialogues with one another as aform of transversal reasoning. Transversality in this sense justifies and urges an acknowledgment of multiple patterns of interpretation as one moves across the borders and boundaries of different disciplines. (shrink)

In this article Jerome A Stone's neo-naturalistic philosophy of religion is critically assessed. Stone develops a minimalist model of the divine by means of retrieving experiences of transcendence in a plural secular society. The article aims at arguing that such a 'transactional realistic' concept of God is not only a-contextual, but also too generic. Although this is regarded as a postfoundationalist move by radical empiricism, it turns out to he not consonant with postmodernism’s celebration of true pluralism.

The reception of rhetorical elements in the Letter to Philemon by Patristic exegetes. The aim of this study is to offer an overview of the way in which Patristic exegetes interpreted the rhetorical aspects of Paul’s Letter to Philemon. Although a rhetorical analysis of the letter was not the matter which interested them as such, one can still obtain a fairly good idea of the way in which they perceived such aspects by reading their explanations of this letter. Accordingly, the (...) contributions of all the Patristic exegetes in this regard are studied systematically in this study. The interpretations of the letters by Ambrosiaster, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus are investigated from this angle. In each case, the most important comments on Paul’s rhetorical strategy are identified and discussed.Keywords: Pauline Letters; Letter to Philemon; Rhetorical Analaysis; Patristic Exegetes. (shrink)

Paul, the peacemaker. On the reception of the Letter to Philemon in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. By means of his letter to Philemon Paul attempted to make peace between Philemon and his slave, Onesimus. The theological aspects of this endeavour have been discussed often in academic circles, but thus far little attention has been given to what the practical implications of this would have been for Philemon’s household. In this article, this issue is addressed from a particular perspective, (...) namely how this aspect was interpreted by Christians in the 4th and 5th centuries CE. The interpretations of the Letter to Philemon by Ambrosiaster, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus are then investigated systematically in order to determine what their views were in this regard. It is shown that they all agreed that Philemon would (or would have no choice but to) forgive Onesimus, and that Onesimus would have turned into a better slave. All of these interpreters agreed that there would not be any drastic social changes in Philemon’s household although it does seem as if one of them, Ambrosiaster, realised that what Paul expected of Philemon could have had serious consequences for the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus. (shrink)

Bruner sets forth nothing less than a new agenda for the study of the mind. He examines the irrepressibly human acts of imagination that allow us to make experience meaningful; he calls this side of mental activity the “narrative mode,” and his book makes important advances in the effort to unravel its nature.

We investigate the nature of the sense of presence that usually accompanies perceptual experience. We show that the notion of a sense of presence can be interpreted in two ways, corresponding to the sense that we are acquainted with an object, and the sense that the object is real. In this essay, we focus on the sense of reality. Drawing on several case studies such as derealization disorder, Parkinson’s disease and virtual reality, we argue that the sense of reality is (...) two-way independent from the spatial and sensory contents of experience. We suggest that the sense of reality is an affective experience akin to a metacognitive feeling. Finally, we present a potentially important implication of our account for the current debate between Intentionalism and Naïve Realism. Since perception is “opaque” with respect to the reality of what is perceived, Intentionalism cannot refer to the sense of reality as what differentiates perception from sensory-like experiences such as imaginings. In contrast, Naïve Realism has an independent explanation of the specificity of perception. (shrink)

Keuze van artikelen uit het werk van de Vlaamse filosoof over wetenschap, milieu, en medische en biologische ethiek.

In this article we show how the Lacanian theory of the Imaginary , as elaborated in Lacan's earlier texts, is strongly influenced by the Hegelianism of Alexandre Kojève. In the first part we explain how Lacan is giving a fresh interpretation of Freud's theory of Narcissism by making use of the category of the Imaginary. The second part indicates how the Kojèvian interpretation of the dialectics of Self-consciousness serves as a paradigm for imaginary intersubjectivity. Imaginary intersubjectivity, however, leads to an (...) impasse since authentic recognition requires a symbolic context. That is why Lacan's theory of a fundamental desire for recognition is intrinsically linked up with his theory of the Symbolic. According to Lacan this aspect has been neglected by Hegel . Hegel did not see the importance of the symbolic order. This affirmation, however, implies a severe misinterpretation of Hegel's text. In the last part we elaborate the relation between the Imaginary and the Symbolic as a dialectical one. The Lacanian interpretation of Freud's theory, ' Hegelianizes' Freud. We illustrate this in reference to the Freudian concept of 'libido'. (shrink)

The Christian-democrat/socialist government Martens IV resigned at the end ofMarch 1981, because the socialist party could not agree with an urgency plan to reorganize the public finances. Mark Eyskens, Minister of Finance in that cabinet, put together a new government as soon as April 6 of the same year. He succeeded as Prime Minister while all the other resigning ministers remained in their function. Minister Robert Vandeputte, an extra-parlementarian and honorary governor of the Central Bank, became the new Minister of (...) Finance. Like the preceding governments, the Eyskens cabinet was strongly hampered by deep mistrust between the coalition partners, opposing views between the two communities of Belgium and by disagreements about the way to deal with the socio-economic crisis.The Eyskens cabinet was particularly confronted with the organization of the restructured steelmill Cockerill-Sambre and with the absolute low point of the economic crisis. The budget was strongly affected by the increasing unemployment benefits and the collapse of the fiscal revenues. Due to the continuing protest of the trade unions, Mark Eyskens did not succeed to adapt the automatic wage indexation in order to improve the competitive position ofthe Belgian enterprises. He did however manage to prevent the devaluation of the Belgian franc, which had come under pressure regularly on the financial markets.By the middle of September 1981 the Eyskens government fell as a result of disagreements between the coalition partners about the financing ofthe money loosing steelmill Cockerill-Sambre in Wallonia. Parliamentary elections were advanced to November 8, 1981. The Christiandemocrats lost a considerable number of seats. A Christian-democrat/liberal cabinet, again headed by Wilfried Martens, emerged by mid December. It would carry out a neoliberal policy. Mark Eyskens became the Minister of Economicaffairs in the new government. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to study anomalies of self- and world-experience in schizophrenia from a phenomenological perspective, through the use of the EASE and the EAWE interviews. Four patients with diagnoses of schizophrenia were interviewed with both EASE and EAWE. A qualitative analysis of these interviews was carried out on all the data; quantitative scores were also assigned based on the frequency and intensity of items endorsed by the subjects. For the EASE, subjects endorsed an average frequency of (...) 45% of all items. For the EAWE, subjects endorsed an average frequency of 26% of all items. Furthermore, EAWE data indicated more heterogeneous profiles of experience than the EASE. This heterogeneity is not surprising, given that the EAWE was designed to be a more broad-based or less targeted exploration of various changes likely to be associated with schizophrenia spectrum. Our data suggest that, although disturbances of world experience may always be present in schizophrenia, they may take numerous and varied forms. Because the experience of the world occurs across many different modalities, disturbances of this experience would be fundamentally less unitary, whereas the experience of the self present a more coherent and unitary gestalt. These results show certain overlapping between the scales while also indicating the potential value of combined use of the two instruments. Finally, we discussed the relationship between experiential description and behavioral observation, and their potentially complementary value in exploring the first-person perspective, particular in the case of experiences that occur at a more pre-reflective level. (shrink)

This collection of original essays, from both established scholars and newcomers, takes up a debate that has recently flared up in philosophy, sociology, and disability studies on whether disability is intrinsically a harm that lowers a person's quality of life. While this is a new question in disability scholarship, it is also touches on one of the oldest philosophical questions: What is the good human life? Historically, philosophers have not been interested in the topic of disability, and when they are (...) it is usually only in relation to questions such as euthanasia, abortion, or the moral status of disabled people. Consequently, implicitly or explicitly, disability has been either ignored by moral and political philosophers or simply equated with a bad human life, a life not worth living. This collection takes up the challenge that disability poses to basic questions of political philosophy and bioethics, among others, by focusing on fundamental issues as well as practical implications of the relationship between disability and the good human life. (shrink)

According to the standards of public law, municipal polls have only a local scope : the election of a common council. Do politicians make deductions concerning the formal political power-constellation on national level either from the approach of municipal elections or from their results? Can these elections lead to changes in or of the government and eventually to anticipated legislative elections?After the first world-war, the electorate was called eight times to vote for new common councillors. Half of these elections had (...) no influence on the national power-constellation :they hardly stirred the national political life. In 1958 any possible influence of the municipal elections was even a priori ruled out. A remarkable point is that all municipal elections which took place undergovernments of national union, were only of local importance.Since the first world-war not a single municipal election has led to changes within the government : there was never a redistribution of ministerial portfolios amongst the coalitionpartners, nor did any electioncause the dismissal of an individual minister.It is traditional in Belgian politics that the national opposition, when the results of municipal elections are in its favour and prejudicial to the party in office, tries to call in question the legitimacy of the government in the opinion of the public by the way of motions or interpellations in parliament, claiming dismissal of the government or anticipated legislative elections. At these occasions it appeared unimportant whether the parliamental majority were confortable or not. But never did the governments give in to these attempts.The elections of 1857, 1884 and 1932 constitute an element of power - although of subsidiary importance - in the discharge of the then governments. The governmental crisis of 1884 however can only be explained if the constitutional position of Leopold II is taken into account. With all other factors alike, such a crisis wouldn't arise any more in the context of to-day. The municipal elections of 1932 have moreover led to anticipated legislative elections whose date was an element of power in the election-process. At that time, these elections played the part of an indicator of the electorial condition, comparable to that of the by elections in Great-Britain. And an unreliable indicator too, in view of the difference between national and local electionstatures. (shrink)

Beschouwing vanuit een orthodox-christelijk perspectief.

The ecclesiastical debate at the 73 General Church Assembly of the Dutch Reformed Church of Africa. Reformed churches emerged from the Reformation which commenced in the 16th century because of the input of well-known reformers such as Martin Luther (1483–1546) and John Calvin (1509–1564). Reformed churches are founded on a certain system of church polity known as presbyterial-synodal. This church orderly viewpoint amounts to the fact that it is a church where Jesus Christ is the sole ruler of the church, (...) transforming all meetings of offices of the church to operate on the same horizontal level with Jesus Christ as the only and sufficient authority in the church. This means that such a church is trying to be church of the Word and should take good care to maintain this critical principal position during meetings, as will eventually be reflected in synodal decisions taken. Contribution: This article takes a critical look at points of discussion submitted to the meeting, especially those with church orderly implications. Critically spoken, it means that decisions tabled at such meetings should be in the prolongment of the churches’ decision to be church of the Word, and therefore presbyterial-synodal. It is therefore also a contribution to church polity as such. (shrink)