The article summarizes and critically analyzes the encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI “Deus Caritas est.” This document discusses “diaconia” in the Roman Catholic Church in view of its biblical and theological foundations, its characteristics, and the position of works of mercy within the general self-understanding of the church. In going beyond the text, the author emphasizes the political dimension of church-based charity, the need to respond to the challenge of the principle of solidarity by contemporary neoliberal tendencies, and the (...) relationship of the church to those employed in the service of her diaconia. (shrink)

The theory of branching space-times, put forward by Belnap, considers indeterminism as local in space and time. In the axiomatic foundations of that theory, so-called choice points mark the points at which the possible future can turn out in different ways. Working under the assumption of choice points is suitable for many applications, but has an unwelcome topological consequence that makes it difficult to employ branching space-times to represent a range of possible physical space-times. Therefore it is interesting to develop (...) a branching space-times theory without choice points. This is what we set out to do in this paper, providing new foundations for branching space-times in terms of choice sets rather than choice points. After motivating and developing the resulting theory in formal detail, we show that it is possible to translate structures of one style into structures of the other style and vice versa. This result shows that the underlying idea of indeterminism as the branching of spatio-temporal histories is robust with respect to different implementations, making a choice between them a matter of expediency rather than of principle. (shrink)

Måske er netop Grundtvigs forståelse af det evige en nødvendig inspiration til at se sider af kristendommen, som vi ellers fortrænger. For om nogen formulerede han både sammenhængen og det uoverstigelige svælg mellem ”nu” og ”engang”, det dennesidige og det evige - og så den modsætning, der går ned gennem det menneskelige liv mellem lys og mørke, liv og død, frelse og fortabelse. Det modsætningsfyldte i kristendommen, dens paradoks, var for Grundtvig at se gået tabt i rationalismens kritiske syn på (...) Bibelen og i romantikkens harmonitænkning Spørgsmålet er så, om det dristige og håndgribelige i Grundtvigs tale om det evige kan gøres gældende i en folkekirkelighed, hvor den teologiske refleksion over eskatologien er gledet i baggrunden. Er Grundtvigs kraftige billedverden, kampen mellem lys og mørke, fylde og meningsløshed, frelse og fortabelse, liv og død blevet uforståelig? Og kan vi igen gøre denne billedverden nærværende og meningsfyldt? (shrink)

Book Information Hegel and Aristotle. By A. Ferrarin. Cambridge University Press. New York. 2001. Pp. xxii + 442. Hardback, US$65.00.

Historical essays on Lingayat philosophy.