Religions, Volume 7, Issue 11 (November 2016) – 11 articles

This is an essay in comparative ethics within the Platonist tradition. Although the primary focus is on Augustine’s account of rightly ordered love of neighbor in De vera religione, it analyzes Augustine’s account of the love of finite goods by comparing it with Plato’s grounding of the love of imperfect creatures within an ontological hierarchy in Symposium. Against the backdrop of the critique by modern readers that neither thinker’s teleological and hierarchical view of love allows for a real love of particular individuals, this essay will show how for Plato and Augustine alike, the love of the One—the Beautiful, for Plato, and God, for Augustine—conditions all other loves. Augustine’s ontological hierarchy of the one eternal God and the many created goods leads him to insist that the love of God, who alone is loved for his own sake, conditions the Christian’s love of neighbors whom she loves not for their own sake but for God’s. The Platonic ontology of Augustine’s theodicy, it will be argued, allows him to explain how use-love is a genuine expression of love for the neighbor in her particularity and yet remains subordinated to one’s highest love of God. Full article

To understand any aspect of being-in-the-world in general or cinematic experience in particular, both reductionist and holistic approaches are needed. Psychological accounts can give us only functional explanations of human behaviour or responses to signifying artifacts such as art. To understand the significance of these experiences the psychological must be complemented by a study on a level which may be termed spiritual. This line of thought is applied to analyses of Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, starting from David Bordwell’s formalist and cognitive account of why many people experience this film as religious despite there being no explicit reference to religion. Paul Schrader’s analysis of the formal structure of this film in terms of his notion of transcendental style in film goes a step forward by explaining how the formal structure as he analyses it suggests a transcendental dimension which cannot be addressed directly. This approach connects in an illuminating way with Slavoj Žižek’s notions of the imaginary and the symbolic sphere. Bordwell’s approach, functioning on the psychological level, is basically reductionist, while Schrader’s, boosted with Žižek’s ideas as appropriated for the purposes of this article, is holistic and operative on the spiritual level. This two-tiered analysis reveals how cinematic form in Pickpocket serves as an indirect expression of faith. Full article

This paper is a call for the development of a neuroscientific research protocol for the study of the impact of Tantric practice on the autonomic nervous system. Tantric texts like Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka map out a complex meditative ritual system in which inward-gazing, apophatic, sense-denying contemplative practices are combined with outward-gazing, kataphatic sense-activating ritual practices. Abhinavagupta announces a culminating “bi-directional” state (pratimīlana-samādhi) as the highest natural state (sahaja-samādhi) in which the practitioner becomes a perfected yogi (siddhayogi). This state of maximized cognitive capacities, in which one’s inward gaze and outward world-engagement are held in balance, appears to be one in which the anabolic metabolic processes of the parasympathetic nervous system and the catabolic metabolic processes of the sympathetic nervous systems are simultaneously activated and integrated. Akin to secularized mindfulness and compassion training protocols like Emory’s CBCT, I propose the development of secularized “Tantric protocols” for the development of secular and tradition-specific methods for further exploring the potential of the human neurological system. Full article

Although we live in a post-metaphysical age, there is a renewed interest in transcendence, especially at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and theology. There are several reasons for this: among others, the important link that the future (eschatology) has with the unknown or that which lies beyond (transcendence). In this article, this relation between eschatology and transcendence is explored by analysing different concepts of transcendence and their possible relations to the future. Jacques Derrida and Catharine Malabou’s concepts of the future are used to shed light on the link between eschatology and transcendence as “impossible”. Secondly, Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of transimmanence is introduced, in an attempt to find such a possible link. A reconceptualisation of transcendence as transimmanence and a reconceptualisation of the future of eschatology as something “outside within”, facilitate a link between these terms, but the original or general meanings of these terms then become impossible. This outcome urges a rethinking of the meaning and role of transcendence, eschatology, and the future in our post-metaphysical age. Full article

Spirituality is considered a dimension of nursing care, which is often recognized as being neglected, mainly due to a lack of education. Several studies have addressed nursing students’ perceptions and skills for providing spiritual care, but there is little evidence on how spirituality is addressed in undergraduate nursing curricula. This study comprised Portuguese and Brazilian nursing schools (from São Paulo) and describes how spirituality is addressed in undergraduate nursing curricula. It is descriptive and the survey research was performed in 2014–2015. The questionnaire was composed of closed and open-ended questions and was sent by e-mail. A total of 129 answers were obtained, mostly from Portugal. Results indicated that several curricular units include spirituality, although having different contents. The learning outcomes are consistent with improving nursing students’ integral education, developing the clinical reasoning regarding spirituality, and improving the assessment of the patient across the life span. Nevertheless, it seems that spirituality is poorly addressed in clinical practice. Few nursing schools have courses or curricular units specifically dealing with spirituality, but they do provide some form of teaching on the subject. No standard curriculum exists, but teachers believe that it is a very important subject that should be included in the courses taught. Full article

This article examines an important but relatively overlooked aspect in the field of international giving in the U.S.—individual monetary donations to Christian faith-related international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs)—and outlines the cognitive process influencing donors who choose to keep up their financial support to Christian faith-related INGOs. The propositions forwarded in this article draw on existing literature on Christian giving to international causes, INGO management, donor retention and finally, the logic of self-perception to highlight how existing donors might evaluate their repeat giving decision. The more existing donors of Christian faith-related INGOs can identify themselves with the INGO’s identity—comprising its beliefs and values, its claims to legitimacy, and performance—the more likely it is for donors to be satisfied and decide to maintain a stable relationship with the specific INGO. Full article

This paper explores continuity and change in the American Catholic hierarchy’s promotion of and later reliance on religious freedom. With an analysis spanning more than 50 years, it first traces the pressures for reform that created the Declaration more than 50 years ago, demonstrating that American bishops were crucial actors in the Declaration’s existence and passage, and that this was the case because of the strong legitimacy pressures they were under as Roman Catholic leaders in a predominantly Protestant country. The paper then turns to a summary of how the Birth Control Mandate of the Affordable Care Act once again created pressures for legitimacy for the American Catholic hierarchy, pressures which were again articulated in terms of critiques of hypocrisy. It demonstrates that although the specific critique changed, accusations of hypocrisy remain central in discussions of the Catholic Church’s stance on the Birth Control Mandate in the Affordable Care Act. Full article

After the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, leaders in successor states were eager to become economically independent from the former capital Vienna. They therefore quickly implemented a set of neomercantilistic measures, especially nationalization programs. Nevertheless, the 1920s saw a reestablishment of the common market in the former territories of the Habsburg Empire in terms of interregional trade and interlocking directorates, mainly because of the business strategy of international financial syndicates that were based on the traditional Viennese commercial relations with the successor states. The international credit of Jewish bankers like Louis Rothschild, Rudolf Sieghart, and Max Feilchenfeld and others mattered. After the “Big Bang” at Wall Street in 1929, the industrial holdings of the Viennese banks and the maturity problem (short-term borrowing, long-term lending) in their relations to East European debtors and Western financiers caused the Creditanstalt-crisis of 1931 and put an end to Vienna’s position as a financial hub in East Central Europe. However, even during the crisis of the 1930s, the share of the successor states in the bilateral balances of trade indicates path dependency on a smaller scale. Full article

Between 1945 and 1980, evangelicals emerged as a key political constituency in American politics, helping to form the Religious Right and work for the election of Ronald Reagan and other conservative Republicans. This article argues that they embraced a distinctive type of revivalist nationalism, centered around the mass revival. Case studies of Billy Graham, Bill Bright, Jerry Falwell, and Ronald Reagan offer a narrative of postwar revivalist nationalism and demonstrate that evangelicals renegotiated the relationship between personal salvation and national renewal during this period, facilitating their mass entry into partisan politics. Billy Graham presented in his early crusades an unsophisticated assumption that mass conversion would lead to national renewal. Later revivalists such as Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, sought to reorient revivalism toward directed political organization, leading in the 1970s to decreasing emphasis on personal conversion and increasing focus on the political process. By the 1980 presidential election, the Religious Right had completely abandoned the priority of personal conversion and sought instead to revive the “principles” of a Christian America. Ronald Reagan embodied this principle-oriented revival, and helped crystalize a revivalist nationalism that remains embedded in contemporary evangelical politics. Full article

The émigré Russian priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann (1921–1983) spent most of his career as a faculty member and dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, New York, not far from New York City. For over 30 years, in lectures, teaching and numerous publications, he presented the distinctive vision of the Eastern Church, mostly unknown to Western Christians, in which the church’s liturgy was the primary source not only of its theology but of all other aspects of its life. I offer an overview of his work, with analysis and criticism and an assessment of his continuing significance. Full article