Christian Belief (christian + belief)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


TAYLORING REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY: CHARLES TAYLOR, ALVIN PLANTINGA AND THE DE JURE CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIAN BELIEF by Deane-Peter Baker THEOLOGY, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND TRAUMA by Marcus Pound

NEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1024 2008
GRAEME RICHARDSON
First page of article [source]


Tayloring Reformed Epistemology: Charles Taylor, Alvin Plantinga, and the De Jure Challenge to Christian Belief , By Deane-Peter Baker

RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
Wendy Petersen Boring
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Neurocognitive processes of the religious leader in Christians

HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 12 2009
Jianqiao Ge
Abstract Our recent work suggests that trait judgment of the self in Christians, relative to nonreligious subjects, is characterized by weakened neural coding of stimulus self-relatedness in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) but enhanced evaluative processes of self-referential stimuli in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). The current study tested the hypothesis that Christian belief and practice produce a trait summary about the religious leader (Jesus) in the believers and thus episodic memory retrieval is involved to the minimum degree when making trait judgment of Jesus. Experiment 1 showed that to recall a specific incident to exemplify Jesus' trait facilitated behavioral performances associated with the following trait judgment of Jesus in nonreligious subjects but not in Christians. Experiment 2 showed that, for nonreligious subjects, trait judgments of both government and religious leaders resulted in enhanced functional connectivity between MPFC and posterior parietal cortex (PPC)/precuneus compared with self judgment. For Christian subjects, however, the functional connectivity between MPFC and PPC/precuneus differentiated between trait judgments of the government leader and the self but not between trait judgments of Jesus and the self. Our findings suggest that Christian belief and practice modulate the neurocognitive processes of the religious leader so that trait judgment of Jesus engages increased employment of semantic trait summary but decreased memory retrieval of behavioral episodes. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


"Britain's Spiritual Life: How Can It Be Deepened?": Seebohm Rowntree, Russell Lavers, and the "Crisis of Belief", ca.

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2005

This article examines the response of two social investigators in the early post-World War II period to the apparent secularization of British society. It explains how an unpublished survey that the two men carried out, along with the work of other Christian and non-Christian commentators in this period, expressed the hope that religious influences would be strengthened through secular institutions, including communal organizations, workplaces, and the military. A revival of Christian belief, in some form, was seen as a bulwark against communism in the context of the Cold War in which the Soviet regime was seen to present a threat to the "Christian civilization" of the West. The "spiritual life of the nation" was synonymous with the "national character," and for the information and opinion on which their study was based, Seebohm Rowntree and Russell Lavers turned to those who they believed were in a position to influence the "national character." [source]


Jonathan Edwards and the Language of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2002
Avihu Zakai
For a long time Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was thought of more as a preacher of hellfire and revival than as a theologian, and rather as a Calvinist theologian than a philosopher of importance, and he was dismissed accordingly. Yet Edwards was more than a hellfire preacher, more than a theologian. This New England divine was one of the rare individuals anywhere to recognize and answer the challenges posed to traditional Christian belief by the emergence of new modes of thought in early modern history - the new ideas of the scientific thought and the Enlightenment. His force of mind is evident in his exposition of the poverty of mechanical philosophy, which radically transformed the traditional Christian dialectic of God's utter transcendence and divine immanence by gradually dimin-ishing divine sovereignty with respect to creation, providence, and redemption, thus leading to the disenchantment of the world. Edwards constructed a teleological and theological alternative to the prevailing mechanistic interpretation of the essential nature of reality, whose ultimate goal was the re-enchantment of the world by reconstituting the glory of God's majestic sovereignty, power, and will within the order of creation. [source]


PAUL RICOEUR AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS: NARRATIVE IDENTITY AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

MODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
MICHAEL W. DeLASHMUTT
This article attempts to reconcile the holistically understood and embodied philosophical anthropology indicated by Paul Ricoeur's concept of "narrative identity" with Christian personal eschatology, as realized in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Narrative identity resonates with spiritual autobiography in the Christian tradition,evinced here by a brief comparison with the confessed self of St Augustine of Hippo,and offers to theology a means of explaining identity in a way which: 1) places care for the other firmly within the construction of one's sense of self; 2) accounts for radical change over time and 3) hints at the possibility of the in-breaking of the infinite into the finite. In this article I will contend that narrative identity provides theology with an exemplary means of framing selfhood which is ultimately congruent with the orthodox Christian belief in the resurrection of the body. [source]


CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

MODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 1 2006
TERRENCE W. TILLEY
The paper argues that it can be demonstrated that the position of Jacques Dupuis, S.J., a pluralist, is compatible with that of the syllabus on religious pluralism produced by the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominius Iesus. This demonstration provides good reason to believe that at least one form of de jure pluralism, labeled "inclusivist pluralism", is a theological theory compatible with orthodox Christian belief. [source]


NOT EXPLANATION BUT SALVATION: SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY, CHRISTOLOGY, AND SUFFERING

MODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 1 2006
ANDREW MOORE
The view that Christian belief is explanatory is widespread in contemporary theology, apologetics, and philosophy of religion and it has received particular impetus from attempts to correlate science and Christianity. This article proposes an account of explanatory thinking in theology based on the principle that theological explanations should be disciplined by the internal logic of Scripture. Arthur Peacocke's biologically construed Christology and Alister McGrath's argument that suffering is an anomaly in the Christian explanatory scheme are shown to yield theological results which are inconsistent with this principle. This article's theological argument complements philosophical criticisms of the view that religious belief is explanatory. [source]


Phillips and Eternal Life: A Response to Haldane

PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, Issue 3 2008
Mikel Burley
This paper responds to John Haldane's recent criticisms of D. Z. Phillips' treatment of the Christian belief in eternal life. I argue that Haldane's attempt to show that Phillips only partially elucidates, and hence misrepresents, this belief is unsuccessful, the biblical and theological passages cited by Haldane being amenable to elucidation in terms of which Phillips would have approved. Haldane makes three points to support his main claim, and I argue that none of these has significant force against Phillips' position unless we presuppose the truth of some realist account of meaning, which Phillips would, of course, reject. [source]


Religious Involvement, Conventional Christian, and Unconventional Nonmaterialist Beliefs

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2006
TONY GLENDINNING
This article uses a Scottish national sample to examine the relationship between church involvement, religious socialization among nonattenders, orthodox Christian beliefs, and a variety of unconventional nonmaterialist beliefs. Greater conventional religious belief is strongly associated with supposed alternatives but nonetheless, nonattenders are more likely to believe in the unconventional over and above any enduring sympathy they may hold for Christian doctrine. One group in particular stands out: belief remains high among nonattenders who once went to services regularly and seriously contemplate reengaging with organized religion. The article discusses the importance of these findings for "believing but not belonging." [source]


Pro-family Organizations in Calgary, 1998: Beliefs, Interconnections and Allies,

CANADIAN REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY/REVUE CANADIENNE DE SOCIOLOGIE, Issue 1 2001
Gillian Anderson
Dans cet article, nous comparons les convictions des différents groupes pro-famille de Calgary et nous préscntons la structure des liens qui unissent ces groupes. Les données, recueillies en 1998, proviennent de documents et d'entretiens semi-structurés avec les chefs de file de ces groupes. Nous abordons ici trois problèmes de recherche. Tout d'abord, nous examinons la teneur des relations entre groupes pro-famille et pro-vie. Tous les groupes pro-famille, même ceux qui se prononcent résolument contre l'avortement, se dis-tinguent des groupes pro-vie sur le plan tant organisational que politique. Ensuite, nous nous penchons sur le rôle des croyances chré-tiennes au sein du mouvement. Nous affirmons que, bien que les groupes chrétiens aient été dominants en 1998, la promotion, de la famille hétérosexuelle nucléaire, et non les questions de doctrine, a été fondamentale pour le mouvement. Enfin, nous examinons si le mouvement s'est scindé entre socioconservateurs et centristes, les centristes étant peu représentatifs en 1998. En outre, l'un des groupes présentant un profil centriste, la National Foundation for Family Research and Education, a tout fait pour légitimer du point de vue scientifique les arguments moraux des socioconservateurs en faveur de la famille. En conclusion, nous soutenons que le mouvement pro-famille à Calgary s'est éloigné de sa vocation initiale de contre-mouvement antiféministe. Dans l'avenir, la popularité du mouvement pro-famille au Canada dépendra peut-être des valeurs postféministes qu'il affichera. This paper presents a comparative study of the beliefs of pro-family organizations in Calgary and a structural mapping of organizational ties. Data were gathered in 1998 from documents and semi-structured interviews with group leaders. Three research problems are addressed. The first concerns the closeness of the relationship between pro-family and pro-life groups. We find that all pro-family groups, even those with strong anti-abortion convictions, were organizationally and politically distinctive from pro-life groups. The second problem considers the role of Christian beliefs in the movement. We ascertain that although Christian groups were dominant in 1998, promotion of the heterosexual nuclear family, not doctrinal issues, was fundamental to the movement. The third problem concerns whether the movement was bifurcated between social conservative and centrist segments. The centrist segment was quite weak in 1998. Furthermore, one of the groups with a centrist persona, the National Foundation for Family Research and Education, strove to supply scientific legitimation for social conservatives' moral claims about the family. In conclusion, the article argues that the pro-family movement in Calgary has broken free of its initial phase as an anti-feminist countermovement and suggests that the future popularity of pro-family advocacy in Canada will be proportional to the degree that it is couched in a post-feminist framework. [source]