manuel Sumares

Reflecting on "the artist as responsible servant" in his Art in Action, Nicholas Wolterstorff stops to consider the legitimacy of the thesis that the tendency to have religion is pervasive in humankind. Though he would grant the idea as generally valid, he nevertheless insists that such a tendency is in no wise irresistible. Indeed it can be resisted and an irreligious doctrine can be proposed in its stead. He concludes that some men are intentionally irreligious and simply do not, as Paul Tillich wished, fix their attention on an "ultimate concern." Rather we see that human beings possess "a fractured multiplicity of concerns" and prefer it that way, thus manifesting their spiritual rebellion before the One God as revealed both in Scripture and in the created order, as suggested by Paul in Romans 1:18-32. For Wolterstorff, "[The Bible] never contends that all those who are not true worshippers of the true God nevertheless have religion. It simply regards them as falling away in a vast multiplicity of different ways." x From the point of view of faith, much has been said in recent times about the effects of such rebelliousness that has been most especially cultivated throughout modernity and about how it has finally reached its breaking point. The title of Mister McGrath s recent book, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World,2 expresses well the gist of the emerging position which has quite often to do with the reaffirmation of forgotten conceptual potential of Christian orthodoxy. The basic conviction is that the secular world is suffering from a kind of metaphysical boredom and that time has come to revitalise human will and reason. Indeed, it is not so much that contemporary secularism has simply diverted attention from things Christian. Rather, it is the health of the mind and that dimension of reality with which religion specifically deals and to which human rationality would spontaneously tend to consider (if it were allowed to) that is ultimately at issue. Put in classical philosophical terms, the question of the

... ou seja na sua interdependencia. Este procedimento justificar-se-a, espero, pela clareza que 1 Rene Girard, La violence et le sacre, Collection Pluriel, Grasset, Paris, 1972, p.299. ... 2 Rene Girard, Le bouc emissaire, Grasset, Paris, 1982, pp. 143-44. ...

Maurice Blondel's study of action and the place that the supernatural finds in it not only anticipates Henri de Lubac's contribution to contemporary theology but deserves to be considered on its own, both as an early expression of the so-called ‘suspended middle’ and as a still suggestive speculative undertaking. In order to appreciate this, it is important to recognize that Blondel's philosophical concept of action owed much to his vision of the Church, the place that the Eucharist has in her life, and the constant attention that he gave to the shaping power of the Incarnation. Thus, while making a plausible philosophical argument in regard to action, Blondel offered in addition a description of the dynamics underlying the reality of the Church.

In contrast with the post-12th century notion of theology as an academic subject, the properly patristic idea of theologia is inseparable from prayer to be “truly” practiced. Theologia is an experience to be thus attained, for the vision of divine glory is not only for the age to come but is indeed available to the saints in the present life.  Such will be one of the central arguments that St. Gregory Palamas will make in defence of the hesychasts, for whom  -- as his sermons on the Theotokos teach – the Virgin is to be considered a model. For Palamas, the Mother of God by-passes the stages of praktiki and physiki and moves directly into theologia. She is the true theologian who prays truly and is from the start gifted with the discerning spirit of prophecy. Having entered into the Holy of Holies shortly after she was weaned, she more than any other has insight into a divine knowledge beyond that contemplated in philosophy and analogical reasoning. Fruit of experiencing a communion with God unlike any other, her mystical vision of God transcends mere discursive speculation. Yet the implication is that, in becoming the Mother of God, she embodies a paradox: having been fashioned by God through providential grace, she freely consents to be the means of fashioning God in a human form through her flesh. In her body, she circumscribes the pre-eternal God. In the light of some of the issues raised in his controversy with Barlaam, Palamas’ teachings on the Mother of God put into a new perspective the question that Spinoza introduced into modern and contemporary philosophy: what can the body be?

The nominalist contagion has become transversal in contemporary culture. Schmemann sees it as pervasive in Western Christianity, but it can be also found in the Eastern Church in the excessive ritualism and formalism associated with Byzantium. In sum, Orthodoxism and the issue of clericalism. Moreover, the transversality of nominalism is such that it practically defines secularism with its own universalist pretensions. The two great church bodies that see themselves as apostolic and catholic would do well to look back to Schmemann's criteria for the right kind of consolidations, especially in regard to sacramental realism, to break the hold of nominalism. In exploring this theme, we shall note Paul Ricoeur's critical hermeneutics to bring forth the peculiarities of Schmemann's Orthodox positioning. And, we shall briefly allude to some facets of Donald Davidson's theory of radical interpretation to suggest how the dialogue might proceed, as well as Bulgakov's own take on Una Sancta and where it meets one of Schmemann's crucial concerns.

Following upon the effects of modernity, the regulation of ordinary life relative to the practicalities of human existence became a sphere of its own with no need of ontological justification. Charles Taylor’s monumental works on modern identity and secularisation represent a valuable resource in appreciating a situation that may be Western in inspiration but is, in fact, ultimately global and, thereby, affects the potential of Orthodox thought, and, more particularly that of Saint Gregory Palamas, to make a difference. However, the apparent inability for Western thought to provide an ontology for ordinary life offers an opening for reactivating the potential of Hesychast spirituality to speak of ordinary life in ontological terms. After considering Taylor’s contributions, we turn to Saint Gregory’s critique of the ‘Hellenic error’ in order to suggest an ontological revalidation of ordinary life through the enhancement of immanence and to point to its permanence in the Orthodox Church.

Sergius Bulgakov, Orthodox priest and philosophical theologian, made it a point of including, in several of his writings, accounts of epiphanic moments that constitute experiential groundings for the strenuous thinking produced in his sophiological theology. They are instructive both in regard to his personal life and as pathways into some of the most central themes of his work, namely, consubstantiality, interconnectedness, death/ dying, Divine-humanity, and catholicity.

The question that St Gregory Palamas raises in relation to corporality and the noetic process finds, in many ways, a consonant development  in Michel Henry's 'reversed' phenomenology to the extent that the latter's approach to ontology accentuates the primacy of the appearing of Life as affective instead of the exterior perceived by the senses  and looked at by the mind.

A1. Twentieth Century philosophy was largely dominated by the question of language. Suffice it to recall that, for its part, analytical philosophy is effectively philosophical analysis of language – be it about questions of science, ontology, art, ethics, social reality, religion, mind, psychology, decision-making, even about speech-acts for their own sake. The semiotic nature of early pragmatism and the rise of neo-pragmatism later in the century continued or, perhaps, ended the obsession. To this latter question I shall return shortly below in reference to Richard Rorty’s assessment of the “Linguistic Turn.” But because the problem being addressed in this essay has to do with the apparent decline of language and the alleged silence of God, we should keep in mind that inquiries into what we mean by “God” and by the usual attributes given to Him, or the linguistic coherence and the truth 1 The use of A, B, and C, with subsequent variants, is meant to suggest different routes that ha...

... ou seja na sua interdependencia. Este procedimento justificar-se-a, espero, pela clareza que 1 Rene Girard, La violence et le sacre, Collection Pluriel, Grasset, Paris, 1972, p.299. ... 2 Rene Girard, Le bouc emissaire, Grasset, Paris, 1982, pp. 143-44. ...

... interpreta9ao radical, criada por Davidson, esta geneticamente relacionada a de «tradu9ao radical)), proposta port Williard Quine na ... como ilustra9ao do aspecto ndeterminado da ordena9ao linguistica do comportamnento verbal de uma outra pessoa, especialmente quando ...

In accordance with the early Wittgenstein, for Christos Yannaras, the mystical might “show” itself in experience, but which, in propositional terms, remains transcendent and ultimately non-sense. Yet, the struggle at once to “signify” and to “relate to” the ultimately a inexpressible persists as integral to human being. Indeed, it defines the specificity of his involvement in the order of Life. With Heidegger’s help, Yannaras’ philosophy of language, factoring in the reality of Otherness and apophatic thinking, seeks to explore the dimensions of rationality in relational terms. The net effect of his creative thinking on language and rationality is, above all, suggestive in demonstrating the potential of patristic intuitions that underlie Yannaras’ philosophy in view of providing an alternative direction for contemporary thought.

Reflecting on "the artist as responsible servant" in his Art in Action, Nicholas Wolterstorff stops to consider the legitimacy of the thesis that the tendency to have religion is pervasive in humankind. Though he would grant the idea as generally valid, he nevertheless insists that such a tendency is in no wise irresistible. Indeed it can be resisted and an irreligious doctrine can be proposed in its stead. He concludes that some men are intentionally irreligious and simply do not, as Paul Tillich wished, fix their attention on an "ultimate concern." Rather we see that human beings possess "a fractured multiplicity of concerns" and prefer it that way, thus manifesting their spiritual rebellion before the One God as revealed both in Scripture and in the created order, as suggested by Paul in Romans 1:18-32. For Wolterstorff, "[The Bible] never contends that all those who are not true worshippers of the true God nevertheless have religion. It simply regards them as falling away in a vast multiplicity of different ways." x From the point of view of faith, much has been said in recent times about the effects of such rebelliousness that has been most especially cultivated throughout modernity and about how it has finally reached its breaking point. The title of Mister McGrath s recent book, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World,2 expresses well the gist of the emerging position which has quite often to do with the reaffirmation of forgotten conceptual potential of Christian orthodoxy. The basic conviction is that the secular world is suffering from a kind of metaphysical boredom and that time has come to revitalise human will and reason. Indeed, it is not so much that contemporary secularism has simply diverted attention from things Christian. Rather, it is the health of the mind and that dimension of reality with which religion specifically deals and to which human rationality would spontaneously tend to consider (if it were allowed to) that is ultimately at issue. Put in classical philosophical terms, the question of the

... ou seja na sua interdependencia. Este procedimento justificar-se-a, espero, pela clareza que 1 Rene Girard, La violence et le sacre, Collection Pluriel, Grasset, Paris, 1972, p.299. ... 2 Rene Girard, Le bouc emissaire, Grasset, Paris, 1982, pp. 143-44. ...