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This chapter represents a programmatic attempt at the identification of the problem of older scholarship in its reading of scholastic orthodoxy, from its tendency to ignore the fundamental identity of “scholasticism” as a method rather than a particular theological or philosophical consent, to its unwillingness to recognize that the Reformation itself, as the primary antecedent of Protestant orthodoxy, had the reestablishment of Christian “orthodoxy” as one of its fundamental goals. It concludes with a discussion of methodological issues and problems that need to be addressed for the full reappraisal of the phenomenon of Protestant orthodoxy.

This chapter examines two chief African responses to the European missionary enterprise from slavery to the 20th century. One response was to incorporate aspects of the Christian faith into the African religious heritage. Native Baptist (c.1830s-c. 1860s), Revival Zion (1860s- ), and Rastafari (1930s- ) traditions represent this type of religious formation. The Native Baptists were associated with the African-American evangelist George Liele, who began his missionary work in Jamaica during the late 18th century. The Revival Zion tradition represents a resurgence of the Native Baptist religion. With a Pan-African orientation and deep socio-political convictions, Rastafari, more than any other African-oriented tradition on the island, has shaped the postmodern, post-Christian African personality in Jamaica. African loyalty to Christian orthodoxy, another African-Jamaican response to European missionary Christianity, is also considered in this chapter as it was taught and reinforced by generations of missionary groups, especially after the last quarter of the 19th century.

During the 20th century, the United States undertook one of the most expansive programs of higher education ever witnessed. In the next century, whether such expansion continues or not, the college-educated person will make a major difference in shaping the future. So will the professoriate and those who administer the nation's colleges and universities. Their effect on American religion will be considerable. But what will this effect be? Is it possible to combine a deep personal commitment to the Christian faith with the life of the mind? Or is critical thought simply incompatible with Christian orthodoxy? As the 20th century began, conservative Christianity appeared to be already at war with the prevailing values of an enlightened society. In 1938, noted sociologist Robert Merton published an influential book in which he examined the connection between Puritanism and the rise of science in 17th-century England. We might say that Christianity sacralizes—makes sacred—the intellectual life. It gives the questions we struggle with in our work and in our lives a larger significance.

in 1891, the Czech poet Jaroslav Vrchlický published a collection of poems, Fresky a gobeliny (Frescoes and Tapestries). In the second volume, called Medieval Legends, is a poem entitled ‘Vĕčné evangelium’, or ‘Eternal Evangel’, to which the date 1240 is added. In Vrchlický's poem, Leoš Janáček found a worthy expression of that longing for a new religion of love which runs like a thread through all his work. The theme had been heard in The Fiddler's Child and there are later echoes of Vrchlicky's poem in Mr Broucek. Once more, one can find that the message of the Eternal Evangel met Janáček's need precisely because it could be detached from Christian orthodoxy. As one studies Vrchlický's poem the impression grows that the Czech poet knew more about the writings of Joachim of Fiore than most others who cited him in the nineteenth century, although he adapted freely.

In order to contextualize contemporary Pentecostal religion in the country and to explain the historical constitution of Christian culture and Christian subjectivities locally, Chapter 1 offers a brief social history of Christianity in the Dominican Republic beginning with the advent of Roman Catholic supremacy following the “discovery” of the New World. Christian orthodoxy has been the religion of status and power on the island since the establishment of the first colony, Catholicism’s intimate relationship with political authority initiated along with the region’s first colonial governments. No less a principal symbol in subsequent independence movements and intimately tied to popular nationalist discourses, Christianity has come to define the dominant moral order of Dominican society. This chapter traces the origins of Christian hegemony, rooted in over 500 years of Christian domination, and plots the primary vertices of religious pluralism in the country, namely popular versions of Catholicism, Protestantism (especially Pentecostalism), and so-called Dominican vodú.

This chapter talks about the cross as a central symbol in both Kongo and European religious belief. The cross as a symbol that allowed the two sides to determine the religious significance and epistemological common ground of the nature of the supernatural and its manifestations. The cross created an opportunity for Christian orthodoxy to recognize central Africa manifestations of immanence and for Kongo to broaden its religious belief to include the powers of Christianity. Kongo artists and patrons expressed their new Kongo Christian worldview through portable and elaborately crafted crucifixes.

This chapter focuses on Augustine, who is the sole bishop of Hippo since 396 to 397 and had achieved cult status as the leading apologist for Christian orthodoxy in Africa. It explains how Augustine wrote an extended contrast between Jerusalem and Babylon, the city of God and the secular city. It also mentions Augustine's City of God, which culminated the patristic tradition of Christian apology in the West during the mid-second century. The chapter looks at Augustine's central criticism of Roman religion, which implies that the Roman gods are demonic spirits that impersonate humans. It explores the basic belief on which Augustine constructs his work, the contrast between the city where injustice and violence reign and the city of justice and peace.

The Epilogue reflects on Lewis’s influence since his death and confidently predicts that his appeal and importance will remain strong in the third millennium. Readers are attracted to Lewis’s writings because of his literary gifts, winsome personality, and fascinating life story, but his positive, inviting presentation of Christian orthodoxy, in ever so many venues, is very much a part of the attraction as well. Classical orthodoxy was at the heart of Lewis’s understanding of the Christian worldview, which he considered to be the philosophia perennis, the perennial philosophy. For Lewis, this philosophical framework both explains the major phenomena of life and the world and answers the tough questions posed to it. In presenting the Christian worldview, Lewis particularly accents the orthodox doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation, giving them a significance beyond mere perfunctory assent. What is more, Lewis’s long search for truth, spanning two decades of his life, prepared him extremely well for critiquing other worldviews and explaining the credibility of the Christian worldview. Clearly, his ability to articulate the existential side of his search provides a point of personal contact with readers.

Chapter 1 defines a worldview as a unified, coherent understanding of reality and includes the image of an “intellectual framework” for interpreting the key phenomena of life and the world. The chapter then unfolds to explain that Lewis’s approach to worldview thinking was shaped by a handful of key factors—such as his philosophical training, academic background, and literary skill—which he masterfully put into the service of crafting an adequate worldview, a process that eventually focused on classical orthodox Christianity. One important emphasis is that Lewis’s Christian worldview cannot be reduced to Lewis’s own creation but is rather his way of packaging a transcending and enduring point of view—that is, the philosophia perennis. Lewis’s attraction to Platonism and Neoplatonism in connection to Christianity is also critically engaged. The unfolding discussion further reflects on Lewis’s sense of being sought by a God who seeks relationship, which set the stage for his “reluctant conversion.” After becoming a Christian, the culmination of a twenty-year intellectual search, Lewis felt that his greatest contribution and source of fulfillment—indeed, his calling—would be writing and addressing the key issues of his day as well as enduring philosophical, theological, and humanistic topics.

This chapter examines two different models of cosmic multiplicity: the Atomists’ infinite kosmoi that randomly moves through space, and the Stoics’ one world which is destroyed and reborn throughout infinite time. Roman philosophy and Christian orthodoxy were both against the early Stoics’ endless cycles, while the Atomists suffered great ridicule during the first century bce until the early fifteenth century. Throughout the same time period, Epicureanism was consistently criticized by the early church fathers, as well as Cicero, as intellectually unmoving and ethically repulsive, which can be attributed to the concept’s godlessness. The chapter also looks at how St. Augustine’s concern for sovereignty led him to assert God’s creation out of nothing against the followers of Epicurus, the followers of Zeno, and the Physicists (or Stoics).

The chapter expands the notion of Talmudic refuting to translate it into a certain structure of personhood in an interpersonal relationship. It stages a conception of personhood, which neither “subjectivist” nor “relativist” notions of the humanity of humans can either fully grasp or fully efface. At issue is a possibility for a conception of humanity in general and of a human being that reaches beyond notions of “a human” as bestowing nonbeing on things, and in particular measuring their being. To advance this argument, the chapter engages with, and limits the applicability of, Alexey Losev’s Eastern Orthodox political aesthetics as a purported foundation of, or even a possible replacement for, political theology. The argument in the chapter arrives at the insufficiency of Losev’s political aesthetics to grasp Talmudic interpersonality grounded in self-refuting, or broader yet, in refuting as its foundation. That helps showing how Losev’s Eastern Orthodox political alternative for modern notions of either universal “human being” or of a modern notion of a “Jew” -- as not only its counterpart but also its root -- prove insufficient to grasp the interpersonal political the Talmud’s pages show emerging and disappearing.