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The phenomenon of Christian prophecy investigated in this book is controversial. Prophets have easily been associated with religious fanatics who preach doom and gloom. Historical, exegetical, and theological arguments have been adduced by many for the extinction of prophecy. The conclusions in this chapter state that none of these arguments are sound, since they merely argue for the cessation of one form of prophecy, not the prophetic phenomenon itself. This book argues that prophecy never died, but rather proved its dynamism by mutating according to the preconditions of new historical developments. Exploring Christian prophecy as a theme for systematic theology means we should regard revelation as more than a past event. Instead, inherent to revelation is the eternal Word's continuous salvific operation that actualizes and realizes what was given in Christ's Incarnation for the edification of the church. Therewith, prophecy becomes an integral part of revelation as one of the forms in which the Word of God continues to unfold and give itself to the people of God.

Surveys proposals for amending the 1947 Constitution. With the end of the Occupation in 1952, critics were free to propose amendments to the constitution. In its hearings, the Commission on the Constitution (1956‐1964) produced a host of arguments in favor of revision, but the conservative parties have never had the two‐thirds majority in the Diet required to pass an amendment. The 1991 Gulf War again stirred debate on the antiwar clause (Article 9) and stimulated a national debate on revision. In 1999, both houses of the Diet established commissions on the constitution and two years later, in May 2001, announced that public hearings would begin.

Reasons why Lewis's critics were not looking for a secret layer of meaning. Reasons why Lewis's critics were not interested in astrology. The extent to which Lewis knew about astronomy. The extent to which he believed in astrology. The circumstances in which the donegalitarian discovery was made.

This chapter examines Priestley's different perspectives as a historian. The discussion is divided into three parts: the first is concerned with Joseph Priestley the historian, the second with Priestley the theologian as historian and Biblical critic, and the third with the importance of his legacy in this latter respect. A brief comparison is made between Priestley's approach to the relationship between religion and history and that of David Hume and Edward Gibbon, two great historians of the 18th century. Two works by Priestley are analyzed: Lectures on History and General Policy, delivered at Warrington Academy in the late 1760s and revised and finally published in 1788, which deals with his secular approach to history; and An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, published six years earlier, in 1782. The latter reveals a different approach to historical understanding within a theological context.

This chapter discusses criticisms against Reinhold Niebuhr. It attempts to put Reinhold Niebuhr in historical perspective, in the same way that Niebuhr himself arrived at a more balanced appreciation of Walter Rauschenbusch and the generation that brought American Protestantism through the years of ‘social crisis’ and the First World War. It so doing, it treats Niebuhr's work with the same sort of Christian realism that he himself eventually applied to Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel. The chapter presents a Niebuhrian view of Niebuhr and his critics, which seeks to recognize both continuity and difference and to further our own reflections on what it means to be realistic about our place in history.

Intellectual autonomy reflects certain facts about the social nature of human agency — that to be effective (or to exist at all) actions must be prepared for by an education at the hands of the community; that actions are often socially coordinated; that people depend on their contemporaries for information, stimulation, and critical correction; that the intelligence with which an action is performed belongs to a tradition of practical intelligence that may be centuries or millennia old but that intelligent action is never algorithmically determined by such a tradition; that actions are always finally performed by individuals; that human beings often disagree about what should be done and that disagreements can often be settled by discussion in which each party shows an independent spirit. Intellectual autonomy is a wise disposition of balance between hetero-regulation and auto-regulation in intellectual practice.

This chapter focuses on liberation theology in North America. It looks at the personal views of theologians with or without a religious insight. At the time North America was not experiencing any military oppression, and this influenced the views of North American theologians, and these views were much more idealistic. A number of different critic groups evolved. The chapter narrates the writings of American Catholic, Evangelical, Nieburhian, and Neo-Conservative critics on liberation theology, each of which had their own interpretations and concepts of socialism and independence. After the examination of scholarship from the north and south, the chapter states that they were in harmony and that certain aspects of their ideas of liberation theory was universally understood and recognized.

This chapter describes the shape of the secular city, illustrating two characteristic components of the social shape of the modern metropolis: anonymity and mobility. Not only are anonymity and mobility central. They are also the two features of the urban social system most frequently singled out for attack by both religious and nonreligious critics. The chapter demonstrates how both anonymity and mobility contribute to the sustenance of human life in the city rather than detracting from it, why they are indispensable modes of existence in the urban setting. It also shows why, from a theological perspective, anonymity and mobility may even produce a certain congruity with biblical faith that is never noticed by the religious rebukers of urbanization.

This chapter analyses Oscar Wilde's Pen, Pencil, and Poison, a biographical essay about an art critic who was also a murderer. It suggests that this work is elusive in its deadpan satire of aestheticism, and that it highlighted the congruity between crime and culture, the efficacy of sin in the creation of personality, and the relation between the hidden life and the public reckoning. The chapter also discusses Frank Harris's comments on this essay.

This chapter analyses Oscar Wilde's essay The Critic as Artist, which suggests that the true critic of a work of art is the starting point for a new work of art. This interpretation of Wilde's essay also discovers a position of refine contempt for the world of fact, which non-artist critics continue to inhabit. The chapter argues that the essay owes its unshapely shape to Wilde's polemical concerns at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century, and its contempt for history to an urgent need to rewrite his history before others could inscribe in on his behalf.

This introductory chapter explains that the book examines the early years of the market for jazz in order to understand why some tunes had long-term appeal while others did not, and how the market boundaries of jazz evolved as a part of this process. Using empirical puzzles and focusing mostly on the period 1917–1933, the book investigates why some songs are re-recorded by many musicians over time while others receive no such following. The book draws on sociological congruence as a mechanism to explain how the context of production affects the appeal of jazz recordings. It shows that jazz has been influenced by the social structure of the geography and producing organizations. A market for jazz could not have formed, flourished, and maintained legitimacy without a smaller set of tunes to serve as a common point of reference by musicians, record labels and companies, consumers, and critics.

Chapter five looks closely at the specific challenges relaxed education presented to Japanese elementary schools, and documents their impact on the learning opportunities provided to children. Evidence presented in this chapter indicates that elementary school teachers cultivated the academic abilities and mental dispositions identified by both conservative and progressive critics as those required for success in contemporary society. The analysis provided indicates that elementary teachers managed to meet the goals for yutori kyoiku precisely because they were not subject to the examination pressures pervasive in secondary schools.

This concluding chapter discusses the implications on the inclusive potential of a particularist route to ethical cosmopolitanism. It explores variations on the morally constitutive community and studies the concepts of complex selves, dislocated communities, and connected critics. The last section in this chapter is devoted to the inclusion from an embedded cosmopolitan perspective and its promise, limits, and insights. Important lessons are taken from the previous chapters as well.

This introduction to Fisher's writings deals with four main topics. It first gives an account of the aims and techniques of the medieval preaching tradition, in particular the “university sermon”, followed by a structural analysis of a sermon that illustrates some developments of preaching in the early sixteenth century. Features of John Fisher's prose style are examined, including sentence structure, and characteristic imagery. The chapter ends with assessments of Fisher's writing by modern critics, including C.S.Lewis.

This chapter tests the degree to which the Fasti is immersed in and co-opted by the prevailing masculinist culture of its time, and compares interpretations of modern critics examining Ovid’s (re)presentations of women. It finds some colluding with the poet’s conservative phallocentric imperatives on ritual(ized) female activity. It contends that the ways by which Ovid engages in negating, inhibiting, silencing, or slaying women are reflected in modern interpretative practices, and notes the operation of an intertextuality between the criticized and the critic. It offers a reading of Ovid’s Regifugium and the rape of Lucretia as a suggested methodology for an interpretation sensitive to sexual(ized) nuances in the Fasti and a way of delimiting and abnegating the perpetuation of the Philomela/Tacita syndrome in contemporary literary-critical and histori(ographi)cal practices.