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The Mind Possessed examines spirit concepts and mediumistic practices from a cognitive scientific perspective. Drawing primarily, but not exclusively, from ethnographic data collected during eighteen months of fieldwork in Belém, northern Brazil, this book combines fine‐grained description and analysis of mediumistic activities in an Afro‐Brazilian cult house with a scientific account of the emergence and the spread of the tradition's core concepts. The book develops a novel theoretical approach to questions that are of central importance to the scientific study of transmission of culture, particularly concepts of spirits, spirit healing, and spirit possession. Making a radical departure from established anthropological, medicalist, and sociological analyses of spirit phenomena, the book looks instead to instructive insights from the cognitive sciences and offers a set of testable hypotheses concerning the spread and appeal of spirit concepts and possession activities. Predictions and claims are grounded in the data collected and sourced in specific ethnographic contexts. The data presented open new lines of enquiry for the cognitive science of religion (a rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship) and challenge the existing but outdated theoretical frameworks within which spirit possession practices have traditionally been understood.

The book provides a fresh description and analysis of Augustine's monumental treatise, De Trinitate, working on a supposition of its unity and its coherence from structural, rhetorical, and theological points of view. The main arguments of the treatise are reviewed first: an examination of Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity; a discussion of ‘Arian’ logical and ontological categories; a comparison between the process of knowledge and formal aspects of the confession of the mystery of the Trinity; an account of the so‐called ‘psychological analogies’. These topics hold a predominantly instructive or polemical function. The unity and the coherence of the treatise become apparent especially when its description focuses on a truly theological understanding of the knowledge of God: Augustine aims at leading the reader to the vision and enjoyment of God the Trinity, in whose image we are created. This mystagogical aspect of the rhetoric of De Trinitate is unfolded through Christology, soteriology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and the doctrine of revelation. At the same time, from the vantage point of love, Augustine detects and powerfully depicts the epistemological consequences of human sinfulness, thus unmasking the fundamental deficiency of received theories of knowledge. Only love restores knowledge and enables phiolosophers to yield to the injunction which resumes philosophical enterprise as a whole, namely ‘know thyself.’

George Berkeley notoriously claimed that his immaterialist metaphysics was not only consistent with common sense, but that it was also integral to its defense. This book argues that understanding the basic connection between Berkeley's philosophy and common sense requires a better understanding of the four principle components of Berkeley's positive metaphysics: the nature of being, the divine language thesis, the active/passive distinction, and the nature of spirits. This book begins by focusing on Berkeley's view of the nature of being. It elucidates Berkeley's view on Locke and the Cartesians, and examines Berkeley's views about related concepts such as unity and simplicity. From there, it moves on to Berkeley's philosophy of language, arguing that scrutiny of the famous Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge reveals that Berkeley identified the ideational theory of meaning and understanding as the root cause of some of the worst of humanity's intellectual errors, not abstract ideas. Abstract ideas are, rather, the most debilitating symptom of this underlying ailment. In place of the ideational theory, Berkeley defends a rudimentary use theory of meaning. This understanding of Berkeley's approach to semantics is then applied to the divine language thesis and is shown to have important consequences for Berkeley's pragmatic approach to the ontology of natural objects and for his approach to our knowledge of, and relation to, other minds, including God's. Turning next to Berkeley's much maligned account of spirits, the book defends the coherence of Berkeley's view of spirits by way of providing an interpretation of the active/passive distinction as marking a normative distinction and by focusing on the role that divine language plays in letting Berkeley identify the soul with the will. With these four principles of Berkeley's philosophy in hand, the book returns to the topic of common sense and offers a defense of Berkeley's philosophy as built upon, and expressive of, the deepest metaphysical commitments of mainstream Christianity.

This book presents a study of Hegel's hugely influential but notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel describes the method of this work as a ‘way of despair’, meaning that the reader who undertakes its inquiry must be open to the experience of self-loss through it. Whereas the existential dimension of Hegel's work has often been either ignored or regarded as romantic ornamentation, this book argues that it belongs centrally to Hegel's attempt to fulfil a demanding epistemological ambition. With his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant expressed a new epistemological demand with respect to rational knowledge and presented a new method for meeting this demand. This book reconstructs Hegel's objection to Kant's Critical Philosophy, according to which Kant's way of meeting the epistemological demand of philosophical critique presupposes subjectivism, that is, presupposes the restriction of our knowledge to things as they are merely for us. Whereas Hegel in his early Jena writings rejects Kant's critical project altogether on this basis, he comes to see that the epistemological demand expressed in Kant's project must be met. This book argues that Hegel's method in the Phenomenology of Spirit takes shape as his attempt to meet the epistemological demand of Kantian critique without presupposing subjectivism. The key to Hegel's transformation of Kant's critical procedure, by virtue of which subjectivism is to be avoided, is precisely the existential or self-transformational dimension of Hegel's criticism, the openness of the criticizing subject to being transformed through the epistemological procedure.

Though understandably overshadowed by Augustine’s preeminence in the West, Ambrose is a doctor of the Catholic Church and an important patristic authority for the Middle Ages and Reformation, especially in moral theology. Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue argues that Ambrose of Milan’s theological commitments, particularly his understanding of the Christian’s participation in God’s saving economy through baptism, are foundational for his virtue theory laid out in his catechetical and other pastoral writings. While he holds a high regard for classical and Hellenistic views of virtue, Ambrose insists that the Christian is able to attain the highest ideal of virtue taught by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. This is possible because the Christian has received the transformative grace of baptism that allows the Christian to participate in the new creation inaugurated by Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. This book explores Ambrose’s understanding of this grace and how it frees the Christian to live the virtuous life. The argument is laid out in two parts. In Part I, the book examines Ambrose’s understanding of human nature and the effects of sin upon that nature. Central to this Part is the question of Ambrose’s understanding of the right relationship of soul and body as presented in Ambrose’s repeated appeal to Paul’s words, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24). Part II lays out Ambrose’s account of baptism as the sacrament of justification and regeneration (sacramental and proleptic participation in the renewal of human nature in the resurrection). Ultimately, Ambrose’s account of the efficacy of baptism rests upon his Christology and pneumatology. The final chapters explain how Ambrose’s accounts of Christ and the Holy Spirit are foundational to his view of the grace that liberates the soul from the corruption of concupiscence.

This book provides a cognitive scientific perspective to beliefs about supernatural agents. First, human intuitions about agents, agency, and counterintuitive concepts are outlined and explained. Second, various kinds of folk beliefs and theological doctrines about souls and spirits are analyzed in the light of the human cognitive architecture, using descriptions of spirit possession and shamanism as materials. Third, scholastic discussions of God’s cognitive capacities as well as folk-psychological God beliefs are analyzed. This analysis combines with a discussion of Buddhist ideas of soullesness and of buddhahood in textual traditions and in folk beliefs. Beliefs about God and buddhas are shown to rest on the same cognitive capacities of understanding agency and intentionality that underlie spirit beliefs. The Buddhist doctrine of soullessness was originally a denial of the self as a separate spiritual entity, not a denial of personal agency. God and buddhas differ from ordinary agents in that they are believed to have open access to all minds. Therefore, they can serve as means of representing what persons believe others to believe. Such divine minds are also used as an explanation for the fact that the whole of reality is intuitively experienced as if intentionally directed by a personal will. The book ends with a discussion of the future of religion and atheism.

Opening a Mountain is a translation with a commentary of 60 koan cases that feature an important supernatural or ritual element selected from a variety of the major and minor Zen Buddhist koan collections compiled in Sung China and Kamakura Japan. The koan is a brief, enigmatic anecdote or dialog between two contesting parties that defines the heart. The book demonstrates that the main theme underlying much of the koan literature deals with how Zen masters opened or transformed mountains. The transforming of spiritual forces that had been closing off the mountains into manifestations of sacred space in Zen was referred to as kuai‐shan in Chinese (or kaizan in Japanese). The mountains harbored spirits, demons, and bodhisattvas, as well as hermits, recluses, ascetics, and other irregular practitioners, and were opened using the symbols and rituals of spiritual purification. In contrast with conventional interpretations that view koans as psychological exercises with a purely iconoclastic intention, the approach here highlights the rich component of mythological and marvelous elements that pervade this genre of literature in a way that complements, rather than contradicts, the demythological or iconoclastic perspective. This approach to interpreting Zen literature is distinctive and innovative in several respects. Opening a Mountain includes the selection of koan cases emphasizing supernatural symbols, such as mountains, animals, and other natural imagery, based on a scholarly standard of translation and citation of source materials. The main topics include “Surveying Mountain Landscapes,” “Contesting with Irregular Rivals,” “Encountering Supernatural Forces,” “Wielding Symbols of Authority,” and “Giving Life and Controlling Death as Confessional Experiences.”

French Dominican Yves Congar is widely recognized as the most important Roman Catholic ecclesiologist of the twentieth century. He was a leader in the ecumenical movement in Europe and one of the most influential theological advisors at the Second Vatican Council. In this book, Groppe analyzes Congar’s theology of the Holy Spirit. She systematizes his pneumatology and identifies its primary contribution. Congar, she argues, advanced Roman Catholic pneumatology through his elaboration of a theology of the Holy Spirit that is at once a theological anthropology and a theology of the church. The early twentieth-century Roman Catholic pneumatology that Congar inherited consisted primarily of a spiritual anthropology—a theology of the Spirit’s indwelling of the human person—while giving little or no attention to the theology of the Holy Spirit within the discipline of ecclesiology. Congar saw this divorce of spiritual anthropology and ecclesiology as a betrayal of Christianity’s biblical and patristic heritage and of his Thomistic tradition. His own theology reintegrates a theology of the Spirit’s indwelling of the human person with an account of the Spirit as co-institutor and life principle of the church, and his approach has significant implications for contemporary discussions in the areas of ecclesiology, theological anthropology, sacramental theology, ecumenism, and spirituality. The book includes extensive notes and bibliography and is important both as an introduction to Congar and a contribution to a contemporary theology of the Holy Spirit.

This book represents a study of the meaning of "the end" in the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar, that highlights both the originality and the fruitfulness of his vision of a reciprocal drama between God and the world. The argument of the book can be summed up simply: being -creaturely being and trinitarian being -unveils its final countenance as love in the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. After setting forth three basic problems inherent in Christian eschatology, Healy introduces Balthasar's trinitarian perspective: eschatology is concerned with the life of the Trinity, as revealed by Jesus Christ, and as the origin and final destiny of the whole created cosmos. The book presupposes that a critical engagement with Balthasar's thought requires attending to the original way he uses philosophy within theology. Thomas Aquinas' analogy of being, fulfilled in the person of Christ, is both the abiding precondition of, and is ultimately disclosed in, the drama between God and the world whose form takes shape within Christ's return to the Father. The ultimate form of the end, and thus the measure of all that is meant by eschatology, is given in Christ's eucharistic and pneumatic gift of himself - gift that simultaneously lays bare the mystery of the Trinity and enables Christ to "return" to the Father in communion with the whole of creation. Insofar as Christ reveals the trinitarian life and the mystery of creation in their dramatic interplay, he establishes the form of eschatology as a participation in God's engagement with the world. Under the sign of the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist, Christian eschatology involves a sharing in Christ's double movement into the world and, together with the world, into God. By developing the metaphysical dimensions of Balthasar's doctrine of the last things, Healy shows that his writings on the eschaton contain unexpected resources for the ecclesial renewal envisaged by the Second Vatican Council and its missionary opening to the world.

Both the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures equate the Spirit of God with power. Power is a diverse phenomenon in human experience; several instances of power are examined here with the help of social scientific and psychological analysis. The book then relates the divine Spirit power to each of these instances of power: force and violence, fear, official and religious authority, law, wealth, images and symbols, language, teaching, sexuality, friendship and love. Finally, as a synthesizing metaphor to help gain insight into the divine outreach, i.e. the Spirit of God, the author uses the experience of a human embrace, examining this with a phenomenological hermeneutic and correlating it to the various forms of power studied.

The present‐day situation of the Roman Catholic Church has been described as a state of ‘peril’. That fact alone, to say nothing of the challenges inseparable from faith in God, implies that the embrace of ecclesial faith is less likely today. Seeks both to account for the emergence of such a situation and to identify sources of possibility for the church. In order to do so, begins by examining both the internal life of the Catholic Church, especially what has occurred in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), and the relationship between the church and the wider society, with a particular emphasis on the Western world. As the necessary foundation for expressing how the church might respond to its present situation and what might enable or support the embrace of ecclesial faith, the book focusses on a broad understanding of ‘the church’, one that highlights its multiple implications for human communion and for the communion between God and humanity. In particular, develops a contemporary theology of the foundational elements of Christian faith in regard to the church, especially its relationship to Jesus Christ and its existence as symbol of the Holy Spirit. In the light of that theology, analyses also how controversial elements of ecclesial faith – such as tradition and authority – might be appropriated positively. The final chapters identify possibilities for both a constructive relationship between the church and the surrounding culture and for a more reconciled diversity within the church. The emphasis of the final chapters is on the need to understand the church as ‘unfinished’, as not simply able to develop, but as defined by the dynamism that expresses the presence of God. Concludes that a willingness to embrace the need for movement, for being a pilgrim, is inseparable from the risk of ecclesial faith.

This book focuses on changing seventeenth-century English views of maternal nurture and the nation. The revaluation of maternal nursing goes hand-in-hand with the reformation of the nation, especially between 1603 and 1675. Maternal nurture gains new prominence in the early modern cultural imagination at the precise moment when England undergoes a major conceptual paradigm shift — from the traditional, dynastic body politic, organized by organic bonds, to the post-dynastic, modern nation, comprised of symbolic and affective relations. The period’s interlocking reassessments of maternal nurture and the nation also manifest (especially in the case of Milton) English Protestant views of Judeo-Christian relations. The book’s five chapters examine a wide range of reformed-and-traditional, well-known-and-somewhat-obscure texts — including A pitiless Mother, William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Charles I’s Eikon Basilike, and Milton’s Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes — and such early modern visual images as The power of women (a late sixteenth-century Dutch engraving), William Marshall’s engraved frontispiece to Richard Braithwaite’s The English Gentleman and Gentlewoman (1641), and Peter Paul Rubens’s painting of Roman Charity (1630). The book demonstrates that the idealized figure of the nurturing mother equivocally mediates between customary Judaic/Hebraic paradigms of English kingship and reformed models of England as the new Israel.

Catharism was a popular medieval heresy based on the belief that the creation of humankind was a disaster in which angelic spirits were trapped in matter by the devil. Their only goal was to escape the body through purification. Cathars denied any value to material life, including the human body, baptism, and the Eucharist, even marriage and childbirth. What could explain the long popularity of such a bleak faith in the towns of southern France and Italy? This book explores the place of Cathar heresy in the life of the medieval Italian town of Orvieto. Based on extensive archival research, it details the social makeup of the Cathar community and argues that the heresy was central to the social and political changes of the 13th century. The late 13th-century repression of Catharism by a local inquisition was part of a larger redefinition of civic and ecclesiastical authority. The book shows that the faith attracted not an alienated older nobility but artisans, merchants, popular political leaders, and indeed circles of women in Orvieto, as well as in Florence and Bologna. Cathar beliefs were not so much a pessimistic anomaly as a part of a larger climate of religious doubt. The teachings on the body and the practice of Cathar holy persons addressed questions of sexual difference and the structure of authority that were key elements of medieval Italian life. The pure lives of the Cathar holy people, both male and female, demonstrated a human capacity for self-restraint.

If, as the theist maintains, God is a being who exists of necessity, his existence explains why there is something rather than nothing. However, a less demanding explanation is also possible: not that there is some particular being that has to be, but simply that there has to be something or other. Reasons are given in favour of this weaker claim, and it is then argued that if anything at all exists, the physical exists. The priority of the physical is supported by eliminating rival contenders: the supernatural is dismissed, and while other forms of being, notably the abstract and the mental, are not reducible to the physical, they presuppose its existence. The question whether ultimate explanations can be given is forever in the background, and the book concludes with an investigation of this issue and of the possibility that the universe could have existed for an infinite time. Other topics discussed include causation, verification, essence, existence, spirit, force, fine tuning, and laws of Nature.

Classical Christian orthodoxy insists that God is Triune: there is only one God, but there are three divine Persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who are somehow of one substance with one another. But what does this doctrine mean? How can we coherently believe that there is only one God if we also believe that there are three divine Persons? This problem, sometimes called the ‘threeness-oneness problem’ or the ‘logical problem of the Trinity’, is the focus of this interdisciplinary volume. It includes a selection of recent philosophical work on this topic, accompanied by a variety of essays by philosophers and theologians to further the discussion. The book is divided into four parts, the first three dealing in turn with the three most prominent models for understanding the relations between the Persons of the Trinity: Social Trinitarianism, Latin Trinitarianism, and Relative Trinitarianism. Each section includes essays by both proponents and critics of the relevant model. The volume concludes with a section containing essays by theologians reflecting on the current state of the debate.