Responding to a well-known essay by Bernard Williams, philosophers (and a few theologians) have engaged in what I call “the Makropulos debate,” a debate over whether immortality—“living forever”—would be desirable for beings like us. Lacking a firm conceptual grounding in the religious contexts from which terms such as “immortality” and “eternal life” gain much of their sense, the debate has consisted chiefly in a battle of speculative fantasies. Having presented my four main reasons for this assessment, I examine an alternative (...) and neglected conception, the idea of eternal life as a present possession, derived in large part from Johannine Christianity. Without claiming to argue for the truth of this conception, I present its investigation as exemplifying a conceptually fruitful direction of inquiry into immortality or eternal life, one which takes seriously the religious and ethical surroundings of these concepts. (shrink)

Nowadays, the category of „Gnosticism” has become very ambiguous and problematic. There are different paradigms in defining the concept of „Gnosticism” and because of this, there still are controversies between the most prominent scholars. In recent decades were made valuable research on this topic, but a consensus is far to achieve. In this paper my aim is to show how this concept changed from ancient heresiologists to modern scholars as Hans Jonas, Ioan Petru Culianu or Michael Allen Williams. In one (...) of the late papers of Ioan Petru Culianu, „Gnosticism” was seen as a „sick sign”. From this observation, Michael A. Williams came to dismantle the concept of „Gnosticism” and to replace this concept with the one of „biblical demiurgical traditions”. Nevertheless, criticism cannot be applied only to the modern concept of,,Gnosticism”, but also to Williams’ suggestions. Indeed, the category in debate is hard to define, but we also will propose in this paper an answer to this question. (shrink)

Taking the use of the logos in Ratzinger's Regensburg Lecture as its starting point, the thesis expands three horizons in Ratzinger studies. Firstly, it extends the understanding of Ratzinger as the author of a logos theology. Secondly, it shows how the Regensburg theme of the full breadth of reason, represented by the logos, is applied by Ratzinger in a critique of secular modernity. Thirdly, it claims that the logos theology of Joseph Ratzinger can provide a repair of the culture of (...) human rights. The thesis argues that if human rights are set exclusively within the framework of secular modernity, they fall sick and fail to meet the criterion of inclusivity and universality. Set within the framework of a Ratzingerian logos theology, their power is strengthened and their promise of inclusivity and universality restored. The thesis calls for a mutually reparative dialogue about human rights, based on the full breadth of reason, between the three constituencies of Christianity, the religions and secular modernity. The thesis concludes that the Regensburg Lecture, far from damaging the dialogue with Islam, and with secular modernity, opens up a new intercultural bridge based on a mutually enriching engagement with a logos-based culture of human rights. (shrink)