It is commonly held that Christian ethics generally and Christian bioethics particularly is the application of Christian moral systems to novel problems engaged by contemporary culture and created by contemporary technology. On this view, Christianity adds its moral vision to a technology, baptizing it for use. In this essay, I show that modern technology is a metaphysical moral worldview that enacts its own moral vision, shaping a moral imaginary, shaping our moral perception, creating moral subjects, and shaping what we imagine (...) as moral intentions. In fact, modern technics has its own liturgics, which is foreign to Christian Divine Liturgy. Divine Liturgy is world forming, showing us a different world than the one that comes into relief in the ersatz liturgy of modern medical technics. (shrink)

Expanding our description of liturgy as an organisation of technics structuring desire, we describe the accompanying myth as a technic of knowing. Drawing on transdisciplinary theology, developed from the work of Wentzel van Huyssteen, Paul Cilliers and Alfonso Montuori, we engage the cross-disciplinary construction of scientific myth by Big Historians. We argue that myth, as a transversal technic of knowing, is abundant in many spheres of our lives and bridges what Bernard Stiegler calls the persistent minimal gap between humanity and (...) technics. Can Big Historians offer such a bridge and what does it mean when scientists use technicities developed by religious practitioners? (shrink)

It seems remarkable that several philosophers in the Reformed tradition have recently interacted with social practice theory without interacting with each other. This gave rise to the question as to whether they interact differently or similarly with social practice theory and to what extent Reformed philosophy might benefit from such an interaction. In this article, therefore, we aim to clear the way by addressing three strands in Reformed philosophy, namely, Nicholas Wolterstorff, the normative practice approach, and James K. A. Smith. (...) We explore why they use social practice theory, what they do with it, and how they make it their own. Finally, we highlight what unites them and what divides them, and conclude with suggestions as to how they might benefit from each other’s work in social practice theory. (shrink)

This article analyses ethnographic material gathered in Sweden amongst dancers in the Church of Sweden. With the help of the writings of Sarah Coakley and Simone Weil I explore if, and how, dancing could be considered a contemplative practice in the Christian traditions of the Latin West.

One of the more radical transhumanist proposals for future human being envisions the uploading of our minds to a digital substrate, trading our dependence on frail, degenerating “meat” bodies for the immortality of software existence. Yet metaphor studies indicate that our use of metaphor operates in our bodily inhabiting of the world, and a phenomenological approach emphasizes a “hybridity” to human being that resists traditional mind/body dichotomies. Future scenarios envisioning mind uploading and disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) share an apocalyptic category (...) with more traditional religious eschatologies, though they differ markedly in content; therefore, the insights of embodied cognition and their uptake in technological innovation are considered as they apply to theological concerns. Theology often functions in debates over the technological future to critique or to caution. However, theologians may learn from their technological dialogue partners when it comes to the future of embodiment and its implications for the construction and practice of theology. (shrink)

How can participating in a liturgy allow us to know God? Recent pathbreaking work on the epistemology of liturgy has argued that liturgy allows individuals to gain ritual knowledge of God by coming to know-how to engage God. However, since liturgy (as it is ordinarily practiced) is a group act, I argue that we need to give an account to explain how a group can know God by engaging with liturgy. If group know-how is reducible to instances of individual know-how, (...) then the existing accounts are sufficient for explaining a group’s knowing-how to engage God. However, I argue, there are good reasons to suppose that reductive accounts of group know-how fail. In this paper, I propose a non-reductive account of common ritual knowledge, according to which the group knows-how to engage God in liturgy. (shrink)

In spite of a commendable proliferation of Muslim-Christian initiatives in recent years, progress has been slow. Islam and Christianity are essentially two rival belief systems each claiming doctrinal and theological superiority. Any serious dialogue that goes deeper into these issues and attempts to discover new hermeneutical bridges inevitably reaches its explanatory limit. In this article, I argue that there may perhaps be new ways to overcome this historic standstill. Borrowing from insights gained from a sociological approach to the study of (...) religion, it becomes evident that it is necessary to distinguish between religion as a set of normative beliefs and the concrete implementation of those beliefs through religious practices. The application of theory into authentic forms of embodied religiosity is the responsibility of believers themselves. They concretize the normative prescriptions through a contextualized, local interpretation that is both pragmatic and meaningful in order to make sense of their everyday lives. To understand religion intellectually, it is necessary to consider its fundamental anthropological dimension. Hence, the study of religion must ultimately include the study of human beings in their natural context and from their point of view. Moreover, I provide evidence that true insight is contingent upon actual participation in the religious practices themselves. Building on this argument, this article suggests that Muslim-Christian relations would significantly benefit from including shared participation in sacred religious performances as part of the strategy for a successful encounter. (shrink)

We live in a world in which God is made known in and through God’s material works, which are other than himself. That is, they are signs of God’s presence whether in the natural world or the world we structure, as God’s image bearers, in our practices, rituals, and the stuff we make. The Christian tradition holds that the created order and human creativity witness to God, because creation is suffused with God’s presence. A sacramental understanding of sports aims to (...) give an alternative stance to how Christian traditions conceive of sports. A sacramental understanding intimates how this worldview helps us reckon that sports can be an acceptable form of divine worship, because of how sports can participate in and point to God. I argue that, when sport is understood as a material mode of worship, sport can serve as an iconic indicator which reflects and imparts something of divine presence. If we inhabit such a world in which God is close to the lived experience of this strenuous and sensual mode of existence, this re-sacralizes sports as contexts in which humans can actually celebrate with gratitude goods such as autotelicity and experience God’s presence in this cultural liturgy. (shrink)

How does one committed to the claims of Christ and a biblical story of redemption live Christianly and navigate the competing worldviews encountered in everyday medical practice? Adopting the practical conceptual framework promoted by Reformed Christian philosopher and theologian Albert Wolters, we argue for an all-encompassing biblical understanding of God’s cosmic redemption plan for the entire creation order in contrast to a more typical sacred/secular duality. We then apply the concepts of structure and direction, drawn from a pretheological understanding of (...) human life drawn from the Scripture, to a semi-fictional case study in discerning Christian faithfulness in everyday mundane aspects of medicine. Our subsequent analysis seeks to render an interpretation of what it means to live life consistent with that worldview when confronted with challenges like those presented in the case. (shrink)

Eric Gregory's Politics and the Order of Love takes up an audacious project: enlisting Saint Augustine in order to "help imagine a better liberalism." This article first provides a summary of Gregory's argument, focusing on his emphasis on love as a "motivation" for neighborly care, and hence democratic participation. This involves tracing the theme of motivation in the book, which is tied to his articulation of liberal perfectionism and an emphasis on civic virtue. In conclusion I raise the question of (...) whether his project has ignored a key aspect of Augustine's account of love, namely, the role of the Holy Spirit, thereby demarcating the limits of Gregory's "rational reconstruction" of Augustine. (shrink)

In order to inspire a vision of biotechnology that affirms human dignity and human flourishing, the author poses questions about virtual reality and the use of robotics in health care. Using the concept of ‘liturgy’ and an anthropology of humans as lovers, the author explores how virtual reality and robotics in health care shape human moral agents, and how such shaping could influence the way we do or do not pursue a ‘posthuman’ future.

The wide acceptance and maturation of the theology of missio Dei is the most important development in the theology of mission in recent times. It introduced a radically new understanding of mission and theology, and flowing from that a re-appropriation of ecclesiology. Mission studies are also characterised by a new appreciation of mission from the margins: liberation theology and the associated discourses on decoloniality, deep engagement in contextuality and the explosion of missional ecclesiology. This apostolic orientation of the church is (...) of the utmost importance in the reflection on the future of theology. This research attends to the postcolonial discourse as an important critique of colonialism and understands the emancipation of Africanised or decolonised theological education as an inevitable and positive development. Contextual sensitivity, attention to diverse power structures and a predisposition to appreciate diversity open imaginative possibilities for theological education. This leads to the argument that decolonial African theology must confront issues of biblical hermeneutics. The proposal of this research is that missional hermeneutic is an excellent starting point. It describes the contours of a missional hermeneutic, attending to mission as central to the Biblical story, the meaning of mission and the conviction that reading Scriptures constitutes an essential part of missional praxis. Missional hermeneutic is a centring vision and purpose for theological education. The argument is for a missional curriculum that defines a centre that unifies the various disciplines, one that places mission and missiology at the heart of theological education. (shrink)

The findings of the Archbishop's Council in their 2004 report, to the effect that traditional forms of church in Britain are under threat because of changing cultural patterns, emphasise the need to re-think church for our contemporary contexts. The 'Fresh Expressions of church' movement is one such initiative identified and approved of by the Archbishop's Council. This article reports on research undertaken in a practical theological interpretation of The Filling Station, a Christian ministry that has grown significantly in its 10-year (...) history and was formed as a missional endeavour in recognition of declining church attendance in traditional churches in Britain. This work explores whether The Filling Station is a Fresh Expression of church and whether it meets the values of authentic missional churches. In examining whether The Filling Station ought to be considered for import into appropriate local congregational contexts, it enquires whether it satisfactorily addresses prevailing social trends affecting churches, including consumerism and the need for identity. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation (CEC) has become all about right technique. When we encounter a case of conflict or confusion, clinical ethicists are expected to deploy a standardized, repeatable, and rationally defensible method for working toward a recommendation and/or consensus. While it has been noted previously that our techniques of CEC often foreclose on its internal goods, there remains an assumption that we must just find the _right_ efficient technique and the problem would be solved. In this paper, I question that (...) assumption, arguing that any standardized, identically repeatable model of CEC will pull us counterproductively away from ethical reflection, and toward the values of modern _techne_: primarily efficiency, efficacy, and repeatability. This is because standardized techniques of CEC pull the dynamism of being into what Catherine Pickstock calls “identical repetition,” a technologized ontology, which is fundamentally at odds with what being is. And, since ethics is a search for the good of being, avoiding the ontological heart of being severely restricts ethics. (shrink)

Reeves condemns the recruitment of scientific methods by representative theologians to lend credibility to their theological claims. His treatment of Nancey Murphy's use of Lakatosian research programme methodology is focused on here, and his proposal that science and religion scholars might act as “historians of the present” to advance the field is explored. The “credibility strategy” is set in historical context with an exploration of some of the science and religion field's original commitments and goals, particularly in terms of the (...) emphasis on rationalism and corresponding neglect of the imagination, and the value of more creative input in promoting better dialogue between science and religion is highlighted. (shrink)

This article reflects on a number of liturgical innovations in the worship of Melodi ya Tshwane, an inner-city congregation of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa . The focus of the innovations was to implement the understanding of justice in Article 4 of the Confession of Belhar, a confessional standard of the URCSA. The basic contention of the article is that well designed liturgies that facilitate experiences of beauty can nurture a concrete spirituality to mobilise urban church members for (...) a justice-seeking lifestyle. After exploring the message of Article 4 of Belhar, the article analyses eight liturgical features of Melodi ya Tshwane, showing how beauty and justice interact in those acts of worship. (shrink)

This is the second article in a series of two on the topic of “action” and “reflection”. The first article appeared last year in the fall issue of this journal, 140–171). This second article is divided into two sections. The first section deals with reflection, mainly in the form of reflexivity, a central notion in contemporary sociology and an attitude characteristic of the modern secular mind. The second section discusses second-order agency, subdivided intospiritsandpowers. Most instances of spirits fall under an (...) “as if” category: all these cases are about certain communalities expressing themselves in such a strong way that itseemsas if a supra-personal agent is at work.Zeitgeisterare a point in case. The only incidence of asoag-kind may be that ofmobs. Powers fit our model better than spirits and for that reason most of the second part of this essay is dedicated to that topic. The foremost distinction that will be made is that between incomplete and full powers. The thesis presented in the final section is that powers can only come to completion by taking a “religious turn”. The notion of “assent” as a basic ingredient of human action is what connects the first to the second part of the essay. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler depicts technics as the human's tertiary memory retention generating a pharmakon with both curative and malignant potential. He additionally rues the posthuman epoch's depletion of a 'time of the question': revealed in the prevalent inaptitude for wisdom -scilicet long-term acuity. We offer Christian liturgy as an abeyant psychotechnique arcing the current pharmakon to cure through soliciting a 'time of the question'. Rejuvenating Christian liturgy as a psychotechnique can bolster a broader societal 'time of the question'. Firstly, we describe (...) technic's du jour mise on scène. Secondly, we constrain Christian liturgies as complex systems incorporating malleability, temporality, and instability. Thirdly, we imagine Christian liturgy as empty tradition allowing amateur repetition of ancient art enticing a 'time of the question'. (shrink)

This paper develops a phenomenological account of spirituality that can help us think more broadly and deeply about religion and its role in our lives. It begins by explaining spirituality as a supra-subjective force that shapes a sub­ject’s intuitive engagement with the world (Section I). Then, it shows that such a spirituality is affective in (and affected by) cultural expression (Section II), by way of historically situated institutions or traditions [Stiftungen] (Section III). The last step of the paper will be (...) to connect this account of spirituality to our understanding of religion by articulating four distinct levels of phenomenological analysis that will have emerged in the discussion of spirituality and showing that each of these levels must be accounted for in a distinct way if we want to offer a full-fledged philosophy of religion (Section IV). In so doing, we will see that this account of spirituality potentially helps us see a broader range of things that could count as “religious,” in part by helping us see that religion is a particular mode of expressing the spirituality that operates as the deepest motivating impulse driving our lives. (shrink)

In this article, I summarize recent work on the philosophy of liturgy. In part 2 of this article, I consider how liturgy can provide a way of knowing God personally. I outline accounts of acquiring phenomenal knowledge, practical knowledge, and propositional knowledge by participating in liturgy.

In this article, I summarize recent work on the philosophy of liturgy. In part 2 of this article, I consider how liturgy can provide a way of knowing God personally. I outline accounts of acquiring phenomenal knowledge, practical knowledge, and propositional knowledge by participating in liturgy.

Is it possible to worship a non-personal God? According to some, the answer is no: worship necessarily involves addressing the object of one’s worship. Since non-personal gods cannot acknowledge or respond to address, it must be conceptually inappropriate to worship such gods. I object to this argument on two fronts. First, I show that the concept of worship used is too narrow, excluding many cases that obviously count as instances of worship. And, secondly, drawing on recent work on the philosophy (...) of object knowledge, I argue that addressing non-personal gods might not be as conceptually confused as it first appears. Thus, it at least possible to worship a non-personal God. (shrink)

In this article, I consider how recent work on the philosophy of group-agency and shared-agency can help us to understand what it is for a church to act in worship. I argue that to assess a model’s suitability for providing such an account, we must consider how well it handles cases of non-paradigm participants, such as those with autism spectrum disorder and young infants. I suggest that whilst a shared-agency model helps to clarify how individuals coordinate actions in cases of (...) reading or singing liturgy, it does not handle non-paradigm cases well and so cannot be considered a suitable model of group liturgical action. Instead, I suggest that a model of groupagency, in which a plurality of action types can contribute to the actions of a group as a whole, is better suited to explaining a church’s actions in worship. (shrink)

This essay argues that a Christian incarnational response to posthumanism must recognize that what is at stake isn't just whether belief systems align. It seeks to relocate the interaction between the church and posthumanism to how the practices of posthumanism and Christianity perform the bodies, affections and dispositions of each. Posthuman practices seeks to habituate: (1) A preference for informational patterns over material instantiation; (2) that consciousness and the self are extended and displaced rather than discrete and localized; (3) that (...) the body is merely a tool, the original prosthesis we learn to manipulate and (4) that human life is organized such that it is seamless with intelligent machines. The Christian performance of embodied life, on the other hand, has Christ as template and, in the Eucharist, Christians are marked by offering, sacrifice and celebration in a community that affirms the integrity of our common incarnate life. (shrink)