Fostering Interreligious Love through Reflecting upon the Dual Metaphor of Christ in Revelation 5:5-6 (original) (raw)
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The Book of Revelation: A Call to Worship, Witness, and Wait in the Midst of Violence
M.J. Smith, “The Book of Revelation: A Call to Worship, Witness, and Wait in the Midst of Violence.” In Into All the World: Emergent Christianity in its Jewish and Greco-Roman Context, edited by M. Harding and A. Nobbs, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017, 334-71., 2017
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the Christian response to violence envisioned by the book of Revelation. My thesis is that the book of Revelation functions as a prophetic call to Christian believers to respond to violence not with further violence, but by worshiping the one true God, by bearing witness to his work in Jesus Christ, and by waiting patiently for his final victory in the world. Part 1 provides a brief orientation to the book of Revelation. Part 2 sketches the origins and nature of the persecution of Christians within the Roman world, with specific reference to the Roman imperial cults and the province of Asia. Part 3 explores the book’s prophetic call to worship, witness, and wait.
Jurnal Ledalero, 2018
This article intends to consider the relationship between violence and the sacred, using as a starting point a theory espoused by Rene Girard. According to this theory, Girard demonstrates that violence happens because human beings imitate others in determining a desired object. Because of that imitation, a conflict arises between those who possess the same object. This conflict is calmed-down by transferring the reciprocal aggression onto a specific group that becomes the scapegoat , to be sacrificed. The ritual of sacrifice is institutionalised in religion. In this way, religion can channel aggression, but it can also hide human violence, by expressing violence towards the person of God. Following on, Christian revelation is pictured as being a process, in which God reveals Godself in a true attitude, and demonstrates that the violence expressed is between human beings and not towards God. In summary, the Christian religion can be a religion of salvation when it truly studies and proclaims the picture of God as revealed in Judeo-Christian revelation, climaxed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
We live by our stories that form us just as we narrate them. We attempt to make sense of the world, as the world takes its shape through our actions. The essential dynamism of this relationship is mimesis, a process of imitation, that creates stories just as it inculturates us. Through the work of Paul Ricoeur, we will reflect on this process of narrative construction as personally formative, while through the insights of René Girard, we will ponder how the " sin " of our humanity is that are narratives are inherently violent, reflecting and prompting the evil in our hearts and actions. Lastly, we will shift our attention to hope: to the divine narrative as told through the mouth of the Beloved Disciple and the Johannine community. God's story for us remains ever new, and the completion of our deepest desire. It is our constant challenge for repentance, healing, transformation and fullness of life.
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The overwhelming number of violent texts within the Old Testament raises serious theological and ethical problems for those who read the Bible in search of spiritual devotion and ethical direction. This article aims to explore one of the most ethically challenging texts in this regardthe conquest narrative in Joshua 6-11. An interdisciplinary study is presented in which social identity theory, the concept of hybridity and the role of courage and fear within an ancient community are discussed. This response is largely based upon the work of Baumann (2006) who also urges contemporary scholars to not only engage with the violent images within the Old Testament but also to earnestly seek to understand the functioning thereof within its original Ancient Near Eastern context.
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If the "metaphysics of the present" consists of a series of impositions, such as the centre and truth, and if this metaphysics dominates the Christian religion, it seems complicated for the Church to establish a sincere, interreligious dialogue. Even philosophers define the link between Christianity and metaphysics as an alliance capable of engendering violence. In this sense, it is noteworthy to mention the Derridean concept of difference, considering that the différance, as Derrida himself says, «nowhere exercises any authority». Well, we can ask ourselves, it is desirable that Christianity distance itself from metaphysics? How is it possible to reconcile Christian universalism with the current demand to listen seriously to other religious realities? This paper aims to show that those who enter a dialogue with sincerity and with respect for the other do not necessarily have to be exempt from certainties concerning the subject at hand, or in any case, renounce what, about this subject, they believe to be true. The true Christian that dialogues with the believers of other religions do not want to impose the "Good News".
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This paper argues that religious violence can be interpreted as resulting from the disproportion between the transcendent, elusive character of the divine and the need of a religious community for identity. This explains why the divine has to be contained in finite, human categories. Inevitably, these categories mark the distinction between inclusion and exclusion, as well as between orthodoxy and heresy. Hence, religious violence can be explained as a problematic reaction to the threat of the loss of religious identity. Against this background, the final section explores how this reaction can be averted. Paradoxically, the very absoluteness of God and of religious truth that critics of religion often see as monotheism’s greatest weakness becomes a resource for identifying religious violence as a religious failure to admit one’s own fundamental limitations in understanding the divine. Hence, faithful are called upon to practice the virtues of epistemic humility and religious hospitality in their dealings with other religions.
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