Incarnation

Abstract: "God" and "Devil" are abstract concepts often linked to vertical metaphors (e.g., "glory to God in the highest," "the Devil lives down in hell"). It is unknown, however, whether these metaphors simply aid communication or implicate a deeper mode of concept representation. In 6 experiments, the authors examined the extent to which the vertical dimension is used in noncommunication contexts involving God and the Devil. Experiment 1 established that people have implicit associations between God-Devil and up-down. Experiment 2 revealed that people encode God-related concepts faster if presented in a high (vs. low) vertical position. Experiment 3 found that people's memory for the vertical location of God- and Devil-like images showed a metaphor-consistent bias (up for God; down for Devil). Experiments 4, 5a, and 5b revealed that people rated strangers as more likely to believe in God when their images appeared in a high versus low vertical position, and this effect was independent of inferences related to power and likability. These robust results reveal that vertical perceptions are invoked when people access divinity-related cognitions.

Abstract: From the time of the Crusades to the present day, the relationship between Islam and the West has been one of conflict and misunderstanding. The prejudices conceived over a thousand years ago have survived the break-up of western Christianity into Catholic and Protestant, the growth of atheism, and the rise of the multifaith community; they continue, despite today's increased mutual understanding, to permeate European attitudes towards Islam. This classic study by Norman Daniel explores the political and religious considerations behind distorted western views of Islam, examining Christian-Muslim interaction from medieval times to the modern world, and covering such key topics as: revelation, prophethood and incarnation; the life of Muhammad; the authenticity of the Qur'an; western views of violence, morality and religious practice in Islam. First published over 30 years ago, the message within this great scholarly achievement is more relevant today than ever before. This timeless and accessible book should be of interest to students and for anyone wishing to gain a deeper insight into the complex relations between two of the world's greatest religions.

Abstract: Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge, by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998. Pp. 496. $29.99. Is there a meaning in this text? The answer is yes, but this simple answer belies the complicated trail that Vanhoozer follows to get there. This rich book generally falls into two parts. Part 1 deals with the major issues from literary criticism and philosophy-- especially Derridean deconstruction and neo-pragmatism (R. Rorty and S. Fish)-that challenge the traditional claim that meaning is "in" the text. Part 2 presents Vanhoozer's hermeneutical proposal for the postmodern challenges that are elucidated in Part 1. He defends "the possibility, in the vale of the shadow of Derrida, that readers can legitimately and responsibly attain literary knowledge of the Bible... that there is a meaning in the text, that it can be known, and that readers should strive to do so" (p. 24). Vanhoozer defines the current hermeneutical situation as a "crisis" that, at bottom, is theological. The postmodern emphasis upon the "death of the Author" is actually the death of authorial intentionality in the text, and it entails the impossibility of ever arriving at a discernible meaning. What does this have to do with theology? Just this: postmodern "literary atheism" and "hermeneutic agnosticism," especially deconstruction, is, as Derrida himself says, "the death of God put into writing." The death of the Author and the loss of belief in finding any kind of authorial meaning are theological issues because they cast doubt on any possibility of understanding the presence of God's meaning in a sacred text. These ideas encourage a critic's refusal to recognize the distinction between Creator and creature, text and commentary, author and reader. Against this, Vanhoozer argues that one can arrive at "presence," at meaning, in a biblical text. He bills his project, therefore, as a theological hermeneutics that unabashedly takes the Augustinian approach of "I believe in order to understand." If theology is the heart of the issue about meaning, then the kind of theology one holds when interpreting the Bible becomes a key issue. Vanhoozer argues for a hermeneutic based upon "interpretive Trinitarianism," that is, a God who has communicated its being to humans in a trinitarian fashion. It is particularly in the Incarnation that Christians regard God as "the self-interpreting God" who communicates with the Other (humans). God's primary communicative act, in turn, "grounds the possibility of human communication by demonstrating that it is indeed possible to enter into the life of another so as to achieve understanding" (p. 161). Thus, Augustine's critical fideism opens the literary-critical door for understanding the biblical text as an intentional communicative act of an author that can be understood by readers. Interpretation of the Bible is ultimately a matter of interpersonal communication rather than of conflict and irretrievable meaning (differance). In place of deconstruction and neo-pragmatism, then, Vanhoozer places critical fideism and neo-Reformed theological hermeneutics (A. Plantings, A. Thiselton, N. Wolstertorff), and he shows how the literary-critical bridge to neo-Reformed hermeneutics is a speech-act theory (J. L. Austin and J. …

Abstract: This new collection of challenging literary studies plays with a foundational definition of Western culture: the word become flesh. But the word become flesh is not, or no longer, a theological already-given. It is a millennial goal or telos toward which each text strives. Both witty and immensely erudite, Jacques Ranciere leads the critical reader through a maze of arrivals toward the moment, perhaps always suspended, when the word finds its flesh. That is what he, a valiant and good-humored companion to these texts, goes questing for through seven essays examining a wide variety of familiar and unfamiliar works. A text is always a commencement, the word setting out on its excursions through the implausible vicissitudes of narrative and the bizarre phantasmagorias of imagery, Don Quixote's unsent letter reaching us through generous Balzac, lovely Rimbaud, demonic Althusser. The word is on its way to an incarnation that always lies ahead of the writer and the reader both, in this anguished democracy of language where the word is always taking on its flesh.