NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 71, Issue 3, 2017

Summary

The early-Christian writer Tertullian is commonly associated with the statement ‘credo quia absurdum’ – I believe because it is absurd. However, this sentence (first ascribed to him in the early-modern period) cannot be found in Tertullian’s work. As this article seeks to demonstrate, the very idea behind it is neither in line with his conception of the relationship between faith and reason. The same Tertullian who decries the Greek philosophy of ‘Athens’ builds on Stoic views to reinforce and clarify his theological positions. Rather than as a total rejection of ancient philosophy, his preference for ‘Jerusalem’ should therefore be read as a critique of the way in which some Greek philosophers philosophized and the unchristian conclusions that they reached. Tertullian did not shun philosophical argumentation as such. As a matter of fact, his argument based on absurdity resembles one the rhetorical tropes described in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. The real conflict in Tertullian is that between the divine wisdom from heaven and the worldly wisdom of the heretics.

Summary

In the Netherlands there is a popular practice of Anglican choral evensongs (outside the context of the Anglican Church), organised either as worship, a concert or as worship and a concert at the same time. The evensongs are performed either completely in English or partly in English, partly in Dutch. In this article the authors will explore for what reasons the English language as non-vernacular is used. Which qualities do participants attribute to the English language in evensongs in the Netherlands and how should these qualities be interpreted? The use of language will be explored as a possible indicator of transformation of religiosity. The main conclusion is that the English language is used because of the beauty of its sound, the ritual quality of using a non-vernacular, and its power to evoke an experience of sacrality and contrast. Participants, it is found, are critical of the traditional Reformed emphasis on words, and refer instead to unarticulated transcendental experiences.

Summary

This article wants to explore absent ritual as a more or less ritual repertoire of its own by distinguishing a series of forms or types of manifestation, use and appropriation. In addition to emerging ritual, grassroots ritual, failed ritual, transferred ritual, and postponed ritual, there is also absent ritual. Absent ritual is always accompanied by ambivalence. It plays a role especially in situations in which there are all kinds of hindrances to ritual presence as in rituals associated with disasters, tragedies, atrocities, and more generally with practices of memorialization and victimhood. Studying current ritual repertoires like absent ritual enables to study ritual and cultural dynamics. After preliminary notes on the concept of absent ritual, ritual and ritualization, and the perspective and nature of the typology there is a presentation of ten types of absent ritual. As a coda the author formulates a reflection on functions or qualities of ritual in the context of absent ritual.

Summary

This explorative article revolves around contemporary views on Ravana as one of the components of Ravanisation – i.e., the current revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka. The Ravana myth – exceeding its previous incarnation in the early twentieth-century Hela movement in which it was only a myth of marginal importance – plays a central role in this process. By discussing three examples of views on Ravana from my explorative fieldwork research it is argued that the evolving Ravana myth and its current materialisation are intriguing examples of the contemporary ongoing processes of self-understanding and identity formation of Sri Lanka’s ethnic majority in post-war Sri Lanka.

Summary

This commentary revisits Lynn White’s article, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’ (1967), and questions the assumption that there is a unified ‘Lynn White thesis’. Instead, it proposes a complex narrative in which four key elements can be identified: (1) the long history of human impact on the environment; (2) the claim that the human-environment interaction took on a new, destructive quality around 1850 through the ‘marriage’ of specifically Western science and technology; (3) an historical narrative of how Latin Christianity is responsible for the specific thrust of Western science and technology, in which White identifies Latin theological voluntarism as key trigger; and (4) a constructivist view of religion as malleable. It argues, further, that White’s narrative itself relies on a radical variant of the Latin theological voluntarism that he attacks, and it points towards Christian environmental virtue ethics as an underexplored way forward.

This article reviews Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship, (The Bible in the Modern World 38), , , ; + pp., € 22,50.