Article
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Doctrinal features of early Christianity and medicine. From the Didascalia Apostolorum to Gregory of Nyssa
Manuel ORTUÑO ARREGUI
Original title: Los rasgos doctrinales del cristianismo primitivo y la medicina. De la Didascalia Apostolorum a Gregorio de Nisa
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nisa, Medicine, Primitive Christianity.
The aim of this paper has been to present the doctrinal features connecting early Christianity and medicine through the theological contributions of the holy fathers. Specifically, we have focused on the evolution of the doctrinal relationship from the Didascalia apostolorum to Gregory of Nyssa. In the analysis of this relationship through the texts we discover two ways of seeing the medicine of his time at the beginning of the diffusion and transmission of the Christian message and the beginning of its anthropology as opposed to paganism or Christianity. Basil represents a less scientific or rational medicine, and on the other hand, Gregory of Nyssa offers us a penitential and even pastoral medicine with evident Neoplatonic philosophical influences. In short, we can see an advance in the beginnings of Christian anthropology and its relationship with the medicine of the time, which can be summed up in the beginning of the ‘Theology of Illness’, which is fundamentally centered on penitential medicine.
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Music, Liberal Arts, and transcendence in Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Luiz Cláudio Luciano França GONÇALVES
Original title: Música, Artes Liberais e transcendência em Agostinho de Hipona (354-430)
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Liberal Arts, Music, Transcendence.
The dialogue De musica (387/391) is part of the unfinished project of the Disciplinarum libri, undertaken by Augustine of Hippo (354-430) on the liberal arts. At the time, the author conceives the musical discipline as scientia bene modulandi, kind of knowledge that has as its goal the understanding of the transcendent signs that underlies and governs the corporeal world. Taken in its proper and worthy sense – as a science that rises beyond the sensitive sphere –, the art of music is dedicated to the revelation of the incorporeal nature that sustains the modus and, at the end, leads to contemplation of its transcendent source. It is an anagogical path, by which the soul, turned to its noblest activity, deciphers, through reason, the divine order inscribed in proportion and measure of the material world.
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The transcendence of War and Peace by the spiritual sense of Christian Theology
Eirini ARTEMI
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Demons, Passions Christian Teaching, Peace, Theosis, War.
“War” and “peace” are subject to theological, philosophical, moral, and political construction. In Christian theology, “war” and “peace” have to do with the relations of people with God, with themselves and with the other people in every place of this earth. The transcendence of the war and peace has literal and spiritual meaning. In the Christian view of peace, it is necessary to relate to justice and includes the dimensions of inner peace or a spiritual peace. This understanding is different from a more secular outlook means peace at the level of exterior dimensions –outer dimension–. As far as the word “war” can mean spiritual struggling with our passions or with the demons and with the other people in our daily life. The teachings on peace and on war, deriving from the sacred texts of Christianity, effectively guide adherents to attain inner peace, to extend it outwardly and to try to get rid of the passions which are cause of war. The latter relates to our passions and sins.
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Transcendência e Imanência – dois aspectos da música na vida monástica de Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Antonio Celso RIBEIRO
Original title: Transcendence and Immanence – two aspects of music in the monastic life of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Immanency, Middle Ages, Monastery, Music, Transcendence.
The present work intends to analyze the role of the music in the everyday life inside the women monasteries in the Middle Ages. Exploring the dichotomies between some aspects of music in medieval thinking like it being corruptive or regenerative and belonging to the realm of musica mundane, musica humana, musica instrumentalis, or musica celestis, as stated by Boethius and complemented by Jacobus Leodiensis, the paper intends to take a glimpse on music usage at the monasteries focusing specially on Hildegard von Bingen’s Works and Philosophy.
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Utopia of the Kingdom of the Spirit
Noeli Dutra ROSSATTO
Original title: Utopia do Reino do Espírito
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Agostinho da da Silva, Antonio Vieira, Fifth Empire, Joachim of Fiore, Kingdom of the Spirit.
Three utopian perspectives of the kingdom merge in Luso-Brazilian culture. The Abbot Joachim of Fiore (1135-1205) proposes a Trinitarian division of history into three states (status) of the world, and the Kingdom of the Spirit blooms in third. Derive of the contribution prophetic work of the Jesuit Antonio Vieira (1608-1692) the second perspective that divides history into three kingdoms of Christ, in which the last stage fulfils as a Consummated Kingdom of Christ or Fifth Empire, without the prediction of a Kingdom of the Spirit. Finally, Agostinho da Silva (1906-1994) takes up the Trinitarian division of history and projects a Kingdom of the Spirit as a recreation of the Fifth-imperialism, Messianic and Joachimite utopias, celebrated in the festivities of the Empire of the Divine Holy Spirit.
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The Notion of Excessus in Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)
Luís Carlos Silva de SOUSA
Original title: A noção de Excessus em Santo Tomás de Aquino (1224-1274)
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Deus, Excessus, Knowledge, Metaphysics, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Thomas Aquinas, Transcendence, Triplex via.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the notion of excessus in St. Thomas Aquinas (Sth. Iª, q. 84, a. 7 ad 3). We will highlight the influence of the negative way of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite on human intellectual knowledge about God. The term excessus indicates the way of eminence (via eminentiae, per excessum) of our knowledge of the fullness of God’s perfections, that is, of his transcendence.
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The One Beyond Being: the Abrogation of Otherness in Meister Eckhart
Leandro BERTONCELLO
Original title: O Uno além do Ser: a ab-rogação da alteridade em Meister Eckhart
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Meister Eckhart, Negatio negationis, Non-dualism.
This article examines the concept of the abrogation of otherness in Meister Eckhart, with emphasis on his doctrine of the union between the human soul and the One, a reality that transcends being. Through the analysis of texts and sermons by the Rhenish mystic, it explores how the soul can overcome all distinctions and attain unity with God through the negation of negation (negatio negationis). The study discusses the transcendence of the One beyond being, the role of the ground of the soul (Grunde der Seele) as the locus of this union, and the dialectic between detachment and love for others. It concludes that abrogation does not imply contempt for the world but rather a new way of experiencing the divine in all creatures.
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Grasping the Divine essence: Cusanus (1401-1464) and Wenck (†1460)
Marica COSTIGLIOLO
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Dialogue, Difference, Nicholas of Cusa, Transcendence.
In this aim, I analyse some theories of De docta ignorantia (1440) of Nicholas of Cusa, criticized by Johannes Wenck. Some interesting themes emerge from the dispute between Cusanus and Wenck: for example, on the threshold of modernity the way thinkers use concepts and words to define transcendence, time, difference. Through this dispute, the end of the Middle Ages appears as a rich intellectual period and a harbinger of continuous insights and new interpretations.
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Globalization: the dialectic between local experience and the universal inclination of philosophical knowledge in intercultural historical experience
Samuel DIMAS
Original title: Globalização: a dialética entre a experiência local e a inclinação universal do conhecimento filosófico na vivência histórica intercultural
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Globalization, Interculturality, Localization, National and universal philosophies.
In this study we intend to present the methodology of global thinking that rejects the traditional strategy of “globalization”, which aims to universally impose a single economic-social model and proposes the promotion of intercultural relations and the valorization of national and linguistic identities. In this sense, globalization does not mean a homogenization of thought, but the recognition of the importance of philosophical, literary and artistic diversity for the civilizational development and progress in the humanization of peoples. The ideological imposition of currents of thought and research methods, disseminated through Basic English, must be replaced by a critical interpretation that addresses the existential dynamics of being-in-the-world and being-in-place and values models of intercommunication cultural in the dialectic between the particularity of situated thought and its inclination towards universality.
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The flood and its universality, a transcultural approach
André BUENO; José Maria Gomes de Souza NETO
Original title: O dilúvio e sua universalidade, uma abordagem transcultural
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: China, Deluge, India, Mythography, Mythology, Near East, Universal Flood.
A transcultural analysis of mythography’s about universal floods in ancient civilizations reveals important narrative splits, which make explicit the problem of trying to unify them. In our text, we will seek to present and discuss some issues related to flood/deluge myths in civilizations from the Levant, passing through India and reaching China, an important counterpoint to Western narratives. This comparison allows us to understand the different epistemes from which these myths have been worked and disseminated, and the challenges for a heterotopic claim of narrative fusion.
