The article analyzes the names given today to the children of inhabitants of Przemyśl — followers of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, at the same time showing their differences and similarities within both religions. In the same urban, communication and cultural community, Catholic and Orthodox live side by side (often for many generations). Despite everything, they to some extent retain their own identity (culture, traditions and customs), which also manifests itself in the names given to children. For a more complete picture of the situation, the names of the two older generations (parents and grandparents) were also presented.
Why is the word “tenderness” rarely mentioned in the Bible? Can we make any judgement about God’s tenderness? We talk to Father Tadeusz Dola, Professor Emeritus of Theology and head of the Theological Sciences Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
In the submitted study, the author shows that Paul in the propositio (12,1-2) the section of encouragement (12,3-15,13), although he does not use the word syneidēsis directly, but the words used in it refer to him in conjunction with his basic functions and prove in this way how fundamental it is to renew the mind in the right, i.e. salvifically effective, education of Christian conscience. He does so in the encouragement context to make the recipients aware of how important it is to have a renewed mind and conscience in being and continuing to become a Christian in everyday and concrete living as well as practicing faith in Jesus. With propositio, he makes the foundation on which he builds the paraclesical message of the Letter. It clearly states that permanently renewed by the Gospel of God mind, is an absolute condition for an uninterrupted evangelical renewal of conscience. Thus, renewed in this way conscience is the only deity of mercy granted to sinful humanity, which guarantees constant faithfulness to its norms of judgment with God’s justice revealed in Christ, the Son of God, or his absolute righteousness, which is an indispensable condition for achieving eternal salvation.
This article consists of two parts. The first part summarizes using informal language Wolniewicz’s understanding of the idea of God which he expressed in the language of formal logic. It demonstrates that Wolniewicz’s position was founded on antinaturalism, i.e. the conviction that nature is a fragment of a larger reality while man partly transcends the natural reality. The second part of the article is an attempt at capturing the intuitions behind Wolniewicz’s idea of God as an impersonal power which is not identical with Providence though. It is argued that this view is a consequence of the characteristic traits of Wolniewicz’s personality. This explanation is consistent with Wolniewicz’s understanding of human nature. In the analysis that ensues reference is made to Wolniewicz’s private correspondence.
In the opinion of Bogusław Wolniewicz (1927–2017), Wittgenstein in his Tractatus presented a new metaphysics – a modern ‘metaphysics of facts’, in opposition to the traditional ‘metaphysics of substance’ (Aristotle) or to the ‘metaphysics of things’ (Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s ‘reism’). The new metaphysics describes, just like the old ones did, the structure of the world. First, it refers to the world as a whole, seeing in it an actualization of one of numerous possible worlds. It also refers to the elementary unit of world-structure, which is an ‘atomic fact’ (an independent unit, though at the same time not the simplest one, since it involves further ‘simple objects’). Those concepts of ‘world’, ‘atom’ and ‘possible beings’ make the system of Tractatus ‘metaphysics’, comparable to the Aristotle’s metaphysics of ‘form’ and ‘matter’. In Tractatus, the Aristotelian ‘matter’ turns into ‘simple objects’, while ‘form’ becomes a form of ‘fact’. In this view, the world is conceived as a set of facts and equals a particular choice made from the universe of possible situations. But one element is missing in Wittgenstein’s system, namely, the ‘efficient cause’ responsible for the choice of facts (actualization of possibilities). Leibniz believed there was a ‘sufficient reason’ why a particular choice was made among possible situations and one possible world has become real. This ‘sufficient reason’ finally turned out to be God’s rational will. In Wolniewicz’s late philosophy however, the ‘efficient cause’ is only ‘fate’ or ‘chance’ (τύχη). Fate is therefore the mysterious deus absconditus of Wittgenstein’s metaphysics.
The aim of the paper is to highlight St. Anselm’s way of thinking about nature and order in the world created by God. God for Anselm is the highest nature, one which exists most fully; He possesses the fullness of being, because His essence is identical to His existence. He is the cause of all existing things and does not have a cause Himself, for He exists per se. The order of nature may be observed in two ways: when departing from the diversity of existing beings and when considering these beings before their creation, existing in the divine intellect as ideas and models, after which God called into existence particular objects.
Edith Stein is a person who was born in the Jewish traditionally religious family. In her youth she lost her faith in God. However in her life she was seeking the truth. In this search she was very honest. The article first shows different definitions of truth. Then he takes the presentation of Edith Stein’s, the ways of phenomenological discov-ery of the truth about a human person. Finally, it shows her coming to the discovery of the God of Love, who has drawn her to mystical union in the spirituality of Carmel. Edith Stein died in the concentration camp in Auschwitz, experiencing the mystery of the Cross of Christ and sacrificing herself for her people.
The paper is a biblical-theological study that attempts to describe social groups which can be regarded as the poor in the light of teaching of Jesus . The study is based on the following biblical texts: Mk 1:15; cf . Mt 4:17; Lu 4:43, then Lk 4:18-19, Lk 6:20 and Mt 5:3 and several others. The poor of the Gospels are the first recipients of the kingdom of God. According to the author the evangelical poor have many different faces and also poverty has many dimensions. The first of all is the material lack and need. There are many other categories of poor people, for example those excluded from their social and religious position: widows and children, the little ones, am ha’aretz. Another category of the poor are the sick and suffering, sinners and the outlawed, men with an unclean spirit. All those people were the recipients and bene-ficiaries of the kingdom of God to come.
The foregoing article is an attempt at answering the question, whether Fiodor Sologub is rightly called a eulogist of evil and an apologist of devil, as well as a God-iconoclast. For this purpose the author is trying to revise the hitherto views concerning the fi gure of God in the lyric of the Russian poet. In the effect of conducted studies it was established that the myth of Sologub, “the literary Jack the Ripper”, functioning well until today was based on unjust and often prejudicial opinions of persons from the symbolist’s generation, as well as of the later experts in literature, who ascribed to them the “crimes” committed by the protagonists of his novels (sadism, erotomania, necrophilia and Satanism). The key problem of God-iconoclasty in turn, as it has been revealed, is connected with the issue of literary mask, a play with the reader. On one hand, the poet’s God-iconoclasty is an attempt of “getting inscribed” in the creative tendency that predominated in the Russian literature of that time (the “diabolic symbolism”), on the other – it constitutes one of the stages in looking for God and the development of lyrical “I”, carrying autobiographical traits.
This article presents the problem of understanding Heideggerian ‘turn’ (Kehre) in the context of the most important aspects of his later philosophy. Since Heidegger had written (secretly) Contributions to Philosophy, he departed from his original philosophical assumptions, which had been presented in Being and Time. Heidegger’s turn was conceived as a discovery of truth of Being, as a project of another beginning, as proper asking about Being as such, as well as a discovery of a hidden aspect of being that is revealed in an event (‘enowning’).
The topic „The Bible and Christian Morality" was thoroughly studied by the Papal Biblical Commission. The article's author presents the originality of this concept. He proves why we ought to speak of „revealed morality" and not about Gospel ethics, the writings of St. Paul or OT and NT ethics. Morality - as opposed to ethics - does not rely on freely accepted initial assumptions, but is man's response to the gifts received from God: creation, covenant and fullness of revelation in Christ. It brings to light the criteria resulting from the Bible itself, which contemporary Christians should apply when dealing with problems that contemporary sciences, techniques and culture present, but about which the inspired books do not directly speak of. He stresses that the Bible itself, revealing what is unique and which does not undergo discussion, at the same time calls the faithful of God to dialogue with the world in which we live, particularly with believers of other religions.
In the second half of the 19th century in the European culture appears an increased interest in evil. This phenomenon is widely spread particularly in France and England. In his famous volume of poems Les Fleurs du Mal Charles Baudelaire publishes The Litanies for Satan where the Devil replaces God as the addressee of a blasphemous prayer. Joris-Karl Huysmans, an author of the novel LB-bas, describes a black mess and a litany addressed to Satan who seems to be closer to sinful people than perfectly indifferent God. A poet from the Huysmans’ artictic circle, Édouard Dubus, devotes his litany to a „Lady of grace and immorality” – a blasphemous double of Mary, mother of Jesus. An English poet Charles Algernon Swinburne writes Dolores, a poem addressed to „Our Lady of Pain” and recognised as the apogee of the satanic litany. In all these cases the choice of a litany as a literary genre results in acceptance of a vision of the world broaden with spirituality. In spite of their seemingly blasphemous plots, all these texts express a deep hunger for the sacred – the hunger that could not be satisfied with official religion.
The ethics of ‘theistic absolute morality’ (TAM), as any other ethical theory, must offer a definition of good, describe the connection between good and duty, and provide an effective guidance to human conduct. In the ethics of TAM we find, in my rendering of its claims, an irremediably unsuccessful definition of good, permanently loose connection between moral value and moral duty, and irreparably limited practical efficacy. It is not surprising that it has to be so, as it is a common condition of all ethical systems. The TAM ethics suffers, however, additionally from a unique conceptual trouble, but that is a story I have told elsewhere.
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