Van Paul

In this contribution it will be demonstrated, on the basis of two treatises in St Augustine’s In lohannis euangelium tractatus centum viginti quatuor, that Augustine, precursor of the later negative theology, sees the awareness of human consciousness as the prelude to the realisation that God is incomprehensible. His reflections on human consciousness as the seat of God, in their turn, form the prelude to reflections on two types of inadequacy of human intelligence. In Tractatus 1 he first reduces this inadequacy to the need people feel to see God as all too human, and exactly therefore refuse to appreciate Him as the Incomprehensible One. He regards this as reprehensible and he attributes this attempt to certain heresies. In addition the cognitive capacity of inspired men like St John is inadequate, because they too are caught in the limitations of the concrete dimensions of time and space inherent in their existence on earth. They are not reprehensible, however. Augustine also expands the awareness of God’s incomprehensibility by emphasizing that God cannot possibly be grasped conceptually by means of words. He takes great pains to evoke some kind of consciousness of God as the Word, by making use of comparisons, but these attempts are structurally embedded in reflections on the incomprehensibility of God, precisely as the Word, not to be compared with a human, spoken, transient word. Nevertheless, in accordance with a principle, already recognized in De ordine, Augustine emphasizes that, on the authority of St John however incomprehensible the Word that is God may be for him, the Word made flesh, Who dwelt among us, is very near indeed. Also in Tractatus I and II of In lohannis euangelium tractatus Augustine tries to find a language evoking God’s incomprehensibility by reminding us that the experience of God is an experience that is in perfect contrast with a sensual experience; it is a counter-experience that cannot possibly be grasped in concepts. At the same time he tries to see the Incarnation as an appeal to become as humble as God Himself.

The article deals with the violence applied to the Donatists, trying to answer three questions. The first is the about the development that Augustine experienced which finally led him to approve violence against the Donatists and to adopt the coge intrare as his device. The second question deals with the function Augustine envisaged for the use of violence and coercion in the process of returning heretics to the Catholic Church. Finally it traces the general and fundamental principles in Augustine’s way of thinking on violence. For this third question the article considers Augustine’s passages on coercion and violence in texts in which he speaks about administration of justice and medicine, and about the role of God at the Last Judgment.

The Birthpangs of a discipline? is a lengthy review of the recent standard work on spirituality by K. Waaijman, Spirituality. Forms, Foundations, Methods . After an outline of the book, the authors present some comments. The most important points are the following four. The forms of spirituality are divided in three classes: lay spirituality, the spirituality of the schools and counter-movements. The authors praise this division, but have some doubts about the way it is used. Waaijman doesn’t always indicate where his own voice is heard and where he quotes people from other times or persuasions. This tends to alineate the reader from the text. Waaijman tries to keep theology at a distance from spirituality. His definition of spirituality mentions a certain reciprocity between God and man. That is unusual in the three monotheistic religions. Doesn’t, furthermore, the word ‘God’ exclude people who look for a non- or post-theistic spirituality? These criticisms notwithstanding, the authors conclude that Waaijman has laid a solid foundation for the scientific study of spirituality

In the last decade, a number of studies in the behavioural sciences, particularly in psychology and economics, have explored the complexity of individual risk behaviour and its underlying factors. Most previous studies have examined the influences of various socio-economic, cognitive, biological and psychological factors on human decision-making however, the relationship between the decision-makers’ risk preferences and occupational background has not received much empirical attention. Accordingly, in the current study, we investigated how occupational background, together with decision-making framing (e.g., variations in decision domain, context, presentation of risk and utility ratios), influence participants’ risk preferences for decision options with equivalent expected utility. Our novel findings indicate that risk preferences may vary among individuals from different occupational backgrounds. As such, when the task was framed in gain terms, participants who mostly deal with health/safety-related risks on a day-to-day basis (high-risk occupations) were predominantly risk-averse (avoiding risky options), while participants who mostly deal with financial/social risks (white-collar occupations) were prone to risk-seeking behaviour (avoiding certain options). Specifically, in “high-risk” occupations, participants’ pattern of choices changed from risk-averse in gain scenarios to risk-seeking in loss scenarios. However, the opposite pattern of risk preferences was found in participants with “white-collar” occupations. Our findings indicate that decision-makers’ occupational backgrounds influence risk preferences under some circumstances.

Towards the end of a ramble: transfer of knowledge, embracing values and the teaching profession according to Augustine In this article the first traces of Augustine’s desire to be not only a teacher but also, in conjunction with this, a writer of protreptics are pointed out in his Soliloquia and his De catechizandis rudibus. Protrepsis and first catechesis need to coincide. In De catechizandis rudibus, he advised deacon Deogratias to clarify the Last Judgement and the resurrection of the body. These two doctrines were both a pièce de resistance for pagans, and therefore also for rudes. The choice of these doctrines demonstrates Augustine’s attempt to have the deacon adopt a protreptic approach in his first catechesis – possibly without Deogratias even knowing it himself. There was no chance that the beginners would already be truly acquainted with these essential aspects of the Christian view of the world and of the future. As it turns out, the line between protrepsis and catechesis is a very fine one in this case.

In this paper we discuss the epistemological positions of evolution theories. A sharp distinction is made between the theory that species evolved from common ancestors along specified lines of descent , and the theories intended as causal explanations of evolution . The theory of common descent permits a large number of predictions of new results that would be improbable without evolution. For instance, phylogenetic trees have been validated now; the observed order in fossils of new species discovered since Darwin's time could be predicted from the theory of common descent; owing to the theory of common descent, the degrees of similarity and difference in newly discovered properties of more or less related species could be predicted. Such observations can be regarded as attempts to falsify the theory of common descent. We conclude that the theory of common descent is an easily-falsifiable & often-tested & still-not-falsified theory, which is the strongest predicate a theory in an empirical science can obtain. Theories intended as causal explanations of evolution can be falsified essentially, and Lamarck's theory has been falsified actually. Several elements of Darwin's theory have been modified or falsified: new versions of a theory of evolution by natural selection are now the leading scientific theories on evolution. We have argued that the theory of common descent and Darwinism are ordinary, falsifiable scientific theories