This study aimed to compare measures of religiosity and spirituality in the experience of positive and negative emotions. For this purpose, a measure of non-spiritual religiosity (Religious Sense Scale) was developed. Method: The study has been conducted on a sample of 279 participants aged between 19 and 69 (M=24.42, SD=9.463) who completed a questionnaire that included the Religious Sense Scale, the Portuguese version of the Spiritual Well-being Questionnaire and the abridged Portuguese version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Findings: The was found to have excellent metrical properties for the measurement of religiosity or “religious sense”. Religious individuals differ from spiritual ones in the experience of emotions: spirituality tends to a greater experience of positive affect and religiosity to negative affect.
The aim of this article is to answer the question, “How Philaret Drozdov understood God’s holiness and human holiness and how both the ideas were displayed in his writings?” The research material constitutes selected homilies and a catechism. In the first place, the author discusses the definition of holiness and its understanding by the Orthodox Church with regard to the issue of deification. Also, he familiarizes the reader with the concept of holiness in its various aspects. Subsequently, the homilies and the catechism of Philaret Drozdov are analysed. The article shows the Moscow Metropolitan’s beliefs about the essence of human holiness as well as about the eschatological dimension of temporality and the pneumatological aspect of holiness, the issue of grace and a human seen as a vessel of God’s energy. The author proves that the Moscow Metropolitan continued in his works the traditions of the Church Fathers and creatively developed the most important assumptions of Orthodox anthropology and soteriology and, hence enriching Russian spiritual thought.
The author puts forward a hypothesis related to the interpretation of the thought of Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI on the interrelation of time and eternity. Different religions offer different ways of departing temporality - the way of being within the confines of time - towards some extratemporal existence, commonly referred to as eternity or immortality. This perspective evokes a fundamental question: if time wants to reach beyond itself towards eternity, is it that eternity - in its turn - stays in a kind of interrelation to time, or is it a kind of negative atemporality? In its view of the matter, Christianity makes a clear statement that God has power over time, which implies that God participates in the temporal reality. This participation manifests itself overtly through the Incarnation of the Son of God. Consequently, this participation shows that man takes part in the eternity of God. In this sense, a Christian reaches eternity through his/her existence in the Person of the Resurrected Jesus. This ability to eternally remain in Jesus rests on the immortal element of the human being - that is his/her spiritual soul. The soul opens a path towards salvation and the relational eternity, that is a relationship of a Christian person with the Son of God and through Him with God as Trinitary Love. This is how Christianity – while respecting the linear nature of time – promotes a positive cyclical (yet not a reiterative) concept of time, which manifests itself in the exitus - reditus relationship. Exitus is an autonomous act of God’s creation, while reditus - is a human self-sacrifice as exemplified by the Son of God. Jesus’ self-sacrifice to God the Father is a model of how time can be projected onto a new way of existence: eternity. Therefore, Christ brings time to its fullness. His Event marks the beginning of eternity for the faithful
The new challenges for Polish theology in the beginning of the 21st c. in the context of possession and exorcism include a theological reflection on possession and exorcism in the Bible, in patristic texts as well as in medieval and modern theological literature. Another issue is an elaboration of a new theological anthropology, which should acknowledge the achievements of human sciences like psychology and psychiatry. The existence of the psychic sphere in the human being is to be distinguished while the human spiritual sphere is to be convincingly justified. More precise criteria will be needed in order to distinguish psychic problems from those of a spiritual nature, including possession.
In the article an attempt is made to analyze the aspects of non-dogmatic spirituality of characters in the prose works of Ukrainian postm odernists (including Yuriy Andrukhovych, Oksana Zabuzhko, Yuriy Izdryk, Natalia Sniadanko). The theoretical aspects of problem are considered in the context of analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. The following concepts play an important role in the study: religious position, father complex, conflict and some others.
Since Vatican II there have been issued many Church documents of different rank, which are explicitly devoted to dialogue with non-Christian religions or contain statements on the matter; there is also a very comprehensive bibliography on interreligious dialogue. The article presents three issues which occupy a signifcant place in these works. The frst is the theological bases for dialogue. They have been expressed in the trinitarian structure. At the heart of the dialogue is faith in God, the creator and father of all people, in the Son, through whom universal salvation took place and the Spirit, which everywhere personifes the salvation work of God in three persons. The second issue, which is the content of the article, expresses a unique position of Judaism in dialogue of Christianity with other religions. The importance of Israel for the emergence and existence of the Church, and at the same time for her salvation role for the entire Jewish people, is an important spur to the refection on the salvation relationship of christianity to other religions. The dialogue is diffcult to operate without a proper spiritual attitude. This issue is the subject of interest of the third point in the article. Spirituality shaped by attitudes of conversion and submission to the will of God, especially in the prayerful elation of the human heart, becomes a source of behaviours which are conducive to dialogue.
The writings of Lyudmila Ulitskaya, one of the most popular contemporary Russian novelists, attracts lots of attention from both Russian and foreign literary critics and scholars. The author’s popularity is also confirmed by the fact that her works have been translated into more than 20 different languages. The main goal of this article is to provide an analysis of the spiritual dimension of the novel The Kukotsky Enigma. At its very essence, the main subject of the study is the plot, which focuses on the anthropological aspect in the context of the transcendental dimension as such, hagiographic motifs and biblical metaphorics. The article also discusses the synthetism of genetic elements appearing in the novel that allowed the writer to combine Christian, mythopoeic, axiological, soteriological and theological contexts. Furthermore, an attempt was made to analyse the characters, considering spiritual and moral values they represent. The intersection of two spheres – the Sacred and the profane – together with the loci associated with them constitute additional object of the research.
This paper not only clarifies the concepts of secularism and secularization, but also analyzes them, and in its final part it evaluates them. The phenomenon of secu-larism is defined as an ideological and active attitude of hostility toward everything that is Christian. In turn, secularism, quite strongly associated with the current form of culture of societies and their development, is seeking autonomy and freedom. Rad-ical (sometimes irresponsible) secularization thesis of the Protestant (R. Bultmann, K. Barth, D. Bonhoeffer, E. Fuchs, F. Gogarten, G. Vahanian, P. van Buren, W. Ham-ilton, Th . J. Alitzer, J.A.T. Robinson, D. Sölle, W. Pannenberg) mind has been adopted by most Catholic theologians with a reasonable reserve. Catholic doctrine accepts the autonomy of temporal realities and a specifically understood process of profanation of the world (constructio mundi and consecratio mundi). However, the fact that different sectors of earthly life are governed by their own relevant laws, does not mean that the created things are totally independent of God, or that man can dispose of them freely and without any relation to the Creator (K. Rahner, J. B. Metz, P. Teilhard de Chardin, M. D. Chenu, J. Danielou, G. Thils, Ch. Duquoc, J. Maritain, H. de Lubac, Y. Congar, Cz. Bartnik, A. Skowronek, A. Nossol, J. Mariański). The position of the Catholic Church on this matter is contained in the conciliar Constitution Gaudium et Spes.
This article attempts to follow the dynamic process of body communication between the characters of Juliusz Słowacki's Samuel Zborowski (1845, published 1903). An analysis of some passages at the beginning of the drama and in the penultimate act indicates that in the world of the drama the body functions as a medium and body language is at least as important as the spoken word; or, to be more precise, the two types of communication complement one another. In the encounter between Eolion and the Maiden the bodies act as repositories of spiritual memory (a key idea of Słowacki's Genesian philosophy) and can trigger the process of anamnesis, which combines elements of heterosexual eroticism and the affective touch of physical interaction. Moreover, the ensuing scene of judgment hints at a nostalgic relationship between the spirit and the body, the latter acting as a guarantor of a coherent identity, though to some extent undermined by the new model of polyphonic identity. Finally, these scenes are analyzed from the point of view of the performative-persuasive functions of the body.