Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Ecumenical dialogue and reconciliation among Christians, the dictates of academic freedom, and the very integrity of science and faith call for a new conceptual framework, episteme or paradigm for understanding the phenomenon of man, including the proper relationship between science and faith. Both science and Scripture suggest a more humane, charitable, and open-ended approach to science and religion. Freedom of inquiry and Christian charity constitute the essential prerequisites for a new episteme reflected by the imperative for a Second Reformation in the religious sphere, coupled with the prospects for a post-Kantian Second Copemican Revolution in the scientific sphere.

From roughly the 16th century onwards, religiously oriented persons have engaged in what might appear to be a losing battle against the scientific community. With each new success of scientific explanation, religious traditionalists have been forced to either renounce or radically reinterpret doctrines which were previously regarded as "factual descriptions" of the way the world is. The situation just described has been changed by recent advances in the philosophy of science. The present view of the status of scientific explanation as found in such thinkers as Feyerabend, Goodman, and Von Fraasen is a far cry from the 17th-19th century respresentational realism. This raises the possibility that we need to reassess the relationship of religious assertions to scientific assertions.

There are many similarities between the Christian concept of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Stoic concept of internal events, the Hebrew concept of 'awon (sin, punishment), and the existential concept of bad faith. All of these evidence a concern for an internalization of sin or bad faith, which is more common in Eastern than Western religions. These four views are contrasted with the English concept synne which represents the Western extemalization of sin or bad faith. This existential interpretation includes an exploration of 'awon in the Cain and Abel story as well as several reflections concerning the difference between bad faith and good faith.

Anknüpfend an die erkenntnistheoretische und naturwissenschaftliche Krise stellt Karl Heim die Frage nach der Glauhensgewissheit: Die erkenntnistheoretische Unlösbarkeit der Frage nach der letiten, weltbewegenden Machtjuhrt alle Weltanschauungen in eine Aporie und stellt vor ein letztes "Entweder-Oder." Der Aufweis eines wirklichkeitsbestimmenden, nichtgegenständlichen Raumes und innerweltlicher Transzendenzverhältnisse eröffnet ein dynamisches Weltbild, innerhalb dessen der metaphysisch transzendente Daseinsraum Gottes die Wirklichkeit dimensional durchdringt (Allgegenwart), In scharfem Gegensatz zur menschlichen Selbstbestimmung im deutschen Idealismus wird Christi Herrschervollmacht herausgearbeitet, die einziges Fundament für menschliches Handeln ist: Als Offenbarer des Vaters besiegte Er in Tod und Auferstehung die widergöttlichen Mächte als die Verursacher alter Sunde.

The barriers that exist between theistic and non-theistic scholars, as well as between Christians and non-Christians, are a double tragedy. On the one hand, such barriers deprive both of the valuable contributions that each might make to the other. On the other hand, they contribute to the already devastating effects of the contentions and conflicts that exist in the pursuit of truth. This article analyzes the problem as to its fundamental causes, and offers recommendations as to its resolution.

This essay traces the development of the idea of religious liberty from its origins among the "Commonwealthmen" in seventeenth-century England to its embodiment in the United States Constitution. The Commonwealthmen believed that the theory of natural law-natural rights guaranteed civil liberties, including religious liberty, and that these natural rights should be protected by the state. The Commonwealthmen also believed in a fundamental constitution derived from the people rather than the state, and the concept of individual sovereignty.

This essay focuses on the attempts to give institutional expression to religion. It surveys various solutions articulated by theorists, ancient and modem, to address the sometimes uneasy relationship between religion and the polity. The emphasis then shifts to the statesmen-theoreticians who gave constitutional form to the American regime. The experiments contained in the early state constitutions are the primary focus. Contemporary expositions of American civil religion are viewed in light of the founding experience.

This essay offers a critical reinterpretation of Edward Bellamy's Utopian novel. Looking Backward, that focuses on the moral destructiveness of industrial capitalism, Bellamy's attempt to restore Christian values and republican traditions led him to confront his own religious upbringing revolting against harsh Calvinism as well as the feminization of Protestantism. These theological dilemmas were compounded by both his belief that the Church was corrupted by the dictates of the capitalists and his need to find a spiritual relation between the individual and the infinite outside the Church. He reached a resolution to his spiritual consternation through his fiction, most forcefully in Looking Backward, which approximated a new "Bible" for industrial America.

Now the rallying cry of resurgent democratic movements throughout the Soviet Empire, the riggt of national self-determination was first articulated in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the League of Nations Covenant. Wilson's goals in defining the concept were to rejuvenate Western capitalism and liberalism, in order to ensure both justice and economic progress; and to offer a viable ideological alternative to revolutionary Russia. Wilson's policies sprang from a rejection of determinism; his views of Christian principles; and his admiration for the reforms of English Methodism. Through the concept of self-determination, Wilson brought a concern for social justice into the management of the international state system.

Before the advent of the Moral Majority, fundamentalists were noted for their absence from the socio-political arena. Though there were sporadic attempts, no fundamentalist social action organization had been successful until the Moral Majority came on the scene in 1979. Are Moral Majoritarians bothered by their recent involvement in social activism? What kinds of social action behaviors are they more likely to engage in? A questionnaire was sent to a random sample of Moral Majoritarians in a Midwestern Chapter to shed light on social action involvement It found that Moral Majoritarians prefer safe, democratic social behaviors to more radical actions, and that evangelism still takes priority over social activism.

This article examines the Christian factor as it relates to the socio-political responsibility and development in Nigeria, and postulates that the Churches in Nigeria fall into two major categories in relation to the state: Identificationism and Isolationism. The study contends that in order to adequately assess the specific roles the Churches play in nation-building, an institutional and functional definition of the Church is necessary. It concludes that the Churches do have a role to play in shaping the future of a nation, including prophetic referee, historico-cultural integrator, moral role model, social mobilizer, and spiritual and vocational mentor.