The hinc et nunc of moral theology: Francisco de Vitoria’s lesson and the missionary experience*

In the sixteenth century, as moral theology was being consolidated as an autonomous academic discipline, theologians at the University of Salamanca, including the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, began to incorporate current moral and political issues into their teaching agendas. Prominent among these issues were those arising out of the conquest of the Americas. Their students, a generation of university-trained missionaries, then went to work in Spanish possessions in the Americas and the Philippines. These missionaries and men of learning included the Augustinians Alonso de la Veracruz (in Mexico) and Martín de Rada (in the Philippines and China). As their world expanded, Vitoria's teachings were rendered fully intelligible in the confusing reality of the colonial enterprise, and these missionaries struggled to apply his lessons to the questions of conscience they encountered. The result can be considered a new chapter in the relationship between theological knowledge, the production of facts, and moral certainty, all against the backdrop of the territorial and economic expansion of Spain.     

河南汉代陶阙及相关问题

本文依据已发表的考古学资料,对河南出土的汉代陶阙进行了分类分期研究,并对其中一类陶阙在汉墓中的位置、寓意、双阙中间的“罘罳”及其上面的浮雕像内容进行了探讨。     

The Conflict between Traditional Christian Churches in Ukraine as a Conflict of Identities: Where to Search for the Prospects of Reconciliation? A Reflection in the Light of the Theories of Paul Ricoeur and John Paul Lederach

Abstract

After the independence of Ukraine in 1991 there emerged or re-emerged four churches that derive their roots from ancient Kyiv Christianity. Those churches conflict with each other, the main cause of the split and tensions being the issue of cultural and social–political identities in the country. Such conflicting narrative identities have to be reconciled by the mutual recognition of their diversity when churches in Ukraine want to become a real force for transformation in society. Among the different models of the search for rapprochement in this article I refer to the theories of Paul Ricoeur and John Paul Lederach. According to the ethics of memory of Paul Ricoeur, traditional Ukrainian churches should abandon endless circles of melancholia about their losses and create new identities through the process of mourning. Because the tensions among traditional Christian denominations in Ukraine are not likely to be solved by institutional measures as history proves, churches should concentrate their efforts on working on social and relational platforms. Here I refer to the ethics of moral imagination of John Paul Lederach that envisions focusing the reconciliatory activities on locations of interaction between people that should finally contribute to the rapprochement.     

Epistemic Ignorance and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–1966: Righting the Wrongs of the Past and the Role of Faith Community

ABSTRACT

This study demonstrates how ignorance works in the Indonesian massacres of 1965–1966. This atrocity, which claimed roughly five hundred thousand lives, is one of the most forgotten human tragedies of the twentieth century. For many years, the massacres were hidden from public view. Ignorance was reinforced by the New Order under the presidency of Suharto. Drawing on contemporary political philosophers’ studies on the epistemology of ignorance, I contend that ignorance, like knowledge, has structures, criteria, and practices. Ignorance, thus, is not merely a “lack of knowledge” or a state of not knowing, but epistemic and political. By appropriating the epistemology of ignorance, I seek to show how the Indonesian people remember the historical wrongs and how Christian theology provides resources for right remembrance. To confront the epistemic ignorance of the Indonesian mass killings, I argue that the churches must assert their identity as the community of memory and lament.