Social Justice and Human Rights Conference

Social Justice and Human Rights. Organising Committee: Lambert Zuidervaart, Thomas Reynolds, Kathy Vandergrift, Shannon Hoff, Allyson Carr, Matthew Klaassen and Lyle Clark. April 2012.

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Social Justice and Human Rights was a two-day interdisciplinary, interreligious and cross-sectoral conference presented by the ICS Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics in partnership with Emmanuel College. Thirty-six presenters hosted seventeen sessions including keynote addresses by Nicholas Wolterstorff and Melissa Williams.

On (Not) Obeying the Sabbath: Reading Jesus Reading Scripture

Nik Ansell. “On (Not) Obeying the Sabbath: Reading Jesus Reading Scripture,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 33/2 (Fall 2011): 97–120

This essay examines the sabbath controversy of Mark 2:23-28 to see how Jesus faces the challenge of biblical interpretation as he models what it means for his disciples to image God in freedom. In dominant approaches to the Gospels, the interpretive process set in motion by this passage, which I characterize as ‘reading Scripture reading Jesus reading Scripture,’ is confined to its earlier stages—a reductionism that calls for hermeneutical reflection. If a narrative has a ‘life of its own’ beyond authorial intention (indispensable though the author may be), can we say the same about a character who is central to a narrative? If so, is ‘the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel’ ‘more than’ the ‘Markan Jesus’ of much scholarly concern? This essay seeks to develop an intertextual, Christocentric hermeneutic by attending to the implicit as well as explicit ways in which Jesus’ reading of Scripture takes place ‘within’ the Gospel narrative.

Sin Has Its Place, But All Shall Be Well: The Universalism of Hope in Julian of Norwich

Sweetman, Robert. "Sin Has Its Place, But All Shall Be Well: the Universalism of Hope in Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-c. 1416)." In "All Shall Be Well": Explorations in Universalism and Christian Theology from Origen to Moltmann, pp. 66-92. Ed. Gregory MacDonald. Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2011.

This study of the Shewings of Julian of Norwich explores the nature of the medieval anchoress’ “universalism.” It places the literary forms she used to contruct her text within the framework of medieval rhetorical theory. It does so in order to lay bear the fundamental dynamic of the text. She is not interested in providing our intellects a theodicy by which to fit all of the units of existence within a universal conceptual frame. Rather, she is interested in providing just that basis of plausibility which can ground and so enable hope’s characteristic motion. And Christian hope as she shows is universal in its extension even as graced will is measureless.

Faith Order Understanding: Natural Theology in the Augustinian Tradition - Foreword

Sweetman, Robert. "Foreword." In Faith Order Understanding: Natural Theology in the Augustinian Tradition, by Louis H. Mackey, pp. xi-xxiii. Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies Publications, 2011.

This piece attempts to locate the posthumously published study of natural theology in the Augustinian tradition which follows it within the life work of the American historian of philosophy Louis H. Mackey. It places the study within Mackey’s lifelong attraction to the Augustinian tradition both in its theological and philosophical expressions. It accounts for his attraction in terms of the light that tradition shines on the intersection of philosophy and literature in and through the self-consciously literary way it works with the relationship between language, meaning and reality. It is in this way that the tradition participates in the perennial dialectic of faith and reason. The study shows how Mackey uses the medieval chapters of the Augustinian tradition to identify an “anatomy” of the as yet unbroken tradition within Western philosophy, an anatomy that one finds again in his other philosophical interests: Kierkegaard and Derrida.