New online publication:

Macrina Magazine: Fresh Philosophical Engagements with an Ancient Faith

Macrina Magazine is an online Christian philosophical journal that offers readers a platform to explore faith, politics, and culture critically and creatively. We seek to offer a respite for overstimulated yet undernourished minds that are hungry for more substantial reflection than the twenty-four-hour news cycle can provide regarding our world and how we ought to live in it. By featuring diverse and engaging content we hope to enable readers to engage with intentionality, thoughtfulness, and charity – both as thinkers as well as people of faith.

“The arrival of Macrina Magazine is exciting and welcome. It offers a vital new space between unmediated mass trivialisation on the one hand and the increasingly dead hand of academia on the other, locked into excessive mediating processes and specialisations. The role of bold independent editorship is here being reinvented to the benefit of both real intellectual life and a more widely-diffused culture.” — John Milbank

“How delightful to see a new journal dedicated to genuinely fascinating topics, prosecuted with such imagination and creativity.” — David B. Hart

“Macrina Magazine offers serious, creative, and accessible engagement with a wealth of texts critical to reflecting on Christian life.” — Natalie Carnes

Visit Macrina Magazine on Facebook and Twitter.

Law vs Milbank: Belief and the Gods, pt. 4:
John Milbank: “In comparing the finite and the infinite, paradox is a powerful tool.”

Previous posts in this series:

Law vs Milbank: Belief and the Gods, pt. 1:
Stephen Law: “Philosophy should side with science in the fight against religion.”

Law vs Milbank: Belief and the Gods, pt. 2:
John Milbank: “There is more to reality than can be seen from the lab and armchair.”

Law vs Milbank: Belief and the Gods, pt. 2:
“There is more to reality than can be seen from the lab and armchair.”

On the referendum of July 5, the Greek polity was asked whether they were prepared to surrender the anti-austerity policy agenda of their Syriza led government in order to get more loans. The Greeks answered this question with an emphatic OXI (NO). Prior to the referendum Yanis Varoufakis, then the Minister for Finance, argued that the stronger the NO vote, the more bargaining power the Greek government would have with her creditors to seek a viable re-structure of Greece’s debt. Surely, Mr Varoufakis seemed to believe, the Eurogroup would not shamelessly ride rough shod over a decisive expression of the political voice of a sovereign European state. Mr Varoufakis also claimed that the refusal of Eurozone financial institutions to extend normal operational terms to the Greek banks for the week prior to the referendum was an overt act of national intimidation, intending to influence the outcome of the referendum towards a YES vote. Mr Varoufakis implied that the anything but subtle subtext of this actions was ‘play by our rules or else we will kill your banks, and then what will you do?’ Before the referendum Alexis Tsipras also urged the Greek people to vote NO as a display of national pride in the face of the creditors demands for humiliating and damaging austerity terms.

[…]

Click here to read the rest.

• Philosophy Infographics: History of Philosphy & History of Eastern Philososphy.
• Video of faculty panel on war with Dean Hays, Professors Amy Laura Hall and Stanley Hauerwas.
• There’s currently an opening for Lecturer in the Study of Religion at Durham University. Closing date is 15 December 2014.
• For those with a political theology focus, there’s also an opening for Duncan Forrester CTPI Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh [source].
• From Eerdmans Publishing: “Five Great New Books for AAR & SBL 2014.” [source]
• Tijdschrift voor Theologie: Essay Prize for Theology and Contemporary Culture 2014 (deadline 1 April 2015). [source]
• New Journal to launch in 2015: International Journal of Christianity and Education (a merging/incorporation of Journal of Education & Christian Belief + Journal of Christian Education).

Know of anything else news-worthy that we should know about? If so, please submit it through our News Submission form here.

Click here to read the TRS’s Newsletter 2013-14 [PDF].

“Globalized, modern societies are characterized by their inability to reconcile the seemingly black and white univocity of scientific rationality with the ambiguous equivocity of post-modern pop-culture. This is not, however, despite its modern dimensions, a new development. It can be argued (as my new book, The Analogical Turn: Rethinking Modernity with Nicholas of Cusa, does) that this impasse between science and culture originated in the Early Renaissance. But this is only half of the story that needs to be told, since Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) also developed an alternative vision of the Age to Come. In contrast to his mainstream contemporaries, his appreciation of individual subjectivity and scientific rationality was deeply rooted in the analogical rationality of the Middle Ages, making him especially relevant for our time. […]”

Read the rest here.

• Richard Bell
• Agata Bielik-Robson
• Carly Crouch
• Conor Cunningham
• Mary Cunningham
• Roland Deines
• Alan Ford
• Philip Goodchild
• Jon Hoover
• Karen Kilby
• Frances Knight
• Alison Milbank
• John Milbank
• Simon Oliver
• Tom O’Loughlin
• Holger Zelentin

Psychology Request for Proposals (RFP)

Psychology RFP Director: Tania Lombrozo, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

This $1.2 million dollar RFP is intended to support empirical work in psychology on the nature and varieties of human understanding. We anticipate applicants from cognitive, social, and developmental psychology, but will consider additional subfields as well. Interdisciplinary teams that include members from other areas, especially philosophy or theology, are encouraged, but collaborative and interdisciplinary proposals are not required.

Proposals can request between $50,000 and $225,000 for projects not to exceed two years in duration. We intend to make 7-8 awards.

Download a copy of the Psychology RFP [PDF]

Philosophy RFP

Philosophy RFP Director: Michael Strevens, Professor of Philosophy, New York University

This $500,000 RFP is intended to support work in philosophy and related areas on the nature and varieties of human understanding. We anticipate applications from philosophers working in the philosophy of science and epistemology, but welcome applicants from other areas including aesthetics, the philosophy of social science, and ethics. Interdisciplinary teams that include members from other areas, especially psychology or theology, are encouraged, but collaborative and interdisciplinary proposals are not required.

Proposals can request between $40,000 and $100,000 for projects not to exceed one year in duration. We intend to make 7-8 awards.

Download a copy of the Philosophy RFP [PDF]

Theology RFP

Theology RFP Director: Gordon Graham, Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts, Princeton Theological Seminary

This $250,000 RFP is intended to support work in theology and related areas on the nature and varieties of religious understanding. We anticipate applications from scholars working in theology, religious studies, and the philosophy of religion, but welcome applications on this topic from other fields as well. Interdisciplinary teams that include members from other areas, especially psychology, are encouraged, but collaborative and interdisciplinary proposals are not required.

Proposals can request between $40,000 and $100,000 for projects not to exceed one year in duration. We intend to make 3-4 awards.

Download a copy of the Theology RFP [PDF]

[Source: http://varietiesofunderstanding.com/researchGrants.html]

• The future of love: The erotic politics of Benedict XVI, by John Milbank
• Pope Benedict XVI: God’s Rottweiler or the Church’s German shepherd?, by Tracey Rowland
• Analysis: What is the role of a modern pope?, by Simon Oliver and Samuel Kimbriel

Wednesday 10th October 2012

In the first address by an Archbishop of Canterbury to the Synod of Bishops in Rome, Archbishop Rowan Williams spoke about the profound connection between contemplation and the task of evangelisation, saying it “must be rooted in a profound confidence that we have a distinctive human destiny to show and share with the world”.

The address may be read here.

[Link]

This week, the Australasian Philosophy of Religion Association convenes its annual conference, hosted by the Australian Catholic University, on the topic “Religious Diversity and Its Philosophical Significance.” Thinkers from both Continental and Analytic traditions – including Kevin Hart, Constant Mews, Marilyn Adams and Richard Kearney – will be involved in this major event.

For philosophers of religion, “religious diversity” has been a significant topic for some time. Questions such as whether the phenomenon of religious diversity entails “inclusivism” – the recognition of the validity of diverse religious paths – or, alternatively, whether or how one would be justified in holding to a traditional religious “exclusivism” – for which one religion (one’s own) possesses the universal truth – are commonly asked.

Similarly pressing questions are unavoidable – such as, whether proselytism is a justifiable practice given the impossibility of “proving” the truth of religious faith, or whether religious diversity is possible, or (for the more optimistic) how it is possible, in secular liberal democracies without destroying either the religions themselves or our political order.

These are, of course, important questions. But are they posed in an adequate way? Suppose for a moment that Socrates was right, that the way questions are posed tells us the most important things about the answers that we seek. Questions already imply how the question itself will be answered, precisely because they contain the field of possibilities by which the question can be answered.  […]

Click here to read the rest.

Let me lay my cards on the table. The conversation between science and theology has been hijacked by a restrictive naturalism, which rests on an impoverished understanding of science, one that is underwritten by an atrophied imagination, and that leaves us bereft of nature.

I’ll explain what I mean. Generally speaking, there are two types of naturalism: methodological and ontological. The former is the approach that science must take when it engages with the universe insofar as it will fail to make any progress unless it brackets the divine. The latter holds that bracketing the divine is not merely methodologically necessary but constitutive of reality as such.

Click here to read the rest.

It is one of the most basic tenets of liberal belief that most people were bored out of their minds for most of human history. Before there were cinemas, art exhibitions, concerts, wine-bars, public gyms, internet sites and a variety of ethnic restaurants, there was basically nothing to do – except of course suffer pain, which was more or less continuous. […]

Click here to read the rest.

As the leaders of the G20 met in the luxury resort of Cannes on the French Riviera, popular outrage and protest movements were spreading across the globe.

From Occupy Wall Street to the camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, the protesters express a deep-seated anger aimed at global finance that is shared by ordinary people and certain elites alike.

Across the globe there is an implicit, inchoate sense that big business and big government have colluded at the expense of the people. Both centralised states and free markets are disembedded from society, and society is subjugated by the global market-state.

Through local vassals like the City of London Corporation, it subordinates social to commercial purpose, as Blue Labour’s Maurice Glasman has argued.

And so global finance has become disconnected from ethical or social goals, while governments of both the Left and the Right have either replaced mutualist arrangements among workers with centralised, bureaucratic welfare, or outsourced the delivery of public goods to private service providers – or, indeed, both.

Collusion between big government and big business has generated a system that privatises profit, nationalises losses and socialises risk. From the very outset, the global economic turmoil was merely a symptom of a much larger moral crisis.

Thus far the expressions of anger are as diverse as the demonstrators’ demands are vague. That is why the call by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for a new debate on specific action is so important.

Read the rest here.

In honor of National Nutrition Awareness Month, Amy Warriner, M.D., director of UAB Weight Loss Medicine and professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, and Lizzy Davis, Ph.D., assistant professor with the UAB Department of Nutrition Sciences, share their top five tips for maintaining a healthy diet.

Choosing the right foods

It is important to choose foods for their nutrient content most of the time. Similarly, Warriner recommends choosing food for enjoyment only some of the time.

“It is important to know what nutrients are in foods and how to work those foods into your daily diet,” Warriner said. “If you do not know how to do this, talking with a registered dietitian can be very helpful.”

Davis says food is used more than just to sustain life — it is tied to culture, feelings, community, memories and more.

“For these reasons, it should be enjoyed some of the time,” Davis said. “Most of the time, choose foods that are nutrient-dense, meaning they provide a lot of nutrients for each serving size.” Try out this best testosterone booster.

Amy Warriner, M.D.,
Photography: Chris CarmichaelSome examples include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, peas, beans and nuts.

“Typically, foods that are closer to their natural form are going to be nutrient-dense,” Davis said.

No food is bad food

There are no specific foods that you should or should not eat to be healthy. Balance is necessary, and all is OK in moderation and with balance.

“If you are eating a diet full of healthy vegetables and lean proteins, eating a treat every now and again is not harmful,” Warriner said. “Alternatively, if you are eating fast food for most meals, adding a protein shake is not going to make you healthier.” Visit phenq website.

Increase vegetable intake in your diet

Warriner says increasing the number of vegetables you eat is something most people struggle with. The recommended intake for vegetables is five to nine servings a day. Davis says roughly 9 percent of adults meet intake recommendations for vegetables.

“Try sneaking this in for breakfast and snacks, as typically these are eating times people aren’t consuming vegetables,” Davis said. “Mix a variety of vegetables in with your eggs, throw some in your hash browns, or sneak some into your muffin or pancake batter.”

Lizzy Davis, Ph.D.,
Photography: Lexi CoonPortion control is essential

Even if you are making healthy choices, you can eat too much of a good thing.

“Serve up one serving size at a time,” Davis said. “When you have a stopping point — besides the bottom of the bag, you make your brain stop and ask, ‘am I still hungry’? You can always go back for more if you want to.”

Do not give in to gimmicks

“If there were a miracle diet/supplement/vitamin, you wouldn’t be learning about it from social media first,” Warriner said.

Instead, she recommends using your money to buy nutritious meals.

UAB has several resources for healthy eating and weight loss; the provides many services for those looking to lose and maintain weight, such as visits with physicians and nurse practitioners, visits with dietitians, meal plans, and more. Call 205-934-7053 to schedule an appointment.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today awarded the 2011 Michael Ramsey prize to ‘Atheist Delusions’ by David Bentley Hart at a gala lunch at the Telegraph Hay festival.

Speaking about the winning entry, Dr Williams said it “takes no prisoners in its response to fashionable criticisms of Christianity”.

On receiving the prize David B. Hart said:

“Needless to say the honour is very great. For me, it lies especially in the name of the prize – as I have such a high regard for Michael Ramsey – and in its being conferred by the current Archbishop of Canterbury – whose work is among the richest theology being written in English today”.

For the full story, please click here.

The Flickr photo set of the event may be found here.