NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 56, Issue 4, 2002

In the continuous riots between the late antique and Byzantine circus factions of the Blues and the Greens, the Jews always side with the Blues and the Greens invariably seem to engage in anti-Jewish actions. However, the sources never indicate the reasons and causes for this partisanship. After having collected the evidence, the author tries to shed some light on this problem with the help of social science theories on group conflict.

In most commentaries and other studies Isa. 2:1-5 is considered as a unity. The message of salvation for the nations in Jerusalem results in an urgent appeal to Israel. However, ancient text witnesses as Septuagint, Peshitta and Vulgate support the text delimitation of the Masoretic tradition, which shows a delimitation marker (petucha or setuma) between Isa. 2:4 and 2:5. For the understanding of both the vision of the nations (Isa. 2:2-4) and the prophecy of doom (Isa. 2:6-22) the consequences of this insight are remarkable. The issue of the demarcation of Isa. 2:5 is an example of the importance of a more structural use of what methodically can be called ‘delimitation criticism’ in exegesis.

The personality or impersonality of transcendent reality is one of the main issues at stake between Buddhists and Christians. The Christian idea of a personal God differs deeply from the Buddhist idea of shunyata, which is often said to be impersonal. Based on this difference, religious scholars usually draw the conclusion that both ideas of ultimate reality are incompatible. Although the contradiction between Buddhist and Christian schools on this central point may seem unbridgeable, I suggest that a closer examination of the ideas of personality and impersonality can increase mutual understanding, since at present significant misunderstandings may exist in each side’s image of the other party. This is not to say that both traditions can be brought to agree, but only that on a deeper level more understanding seems possible. In this contribution, I first deal with the (im)personal nature of transcendence. I then go on to summarise the idea of the divine in two writings of the founder of the Kyoto School Philosophy, Kitaro Nishida, as well as the ideas of God’s personality in Paul Tillich and Karl Barth. I attempt to show that, due to important qualifications in each tradition’s use of ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’, both beliefs are not as straightforwardly opposed as they often are supposed to be, and I mention some of the questions for further dialogue.

In a recent article, Marcel Sarot has enquired into the relevance of the ‘God-spot’ (e.g. five spots in the brain that are being activated when people have an experience of the divine) for the rationality of belief in God. In our article, we argue, first, that the objections Sarot presents against an argument aiming to show that the existence of the God-spot is in some sense evidence for the reliability of religious experience, are not convincing. We argue, second, that Sarot’s claim that the existence of the God-spot poses a problem for Reformed Epistemology is ill-motivated since it rests on an inadequate view of Reformed Epistemology.

It is argued that, though the discovery of the ‘God spot’ adds to the analogy between sensory perception and religious experience, it is of no avail in establishing the reliability of religious experience, because the main difference between sensory perception and religious experience (i.e., that sensory perception can be ‘calibrated’ while religious experience cannot) remains unchanged. He also argues that religious experience is much more central to Reformed Epistemology than Van Woudenberg and Blaauw admit, because – as Alvin Plantinga has shown – religious propositions that are properly basic in a strict sense mostly are reports of religious experiences.

This article is a review of the PhD-thesis of Dick van Arkel, Voor ons de zondvloed (The Flood Before Us). The book is intended to initiate a discussion between ‘the reformed heritage’ and the liturgical movement. It focuses on the so-called flood-prayer. It is shown that about seven pages in two key sections of the thesis (4.7.3 and 4) are copied from previously published articles, written by other authors (K.W. de Jong and W.R ten Kate). These articles are only mentioned in an ‘erratum’; in the text the citations are not marked.