NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 71, Issue 3, 2017

Summary The early-Christian writer Tertullian is commonly associated with the statement ‘credo quia absurdum’ – I believe because it is absurd. However, this sentence (first ascribed to him in the early-modern period) cannot be found in Tertullian’s work. As this article seeks to demonstrate, the very idea behind it is neither in line with his conception of the relationship between faith and reason. The same Tertullian who decrie Read More

Summary In the Netherlands there is a popular practice of Anglican choral evensongs (outside the context of the Anglican Church), organised either as worship, a concert or as worship and a concert at the same time. The evensongs are performed either completely in English or partly in English, partly in Dutch. In this article the authors will explore for what reasons the English language as non-vernacular is used. Which qu Read More

Summary This article wants to explore absent ritual as a more or less ritual repertoire of its own by distinguishing a series of forms or types of manifestation, use and appropriation. In addition to emerging ritual, grassroots ritual, failed ritual, transferred ritual, and postponed ritual, there is also absent ritual. Absent ritual is always accompanied by ambivalence. It plays a role especially in situations in which there are all kinds Read More

Summary This explorative article revolves around contemporary views on Ravana as one of the components of Ravanisation – i.e., the current revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka. The Ravana myth – exceeding its previous incarnation in the early twentieth-century Hela movement in which it was only a myth of marginal importance – plays a central role in this process. By discussing three ex Read More

Summary This commentary revisits Lynn White’s article, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’ (1967), and questions the assumption that there is a unified ‘Lynn White thesis’. Instead, it proposes a complex narrative in which four key elements can be identified: (1) the long history of human impact on the environment; (2) the claim that the human-environment interaction took on a new, destructive quality around 185 Read More

This article reviews Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship , (The Bible in the Modern World 38), , , ; + pp., € 22,50.