NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 51, Issue 1, 1997

In the pseudo-Justinian treatise Ad Graecos (probably written in the early 4th century), considerable attention is paid to the notion that it was the fear of undergoing the same fate as Socrates did that withheld Plato from openly acknowledging his dependency upon Moses. In the face of pagan criticism of the Christian annexation of Plato, the author tries thus to save Plato as a pre-Christian witness for the truth of the Gospel. It may have been a passage in Plato’s own Protagoras that inspired the author to develop this motif.

The striking trinitarian formula of Logion 44 in the Gospel of Thomas has drawn the attention of scholars from the very beginning. Those scholars who date the Gospel in the first century C.E. find in it either a particular early development of a specific independent tradition or a hopelessly corrupt form of such an early tradition. Some scholars who date this Gospel ca. 140 C.E. opt for the possibility that the collectors of this sayings source borrowed it from an independent Jewish-Christian tradition, which then establishes the fact that Jewish Christians cherished a trinitarian faith. The author of the present contribution is inclined to believe that the form of Saying 44 is a rather late, gnostic development of a (probably Syriac form of the) text as it is now preserved in Mt 12:32.

Winnicott’s particular psychoanalytic theory of culture leads to an appraisal of religion which is completely different from the traditional Freudian one. He does not view religion primarily in an instinctual context as infantile wish fulfilment. Rather, he interprets religion against the background of self-development and the life-lasting human need for creative interaction between the subject and the object world in the so-called transitional sphere, the sphere of culture. It is only by activities in this sphere that human beings can experience life as meaningful. This leads to a revaluation of notions like illusion, projection and imagination. After a discussion of successively Winnicott’s theory of culture, his view on religion and the reception of his work in the psychology of religion, it is concluded that his psychology seems to lay the foundation of a general ‘psychology of meaning’ rather than of a ‘psychology of religion’, although it is also being used fruitfully to understand the psychological dynamics of faith in God, religious rituals and the like.