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- Volume 77, Issue 3, 2023
NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 77, Issue 3, 2023
Volume 77, Issue 3, 2023
- Articles
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Reproductive Religion? Ernst Troeltsch’s Approach to Individual Religious Experience
More LessAbstractRecent publications about religion and spirituality in the Netherlands show a growing group of “religious nones”—individuals who do not affiliate themselves with a religion or ideological group. For the “unaffiliated spirituals,” those who call themselves spiritual without being institutionally affiliated, organized religions and religious communities are considered a non-necessity to one’s spirituality. This generates questions about the role, function, and value of institutional, organized religion, and religious communities. Looking at Ernst Troeltsch’s reception of William James’s individualistic approach to religion in The Varieties of Religious Experiences, I show how Troeltsch outlines possible boundaries or prerequisites to an individualized approach to religion and spirituality, specifically on the level of religious experiences. Troeltsch argues that thought, media, and community are crucial parts of (re)productive religious experiences. Putting into question a purely individualistic and privatized approach to religion, Troeltsch offers a helpful and relevant perspective on the importance of religious communities and their role in articulating, even facilitating and regulating individual experiences. Furthermore, he refers to the potential of religious experiences to bridge the tension between individual and community.
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The First Deeds of Elisha
More LessAbstractAfter the transmission of the spirit from Elijah to Elisha (2 Kgs 2:1-18), two small stories follow that have preoccupied the exegetes (2:19-22 and 2:23-25), partly because they are two remarkable miracles, partly because the two contrast remarkably strongly. The two stories form a diptych. They tell of the first deeds of Elisha. Do they function as legitimation of Elisha as a prophet, as many scholars claim? The stories contain different signs, suggesting that Elisha’s first deeds are too ambiguous, to see him, though following Elijah, as a legitimate prophet.
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The Invisible Religion (1967) by Thomas Luckmann: Still an Inspiring Program for the Study of Contemporary Religion
More LessAbstractThomas Luckmann’s The Invisible religion was first published in English in 1967 and has now, in 2023, at last been reprinted in a new, expanded edition. The book still opens vistas and raises challenges that are at the center of the study of religion today: how to conceptualize religion, how to trace “invisible,” in particular non-institutional, religion, and how to conceive the contemporary transformation of religion. After introducing the author and the context of the book, I will summarize its content. In the third and main part, I will highlight the enduring programmatic qualities of this modern classic.
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- Key text
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Nature as a Mystery in a Problem Oriented World: Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures
More LessAbstractAs part of NTT JTSR’s series on Key Texts, the present article discusses the Canticle of the Creatures or Canticle of Brother Sun as a song that can change the way people perceive themselves in their natural environment. Francis of Assisi, who had turned away from ‘the world,’ had learned a different way of perceiving. Where the world perceives the environment by grasping, taking control, and solving problems, Francis had become sensitive to the way in which the environment communicates itself: as a mystery. Purified by humility, his senses testified that the environment, down to its elementary level, is praising the One who created it and guarantees its meaning and value. But rather than praising the Creator for his creatures, the hymn prays that the Creator lets Himself be praised by His creatures. This praise of the creatures is a reverberation, strengthening, and colouring of God’s blessings. The role of Francis is to lend his own voice and language to these heavenly praises as they are resounding in his environment. His message is, with words quoted from the Encyclical Laudato Si’ of Pope Francis, that our environment is not a problem to be solved, but “a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.”1
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- Reviews
Volumes & issues
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Volume 78 (2024)
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Volume 77 (2023)
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Volume 76 (2022)
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Volume 75 (2021)
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Volume 74 (2020)
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Volume 73 (2019)
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Volume 72 (2018)
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Volume 71 (2017)
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Volume 70 (2016)
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Volume 69 (2015)
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Volume 68 (2014)
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Volume 67 (2013)
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Volume 66 (2012)
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Volume 65 (2011)
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Volume 64 (2010)
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Volume 63 (2009)
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Volume 62 (2008)
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Volume 61 (2007)
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Volume 60 (2006)
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Volume 59 (2005)
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Volume 58 (2004)
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Volume 57 (2003)
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Volume 56 (2002)
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Volume 55 (2001)
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Volume 54 (2000)
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Volume 53 (1999)
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Volume 52 (1998)
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Volume 51 (1997)
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Volume 50 (1996)
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Volume 49 (1995)
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Volume 48 (1994)
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Volume 47 (1993)
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Volume 46 (1992)
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Volume 45 (1991)
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Volume 44 (1990)
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Volume 43 (1989)
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Volume 42 (1988)
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Volume 41 (1987)
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Volume 40 (1986)
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Volume 39 (1985)
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Volume 38 (1984)
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Volume 37 (1983)
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Volume 36 (1982)
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Volume 35 (1981)
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Volume 34 (1980)
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