标签：faith

Tension Is Harmony

Culture & Public Commentary2007.01.25
Tension Is Harmony
The term “tension” often appears in academic discussions, but as a concept it is by no means abstruse; it can be understood directly in its literal sense: “Zhang” refers to a state of “tension.” Imagine a rubber band, or better yet a taut violin string—that is “tension.” “Harmony” is the word best suited to describe music. Thus a very simple fact is this: only when a string is under an appropriate degree of tension can it produce harmonious tones. If the tension is too great and the string snaps, or if the tension is too slight and the string slackens, then it cannot be played. Many paired categories, such as…
culture science faith
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2007年1月25日
[Eng] Merrill Davis: “Darwin and Fundamentalism”

History of Science & Scholarship2007.01.23
[Eng] Merrill Davis: “Darwin and Fundamentalism”
[English] Merrell Davis: Darwin and Fundamentalism, translated by Zhang Zengyi, Peking University Press, March 2005 I had read this book once before, but apparently I didn’t take any notes. Today I reread it at great speed. A couple of random remarks, by the way: this “Postmodern Confrontation Series” is, in terms of content, all quite good, but… alas, such a thin little book, with only 70,000 characters, already takes 5.375 sheets, and still costs 12.8 yuan! Also, Mr. Jin Wulun’s general preface to the series and Mr. Wang Zhihe’s Chinese translation preface are of course very good, and generally speaking they are not especially long in terms of word count,…
book reading notes history of science faith
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2007年1月23日
[English] John Hick: “The Rainbow of Faith—A Dialogue with Critics of Religious Pluralism”

Philosophy & Thought2007.01.21
[English] John Hick: “The Rainbow of Faith—A Dialogue with Critics of Religious Pluralism”
[Eng.]John Hick: Rainbow of Faith — A Dialogue with Critics of Religious Pluralism, translated by Wang Zhicheng and Sizhu, Jiangsu People’s Publishing House2000, February2. Pages2~3. The purpose of dialogue between theology and philosophy is not necessarily to reach agreement—though that is what the interlocutors hope for, and sometimes agreement really is reached—but rather, more precisely, to find out where they differ from one another, and to look at the issues from both the affirmative and the negative sides,////—I very much appreciate Hick’s view of dialogue. Page32. Kant held that perception is not a passive recording of perceived objects, but is always an active process of selection, grouping, association, inference, and the conferring…
philosophy book reading notes faith
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2007年1月21日
[Eng.] John Hick: “Reason and Faith — Problems of Religious Pluralism”

Philosophy & Thought2007.01.20
[Eng.] John Hick: “Reason and Faith — Problems of Religious Pluralism”
[Eng]John Hick: Rationality and Faith — Questions in Religious Pluralism, translated by Chen Zhiping and Wang Zhicheng, Sichuan People’s Publishing House2003January pp. 15–16 P14 Religious language expresses our understanding of God in mythic patterns. That these patterns are human in character and culturally conditioned is a fact, and to some people this fact reveals the following possibility: in depicting divine reality, the different mythic systems of the major religious traditions are less in competition with one another than complementary to one another. However, in such theological work there is a genuinely internal problem or tension. Religious life is practiced primarily on the basis of symbols and myths. The eternal Son…
philosophy book reading notes faith
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2007年1月20日
How Locke, Kant, and Dostoevsky respectively viewed the relationship between Christianity and modern society (draft)

Philosophy & Thought2007.01.13
How Locke, Kant, and Dostoevsky respectively viewed the relationship between Christianity and modern society (draft)
Locke is a representative figure of empiricism and natural theology; empiricism and natural theology, together with Baconian science (that is, experimental science), make up the basic tendency of modern and contemporary thought—in precise terms, these three are simply three aspects, in philosophy, theology, and science respectively, of the same intellectual current. Reason and freedom are the key words in Locke’s view of religion, and of course they are also the main thread of modern and contemporary thought. Locke placed reason above revelation, holding that wherever reason can provide certain knowledge, faith should not interfere; if faith oversteps its bounds, fanaticism is inevitable. Only in those matters that reason cannot confirm…
philosophy faith Kant Christianity
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2007年1月13日
How Am I a Marxist?

Life & Notes2007.01.04
How Am I a Marxist?
I’ve recently been wanting to sort out this question again and make my position clear once more — I still call myself a Marxist, and that has never changed since I joined the Party. I have always idealized myself as a maverick, an unruly thinker; as long as I have not resigned from the Party, I will continue to insist on this. Expediency and status can never be reasons for me to remain inside the Party. The only reason I am a Party member is that I genuinely claim to be a Marxist. So, how am I a Marxist? Of course, one major reason is that I am a Party…
philosophy China faith autobiography
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2007年1月4日
Christianity as I Have Seen It & Christianity as I Understand It & Christianity as I Imagine It

Life & Notes2006.12.06
Christianity as I Have Seen It & Christianity as I Understand It & Christianity as I Imagine It
Christianity as I Have Encountered It I came into a certain intimate contact with Christianity already in elementary school: the first four years of my primary education were spent at Sichuan South Road Primary School in Shanghai. The campus of that school was extraordinary: an iron-gated entrance with openwork filigree, with the three large characters “天主堂” (“Catholic Church”) engraved on top; beyond the gate was the playground; on the right stood a row of three-story Romanesque buildings of alternating red and gray brick, which were our classroom building; and straight ahead, solemn and stately, was a great cathedral. Although throughout my entire primary-school life I never once entered the church…
philosophy everyday life faith religion
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2006年12月6日
In the Epistle to the Romans, how did Paul understand Jesus’ Passion?

Philosophy & Thought2006.12.04
In the Epistle to the Romans, how did Paul understand Jesus’ Passion?
At the very opening of Romans, it is already said that “this gospel [is that] which God had before promised by his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared with power to be the Son of God according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for his name” (1:2–5). We can see that Jesus’ death and resurrection are, first, the “promise,” second, the “declaration,” third, “grace,” and fourth, what teaches…
book reading notes faith Christianity
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2006年12月4日
A Very Comprehensive Analysis of Scorpio

Life & Notes2006.11.24
A Very Comprehensive Analysis of Scorpio
I have absolutely no belief in horoscopes: I neither accept them, nor need them, and they’re not even all that fun. But I admit they are very “effective,” with many things said quite accurately, and the various suggestions they give are for the most part harmless; reading them is not a bad thing. Of course, I’m not interested in reading them, unless someone else mentions one and I suddenly feel like taking a look. Horoscopes are very good at exploiting human psychology. When we see a long analysis, if there are a few passages in it that “hit the nail on the head,” so accurate as to be astonishing, then…
everyday life culture faith psychology
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2006年11月24日
What Day Is November 10?

Life & Notes2006.11.10
What Day Is November 10?
November 10 is marked in the almanac, in large type, as “World Youth Day.” China’s Youth Day is May 4, obviously commemorating the May Fourth Movement. So where did World Youth Day come from? I looked it up online and found nothing but “a Catholic religious gathering founded by Pope John Paul II in 1984.” “This festival was created to reverse the tendency of young people with Catholic faith to drift away from the Church.” But this Youth Day is not the one we mean today. With just a little careful looking, one can tell that this Catholic gathering is actually held at different times every year, and there is…
everyday life faith religion
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2006年11月10日