Towards a Renewed Theology of Personal Agency: Origen’s Theological Vision and the Challenges of Fatalism and Determinism

In our own contemporary context, there seems to be nothing more important than for a person to be able to speak about their achievements as being specifically their own. Yet it seems that due to two trends found in theology and science, it is increasingly difficult to talk about individual agency. The first trend which undercuts human agency is found in theological fatalism.1 We will look at the case of theological fatalism found in Islamic thought in the idea of qadar, the power of God by which everything is commanded.2 The second trend comes to us on account of science where there is an ideological claim3 being made called scientism. This ideology asserts that “science is the only way of knowing”4 and results in the rejection of all non-material categories; human actions are seen to be brought about (determined) simply as functions of their antecedent conditions in the material world and thusly become “incompatible with human freedom.”5 In this paper, I seek to develop a renewed theology of personal agency in the face of theological fatalism and scientific determinism by drawing upon the work of Origen of Alexandria. This second-third century Father of the Church, offers a number of insights which are very pertinent in our contemporary context; in an age where individuality and self-realization are considered fundamental to the human experience. His assertions on human agency found in the first chapter of the third book of his De Principiis, summons its hearers “to live a good life and by every means avoid sin, for it assumes that they acknowledge that deeds worthy of praise or blame lie within our own power.”6 We will also draw on the vast work of St. Thomas Aquinas who helps situate a philosophical anthropology and an understanding of causality where humans are free in a world where God exists and is operative. He will assert and uphold the Catholic principle of cooperation between the human will and the divine will in defense of human freedom. To this end Aquinas states “that nothing which involves contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.”

Computer vision for 3d perception and applications

Effective 3D perception of an observed scene greatly enriches the knowledge about the surrounding environment and is crucial to effectively develop high-level applications for various purposes [...

War and dissociation : the case of futurist aesthetics

Thanks to their deliberate engagement in state propaganda Italian Futurists deserved a prominent spot in the history of military aesthetics in the 20th century. However, under what looked like an unequivocal expression of support for war, lied a deep philosophical disagreement concerning its existential and epistemological value. The bone of contention concerned the effects of warfare on perception and, consequently, the means of its depiction. The author analyses this intellectual disagreement within the group and focuses, in particular, on its philosophical implications

The impact of columnar file formats on SQL‐on‐hadoop engine performance: A study on ORC and Parquet

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Shock waves in one-dimensional Heisenberg ferromagnets

We use SU(2) coherent state path integral formulation with the stationary phase approximation to investigate, both analytically and numerically, the existence of shock waves in the one- dimensional Heisenberg ferromagnets with anisotropic exchange interaction. As a result we show the existence of shock waves of two types,"bright" and "dark", which can be interpreted as moving magnetic domains.Comment: 10 pages, with 3 ps figure

Fast cerebellar reflex circuitry requires synaptic vesicle priming by Munc13-3

Munc13-3 is a member of the Munc13 family of synaptic vesicle priming proteins and mainly expressed in cerebellar neurons. Munc13-3 null mutant (Munc13-3(−/−)) mice show decreased synaptic release probability at parallel fiber to Purkinje cell, granule cell to Golgi cell, and granule cell to basket cell synapses and exhibit a motor learning deficit at highest rotarod speeds. Since we detected Munc13-3 immunoreactivity in the dentate gyrus, as reported here for the first time, and current studies indicated a crucial role for the cerebellum in hippocampus-dependent spatial memory, we systematically investigated Munc13-3(−/−) mice versus wild-type littermates of both genders with respect to hippocampus-related cognition and a range of basic behaviors, including tests for anxiety, sensory functions, motor performance and balance, sensorimotor gating, social interaction and competence, and repetitive and compulsive behaviors. Neither basic behavior nor hippocampus-dependent cognitive performance, evaluated by Morris water maze, hole board working and reference memory, IntelliCage-based place learning including multiple reversals, and fear conditioning, showed any difference between genotypes. However, consistent with a disturbed cerebellar reflex circuitry, a reliable reduction in the acoustic startle response in both male and female Munc13-3(−/−) mice was found. To conclude, complete deletion of Munc13-3 leads to a robust decrease in the acoustic startle response. This readout of a fast cerebellar reflex circuitry obviously requires synaptic vesicle priming by Munc13-3 for full functionality, in contrast to other behavioral or cognitive features, where a nearly perfect compensation of Munc13-3 deficiency by related synaptic proteins has to be assumed

Beamlet scraping and its influence on the beam divergence at the BATMAN Upgrade test facility

For the ITER fusion experiment, two neutral beam injectors are required for plasma heating and current drive. Each injector supplies a power of about 17 MW, obtained from neutralization of 40 A (46 A), 1 MeV (0.87 MeV) negative deuterium (hydrogen) ions. The full beam is composed of 1280 beamlets, formed in 16 beamlet groups, and strict requirements apply to the beamlet core divergence (<7 mrad). The test facility BATMAN Upgrade uses an ITER-like grid with one beamlet group, which consists of 70 apertures. In a joint campaign performed by IPP and Consorzio RFX to better assess the beam optics, the divergence of a single beamlet was compared to a group of beamlets at BATMAN Upgrade. The single beamlet is measured with a carbon fiber composite tile calorimeter and by beam emission spectroscopy, whereas the divergence of the group of beamlets is measured by beam emission spectroscopy only. When increasing the RF power at low extraction voltages, the divergence of the beamlet and of the group of beamlets is continuously decreasing and no inflection point toward an overperveant beam is found. At the same time, scraping of the extracted ion beam at the second grid (extraction grid) takes place at higher RF power, supported by the absence of the normally seen linear behavior between the measured negative ion density in the plasma close to the extraction system and the measured extracted ion current. Beside its influence on the divergence, beamlet scraping needs to be considered for the determination of the correct perveance and contributes to the measured coextracted electron current