God's mercy: the key thematic undercurrent of Paul's Letter to the Romans

In this essay, I propose that divine mercy is the key thematic "undercurrent" of Paul's Letter to the Romans. In the undisputed Pauline letters, thirteen of the nineteen instances of the word "mercy" and its derivatives occur in Romans. Furthermore, nine of the thirteen instances of "mercy" terminology are found in chaps. 9-11. In the light of the intertextual approach, the unusually high frequency of "mercy" words in these climactic chapters, as well as references to mercy in the preceding and following chapters, suggests that the concept of mercy permeates the whole letter and has greater significance than is commonly though

Conversion: falling into friendship like no other

In the context of contemporary vicissitudes, this article examines how Lonergan's grasp of the meaning of redemption illuminates our understanding of Christian conversion. Lonergan's Law of the Cross implies that the effectiveness of Christian conversion hinges on one's antecedent willingness to undertake suffering for the sake of the transformation of evil into good. His analogies for Christ's salvific work with the sacrament of reconciliation and with friendship further clarify the christomorphic, penitential, and community-building character of conversion, which proceeds from the total, transformative, and diffusive falling into friendship with Go

The Women of the Gulags and Nelson’s paradigms of evil: becoming a sign of hope against all hope

Ligita Ryliškytė analyses the experience of women in the Soviet Gulag. The author starts from the premise that the suffered pain and violence in Eastern Europe during the socialist period do not fit into the dominant paradigm with regard to the interpretation of suffering in the Christian tradition as God’s pedagogy or temptation. Instead she accepts four paradigms of the Protestant theologian, Susan Nelson which she considers to be more appropriate for understanding the suffering of the innocent. Based on the memoirs and documented narratives of three Lithuanian women who were imprisoned in the Gulag, the author shows how the experience of women “after the Gulag” can become a contribution to the theology of suffering and hope. On a similar note, the article by Márta Bodó based on the autobiography of two women from Transylvania shows all their sufferings under socialism because of their religious beliefs and activities. The author focuses specifically on the religious interpretation of their suffering and on this basis draws theological conclusions. The final three articles in this part on the contexts of women’s suffering relate to contemporary societ

Non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology: furthering Neil Ormerod’s account

As a corrective for the idealizing, romanticizing, and universalizing tendencies of communio ecclesiology, Neil Ormerod recently proposed an alternative non-communio trinitarian approach based on the ‘four-point hypothesis’ originating in Bernard F. Lonergan’s trinitarian theology. Ormerod’s account focuses on the missio rather than communio dimension of the church and thus gives primacy to ecclesial ‘operator’ over ‘integrator.’ This article aims at furthering Ormerod’s account of a non-communio trinitarian ecclesiology. In the light of Thomas Aquinas’s teaching, recent developments in ecclesiology and biblical scholarship, this essay (1) critically engages Ormerod’s account and (2) suggests a complementary route grounded in the biblical foundations of trinitarian doctrin

Metaphor and analogy in theology: a choice between lions and witches, and wardrobes?

Through a reconsideration of metaphorical language in its relation to analogy, this essay brings into conversation the divergent currents of spirituality and theology. The author advocates a theological approach which values and appropriately employs both analogical and figurative language as the means for integrating the speculative and spiritual dimensions of theological discourse. In particular, by referring to the Christian mystical tradition, metaphor can be deployed as a creative modification of the standard triplex via of analogical predicatio

Post-Gulag Christology: contextual considerations from a Lithuanian perspective

This article aims at enriching the global theology of Jesus Christ by offering a contribution to Christology from an Eastern European perspective. Such Christology emerges in the context of the experience of the Gulag era as interpreted in the following period. From the viewpoint of one Baltic nation, Lithuania, the author draws on an influential image of popular culture to develop christological insight and delineates the work still to be done in Christology in Eastern EuropeVilniaus universiteta

Ambulatory and successive home-based heart rate targeted aerobic training improves arterial parameters: a follow-up study in people with metabolic syndrome

Background: studies demonstrated that outpatient aerobic exercise programs (aeP) can significantly decrease aortic stiffness in people with metabolic syndrome (Mets). there is some limited data that remotely supervised home-based aeP can also improve arterial stiffness in this population. We aimed to evaluate the changes in the arterial wall parameters after the 2-month ambulatory supervised aeP followed by the 6-month home-based aeP with and without targeting of heart rate (hR) by electrocardiogram (ecG) in people with Mets.Methods: in this prospective study (clinicaltrials.gov identifier: Nct05592704) 132 Mets subjects (mean age 52.44 ± 6.26 years, 54.55% female) were evaluated. at first, all subjects participated in the 2-month ambulatory supervised aeP, which consisted of 40 individual aerobic training sessions on a cycle ergometer 5 times/week for 40 min and received the recommendations for home-based training. then the study (n = 66) and the control (n = 66) groups participated in the 6-month home-based aeP, but only the study group subjects targeted their hR using ecG monitor connected to the smartphone during workouts. arterial stiffness parameters and carotid artery intima-media thickness (ciMt) were evaluated in all participants at baseline and after 8 months.Results: after 8 months, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (c-f PWV) significantly reduced in both groups (−12.22% in the study group vs. −7.85% in the control group, all p 7.90 m/s). a significant decrease of 3.32% in ciMt was present only in the study group (p = .032, d = −0.288).Conclusions: the combination of 2-month ambulatory supervised aeP and successive 6-month home-based aeP targeted by hR monitoring using ecG improved arterial properties in Metssubjects more than the same combination without hR targeting, leading to the greater reduction of c-r PWV and ciM