Articles varia
- WÉNIN André - Ismaël et Isaac, ou la fraternité contrariée dans le récit de la Genèse
- BUTTICAZ Simon - Du principe de précaution à l’économie du don Relire Matthieu 7,6 en contexte
- BERNAT Chrystel - Laodicée et la tiédeur sacrilège Plaidoyer contre le scandale de la timidité spirituelle dans l’œuvre de Claude Brousson (1647-1698)
The relationship between Abraham’s two sons is but outlined in Genesis. Nevertheless, when we approach the text from a narrative point of view, discreet clues suggest to the reader that Isaac experiences nostalgia for a sibling relationship he could not establish with Ishmael. The dismissal of this son is due to the jealousy of Sarah (21,8-21) that reaches back to the circumstances of his birth (16,1-16). It takes place even though Yhwh has created conditions to make a real brotherhood with Isaac possible (17,19-21). In the last analysis, however, the reason of this failure does not lie only in Sarah herself but also in her difficult relationship with Abraham, whose consequences are transferred to the following generations.
The Logion of Mt 7,6 is a well-known crux interpretum in the New Testament field, even though generations of scholars have attempted to explicate this verse by investigating its linguistic, formal or tradition-historical dimensions. The present contribution is an essay to pursue this hermeneutical task from another perspective: by examining the compositional strategy which commanded the insertion of Mt 7,6 in its close context (Mt 7,1-12) and its literary function as well as its impact on the reader in this new discursive economy. Thus he reopens the case of the enigmatic Matthean logion, analyzing its contextual anchoring in the Sermon on the Mount and construing it in the light of the Ricoeurian notion of the « economy of the gift ».
In this essay, Chrystel Bernat highlights a central feature of the Huguenot understanding of spiritual fervor at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, namely the warning against the lukewarmness of the corrupt church as epitomized in the figure of Laodicea. What are the issues at stake in this harsh condemnation of bashfulness at the end of the seventeenth century? What ideal of dedication does this gripping concern with the evilness of disloyalty and perjury entail? What are the biblical associations mobilized to express this concern and what effects do they produce? Focusing her enquiry on the sermons of the French pastor Claude Brousson, the author examines the scriptural devices at work in his attempt to dramatize and outlaw confessional compromise and shows how this serves the purpose of resisting forced catholicization by promoting a fostered commitment to Reformed faith.
Dossier
- LECHOT Pierre-Olivier, FORNI ROSA Guglielmo - Le christianisme au tournant : Rousseau penseur de la religion (Avant-propos)
- KNEE Philip - L’autorité de la conscience et l’indifférence sceptique dans la Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard
- COTTRET Bernard - Rousseau était-il protestant ? Péché, justification et Écriture selon Jean-Jacques
- GATTI Roberto - Religion et démocratie : du vicaire savoyard à nous
- FORNI ROSA Guglielmo - Karl Barth : du Rousseau romantique à la théologie libérale
The article analyzes the skeptical aspect of the Savoyard Vicar’s spirituality in Rousseau’s Émile and reflects on whether the authority it confers on moral conscience can lead to indifference. While skepticism can be unbearable for human existence or can be a mere appearance in the thought of the philosophes, the Vicar’s involuntary skepticism attempts to recognize the limits of philosophical and theological knowledge while keeping alive a quest for truth.
What is most essential in Rousseau’s neo-Protestant stance on religion is the way in which he gives priority to experience over Church doctrine or text-derived beliefs. Asking what Rousseau’s Protestantism is about is therefore different form asking into which established denomination it might fit. On these premises, Bernard Cottret argues that Rousseau’s denial of original sin reveals a new territory, both political and religious, where Christian freedom turns its back on all dogmatic statements or at least relativizes their impact.
In this article, Roberto Gatti argues that deism as advocated in theProfession of faith of the Savoyard vicar proves open to the supernatural in a way that makes the concept less vulnerable to atheism than Pascal assumed. The vicar’s « involuntary skepticism » should be construed as some thinking in search of a truth that cannot be completely unveiled but continues to beckon us through traces, events, narratives or symbols that are not reducible to mere « myths ».
Karl Barth, who once was Harnack’s student and who was trained by liberals, knows that reduction formulas (i.e. reduction from the stranger to the familiar, from the unknown to the known, from the divine to the human) are diverse: ethical, historical, psychological. Guglielmo Forni Rosa therefore reminds us of some aspects of Harnack’s position that are crucial in order to understand Rousseau. Barth sees that referring to nature through reason or conscience creates an autonomous individual, free from the weight of authority; but rather than the Cartesian element of evidence, which is very important in Rousseau, he prefers to stress his stoical pre-Christian inspiration, that also constitutes the basis of the young Goethe’s thought. Indeed, he considers Rousseau as a man torn between two worlds: the Encyclopaedia and the Enlightenment on the one hand, and Goethe’s time and the early Romanticism (Schleiermacher’s On religion) on the other.
Notules et Péricopes
- STERNBERGER Jean-Pierre - Jacob, Tobias et les guillemets de Genèse 2,23-24
Following Angelo Tosato, the author analyzes how the gloss of Gn 2,24 was introduced in order to propose a new model of monogamous and indissoluble marriage. The parallel drawn between the narratives of Gn 29,4-14 and Tb 7,1-14 suggests that these modifications could have been introduced between 250 and 150 B.C., offering to the translator the opportunity of different readings and uses of quotation marks, and concerning the demarcation of the speech of Adam.
Position de thèse
- DULEY-HAOUR Pauline - Désert et Refuge : sociohistoire d’une internationale huguenote Un réseau européen de soutien aux « Églises sous la croix » (1715-1752)
In this study based on the epistolary exchanges between the French Reformed pastor Antoine Court and his correspondents in the Huguenot diaspora from 1715 to 1752, Pauline DULEY-HAOUR shows how this diaspora located in various countries of the so-called « Refuge » (Geneva and Switzerland, the United Provinces, Great-Britain, Sweden or Denmark) provided support to the clandestine Churches of the kingdom of France.