Books by Markus Locker
Landas 32:1, 2018
John finds a church in tribulation in which, due to the emerging ‘reason(ing)’ of the world – as ... more John finds a church in tribulation in which, due to the emerging ‘reason(ing)’ of the world – as Blake would call it – the gift of the imagination, i.e. the Holy Ghost, is on the verge of vanishing. Accosted by the ideology of the Roman imperial cult, the Christian imagination is partially replaced by a rationality that allows for compromises with Satan. Through visions of ‘terror’, ‘beauty’, and ‘sublimity’, enclosed in an epistolary framework, Revelation seeks to restore the ‘first’ imagination of the Christian churches.
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Perspectives in the Arts & Humanities Asia, 2016
The starting point of this article is that a balanced faith life is the foundation to happiness i... more The starting point of this article is that a balanced faith life is the foundation to happiness in the Christian sense. This article considers this suggestion from a historical perspective, i.e., by a survey of three reformations that occurred within the last five hundred years. Specifically, these are Luther's challenge to orthodoxy, the Pietist movement in the seventeenth, and the Social Gospel and Missionary Movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article specifies what each of these reformations contributed to the development of an understanding of faith as a balance of notitia, assensus, and fiducia. To shed light on these dimensions, the article will look at three key concepts that characterize these reformations; orthodoxy, orthopathy, and orthopraxy. Biblical references will be used to illustrate each point.
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Brill, 2019
This book argues that all truths systems include paradoxes. Paradoxes, such as found in the scien... more This book argues that all truths systems include paradoxes. Paradoxes, such as found in the sciences, philosophy and religion offer themselves as mutually shared partners in a dialogue of arguably incommensurable truths on the basis of their underlying truth. Paradoxes leap beyond the epistemic border of individual truth claims. A dialogue of truths, grounded in paradox, reaches before, and at the same time past singular truths. A paradox-based dialogue of truths elevates the communication of disciplines, such as the sciences and religion, to a meta-discourse level from which differences are not perceived as obstacles for dialogue but as complementary aspects of a deeper and fuller truth in which all truths are grounded.
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Contemporary biblical hermeneutics have reached a stalemate. Theory and practical application are... more Contemporary biblical hermeneutics have reached a stalemate. Theory and practical application are at far distance. The only way out appears to be postmodernism with its call for the deconstruction of all hitherto proposed meta-theories of knowledge and understanding. This paper, however, interprets the present day hermeneutical status as rooted in the historical origin of the rationalist argument and its critical conceptions of language and thinking. Johann Georg Hamann sees the major error of rationalism resting on the " misunderstanding of reason with itself, " causing the abstract separation of meaning in pure thoughts and language. Based on this premise, this paper proposes the possibility of a pre-critical hermeneutics in which the deceptive breach of language and meaning is bridged by the " spoken word. " Ludwig Wittgenstein's language-game model develops the concept of the use of language into a whole of speech in which meaning is a form of life and worldview. Following this understanding, a pre-critical hermeneutics hopes to allow the language of scripture to come to mean by itself and without depending on extra-linguistic conditions of knowing that, as experience shows, all to often prevent meaning instead of revealing it.
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This paper assumes that Luke, by using the term paradoxa in Luke 5.26, intends to convey a signif... more This paper assumes that Luke, by using the term paradoxa in Luke 5.26, intends to convey a significance to the words and deeds of Jesus in Luke 5.17-26 that could not have been captured equally well by standard Greek expressions, such as “extraordinary” or “strange.” A study of Luke’s placement of 5.17-26 in his narrative and a brief survey of the meaning of paradox in antiquity allows for the assumption that paradoxa could mean different things for the various audiences of this scene: “glorious” things for the believer and “inglorious” things for the unbeliever.
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translations by Markus Locker
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Papers by Markus Locker
Cybern. Hum. Knowing, 2005
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Foundations of Science, 2016
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The study The Power of Paradox avers that truths claims are necessarily singular. For that reason... more The study The Power of Paradox avers that truths claims are necessarily singular. For that reason, the conversation of truths cannot take place unmediated. Truths are not communicable, yet seek to be communicated. What all truth claims have in common is sets of truths that cannot be fully explained within their system of origin. These are paradoxes— truths standing on the head. Paradoxes point to an original unity behind all opposing truths. It is suggested that the conversation of truths—as intended in the dialogue between religions, and science and faith—must take recourse to paradox. In communicating paradoxes, otherwise incommunicable truth claims can communicate. The route to paradox is systems epistemology and imagination. A systems view of reality offers complementary viewpoints that, taken together, surpass insights provided by conventional observation. A systems perspective creates a holistic image of reality that is grounded in paradoxes. The capacity to represent this paradoxical image is found in the imagination. The productive imagination conceives of subliminal forms of paradoxical representations. As models of paradoxes, these images perform a transcendental analysis that communicates their paradoxical nature. The language for the communication of paradoxes is the language of poetization, found in the structures of humour and art. Imagination and imaginative language embody and communicate paradoxes. The embodiment of paradoxes creates an environment in which truths are not oppressive, but allow for form of life sustained by the paradoxical qualities of freedom, peace and happiness. Paradoxical truths speak in metaphors. The communication of these metaphors and their structure establishes the communication of opposing truths. Science and religion share in the God-metaphor whose communicative extension guarantees the ongoing dialogue between these disciplines. Religions that feature paradoxical structures share in a theology of humour—the folly of faith is their common subject. Realizing the power o [...]
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The Power of Paradox: Impossible Conversations, 2019
This book argues that all truths systems include paradoxes. Paradoxes, such as found in the scien... more This book argues that all truths systems include paradoxes. Paradoxes, such as found in the sciences, philosophy and religion offer themselves as mutually shared partners in a dialogue of arguably incommensurable truths on the basis of their underlying truth. Paradoxes leap beyond the epistemic border of individual truth claims. A dialogue of truths, grounded in paradox, reaches before, and at the same time past singular truths. A paradox-based dialogue of truths elevates the communication of disciplines, such as the sciences and religion, to a meta-discourse level from which differences are not perceived as obstacles for dialogue but as complementary aspects of a deeper and fuller truth in which all truths are grounded.
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The Bible Translator, 2017
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The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, 2017
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Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 2010
Speaking of truth inescapably confronts us with paradoxes, i.e., correct deductive propositions l... more Speaking of truth inescapably confronts us with paradoxes, i.e., correct deductive propositions like a Cretan claiming that all Cretans lie which (due to negative systemic self-reference) end up as circular contradictions, indeterminable questions, or dilemmas. Faced with the numerous paradoxical statements (apparently 82) found in the Bible, the German Protestant reformer Sebastian Franck (14991542), for example, conceded that any truth of God cannot be found in language but only in the immediate silent experience of God. Likewise, believers in an uncompromising search for true facts about this world would certainly agree with (though arguably misappropriate) Wittgenstein in claiming that Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Paradoxes this article claims must neither be feared, nor avoided, nor become subject to hopeless attempts in searching for logic solutions. Paradoxes lead the way to truth in demonstrating that questions of truth, or truth claims, cannot be ad...
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Kritika Kultura, 2013
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Philosophy and Theology, 2001
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The Heythrop Journal, 2009
Despite the exciting consequences of the later Wittgenstein's notion of language-game for the... more Despite the exciting consequences of the later Wittgenstein's notion of language-game for theology in general, one discipline centered on language – exegesis and biblical theology – has remained largely unaffected by this advance. I here show that describing biblical language as a language-game not only enhances our understanding of biblical texts; it also explodes a long-term impasse separating the interpretation from the ‘actualization’ of sacred texts. Insights taken from the notion of a language-game may, as with form of life and grammar, emerge as central building blocks for reformulating the postulates of biblical theology. 2
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Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia, 2016
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Books by Markus Locker
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