HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
August 28, 2026
Daud Darmadi, Juanda Juanda, Munatar Kause
The portrayal of Isa in Serat Centhini, a nineteenth-century Javanese literary encyclopaedia from the Surakarta court tradition, reveals a rich intertextual interaction between the Gospel tradition, Islamic theology, and Javanese mystical cosmology. This raises an important hermeneutical question concerning how Christology should engage with non-Western literary traditions that reinterpret...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
April 30, 2026
Wojciech Słomski
This article argues that hesychasm, as articulated by Gregory Palamas, constitutes a genuine locus theologicus when ‘experience’ is construed within a disciplined epistemological and ecclesial framework. Against both rationalist reductions of theology to discursive inference and subjectivist appeals to immediate experience, Gregory Palamas develops a participatory epistemology in which...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
August 31, 2022
Richard Alan Northover
5 citations
The article assesses Arthur Schopenhauer’s reinterpretation of religious myths, particularly those of Christianity, in terms of his philosophical system, and applies his ideas to the mythical cosmology of shamanistic and animistic religions. Schopenhauer, a 19th-century Romantic philosopher, although an atheist himself, took religious myths very seriously, translating them into the terms of his...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
June 23, 2020
M. Nel
10 citations
Western academic theology do not succeed in accounting for the identity and faith culture of African Pentecostals for at least two reasons. In the first place, because as part of the Pentecostal movement it grew from the holiness, divine healing and revivalist movement that went back to Pietism and emphasised a holistic effective spirituality, and secondly, because it links with the holistic...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
February 8, 2017
Stephen D. Edwards, David J. Edwards
1 citation
An exploratory pilot study with a small homogenous sample of Christian English speaking participants (four men and four women, with a mean age of 48 and age range from 27 to 70 years) provided support for an alternative research hypothesis that a Christ consciousness contemplation with Heart Prayer of HeartMath techniques was significantly associated with increasing psychophysiological...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
May 31, 2016
Carter Haynes
12 citations
This article investigates the intersection of psychology and spirituality as seen through the works of Thomas Merton, Carl Jung, Fritz Kunkel and Viktor Frankl. The themes of spirituality contextualised in human identity, psychological and spiritual transcendence, and the true self versus false self metaphor are traced through the works of all four thinkers. Epistemological flexibility and...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
March 23, 2015
Francois Wessels
4 citations
In my experience, conflict and other forms of being stuck or (as it is commonly referred to in narrative texts) ‘stuckness’ are related to actions, behaviour or events. If we consider a narrative paradigm, they happen in the realm of the Bruner’s ‘landscape of action’. Efforts at escaping these problem-saturated experiences mostly resort to replacing these actions, habits, modes of operation or...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
January 11, 2012
Stephen D. Edwards, David J. Edwards
5 citations
This integral investigation explored phenomenological and neurophysiologic, individual and collective dimensions of Christian Trinitarian meditation experiences in a volunteer, convenience sample of 10 practicing Christians, 6 men and 4 women, with a mean age of 48 years and an age range from 21 to 85 years. Participants meditated for a minimum period of 15 minutes, during which...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
March 9, 2011
Cornel W. du Toit
3 citations
This article treats self-transcendence – like all transcendence – as a fact of human life. Inter alia this means that the human mind perforce operates in terms of binary concepts such as finitude–infinity, inner world–outside world, self–other, desire–fulfilment, separation–union and the like. We find these concepts in most myths of origin. The concept of desire (Eros), combining unfulfilment...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
March 9, 2011
Celia Kourie, Alex Kurian
1 citation
In our pluralistic society, the diverse religious traditions offer an opportunity for interreligious dialogue which has as its aim an appreciation of, and respect for, the integrity of individual traditions. Swami Abhishiktananda is a clear example of one who offered an alternative to Christian exclusiveness in his willingness to engage in an inter-spiritual lifestyle in which Eastern and...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
August 12, 2010
George Drazenovich, Celia Kourie
8 citations
Contemporary research suggests that a path is now open for critical dialogue between mysticism and mental health. Data are accumulating regarding the frequency with which mystical experience occurs in the general population. Social science researchers are undertaking studies to determine whether people can knowledgably differentiate between the presence of a mystical experience and other types...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
February 19, 2010
Ignatius W. Ferreira
3 citations
The development of the human consciousness: Ken Wilber’s AQAL theoryKenneth Earl Wilber III, an integral philosopher, psychologist and mystic with an intelligence quotient of 160, was born on 31 January 1949 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the United States of America, and is considered by some as one of the most important philosophers of the 21st century. He developed his integral philosophy...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
October 9, 2005
John J. Pilch
3 citations
This brief survey and analysis of the statements made by Paul about his experience of God calling him to be an apostle in Galatians 1:15-16; 1 Corinth 15:8-9; 2 Corinth 4:6; and Philippians 3:12 were chiefly conducted from an intentionally limited social science perspective. The article argues that the investigator can gain deeper insights into Paul’s statements “in his own words” by submitting...
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
November 3, 2002
John J. Pilch
17 citations
Luke reports more than twenty altered states of consciousness experiences in Acts of the Apostles. These are common and normal human experiences in approximately ninety percent of contemporary cultures. In the ancient Circum-Mediterranean world, it seems to have been common and normal in about eighty percent of those cultures. Insights from psychological anthropology, cultural anthropology and...