The paper aims to analyse the sermons and writings of the bishop and recently canonized saint of the Serbian Orthodox Church Nicholai Velimirović in regard to democracy. Due to his critique of Europe for abandoning Christianity as its centre of civilization, and slipping into the barbarity of the two world wars, some scholars maintained that Velimirović condemns European democracy. The analysis is focused on two periods from Velimirović's life, the first one that comprises the period of his studies abroad, the WWI and interwar period, and the second one which includes the period of the WWII and Velimirović's subsequent emigration in the USA.
The aim of the paper is to analyse the views of Klaus Buchenau, Stefan Rohdewald and Ju- lia Anna Lis on the Serbian Orthodox Church. The paper argues that authors form their attitudes towards Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church along the lines of the German press, which portrays the Serbian Church as nationalistic, violent, bigoted and backward.The paper embarks on the task to investigate the motifs of the authors for such negative views on the Serbian Church, by arguing that authors build their scholarly constructs on the political narratives of global Western dominance on the one hand, and on the revision of German historical responsibility for the two world wars on the other hand.
Focusing on three historical examples of a different understanding of Christian identity, the paper seeks to address the role of contemporary concepts of sex and gender in the creation of Christian identity. In the first case study, focused on the literary representations of the Christian martyrdom from the second and third centuries, special emphasis is placed on the demand for the ?manly? or ?masculine? way of witnessing faith. The second historical example relates to the creation of a wider ascetic movement in the fourth-century Asia Minor, and its specific focus is on Macrina the Younger. In her Vita, Gregory of Nyssa distinguishes between Macrina?s gender identity based on her virginity on the one hand, and her social role as a widow, and ?mother? and ?father? of her monastic community on the other. Finally, the focus is shifted towards Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor, whose teachings about ecstasy, as a way to transcend oneself in the movement towards the loved one, provide the basis for establishing a theology of marriage and creating a Christian identity based not on sexual or gender roles, but on the uniqueness of human nature.
The article aims to present how the Byzantine scholar St Maximus the Confessor perceived the notion of movement (kinesis). St Maximus exposed his teaching on movement in the course of his refutation of Origenism, which regarded the movement of created beings away from God as the cause of breaking the original unity that existed between the Creation and the Creator. By reversing Origen?s triad ?rest? - ?movement? - ?becoming? into the triad ?becoming? - ?movement? - ?rest?, St Maximus viewed the movement toward God as the sole goal of created beings, finding in the supreme being the repose of their own movement. In addition to the cosmological view of the movement, St Maximus developed a psychological and an ontological view on movement, relying on previous Christian tradition. By transforming and adapting Aristotelian and Neoplatonic notions to the basic principles of Christian metaphysics, St Maximus creates a new Christian philosophy of movement which he supported primarily with the views of the Cappadocian Fathers and Dionysius the Areopagite.
The article aims to present the philosophical argumentation in favor of the Christian idea of the creation of the world exposed in the work of the seventh century author Maximus the Confessor. Maximus the Confessor developed his doctrine of creation on the basis of the philosophical arguments of his Christian predecessors, above all, Gregory of Nyssa, Nemesius of Emesa and Dionysius the Areopagite. The core of Maximus? argumentation on the creation of the world is similar to the position of the Alexandrian philosopher John Philoponus (6th century), but it is additionally enriched with ideas deriving from the works of the aforementioned Christian authors. Some of the ideas that form the scaffolding of Maximus? doctrine of creation are: the fivefold division of beings, which has its climax in the division between the created and uncreated nature, the movement of creatures towards God, who alone is the true goal of their movement, the eternal existence of the world in logoi as expressions of divine will, God?s providential care not only for the universal but also for the individual beings and the deification of the entire created world as the initial purpose of creation. Maximus? views on creation are conveyed in a language that combines Aristotelian, Stoic and Neoplatonist philosophical vocabulary.
Climate change poses a threat to cities. Geospatial information and communication technology (Geo-ICT) assisted planning is increasingly being utilised to foster urban sustainability and adaptability to climate change. To fill the theoretical and practical gaps of urban adaptive planning and Geo-ICT implementation, this article presents an urban ecosystem vulnerability assessment approach using integrated socio-ecological modelling. The application of the Geo-ICT method is demonstrated in a specific case study of climate-resilient city development in Nanjing (China), aiming at helping city decision-makers understand the general geographic data processing and policy revision processes in response to hypothetical future disruptions and pressures on urban social, economic, and environmental systems. Ideally, the conceptual framework of the climate-resilient city transition proposed in this study effectively integrates the geographic data analysis, policy modification, and participatory planning. In the process of model building, we put forward the index system of urban ecosystem vulnerability assessment and use the assessment result as input data for the socio-ecological model. As a result, the model reveals the interaction processes of local land use, economy, and environment, further generating an evolving state of future land use in the studied city. The findings of this study demonstrate that socio-ecological modelling can provide guidance in adjusting the human-land interaction and climate-resilient city development from the perspective of macro policy. The decision support using urban ecosystem vulnerability assessment and quantitative system modelling can be useful for urban development under a variety of environmental change scenarios.
In the context of accelerated urbanization, socioeconomic development, and population growth, as well as the rapid advancement of information and communication technology (ICT), urban land is rapidly expanding worldwide. Unplanned urban growth has led to the low utilization efficiency of land resources. Also, ecological and agricultural lands are continuously sacrificed for urban construction, which in the long-term may severely impact the health of citizens in cities. A thorough understanding of the mechanisms and driving forces of a city's urban land use changes, including the influence of ICT development, is therefore crucial to the formation of optimal and feasible urban planning in the new era. Taking Nanjing as a study case, this article attempts to explore the measurable "smart" driving indicators of urban land use change and analyze the tapestry of the relationship between these and urban land use change. Different from the traditional linear regression analysis method of driving force of urban land use change, this study focuses on the interaction relationship and the underlying causal relationship among various "smart" driving factors, so it adopts a fuzzy statistical method, namely the grey relational analysis (GRA). Through the integration of literature research and known effective data, five categories of "smart" indicators have been taken as the primary driving factors: industry and economy, transportation, humanities and science, ICT systems, and environmental management. The results show that these indicators have different impacts on driving urban built-up land growth. Accordingly, optimization possibilities and recommendations for development strategies are proposed to realize a "smarter" development direction in Nanjing. This article confirms the effectiveness of GRA for studies on the driving mechanisms of urban land use change and provides a theoretical basis for the development goals of a smart city.
