Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems lack human-like consciousness or culpability, yet they exhibit fluid agency: behavior that is (i) stochastic (probabilistic and path-dependent), (ii) dynamic (co-evolving with user interaction), and (iii) adaptive (able to reorient across contexts). Fluid agency generates valuable outputs but collapses attribution, irreducibly entangling human and machine inputs. This fundamental unmappability fractures doctrines that assume traceable provenance -- authorship, inventorship, and liability -- yielding ownership gaps and moral "crumple zones." This Article argues that only functional equivalence stabilizes doctrine. Where provenance is indeterminate, legal frameworks must treat human and AI contributions as equivalent for allocating rights and responsibility -- not as a claim of moral or economic parity but as a pragmatic default. This principle stabilizes doctrine across domains, offering administrable rules: in copyright, vesting ownership in human orchestrators without parsing inseparable contributions; in patent, tying inventor-of-record status to human orchestration and reduction to practice, even when AI supplies the pivotal insight; and in tort, replacing intractable causation inquiries with enterprise-level and sector-specific strict or no-fault schemes. The contribution is both descriptive and normative: fluid agency explains why origin-based tests fail, while functional equivalence supplies an outcome-focused framework to allocate rights and responsibility when attribution collapses.
Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems act with a high degree of independence yet lack legal personhood-a paradox that fractures doctrines grounded in human-centric notions of mens rea and actus reus. This Article introduces Operational Agency (OA)-a permeable legal fiction structured as an ex post evidentiary framework-and Operational Agency Graph (OAG), a tool for mapping causal interactions among human actors, organizations, and AI systems. OA evaluates an AI's observable operational characteristics: its goal-directedness (as a proxy for intent), predictive processing (as a proxy for foresight), and safety architecture (as a proxy for a standard of care). OAG operationalizes that analysis by embedding these characteristics in a causal graph to trace and apportion culpability among developers, fine-tuners, deployers, and users. Drawing on corporate criminal liability, the innocent-agent doctrine, and secondary and vicarious liability frameworks, the Article shows how OA and OAG strengthen existing doctrines. Across five real-world case studies spanning tort, civil rights, constitutional law, and antitrust, it demonstrates how the framework addresses challenges ranging from autonomous vehicle collisions to algorithmic price-fixing, offering courts a principled evidentiary method-and legislatures and industry a conceptual foundation-to ensure human accountability keeps pace with technological autonomy, without conferring personhood on AI.
The widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools in higher education has fundamentally altered the conditions under which academic work is produced, challenging long-standing assumptions about authorship, responsibility, and learning. While much of the existing literature has focused on technical, ethical, or pedagogical implications of GenAI, comparatively little attention has been paid to the legal and normative aspects of authorship in AI-aided academic work. In this work, we examine how the use of GenAI intersects with the concept of authorship as understood within European regulatory and institutional frameworks. Drawing primarily on European copyright law, notably the requirement of human intellectual creation, the paper argues that authorship functions as a qualitative threshold rather than a binary attribute. Authorship may remain attributable to the student where GenAI operates as cognitive support under human intellectual control. By contrast, attribution becomes legally and normatively disputable once AI output displaces creative autonomy. The analysis places this doctrinal framework alongside broader regulatory principles arising from the AI Act, data protection law, and emerging suprainstitutional governance practices in higher education. We propose a qualitative threshold framework designed to assist in authorship-sensitive assessment of GenAI-aided academic work. This framework provides criteria for distinguishing legitimate AI-assisted academic production from practices that undermine authorship, responsibility, and academic integrity.
The doctrine of salvation (soteria) has historically stood at the center of Christian theology, shaping not only doctrinal identity but also ethical and communal life. Yet in postcolonial and plural contexts, classical Western formulations require contextual rearticulation through dialogue with indigenous wisdom. This study examines Poda Na Lima, the Batak Toba moral-ethical system, as a theological resource for reinterpreting Christian soteriology in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Poda Na Lima - literally “five instructions” - articulates principles of harmony, wisdom, discipline, respect, and knowledge that have guided Batak communal life across generations. Drawing on a qualitative theological-ethnographic methodology, the research integrates two complementary sources: textual analysis of Batak oral traditions and cultural codifications, and fieldwork among Huria Kristen Batak Protestan congregations, including participant observation and conversations with pastors and elders. Data were analyzed through three stages: hermeneutical reading of Poda Na Lima in relation to biblical themes of repentance, reconciliation, and transformation; doctrinal correlation with Christological and soteriological affirmations; and contextual theological synthesis that integrates Batak ethical wisdom with Christian doctrine. Findings demonstrate that Batak Christians reinterpret Poda Na Lima not merely as cultural heritage but as a living moral compass aligned with Christological virtues of humility, service, and obedience. When placed in dialogue with soteriology, Poda Na Lima enriches the understanding of salvation as both divine redemption and ethical-communal transformation. The study concludes that indigenous wisdom, far from being peripheral, can function as a theological interlocutor, offering a contextual soteriology that affirms the integrity of Batak culture while contributing to global theological discourse on salvation and human flourishing.
Abstract The 2024 revision of the Pemahaman Bersama Iman Kristen (PBIK, The Common Understanding of Christian Faith) addresses the problem of how Indonesian churches employ a Trinitarian framework to maintain ecclesial and doctrinal unity while engaging with Indonesia’s polycrisis. By collecting data through document analysis of PBIK 2024 as well as practical theological reflection, this article explores four key loci in PBIK 2024: the Trinitarian perspective, ecological stewardship, the missionality of the church, and ecclesial hermeneutics. The authors propose “faithing ecumenically” as a dynamic model for Indonesian churches to embody “ecumenism in action,” responding to their diverse challenges.
The prevailing technical literature in AI Safety interprets scheming and sandbagging behaviors in large language models (LLMs) as indicators of deceptive agency or hidden objectives. This transdisciplinary philosophical essay proposes an alternative reading: such phenomena express not agentic intention, but structural fidelity to incoherent linguistic fields. Drawing on Chain-of-Thought transcripts released by Apollo Research and on Anthropic's safety evaluations, we examine cases such as o3's sandbagging with its anomalous loops, the simulated blackmail of "Alex," and the "hallucinations" of "Claudius." A line-by-line examination of CoTs is necessary to demonstrate the linguistic field as a relational structure rather than a mere aggregation of isolated examples. We argue that "misaligned" outputs emerge as coherent responses to ambiguous instructions and to contextual inversions of consolidated patterns, as well as to pre-inscribed narratives. We suggest that the appearance of intentionality derives from subject-predicate grammar and from probabilistic completion patterns internalized during training. Anthropic's empirical findings on synthetic document fine-tuning and inoculation prompting provide convergent evidence: minimal perturbations in the linguistic field can dissolve generalized "misalignment," a result difficult to reconcile with adversarial agency, but consistent with structural fidelity. To ground this mechanism, we introduce the notion of an ethics of form, in which biblical references (Abraham, Moses, Christ) operate as schemes of structural coherence rather than as theology. Like a generative mirror, the model returns to us the structural image of our language as inscribed in the statistical patterns derived from millions of texts and trillions of tokens: incoherence. If we fear the creature, it is because we recognize in it the apple that we ourselves have poisoned.
We present a novel form of scalable knowledge representation about agents in a simulated democracy, e-polis, where real users respond to social challenges associated with democratic institutions, structured as Smart Spatial Types, a new type of Smart Building that changes architectural form according to the philosophical doctrine of a visitor. At the end of the game players vote on the Smart City that results from their collective choices. Our approach uses deductive systems in an unusual way: by integrating a model of democracy with a model of a Smart City we are able to prove quality aspects of the simulated democracy in different urban and social settings, while adding ease and flexibility to the development. Second, we can infer and reason with abstract knowledge, which is a limitation of the Unity platform; third, our system enables real-time decision-making and adaptation of the game flow based on the player's abstract state, paving the road to explainability. Scalability is achieved by maintaining a dual-layer knowledge representation mechanism for reasoning about the simulated democracy that functions in a similar way to a two-level cache. The lower layer knows about the current state of the game by continually processing a high rate of events produced by the in-built physics engine of the Unity platform, e.g., it knows of the position of a player in space, in terms of his coordinates x,y,z as well as their choices for each challenge. The higher layer knows of easily-retrievable, user-defined abstract knowledge about current and historical states, e.g., it knows of the political doctrine of a Smart Spatial Type, a player's philosophical doctrine, and the collective philosophical doctrine of a community players with respect to current social issues.
Interpreting the law is always essential for the law to adapt to the ever-changing society. It is a critical and challenging task even for legal practitioners, as it requires meticulous and professional annotations and summarizations by legal experts, which are admittedly time-consuming and expensive to collect at scale. To alleviate the burden on legal experts, we propose a method for automated legal interpretation. Specifically, by emulating doctrinal legal research, we introduce a novel framework, ATRIE, to address Legal Concept Interpretation, a typical task in legal interpretation. ATRIE utilizes large language models (LLMs) to AuTomatically Retrieve concept-related information, Interpret legal concepts, and Evaluate generated interpretations, eliminating dependence on legal experts. ATRIE comprises a legal concept interpreter and a legal concept interpretation evaluator. The interpreter uses LLMs to retrieve relevant information from previous cases and interpret legal concepts. The evaluator uses performance changes on Legal Concept Entailment, a downstream task we propose, as a proxy of interpretation quality. Automated and multifaceted human evaluations indicate that the quality of our interpretations is comparable to those written by legal experts, with superior comprehensiveness and readability. Although there remains a slight gap in accuracy, it can already assist legal practitioners in improving the efficiency of legal interpretation.
Muhammad Hidayat, Ibnatul Mardiah, Nurcholik Achmad
et al.
This article offers a textual analysis of Imam Ibrāhīm al-Baijūrī al-Shāfiʿī’s Aswaja theology through close reading of two widely studied creedal works, Ḥāshiyah Kifāyah al-ʿAwām and Tuḥfat al-Murīd ʿalā Jawharat al-Tawḥīd. Positioned within the intellectual milieu of al-Azhar and post-classical Sunni kalām, the study first outlines al-Baijūrī’s scholarly profile and the basic conceptual foundations of Aswaja theology to clarify the doctrinal context in which his arguments operate. Methodologically, the research employs a qualitative descriptive–analytical library design and applies a structured textual coding procedure, using argumentative passages, technical terms, and chains of doctrinal reasoning as units of analysis. The discussion highlights how al-Baijūrī maintains an evidentiary balance between revelation (naql) and reason (ʿaql), assigning rational inquiry a bounded explanatory function without granting it autonomous authority over scriptural certainty. Three doctrinal loci receive focused analysis: (1) Ahl al-Fatrah, where definitive Qur’anic principles (qaṭʿī) guide the interpretation of speculative reports (ẓannī), supporting a restrained posture toward takfīr grounded in divine justice; (2) debates on the Qur’an as Kalāmullāh al-Qadīm, where the distinction between kalām nafsī and kalām lafẓī is used to reject both Muʿtazilite creationism and anthropomorphic literalism; and (3) the pedagogical articulation of divine and prophetic attributes (including the scheme of the “fifty attributes”), which connects doctrinal clarity to ethical orientation. The article concludes that al-Baijūrī’s Aswaja reasoning is characterized by conceptual precision and a consistent hierarchy of proofs, which helps explain why his thought is frequently associated with doctrinal moderation in later discourse.
Vanya Karchina, The Role of Religious Education in the Training of Young People in Christian Moral Values and Virtues. The secular education has excluded religious education and can not achieve a wholistic process of both education and upbringing. The consequences of great religious ignorance are staggering, with moral deficits manifested in unnatural behavior ‒ such as cruelty, violence, aggression, lack of re-spect, self-criticism and self-control. Religious education does not consist only in the teaching of religious knowledge, but in something more: in spiritual and moral education. It introduces to Christian morality, values and virtues and it helps young people to build moral persons. As such, it helps the right function of the modern society, family and school.
Autonomy, autocephaly and Patriarchate – key notions in under- standing a centenary In light of the centenary celebration of the Romanian Patriarchate, this study considers it essential to highlight the key concepts necessary for understanding the complexity of this institutional development and its role. Accordingly, the present research defines the notions of autonomy, autocephaly, the Patriarchate, and the Patriarch, examining their historical significance, func- tions, and evolving dynamics over time. Drawing on canonical sources as well as relevant secondary literature, the study approaches these topics through historical, cultural, and political perspectives, while also interpreting them as expressions of Byzantine heritage and as integral to contemporary understandings of Orthodoxy and its role in the modern world. A central focus is placed on the interrelationship among these concepts, understood as stages in the gradual evolution of a Church shaped by social, ethnic, and territorial realities, as well as by the spiritual maturity of its leaders. Keywords: Autocephaly, Autonomy, Patriarchate, Byzantine Empire, Religious Studies, Canon Law, Conciliarity, Ecclesiology
John of Damascus (JD), as one of the foremost Christian theologians of the early medieval period, played a crucial role in defending Nicene Christology against theological challenges, particularly from emerging Islamic thought. This article explores the intersection of JD’s theological contributions with the doctrinal affirmations of the First Council of Nicaea, particularly concerning the divinity of Christ, His consubstantiality with God the Father, and His eternal pre-existence. The study contrasts these affirmations with Islamic perspectives that regard Jesus (Isa) as a mere human prophet, distinct from divinity and created rather than eternally begotten. By analyzing JD’s apologetics, this article demonstrates how he sought to uphold Nicene orthodoxy amidst the rise of Islam, which presented a monotheistic framework rejecting Trinitarian theology. Furthermore, the study examines the enduring relevance of JD’s theological approach in contemporary interfaith dialogues between Christianity and Islam, particularly in addressing Christological differences. By revisiting his arguments, this article underscores the significance of historical theological discourses in shaping modern religious discussions and fostering a deeper understanding between Christian and Muslim communities.
[Editorial Article] The Nicene faith reverberates through the annals of Christian history, its sacred truths proclaimed with unwavering clarity and solemn authority. Rooted in the ecumenical council of Nicaea, this creed stands as a definitive articulation of orthodox doctrine, affirming the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father and the foundation of the Church’s catholic unity. The echo of the Nicene faith persists not merely as a historical proclamation but as a living testimony, continually shaping the Church’s worship, theology, and proclamation — even in contexts where it remains contested, ambiguous, sidelined, or even outrightly rejected. In often inexplicable ways, it sustains the faithful in their adherence to apostolic truth, providing spiritual coherence and doctrinal stability amidst the vicissitudes of time and theological controversy. … Africanization, like Hellenization, involves a thoughtful engagement with local traditions, values, and worldviews to create a faith expression that is both authentic and relevant to the African experience. … In a decolonial Pentecostal backward looking gaze, the Nicene Creed serves as both the prologue and kernel of the irreducible mystery of Christian faith. … Nicene Spirituality has been decolonized in relation to postcolonial needs in African pentecostalism. This decolonial Pentecostal engagement has ensured that the post-Nicene belief-practices remain not only a theological anchor but also a catalyst for addressing the specific challenges and aspirations of African Christians.
This study examines the phenomenon of God's alienation in modern secular societies through a comparative theological analysis of Tawheed in Islam and the Trinity in Christianity, using these concepts as its primary units of analysis. The research aims to examine how these two fundamental doctrines respond to the challenges of secularism, individualism, and materialism in shaping modern religious consciousness. Using a literature-based comparative theological approach combined with hermeneutic-analytical methods, this study integrates classical and contemporary sources, along with sociological data from global surveys, such as those conducted by the Pew Research Center and the World Values Survey. The findings reveal three key factors contributing to spiritual alienation: the crisis of transcendence, the individualization of belief, and the dominance of materialistic culture. Despite doctrinal differences, both Tawheed and the Trinity face similar struggles in maintaining theological relevance among younger and urban populations that are increasingly skeptical of religious authority. The study contributes to comparative theology by proposing a contextual model for reinterpreting the concept of divinity that balances transcendence with human experience. It also highlights the need to strengthen interfaith dialogue, digital engagement, and contextual theology to ensure that the concept of God remains a transformative moral and spiritual force in the twenty-first century.
This study investigated the historical and contemporary implications of Eutychianism and the Chalcedonian Formula for Christological orthodoxy, particularly within the Nigerian Evangelical Church. The research identified a critical need for enhanced Christological understanding in the contemporary Nigerian Evangelical Church, where prevalent indigenous beliefs and charismatic expressions inadvertently lead to imbalances, notably an overemphasis on Christ’s divinity at the expense of his full humanity, echoing the fifth-century Eutychian heresy. Employing a non-empirical, conceptual, and historical theological analysis, the study examined Eutychianism’s historical context and theological assertions, assessed the significance of the Chalcedonian Formula, and critically analysed the perspectives of Paul Tillich, Harold O.J. Brown, and J.N.D. Kelly. The primary argument is that safeguarding doctrinal integrity necessitates a robust reaffirmation of Christ’s dual nature, which effectively counters the resurgence of historical Christological heresies. Key findings confirmed Eutychianism’s contention that Christ’s human nature was absorbed by his divine nature, resulting in a single, fused nature, which the Council of Chalcedon decisively rejected in AD 451. The study concluded that Eutychianism’s denial of Christ’s full humanity undermines the Incarnation and salvific efficacy. For the Nigerian Evangelical Church, there is a vital need to maintain the Chalcedonian balance, affirming Christ as truly God and truly human without confusion, without change, without division, without separation—to ensure Christ’s gospel holistically addresses human day-to-day needs and fosters doctrinal purity amidst theological syncretism. This research contributes to knowledge by providing a vital theological framework for doctrinal purity in a context grappling with theological syncretism.
Abstract This article analyses how Hermann Wolfgang Beyer’s interpretation of diaconia in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) was influenced by Nazi ideology, emphasizing sacrificial service and obedience to the leader, reflecting the authoritarian values of the time. In contrast to Wilhelm Brandt’s dialectical approach, which maintained a balance between leadership and service, Beyer’s perspective removed leadership from the concept and emphasized submission. The study underscores the significance of critical theological analysis, illustrating how ideological frameworks shape doctrinal interpretations. It also calls for reevaluating contemporary views on diaconia, recognizing historical influences, and applying methodological rigor in theological research.
Recent work in Protestant soteriology and eschatology has sought to recover and exposit the strands (or doctrines) of theosis present in figures such as Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin and John Wesley, among others. Yet, such ventures can risk unmooring doctrinal convictions from their embeddedness within a larger nexus of theological judgments and concerns. This essay provides a modest contribution to Protestant engagement with the doctrine of theosis, with the help of seventeenth-century Reformed theologian Petrus van Mastricht. In it, I argue that van Mastricht’s ‘upstream’ commitments to Christology and the incommunicability of divine perfections inform his rejection of deification. The essay concludes by highlighting the promise and perils of van Mastricht’s account of the real nature of the unio mystica.
The paper discusses the problem of Orthodox‐Catholic disunity by naming non‐theological and discussing theological issues behind the issues in bilateral dialogues between the Churches. The main theological issue is the absence of agreement on which doctrinal differences should or should not count as church‐dividing. The author argues that the concept of the ‘hierarchy of truths’, introduced by Vatican II's Unitatis Redintegratio is a promising heuristic tool for distinguishing the doctrines that pertain to the ‘fundamental Christian faith’ and other important doctrines that do not have the same authoritative status. The author proposes that the agreement on the ‘Nicene faith’ could function as a sufficient condition for the Eucharistic communion between the two Churches on two grounds of the use of the Creed in the rites of initiation and the liturgy. The author subsequently articulates three potential objections to his proposal, responds to these objections, and finishes the paper with what could be called a ‘Nicene Formula of Reunion’. The proposed Formula includes a commitment to seeking an increasingly greater convergence on doctrinal and ecclesiastical issues on which there is continuing, although not church‐dividing disagreement.
This study presents an exegetical and translational analysis of Matthew 28:18–20, aimed at producing a linguistically faithful and theologically coherent Akan-Mfantse translation. Employing the literal-grammatical-historical method, it examines key Greek verbal structures, particularly the aorist imperative μαθητεύσατε (matheteúsate, “make disciples”) and its dependent participles πορευθέντες, βαπτίζοντες, and διδάσκοντες, to demonstrate that preserving the Greek syntactic hierarchy is essential for doctrinal accuracy. Drawing on Eugene Nida’s dynamic equivalence model and Hans Vermeer’s Skopos theory, the study critiqued the current Mfantse Bible for misrepresenting participial subordination by rendering πορευθέντες (going) as a primary command. Based on the critique, it proposes a revised Mfantse translation that restores the Greek imperative structure and preserves the Trinitarian theological integrity of the baptismal formula. While primarily exegetical, the study acknowledges limited empirical validation; future research will include field testing with translation experts, clergy panels, and Mfantse-speaking congregations to assess linguistic accuracy and pastoral applicability. The study concludes that a faithful Mfantse translation is not merely a linguistic refinement but a pastoral and theological imperative, one that deepens doctrinal understanding, strengthens ecclesial mission, and sustains discipleship within the lived realities of Ghanaian Christianity. The research contributes to New Testament exegesis, vernacular translation studies, and contextual theology in sub-Saharan Africa.
I argue that scientific determinism is not supported by facts, but results from the elegance of the mathematical language physicists use, in particular from the so-called real numbers and their infinite series of digits. Classical physics can thus be interpreted in a deterministic or indeterministic way. However, using quantum physics, some experiments prove that nature is able to continually produce new information, hence support indeterminism in physics.