Philosophy of Religion

This book uncovers something more radical than atheism: hostility against God. Misotheists are not anti-religious, nor do they question God's existence; however, they do deny his competence and goodness. The author marshals an impressive array of evidence to demonstrate that this stance has a history of its own, although few people are aware of it. Indeed, misotheists tend to conceal their hostility to God, even while they hint at it obsessively. Hating God contains both a sweeping historical overview of the hostility against God and compelling case studies of six major authors who explore misotheistic themes: Algernon Swinburne, Zora Neale Hurston, Rebecca West, Elie Wiesel, Peter Shaffer, and Philip Pullman.The author's focus on literary artists is no coincidence, as literature has served as the principal vehicle for expressions of God-hatred over the last two hundred years. By probing the deeper mainsprings that cause rational, talented, moral people to become blasphemers, he offers answers to some of the most vexing questions that beset the human relationship with the divine. In a provocative finding the author concludes that misotheists have no morbid or perverse inclinations but instead number among them humanists of the highest caliber.

Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is one of the most important resources from the nineteenth century for theology as it faces the challenges of modernity and postmodernity. A critical edition of these lectures was published in the 1980s, which makes possible a study of the text on a level of accuracy and insight hitherto unattainable. The present book (by the editor and translator of the critical edition) engages the speculative reconstruction of Christian theology that is accomplished by Hegel’s lectures, and it provides a close reading of the text as a whole. The first two chapters argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion is a philosophical theology focused on the concept of spirit, and they provide an overview of his writings on religion prior to the philosophy of religion. The book analyses Hegel’s conception of the object and purpose of the philosophy of religion, his critique of the theology of his time, his approach to Christianity within the framework of the concept of religion, his concept of God, his reconstruction of central Christian themes (Trinity, creation, humanity, evil, Christ, Spirit, community), and his placing of Christianity among the religions of the world. The concluding chapter makes a case for the contemporary theological significance of Hegel by identifying currently contested sites of interpretation and their Hegelian resolution (focusing on the categories of spirit, wholeness, narrative, Christ, community, and pluralism). Hegel, it is argued, provides a basis for a revisioning of central doctrinal themes in contrast to the reigning dogmatisms of our time, namely philosophical agnosticism and religious fundamentalism. The book is being published concurrently with the reissuing by Oxford University Press of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.

How and why should hope play a key role in a 21st-century democratic politics? This book offers a philosophical exploration of the theme, contending that a modern construction of hope as an emotion is deficient. It revives the medieval understanding of hope as a virtue, reconstructing this in a contemporary philosophical idiom. In this framework, hope is less a spontaneous reaction than it is a choice against despair; a decision to live with confidence and expectation, based on a rational assessment of possibility and a faith in the underlying goodness of life. In cultures shaped by biblical teaching, hope is thought praiseworthy. The book explores the religious origins of the concept of hope in the Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, rabbinic literature, and Augustine. It traces the roots of both the praise of hope, in Jewish and Christian thought, and the criticism of hope in Greco-Roman thought and in the tradition of philosophical pessimism. Arguing on behalf of a straightened, sober form of hope, it relates hope-as-a-virtue to the tasks of democratic citizenship. Without diminishing the wisdom found in tragedy, a strong argument emerges in favour of hope as a way of taking responsibility for the world. Drawing on insights from scriptural and classical texts, philosophers, and theologians — ancient and modern, the book builds a compelling case for placing hope at the centre of democratic political systems.

The question of who ‘we’ are and what vision of humanity ‘we’ assume to undergird Western culture lies at the heart of hotly debated questions on the role of religion in education, politics, and culture in general. Ongoing complaints about higher education, and the apparent failure by European secular societies to integrate religiously vibrant cultures reveal a profound lack of identity and purpose within Western culture. This book suggests that the long-standing separation of reason and faith offers an explanation for the West's cultural malaise. The author proposes that the West can rearticulate its identity and renew its cultural purpose by recovering the humanistic ethos that originally shaped Western societies. Tracing the Christian roots of humanism from patristic theology, through the Renaissance into modern philosophy reveals the religious foundation for the correlation of reason and faith based on the incarnation that enabled central Western values. Drawing on this history, the author combines humanism, religion, and hermeneutic philosophy to re-imagine a humanistic ethos for our current cultural and intellectual climate. The hope of this recovery is for humanism to become what Charles Taylor has called a ‘social imaginary’, an internalized vision of what it means to be human. This vision will encourage, once again, the correlation of reason and faith in order to overcome current cultural impasses, such as those posed, for example, by religious and secularist fundamentalisms.

John Calvin is universally acknowledged as one of the formative Christian theologians and one of the great doctors of the Church. His work continues to be the subject of almost continuous exposition and scholarly appraisal. This book is the first at length treatment of some of his key ideas and his theological positions that have a philosophical aspect to them. Work has been done on the philosophical sources of some of Calvin's work, but little or nothing on how Calvin actually made use of philosophical ideas in his work. Calvin has frequently been thought of as anti philosophical in his bent, with particular focus being placed on his intense dislike of speculation. Emphasis has been placed on his role as a theologian of 'the Word' and on his Renaissance background. It is not denied that Calvin was first and foremost a theologian, and not a philosopher, and the influence of the Renaissance upon him, particularly on his style, must be recognized. However, careful analysis of his theology reveals both Calvin's thorough familiarity with a range of philosophical ideas, and a willingness to use these, putting them to work in elucidation of his own theological positions, and even on occasion indulging in a little speculation on his own account.

In order to emphasis Calvin's often positive relationship to philosophical ideas, the chapters of the book are arranged in philosophical rather than theological order. So there are chapters on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. As well as examining Calvin's theology in its late mediaeval context, attention is given to the way in which Calvin has been appealed to in contemporary philosophy by 'reformed' epistemology.

It is believed that this book should lead to a reappraisal not of Calvin's theology as such, but of his theological method, and of the way in which his work relates not only to late mediaeval theology but also to later developments in Reformed theology, in Puritanism, and Reformed Scholasticism.

Karl Barth is often assumed to have been hostile to philosophy, willfully ignorant of it, or too indebted to its conclusions for his own theological good. These truisms of twentieth-century theology are challenged in this original and comprehensive account of Barth’s understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy. Drawing upon a range of material from Barth’s earliest writings (1909) up until interviews and roundtable discussions that took place shortly before his death (1968), this book offers a developmental account of Barth’s thoughts on philosophy and theology. Beginning with the nineteenth-century intellectual background to Barth’s earliest theology, this work presents the young and ‘liberal’ Barth’s understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy and then tracks this understanding throughout the rest of Barth’s career. While Barth never finally settled on a single, fixed account of theology and philosophy, there was still a great deal of continuity regarding this topic in Barth’s oeuvre. Looking through the lens of theology and philosophy, one can clearly see Barth’s continual indebtedness to nineteenth-century modern theology as well as his attempts and struggles to move beyond it. In addition to locating Barth’s account of theology and philosophy historically, attention is given to the specific doctrines and theological presuppositions that inform Barth’s different portrayals of the relationship between theology and philosophy. Consideration is given to how and why Barth used material from the doctrines under consideration—such as revelation, theological ethics, Christology—to talk about theology and philosophy. What emerges is a Barth not only concerned about the integrity and independence of theological discourse but also concerned that theology does not lose its necessary and salutary interactions with philosophy.

The book draws out the critique of Christian nationalism that is implicit throughout the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, an analysis that is inseparable from his wider aim of reintroducing Christianity into Christendom. ‘Christian nationalism’ refers to the set of ideas in which belief in the development and superiority of one's national group is combined with, or underwritten by, Christian theology and practice. The book examines the nationalist theologies of H.L. Martensen and N.F.S. Grundtvig, important cultural leaders and contemporaries of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's response to their thought forms the backbone of his own philosophical and theological project, namely his attempt to form authentic Christian individuals through the use of ‘the moment’, ‘the leap’ and ‘contemporaneity’. This Kierkegaardian critique is brought into conversation with current political science theories of religious nationalism, and is expanded to address movements and theologies beyond the historical context of Kierkegaard's Golden Age Denmark. The implications of Kierkegaard's approach are undoubtedly radical and unsettling to politicians and church leaders alike, yet there is much to commend it to the reality of modern religious and social life. As a theological thinker keenly aware of the unique problems posed by Christendom, Kierkegaard's critique is timely for any Christian culture that is tempted to confuse its faith with patriotism or national affiliation.

Kierkegaard presents a form of divine command theory of moral obligation similar to accounts developed by Robert Adams and Philip Quinn. The account understands the relation humans have with a loving God as making possible the greatest human good, and as creating those unique obligations we designate as moral. God’s commands should be obeyed, not because of fear of divine punishment, but out of love and gratitude for the good that God has bestowed on humanity. Though God can and does address specific individuals, the fundamental divine command is the injunction – common to Judaism and Christianity – to love one’s neighbour as oneself. God’s commands are not arbitrary; they are directed at human flourishing and lead to genuine happiness, even though obedience to them requires self-denial and is not egoistically motivated. This Kierkegaardian ethic, found principally in Works of Love, has advantages over its contemporary secular rivals, such as evolutionary naturalism, social contract theories, and moral relativism. Additionally, this form of divine command theory resists the fundamental objections often posed against a religiously grounded ethic.

The orthodox doctrine of the incarnation affirms that Christ is both truly divine and truly human. This, however, raises the question of how these two natures can co-exist in the one, united person of Christ without undermining the integrity of either nature. Kenotic theologians address this problem by arguing that Christ ‘emptied’ himself of his divine attributes or prerogatives in order to become a human being. This book contends that a type of kenotic Christology is present in Kierkegaard's works, developed independently of the Christologies of contemporary kenotic theologians. Like many of the classic kenotic theologians of the 19th century, Kierkegaard argues that Christ underwent limitation on becoming a human being. Where he differs from his contemporaries is in emphasizing the radical nature of this limitation and in bringing out its existential consequences. The aim of Kierkegaard's Christology is not to provide a rationally satisfying theory of the incarnation, but to highlight the existential challenge with which Christ confronts each human being. Kierkegaard advances ‘existential kenoticism’, a form of kenotic Christology which extends the notion of the kenosis of Christ to the Christian believer, who is called upon to live a life of kenotic discipleship in which the believer follows Christ's example of lowly, humble, and suffering service. Kierkegaard thus shifts the problem of kenosis from the intellectual problem of working out how divinity and humanity can be united in Christ's Person to the existential problem of discipleship.