Philosophy of Religion : oso

Schelling's Theory of Symbolic Language

Daniel Whistler — 2013-05-23

Author:: Daniel Whistler
ISBN:: 9780199673735
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Literature
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673735.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

In this book, Daniel Whistler reconstructs F. W. J. Schelling’s philosophy of language based on a detailed reading of §73 of Schelling’s lectures on the Philosophy of Art. Whistler argues that the concept of the symbol present in this lecture course and elsewhere in Schelling’s writings of the period provides the key for a non-referential conception of language, where what matters is the intensity at which identity is produced. Such a reconstruction leads Whistler to a detailed analysis of Schelling’s system of identity, his grand project of the years 1801 to 1805, which has been continually neglected by contemporary scholarship. In particular, Whistler recovers the concepts of quantitative differentiation and construction as central to Schelling’s project of the period. This reconstruction also leads Whistler to an original reading of the origins of the concept of the symbol in German thought: there is not one ‘romantic symbol’, but a whole plethora of experiments in theorizing symbolism taking place at the turn of the nineteenth century. At stake then in this book is Schelling as a philosopher of language, Schelling as a systematizer of identity, and Schelling as a theorist of the symbol.

Renewing the Senses

Mark R. Wynn — 2013-05-23

Author:: Mark R. Wynn
ISBN:: 9780199669981
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199669981.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

In The Republic, Plato suggests that the enlightened person will find himself disoriented on his return to the realm of the shadows. So at the very beginning of the Western philosophical tradition there is a clear recognition that the condition of enlightenment can make for a difference in the phenomenology of a person’s experience of the sensory world. This book develops the idea that ‘enlightenment’ or spiritual maturity may result in, and may partly consist in, not so much a state of confusion or bewilderment in our experience of sensory things, but in a renewal of the realm of the senses. On this view, the ‘shadows’, as they feature in the seer’s experience, can bear the imprint of religious thoughts and attitudes, and can therefore serve as a proper focus for the spiritual life. And if that is so, then one standard objection to Christian, and broadly Platonic, conceptions of the spiritual life will have been removed: attending to the divine world need not after all imply any neglect of the world of sensory forms; and it may even be that it is in our encounter with the realm of sensory forms that certain religious insights are presented to us most vividly.

Kierkegaard and the Quest for Unambiguous Life

George Pattison — 2013-05-23

Author:: George Pattison
ISBN:: 9780199698677
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698677.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

This book looks at Kierkegaard with a fresh perspective shaped by the history of ideas, framed by the terms romanticism and modernism. ‘Modernism’ here refers to the kind of intellectual and literary modernism associated with Georg Brandes, and such later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures as J. P. Jacobsen, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Ibsen (all often associated with Kierkegaard in early secondary literature), and the young Georg Lukacs. This movement, currently attracting increasing scholarly attention, fed into such varied currents of twentieth-century thought as Bolshevism (as in Lukacs himself), fascism, and the early existentialism of, e.g., Shestov and the radical culture journal The Brenner (in which Kierkegaard featured regularly, and whose readers included Martin Heidegger). Each of these movements has, arguably, its own ‘Romantic’ aspect and Kierkegaard thus emerges as a figure who holds together or in whom are reflected both the aspirations and contradictions of early romanticism and its later nineteenth- and twentieth-century inheritors. Kierkegaard's specific ‘staging’ of his authorship in the contemporary life of Copenhagen, then undergoing a rapid transformation from being the backward capital of an absolutist monarchy to a modern, cosmopolitan city, provides a further focus for the volume. In this situation the early Romantic experience of nature as providing a source of healing and an experience of unambiguous life is transposed into a more complex and, ultimately, catastrophic register. In articulating these tensions, Kierkegaard's authorship provided a mirror to his age but also anticipated and influenced later generations who wrestled with their own versions of this situation.

God and Moral Obligation

C. Stephen Evans — 2013-05-23

Author:: C. Stephen Evans
ISBN:: 9780199696680
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696680.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-05-23

Is there a connection between religion and morality? Ivan Karamazov, in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, famously declares that if God does not exist, then “everything is permitted.” Most philosophers reject such a view and hold that moral truths do not depend on God. God and Moral Obligation argues that the truth lies somewhere between these two claims. It is not quite right to say that there would be nothing left of morality if God did not exist, but moral obligations do depend on God ontologically. Such obligations are best understood as divine commands or requirements, communicated to humans in a variety of ways, including conscience God and Moral Obligation also argues that two views often thought to be rivals to a divine command morality, natural law ethics and virtue ethics, are not rivals at all but provide necessary complementary elements of a comprehensive morality. A number of prominent objections to a divine command account of moral obligations, such as the so-called Euthyphro objection, are posed and answered. In the concluding chapters I point out the advantages a divine command account has over secular rivals, and I argue that those who reject an error theory and want to be moral realists about moral obligations (which is a reasonable view) should be open to a divine command account. The authority and objectivity of moral obligations are best explained by seeing them as divine commands.

Spirituality

Roger S. Gottlieb — 2013-01-24

Author:: Roger S. Gottlieb
ISBN:: 9780199738748
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738748.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This view of spirituality from traditional religion to contemporary culture reveals the common thread that joins Mahayana Buddhism and Hasidic Judaism, the Islamic Sufi poet Rumi and the Catholic St. Thomas a Kempis, people of every traditional religion and people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” This book describes spiritual life as the simple but extraordinarily difficult choice to face life's rigors and disappointments by developing certain key virtues. As we become more mindful, accepting, grateful, compassionate, and lovingly connected to others, we become more spiritual. These virtues oppose both the conventional social ego's attachment and arrogance, and any habitual, unreflective religiosity; and the spiritual path towards them can be shared equally by people inspired by belief in one God or many, the divinity of nature or the sacredness of life. The book spiritual teachings from both within and outside of traditional faiths, explains the origins and meaning of today's widespread spiritual detachment from institutional religion, and offers illuminating accounts of practices such as yoga, meditation, and prayer. The book also contains innovative and penetrating accounts of the role of spirituality in modern medicine, nature and the environmental crisis, and political activism.

Kierkegaard's Kenotic Christology

David R. Law — 2013-01-24

Author:: David R. Law
ISBN:: 9780199698639
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698639.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

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.

Karl Barth on Theology and Philosophy

Kenneth Oakes — 2013-01-24

Author:: Kenneth Oakes
ISBN:: 9780199661169
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199661169.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

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 Allure of Decadent Thinking

Carl Olson — 2013-01-24

Author:: Carl Olson
ISBN:: 9780199959839
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199959839.001.0001
Published in print:: 2013
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers a compelling and provocative argument against the application of postmodern thought to religious studies, showing how such radically skeptical thinking undermines, subverts, and distorts the study of religion. It shows that religious studies is an ongoing experiment with various types of methodological approaches to the study of religion, which is itself a human construct with limited cross-cultural application. Without a commonly agreed-upon method for the study of its subject, religious studies is characterized by the use of multiple methods, which tend to be adopted based on the latest trends in the field. Most recently, these trends have been dominated by postmodern thought. Because the discipline of religious studies is a product of the European Enlightenment with its values and representational mode of thinking, it is challenged and even threatened by postmodern thought, which calls into question many of its values, basic presuppositions, and convictions. The author examines various postmodern positions related to the study of religion, including those of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Mauss, Michel Foucault and Edward W. Said. He contrasts the thought of traditional history of religions scholars Mircea Eliade and Wendy Doniger with selected postmodern thinkers on the topics of hermeneutics, comparison, and difference. The book concludes by exploring the postmodern challenges to such accepted concepts of religion and considers the long-term implications of a scholar's adoption of postmodern methods. Regardless of whether they are transformed by postmodern thought, it suggests all methods and concepts should be subject to pragmatic review.

Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism

Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr — 2013-01-24

Author:: HenrikBogdanUniversity of Gothenburg, SwedenMartin P.Starr
ISBN:: 9780199863075
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199863075.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

This book offers an examination of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive occult iconoclasts. Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was a study in contradictions. He was born into a Fundamentalist Christian family, and then he was educated at Cambridge where he experienced both an intellectual liberation from his religious upbringing and a psychic awakening that led him into the study of magic. He was a stock figure in the tabloid press of his day, vilified during his life as a traitor, drug addict and debaucher; yet he became known as perhaps the most influential thinker in contemporary esotericism. The practice of the occult arts was understood in the light of contemporary developments in psychology, and its advocates, such as William Butler Yeats, were among the intellectual avant-garde of the modernist project. Crowley took a more drastic step and declared himself the revelator of a new age of individualism. Crowley's occult bricolage, Magick, was a thoroughly eclectic combination of spiritual exercises drawing from Western European ceremonial magical traditions as practiced in the nineteenth-century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley also pioneered in his inclusion of Indic sources for the parallel disciplines of meditation and yoga. The summa of this journey of self-liberation was harnessing the power of sexuality as a magical discipline, an instance of the “sacrilization of the self” as practiced in his co-masonic magical group, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The religion Crowley created, Thelema, legitimated his role as a charismatic revelator and herald of a new age of freedom under the law of “Do what thou wilt.” The influence of Aleister Crowley is not only to be found in contemporary esotericismȔhe was, for instance, a major influence on Gerald Gardner and the modern witchcraft movement—but can also be seen in the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in many forms of alternative spirituality and popular culture. This book provides insight into Crowley's critical role in the study of western esotericism, new religious movements, and sexuality.

Writing the Self

Jeanne Openshaw — 2012-10-18

Author:: Jeanne Openshaw
ISBN:: 9780198062479
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198062479.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

Renowned as the wandering minstrels and mystics from India and Bangladesh, Bauls have attained an iconic status as representatives of the ‘spiritual East’. This book investigates the largely unexplored terrain of the lives of Baul gurus by studying the autobiography of Baul guru, Raj Krishna, and situating Baul songs in a larger socio-historical perspective. The author examines the life, ‘lineage’, and legacy of Raj Krishna in the context of the Renaissance in colonial Bengal, the growth of urban middle classes, transforming identities and the development of spiritual philosophy in the subcontinent. She traces the life and beliefs of Raj and his disciples through oral as well as written sources. This volume also provides a comprehensive picture of the religious and socio-cultural aspirations of the people being addressed by the Baul gurus. The volume also contains transliteration of the original text and discussions on the methods of dating and analysing Baul texts.

Bahudhā and the Post 9/11 World

Balmiki Prasad Singh — 2012-10-18

Author:: Balmiki Prasad Singh
ISBN:: 9780195693553
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195693553.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2012-10-18

Today, in the age of terrorism and an unsafe world, there is a fresh need to understand the core meaning of the world religions, to reshape the educational system, and to strengthen the United Nations (UN) in a manner that can help people to build a better future. Drawing upon sources from the ancient roots of Indian culture and his experience as an international civil servant, B.P. Singh presents an essential framework for addressing the core twenty-first century global conflict and rebuilding for the post-September 11 world, while integrating the concept of the bahudhā philosophy. The futility of promoting violence and conflict in the name of religion is obvious to all except a few. Together, people have to recognize that many factors drive public opinion, including education and media, and that a global view is required. Underlining the need to transcend age-old peace mechanisms and reconstruct the language of discourse, this book propounds the concept of bahudhā — an eternal reality or continuum, a dialogue of harmony, and peaceful living. Bahudhā recognizes the distinction between plural societies and pluralism, facilitates exchange of views, and promotes understanding of the collective good. This book argues that the answer to terrorism lies in respecting human rights and appreciating various cultures and value systems. This is crucial for facilitating and enhancing dialogue processes eventually leading to amity and a peaceful world.

Tragic Soul-Life

Terrence L. Johnson — 2012-09-20

Author:: Terrence L. Johnson
ISBN:: 9780195383980
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195383980.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Contemporary debates on the role of religion in American public life ignore the overlap between religion and race in the formation of American democratic traditions and more often than not imagine democracy within the terrain of John Rawls’s political liberalism. This kind of political liberalism, which focuses on political commitments at the expense of our religious beliefs, fosters the necessary conditions to open historically closed doors to black bodies, allows blacks to sit at the King’s table and creates the necessary safeguards for black protest against discrimination within a constitutional democracy. By implication of its emphasis on rights and inclusion, political liberalism assumes that the presence of black bodies signifies the materialization of a robust American democracy. However, political liberalism discounts the historical role of religion in forming and fashioning the nation’s construction of race. This book argues that the collision between religion and politics during U.S. slavery and segregation created the fragments from which emerged a firm but shifting moral disdain for blackness within the nation’s collective moral imagination. The very problem political liberals want to avoid, our comprehensive philosophy, is central to solving the moral crisis facing democracy.

On Religious Diversity

Robert McKim — 2012-05-24

Author:: Robert McKim
ISBN:: 9780199774029
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199774029.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book explores some responses to religious diversity, with particular attention to attitudes that a member of a religious tradition might take to the beliefs and salvific prospects of outsiders. The book aims to provide deeper analyses of the familiar options of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism than have previously been provided. Much attention is focused on the question of whether more than one religious tradition might give a correct account of reality. This is the issue of truth. There is also much attention to questions about salvation, or whatever the goal of a tradition may be, whether this is understood to consist in enlightenment, liberation from rebirth, moksha, samadhi, Nirvana, union with God, or something else. There is detailed examination of many positions, including inclusivism about truth and inclusivism about salvation. For example, we might think of inclusivism about truth as involving both the idea that others may be right about beliefs that we do not hold and an openness on our part to learning from them. Some versions of salvific inclusivism involve a single route to salvation and some involve multiple routes. But all versions contend that while salvation is available to outsiders, they are not as well situated with respect to salvation as are insiders. This might, for example, be because whatever salvific efficacy their tradition possesses is derived from the insider’s tradition. The religiously ambiguous nature of the human situation is treated at length. On account of this ambiguity, people with different perspectives on religious matters have their own bodies of evidence to which they can appeal, and each person can have access only to a small portion of the available evidence. Some responses to outsiders, such as curiosity about their views and avoiding judgment about their salvific status, are advocated in light of this ambiguity.

Humanism and Religion

Jens Zimmermann — 2012-05-24

Author:: Jens Zimmermann
ISBN:: 9780199697755
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697755.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

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.

Turning Images in Philosophy, Science, and Religion

Charles Taliaferro and Jil Evans — 2012-01-19

Author:: CharlesTaliaferroProfessor of Philosophy, St. Olaf CollegeJilEvansVisual Artist
ISBN:: 9780199563340
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religious Studies
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199563340.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

This book brings together chapters addressing the role of images and imagination recruited in the perennial debates surrounding nature, mind, and God. The debate between ‘new atheists’ and religious apologists today is often hostile. This book sets a new tone by locating the debate between theism and naturalism (most ‘new atheists’ are self-described ‘naturalists’) in the broader context of reflection on imagination and aesthetics. The eleven chapters are about the power of imagination and the role of aesthetics in deciding between worldviews or philosophies of nature. This book represents a variety of points of view, including the philosophy of religion and of science, art history, and visual art.

The Predicament of Belief

Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp — 2012-01-19

Author:: Philip Clayton, Steven Knapp
ISBN:: 9780199695270
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695270.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Can those who appreciate the explanatory power of modern science still believe in traditional religious accounts of the nature and purpose of the universe? This book is intended for those who care about that question and are dissatisfied with the rigid dichotomies that dominate the contemporary debate. The extremists won’t be interested – those who assume that science answers all the questions that matter, and those so certain of their religious faith that dialogue with science, philosophy, or other faith traditions seems unnecessary. But far more people today recognize that matters of faith are complex, that doubt is endemic to belief, and that dialogue is indispensable in our day. In eight probing chapters, the authors of The Predicament of Belief consider the most urgent reasons for doubting that religious claims – in particular, those embedded in the Christian tradition – are likely to be true. They develop a version of Christian faith that preserves the tradition’s core insights but also gauges the varying degrees of certainty with which those insights can still be affirmed. Along the way, they address such questions as the ultimate origin of the universe, the existence of innocent suffering, the challenge of religious plurality, and how to understand the extraordinary claim that an ancient teacher rose from the dead. They end with a discussion of what their conclusions imply about the present state and future structure of churches and other communities in which Christian affirmations are made.

Place and Dialectic

John W.M. Krummel and Shigenori Nagatomo — 2012-01-19

Author:: John W.M. Krummel, Shigenori Nagatomo
ISBN:: 9780199841172
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199841172.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

This book consists of two significant essays by Nishida Kitarō, the founder of the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philosophy, “Basho” and “Logic and Life,” together with a substantial introduction to Nishida’s thought, extensive notes to the text, bibliography, and glossary of Japanese terms. The introduction discusses the significance of Nishida as a thinker and the key components of his philosophy as a whole, and contextualizes the essays within the unfolding of his oeuvre. “Basho” (1926/27) provides the first systematic articulation of Nishida’s philosophy of “place.” In “Logic and Life” (1936/37) Nishida inquires into the prelogical origin of logic, which he suggests is to be found within the dialectical unfoldings of world history and human society. The first essay initiated the philosophical system of basho (“place”) that eventually came to be known as “Nishida philosophy.” It is indispensable to understanding not only Nishida’s philosophy but the entire Kyoto school of thought that took off from Nishida’s thoughts on basho. The second essay provides an expression of one way in which Nishida’s thinking evolved after the initial articulation of his basho-theory. It shows how Nishida applied, in his later years, his understanding of basho to the outer world of history.

Visions of Jesus

Phillip H. Wiebe — 2011-10-03

Author:: Phillip H. Wiebe
ISBN:: 9780195126693
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195126693.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book provides a critical study of contemporary visions of Jesus. Based on personal accounts from thirty people, the book discusses each vision in vivid detail and discusses such issues as why these individuals believe their visions were of Jesus, what impact the experience has had on their lives, how the visions differ from dreams, and the possibility that the visions were actually hallucinations.

Uncertain Belief

David J. Bartholomew — 2011-10-03

Author:: David J. Bartholomew
ISBN:: 9780198270140
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198270140.001.0001
Published in print:: 2000
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

The certainties which underpinned Christian belief have crumbled in a world where science sets the standard of what is true. A rational case for belief must therefore be constructed out of uncertainties. Probability theory provides the tools for measuring and combining uncertainties and is thus the key to progress. This book examines four much debated topics where the logic of uncertain reference can be brought to bear. These are: miracles, the paranormal, God's existence, and the Bible. Given the great diversity of evidence, it is not surprising that opposite conclusions have been drawn by supposedly rational people. An assessment of the state of the argument from a probabilistic perspective is overdue. In this book the author examines and refutes some of the more extravagant claims, evaluates the weight of some of the quantitative evidence, and provides an answer to the fundamental question: can a rational person be a Christian?

Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology

William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith — 2011-10-03

Author:: William Lane Craig, Quentin Smith
ISBN:: 9780198263838
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263838.001.0001
Published in print:: 1995
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began to exist about fifteen billion years ago with a cataclysmic explosion called ‘the Big Bang’. The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received scant attention from philosophers. This book sets out to fill this gap by means of a sustained debate between two philosophers, William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, who defend opposing positions. Craig argues that the Big Bang that began the universe was created by God, while Smith argues that the Big Bang has no cause. The book consists of alternating chapters by Craig and Smith, with each chapter being either a criticism of a preceding chapter or being criticized by a subsequent chapter. Part One consists of Craig's arguments that the past is necessarily finite and that God created the Big Bang, and Smith's criticisms of these arguments. Part Two presents Smith's arguments that Big Bang cosmology is inconsistent with theism and Craig's criticisms of Smith's argument. The authors' arguments are based on Einstein's theory of relativity, and there is also a discussion of Stephen Hawking's new quantum cosmology.

St. Francis of Assisi and Nature

Roger D Sorrell — 2011-10-03

Author:: Roger D Sorrell
ISBN:: 9780195386738
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386738.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

One of the best-loved saints of all time, Francis of Assisi is often depicted today as a kind of proto-hippie or early environmentalist. This book — the most comprehensive study in English of Francis' view of nature in the context of medieval tradition — debunks modern anachronistic interpretations, arguing convincingly that Francis' ideas can only be understood in their 13th-century context. Through close analysis of Francis' writings, particularly the Canticle of the Sun, the author shows that many of Francis' beliefs concerning the proper relation of humanity to the natural world have their antecedents in scripture and the medieval monastic orders, while other ideas and practices — his nature mysticism, his concept of familial relationships with created things, and his extension of chivalric conceptions to interactions with creatures — are entirely his own. The author insists, however, that only by seeing Francis in terms of the Western traditions from which he arose can we appreciate the true originality of this extraordinary figure and the relevance of his thought to modern religious and environmental concerns.

Sincerity and Truth

John Kilcullen — 2011-10-03

Author:: John Kilcullen
ISBN:: 9780198266914
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198266914.001.0001
Published in print:: 1988
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

The chapters in this book reflect upon Pierre Bayle's Philosophical Commentary on the Words of the Gospel ‘Compel them to come in’, which appeared in parts in 1686–88, a classic statement of the case for toleration. The first two chapters are concerned with controversies about religious toleration in the 17th century, and the rest discuss philosophical questions relating to toleration and to the broader liberal idea of an open society. Three of the chapters originally appeared in the Philosophy Research Archives and are reproduced here with alterations.

Religion in Public Life

Roger Trigg — 2011-10-03

Author:: Roger Trigg
ISBN:: 9780199543670
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199543670.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

How far can religion play a part in the public sphere, or should it be only a private matter? In this book, the author examines this question in the context of today's pluralist societies, where many different beliefs clamour for attention. Should we celebrate diversity, or are matters of truth at stake? In particular, can we maintain our love of freedom, while cutting it off from religious roots? In societies in which there are many conflicting beliefs, the place of religion is a growing political issue. Should all religions be equally welcomed in the public square? Favouring one religion over others may appear to be a failure to treat all citizens equally, yet for citizens in many countries Christian heritage is woven into their way of life. Whether it is the issue of same-sex marriages, the right of French schoolgirls to wear Islamic headscarves, or just the public display of Christmas trees, all societies have to work out a consistent approach to the public influence of religion.

Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England

B. W. Young — 2011-10-03

Author:: B. W. Young
ISBN:: 9780198269427
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269427.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

The author describes and analyses the intellectual culture of the eighteenth-century Church of England, particularly in relation to those developments traditionally described as constituting the Enlightenment. It challenges conventional perceptions of an intellectually moribund institution by contextualising the polemical and scholarly debates in which churchmen engaged. In particular, it delineates the vigorous clerical culture in which much eighteenth-century thought evolved. The book traces the creation of a self-consciously enlightened tradition within Anglicanism, which drew on Erasmianism, seventeenth-century eirenicism and the legacy of Locke. By emphasising the variety of its intellectual life, the book challenges those notions of Enlightenment which advance predominantly political interpretations of this period. Thus, eighteenth-century critics of the Enlightenment, notably those who contributed to a burgeoning interest in mysticism, are equally integral to this study.

The Re-Emergence of Emergence

Philip Clayton and Paul Davies — 2011-10-03

Author:: PhilipClaytonIngraham Professor, Claremont School of Theology; Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Claremont Graduate Universityhttp://www.cgu.edu/pages/1058.aspPaulDaviesProfessor of Natural Philosophy, Australian Centre for Astrobiology, Macquarie University, Sydney
ISBN:: 9780199544318
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544318.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Much of the modern period was dominated by a ‘reductionist’ theory of science. On this view, to explain any event in the world is to reduce it down to fundamental particles, laws, and forces. In recent years reductionism has been dramatically challenged by a radically new paradigm called ‘emergence’. According to this new theory, natural history reveals the continuous emergence of novel phenomena: new structures and new organisms with new causal powers. Consciousness is yet one more emergent level in the natural hierarchy. Many theologians and religious scholars believe that this new paradigm may offer new insights into the nature of God and God's relation to the world. This volume introduces emergence theory, outlines the major arguments in its defence, and summarizes the most powerful objections against it.

The Physics of Duns Scotus

Richard Cross — 2011-10-03

Author:: Richard Cross
ISBN:: 9780198269748
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269748.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Duns Scotus, along with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, was one of the three most talented and influential of the medieval schoolmen, and a highly original and creative thinker. Natural philosophy, or physics, is one of the areas of his system which has not received detailed attention in modern literature. But it is important, both for understanding Scotus's contributions in theology, and in tracing some important developments in the basically Aristotelian world-view which Scotus and his contemporaries espoused. This book contains discussion and analysis of Scotus's accounts of the nature of matter; the structure of material substance; mass; the nature of space, time, and motion; quantitative and qualitative change; and the various sorts of unity which can be exhibited by different kinds of whole. It also includes discussion of Scotus's accounts of chemical composition, organic unity, and nutrition. Scotus's views on these matters are philosophically sophisticated, and often highly original.

Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity

Thomas McCall and Michael Rea — 2011-10-03

Author:: ThomasMcCallAssistant Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity SchoolMichaelReaProfessor of Philosophy, University of Notre Damehttp://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/faculty/index.shtml
ISBN:: 9780199216215
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199216215.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Classical Christian orthodoxy insists that God is Triune: there is only one God, but there are three divine Persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who are somehow of one substance with one another. But what does this doctrine mean? How can we coherently believe that there is only one God if we also believe that there are three divine Persons? This problem, sometimes called the ‘threeness-oneness problem’ or the ‘logical problem of the Trinity’, is the focus of this interdisciplinary volume. It includes a selection of recent philosophical work on this topic, accompanied by a variety of essays by philosophers and theologians to further the discussion. The book is divided into four parts, the first three dealing in turn with the three most prominent models for understanding the relations between the Persons of the Trinity: Social Trinitarianism, Latin Trinitarianism, and Relative Trinitarianism. Each section includes essays by both proponents and critics of the relevant model. The volume concludes with a section containing essays by theologians reflecting on the current state of the debate.

Peter Lombard

Philipp W. Rosemann — 2011-10-03

Author:: Philipp W. Rosemann
ISBN:: 9780195155440
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195155440.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Peter Lombard is best known as the author of a celebrated work entitled Book of Sentences, which for several centuries served as the standard theological textbook in the Christian West. It was the subject of more commentaries than any other work of Christian literature besides the Bible itself. The Book of Sentences is essentially a compilation of older sources, from the Scriptures and Augustine down to several of Lombard's contemporaries, such as Hugh of Saint Victor and Peter Abelard. Its importance lies in Lombard's organization of the theological material, his method of presentation, and the way in which he shaped doctrine in several major areas. Despite his importance, however, there is no accessible introduction to Peter Lombard's life and thought available in any modern language. This volume fills this gap. The book begins by demonstrating how the Book of Sentences grew out of a long tradition of Christian reflection—a tradition, ultimately rooted in Scripture, which by the twelfth century had become ready to transform itself into a theological system. Turning to the Sentences, the book then offers a brief exposition of Lombard's life and work. It proceeds to a book-by-book examination and interpretation of its main topics, including the nature and attributes of God, the Trinity, creation, angelology, human nature and the Fall, original sin, Christology, ethics, and the sacraments. The book concludes by exploring how the Sentences helped shape the further development of the Christian tradition, from the twelfth century through the time of Martin Luther.

Origen and the Life of the Stars

Alan Scott — 2011-10-03

Author:: Alan Scott
ISBN:: 9780198263616
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Early Christian Studies, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263616.001.0001
Published in print:: 1994
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

It was widely assumed by intellectuals from antiquity to the Middle Ages that the beauty and regularity of the heavens was a sign of their superior life. Through this belief the stars gained an important position in Greek religion, and speculations on their nature figured prominently in discussions of human psychology and eschatology. In the 3rd century AD the influential Christian theologian Origen included Hellenistic theories on the life and nature of the stars in his cosmology. This marked an interesting episode in the history of the idea, but it also had important implications for early Christian theology. Although he was condemned as heretical for these (and other) speculations, he was successful in incorporating traditional philosophical theories about the stars into a biblical theology.

Moral, Believing Animals

Christian Smith — 2011-10-03

Author:: Christian Smith
ISBN:: 9780195162028
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195162028.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? This book offers answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theories. The research for this book is based on the assumption (unfashionable in certain circles) that human beings have an identifiable and peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. It argues that all people are at bottom believers, whose lives, actions, and institutions are constituted, motivated, and governed by narrative traditions and moral orders on which they inescapably depend. Despite the vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, the book argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, the book says, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings.

The Moral Gap

John E. Hare — 2011-10-03

Author:: John E. Hare
ISBN:: 9780198269571
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269571.001.0001
Published in print:: 1997
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book is about the gap between the moral demand on us and our natural capacities to meet it. The author starts with Kant’s statement of the moral demand and his acknowledgement of this gap. He then analyses Kant’s use of the resources of the Christian tradition to make sense of this gap, especially the notions of revelation, providence, and God’s grace. Kant reflects the traditional way of making sense of this gap, which is to invoke God’s assistance in bridging it. The author goes on to examine various contemporary philosophers who do not use these resources. He considers three main strategies: exaggerating our natural capacities, diminishing the moral demand, and finding some naturalistic substitute for God’s assistance. He argues that these strategies do not work, and that we are therefore left with the gap and with the problem that it is unreasonable to demand of ourselves — a standard that we cannot reach. In the final section of the book, the author looks in more detail at the Christian doctrines of atonement, justification, and sanctification. He discusses Kierkegaard’s account of the relation between the ethical life and the Christian life, and ends by considering human forgiveness, and the ways in which God’s forgiveness is both like and unlike our forgiveness of each other.

Metaphysical Personalism

Charles Conti — 2011-10-03

Author:: Charles Conti
ISBN:: 9780198263388
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263388.001.0001
Published in print:: 1995
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

How can we, or should we, talk about God? What concepts are involved in the idea of a Supreme Being? This book is about the search to reconcile modern metaphysics with traditional theism — focusing on the seminal work of Austin Farrer, who was Warden of Keble College, Oxford, until his death in 1968, and one of the most original and important philosophers of religion of this century.

Hope in a Democratic Age

Alan Mittleman — 2011-10-03

Author:: Alan Mittleman
ISBN:: 9780199297153
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297153.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

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.

Freedom in Response

Oswald Bayer — 2011-10-03

Author:: Oswald Bayer
ISBN:: 9780199249091
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249091.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

The leitmotif of this book is a reasoned exposition of the nature of freedom, as it is presented in the Bible and developed by such later theologians as Martin Luther. The book considers Luther’s teachings on pastoral care, marriage, and the three estates, bringing in Kant and Hegel as conversation partners, together with Kant’s friend and critic, the innovative theologian and philosopher Johann Georg Hamann.

Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking

Clare Palmer — 2011-10-03

Author:: Clare Palmer
ISBN:: 9780198269526
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269526.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book challenges the popular conception that process thinking offers an unambiguously positive contribution to the philosophical debate on environmental ethics. It critically examines the approach to ethics which may be derived from the work of process thinkers such as A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, pointing out questions about justice and respect for individual integrity which are raised. With these questions in mind, the book compares process ethics to a variety of other forms of environmental ethics, as well as deep ecology. This comparative study reveals a number of difficulties associated with process thinking about the environment. Although some reformulations of process philosophy in the light of these difficulties are offered, the book suggests that a question mark should remain over the contribution which process philosophy can make to environmental ethics.

Does God’s Existence Need Proof?

Richard Messer — 2011-10-03

Author:: Richard Messer
ISBN:: 9780198269717
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269717.001.0001
Published in print:: 1997
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

The possibility of proving the existence of God has fascinated thinkers and believers throughout the centuries. For those like Richard Swinburne, such a project is both worthwhile and successful. For others, like D. Z. Phillips, it is wholly inappropriate. Most critics have simply taken sides at this point; but this book argues a way forward, showing that the disparity between Swinburne and Phillips goes deeper — questioning the fundamental nature of God, the meaning of religious language, and the proper task of philosophy. The author of this book argues that behind each thinker's work, and their attitudes towards proving the existence of God, lies fundamental trust. A positive discussion of relativism leads to a fresh analysis of the arguments for God's existence, particularly the ontological argument: the author shows that these are worthwhile — although not for the traditional reasons.

A Catholic Modernity?

James L. Heft — 2011-10-03

Author:: James L.HeftUniversity of Dayton
ISBN:: 9780195131611
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195131611.001.0001
Published in print:: 1999
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the world today. The centrepiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, from which the title of the book is taken. The lecture, delivered at Dayton University in January of 1996, offered Taylor the opportunity to speak about his theological views and his sense of the cultural placement of Catholicism, its history and trajectory. Four well-known commentators on religion and society were invited to respond to Taylor's lecture: William M. Shea, George Marsden, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Rosemary Luling–Haughton. Their chapters offer a variety of astute reflections on the tensions between religion and modernity, and in particular on the role that Catholicism can and should play in contemporary society.

Boethius

Henry Chadwick — 2011-10-03

Author:: Henry Chadwick
ISBN:: 9780198265498
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Early Christian Studies, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198265498.001.0001
Published in print:: 1990
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

The Consolations of Philosophy by Boethius, whose English translators include King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I, ranks among the most remarkable books to be written by a prisoner awaiting the execution of a tyrannical death sentence. Its interpretation is bound up with his other writings on mathematics and music, on Aristotelian and propositional logic, and on central themes of Christian dogma. This book begins by tracing the career of Boethius, a Roman rising to high office under the Gothic King Theoderic the Great, and suggests that his death may be seen as a cruel by-product of Byzantine ambitions to restore Roman imperial rule after its elimination in the West in AD 476. Subsequent chapters examine in detail his educational programme in the liberal arts, designed to avert a threatened collapse of culture, and his ambition to translate into Latin everything he could find on Plato and Aristotle. Boethius has been called the ‘last of the Romans, first of the scholastics’. This book is the first major study in English of the writer, who was of critical importance in the history of thought.

The Believing Primate

Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray — 2011-10-03

Author:: JeffreySchlossProfessor of Biology, Westmont Collegehttp://www.westmont.edu/_academics/departments/biology/jeff-schloss.htmlMichaelMurrayArthur and Katherine Shadek Professor in the Humanities and Philosophy, Franklin and Marshall Collegehttp://www.templeton.org/who-we-are/our-team/staff/michael-j-murray-phd
ISBN:: 9780199557028
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religious Studies, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557028.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Over the last two decades, scientific accounts of religion have received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention both because of their intrinsic interest and because they are widely viewed as constituting a threat to the religion they analyse. This book aims to describe and discuss these scientific accounts as well as to assess their implications. The volume begins with essays by leading scientists in the field, describing these accounts and discussing evidence in their favour. Philosophical and theological reflections on these accounts follow, offered by leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. This diverse group of scholars address some fascinating underlying questions: Do scientific accounts of religion undermine the justification of religious belief? Do such accounts show religion to be an accidental by-product of our evolutionary development? And, whilst we seem naturally disposed toward religion, would we fare better or worse without it? Bringing together dissenting perspectives, this provocative collection will serve to freshly illuminate on-going debate on these perennial questions.

Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law

Anthony J. Lisska — 2011-10-03

Author:: Anthony J. Lisska
ISBN:: 9780198269670
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269670.001.0001
Published in print:: 1997
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This new critique of Aquinas' theory of natural law presents an incisive, new analysis of the central themes and relevant texts in the Summa Theologiae, which became the classical canon for natural law. The author discusses Aquinas' view of ethical naturalism within the context of the contemporary revival and recovery of Aristotelian ethics, arguing that Aquinas is fundamentally Aristotelian in the foundations of his moral theory. The book looks at the historical development of natural law themes in the twentieth century, and in particular demonstrates the important connections between Aquinas and contemporary legal philosophers. The book should be of considerable interest to scholars of jurisprudence as well as philosophers.

Anselm

Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams — 2011-10-03

Author:: Sandra Visser, Thomas Williams
ISBN:: 9780195309386
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309386.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book offers a brief introduction to the life and thought of Saint Anselm (c. 1033–1109). Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury for the last sixteen years of his life, is one of the foremost philosopher-theologians of the Middle Ages. His keen and rigorous thinking earned him the title “The Father of Scholasticism”, and his influence is discernible in figures as various as Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, the voluntarists of the late-13th and 14th centuries, and the Protestant reformers. Part I of this book lays out the framework of Anselm's thought: his approach to what he calls “the reason of faith”, his account of thought and language, and his theory of truth. Part II focuses on Anselm's account of God and the divine attributes, and it shows how Anselm applies his theory of language and thought to develop a theological semantics that at once respects divine transcendence and allows for the possibility of divine rational knowledge. In Part III, the book turns from the heavenly to the animal. It elucidates Anselm's theory of modality and his understanding of free choice, an idea that was, for Anselm, embedded in his conception of justice. The book concludes with a discussion of Incarnation, Atonement, and original sin, as the chapters examine Anselm's argument that the death of a God-man is the only possible remedy for human injustice.

Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil

Brian Davies — 2011-09-22

Author:: Brian Davies
ISBN:: 9780199790890
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790890.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

This book offers an in-depth study of Saint Thomas Aquinas's thoughts on God and evil, revealing that Aquinas's thinking about God and evil can be traced through his metaphysical philosophy, his thoughts on God and creation, and his writings about Christian revelation and the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. The book first gives an introduction to Aquinas's philosophical theology, as well as a nuanced analysis of the ways in which Aquinas's writings have been considered over time. For hundreds of years scholars have argued that Aquinas's views on God and evil were original and different from those of his contemporaries. The book shows that Aquinas's views were by modern standards very original, but that in their historical context they were more traditional than many scholars since have realized. The book also provides insight into what we can learn from Aquinas's philosophy.

Teaching Jung

Kelly Bulkeley and Clodagh Weldon — 2011-09-22

Author:: KellyBulkeleyGraduate Theological UnionClodaghWeldonDominican Universityhttp://www.dom.edu/departments/theology/faculty/clodaghweldon.html
ISBN:: 9780199735426
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199735426.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

This book presents a collection of individually authored chapters that give several different perspectives on Jung's psychology and its relations with religion, theology, and contemporary culture. This book provides a resource for anyone interested in the relationship between religious studies and Jungian psychology. The book's chapters describe the teaching of Jung in different academic contexts (universities, colleges, seminaries, psychology institutes), with special attention to the pedagogical and theoretical challenges that arise in their classrooms. A central theme running through all the chapters is the intensified self-reflexivity that students experience when they directly engage with Jung's ideas. As the chapters show, this self-reflexivity can be further cultivated in the classroom in ways that enhance the analytic, interpretive, and critical thinking skills that characterize the best of religious studies scholarship. The book features scholars who work with Jung in diverse academic, curricular, and pedagogical contexts and who want to engage in productive dialogue about teaching Jung, our learning goals, how we integrate scholarly debates and concerns into our pedagogies, and how our teaching both reflects and influences the status of religious studies and theology in schools today. It provides fresh perspectives on these issues, bringing together the ideas of well-respected scholars in religious studies, psychology, theology, and other disciplines whose teaching and research have explored the continuing relevance of Jung's ideas for the study of religion in the twenty-first century.

Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel

Thomas A. Lewis — 2011-09-22

Author:: Thomas A. Lewis
ISBN:: 9780199595594
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199595594.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel analyzes Hegel's philosophy of religion and develops its significance for ongoing debates about the relation between religion and politics as well as the history of the conceptualization of religion. One of the most vital currents in contemporary Hegel scholarship argues that Hegel radicalizes, rather than reneges upon, Kant's critique of metaphysics. Critics have claimed that this new scholarship cannot account for Hegel's treatment of religion. Addressing an important lacuna in the scholarship, Lewis argues that reading Hegel's philosophy of religion in relation to these non-traditional interpretations of his intellectual project as a whole opens up a dramatically new understanding of Hegel on religion. In relation to the conceptualization of religion, Hegel's complex and multi-faceted account of religion reconciles common contrasts, presenting religion as both personal and social, both emotional and cognitive, both theoretical and practical. In relation to politics, it is public without being theocratic and gives a decisive importance to individual conscience. Attending closely to Hegel's social, political, and intellectual context, the book begins with Hegel's early concerns with a modern civil religion in the tumultuous 1790s. After analyzing Hegel's crucial engagement with post-Kantian idealism, Lewis elaborates Hegel's mature philosophy of religion as presented in his Berlin Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The resulting interpretation advances the non-traditionalist reading of Hegel's project as a whole and inspires a promising conception of religion that challenges those that have dominated both public discourse and religious studies scholarship.

Kierkegaard's Critique of Christian Nationalism

Stephen Backhouse — 2011-09-22

Author:: Stephen Backhouse
ISBN:: 9780199604722
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604722.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

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.

Fortunate Fallibility

Jason A. Mahn — 2011-09-22

Author:: Jason A. Mahn
ISBN:: 9780199790661
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790661.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

This book deconstructs and reconstructs the fortunate Fall (felix culpa) theme of Western thought, using Kierkegaard as a guide. Dating back to the fifth century Easter Eve Mass, the claim that Adam's Fall might be considered “fortunate” in light of a resultant good has become Christianity's most controversial and unwieldy idea. Whereas the phrase originally praised sin as a backhanded witness to the ineffability of redemption, modern speculative theodicy came to understand all evil as comprehensible, historically productive, and therefore fortunate, while the Romantic poets celebrated transgression for bolstering individual creativity and spiritedness. This book traces Kierkegaard's blunt critique of Idealism's justification of evil, as well as his playful deconstruction of Romantic celebrations of sin. The book argues, however, that Kierkegaard also resists the moralization of evil, preferring to consider temptation and sin as determinative dimensions of religious existence. At least in relation to the assumed “innocence” of Christendom's cultured Christians, the self-conscious sinner might be the better religious witness. Although the book shows how Kierkegaard finally replaces actual sin with human fragility, temptation, and the possibility of spiritual offense as that which “happily” shapes religious faith, it also argues that his understanding of “fortunate fallibility” is at least as rhetorically compelling and theologically operative as talk of a “fortunate Fall.” Together, Kierkegaard's playful maneuvers and this book's thematizations carve rhetorical space for Christian theologians to speak of sin in ways that are more particular and peculiar than the typical discourses of Church and culture.

Ravished by Beauty

Belden C. Lane — 2011-05-01

Author:: Belden C. Lane
ISBN:: 9780199755080
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755080.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

This book offers a new way of looking at the Reformed tradition. The older, traditional view of the Swiss/Scots/New England heritage had emphasized its harsh Calvinism, focusing on divine transcendence, predestination, strict moral discipline, and a distrust of beauty and ritual. In contrast, this study looks at the historical development—from John Calvin to Jonathan Edwards—of a theology of beauty and desire, expressed in the metaphors of the world as a theater of God's glory and nature as a school of desire. In doing so, it lays a theological foundation for an environmental ethic based on the impulse of the world to reflect God's beauty. The author speaks of a “double irony” in the history of Reformed spirituality, showing Calvinists who traditionally have seemed so prudish and proper to also have been a people of passionate desire. Reformed Christians who have focused so often on divine transcendence are revealed as nature mystics, exulting in God's glory everywhere. Nature and desire are thus intimately joined in Reformed piety. Finally, the book combines a personal, autobiographical perspective with academic research, modeling the self‐implicating pattern of scholarship seen in the emerging field of spirituality. The main chapters deal with the historical and theological development of Reformed piety as it relates to the natural world. These are joined by personal essays that share the author's own experience as a Reformed Christian raised within a morally rigid theology of transcendence and predestination while seeking a God of wild splendor who exults in nature's beauty.

Morality and War

David Fisher — 2011-05-01

Author:: David Fisher
ISBN:: 9780199599240
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Society
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599240.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

There has been a recent revival of interest in the just‐war tradition. But can a medieval theory help us answer twenty‐first‐century security concerns? The book explores how just‐war thinking needs to be developed to provide such guidance. Part One examines challenges to just‐war thinking, including those posed by moral scepticism and relativism. It explores the nature and grounds of moral reasoning; the relation between public and private morality; and how just‐war teaching needs to be refashioned to provide practical guidance not just to politicians and generals but to ordinary service people. The complexity and difficulty of moral decision‐making require a new ethical approach—characterized as virtuous consequentialism—that recognizes the importance of both the internal quality and the external effects of agency; and of the moral principles and virtues needed to enact them. Virtuous consequentialism restores to the virtues an importance lost in recent just‐war thinking. Just‐war teaching, so reinforced, is applied in Part Two to address key contemporary security challenges, including the changing nature of war, military pre‐emption and torture, the morality of the Iraq War, and humanitarian intervention. The book concludes that, with the ending of the strategic certainties of the cold war, the need for moral clarity over when, where, and how to start, conduct, and conclude war has never been greater. The just‐war tradition provides not only a robust but also an indispensable guide for addressing the security challenges of the twenty‐first century.

The Metaphysics of the Incarnation

Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill — 2011-05-01

Author:: AnnaMarmodoroResearch Fellow in Philosophy, University of Oxfordhttp://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/members/anna_marmodoroJonathanHillResearch Assistant in Philosophy, University of Oxford
ISBN:: 9780199583164
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199583164.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

The growth of both philosophy of mind and cognitive science has developed our understanding of the human mind in ways that just a few decades ago were unthinkable. As ideas from philosophy of mind begin to cross over into philosophy of religion, there is renewed interest in questions about the divine mind, about how it might relate to a human body, and about whether incarnation itself might be articulated with the conceptual tools offered by the current research developments in the philosophy of mind. This book offers chapters by leading philosophers of religion representing these new approaches to theological problems such as incarnation. The doctrine of incarnation—that Jesus Christ was God become human—has always been one of the most central and distinctive features of Christianity. Similar doctrines about divine humans can be found in other religions, from the claims to divinity made by ancient kings and emperors to the concept of avatars in Hinduism. But many people regard the notion that a human being could also be divine as unjustifiable or incoherent, and none of the many attempts to articulate it philosophically has earned general acceptance. The chapters explore, from a variety of different viewpoints, whether any metaphysically rigorous and coherent model of incarnation can be defended today.

Good God

David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls — 2011-05-01

Author:: David Baggett, Jerry L. Walls
ISBN:: 9780199751808
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751808.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

This book defends an interconnected set of moral arguments for God's existence by arguing that classical theism better explains moral duty, freedom, and responsibility than naturalism does. After furnishing positive arguments in favor of moral apologetics, the book defends theistic ethics against a number of objections inspired by the Euthyphro Dilemma. Such objections include normativity, “no reasons,” abhorrent commands, vacuity, epistemic, and autonomy objections. Subsequent chapters deploy seven distinctions that together enable both a defense of theistic ethics and an advancement of the moral argument(s) for God's existence. The relevant distinctions encompass matters of scope, semantics, modality, morality, epistemology, meta-ethics, and ontology. The book makes the case not just that God exists, but that a God of perfect love exists, a God who is holy, impeccable, perfect, and a God of covenantal fidelity who can be trusted. Such a notion of Deity provides the needed resources to answer the problem of evil and make sense of Old Testament conquest narratives, while at the same time providing warrant to resist portraits of God that are impossible to square with nonnegotiable moral intuitions. Finally, the book argues that morality receives its fullest and deepest illumination in light of distinctively Christian doctrines such as resurrection, incarnation, and heaven.

Faith and Freedom

Michah Gottlieb — 2011-05-01

Author:: Michah Gottlieb
ISBN:: 9780195398946
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Judaism, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195398946.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) is often considered the founder of modern Jewish philosophy or even of modern Judaism. For many, Mendelssohn's commitment to enlightened values appeared to be irreconcilable with his life-long adherence to Judaism. This book approaches this problem by placing Mendelssohn's moderate enlightenment in three contexts: Maimonides' medieval enlightenment, Spinoza's radical enlightenment, and F.H. Jacobi's Christian counter-Enlightenment. This books argues that Mendelssohn breaks from Maimonides because he faces problems never encountered by Maimonides—namely how to remain an observant Jew in a modern state where Jews could be citizens with their Christian neighbors. Through an original, selective reading of Jewish tradition, Mendelssohn is able to achieve remarkable harmony between Judaism and enlightenment. But at the end of his life Mendelssohn confronts a profound challenge to his religious principles in the “Pantheism Controversy” that he wages with Jacobi over Lessing's alleged Spinozism. To defend his enlightened religious position, Mendelssohn develops a pragmatic religious idealism that inaugurates an anthropocentric turn in religious thought later developed by thinkers such as Hermann Cohen and Mordecai Kaplan.

Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist

Marilyn McCord Adams — 2011-01-01

Author:: Marilyn McCord Adams
ISBN:: 9780199591053
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591053.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

This book is a work in historical theology and history of philosophy, combined. It focuses on how the theological data of real presence — that after the consecration of eucharistic bread and wine, Christ's Body and Blood are really present where the bread and wine accidents still seem to be — provoked 13th and 14th century Aristotelians to remodel Aristotelian physics and metaphysics in ways that nevertheless allowed Aristotelian principles to describe the way things normally and naturally are. The core analyzes how Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and William Ockham explain what it is for Christ's Body to be present on earthly altars and what changes are needed to get it there. The most striking philosophical developments concern the metaphysics of bodies and their placement, varieties of essential causal dependence and their connections with causal powers, the independent existence and causal powers of accidents, and the fundamental kinds of change producible by natural vs Divine agency. An initial chapter reviews presupposed Aristotelian conceptual machinery, while Chapter 10 overviews the significant philosophical moves made. Three other chapters orient the theology of sacraments out of which the doctrine of real presence arose, and assess the degree of theological coherence achieved.

Meeting God on the Cross

Arnfritur Gutmundsdottir — 2011-01-01

Author:: Arnfritur Gutmundsdottir
ISBN:: 9780195397963
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Religion and Society, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195397963.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

The cross of Christ has proven to be no less of a “stumbling block” for Christians living in the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, than it was in the 1st century, when the newly established community of friends and followers of Jesus Christ sought to define the foundation of their faith over against the critiques of their Jewish and Greek contemporaries. This book presents a theological reception of the contemporary feminist challenge to classical christology by means of an explicit feminist retrieval and reconstruction of a theology of the cross. This book argues that a feminist theology of the cross serves a dual purpose in feminist christology: it discloses the patriarchal distortion of traditional christology, and can also reveal lost dimensions in the understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Although the book argues that feminist critique is an indispensable element of contemporary christology, it also claims that there is a redemptive message in the cross of Christ that is retrievable for women today. Despite its potential for abuse and indeed its well-documented history of misuse against women in the past, a theology of the cross proclaims Jesus as a divine co-sufferer who brings good news to the poor and oppressed, and as such can be a source of healing and empowerment for suffering women. The constructive task of this book is to show that a theology of the cross can indeed become a theology of hope today, offering women meaning and strength from a God who takes human form and enters redemptively into their situations of suffering.

Hating God

Bernard Schweizer — 2011-01-01

Author:: Bernard Schweizer
ISBN:: 9780199751389
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751389.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

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.

Empire of Souls

Stefania Tutino — 2011-01-01

Author:: Stefania Tutino
ISBN:: 9780199740536
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740536.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

Robert Bellarmine was one of the pillars of post-Reformation Catholicism: he was a celebrated Jesuit theologian, a highly ranked member of the Congregations of the Inquisition and of the Index, the censor in charge of the Galileo affair. Bellarmine was also one of the most original political theorists of his time, and he participated directly in many of the political conflicts that agitated Europe between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. This book offers the first full-length study of the impact of Bellarmine’s theory of the potestas indirecta in early modern Europe. Following the reactions to Bellarmine’s theory across national and confessional boundaries, this book explores some of the most crucial political and theological knots in the history of post-Reformation Europe, from the controversy over the Oath of Allegiance to the battle over the Interdetto in Venice. The book sets those political and religious controversies against the background of the theological and institutional developments of the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. By examining the violent and at times surprising controversies originated by Bellarmine’s theory, this book challenges some of the traditional assumptions regarding the theological shape of post-Tridentine Catholicism; it offers a fresh perspective on the centrality of the links between confessional affiliation and political allegiance in the formation of the modern nation-states; and it contributes to our understanding of the development of “modern” notions of power and authority.

Divine Evil?

Michael Bergmann, Michael J. Murray, and Michael C. Rea — 2011-01-01

Author:: MichaelBergmannProfessor of Philosophy, Purdue Universityhttp://www.cla.purdue.edu/philosophy/directory/?personid=120Michael J.MurrayArthur and Katherine Shadek Professor in the Humanities and Philosophy, Franklin and Marshall Collegehttp://www.templeton.org/who-we-are/our-team/staff/michael-j-murray-phdMichael C.ReaProfessor of Philosophy, University of Notre Damehttp://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/faculty/index.shtml
ISBN:: 9780199576739
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576739.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-01-01

Numerous critics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have argued that God, especially in the Hebrew Bible, is often portrayed as morally vicious. For example, historical narratives in these texts apparently describe God as ordering or commending genocide, slavery, and rape among other moral atrocities; and other texts seem to portray God as commending bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia. The main chapters in this interdisciplinary volume fall into four groups: (i) the first three press objections by philosophers to the moral character of God as it is represented in the Hebrew Bible; (ii) the next five offer responses by theistic philosophers to such objections; (iii) the next two after that present additional responses from the perspective of specialists in biblical studies; and (iv) the final chapter provides some general reflections on the conference at which these papers were initially presented. Also included in the volume are commentators' remarks on each chapter (except the last), along with replies by the original authors.

Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism

Runar M. Thorsteinsson — 2010-09-01

Author:: Runar M. Thorsteinsson
ISBN:: 9780199578641
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199578641.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-09-01

This study examines the moral teachings of first-century Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism, and compares the two. The study falls into three main parts: Part I introduces and discusses the moral teaching of Roman Stoicism, that is, of Seneca, Musonius Rufus, and Epictetus. Part II presents the moral teaching of Roman Christianity, that is, as it is represented in Paul's Letter to the Romans, the First Letter of Peter, and the First Letter of Clement. On the basis of Parts I and II, then, Part III examines the similarities and differences between Roman Stoicism and Roman Christianity in terms of morality. This is done under the headings of five main themes, including questions of Christian and Stoic views about (1) a particular morality or way of life as proper worship of the deity; (2) certain individuals (like Jesus and Socrates) as paradigms for the proper way of life; (3) the importance of mutual love and care; (4) non-retaliation and ‘love of enemies’; and (5) the social dimension of ethics. It is concluded that there is a fundamental similarity between the moral teachings of Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism. The most basic difference is found in the ethical scope of the two: While the latter teaches unqualified universal humanity, the former seems to condition the ethical scope in terms of religious adherence.

Robert Spaemann's Philosophy of the Human Person

Holger Zaborowski — 2010-05-01

Author:: Holger Zaborowski
ISBN:: 9780199576777
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576777.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-05-01

The German philosopher Robert Spaemann provides an important contribution to a number of contemporary debates in philosophy and theology, opening up possibilities for conversation between these disciplines. He engages in a dialogue with classical and contemporary positions and often formulates important and original insights that lie beyond common alternatives. This study provides an analysis of the most important features of Spaemann's philosophy and shows the unity of his thought. The question ‘Who is a person?’ is of increasing significance: Are all human beings persons? Are there animals that can be considered persons? What does it mean to speak of personal identity and of the dignity of the person? Spaemann provides an answer to these questions: every human being, he argues, is a person and, therefore, ‘has’ his nature in freedom. In order to understand the person, Spaemann explains, we have to think about the relation between nature and freedom, and avoid the reductive accounts of this relation prevalent in important strands of modern thought. Spaemann develops a challenging critique of modernity, incorporating analysis of modern anti-modernisms and showing that these are also subject to a dialectical development, perpetuating the problematic shortcomings of many features of modern reasoning. If we do not want to abolish ourselves as persons, Spaemann reasons, we need to find a way of understanding ourselves that evades the dialectic of modernity. Thus, he reminds his readers of ‘self-evident’ knowledge: insights that we have once already known, but tend to forget.

Natural Signs and Knowledge of God

C. Stephen Evans — 2010-05-01

Author:: C. Stephen Evans
ISBN:: 9780199217168
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217168.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-05-01

This book introduces the concept of theistic natural signs. It argues that these signs, the concept of which comes from a modified and expanded account of Reidian natural signs, provide sufficient evidence to support belief in God for at least some people. The book first explains the Reidian account of natural signs and adapts that account to provide the framework for theistic natural signs. The book then argues that theistic natural signs provide the intuitions that undergird many of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments for God's existence. Cosmic wonder, beneficial order, perception of the self as a responsible and accountable moral agent, and perception of the value of the human person are four natural signs that the book considers at length. It is argued that theistic natural signs should be consistent with the Pascalian constraints formalized in the Wide Accessibility and Easy Resistibility principles, and that each of the four signs mentioned does meet those standards. While it is not argued that theistic natural signs provide a conclusive proof for God, it is maintained that they do provide significant evidence for anyone whose epistemic stance is sufficient to avoid general skepticism. Even though these natural signs, taken alone, may lead only to a thin theism and do not provide what is necessary for a meaningful faith in God, they do provide important overall support for theism.

The Dispeller of Disputes

Jan Westerhoff — 2010-05-01

Author:: Jan Westerhoff
ISBN:: 9780199732692
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Buddhism, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732692.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-05-01

The Vigrahavyāvartanī is a short work by the second-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna. In this text, which is written in a lively question-and-answer style he addresses a number of objections (coming both from Buddhists and from non-Buddhists) which have been put forward against his theory of emptiness discussed in his main work, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. The Vigrahavyāvartanī is especially noteworthy for its treatment of topics which Nāgārjuna does not much discuss elsewhere, in particular questions of epistemology and the philosophy of language. The purpose of this book is to unlock the philosophical contents of the texts by providing a comprehensive commentary on Nāgārjuna’s arguments as well as a somewhat more general discussion of the philosophical points these raise. It is divided into three sections: the introduction, the translation, and the commentary. The introduction discusses the history of the text and gives a survey of the presently available editions and translations. I then address the question of the authenticity of the Vigrahavyāvartanī, discussing in detail some of the arguments put forward in the secondary literature which attempt to show that the text was not composed by Nāgārjuna. This is followed by some notes on the peculiar structure of the Vigrahavyāvartanī. Here I also explain why I chose to arrange the text differently in the translation and in the commentary. The introduction is concluded by a synopsis which gives a brief survey of the contents of the ten sections into which I have divided the text. The translation is based on the most recent edition of the Sanskrit text (Yonezawa 2008). All explanatory notes, discussions of variant readings and so forth have been left to the commentary. The commentary contains the entire text of the Vigrahavyāvartanī, though in an arrangement which differs from the one followed in the translation. My remarks on a specific section of the text usually follow this section directly, distinguished by a different typeface. The commentary divides Nāgārjuna’s text into ten main thematic units: (1) The status of the theory of emptiness; (2) Epistemology; (3) Intrinsically good things; (4) Names without objects; (5) Extrinsic substances; (6) Negation and existence; (7) The mirage analogy; (8) Emptiness and reasons; (9) Negation and temporal relations; (10) Conclusion

Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul

Troels Engberg-Pedersen — 2010-05-01

Author:: Troels Engberg-Pedersen
ISBN:: 9780199558568
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199558568.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-05-01

This book argues that the traditional, mainly cognitive and metaphorical ways of understanding central Pauline concepts, e.g. ‘being in Christ’, which have been heavily influenced by the incorporation of Platonic dualism into early Christianity from the 2nd century onwards, must be supplemented by a literal, not just cognitive and non-metaphorical understanding that directly reflects Paul's cosmology. That cosmology, including Paul's understanding of the pneuma (‘spirit’), was a materialist, bodily one, with the pneuma being understood by Paul as consisting of a combination of physical elements that would at the resurrection act directly on the ordinary human bodies of believers and transform them into ‘pneumatic bodies’. The book traces this understanding of the future events back to the Pauline present and considers how Paul conceived in bodily terms of his own conversion, of the believers' reception of the pneuma in baptism, and the way it informed his own and their ways of life from the beginning to the projected end. In developing this picture of Paul's overall world view, which maintains its basically ‘apocalyptic’ character, the book draws on ancient Stoic materialist and monistic physics and cosmology, and on modern ideas on ‘religious experience’, ‘self’, ‘body’, and ‘practice’ derived from Foucault and Bourdieu. The book states the cosmological case for the author's earlier ‘ethical’ reading of Paul in his book, Paul and the Stoics (2000).

Supernatural Agents

Ilkka Pyysiäinen — 2009-05-01

Author:: Ilkka Pyysiäinen
ISBN:: 9780195380026
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195380026.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-05-01

This book provides a cognitive scientific perspective to beliefs about supernatural agents. First, human intuitions about agents, agency, and counterintuitive concepts are outlined and explained. Second, various kinds of folk beliefs and theological doctrines about souls and spirits are analyzed in the light of the human cognitive architecture, using descriptions of spirit possession and shamanism as materials. Third, scholastic discussions of God’s cognitive capacities as well as folk-psychological God beliefs are analyzed. This analysis combines with a discussion of Buddhist ideas of soullesness and of buddhahood in textual traditions and in folk beliefs. Beliefs about God and buddhas are shown to rest on the same cognitive capacities of understanding agency and intentionality that underlie spirit beliefs. The Buddhist doctrine of soullessness was originally a denial of the self as a separate spiritual entity, not a denial of personal agency. God and buddhas differ from ordinary agents in that they are believed to have open access to all minds. Therefore, they can serve as means of representing what persons believe others to believe. Such divine minds are also used as an explanation for the fact that the whole of reality is intuitively experienced as if intentionally directed by a personal will. The book ends with a discussion of the future of religion and atheism.

Analytic Theology

Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea — 2009-05-01

Author:: Oliver D.CrispLecturer in Theology, University of Bristolhttp://www.bristol.ac.uk/thrs/staff/oc.htmlMichael C.ReaProfessor of Philosophy, University of Notre Damehttp://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/faculty/index.shtml
ISBN:: 9780199203567
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203567.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-05-01

Philosophy in the English-speaking world is dominated by analytical approaches to its problems and projects; but theology has been dominated by alternative approaches. Many would say that the current state in theology is not mere historical accident, but is, rather, how things ought to be. On the other hand, many others would say precisely the opposite: that theology as a discipline has been beguiled and taken largely deleterious. The methodological divide between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers of religion is ripe for exploration. This book attempts to bring a much-needed interdisciplinary conversation about the value of analytic philosophical approaches to theological topics. Most of the chapters are sympathetic to the enterprise of analytic theology; but with an eye towards balance.

The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs

Solomon Schimmel — 2008-09-01

Author:: Solomon Schimmel
ISBN:: 9780195188264
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195188264.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2008-09-01

This book is a passionate yet analytical critique of and polemic against Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural fundamentalists. It examines the ways in which otherwise intelligent and bright Jews, Christians, and Muslims defend their belief in the divine authorship of the Bible or of the Koran, as well as other religious beliefs derived from those claims, against overwhelming evidence and argument to the contrary from science, scholarship, common sense, and rational analysis. The book also examines the motives, fears, and anxieties of scriptural fundamentalists that induce them to cling tenaciously to their unreasonable beliefs. The author begins with reflections on his own journey from commitment to Orthodox Judaism, through doubts about its theological claims, and eventually to denial of their truth. This is followed by an examination of theological and philosophical debate about the proper relationships between faith, reason, and revelation. The book then devotes one chapter of detailed analysis to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural fundamentalism, noting their differences and similarities. It then analyzes the psychological and social reasons why people acquire, maintain, and protect unreasonable religious beliefs. The book also discusses some unethical and immoral consequences of scriptural fundamentalism, such as gender inequality, homophobia, lack of intellectual honesty, self‐righteousness, intolerance, propagation of falsehood, and in some instances (especially among some Muslim fundamentalists) the advocacy of violence and terrorism. It concludes with a discussion of why, when, and where it is appropriate to critique and assertively challenge and combat scriptural fundamentalists.

Transformation of the Self in the thought of Schleiermacher

Jacqueline Mariña — 2008-05-01

Author:: Jacqueline Mariña
ISBN:: 9780199206377
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199206377.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2008-05-01

Often referred to as the father of modern theology, F. D. E. Schleiermacher occasioned a revolution in theology having a decisive impact on all subsequent theology. This book argues that Schleiermacher's philosophical ethics constitutes a completely original project, and is arguably his most important achievement. The book examines Schleiermacher's claim that the self relates to the ‘whence’ of all that is through the ground of self-consciousness, and shows how this understanding allowed Schleiermacher to develop a philosophical system integrally linking religion and ethics. Because this whence relates to self-consciousness in the way of a formal cause, the most important criteria for what constitutes genuine religion are the ethical fruits expressive of a proper relation to the divine. In Christian Faith, Schleiermacher argues that insofar as the personal self-consciousness has been transformed through openness to this whence, the actions that arise from it, too, will be different from those of the former self. This book is an analysis of how Schleiermacher conceived of this transformation, the conditions of its possibility, and the nature of its effects. This is accomplished through an examination of his metaphysics of the self, especially Schleiermacher's understanding of the immediate self-consciousness and its relation to the divine causality, the nature of self-consciousness and personal identity, the nature of agency, and the relation between self and society. This book demonstrates that Schleiermacher's achievement offers a compelling, live option for contemporary debates concerning the relation of religion and morality.

Ecologies of Grace

Willis Jenkins — 2008-05-01

Author:: Willis Jenkins
ISBN:: 9780195328516
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195328516.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2008-05-01

Christianity struggles to show how living on earth matters for living with God. While people of faith increasingly seek practical ways to respond to the environmental crisis, theology has had difficulty contextualizing the crisis and interpreting the responses. This book presents a field-shaping introduction to Christian environmental ethics that offers resources for renewing theology. Observing how religious environmental practices often draw on concepts of grace, the book maps the way Christian environmental strategies draw from traditions of salvation as they engage the problems of environmental ethics. It then uses this new map to explore afresh the ecological dimensions of Christian theology. The book first shows how Christian ethics uniquely frames environmental issues, and then how those approaches both challenge and re-inhabit theological traditions. It identifies three major strategies for making environmental problems intelligible to Christian moral experience. Each one draws on a distinct pattern of grace as it adapts a secular approach to environmental ethics. The strategies of ecojustice, stewardship, and ecological spirituality make environments matter for Christian experience by drawing on patterns of sanctification, redemption, and deification. The book then confronts the problems of each of these strategies through critical reappraisals of Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Sergei Bulgakov.

Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Grace

Terrance W. Klein — 2008-01-01

Author:: Terrance W. Klein
ISBN:: 9780199204236
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199204236.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2008-01-01

What is the meaning of the word ‘grace’? Can Wittgenstein's maxim that the meaning of a word is its usage help explicate the claims that Christians have made about grace? When Christians use the word, they reference within language the point of contact between humanity and the divine. This book suggests that grace is not an occult object but rather an insight, a moment when we perceive God to be active on our behalf. The book examines the biblical evidence that grace begins as a recognition of God's favour, before considering Augustine as the theologian who champions history rather than nature as the place of encounter with grace. Aquinas' work on grace is also explored, retrieving the saint's thought on three seminal concepts: nature, form, and the striving intellect. Overall, the book suggests that grace is the perception of a form, an awareness that the human person is being addressed by the world itself.

A Theology of Criticism

Michael P. Murphy — 2008-01-01

Author:: Michael P. Murphy
ISBN:: 9780195333527
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195333527.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2008-01-01

The turn of the millennium has brought with it a vigorous revival in the interdisciplinary study of theology and art. The notion of a Catholic imagination, however, as a specific category of aesthetics, lacks thematic and theological coherence. More often, the idea of a Catholic imagination functions at this time as a deeply felt intuition about the organic connections that exist among theological insights, cultural background, and literary expression. The book explores the many ways that the theological work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) provides the model, content, and optic for demonstrating the credibility and range of a Catholic imagination. Since Balthasar views arts and literatures precisely as theologies, the book surveys a broad array of poetry, drama, fiction, and film and sets these readings against the central aspects of Balthasar's theological program. A major consequence of this study is the recovery of the legitimate place of a distinct “theological imagination” in the critical study of literary and narrative art. The book also argues that Balthasar's voice both complements and challenges contemporary critical theory and contends that postmodern interpretive methodology, with its careful critique of entrenched philosophical assumptions and reiterated codes of meaning, is not the threat to theological meaning that many fear. On the contrary, postmodernism can provide both literary critics and theologians alike with the tools that assess, challenge, and celebrate the theological imagination as it is depicted in literary art today.

Bonaventure

Christopher M. Cullen — 2007-01-01

Author:: Christopher M. Cullen
ISBN:: 9780195149258
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195149258.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2007-01-01

This book is a brief introduction to the thought of the great Franciscan theologian St. Bonaventure (c.1217-74). It focuses on the long-debated relation between philosophy and theology in the work of this important but neglected thinker, revealing Bonaventure as a great synthesizer. The book's exposition shows in a new and more nuanced way Bonaventure's debt to Augustine, while making clear how he was influenced by Aristotle. The book is organized according to the categories of Bonaventure's own classic text: De reductione artium ad theologiam. Part I is devoted to the definition of Christian Wisdom. In Part II, individual chapters are devoted to Bonaventure's physics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy. Part III includes chapters on the Trinity, Creation, Sin, the Incarnation, Grace, the Sacraments, and the Last Things.

Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election

Matthias Gockel — 2007-01-01

Author:: Matthias Gockel
ISBN:: 9780199203222
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203222.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2007-01-01

The book argues that the doctrine of election in Karl Barth's early theology shows a striking resemblance to the position of Friedrich Schleiermacher, and that his later christological revision of the doctrine overcomes the limitations of his earlier ‘Schleiermacherian’ position. Initially, both agree that predestination is not a pre‐temporal decision by which God has decreed once and for all who will believe and who will not believe. Instead, the outcome of the divine decision is determined when God addresses a human being here and now. Schleiermacher's concept of a single divine decree is consistent with Barth's assertion that God addresses every person in the same way, but the responses to the address are diverse. Their doctrine of election is theocentric and envisions a teleological relation between reprobation and election, in which the former always serves the purpose of the latter, without an endorsement of universalism. Whereas Schleiermacher rejects the concept of double predestination, Barth modifies it twice. In Church Dogmatics II/2 it refers no longer to the twofold possibility of faith and unbelief but to the double determination of individual human beings and God's own being. It explains that God sees every human being and also Himself in Christ.

Al-KindĪ

Peter Adamson — 2007-01-01

Author:: Peter Adamson
ISBN:: 9780195181425
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181425.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2007-01-01

This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely engaged with Greek philosophical and scientific texts, whose translation into Arabic he oversaw. Some of the philosophical views for which al-Kindī is known are reactions to Greek thinkers. For instance, he used ideas from Philoponus in arguing against the eternity of the world, and his discussion of divine attributes is based on Neoplatonic texts. However, the book also places al-Kindī’s thought within the context of 9th century Islamic culture, especially contemporary theological developments. The book covers every aspect of al-Kindī’s extant philosophical corpus, including not only his philosophical theology but also his theory of soul, his epistemology, and his ethics. Two chapters are devoted to al-Kindī’s works on the natural sciences (in particular pharmacology, optics, music, and cosmology). The book concludes by discussing how al-Kindī used Greek cosmological ideas in his account of divine providence.

Handbook of Bioethics and Religion

David E. Guinn — 2006-09-01

Author:: David E.GuinnDePaul University
ISBN:: 9780195178739
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195178734.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2006-09-01

This book discusses the role of religion in a religiously pluralistic liberal society, namely the United States. Nowhere else in the public realm do the fundamental religious questions about the meaning and nature of life arise in a context where resort to a political answer is the norm. Many people continue to insist that the US Constitution precludes religious participation in the political process, while others insist that by denying a role to religion we fundamentally discriminate against people of faith. As the chapters in this book demonstrate, the issues are complex and multifaceted. The book address such specific and highly contested issues as assisted suicide, stem cell research, cloning, reproductive health, and alternative medicine as well as general questions concerning as who legitimately speaks for religion in public bioethics, what religion can add to our understanding of justice, and the value of faith-based contributions to healthcare. The book begins with overview chapters about the role of religion in bioethics since the inception of the field. It then explores that role in the formation of public policy in terms of sociology, critical studies, philosophy, and religious studies. The book questions the distinction between public policy bioethics and clinical care, recognizing the close interconnection between the two. It offers insight on how religion shapes questions of justice in patient care and the ethical tools provided by Islam, Buddhism, and Evangelical Christianity that can be used both in advocating for public policy and in making individual care decisions. Over the last five to ten years, researchers have begun to explore the efficacy of religion as a mode of treatment.

Double-Effect Reasoning

T. A. Cavanaugh — 2006-09-01

Author:: T. A. Cavanaugh
ISBN:: 9780199272198
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0199272190.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2006-09-01

Consequentialists oppose while absolutists and deontologists rely upon double-effect reasoning (DER) to address hard cases in which good inextricably binds with evil (such as destroying a legitimate military target while concomitantly and foreseeably killing innocents). This book addresses the history, application, and philosophical controversy concerning DER. It traces both the origin of DER in the thought of Aquinas and its development by subsequent ethicists. Considering consequentialist criticisms, proportionalism, and recent revisions of double effect, the book argues at length for the reasonableness of DER, particularly the intended/foreseen distinction. Intent is distinguished from foresight, and this distinction is applied to the classic cases of terror and tactical bombing. Most importantly, the book establishes the ethical relevance of this distinction, grounding its import both in broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic features of action as voluntary, and in a Kantian focus on the victim as an end in himself. The book also considers typically neglected albeit intriguing issues such as DER’s application to allowings and how constitutional legal systems that incorporate exceptionless norms employ a legal analogue to DER.

Mystical Encounters with the Natural World

Paul Marshall — 2006-02-01

Author:: Paul Marshall
ISBN:: 9780199279432
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0199279438.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2006-02-01

The present study is devoted to mystical experiences of the natural world and the disparate ways in which they have been explained. Typically, these so-called ‘extrovertive mystical experiences’ are characterized by some combination of unity, deepened knowledge, sense of contact with reality, self-transcendence, altered time-experience, light, bliss, and love. The experiences are well represented in modern collections of spiritual testimonies, but unlike some other extraordinary experiences, they have received little sustained investigation in recent years. In Part I of the book, the experiences themselves take centre stage, with attention given to definition, phenomenology, present-day incidence, historical occurrence, circumstances, and after-effects. The classic characterizations of extrovertive experience are found wanting, and a more nuanced survey of characteristics is attempted. In Part II, attention turns to the explanation of extrovertive experience, with a survey and critique of a hundred years of explanations that range from the spiritual and metaphysical to the psychoanalytic, contextual, deconstructive, and neuropsychological. Theorists covered include R. M. Bucke and Edward Carpenter on the evolutionary path to cosmic consciousness, liberal Christian thinkers on the divine presence in nature, W. T. Stace and Robert Forman on pure consciousness, Bruce Garside and Steven Katz on the contextual construction of mystical experience, H. N. Wieman and Arthur Deikman on deconstructed, nondual awareness, R. C. Zaehner and Erich Neumann on regression to the Jungian unconscious, Sigmund Freud on the oceanic feeling, neuropsychologists on the biological basis of mystical experience, Aldous Huxley on filtration of Mind at Large, and idealist thinkers on contact with universal consciousness. A recurrent theme is the lack of attention given by theorists to extrovertive phenomenology: many explanations fall down because they fail to address the full range of experiential characteristics. Although no firm conclusion can at present be reached on the essential nature of extrovertive mystical experience, the author favours a transpersonal form of explanation that is rooted in idealist metaphysics, but which is also attentive to the contributions of neuropsychological, collective, and contextual factors.

Minds and Gods

Todd Tremlin — 2006-02-01

Author:: Todd Tremlin
ISBN:: 9780195305340
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195305345.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2006-02-01

This book provides an introduction to the cognitive science of religion, a new discipline of study that explains the origins and persistence of religious ideas and behavior on the basis of evolved mental structures and functions of the human brain. Belief in gods and the social formation of religion have their genesis in biology — in powerful, often hidden, processes of cognition that all humans share. Arguing that we cannot understand what we think until we first understand how we think, the book describes ways in which evolution by natural selection molded the modern human mind, resulting in mental modularity, innate intelligences, and species-typical modes of thought. The book details many of the adapted features of the brain — agent detection, theory of mind, social cognition, and others — focusing on how mental endowments inherited from our ancestral past lead people to naturally entertain religious ideas, such as the god concepts that are ubiquitous the world over. In addition to introducing the major themes, theories, and thinkers in the cognitive science of religion, the book also advances the current discussion by moving beyond explanations for individual religious beliefs and behaviors to the operation of culture and religious systems. Drawing on dual-process models of cognition developed in social psychology, the book argues that the same cognitive constraints that shape human thought also work as a selective force on the content and durability of religions.

Moral Creativity

John Wall — 2005-07-14

Author:: John Wall
ISBN:: 9780195182569
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195182561.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2005-07-14

This book combines ancient, modern, and postmodern resources to argue that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation together of their world. This creative capability can be understood in its fullest dimensions only as a religious or mythological affirmation of humanity as an image of its Creator. This thesis challenges Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in fixed principles or preconstituted traditions. It instead recasts a range of mythic, prophetic, and tragic resources to uncover moral life’s poetics, tension, dynamism, catharsis, disruptiveness, excess, and impossible possibility for renewal. The book takes as its starting point a critical reading of the hermeneutical poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and from there enters into a range of conversations with Aristotle and contemporary Aristotelianism, Immanuel Kant and modernism, and current Continental, narrative, liberationist, and feminist ethics such as in Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Kearney, Martha Nussbaum, Jürgen Habermas, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Luce Irigaray, and Sallie McFague. In the process, it develops a meta-ethical phenomenology of moral creativity along the lines of four increasingly complex dimensions: ontology (creativity of the self), teleology (positive creativity of narrative goods), deontology (negative creativity in response to otherness), and social practice (mixed creativity between plural others in society). Moral creativity is in the end an original and necessary religious capability for responding anew to the tensions within and between selves in the world by forming over time, in love and hope, an ever more radically inclusive humanity.

Michael Polanyi

William Taussig Scott and Martin X. Moleski — 2005-07-14

Author:: William Taussig Scott, Martin X. Moleski
ISBN:: 9780195174335
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/019517433X.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2005-07-14

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was born to a Viennese family living in Hungary. After obtaining a medical degree, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, then chose Austrian citizenship in the aftermath of the war. While on sick leave, he wrote an article on the adsorption of gases that became the foundation for his doctoral research in physical chemistry at Karlsruhe in Germany. In his later work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and the University of Manchester in England, Polanyi also worked on crystallography and reaction kinetics. After fleeing to England from Nazi Germany, Polanyi gradually turned away from physical chemistry to studies in economics, social and political analysis, philosophy, theology, and aesthetics. The biography traces the development of Polanyi's theory of tacit, personal knowledge and shows how his scientific career shaped his philosophy of science and his view of religion in general and Christianity and Judaism in particular.

Two Models of Jewish Philosophy

Daniel Rynhold — 2005-04-20

Author:: Daniel Rynhold
ISBN:: 9780199274864
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/019927486X.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2005-04-20

Judaism is a religion that historically has emphasized the importance of a set of practical commandments, and in the history of Jewish philosophy various attempts have been made to rationalize or justify these commandments. In this book, Daniel Rynhold attempts to formulate a general model for the justification of practices out of a critical analysis of approaches taken to the issue of ta’amei ha-mitzvot (the rationalization of the commandments) within Jewish philosophy. Bringing a modern analytical framework to bear on the methods of the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides and the contemporary thinker Joseph Soloveitchik, Rynhold argues that despite being put forward as opposing approaches, their views on ta’amei ha-mitzvot share a central methodological presumption—the Priority of Theory (PoT). Rynhold’s critique of this method, based primarily on developing an argument from uncodifiability is followed by the development of his own original method of justifying practices that he terms the Priority of Practice (PoP). Rynhold’s innovative approach, based on an analysis of the concept of faith as presented in certain central strands of the Jewish tradition emphasizes the limits of propositional methods for justifying practices in general and the need for a more pragmatic line in which practices are justified practically rather than by reference to theories and principles. Whilst much work in Jewish philosophy is more historical than conceptual, Rynhold’s attempt to bring together Jewish and general philosophy yields a work that illustrates how Jewish philosophy can be of more than historical interest and make a genuine contribution to current philosophical debate.

John Calvin's Ideas

Paul Helm — 2005-04-20

Author:: Paul Helm
ISBN:: 9780199255696
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0199255695.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2005-04-20

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.

Hegel and Christian Theology

Peter C. Hodgson — 2005-04-20

Author:: Peter C. Hodgson
ISBN:: 9780199273614
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0199273618.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2005-04-20

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.

God and Other Spirits

Phillip Wiebe — 2005-04-20

Author:: Phillip Wiebe
ISBN:: 9780195140125
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195140125.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2005-04-20

This book advances three central propositions: (a) Claims about what is real, including a transcendent reality, if it exists, cannot be achieved by short, snappy proofs, but by the hard work of examining phenomena closely, conjecturing about how they might explained, and critically scrutinizing the explanations that are suggested by the phenomena; (b) The methodology that is needed in a critical scrutiny of religion is neither deductive nor inductive argumentation, both of which have been prominent in philosophy of religion, but abductive argumentation, in which unobservable objects are tentatively postulated to exist, in an effort to determine how well they explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena; and (c) The phenomena that ought to be made central to the study of religion are the varied experiences that people have reported and continue to report, especially those that suggest to educated and articulate adults that an order of reality might exist that transcends the known natural one. Empirical grounds for advancing the existence of spirits are examined in several chapters, such as the phenomena of (alleged) demonic possession and exorcism, as well as other phenomena in biblical history and in contemporary life that suggest the existence of holy beings. These phenomena are used to reconstruct the theory of spirits in a critical realist way, according to which the postulated entities are contextually defined by the causal roles these entities are deemed to play. The abductive argumentation to unobservable objects that is advocated is perhaps best known from atomism, but it has also been vital to evolutionary theory, genetic theory, psychoanalysis, and to other well known fields of scientific inquiry. Various objections are examined against the thesis of the book, including the view that the concepts of religion are mythopoeic, the claim that naturalism as it is presently known is adequate to explain all phenomena, and the position that Christian theism is incoherent. The plausibility of contextual realism is defended according to which separate domains of critical inquiry have epistemic independence from one another, so that ontological reduction is neither routinely imposed on religious claims nor deemed to be impossible. The competing claims that theism is properly basic and that probabilistic argument affords the best approach toward theism are resisted. The author calls for “naturalizing epistemology” of religion, following W. V. O. Quine, which requires paying more attention than classical empiricism has given to the circumstances in which educated and articulate adults adopt beliefs, including beliefs that accommodate God and other spirits.

Theological Incorrectness

D. Jason Slone — 2005-01-20

Author:: D. Jason Slone
ISBN:: 9780195169263
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195169263.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2005-01-20

This book analyzes the concept of theological incorrectness, namely, why people believe what they shouldn’t? It takes off from Justin Barrett’s notion of “theological correctness”, which contends that while religious believers produce theologically correct ideas in situations that allow them the time and space to reflect symmetrically on their beliefs, the same people can stray from those ideological beliefs in situations that require them to solve problems rapidly. It also puts forward a cognitive approach to studying religion.

Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love

C. Stephen Evans — 2005-01-20

Author:: C. Stephen Evans
ISBN:: 9780199272174
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0199272174.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2005-01-20

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.

Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity

Robert McKim — 2003-11-01

Author:: Robert McKim
ISBN:: 9780195128352
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195128354.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

The religious ambiguity of the world has many aspects, one of which is the hiddenness of God. Theists have proposed a number of explanations of God's hiddenness. Some putative explanations contend that the advantages of God's hiddenness (“goods of mystery”) outweigh whatever benefits would result if God's existence and nature were clear to us (“goods of clarity”). Goods of mystery that have received a lot of discussion include human moral autonomy and the ability on our part to exercise control over whether we believe in the existence of God. The extent of the ambiguity that surrounds God's existence, and indeed all important religious matters, combined with our lack of an obviously correct and adequate explanation of this lack, suggest that, even if God exists, it is not important that people believe in God. Another central theme in the book is the significance of religious diversity for religious belief. The character of this diversity is such that it provides people who take a position on religious matters with reason to adopt the “Critical Stance” – which requires people in all the religious traditions to subject their religious beliefs to critical scrutiny and hold those beliefs in a tentative way.Some contend that religious faith requires complete confidence in what is believed but tentative belief actually is sufficient to sustain many forms of religious commitment.

Public Vision, Private Lives

Mark S. Cladis — 2003-11-01

Author:: Mark S. Cladis
ISBN:: 9780195125542
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195125541.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

Cladis reflects on the nature and place of the public and private in the work of Rousseau and, more generally, in democratic society. The tension between the hopes and desires of the individual and the requirements of a shared public life was at the heart, or the knot, of Rousseau's life and thought. Cladis leads the reader on an exploration of the conflicting claims with which Rousseau wrestled – prerogatives and obligations to self, friends, family, vocation, civic life, and humanity. At the juncture of diverse theological and secular traditions, including Enlightenment optimism and Augustinian pessimism, Rousseau forged a vision of human happiness found not exclusively in the public or private, but in a complex combination of the two. In Part I, Cladis employs the Garden–Fall myth to narrate Rousseau's rather dismal account of the human journey into social life. Yet, contrary to most interpreters of Rousseau, Cladis maintains that if we categorically identify the natural with the good and the social with evil, we fail to do justice to Rousseau's provocative account of our joy and sorrow in solitude and community. Part II explores the limits and possibilities of Rousseau's three paths to partial redemption – the public path (the reformed society), the private path (the escape into solitude), and the tense, middle way between them. Throughout this study, Cladis listens closely to the religious pitch in Rousseau's voice. He shows that Rousseau, when attempting to portray the most characteristic aspects of the public and private, reached for a religious vocabulary. Honoring both love of self and love of that which is larger than the self – these twin poles, with all the tension between them – mark Rousseau's work, vision, and challenge – the challenge of twenty‐first century democracy.

Love's Grateful Striving

M. Jamie Ferreira — 2003-11-01

Author:: M. Jamie Ferreira
ISBN:: 9780195130256
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195130251.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

This commentary on Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love (1847), a series of 15 deliberations on the love commandment (to love one's neighbor as oneself), argues that Works of Love provides resources for understanding our ethical responsibility for others in ways that respect concrete distinctiveness and equality, partiality and impartiality, as well as the relation between self‐esteem, human needs, and self‐denial. This reading of Kierkegaard's Christian love ethic – an ethic of agape – relates to contemporary discussions of love as infinite debt and radical gift; it presents the ethical relation as one of moral vision and moral blindness, in order to respect alterity and kinship; it also clarifies Kierkegaard's relation to his Lutheran heritage, highlighting both love's hiddenness and its works (fruits). Moreover, the deliberations on building up others, on forgiveness, and on reconciliation, address dimensions of our responsibility for community.

Lessing's Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment

Toshimasa Yasukata — 2003-11-01

Author:: Toshimasa Yasukata
ISBN:: 9780195144949
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195144945.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) is held in high esteem as one who marks the cutting edge of the German Enlightenment. He was the very first German to achieve a spiritually and intellectually mature state of being, the hallmark of which is independent and responsible use of one's own reason. He also stands as a key figure in German intellectual history, a bridge joining Luther, Leibniz, and German idealism. Yet despite his well‐recognized importance in the history of thought, and despite a substantial body of in‐depth studies, Lessing as theologian or philosopher of religion remains an enigmatic figure. Even today, his theology or philosophy of religion is a subject of dispute. With regard to the genuine core of his theological or religious‐philosophical thought, researchers hold diametrically opposed interpretations. It is not without reason that scholars refer to the “riddle” or “mystery” of Lessing, a mystery that has proved intractable because of his reticence on the subject of the final conclusions of his intellectual project. Confronted with this perplexity in Lessing studies, this book seeks to resolve the enigma. On the basis of intensive study of the entire corpus of Lessing's philosophical and theological writings as well as the extensive secondary literature, it leads the reader into the systematic core of Lessing's highly elusive religious thought. From a detailed and thoroughgoing analysis of Lessing's developing position on Christianity and reason, there emerges a fresh image of Lessing as a creative modern mind, both shaped by and giving shape to the Christian heritage.

The Genealogy of Violence

Charles K. Bellinger — 2003-11-01

Author:: Charles K. Bellinger
ISBN:: 9780195134988
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195134982.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

In the twentieth century, many thinkers have put forward theories that purport to explain the motivations underlying the violent behavior of human beings. This book presents Kierkegaard's thought as offering a way of interpreting violent behavior that is superior to the alternatives. The basic elements of Kierkegaard's psychology are drawn out of his published and unpublished works, concentrating on The Concept of Anxiety, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death. Violence, most fundamentally, arises out of human resistance to the possibility of psychological change and growth into maturity. Violence toward others seeks to fend off that potential for otherness within oneself that is entailed by the incompleteness of creation. Kierkegaard's theory of violence is compared and contrasted with Rene Girard's theory, and both thinkers are brought into conversation with Karl Barth and Eric Voegelin. Anabaptism's approach to interpreting the history of Christian violence is taken into consideration. Hitler and Stalin, as key contemporary examples of demonic violence, are analyzed in connection with Kierkegaard's aesthetic and ethical spheres of existence. The book closes with reflections on the Christian doctrine of atonement in light of the preceding discussion of the roots of human evil.

The Bonds of Freedom

Rebekah L. Miles — 2003-11-01

Author:: Rebekah L. Miles
ISBN:: 9780195144161
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195144163.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

Feminist theologians have commonly identified Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism as a prime example of a patriarchal theological ethic that promotes domination. In this study, the author claims that Niebuhr's thought can be usefully appropriated and revised in service of a new ethic – a feminist Christian realism. This new ethic is offered as an answer to the loss of moral grounding and critical judgment within some North American feminist theologies. She contends that an increasingly radical feminist emphasis on divine immanence and human boundedness has undercut key assumptions upon which feminism rests. Niebuhr's realism, she believes, can be the source of a necessary correction. Feminist theologians. Miles argues, would be better served by using the categories of Christian realism to retrieve critically, a more positive understanding of divine transcendence and human self‐transcendence while maintaining their emphasis on human boundedness and divine presence. This position is developed by drawing together the contributions of Niebuhr, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Sharon Welch (two prominent feminist theologians). Ruether's turn to creation and Welch's turn to community together provide an important corrective to Niebuhr's Christian realism.

Boethius

John Marenbon — 2003-11-01

Author:: John Marenbon
ISBN:: 9780195134070
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195134079.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

This book provides, for the first time, a philosophical study of the whole range of Boethius's writings (except his textbooks on music and arithmetic): the commentaries and monographs on logic, the Opuscula sacra (short treatises on theology) and the Consolation of Philosophy. It also offers a reassessment of Boethius as a philosopher. Boethius, Marenbon argues, was not merely of importance in transmitting ancient Platonism and Aristotelian logical doctrines of the late ancient Platonic schools to the Latin Middle Ages, but was also a subtle and interesting original thinker. In his Opuscula sacra, he makes innovations in the theological method that would mould medieval thinking. The Consolation both directly tackles problems such as the compatibility of human free will and divine prescience and providence, and through its complex use of the dialog form, probes the relation between philosophy and religious belief, Christian and pagan.

American Pragmatism

M. Gail Hamner — 2003-11-01

Author:: M. Gail Hamner
ISBN:: 9780195155471
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Religion, Philosophy of Religion
DOI:: 10.1093/0195155475.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2003-11-01

The development of pragmatism is the most important achievement in the history of American philosophy. M. Gail Hamner here examines the European roots of the movement in a search for what makes pragmatism uniquely American. She argues that the inextricably American character of the pragmatism of such figures as Charles Sanders Peirce and William James lies in its often‐understated affirmation of America as a uniquely religious country with a God‐given mission, and as populated by God‐fearing citizens. By looking at European and British thinkers whom the pragmatists read, Hamner examines how pragmatism's notions of self, nation, and morality were formed in reaction to the work of these thinkers. She finds that the pervasive religiosity of nineteenth‐century American public language underlies Peirce's and James's resistance to aspects of the philosophy and science of their non‐American colleagues. This religiosity, Hamner shows, is linked strongly to the continuing rhetorical power of American Puritanism. Claims made for and about Puritanism were advanced throughout the nineteenth century as rallying cries for specific political, social, and individual changes. It was in this religiously and politically charged environment that Peirce and James received and reinterpreted non‐American voices. Hamner traces the development of pragmatism by analyzing the concepts of consciousness, causality, will, and belief in two German thinkers (Hermann von Helmholtz and Wilhelm Wundt) and two Scottish thinkers (William Hamilton and Alexander Bain), and by examining how their ideas were appropriated by Peirce and James. The book is arranged in three main parts: Evolution of German psychology; Evolution of Scottish psychology; and Pragmatic reception of European psychology.