bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, Fifty Years Later
Authors: Simon Marcel
Published: October 2008

The religionsgeschichtliche Schule, born in Germany towards the end of the XIXth century, rapidly met with considerable success throughout the world of scholarship. It reached its zenith during the first decennia of the present century, when it played a leading part in the study of Christian origins, and began to fall out of favour shortly after World War I. Alfred Loisy's Les Mystères païens et le mystère chrétien, first published in 1919 and re-edited in 1930, represents one of its most significant and also one of its last productions. Very few scholars, if any, would be willing nowadays to enlist under its banner. And yet there can be little doubt that this school, despite its obvious shortcomings and unwarranted systematisations, has, in its time, done the cause of learning signal service.
Theology and Religious Studies—The Unity of our Discipline
Authors: Galloway A. D.
Published: October 2008

A major aspect of the concern that brings us together in a newly founded and established Institute of Religion and Theology in Great Britain and Ireland is the organisation and management of knowledge and research within our field. During the past generation there has been an explosive growth of knowledge. Unfortunately this has not been accompanied by a corresponding growth in human brain capacity. This has given rise to new problems in the organisation and management of knowledge. The computer has helped, but mainly in the area of the quantifiable and the aggregation and arrangement of brute facts.
Non-Being and Mu the Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West
Authors: Abe Masao
Published: October 2008

In Volume i of his Systematic Theology, Paul Tillich says, ‘Being precedes nonbeing in ontological validity, as the word “nonbeing” itself indicates’ (p. 189). He also says elsewhere, ‘Being “embraces” itself and nonbeing’, and ‘Nonbeing is dependent on the being it negates. “Dependent”—points first of all to the ontological priority of being over nonbeing’ (The Courage to Be, p. 34, p. 40). Tillich makes these statements in connection with a tendency among some Christian thinkers to take God as Being itself. The same understanding of the relation of being and non-being can be discerned in major strands of Greek philosophy through the ideas of to on and me on. Although Greek philosophy and the Christian movement have different starting points in time, in geographical locale, in conceptual orientation, Tillich's statements demonstrate the manner in which the two strands have, to a significant degree, merged, and his comments reflect a basic under standing (if not the basic understanding) of being and nonbeing in the West.
Christian Belief—an Unchanging Essence?
Authors: Ramsey Michael
Published: October 2008

In about the year A.D. III Pliny sent to the emperor Trajan a report about the behaviour of Christians in Bithynia in which he said that they admitted to having meetings before dawn at which it was their practice carmen Christo quasi deo dicere. Would the Christians have thought this account of themselves to be a fair one? Certainly Pliny was right in thinking that the Christians gave, and professed to give, worship to Christ as divine. But no doubt he would suppose that to them Christ was ‘a god’, just one of the deities whose statues were familiar in the Graeco-Roman world. He could scarcely be expected to grasp that carmen Christo quasi deo dicere involved the attitudes to Christ described by St John or Ignatius of Antioch or Polycarp of Smyrna.
Experience, Knowledge and Understanding
Authors: Kitagawa Joseph M.
Published: October 2008

Anyone teaching in theological schools or university departments of religion in the West should be struck by two related factors which seem to influence the attitude and thinking, of today's students. The first is the preoccupation with ‘experience’, while the second is the openness toward Eastern religious insights as well as their meditation techniques. In this paper, the writer intends to reflect on these two factors both as the causes and the effects of the significant change that has taken place in Western man's world of meaning in our time.
Castaneda and Don Juan: Some Preliminary Observations
Authors: Reno Stephen J.
Published: October 2008

In this paper I would like to begin following up a suggestion made informally in conversation by Professor Mircea Eliade that someone with an interest in phenomenology of religion take a serious look at the writings of the American anthropologist, Carlos Castaneda. Since the appearance of his most recent book two years ago, there has been a growing bibliography of commentaries on and interviews with this scholar. To my knowledge, however, no one has yet attempted to bring to bear on his works some of the insights derived from the comparative approach of a phenomenology of religion. This paper will only be a step in that direction. It is intended in the first place to set some relatively new material before a group of scholars in order to invite comments from various special disciplines. Throughout, it is prompted by my own personal curiosity and informed, for better or worse, by my own developing understanding of the aims and procedures of a general phenomenology of religion.
Christology and Complementarity
Authors: Kaiser Christopher B.
Published: October 2008

A good deal has already been written on the possible relevance of Niels Bohr's principle of ‘complementarity’ to various theological issues. Bohr, himself, suggested that the concept might be useful in discussions concerning the relation of intra-mundane causality and divine providence, or that of human freedom and divine sovereignty. These suggestions have been taken up and developed by C. A. Coulson and D. M. Mackay, but they have also seriously been criticized, notably by I. G. Barbour. The principal difficulty encountered in regarding God and the world as ‘complementary’, in Bohr's sense of the term, is that Creator and creature are generally thought to be two distinct ‘entities’, in Christian ‘theism’, rather than two ‘modes’ of a single entity as ‘wave’ and ‘particle’ are two ‘complementary’ modes of an atomic object in physics.
Jonathan Edwards and H. Richard Niebuhr
Authors: Sandon Leo
Published: October 2008

Martin E. Marty, in his foreword to a volume on the thought of the late H. Richard Niebuhr, offered the comment, ‘I wonder whether since Jonathan Edwards there has been a systematic theologian of such organizing brilliance as H. Richard Niebuhr.’1 Marty's judgement that Niebuhr shares with Edwards a significant position in the American theological tradition is particularly suggestive when one is aware of Niebuhr's indebtedness to Edwards in his own constructive theological programme. One of the most precarious exercises in the writing of intellectual history is that of demonstrating the ‘influence’ of one thinker upon another. Unless there is an explicit citation or a confession of dependence upon the thought of a mentor in the writings of a theologian, the lines of influence are elusive and difficult to establish. It is therefore more prudent and manageable to speak of ‘similarities’ of thought or the ‘possibility’ of influence. Nevertheless the author of this study is convinced of the importance of Edwardsean influence on Niebuhr.
John Hick and the Concept of Eschatological Verification
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: October 2008

Many philosophers have claimed that theological statements, if taken as referring to something transcending the world of human experience, are devoid of factual content. They may be meaningful in other ways, but they cannot function to describe anything, to say anything true or false. The two most famous defences of this view are Ayer's in chapter vi of Language, Truth, and Logic, and Flew's in his essay ‘Theology and Falsification’.1
Nāgārjuna's Approach to the Problem of the Existence of God
Authors: Cheng Hsueh-Li
Published: October 2008

In this paper I will investigate Nāgārjuna's approach to the problem of the existence of God. Nāgārjuna lived in the second century A.D. and founded Mādhyamika Buddhism.1 He is considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of India2 and his philosophy, ‘the central philosophy of Buddhism’.3 Although there have been some systematic studies and presentations of Nāgārjuna's writings among Eastern and Western scholars during the past six or seven decades,4 many aspects of his teachings have not been adequately treated. One of these aspects is his examination of the concept of God or deity.
Truth-claims and inter-religious dialogue
Authors: Lipner Julius
Published: October 2008

The debate continues concerning the nature of religious truth-claims and their role in dialogue: a seemingly vexatious topic not only in discussions between religious persons and those who question the value of accredited religion, but also within the camp of differently aligned believers themselves. Indeed the present interest in inter-religious understanding has tended to make this problem even more acute. In Part I of this paper I wish to discuss the issue of truth-claims in religion within the context of two apparently conflicting views: the one represented in the writings of Professor John Hick, and the other that advanced by D. Z. Phillips. In the second part I propose to indicate how this issue bears on the further question of inter-faith dialogue.
Evelyn Underhill
Authors: Ramsey Michael
Published: October 2008

We are commemorating the centenary of the birth of a personality remarkable in herself and remarkable also as a mirror of some great questions about the understanding of God, man and the world. A quaint episode in literary history focuses these questions as they emerged in Evelyn Underhill's life. She had published in 1911, when she was thirty-seven years old, a very learned and also very readable book with the title Mysticism. It sold well from the start, and its execellenc was acclaimed by critics as different as Dean Inge and Dom John Chapman. But an acquaintance who was not at the time an intimate friend wrote to say that he had not yet, as he had hoped, been able to make a thorough study of the whole work; but as a second printing of it was imminent he made two proposals, and he presented them in a tone just a little reminiscent of Hitler addressing the President of Czechoslovakia. I quote Baron von Hugel:

(1) Either, you rest content, so far as my little help is concerned with these corrections proposed for the first four chapters – yet with the extension that you go through all the passages concerning (a) the supposed identity of man's soul and God, (b) the supposed non-necessity of institutional, historical, etc. religion for many or for some; and you would strictly weigh and reconsider them all. Or,

(2) you would get your publisher to defer the reprinting till the beginning of February, in which case I willingly undertake to give January to a careful study of your entire book.
A Death-Blow to Śaṅkara's Non-Dualism? A Dualist Refutation
Authors: Betty L. Stafford
Published: October 2008

Many of us, and I am no exception, have been led to assume, almost un-consciously, that Śankara is India's greatest philosopher and that the non-dualist philosophy he consolidated, Advaita Vedānta, is the supreme spiritual philosophy of India, if not of the whole world. Dualist (Dvaita) opponents like Madhva, on the other hand, have usually been appreciated very little, if at all. Several of my colleagues think of Madhva as a reactionary, if brilliant, theist whose philosophy best serves as a foil to Śankara's. Madhva, it almost seems, is studied not for his own philosophical virtues but as a means the better to appreciate Śankara's. I believe that we must weigh more carefully the dualist position, particularly its trenchant critique of non-dualism. We may discover in the process that Śankara, whatever else he was – brilliant stylist, mystic par excellence, deft polemicist – was not the originator or consolidator of anything like an internally consistent metaphysics.
The Will to Come Out All Right
Authors: Yarvin Herb
Published: October 2008

William James presents Pascal's wager in this manner: if you believe in God and God exists, then your gain is infinite; if you believe in God and God doesn't exist, then your loss is finite. Therefore, since a finite loss is reasonable where there is the possibility of infinite gain, you ought to believe in God. ‘What have you to lose?’ James asks (II).1
Religious Experience and Rational Certainty*
Authors: Oakes Robert A.
Published: October 2008

The purpose of this paper is to clear up the long-standing veritable mountain of misinterpretation, perpetuated from critic to critic, concerning the admittedly problematic concept of self-authenticating (i.e. unmistakable) religious experience. While it may well be the case, as many have argued, that a sort of ‘experience’ about which one could not be mistaken is simply a logically impossible state of affairs, this cannot be known to be the case so long as what is under attack is (as I hope to show) a bogus concept, obviously absurd, having nothing whatsoever to do with the correct interpretation of ‘self-authentication’. Hence, my mission herein is essentially that of philosophical analysis or clarification of meaning. Only upon suitable clarification of this concept will we be in a position to consider the question of its possible application, i.e. whether or not there could be an instantiation of such experience. I might point out that my central concern is somewhat more explicatory than historical, though I believe that the account developed in this paper is essentially congenial with the intent of those who have been proponents of the view that there can be self-authenticating religious experience. Let us begin, then, by turning to some representative criticism of the concept in question.
Self-Consciousness and the Normative in Christian Theology
Authors: Howe Leroy T.
Published: October 2008

If Christian theology is that enterprise whose essential purpose is to understand the faith of the Christian Church, then it must approach that faith from the perspective not only of its transcendent source, but also as a human achievement, a creative interpretation of those events in which transcendent reality discloses itself for appropriation. Few theologians would deny that theology has to do primarily with the ways in which ultimate reality becomes manifest in human beings' faithful responses, in belief and trust, to its self-disclosures, preparatory and decisive. But the implications of such a view are not always confronted straightforwardly, especially for the suitable normative principles by which theology must assess the adequacy of the church's expressions of its faith. This essay seeks to probe how an account of the Christian faith could proceed whose norm (that is: whose principle for determining whether any claim about transcendent reality is both Christian and true) derives not from the revelatory source of faith but from the dynamic of human creativity within which alone faith's source, in being interpreted, becomes clear, cogent, and decisive for conscious existence.
The Design Argument: Hume's Critique of Poor Reason
Authors: Gaskin J. C. A.
Published: October 2008

In an article in Philosophy (1968, pp. 199–211) R. G. Swinburne set out to argue that none of Hume's formal objections to the design argument ‘have any validity against a carefully articulated version of the argument’ (p. 199). This, he maintained, is largely because Hume's criticisms ‘are bad criticisms of the argument in any form’ (p. 206). The ensuing controversy between Swinburne and Olding1 has focused upon the acceptable/unacceptable aspects of the dualism presupposed in Swinburne's defence of the design argument; upon whether any simplification is achieved by reducing scientific explanation to agent explanation; and upon the problems which arise from taking a man's acting upon his body (or the material universe within his reach) as the analogy for understanding a disembodied agent acting upon matter. In this article I shall refer to the Swinburne-Olding controversy when appropriate but my main concern is to return to Swinburne's original article and argue, seriatim, that Hume's individual criticisms of the design argument are for the most part a great deal more powerful than Swinburne allowed. I shall contend that cumulatively they destroy the design argument as any sort of rational foundation for theistic belief. But first I shall indicate briefly the character of the argument together with one or two of the distinctions and refinements in terms of which it has been found helpful to carry on the discussion in recent years.
The Intelligibility of the Thomistic God
Authors: Kelly Charles J.
Published: October 2008

Man has the urge to thrust against the limits of language. Think for instance about one's astonishment that anything exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question and there is no answer to it. Anything we can say must, a priori, be nonsense. (Wittgenstein)
Hume's Metaphysics: A New Theory of Order
Authors: Kuntz Paul Grimley
Published: October 2008

A paper on Hume's metaphysics might be exceedingly short: we might say that Hume pricked bubbles but blew none. Most readers of Hume think there is nothing here to write about, unless anti-metaphysics be a form of metaphysics.l Hume's good repute rose with agnosticism and positivism, and it is characteristic of the Germans to credit Hume with being the awakener from dogmatic, that is, metaphysical, slumbers. Add to this those who deplore Hume as the antithesis of classical philosophy, and we have a chorus who would laugh down the claim that Hume had, as he claimed, a system. And indeed who cannot quote Hume's eloquent conclusion about ‘divinity or school metaphysics’: ‘Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion’ (EcHU 132, p. 165)?2
Religion and Reason
Authors: Margolis Joseph
Published: October 2008

The persistence of the religious spirit under the most varied cultural circumstances suggests the superficiality, though not necessarily the irrelevance, of those explanatory theories that view religion as the symptom of some profound, but theoretically superable, social or personal disorder. Certainly the most influential of these, the Marxist and the Freudian, cannot be dismissed as mere errors; they have too clearly perceived certain regular abuses of religious sensitivity, and they have stated these in such a bold and open way that it seems unlikely that anyone could resist their simple truth: ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people …’ [Marx]; ‘religion [is]… the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity’ [Freud].
Devas
Authors: Watson-Kesarcodi Ian
Published: October 2008

I want to say a few words to dispel certain silly mistakes made about the Hindu notion of devās by Westerners not of this tradition. It is common for Westerners, and especially for certain tendentious devotees of Semitic traditions – most notably the Christian one – to accuse Hinduism of ‘polytheism’, meaning by this the nonsense that enlightened Hindus believe there to be a multitude of ‘gods’, all equivalent to the single Semitic one. But this is simply false. The Hindu equivalent, so far as there is one, to Christianity's ‘God, the Father, Supreme Being or Person’, is Brahman, manifest as Īśvara, and sometimes called ‘Purusottama’ (lit. ‘Supreme Personl’: see Bhagavad Gītā, 15: 15–18), and of which there is only one.
Winch and Wittgenstein
Authors: Almond P. C.
Published: October 2008

In this paper, I shall be concerned to show: (1) that Winch believes that there can be different conceptions of ‘agreement with reality’; (2) that Wittgenstein agrees with this, but emphasizes the difficulty of understanding such conceptions; (3) that Winch realizes this difficulty, and yet still tries to gain understanding of primitive social institutions in terms of their sense of the significance of human life, in terms of the limiting notions of birth, death and sexual relations; (4) that such a notion of the significance of human life cannot be made sense of without an understanding of the concept of agreement with reality which undergirds it; (5) that Winch's position is internally incoherent.
After Wittgenstein
Authors: Robinson N. H. G.
Published: October 2008

In recent years the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein have received much attention from philosophers in general and especially from philosophers interested in religion; and there is no doubt that Wittgenstein's legacy of thought is both highly suggestive and highly problematical. It seems likely, however, that the vogue which Wittgenstein now enjoys owes not a little to his peculiar place in the development of modern philosophy and, in particular, of that empiricist tradition in philosophy which stems from what has been called the revolution in philosophy in the early decades of the present century.
Moral Evil as Apparent Disvalue
Authors: Hicks David C.
Published: October 2008

In this article1 I have two theological interests and a less direct philosophical one.
The Confirmation of Scientific and Theistic Hypotheses
Authors: Schlesinger G.
Published: October 2008

The idea that there might be empirical evidence for the existence of God has been largely discredited these days. Even among theists there are many who hold that it is not a fruitful idea and that there is no point in searching for evidence for theistic beliefs. Some who regard themselves as theists go to the extreme of denying that there is any possibility of there being empirical evidence to support a religious world-view since that view implies no factual claim, as it is essentially a commitment to a given set of values and a way of life and not to the existence of any physically real entity. Others are willing to assert that theism implies the belief in some special facts but that these are so far removed from the mundane experiences upon which physical science is based, that the latter could not possibly support such a belief. Yet others merely say that there is no need at all for confirmatory evidence of the kind employed in science since their beliefs are grounded in something much firmer and more immediate, like religious experience.
A Neglected Avenue in Contemporary Religious Apologetics
Authors: Veatch Henry B.
Published: October 2008

‘Apologetics’ is hardly a word to be used without apology in the present dispensation. And to speak of anything like a neglected avenue or opportunity in religious apologetics might almost seem as if one were speaking of an opportunity in just such an enterprise as no self-respecting philosopher would nowadays wish even to be associated with. For all of their avoidance of the term, however, the thing designated by the term is something with which not a few philosophers of recent years have been not above dabbling in, albeit usually under other names and other labels. After all, religious language has now come to be recognized as not just a legitimate, but even a fashionable object of philosophic attention. And a concern with religious language has often brought with it a concern with religious attitudes, religious behaviour, religious argumentation — yes, even to the point of occasionally becoming a concern with the very religious realities themselves that religious language, religious attitudes, religious behaviour, and religious argument are presumably all about. True, religious realities in this sense are to today's garden of philosophy pretty much what the tree of knowledge once was to the garden of Eden. In fact, one even suspects that there could be a serpent about somewhere, for cases have been reported of an occasional philosopher Adam or philosopher Eve having yielded to temptation: a consideration of God-talk has been known to lead to cautious admissions that such talk might be cognitively meaningful; a consideration of God-experiences to the admission that such experiences under certain circumstances could be veridical; or, even more rarely, a consideration of proofs for God's existence to the gingerly admission that at least some of these proofs might just possibly be valid. Needless to say, though, such a yielding to temptation on the part of some few contemporary philosophers, while it may not have led to any manifest sewing together of fig-leaves, has certainly brought with it the danger, if not always the reality, of a supercilious expulsion from the glorious Eden of contemporary professional philosophy.
On The Time–Eternity ‘Link’: Some Aspects Of Recent Christian Eschatology
Authors: Stinson Charles
Published: October 2008

In Christian tradition there have been three broadly different ways in which eternity (however conceived)1 has been connected with time We find (I) a moral view: eternal life is the ‘due reward’, the ‘prize’ owed to certain states of consciousness and types of behaviour which have occurred in this life; (2) a voluntarist theory: eternal life is the unowed and thus gratuitous gift given subsequent to the occurrence of certain conscious states and behaviour patterns; and (3) the ‘ontological’ approach: eternal life is the final, culminating phase or development of those conscious states and patterns of action. All three of these views co-exist in Christian literature from the New Testament era on.
the Analysis of Faith in St Thomas Aquinas
Authors: Penelhum Terence
Published: October 2008

My intent in this paper is to give an account of Aquinas' analysis of the nature of Christian faith, to indicate some difficulties to which it seems to me, and has seemed to others, to give rise, to try to evaluate the degree to which his analysis can suggest answers to those difficulties, and then to conclude with some general comments about the sources of those perplexities that still remain.*
John Hick on Logical and Ontological Necessity
Authors: Hartshorne Charles
Published: October 2008

A number of writers have recently taken fresh looks at the many centuries-old ontological proof of Anselm.1 Three of these writers seem to agree with me that traditional ways of treating this topic have been inadequate and that the proof, whether or not it is a sufficient reason for belief, is not without important bearings for philosophy of religion. These writers are Malcolm, Findlay, and Plantinga. With each of these I find considerable common ground, and they have all indicated to me that they are aware of this. In the present article on the topic, however, I wish to discuss a fourth writer, who differs rather sharply from the other three and particularly from me. Since Hick's views are shared in certain respects by what I take to be a main stream of contemporary thought, particularly in Britain, it seems worth while to accept the challenge he offers.
Eschatological Verification Reconsidered
Authors: Hick John
Published: October 2008

The world in which we find ourselves is religiously ambiguous. It is possible for different people (as also for the same person at different times) to experience it both religiously and non-religiously; and to hold beliefs which arise from and feed into each of these ways of experiencing. A religious man may report that in moments of prayer he is conscious of existing in the unseen presence of God, and is aware - sometimes at least - that his whole life and the entire history of the world is taking place within the ambience of the divine purpose. But on the other hand the majority of people in our modern world do not participate in that form of experience and are instead conscious of their own and others' lives as purely natural phenomena, so that their own experience leads them at least implicitly to reject the idea of a transcendent divine presence and purpose. If they are philosophically minded, they may well think that the believer's talk is the expression of what Richard Hare has called a blik, a way of feeling and thinking about the world which expresses itself in pseudo-assertions, pseudo because they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable and are therefore factually empty.1 The religious man speaks of God as a living reality in whose presence we are, and of a divine purpose which gives ultimate meaning to our lives. But is not the world the same whether or not we suppose it to exist in God's presence; and is not the course of history the same whether or not we describe it as fulfilling God's purposes? Is not the religious description thus merely a gratuitous embellishment, a logical fifth wheel, an optional language-game which may assuage some psychological need of the speaker but which involves no claims of substance concerning the objective nature or structure of the universe? Must not the central religious use of language then be accounted a non-cognitive use, whose function is not to assert alleged facts but to express a speaker's, or a community of speakers', emotions within the framework of a factually contentless blik, ‘slant’, or ‘onlook’?
Bochenski on the Structure of Schemes of Doctrines
Authors: Christian William A.
Published: October 2008

My object is to suggest some ways of amplifying and applying Bochenski's account,1 in order to bring out its value for philosophical investigation of the doctrines of particular religious communities.
Visions, Pictures, and Rules
Authors: Runzo Joseph
Published: October 2008

The Judeo-Christian mystical tradition is replete with accounts of visions. But the perceptual experiences reputedly involved in these visions are often problematic. The prophet Isaiah (of Jerusalem) is reputed to have seen God in a mystic vision; St Francis to have seen Christ and received the stigmata; Julian of Norwich to have seen Christ's passion; St Teresa of Avila to have seen Christ, the devil, seraphim, and various Saints. Yet at least two fundamental questions immediately arise concerning the perceptual awareness involved in such visionary experiences. First, how could Jewish or Christian mystics have any reasonable certitude of correctly identifying such extraordinary entities as God, angels, and deceased Saints, as figures in their visions? And second, while Catholics, for example, see the Virgin Mary during their visions, Muslims see Muslim saints and Hindus see Hindu deities: why then do mystics tend during their visions to perceive entities which accord with their expectations, entities which are usually regarded as possessing special religious significance exclusively within each mystic's own religious tradition?
The Logic of ‘Solemn’ Believing
Authors: Robinson W. D.
Published: October 2008

It is sometimes suggested that the logic of religious language differs from other kinds of language. Or it is said that each ‘language-game’ has its own ‘logic’ and that, whatever usual language-games are played in the context of religion, there is something that could be called the ‘religious language-game’ which does not correspond to any other and, therefore, has its own peculiar logic. In either case, religious people are urged to make clear what this logic is, so that their utterances may be understood and evaluated.
Theodicy and the Free Will Defence: Response to Plantinga and Flew
Authors: Barnhart J. E.
Published: October 2008

Although Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, Alvin Plantinga has developed a theodicy that is fundamentally Arminian rather than Calvinistic. Anthony Flew, although the son of an Arminian Christian minister, regards the Arminian view of ‘free will’ to be both unacceptable on its own terms and incompatible with classical Christian theism. In this paper I hope to disentangle some of the involved controversy regarding theodicy which has developed between Plantinga and Flew, and between Flew and myself. The major portion of this paper is devoted to showing that Plantinga's theodicy contains some serious flaws and undesirable implications.
God, Evil, and the Free Will Defence
Authors: Tomberlin James E. , McGuinness Frank
Published: October 2008

The Free Will Defence, as we shall understand it here, is an attempt to show that

(1) God exists and he is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good is logically consistent with

(2) There is moral evil in the actual world.
Monism and the possibility of Life after death
Authors: Reichenbach Bruce R.
Published: October 2008

Traditionally, when man was viewed as a psycho-physical unity, life after death was deemed quite impossible, particularly in the face of universal human mortality and inevitable bodily corruption. However, some modern anthropologically monistic philosophers, including most notably John Hick, have argued that life after death is possible.
The Paṭiccasamuppāda: A developed formula
Authors: Williams D. M.
Published: October 2008

The purpose of this article should become plain during the reading of it, but perhaps some prior explanation is needed. Almost from the beginning of my study of the paṭiccasamuppāda I have had the notion that it could not have come into existence in the form the usual twelvefold formulation takes. For reasons which I try to make clear this twelvefold formulation is not a satisfactory statement of what it is supposed to explain, namely the reasons for each individual's continued rebirths. I feel - and sadly I have to emphasize, before someone else does it for me, that in the final analysis I am relying more or less on intuition for my attitude towards the twelvefold formulation - that if one person alone had been responsible for the usually referred to formulation, and especially if that one person had been the Buddha, then those anomalies that now prevail would never have existed.
Dialogue and revelation in the thought of Martin Buber
Authors: Katz Steven T.
Published: October 2008

Central to Buber's philosophy of I-Thou is his understanding of the related notions of dialogue and revelation and his espousal of a non-propositional account of revelation framed in the language and structure of personal dialogical encounter. The consequent re-interpretation of revelation in this form has been widely influential in contemporary theological circles, especially among those theologians and philosophers of religion broadly known as existentialists. However, the wide dissemination and influence of this position does not guarantee its validity. This paper will try to show that the dialogical account of revelation, at least in the form given it by Buber, is logically and philosophically deficient, being based on a set of misleading analogies between inter-human and Divine-human relations.
Gordon Kaufman's Perspectival Language
Authors: Jones Hugh O.
Published: October 2008

In the two decades following the publication of New Essays in Philosophical Theology, a metatheological awareness has been steadily developing among systematic theologians. Gordon Kaufman is one of those theologians prepared to face the rather embarrassing question as to whether sentences containing the word ‘God’ provide information about a transcendent reality called ‘God’. Kaufman has, indeed, always seen the need for a constructive relationship between theology and philosophy, a relationship in which both philosophy and theology retain their respective autonomous standpoints. In arguing for an historically orientated philosophy, he claimed that here one would treat what is concrete and specific for Christian faith in abstract and general terms, showing how ‘every philosophical perspective finds its focus and meaning in a historical event which is the centre of history - the Christ - for it’. Because it has grown out of a generalizing of Christian faith-affirmations, this philosophy does not threaten theology's autonomy. Indeed, it would ‘already be determined by the Christian perspective in its fundamental orientation’. It is the methodological importance of this notion of a perspective which the present article seeks to make clear.
Understanding the Fire-Festivals: Wittgenstein and Theories in Religion
Authors: Bell Richard H.
Published: October 2008

The riddle Frazer confronts us with inThe Golden Boughis posed in the form of a question. ‘Why is this happening?’ - this life and death of the King of the Wood at Nemi? In the related context of his accounts of the fire-festivals in Europe, Frazer refines the question in a more dramatic form: ‘What is the meaning of such sacrifices? Why were men and animals burnt to death at these festivals?’ Frazer recognizes something serious in all this. The practice of human sacrifice is puzzling; it does leave us disquieted! But Frazer's search for what he calls ‘a fairly probable explanation’ of the motives which gave rise to the priesthood of Nemi and its embodiment of the practice of human sacrifice, Wittgenstein in his ‘Remarks on Frazer'sGolden Bough’feels, does not help us tounderstanda practice like the burning of a man! With all the additional data, numerous theories, and the historical tracing of origins we are no closer to resolving the perplexities of the riddle than the riddle itself presents to us daily.
Reasons of the Heart: A Polanyian Reflection
Authors: Gill Jerry H.
Published: October 2008

Reasoning about religion would seem to involve both explicit and tacit factors. These latter are what Pascal had in mind when he spoke of the ‘reasons of the heart which the reason knows not of’. Moreover, these reasons of the heart are the more interesting by virtue of being at least the more difficult and perhaps the more crucial. In these pages I want to examine the notion of reasons of the heart from the angle provided by the insights of Michael Polanyi. Space will not permit a review of the major features of Polanyi's crucial concept of tacit knowledge.1 I shall simply introduce and explore certain of these features as they seem relevant to the main concern of the paper. I trust this can be done in such a way as to be both meaningful to the reader and fair to Polanyi.
Providence and Divine Action
Authors: Hebblethwaite Brian L.
Published: October 2008

In the preface to his book God the Problem, Gordon Kaufman writes ‘Although the notion of God as agent seems presupposed by most contemporary theologians … Austin Farrer has been almost alone in trying to specify carefully and consistently just what this might be understood to mean.’
Biddhist Emptiness in the Ethics and Aesthetics of Watsuji Tetsurō
Authors: Lafleur William R.
Published: October 2008

During the past few decades a growing interest in what is often called the ‘Kyoto School’ of philosophy has evidenced itself here and there in the West, especially in discussions of comparative religious thought and in the pages of journals which are sensitive, in the post-colonial world, to the value of giving attention to contemporary thought that originates outside the Anglo-American and continental contexts. What has made the so-called Kyoto School especially interesting is the fact that those thinkers identified with it obviously possess a wide acquaintance with Western thought but also have a programme of clarifying points at which they, as Japanese philosophers, find Western philosophy either in sum or in its parts inadequate or objectionable. Moreover, inasmuch as the philosophers of the Kyoto School have deliberately reached back into the Mahayana Buddhist component in Japanese civilization in order to find terms, perspectives, and even foundations for their own analyses and constructions, Western students of comparative religion and comparative thought have in the study of this school a unique aperture for observing how a group of thinkers, while sharing modernity and its problems with us, reates both of these to a religious tradition which is in many ways strikingly different from that of the West.
Śūnyatā: Objective Referent or Via Negativa?
Authors: Richards Glyn
Published: October 2008

I propose in this paper to examine and analyse the concept of śūnyatā as it is expressed in the Hrdaya sūtras of the Buddhist prajñā-pāramitā literature and in the Mū1amadhyamaka-kārikās of Nāgārjuna. I shall attempt to show some of the difficulties involved in seeking an objective referent or counter part for the concept and also in trying to preserve the tension implicit in the affirmation of the middle way. I hope to indicate that the via negativa approach has positive implications for the understanding of śūnyatā and that in the final analysis we may have to look for its meaning in the way it is used.
Barth or Bultmann?
Authors: Robinson N. H. G.
Published: October 2008

In his book on Karl Barth Professor T. F. Torrance spoke at one point of ‘the great watershed of modern theology’. ‘There are,’ he wrote,1‘two basic issues here. On the one hand, it is the very substance of the Christian faith that is at stake, and on the other hand, it is the fundamental nature of scientific method, in its critical and methodological renunciation of prior understanding, that is at stake. This is the great watershed of modern theology: either we take the one way or the other – there is no third alter native… one must go either in the direction taken by Barth or in the direction taken by Bultmann.’
The Pagan Dogma of the Absolute Unchangeableness of God
Authors: Edwards Rem B.
Published: October 2008

In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as:

He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable (for it is only in appearance that the external world is for a time unchanged, in reality it is always in flux) and in the overturn of all things, He remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness He, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged.1
Nielsen and Penelhum an agents outside space
Authors: Farlow-King John
Published: October 2008

‘For the inference involved in our knowledge of other minds is not, after all, an inference to them as bodily existences…’ (H. D. Lewis)

In his recent and typically thought-provoking paper, ‘On the Rationality of Radical Theological Non-Naturalism’, Kai Nielsen attacks those who, like Terence Penelhum, believe that ‘there is no good reason to think that we could not, with a little ingenuity, think up some non-theistic statements which would serve, if true, to put some theistic conclusions beyond reason-able doubt’.
Mis-Using Religious Language: Something About Kierkegaard and ‘The Myth of God Incarnate’
Authors: Evans C. Stephen
Published: October 2008

At the risk of a tremendous over-simplification, I believe it is helpful to categorize views of Christianity which have appeared in the west in the last two hundred years into three major groups. First there are the unbelievers, those for whom Christianity is straightforwardly untrue, unknowable, or unbelievable (or all three). This group would include those who try to salvage some form of essentially humanistic religion as well as those who simply turn away from religious belief altogether, either to put their ultimate hopes in political ideology, or science, or simply to attempt to limit themselves to hopes which are finite and non-ultimate in character.
Theological method and Gordon Kaufman
Authors: Sharpe Kevin J.
Published: October 2008

Gordon Kaufman is a theologian who wrestles with essential theological issues. In a recent amplification of his position, An Essay on Theological Method,1 he makes an honest attempt to describe the method by which a self-critical theologian might work. This paper sets out a critique of the method Kaufman proposes and from that delineates a path which theologians might choose to follow.
Autonomy and theological ethics
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: October 2008

Some theists believe that the moral rightness and wrongness of actions consists in agreement and disagreement, respectively, with God's commands. And even theists who do not hold this meta-ethical view do generally believe that all right action is commanded by God and should be done in obedience to him.1 I wish to respond here to one of the commonest objections to this belief - the objection that it is incompatible with a proper regard for the virtue of autonomy.2
Lyttkens on Religious Experience and Transcendence
Authors: Brummer Vincent
Published: October 2008

In his paper Hampus Lyttkens tries to explore the relation between religious experience and the concept of transcendence. Lyttkens limits his enquiry to religious experience in the sense of ‘specific and extraordinary psychic experiences’ (such as visions, numinous experiences, etc.) which are interpreted as experiences of a transcendent God. By ‘transcendence’ Lyttkens means more than ‘objective reference’. The object of religious experiences in the above sense is not only claimed to transcend the experience itself, in the sense in which the external world is claimed to transcend our perception of it. It is also claimed to be transcendent with respect to the spatio-temporal world as such, by existing ‘beyond space and time’ in some sense or other, or in the sense put forward by Karl Heim, as existing in an extra dimension beside the four dimensions of space and time.
The Metaphysical and Religious Triad
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: October 2008

In what follows three theses are submitted for discussion.

(I) The coupling up of creation and annihilation in human existence as in nature and the universe give rise to the metaphysical and religious triad: Being, annihilation and power.
The relationship between English and German ways of doing philosophy of religion
Authors: Jeffner Anders
Published: October 2008

From time to time one comes across pronouncements about the difference between English and German philosophy of religion. Such statements often sound plausible enough, but in my experience they will not stand up to any very close inspection. Let me, anyway, take an example of a general pronouncement regarding the relationship between German and English philosophy, a pronouncement which the author applies particularly to philosophy of religion. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James states:

The Continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct.
Must we Know What we Say?
Authors: Immerman Leon Andrew
Published: October 2008

‘You cannot satisfactorily explain the meaning of your religious utterances; if you cannot explain the meaning, you don't know it; and if you, the speaker, don't know it, how could it exist?’
Divine Omniprescience: Are Literary Works Eternal Entities?
Authors: Croix Richard R. La
Published: October 2008

There are two quite common views which appear to be embraced by a large number of aestheticians as well as a large number of nonaestheticians. It is quite commonly believed by many of both groups that God is omniscient with respect to the future, that is, that God knows everything that will ever occur. I refer to this belief as the doctrine of divine omniprescience. It is also quite common to many of both groups to believe that literary authorship is creative in the sense that by means of his composing activity an author is an agent who brings about the existence of some thing (e.g., a play, a poem, a novel, etc.) which did not exist prior to the composing activity of that agent and which would not exist without the composing activity of that agent or some similar agent. I shall call this belief the doctrine of literary creativity. What does not appear to be recognized is that these two doctrines cannot both be consistently endorsed. I argue that the two doctrines jointly entail a contradiction and I will point out some of the logical consequences of trying to avoid that contradiction.