bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Some Dimensions of the Recent Work of Raimundo Panikkar: A Buddhist Perspective
Authors: Williams Paul
Published: October 2008

The Dalai Lama is fond of quoting a statement in which the Buddha is said to have asserted that no one should accept his word out of respect for the Buddha himself, but only after testing it, analysing it ‘ as a goldsmith analyses gold, through cutting, melting, scraping and rubbing it’. The Dalai Lama is often referred to as the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibet, but in truth as a spiritual figure His Holiness, while respected, indeed revered by almost all Tibetans, usually speaks from within the perspective of one particular tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, that of the dGe lugs (pronounced ‘Geluk’). Founded in the late fourteenth century by Tsong kha pa, the dGe lugs has always stressed the importance of reasoning, analytic rationality, on the spiritual path. This dGe lugs perspective is by no means shared by all Buddhists, at least not in the form it there takes. Nevertheless it does represent an important direction in Buddhist thinking on reasoning and the spiritual path which can be traced back in Indian Buddhism a very long way indeed, and it is in the light of dGe lugs thought that I want to contemplate two points which seem to be crucial in Raimundo Panikkar's approach to interreligious dialogue and understanding: first, that Reality, Being, transcends the intelligible, the range of consciousness, and second, that understanding this is the only basis for tolerance, not seeking in one way or another to overcome the other.
Hume's Logical Objection to the Argument From Design Based on the Uniqueness of the Universe
Authors: Temple Dennis
Published: October 2008

Arguments from design in Hume's day were often cast as arguments from analogy. For instance, a very simple version might read like this: ‘The universe resembles a machine; machines are the products of intelligent design; therefore, the universe is (probably) the product of intelligent design.’ Design arguments (usually of a more sophisticated sort) were put forward by some of the greatest scientists of the time, including Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. Such arguments were generally thought to be on a par with the conclusions of physics: Hume raised a number of well-known objections to such design arguments. I am going to discuss one of these objections, the claim that the uniqueness of the universe is, in itself, a bar to our drawing any conclusion about its cause or origin. This objection is raised by Hume at the end of ‘Of a Particular Providence’ and in Part II of the Dialogues.
The Concept of the Coincidentia Oppositorum in the Thought of Mircea Eliade
Authors: Valk John
Published: October 2008

Eliade, the well-known and prolific historian of religion, has himself of late become an object of intense study. In his endeavours he sought to uncover the deeper, trans-historical meaning of religious expression. He introduced the term ‘creative hermeneutics’ in his more recent writings, and was most intent on discovering what the religious phenomena ‘had to say’.
Constructivist Epistemologies of Mysticism: A Critique and a Revision
Authors: Stoeber Michael
Published: October 2008

Some philosophers of mysticism stress the dependence of mystical experience upon the conceptual categories of the mystic. This has been referred to as an intentionalist or constructivist view, where the mystic ‘constructs’ the framework of mystical encounter, or experiences that which was ‘intended’ at the outset of the mystical path. Steven Katz, for example, insists that the beliefs, values and concepts of mystics directly affect the nature of their mystical experiences. He says, ‘the ontological structure(s) of each major mystical tradition is different and this pre-experiential, inherited structure directly enters into the mystical occasion itself’. In contrast to essentialist theories which hold all mystical experience to be phenomenologically the same though subject to varying interpretations, this constructivist view interprets the tremendous differences in mystical descriptions to be evidence of differences in experience type.
The Pluralistic Hypothesis, Realism, and Post-Eschatology
Authors: Heim S. Mark
Published: October 2008

In his Gifford Lectures, An Interpretation of Religion, John Hick presents his pluralistic hypothesis in its fullest form, a religious account of the variety and unity of the great faith traditions. He summarizes this hypothesis in the assertion that in religious traditions and experiences an ‘infinite Real, in itself beyond the scope of other than purely formal concepts, is differently conceived, experienced and responded to from within the different cultural ways of being human’. It is in relation to this infinite Real that salvation/liberation takes place within each religious tradition as the ‘ transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness’.
Where have all the Angels Gone?
Authors: Clark Stephen R. L.
Published: October 2008

Anyone who wishes to talk about angels has to respond to the mocking question, how many of them can dance on the point of a pin. The answer is: ‘just as many as they please’. Angels being immaterial intellects do not occupy space to the exclusion of any other such intellectual substance, and their being ‘on’ the point of a pin can only mean that they attend to it. The question, however, is not one that concerned our mediaeval predecessors, although it seems as difficult to persuade anyone of this as it is to clear Canute of the charge of insane conceit.
Ethics and Mysticism in Eastern Mystical Traditions
Authors: Katz Steven T.
Published: October 2008

Ethics and mysticism, we are regularly instructed, are if not antithetical, then certainly, at the very least, unrelated. This common wisdom is predicated on a specific understanding of morality and a flawed, though widespread, conception of mysticism and mystical traditions. It is yet another distorted and distorting manifestation of the still more universal misapprehension that mystics are essentially arch-individualists, ‘Lone Rangers’ of the spirit, whose sole intention is to escape the religious environments that spawned them in order to find personal liberation or salvation. Accordingly, mystics are portrayed as rebels and heretics, antinomians and spiritual revolutionaries, if not also underminers of existing social and religious structures. But this characterization, despite its popularity, needs revision. In this essay it is not possible to argue all the detailed reasons why this construal is simply incorrect, but, as a shorthand summary of a much larger, more complex interpretative reconstruction, I would call attention to the fact that mystics share not only the metaphysical problematic, the metaphysical diagnosis of existence, as this is conceptualized within their particular traditions, but also view its overcoming or deconstruction in ways consistent with the teachings of their ‘faith’mmunities. They are, that is to say, fully situated in the ontological, theological, and social contexts of their traditions. Essentially, they share the Weltanschauung of their inherited circumstance and seek to realize, experience, the ‘solutions’ proposed by their tradition.
The Supernatural
Authors: Cockburn David
Published: October 2008

The final chapter of Peter Winch's book on Simone Weil discusses Weil's idea of supernatural virtue. Weil uses this language in connection with certain exceptional actions: actions of a kind which are for most of us, most of the time, simply impossible. She is particularly struck by cases in which someone refrains from exercising a power which they have over another: in which, for example, someone refrains from killing or enslaving an enemy who has grievously harmed him and who is now at his mercy. We could also speak of cases in which someone helps an enemy, or a stranger, at very real cost, or risk, to himself. In such cases Weil speaks of the ‘supernatural’ as being at work.
Probabilistic Arguments from Evil
Authors: Draper Paul
Published: October 2008

Many philosophers have held that traditional theism can be conclusively disproved because it can be shown to be logically inconsistent with some known fact about evil. By ‘traditional theism’ I mean the statement that G. There exists an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect person who created the universe.
God and the Problem of Loneliness
Authors: McGraw John G.
Published: October 2008

As Milton reminds us, the first thing God named not good was loneliness. In proclaiming it not good for man to be alone, was God but projecting his own loneliness? In the words of James Weldon Johnson, God stepped out on space, looked around and said, ‘I'm lonely’.Johnson's concept of God may be very ‘spaced-out’ but the notion of a monotheistic God as lonely is far from preposterous. A God endlessly immersed in the contemplation of its solitary perfection (à la Aristotle, for example) would be an isolation anything but splendid. Such a being might be perfect as an abstract essence, but it would be perfectly alone.
Deep Structure and the Comparative Philosophy of Religion
Authors: Levine Michael P.
Published: October 2008

Through various applications of the ‘deep structure’ of moral and religious reasoning, I have sought to illustrate the value of a morally informed approach in helping us to understand the complexity of religious thought and practice…religions are primarily moved by rational moral concerns and…ethical theory provides the single most powerful methodology for understanding religious belief. Ronald Green, Religion and Moral Reason
Mysticism and Ethics in Western Mystical Traditions
Authors: Katz Steven T.
Published: October 2008

Having considered the role of ethics in Indian mystical teachings in a previous, related, essay I would like to consider the same question in its western religious contexts in the present paper, beginning with the Christian mystical tradition. As is the case with Asian traditions charges of moral unconcern are widely directed at Christian mystics, but they are false. Christian mystics are not indifferent to morality nor do they disconnect morality from an intrinsic relationship to their mystical quest. Augustine would already teach that the story of Leah and Rachel was an instructive allegory in which the active life represented by Leah was intrinsic to the contemplative life represented by Rachel while Gregory the Great would unambiguously assert: ‘We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of the active life’, defining the active life as: ‘to dispense to all what they need and to provide those entrusted to us with the means of subsistence’. These representative early samples of the salience of ethical behaviour to the life of contemplation could be multiplied at great length, and almost without exception in the teaching of the major Christian mystics. This historical exegetical exercise, however, is in the present circumstances, both out of place and I hope unnecessary. Instead, the more general, more enigmatic, more repercussive, issues raised by the place and significance of morality within the Christian mystical tradition need attending to.
Atonement and Reconciliation
Authors: Brümmer Vincent
Published: October 2008

Religious believers understand the meaning of their lives in the light of the way in which they are related to God. Life is significant because it is lived in the presence of God, and ultimate bliss consists in being in the right relation with God. Through sin, however, our relationship with God has been drastically disrupted. The fundamental religious issue which we all have to face, therefore, is how this relationship can be restored. How can we attain ultimate bliss by being reconciled with God? Basically, this is the issue with which the doctrine of atonement has to deal:

The English word ‘atonement’ is derived from the words ‘at-one-ment’, to make two parties at one, to reconcile two parties one to another. It means essentially reconciliation… In current usage, the phrase ‘to atone for’ means the undertaking of a course of action designed to undo the consequences of a wrong act with a view to the restoration of the relationship broken by the wrong act.
Religious Metaphor and Scientific Model: Grounds for Comparison
Authors: Yob Iris M.
Published: October 2008

Human beings make sense of their world by employing symbol systems which pick out, organize and arrange elements of their experiences. With these symbol systems, they sort and order the world, make predictions, give explanations and venture new insights. In this process, a number of identifiable ways of understanding have emerged, ranging from the scientific and mathematical through the artistic, musical and literary to the religious and mythical, each with its own body of knowledge, methodology and focus, and each expressed in its own ‘language’, that is, its own semantically and syntactically differentiated symbol system.
D. Z. Phillips, Self-Renunciation and the Finality of Death
Authors: Thomas Emyr Vaughan
Published: October 2008

D. Z. Phillips thinks that the religious concept of immortality should necessarily be construed as not involving any idea of the self existing after death. In this paper it will be argued that his attempt to support this view on the basis of a descriptive analysis of the self-renouncing character of faith is inadequate. The notion of the finality of death is not essential to, nor inseparable from, a religious conception in which the nothingness of the self is stressed. That this is so is suggested by the existence of religious notions of the nothingness of the self which are religious, in a sense comparable to that implied by Phillips, only in combination with a view of death as not being a termination of the self.
Numinous Experience and Religious Language
Authors: Schlamm Leon
Published: October 2008

The purpose of this article is to evaluate Rudolf Otto's account of the relationship between numinous experience and religious language inThe Idea of the Holy, and this will inevitably also involve some more general discussion of the relationship between all religious experience and discursive reason. InThe Idea of the HolyOtto makes a number of controversial claims about the nature of numinous experience and the problems which it creates for anyone wishing to speak about it. Numinous experience, Otto asserts, is qualitatively quite unlike any other experience. It is a religious feeling providing a unique form of religious knowledge inaccessible to our ordinary rational understanding. It is frequently spoken of as ineffable. Moreover because it resists literal description, it must be approached, if at all, then indirectly through analogy. At the heart of this collection of claims about numinous experience is an epistemological assumption about the distance separating religious language and experience. Otto believes that the parameters of numinous experience extend beyond the parameters of religious language, and consequently that it is possible to compare religious experience with language about it in a straightforward way. Indeed, much ofThe Idea of the Holyis devoted to the struggle of religious experience to cast off what Otto sees as its imprisonment by inadequate religious language.
The Rational Imperative to Believe
Authors: Gordon Jeffrey
Published: October 2008

‘The Will to Believe.’ The mere mention of this title cannot fail to elicit a reaction from philosophers. Written almost 100 years ago, it continues to intrigue, inspire, perplex and repel, often all in the selfsame reader. Few who make acquaintance with this robust and insightful lecture can remain neutral toward it. In 100 years there has been continuous debate about both the content of the argument and its merits. I will confess to being among those intrigued and inspired by this lecture of James's – and, until recently, also much perplexed by it. The sources of my intrigue have been its guiding insights: that living is choosing in the midst of uncertainty; that in pressing cases, waiting for evidence is no escape from risk; and that believing can create certain truths. The sources of my inspiration have been its vibrant presence and its gallant call to courage. But the main source of my perplexity was the shape of the argument itself: Just what was James's case here? What was the conclusion? What were the premises? Off and on, I pondered the matter for years without resolution, and it was only after I abandoned the very frame of the question that I found a way out of my puzzlement. What I have come to see is that James is not pressing toward one key conclusion in ‘The Will to Believe’. There are two, the second far bolder, far more sweeping than the first. What makes this especially difficult to see is that James himself nowhere acknowledges it. Indeed, he expressly disavows the second conclusion, and this for good reason: The two conclusions are incompatible. In what follows, I want first to take you to the source of my problem in understanding James's classic lecture, then to explain to you why my two-argument theory seems its unavoidable if inelegant resolution. Finally, I want to turn to the properly philosophical task. I want to inquire into the truth of his more sweeping (albeit disavowed) claim.
Reflexive Traditions: Anthony Giddens, High Modernity, and the Contours of Contemporary Religiosity
Authors: Mellor Philip A.
Published: October 2008

The following discussion is an attempt to make an initial assessment of the value to Religious Studies of certain aspects of the social theory of Anthony Giddens. I suggest that debates centred on the nature of ‘high’ or ‘late’ modernity have substantial implications for the study of contemporary religion. The theoretical work of Giddens encourages us to reconsider the nature of ‘tradition’ as it is expressed and deployed in modern religious contexts. He notes the centrality of ‘reflexivity’ in modernity and suggests that traditions which have passed through the reflexive filterings and critical questions of modernity should be called ‘sham traditions’. In the following discussion I explore this argument, and outline the potential value of a great deal of it to the scholar of contemporary religion. Nevertheless, I also suggest that we should talk not of ‘sham’ traditions but merely of ‘reflexive’ ones. I argue that the incorporation of modern reflexivity into religious traditions does not mean that they become false representations of traditions which have, in actuality, been discarded. On the contrary, I suggest that reflexive traditions can provide new, dynamic forms for the expression and development of religion within the context of high modernity. In the course of this discussion, I hope to establish the value of the term ‘reflexive traditions’ for scholars of modern religion.
Introvertive Mystical Experiences: Monistic, Theistic, and the Theo-monistic
Authors: Stoeber Michael
Published: October 2008

Some scholars have responded to the apparent differences between monistic and theistic mysticisms by emphasizing the role of socio-religious interpretations of the experiences. Both monistic and theistic experiences, they point out, are described as wholly unlike normal sensory events. These mystics claim to go beyond the usual categories of cognition; the experiences are said to be spaceless and timeless realizations which, though not strictly ineffable, defy precise and positive description. Moreover, the mystical exercises – the spiritual training and mental preparation – seem similar for both theistic and monistic mystics. Common mystical means, along with the cessation of normal categories of interpretation during the experiences, suggest that mystics interpret a singular experience type according to their particular theological or philosophical background.
The Intolerance of Religious Pluralism
Authors: Donovan Peter
Published: October 2008

The pluralistic approach to religions has come in for some serious criticism in recent writings. I shall consider two examples in particular. The first is the book Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered. The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by Gavin D'Costa. This is a collection of essays offered in response to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, edited by John Hick and Paul Knitter. The second example is an essay by Paul Morris, ‘Judaism and Pluralism: the Price of “Religious Freedom”’, in Religious Pluralism and Unbelief, edited by Ian Hamnett.
A Spinozistic Vision of God
Authors: Leslie John
Published: October 2008

Philosophers of today are easy to stupefy. Try suggesting that some situations, such as enjoying a chess problem, really are in themselves better than others such as being burned alive: in themselves better in the sense that situations of the first sort would be preferable to those of the second if they existed all alone, so that one did not need to take consequences into account, and really better much as Africa is really bigger than Iceland, so that talk of real betterness is not just a genuine, wholehearted act of prescribing, or an expression of personal taste like the remark that mustard really is nasty. You will stupefy many a philosopher.
The Return of Adam: Freud's Myth of the Fall
Authors: Humbert David
Published: October 2008

Despite its loss of intellectual respectability in the nineteenth century, the myth of the fall still haunts modern religion and thought like an unquiet ghost. Discredited in its role as an historical account of human origins, it has retained its vitality as a ‘psychological’ myth, an inexhaustible metaphor for the brokeness and fragmentation of the human spirit. The myth of the fall surfaces in the twentieth century in the form of the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, who would not normally spring to mind as someone sympathetic to the myth. Freud is perhaps the most famous ‘demythologizer’ of religion. He traced all religion and myth, including the myth of original sin, back to non-spiritual psychological processes. But although he clearly wished to deconstruct all traditional myth, myth plays an indisputable role in his own psychological theories. Some of his psychological constructs, such as the ‘Oedipus complex’ and the concept of ‘narcissism’, are inspired by Greek myths. Others, like the theory of the death instinct, are founded on scientific speculations which clearly resemble myths. The myth of the primal horde in particular draws its rhetorical power from its similarity to the Biblical account of the fall. Both the Biblical account of the fall and the psychohistorical ‘myth’ of the primal horde attribute the conflicts and imperfections of the human condition in part to an inherited guilt, an inherited guilt which stems from a decisive and fateful historical event in the past.
Schleiermacher's Hermeneutic and Its Critics
Authors: Corliss Richard L.
Published: October 2008

The critics of Schleiermacher's hermeneutic are legion and its defenders few – due, to a great extent, to the popularity of Gadamer's Truth and Method and its attack on Schleiermacher. I believe that the critics of Schleiermacher have not understood him very well and the failure of his hermeneutics to gain very much respect lies, at least partially, to a lack of understanding of what he had to say. Besides, if we look at contemporary scholars who focus on the study of language and how it functions we will find that they often have views very much like those found in Schleiermacher's discussion of hermeneutics.
The Indispensability of the Single-Divine-Attribute Doctrine
Authors: Franklin Melissa
Published: October 2008

The most elusive and perhaps famous argument in the history of the philosophy of religion was put forth in the eleventh century by St Anselm. Now known as the ontological argument, it is based on the idea that God is that being greater than which is inconceivable. Although historically debate focused on the issue of whether existence is a property, or a perfection, required in our concept of such a being, recently it has taken a back seat to the examination of the indisputable attributes a perfect being must exemplify if He exists. Traditionally such attributes include: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, immutability and so forth. The first challenge to the accepted attributes was posed in the Middle Ages; it is the oldest and probably the best known paradox in the philosophy of religion: Can God create a stone so heavy that even He cannot lift it? Whatever the answer is, apparently He is not Almighty. A slightly different version of the omnipotence paradox was advanced in 1955 by J. L. Mackie who questioned whether an omnipotent being could ‘make things He cannot subsequently control’.Both versions are intended to show that the concept of omnipotence suffers from internal incoherence and is therefore inapplicable to any being.
Could there Be More than One Almighty?
Authors: Bartel T. W.
Published: October 2008

If proof is required that yesterday's scandal can become today's fashion, we need look no further than recent discussions of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Just a generation ago, Trinitarians typically insisted that the members of the Godhead are not distinct persons in any literal sense. But during the past few years, more and more philosophically sophisticated Christians have unblushingly maintained that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not just different persons, but different individuals – that the Trinity consists of three divine beings.
Talbott's Universalism Once More
Authors: Craig William Lane
Published: October 2008

In my ‘No Other Name’, I asserted that detractors of Christian exclusivism are, in effect, posing a soteriological problem of evil, to wit, that the proposition
Divine Perfection, Axiology and the No Best World Defence
Authors: Elliot Robert
Published: October 2008

Advocates of the traditional argument from evil assume that an omnipotent and morally perfect being, God, would create a world of the greatest value possible. They dispute that this world is such a world. It is difficult to disagree. They go on to conclude that this world could not have been created by God. It is, however, possible consistently both to agree that God could have guaranteed the existence of a better world than this world and to reject the conclusion that this world could not have been created by God. Specifically, one may argue that this world is not a world of the greatest value God could guarantee, not because there is some other world which is, but because there is no such world. After all, it is plausible that for any possible world, no matter how good, there is another possible world which is even better, that the range of values for possible worlds has no upper limit. If this is correct, then for any world God creates there is a better world God could have created. So the argument from evil collapses, since it is logically impossible even for an omnipotent god to create a particular world which is the best or equal best possible world. God cannot act in accordance with the prescription ‘Create the best world possible!’, since there is no such thing. Nor can God act in accordance with the prescription ‘Create the best world you can!’, since from the perspective of an omnipotent being there is no such thing. This no best world defence has been advanced by Peter Forrest, John McHarry and George Schlesinger.
Eternity has no Duration
Authors: Rogers Katherin A.
Published: October 2008

In 1981 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann published a landmark article aimed at exploring the classical concept of divine eternity.1 Taking Boethius as the primary spokesman for the traditional view, they analyse God's eternity as timeless yet as possessing duration. More recently Brian Leftow has seconded Stump and Kretzmann's interpretation of the medieval position (with qualifications) and attempted to defend the notion of a durational eternity as a useful way of expressing the sort of life God leads.2 However, there are good reasons to reject the idea that divine timelessness should be thought of as having duration. The medievals probably did not accept it, as it contradicts a principle of classical metaphysics even more fundamental than the atemporality of the divine. In any case, it is not possible to express the notion of durational eternity in even a minimally coherent way, and the attempt to salvage the concept by appealing to the Thomistic doctrine of analogy is unsuccessful. The best analogy for God's eternity is still the one proposed by Augustine at the end of the fourth century. God lives in a timeless ‘present’, unextended like our temporal present, but immutable and encompassing all time.
The Point Outside the World: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Nonsense, Paradox and Religion
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie
Published: October 2008

Much has been made of the Kierkegaardian flavour of Wittgenstein's thought on religion, both with respect to its explicit allusions to Kierkegaard and its implicit appeals. Even when significant disparities between the two are noted, there remains an important core of de facto methodological agreement between them, addressing the limits of theory and the dispelling of illusion. The categories of ‘nonsense’ and ‘paradox’ are central to Wittgenstein's therapeutic enterprise, while the categories of ‘paradox’ and the ‘absurd’ are central to much of Kierkegaard's attempt (pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous) to dispel religious illusion. Writing of how the ‘urge to thrust against the limits of language’ yields ‘nonsense’, Wittgenstein explicitly appealed to Kierkegaard: ‘Kierkegaard, too, recognized this thrust and even described it in much the same way (as a thrust against paradox)’.1 I want to consider whether Kierkegaard's category of paradox of the absurd is assimilable to Wittgenstein's view of nonsense and paradox. I shall argue that a consideration of Wittgenstein's view of paradox can highlight contrasting strands in Kierkegaard's writings on religious faith, strands which take paradox more or less strictly – in particular, it can clarify several different opinions concerning the status of religious claims. My exploration will bring to the fore some implications of the attempt to make room, in the religious employment of language, for a ‘higher understanding’ of truths which we are said to be able to grasp but cannot express.
Leibniz and the Contingency of God Exists
Authors: Werther David
Published: October 2008

Leibniz offered two main defences of contingency, the per-se view and the analytic account.1 I argue that an acceptance of either account requires a rejection of what is now known as ‘the characteristic claim of S5 modal logic’, If possibly P then necessarily possibly P, and that apart from an affirmation of that claim Leibniz could not have either offered an a priori argument for God's existence or considered God exists to be a necessary truth. Since Leibniz considered God to be, by definition, the most perfect being and took existence to be a perfection, it follows that Leibniz could not have consistently accepted either account of contingency without abandoning theism.
Kierkegaardian Suspicion and Properly Basic Beliefs
Authors: Williams Clifford
Published: October 2008

It is a commonplace that Kierkegaard believed Christians should adopt a stance of suspicion toward their beliefs. What appear to be genuine Christian beliefs may, he thought, really be spurious, not by virtue of being false, but by virtue of arising in illegitimate ways. Kierkegaard's works are replete with descriptions of these illegitimate ways – the psychological and sociological conditions that produce what people mistakenly take to be genuine Christian beliefs.
Moral Provincialism
Authors: Kent Bonnie
Published: October 2008

Suppose that I stand firmly in what Alasdair MacIntyre describes as the Thomistic tradition of moral enquiry. I try my best to recover a historical understanding of Aquinas's teachings, and I refuse to let my philosophical opponents set the terms of debate. Now suppose that you yourself are one of my opponents: a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim or perhaps a secular humanist. (It makes no difference whether or not you believe in God, just so long as whatever theological commitments you might have diverge sharply from my own.) Finally, suppose that I have always found you a considerate neighbour, a friendly and responsible colleague, and a reliable contributor to worthy causes: you run the neighbourhood recycling programme, do volunteer work at an AIDS hospice, and serve as den mother of your son's Cub Scout troop. All of my experience suggests that you are, by commonly accepted standards, morally admirable; but you don't believe in God, or at least your own understanding of God and God's law differs significantly from my own. Am I, as a loyal Thomist, able to acknowledge your virtues? Or must I dismiss them all as merely apparent?
Ask and It Will Be Given to You
Authors: Murray Michael J. , Meyers Kurt
Published: October 2008

Consider the following situation. It is the first day of school, and the new third-grade students file into the classroom to be shown to their seats for the coming year. As they enter, the third-grade teacher notices one small boy who is particularly unkempt. He looks to be in desperate need of bathing, and his clothes are dirty, torn and tight-fitting. During recess, the teacher pulls aside the boy's previous teacher and asks about his wretched condition. The other teacher informs her that he always looks that way, even though the boy's family is quite wealthy. The reason he appears as he does, she continues, is that the family observes an odd practice according to which the children do not receive many important things – food, clothing, bathing, even shelter – unless they specifically request them. Since the boy, like many third-graders, has little interest in bathing and clean clothes, he just never asks for them.
Belief-In Revisited: A Reply To Williams
Authors: Macintosh J. J.
Published: October 2008

In ‘Belief-In and Belief in God’ (Religious Studies, 28, 1992), J. N. Williams suggests that belief in God cannot be rational unless one has rational beliefs that God exists. While agreeing with his conclusion (though not with his statement of it), I disagree at almost every step with his method of arriving at it. In particular I suggest that Williams goes astray concerning the dual aspect of belief in, the nature of performatives, the arousal of belief states, and the correct account of belief in God.
Hermeneutics and Postmodernism: Can We Have a Radical Reader-Response Theory? Part II
Authors: Noble Paul R.
Published: October 2008

The flaws in Fish's hermeneutics that were diagnosed in Part I (it is now argued) are consequences of his underlying epistemology. This is a version of anti-foundationalism which claims that facts are the product of interpretation; but a careful study of how this issue is handled by N. R. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn shows that Fish's epistemology is fundamentally unsound. An alternative account of the fact-interpretation relationship is then proposed, and the outline of an objectivist, readerindependent hermeneutics are sketched. This is further developed by showing how a common argument against objectivism (based on the historical situatedness of reason and knowledge) may be refuted.
The Prospects for ‘Mediate’ Natural Theology in John Calvin
Authors: Sudduth Michael L. Czapkay
Published: October 2008

In the present paper I consider the plausibility of a mediate natural theology in John Calvin. First, utilizing Robert Audi's distinction between ‘episodically’ and ’structurally’ inferential beliefs, I show that a plausible case can be made for the compatibility of a mediate theology corresponding to both these forms of inferential belief with salient features of Calvin's theology. Second, I apply Calvin's view on arguments for Scripture to theistic belief and suggest a way of construing natural theology as an intra-faith practice aimed at satisfying the cognitive desideratum of reflective nationality–a calvinistic project offides quaerens intellectum.
Anselm on the Necessity of the Incarnation
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: October 2008

Anselm's Cur Deus Homo argues that only by the Incarnation can God save humanity. This seems to sit ill with the claim that God is omnipotent and absolutely free, for this entails that God could save humanity in other ways. I show that features of Anselm's concept of God and treatment of necessity make the claim that the Incarnation is a necessary means of salvation problematic. I then show that for Anselm, all conditions which make the Incarnation necessary for human salvation stem from God's nature and prior choices. If so, the Incarnation's necessity restricts neither God's freedom nor His power. For that the Incarnation is necessary given God's actual choices does not entail that it would have been necessary had God made other choices, or that God could not have made choices which would have made the Incarnation non-necessary.
The Problem of Evil and a Plausible Defence
Authors: Murphy Frank J.
Published: October 2008

This paper argues that God may create and exist in any possible world, no matter how much suffering of any sort that world includes. It combines the traditional free will defence with the notion of an ‘occasion’ for good or evil action and limits God's responsibility to the creation of these occasions. Since no possible world contains occasions for more evil than good action, God is morally permitted to create any possible world. With regard to suffering that is not due to free will, namely the suffering of beings who are not moral agents, the paper questions the idea that the relief of such suffering is a moral perfection.
Bradley's Philosophy of Religion
Authors: Mander W. J.
Published: October 2008

F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) did not write extensively or systematically on the philosophy of religion, and much of what he did write has the character of either tentative speculation or the pre-emptive rebuttal of potential misinterpretations that might threaten his general philosophical position. ‘I admit that on this subject I never had much to say’ (ETR 428) he warns. But such a remark should not discourage us from considering his views on this topic, since the disclaimer is typically Bradleian, and more reflective of his high standards for what is required in order to claim to have something to say about some matter than of any genuine lack of opinion. On closer inspection we find that he has, scattered throughout his work, a great many important things to say about this subject.
Understanding a (Secular) Primitive Society
Authors: Lerner Berel Dov
Published: October 2008

In her essay entitled ‘Heathen Darkness’,1 the anthropologist Mary Douglas has exposed one of the most prevalent modern misunderstandings of ‘primitive’ societies, the myth of primitive piety:

It seems to be an important premise of popular thinking about us, the civilised, and them, the primitives, that we are secular, sceptical and frankly tending more and more away from religious belief, and that they are religious, (p. 73)
The Hume–Edwards Principle
Authors: Cain James
Published: October 2008

In such a chain too, or succession of objects, each part is caused by that which preceded it, and causes that which succeeds it. Where then is the difficulty? But the WHOLE, you say, wants a cause. I answer, that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct counties into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind, and has no influence on the nature of things. Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts. (David Hume)
Don Cupitt: Christian Buddhist?
Authors: Spearritt Gregory
Published: October 2008

In a number of ways, western Christianity has taken a genuine interest in the thought-world and practice of Buddhism over the last few decades. Process theologians have found much to enthuse them in the Buddhist rejection of substance as a fundamental category and Christian mysticism has discovered common ground with Buddhist understandings of ultimate Reality. Buddhist–Christian dialogue has been occurring at many levels, initiated for the most part by Christians.
Petitionary Prayer: a Response to Murray and Meyers
Authors: Basinger David
Published: October 2008

In a recent article in this journal, Michael Murray and Kurt Meyers offer us (among other things) two innovative and thought-provoking responses to the important question of why God would, even occasionally, refrain from giving us that which he can and would like to give us until we request that he do so: to help the believer learn more about God and thus become more like him and to help the believer realize she is dependent on God. I argue that neither explanation is adequate and thus that more work on this significant topic remains to be done.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason: a Moral Argument
Authors: Nelson Mark T.
Published: October 2008

The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other justifications of the Principle of Universalizability on offer, including Richard Hare's, are inadequate.
Why is Faith a Virtue?
Authors: Chappell Tim
Published: October 2008

A virtue is a disposition of character which instantiates or promotes responsiveness to one or more basic goods – where a basic good is one which in itself can provide an agent with a sufficient motivation, and an observer with a full explanation. The basic goods to which faith is a responsiveness are truth and practical hope – the latter being the belief that action according to deliberate choice is not ultimately pointless for me. Now these goods are often in tension for an agent; indeed if there is no God, they will eventually come into irresoluble tension. If God does not exist, there is no single coherent disposition which is a responsiveness to both goods; that is, there is no virtue of faith. So faith is only a virtue if God exists.
Leibniz and the Possibility of God's Existence
Authors: Werther David
Published: October 2008

Toward the end of 1676 Leibniz met Spinoza a number of times. In one of those meetings Leibniz presented a proof of the possibility of God's existence. In his proof Leibniz presupposed that a proposition is necessarily true only if its truth is either demonstrable or self-evident and that the divine perfections are simple and affirmative qualities. I contend that Leibniz's presuppositions undermine, rather than establish, the necessary existence of ‘a God of the kind in whom the pious believe’. My assessment is based upon a consideration of Leibniz's argument in the context of other early papers, works written before the Discourse on Metaphysics in 1686.
Ancient Banyan: an Inquiry into the Meaning of ‘Hinduness’
Authors: Lipner Julius J.
Published: October 2008

This paper suggests, against a comparative horizon and in broadly philosophical context, a fresh approach to the study of Hinduism. After indicating how religion in general and ‘Hinduism’ in particular are plural phenomena both internally and externally, the paper goes on to define a (if not, the) distinguishing property of Hinduness (orhindutā) in terms of an approach that is based on a re-centring system of equilibrating and interactive polarities called ‘polycentrism’. This is described further as a calculated paradoxicality, which is articulated in the light of possible objections.
The Traditional Doctrine of Divine Simplicity
Authors: Rogers Katherin
Published: October 2008

Traditionally God has been considered absolutely simple. Some contemporary philosophers argue that this means that God is His attributes and hence is mere quality, and that all the divine attributes name exactly the same quality, which is incoherent. However, the contemporary debate misunderstands the tradition. God is not quality, He is act. Analogies from human experience can minimize the initial implausibility. There are worrisome corollaries to this doctrine, the most troubling being that God's nature is somehow dependent on the choices of His free creatures. This conclusion, though radical, is not as shocking as it appears.
Simplicity and Theology
Authors: Fawkes Don , Smythe Tom
Published: October 2008

Richard Swinburne has given a defense of arguments for the existence of God (and in particular of teleological arguments) in his bookThe Existence of God(1979/1991). This paper argues that such theistic arguments fail, and poses some general problems for theistic arguments. Swinburne's use of a principle of simplicity is not given adequate justification and, if justified, works against theism. There are adequate rebuttals to Swinburne's arguments that depend upon there being few particles of basic physics, universal laws of nature, cogent cosmological argument, and temporal order in the universe. Theistic arguments falter on malleability, on going well beyond evidence, on anthropomorphism, on treating consistency as if it were evidence or explanation, on selective and inconsistent use of principles, and on a lack of any serious attempt to disprove hypotheses. All of this serves to support the conclusion suggested by Hume's posthumous theological writings that theistic arguments are so malleable, profligate, overreaching, equivocal, anthropomorphic, selective, inconsistent, and uncritical as to be inept.
Does the Empirical Problem of Evil Prove that Theism is Improbable?
Authors: Beilby James
Published: October 2008

Is (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?1
God's Answer To Job
Authors: Morriston Wesley
Published: October 2008

Let the day perish in which I was born… [Job 3: 3a]1
Are Mormons Theists?
Authors: Howsepian A. A.
Published: October 2008

It is widely believed to be a fundamental tenet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter the LDS, or Mormon, Church) that a plurality of divine beings inhabits the universe. It has often been pointed out, for example, that according to Mormon doctrine Elohim (the Father), Jesus (the Son), and the Holy Ghost are three distinct Gods.1 The traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity is, thereby, unambiguously rejected. In light of this, it has become commonplace among Christian apologists2 to infer
Windows Toward the Future
Authors: Hayter Alethea
Published: October 2008

Would Elizabeth Barrett Browning have approved of the project to preserve Casa Guidi as a memorial to her and her husband? There are statements in her letters and in her poetry, and notably in the very poem to which she gave Casa Guidi's name, which suggest at first sight that she would not have supported any such idea.