bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sri Aurobindo's Integral View of Other Religions
Authors: Minor Robert N.
Published: October 2008

Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950), the Indian Nationalist and yogi, developed in the period of his life at Pondicherry in Southeast India a system of thought, practice and experience which he called ‘Integral Yoga’. The title indicated, he said, that ‘it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogas — its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method’. In the development of Integral Yoga Aurobindo believed he was speaking and acting as a ‘realized yogi’ or, better still, a yogi who was in the process of realization. He had not attained a final experience of jñāna, but he believed he had experienced levels of supra-mental consciousness which would lead to the higher level of Supermind itself.
Is God Really in History?
Authors: Sontag Frederick
Published: October 2008

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading.
Does Elusive Becoming in Fact Characterize H. D. Lewis' View of the Mind?
Authors: Bertocci Peter A.
Published: October 2008

It was a little over ten years ago, 1967–8, that H. D. Lewis delivered the first series of Gifford lectures, The Elusive Mind, in the University of Edinburgh. It was my privilege that year to be an auditor in the Seminar at King's College that Professor Lewis was conducting with his students in the area of this topic. I had already read the works in which, in the midst of neo-orthodox and existentialist religious movements, he had devoted himself to critical valuation of those doctrines - witness his Morals and the New Theology (1947), and Morals and Revelation (1951). This earlier work prepared for a comprehensive interpretation of religious experience in his book in 1960: Our Experience of God.
Reply to Professor Bertocci
Authors: Lewis Hywel
Published: October 2008

I am deeply grateful to Professor Bertocci for his exceptionally valuable comments. In requesting that I should accept them for publication in Religious Studies, Professor Bertocci also urged me to reply in the same journal. This is, in itself, a very welcome suggestion, but it is with great reluctance that I take up space, in the journal I edit myself, to set forth my own ideas, even as replies to criticism.
The Truth of Mysticism
Authors: Carloye Jack C.
Published: October 2008

In spite of many claims by people who have had the kind of mystical experiences that I want to discuss, such experiences do not reveal any reality beyond the experience itself; nor does the experience itself constitute a cosmic principle such as the Godhead, Absolute, One or Chaos. These experiences are in the last analysis merely subjective experiences. I say ‘merely’ here only to deny that the experiences have any significance for the cosmologists; not to deny that the experience has significant value for the experiencer. It may be that the experiences are the ultimate goal attainable by human beings. Their value does not depend on their being the ultimate truth.
Infallibility
Authors: Martinich A. P.
Published: October 2008

It has often been charged that the doctrine of papal infallibility is either false or incoherent. These charges stem, I believe, from a misunderstanding of the logical character of infallible papal utterances, a misunderstanding shared alike by friends and foes of the doctrine. In this paper, I shall argue that the doctrine is both coherent and correct. I devote section I to uncovering some of the sources of this misunderstanding and thereby defending what might be called my negative thesis, namely, that infallible papal utterances are not statements. In section II, I continue defending my negative thesis, not now as an end in itself, but rather as a means of advancing my positive thesis that infallible papal utterances are declarations and have the same logic as other declarations. The latter thesis requires a discussion of the difference between statements and declarations. Section III contains a formal speech act analysis of successful and non-defective statements and declarations with some additional explanatory notes. In section IV, I speak rather generally about the task of philosophical theology in the light of the results and procedures of sections I–III.
The Concept of Self: Some Reflections on H. D. Lewis' The Self and Immortality
Authors: Dunbar Scott
Published: October 2008

Professor H. D. Lewis' distinguished achievements in philosophy of religion are complemented by his admirable and original contributions to philosophy of mind. His Gifford Lectures, The Elusive Mind, are a model of philosophical clarity and acumen; his account of the elusive mind in the Gifford Lectures is developed and elaborated in a later work, The Self and Immortality. Professor Lewis' ability to connect philosophy of mind with philosophy of religion at a fundamental level is an outstanding feature of his work. Philosophical reflection on religion must, at some stage, include an adequate concept of person, thus the importance of the relationship between philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. Everyone who is concerned with the philosophical aspects of religious studies has good reason to be indebted to H. D. Lewis as a thinker.
Contemplation and Virtue in Plato
Authors: Rosen F.
Published: October 2008

This paper has been prompted by the conviction that a number of ethical and political doctrines in Plato remain obscure and somewhat unintelligible unless related to the contemplative experience of the Platonic philosopher.1 I shall concentrate here on one such doctrine, the distinction between philosophic and popular virtue, especially as it appears in the Phaedo and the Gorgias. But in order first to clarify our conception of the relationship between contemplation and virtue, I shall examine the fourteenth-century English classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, which is mainly concerned with the practice of contemplation and only remotely connected with Plato.2 One finds in The Cloud a perceptive account of the contemplative's acquisition of ‘perfect’ virtue which enables us to see the distinction between philosophic and popular virtue in Plato in a fresh light. After discussing the important passage in the Phaedo (69A–C) where the distinction is drawn, I shall criticise the account of virtue in Plato given by D. Z. Phillips and H. O. Mounce in Moral Practices where the contemplative context is minimised by their endeavour to see morality wholly in terms of conventions (albeit, for Plato, ‘non-conventional’ conventions).3 In this section, the argument between Socrates and Polus in the Gorgias will be discussed in light of the way Phillips and Mounce distinguish their respective ethical positions. The object of the paper is not only to point to the significance of contemplation in Plato's ethics which has been overlooked by many modern philosophers, but also to note the way our understanding of the dialogue form in Plato depends on the unique perspective of the contemplative philosopher.
Metaphysics, Christology and Sexism: An Essay in Philosophical Theology
Authors: Cooper Burton
Published: October 2008

We have been so much preoccupied with the concept of God lately – Ogden has suggested that it is the central problem in theology – that it is something of a jolt to realize that the doctrine of the incarnation has come suddenly under the sharpest attack from two very different theological directions. There is, coming from one side, the critique of the English theologians in the recently published The Myth of God Incarnate; and then, with a very different kind of agenda, there is the critique of the radical feminist theologians summarily and forcefully stated in the christological chapter of Mary Daly's Beyond God the Father.
The Logic of Questions and the Existence of God
Authors: Heaney James J.
Published: October 2008

O.I. When we ask ‘Does God exist?’, what kind of question are we asking and, further does it make a difference that it is one kind of question rather than another? To find answers to these we will begin by investigating the various kinds of questions to which it seems ‘Does God exist?’ belongs, including questions about physical states of affairs, questions requesting reasons, and questions concerned somehow with the difficult notion of ‘existence’. As part of this initial inquiry we will also examine the relation of presupposition to question and the significance of both negation and assertion in questions.
Redirecting Inquiry in the Religion-Morality Debate
Authors: Stout Jeffrey
Published: October 2008

Morality's relation to religion stands among the broad cultural issues that pull people towards philosophy and religious studies. We hope for insight, but what we find when we get there is another matter – a debate on ‘is’ and ‘ought’ with all the marks of a dead end. While the intellectual goals and strategies that led in this direction have elicited little scholarly attention to date, the time and the tools for an effective critique may now be at hand.
The Death of God and the Death of Persons
Authors: Kellenberger J.
Published: October 2008

‘God is dead’ can mean many things. It can mean that the way God has been thought of is no longer adequate, or that there is no God and never has been, or that human consciousness of God has receded.1 Our concern in what follows begins with ‘the death of God’ in this last sense, in the specific sense of the death of an awareness of God or of an affective consciousness of God. Or rather, this is where half of our concern begins. The other half begins with a phenomenon which is the mirror image of the death of God:the death of persons. By ‘the death of persons’ I mean something analogous to the sense specified for ‘the death of God.’ I mean the death or at least the decline of a consciousness of the inherent worth of persons, of the worth persons have as persons. In Kantian terms the death of persons is the loss of a consciousness of persons as ends in themselves. The death of God and the death of persons are parallel, and, furthermore, they are connected. The connection is not difficult to see, particularly if we remind ourselves of what Nietzsche said about the death of God.
Islamic Millenarianism in West Africa: A ‘Revolutionary’ Ideology?
Authors: Clarke P. B.
Published: October 2008

Social and political scientists, historians and others, have put forward a number of widely differing views concerning the ‘character’ of Islamic millenarian and/or Mahdist movements in Africa. The same is true of course with regard to the opinions ofscholars concerning the transformative capacity of Islam as an ideology. In this paper I want to look at one aspect only of Islamic millenarianism in the West African context, viz. its allegedly revolutionary character.
Statements, Declarations and Infallible Utterances: A Reply to Professor Martinich
Authors: McGrath Patrick
Published: October 2008

In his article ‘Infallibility’ (Religious Studies, March 1980) A. P. Martinich has argued that the logical character of infallible utterances has been generally misunderstood. Opponents and supporters of the doctrine of papal infallibility have both assumed, he claims, that infallible utterances are statements; but this is incorrect, for such utterances are not statements, but declarations. Consideration of this point, he believes, would enable us to see that the doctrine of papal infallibility is both coherent and correct.
Von HÜgel: Philosophy and Spirituality
Authors: Sherry Patrick
Published: October 2008

One of the striking features of the last few years has been a re-awakening of interest in spirituality. Many new books on prayer have appeared, old classics of the spiritual life have been re-published, prayer groups have sprung up and the Charismatic Movement has become an important factor in many Christian communities. If the 1960s was the decade of secularism and ‘God is dead’, the 1970s may well go down in history as the decade of renascent spirituality. But this interest in spirituality has not, in general, gone hand in hand with a renewed interest in theology: indeed, in many cases I detect a positive hostility towards professional theologians (perhaps this is simply the latest exemplification of that separation of ascetical and mystical theology from dogmatics which has existed in Western Christianity since the Middle Ages). Still less has there been any link between this concern with spirituality and philosophy. And yet there are many important philosophical problems here: given that in a spiritual way of life men have certain experiences and are changed in various ways, what does this show?
Is Religious Studies Possible?
Authors: Dougherty Donald L.
Published: October 2008

If one were to investigate the underpinnings of religious studies, or, in other words, to undertake a sort of meta-religious studies (a study which would be twice removed from the actual subject matter of the discipline) one would find that the main contemporary criticisms, by both lay students of religion and the academic community at large, have been primarily twofold. The first stock objection, possibly somewhat more popular twenty years ago, was that ‘religious studies’ was simply not to be considered an autonomous academic discipline worthy of recognition as an independent ‘department’ in a university curriculum. In short, the pejorative implications were clear in the behind-the-back finger-pointing which was conjoined with whispers of ‘interdisciplinary’. The second major criticism of the ‘discipline’ of religious studies has been a polymorphous diversity of twists on the old theme – ‘Oh my God, they are practising what they preach’. The impetus of this criticism is in large measure, the fear, by various sectors for various reasons, that the student of religion is somehow ‘doing’ (as opposed to simply studying) religion and, what's more, doing it inside the hallowed halls of the university.
Understanding Theism
Authors: Millar Alan
Published: October 2008

Much contemporary philosophy of religion is preoccupied with highly general problems about the nature of religious belief and of religious language, rather than with how to interpret, in detail, specific religious beliefs or forms of religious discourse. Among the matters of dispute there seem to be two of overriding importance. The first concerns the relation between religious beliefs and experience and centres on the question, what sorts of experience are relevant to the acceptance or rejection of religious beliefs. The second concerns whether or not religious beliefs have an explanatory function. Discussion of both these themes in relation to theistic belief is still largely dominated by conceptions of God and of his relation to the world which have been developed by natural theologians, particularly, though not exclusively, those who have worked within traditions significantly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. Thus the idea that religious beliefs have an explanatory function is commonly associated with the view that they present answers to questions raised by those alleged traits or features of the world which have been the concern of natural theologians and which have been described by means of concepts of ‘contingency’, ‘purposiveness’, ‘order’, and ‘design’. Consequently, the sort of experience often held to be relevant to the acceptance or rejection of theistic belief is that which is relevant to the application of these problematic concepts.
The Rationality of Belief in God
Authors: DePaul Michael R.
Published: October 2008

In the introduction to his account of the debate concerning religion between Cleanthes, Philo and Demea, Pamphilus remarks that ‘reasonable men may be allowed to differ where no one can reasonably be positive’. Pamphilus goes on to suggest that natural theology is an area that abounds with issues about which ‘no one can reasonably be positive’. Assuming that the beliefs of reasonable men are themselves reasonable, Pamphilus can be interpreted as holding that

(P) If no one is reasonably positive that the proposition p is true or that it is false, a man might reasonably believe that p or might reasonably believe that not p.
Precision or Reductionism: Whence Myth Studies?
Authors: Shinn Larry D.
Published: October 2008

Of the whole field of religious studies, one area of consistent interest and activity has been the study of myth; and if any one area has represented the wide variety of approaches scholars of religion have utilized, it is this one. Students of language and literature (e.g. F. Max Müller and J. Campbell), psychology (e.g. S. Freud and C. Jung), sociology (e.g. E. Durkheim and P. Berger), social anthropology (e.g. B. Malinowski, V. Turner and C. Levi-Strauss) as well as religion (e.g. M. Eliade and G. La Rue) have all offered interpretations of myth. An investigation of these various approaches to understanding myth seems to point to the conclusion that the history of the study of myth is a history of reductionism. That is, the heritage transmitted to scholars who would attempt to understand the nature and function of myth within a single discipline is one which most often limits the essential nature or function of myth to that discipline's underlying assumptions alone. Hence, myth is usually linked either to the social or the psychological dimension of human experience exclusively. However, even those theories of myth which combine social and psychological methods and assumptions have usually resulted in truncated conclusions which give pause to those of us who seek their application.
Religious Studies and the Languages of Religions
Authors: Bowker John
Published: October 2008

This paper was originally given to a meeting of the Institute of Religion and Theology in London. It was in response to a specific request to consider how far it is desirable, or even necessary, for a student or a teacher of a religious tradition to know at least the main language(s) of the tradition in question. To what extent, to put it slightly differently, is it possible to gain knowledge of, and insight into, religion and religions through translations; and without being able to avail oneself of aids which require linguistic knowledge–such things as dictionaries and concordances. I have made no attempt to change the form or the content of the paper as it was given. It depends, obviously, on the more general issues involved in translation and interpretation; if these are unfamiliar, there is an excellent and brief introduction in S. Basnett-McGuire's Translation Studies (London: Methuen, 1980).
The Tension Between Direct Experience and Argument in Religion
Authors: Smith John E.
Published: October 2008

There is an undercurrent to be detected in Anselm's record of the meditative experience that issued in the Ontological Argument and, although it points to a profound and perennial problem in the interpretation of religion, this undercurrent has been largely ignored. The Argument, as is well known, moves entirely within the medium of reflective meaning focused on the idea of God and, unlike the cosmological arguments of later theologians, it makes no appeal whatever to a principle of causality or to the discovery of a sufficient reason for finite existence. Anselm seems to have had his own sense of what one may call the unadulterated rationalism of the Argument when, in his own words, he wondered, ‘if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really exists’. Here we are entirely within that inner chamber of the mind so dear to the Augustinian tradition, a mind from which one is to exclude all thought save that of God. The task of the one who reflects is to penetrate the inner meaning of this thought in order to discover what it implies beyond what is evident on the surface. With such an eminently rational or logical aim occupying the centre of attention, it is quite understandable that the presence of another, and quite opposed, concern should have been overlooked - Anselm's concern, namely, to transcend, as it were, the medium of thought itself, and enter into the presence of God. The reason that this concern introduces a tension in the search for a proof is that the realization of presence would seem to render proof superfluous, while the inference in an argument - especially one moving towards existence – inevitably suggests, in some sense and to some degree, the absence of what is sought for.
Free Will and Theodicy in Augustine: An Exposition and Critique
Authors: Berthold Fred
Published: October 2008

Not only for Augustine, but for virtually all Christian theologians, the doctrine of free will is of critical importance for theodicy. The reason for this is easy to state: these theologians trace either all (as in the case of Augustine) or much evil to human sin, which in turn is understood as an abuse of the free will with which human beings were endowed by their Creator. Augustine sums it very well: ‘… all that we call evil is either sin or punishment for sin’. The argument of this paper is that, unfortunately, Augustine's statements about free will are not adequate to the great theological burden placed upon them. Such a critical judgement is of considerable consequence for Christian theology generally, since Augustine exercised such an enormous formative influence upon later thinkers.
Tom and Jerry or What Price Pelagius?
Authors: Harrison Jonathan
Published: October 2008

Once upon a time Dr Thomas Svengali was walking by the side of a lake when he saw some children playing with their boats. They were model boats of course, but it was possible to control them by short–wave radio. In this way they could be made to go through all the manoeuvres which life–sized boats could execute, but in an unrealistically jerky way, like mice pretending to be elephants.
Miracles and Good Evidence
Authors: Odegard Douglas
Published: October 2008

I. Introduction There are still those who think that, if the word ‘miracle’ means a violation of a law of nature, miracles are either impossible or undetectable or a threat to science. I shall take the opposite side and argue that, thus defined, miracles are possible, are detectable in principle, and, again in principle, can be endorsed without compromising legitimate scientific aspirations.
Divine Omniprescience and Literary Creativity: Has La Croix shown their incompatibility?
Authors: Gregory Donald R.
Published: October 2008

It has recently been suggested by Richard R. La Croix that there is a logical incompatibility between the doctrine of divine omniprescience — the notion that God knows what will happen in the future — and the commonly held belief that literary authors are creative with respect to the compositions they produce. This suggestion is, I take it, part of the overall claim that God's omniscience rules out human free choices, since if what one does is known before one does it, then one can hardly be said to have chosen it. I will not, however, be concerned with this general controversy in the present paper, but rather with the specific one regarding literary creativity and divine omniprescience. La Croix defends this claim by defining literary creativity as follows:

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.
Hominis est Errare — A Reply to ‘In Defence of Infallibility’
Authors: McGrath Patrick
Published: October 2008

The title of A. P. Martinich's article is a misnomer. What he is defending is not the doctrine of infallibility as defined by the First Vatican Council and as understood by Roman Catholic theologians, but his own highly personal and, to my mind, entirely mistaken interpretation of the doctrine. This interpretation derives from the fact that some purportedly infallible utterances contain the expression ‘we declare that…’. This leads Martinich to believe that such utterances are declarations rather than statements and since declarations, as he appears to understand the term, create facts rather than express them, he concludes that it is logically impossible for an ‘infallible utterance’ to be false. The papal claim to infallibility is thus no longer open to question since ‘the fact-making quality of infallible utterances guarantees their correctness’.
The Buddhist Empiricism Thesis
Authors: Hoffman Frank J.
Published: October 2008

In what follows I argue for two interrelated theses: (1) that early Buddhism is not a form of empiricism, and (2) that consequently there is no basis for an early Buddhist apologetic which contrasts an empirical early Buddhism with either a metaphysical Hinduism on the one hand, or with a baseless Christianity on the other.
Kierkegaard: First Existentialist or Last Kantian?
Authors: Friedman R. Z.
Published: October 2008

Kierkegaard's leap of faith is one of the most thoroughly explored topics in modern philosophy. What can yet another inquiry into this notion hope to achieve? A number of significant things, I think, of both historical and systematic value.

The main contention of this paper is that the leap of faith, often associated with the emergence of existentialism, is Kierkegaard's response to a problem which is essentially Kantian in origin and structure. Kierkegaard wants to accomodate both the Kantian interpretation of morality as rational command and Kant's insistence on morality as the sole point of access to religion, while rejecting the Kantian moralization of religion and rationalization of faith. The leap of faith is not, as existentialism would have it, an absolute beginning in philosophy or in individual reflection but a transition from morality to religion within an essentially Kantian context.
Divine Sempiternity and Atemporality
Authors: Tomkinson J. L.
Published: October 2008

Notable among the current fashions in philosophical theology is the movement away from the view that the mode of being properly attributable to God is some form of atemporal eternity. It sometimes seems almost to be the case that a consensus is in process of formation in support of the contention that the only rationally defensible interpretation of the divine eternity is in terms of sempiternity, i.e. of beginingless and endless temporal duration. This is true not only of the so-called ‘process theologians’, for leading theistic philosophers throughout the English-speaking world seem to be in something of a rush to espouse this particular cause.
Can God be Both Perfect and Free?
Authors: Mason David R.
Published: October 2008

The difficulty of ascribing metaphysical predicates such as absoluteness, necessity and perfection to God while simultaneously ascribing personal predicates such as compassion, freedom and agency has often been noted. Most efforts to resolve this dilemma have tended to fall into one of three categories: (I) a merely verbal solution such as that God is ‘compassionate in terms of our experience but…not so in terms of [God's] own’; (2) the univocal and unqualified ascription of the metaphysical predicates to God coupled with equivocation with respect to the personal predicates which results in the final elimination of the latter; (3) the fideistic denial that intelligible language is applicable to God. Unfortunately, none of these is satisfactory. The first solution is seen to be but a version of the second, and it is arguable that the second is, as Feuerbach contends, tantamount to a ‘subtle, disguised atheism’, since ‘to deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the being himself’ or, alternatively, ‘an existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an insipidity, an absurdity’. The third ‘solution’ is no better and is hardly more than an evasive tactic.
Notes Towards a Critique of Buddhist Karmic Theory
Authors: Griffiths Paul J.
Published: October 2008

Western Buddhology, the responsible scholarly study of Buddhist languages, history and ideas, is now more than a century and a half old. For most of that time scholars working in this field have been primarily concerned to understand and expound their sources, not to criticize or assess the views found therein, much less to make any attempt at deciding whether the central views of Buddhist philosophers are likely to be true statements of the way things are. There are good reasons for this restriction; before a given set of philosophical views can be assessed it must be understood, and in the case of Buddhism the gaining of such understanding has involved the collective philological labours of several generations of scholars and is still in many respects in its infancy. What is the case for the scholarly community as a whole is magnified for the individual working in this field; the effort involved in becoming competent in several Buddhist canonical languages and in becoming familiar with a range of philosophical ideas and preconceptions which are in many respects alien to one's own culture tends to mean that the Buddhologist's apprenticeship is long, his publications so clogged with jargon as to be inaccessible to any non-specialist, and his appetite for truth stifled by Sanskrit syntax and Tibetan declensions. There is the added problem that the Western intellectual who makes the study of Buddhism his avocation is likely to be, in some more or less well defined sense, a Buddhist; and the dangers of making religious commitment the major motivation for scholarly study have been so amply illustrated by Christian history that they scarcely need rehearsing here.
Hume'S Critique of Miracles: An Irrelevant Triumph
Authors: Fern Richard L.
Published: October 2008

In The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume argues that there can in principle be no good reason for believing a miracle has occurred. Recently, Richard Swinburne has disagreed, arguing that there could be good reason to believe a miracle has occurred. I will argue that both Hume and Swinburne are correct. So long as we accept Hume's notion of a miracle, his argument against the rationality of belief in such events stands firm. In this respect, Swinburne's attempted refutation fails. In a deeper sense, however, Swinburne's project succeeds. Hume's critique of miracles turns on a truncated understanding of the supernatural. Making use of suggestions drawn from Swinburne's unsuccessful argument, the concept of miracle can be reformulated so as to allow for the possibility of rational belief.
Is the Free Will Defence Irrelevant?
Authors: Dilley Frank B.
Published: October 2008

Recently Steven E. Boër gave another turn to the discussion of the free will defence by claiming that the free will defence is irrelevant to the justification of moral evil. Conceding that free will may be of real value, Boër claims that free will could have been allowed creatures without that leading to any moral evil at all. What I shall hereafter refer to as the ‘Boër reform’ is the suggestion that God could have allowed creatures to exercise free choices but have intervened with ‘coincidence miracles’ to prevent all the intended evil from actually occurring. What is important to the free will defence, according to Boër, is the ability to choose freely and not the ability to succeed in effecting what we have intended to accomplish. It is no intrusion on the freedom of our wills for God to prevent us from accomplishing what we tried to do with our free wills as long as we were free to try.
Allama Iqbal on ‘Immortality’
Authors: Maruf Mohammed
Published: October 2008

The common notion of ‘immortality’ presupposes a ‘dualism’ of mind and body, with the former alone surviving death. Such eminent Muslim thinkers as al-Kindi (A.D. 801–873), known as the Father of Muslim philosophy; al-Farabi (870–950) called ‘The Second Teacher’; ibn Sina (980–1037), that encyclopaedic genius of the Muslim world; and ibn Roshd (1126–1198), have all advocated a very strict kind of ‘dualism’, anticipating Descartes, the Father of modern philosophy, down to the present-day realist-idealists led by Professor H. D. Lewis of the University of London. The dualistic position, however, made even Descartes realize the difficulty of explaining ‘interaction’, or for that matter any kind of relation, which we experience between mind and body in our everyday life - a problem which he and his followers found hard to solve. As every student of modern Western thought knows, Descartes resorted to –interactionism’, Spinoza (like ibn Roshd) took refuge in ‘parallelism7rsquo;, while Leibniz advocated ‘pre-established harmony’ implied in the position of Asharites. Iqbal argues against any such view, ‘I am inclined to think that the hypothesis of matter as an independent existence is perfectly gratuitous. It can only be justified on the ground of our sensations of which matter is supposed to be at least a part-cause other than myself’ (a position taken up by both Locke and Kant). Iqbal contends against the Cartesian hypothesis that ‘We cannot find any observable facts to show how and where exactly their interaction takes place, and which of the two takes the initiative’. Against both ‘parallelism’ and ‘pre-established harmony’ his contention is that they reduce ‘the soul to a mere passive spectator of the happenings of the body’. Thus, Iqbal rejects both ‘interactionism’ and ‘parallelism’ as unsatisfactory.
Jowett and the ‘Original Meaning’ of Scripture
Authors: Barr James
Published: October 2008

To read the Bible ‘like any other book’: that is one of the striking phrases in Benjamin Jowett's sprawling essay – it is over roo pages long – ‘On the Interpretation of Scripture’ in Essays and Reviews (1860; cf. pp. 338, 375, 377, 404 of that edition, which is quoted without further reference throughout this article). Another memorable phrase concerned the ‘original’ meaning: ‘the office of the interpreter is not to add another [meaning], but to recover the original one; the meaning, that is, of the words as they first struck on the ears or flashed before the eyes of those who heard and read them’ (p. 338).
The Right to Believe and Believing the Right Thing
Authors: Sykes Rod
Published: October 2008

During the summer of 1981 I had field training in an ‘outreach ministry’ of the United Church of Canada on an Ojibway Indian reserve in southern Manitoba. The Protestant churches first placed white ministers on the Swan Lake Reserve with the undeclared but clear intention to suppress the ‘paganism’ of traditional Ojibway spirituality. But the present policy of the United Church is to support the Band's recovery of self-determination in politics, culture, and religion. Some people in the United Church (and outside it) may worry that this non-proselytizing policy is a betrayal of our Christian duty to tell all the world that Jesus Christ is Lord. But quite the opposite is true. The silent witness given by the outreach minister in serving the needs of the Indians (as they see those needs) is one way to proclaim Christ's Lordship. Indeed it is the only way which is appropriate in our relations with a people whose exploitation has in the past proceeded under His name.
Divine Simplicity
Authors: Mann William E.
Published: October 2008

In The City of God, XI, 10, St Augustine claims that the divine nature is simple because ‘it is what it has’ (quod habet hoc est). We may take this as a slogan for the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS), a doctrine which finds its way into orthodox medieval Christian theological speculation. Like the doctrine of God's timeless eternality, the DDS has seemed obvious and pious to many, and incoherent, misguided, and repugnant to others. Unlike the doctrine of God's timeless eternality, the DDS has received very little critical attention. The DDS did not originate with Augustine, but I am not primarily concerned with its pedigree. Nor am I concerned to ask how the doctrine interacts with trinitarian speculation. I will have my hands full as it is. In Section I of this paper I shall provide a rough characterization of the DDS, indicate its complexity, and focus on a particular aspect of the doctrine which will exercise us in the remainder of the paper, namely, the thesis that the divine attributes are all identical with each other and with God. In section n I shall discuss Alvin Plantinga's recent objections to Aquinas' version of the DDS. I shall then offer a more detailed presentation of what I take to be Aquinas' version (section III), and recast it in terms of a theory of attributes which is significantly different from Plantinga's (section IV). Although the recasting of the doctrine will enable me to rebut Plantinga's objections (section v), it by no means solves all the problems of the DDS. In section vi I shall discuss the chief lingering problem facing a defender of the DDS.
Emergentism
Authors: Hasker William
Published: October 2008

Great philosophical problems are known by their power to rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of their own dissolution. Indeed, it may be only thus that we are finally convinced of the enduring significance of a problem. The mind-body problem has been dissolved at least twice in the last fifty years: once by the positivists, and again by the therapeutic analysts. Yet it strongly re-asserts itself, so that it is barely a hyperbole when Wilfrid Sellars says that this problem ‘soon turns out, as one picks at it, to be nothing more nor less than the philosophical enterprise as a whole’.
On God and Virtue
Authors: Dunbar Scott
Published: October 2008

Philosophy of religion in the twentieth century has been deeply influenced, one might say dominated, by contemporary empiricism. God is the subject of religion, but the word ‘God’ does not name a person or an object in the ordinary way. The word ‘God’ is a symbol for the ultimately mysterious, unknowable and transcedent ground of all being. The insight or conviction, God is, cannot however, be reached within the context of empricism, no matter how broad in intention it may be. The inadequacy of empiricism in this respect is fundamentally connected with its epistemological presuppositions. Religion — at a serious level — is not concerned with beliefs that soothe and console; it is concerned with a vision of God as the ground of all being. Creation points beyond the finite world to God as its transcendent source. Consent to or belief in God is for nothing. It arises out of a sense of wonder, a sense of mystery at creation or being and refletion on it.
On Unobservability and Detectability
Authors: Digby Thomas
Published: October 2008

Surely the greatest possible accomplishment for a religious epistemologist would be to show how God's existence might be empirically verified. The most obvious, although certainly not unproblematic, approach to this task is to claim that perceptual evidence is available from which God's existence can be inferred. The only apparent alternative, direct sense perception of God, is ruled out by God's essential unobservability, which is implied by his essential incorporeality. But Robert Oakes, in his essay, ‘Religious Experience, Sense-perception and God's Essential Unobservability’ (Religious Studies, vol. 17, pp. 357–67), boldly suggests a third alternative. God's unobservability may preclude his being perceived directly through the senses, but there are still logically possible, Oakes says, ‘sensory detections of God's presence’ (358). To illustrate, he gives the following quote from William Barclay's The Mind of St Paul:

A great artist tells us that it was his father who taught him to see and to love beauty. His father used to take him out in the evening time…One evening there was a sunset of surpassing majesty and splendour, and at the sight of it his father stood up, removed his cap and looked at the splendour of the dying sun, and said: ‘My son, it is God.’
F.H. Bradley: An Unpublished Note on Christian Morality
Authors: Kendal Gordon
Published: October 2008

At some time between 1907 and 1912, probably very much nearer the earlier date, Bradley produced the first draft of an article on Christian morality. He did this in response to criticism that his moral ideas were anti-Christian. This charge was based mainly on the content of two articles that he published during 1894 in the International Journal of Ethics, one called ‘Some Remarks on Punishment’ and the other ‘The Limits of Individual and National Self-Sacrifice’. In these Bradley had maintained that the conventional ‘Christian’ belief in the sacredness of life undermined any sensible approach to punishment and any clear understanding of the moral importance of self-assertion (in contrast to self-sacrifice). It encouraged a squeamishness about retribution and ‘social surgery’. It devalued proper human ends and interests, and the rights and duties founded on them. There was needed ‘a correction of our moral view, and a return to a non-Christian and perhaps a Hellenic ideal’, one that would recognize the unlimited right of the moral organism (i.e. virtually the state) to dispose of its members and to use force internationally in defence of right. Bradley pulled no punches and had this to say about the self-styled ‘Christian’ party:
An Alternative to Creatio ex Nihilo
Authors: Ford Lewis S.
Published: October 2008

For many philosophical thinkers down through the centuries, the notion of a creation out of sheer nothing has been found to be quite unintelligible. Nevertheless the idea of creation preserves an important insight and needs to be freed from the difficulties of this traditional formulation. Alfred North Whitehead has offered an alternative theory of creation worth exploring: each individual actuality creates itself out of prior creative acts. God then serves to direct this creative process.
Is Buddhist Karmic Theory False?
Authors: White J. E.
Published: October 2008

In his recent article ‘Notes Towards a Critique of Buddhist Karmic Theory’ Paul J. Griffiths makes four criticisms of Buddhist karmic theory: it is empirically false, it is incoherent, it is morally repugnant, and it is vacuous. After listing these four criticisms, Griffiths concludes that ‘all these mean that Buddhist karmic theory as expounded in the major theoretical works devoted to it must be false’ (p. 291).
Reply to Michael Levine
Authors: Oakes Robert
Published: October 2008

I am grateful to Mr Levine for his careful and accurate rendering of the thesis which I presented and defended in my first paper on the topic of ‘self-authenticating religious experience’. As should be reasonably clear from his remarks, I defended therein the negative and somewhat modest epistemological thesis that even if it is inconceivable (or logically impossible) for there to occur self-authenticating experience of God, it is far from obvious that such is the case. Hence, it seems to me that the claim of more than a few theistic mystics to have had such experience is entitled to something more than the rather cavalier rejection it has received at the hands of many ‘tough-minded’ epistemologists of religion. (I except Mr Levine: his rejection of that claim inclines towards the distinctly non-cavalier.)
The Relevance of the Christian Message
Authors: Daniel Goronwy
Published: October 2008

It is with diffidence that I venture to give this lecture because the distinction and religious conviction of those who have given it in the past is well known. Moreover, they were able, through their learning, to draw on the great reservoir of thinking by the multitude of gifted men who have devoted their lives to religious and philosophical studies since the early days of civilization whereas my own studies have not only been in different, more secular, fields but have been trivial in duration and depth.
The Significance of Process Theology
Authors: Trethowan Illtyd
Published: October 2008

Process theology is far less prominent in Britain than in its country of origin, but its central doctrine of a developing God would prove, I think, to be held by many British theologians if one made enquiry. Professor Keith Ward may show which way the wind is blowing when he writes in his recent book Rational Theology and the Creativity of God: ‘only if God is temporal, can he be the free creator of a universe of free creatures; only if he is eternal, can he possess that necessity which is the foundation of the world; only if he is dipolar, can he be both’. To that extent he accepts the Whitehead-Hartshorne position. Why has the the absolute timelessness of God seemed obvious so regularly to thinking religious people down the ages? It must be, I shall say, that they have felt themselves in touch somehow with another world, or rather another state, in which time is absolutely transcended. But I am not concerned only with that in this article. My business is to suggest that process theology is important for a number of reasons. I shall return to Ward's book at the end.
Revelation, Salvation, the Uniqueness of Christ and Other Religions
Authors: Surin Kenneth
Published: October 2008

Karl Barth is the foremost modern exponent of the view that Jesus Christ is the decisive, unrepeatable and unsurpassable ‘locus’ of divine revelation, and that consequently it is only by following the way of Christ that we can possibly hope for the ultimate salvation of mankind. This view of Barth's finds expression in the following passage:
Religion within the Limits of the Quest for the Highest Good
Authors: Doore G. L.
Published: October 2008

(1) In this paper I want to discuss a certain way of understanding the concept of religion which I think is more satisfactory than other ways that have often been proposed in the literature, arguing, in brief, that the way to an adequate understanding does not lie through an analysis of the concept of ‘worship’ or ‘the worshipful’ or any notions derivative from these, as some writers have maintained, but instead through a comparative analysis of the various concepts of a ‘highest good’, thought of as a final salvation or ‘liberation’ for its seekers, found in the major religions. I shall also discuss some of the advantages of this way of regarding religion, as well as what I take to be certain of its consequences for the philosophy of religion. The discussion will also lay the groundwork for a pragmatic justification of religious belief (where ‘religious belief’ is understood in the way to be suggested), and will, I hope, help to shed light on the question of what would constitute a religiously satisfactory notion of the highest good.
Iqbal's Concept of God: An appraisal
Authors: Maruf Mohammed
Published: October 2008

I do not agree with Professor M. M. Sharif in his book About Iqbal and His Thought that Allama Iqbal's concept of God passed through three stages, and that at one stage he identified him with ‘Beauty’. This may be said on the basis of his few earlier poems (included in Baang-i-Darā), but they never purported to give any idea about God; they were at best ghazals on nature and offered only stray reflections. Iqbal properly developed his concept of God in his lecture entitled ‘The Conception of God and The Meaning of Prayer’ (included in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam). I may mention at the outset that I am going to base my appraisal on the said lecture of Iqbal.
Mackie, Induction, and God
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2008

J. L. Mackie's posthumous book on the philosophy of religion, The Miracle of Theism, contains a number of detailed criticisms of versions of inductive arguments for the existence of God, contained in my own book The Existence of God. In this paper I argue that what I take to be the three main criticisms have no force.