bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hasidism
Authors: Elior Rachel
Published: September 2018

Its name literally meaning pietism, Hasidism is a mystical renewal movement that originated in eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. It has become one of the most important spiritual and social developments of Orthodox Judaism and has exerted an influence as well on non-Jews and Jews who are not Orthodox. Early Hasidic leaders claimed their spiritual authority on the basis of heavenly revelations and mystical awakenings. But they generally differed from the more esoterically minded Kabbalists, from whom they drew their earliest following, in seeking to present the fruits of mystical inspiration to the community. Hasidic teachings fostered specific spiritual and ritual innovations, which gave outward expression to the profound nexus that the Hasidic masters saw between mundane existence and the inner, mystical meaning of God’s law. According to Hasidic thinking, the divine and the human formed a single, all-encompassing unity, and it was on this basis that the Hasidic rabbis found in acts of Jewish piety means of linking divine experience with human responsiveness. Notable for its vitality and continuity in diversity, Hasidism continues its influence on religious Jewry and beyond to the present day.
Holocaust, the
Authors: Katz Steven T.
Published: September 2018

The specific, tragic event of the Holocaust – the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War – raises profound theological and philosophical problems, particularly problems about the existence of God and the meaning of Jewish existence. Among the thinkers who have tried to wrestle with the conceptual challenge posed by the destruction of European Jewry, three who have presented original arguments that can be termed, in a relatively strict sense, philosophical are Richard L. Rubenstein, Emil Fackenheim and Arthur A. Cohen.

Rubenstein has formulated an argument that turns on the theological difficulties raised by the realities of the evil of Auschwitz and Treblinka in a world putatively created and ordered by a benign God. For him, such evil decisively refutes the traditional theological claim that a God possessed of goodness and power exists, and entails the conclusion that ‘there is no [traditional] God’. In working out this conceptual position, he uses an unsatisfactory empirical theory of verification concerning religious propositions and too narrow a notion of evidence, both historical and ethical, that ultimately undermines his counterclaims and ‘Death of God’ affirmations.

Fackenheim seeks not to defend a religious ‘explanation’ of the Holocaust, but rather to provide a ‘response’ to it that maintains the reality of God and his continued presence in human, and particularly Jewish, history. To do so, he uses Martin Buber’s understanding of dialogical revelation, asserting that revelation is an ever-present possibility, and formulates his own moral-theological demand to the effect that after the Holocaust, Jewish survival is the ‘614th commandment’ (there are 613 commandments in classical Judaism). Fackenheim’s defence of this position, however, is philosophically problematic.

Cohen provides a ‘process theology’ argument as an explanation of the Holocaust; that is, the Holocaust requires a revision in our understanding of God’s nature and action. It forces the theological conclusion that God does not possess the traditional ‘omni’ predicates; God does not intervene in human affairs in the manner taught by traditional Western theology. However, Cohen’s working out of a process theological position in relation to the Holocaust raises as many philosophical problems as it solves.
Leibowitz, Yeshayahu (1903–94)
Authors: Hartman D.
Published: September 2018

Unlike the major intellectual currents that shaped religious thought in the modern world, Leibowitz’s thought is deeply anchored in the Israeli context. Both as philosopher and activist, Leibowitz lived and articulated the paradoxes of modern Israel where he lived and was best known. His reputation as a Socratic gadfly to the establishment reflected his ongoing critique of both Israeli society in the light of Judaism, and Judaism in the light of the revolutionary implications of the creation of the State of Israel.

On the one hand, he was a Jewish patriot, a fighter for Jewish independence from all forms of foreign rule; on the other hand, he was a harsh, relentless critic of national and political expressions of chauvinism in the Israeli establishment. A strictly observant Jew, Leibowitz had less impact on traditional religious Jews than on secular Israelis. His central message is that what makes Jews distinctive as a group is neither their theology nor their Bible, but the system of law with which they regulate their lives. Judaism is a communal concept, and there is no point in religious Jews ignoring the State of Israel, or expecting others to bear their civil burdens for them. Religious law has to be reconciled with life in the political reality of the state, and this necessitates changing those attitudes to the law which reflect the historical conditions of life in exile.
Hillel ben Samuel of Verona (c.1220–95)
Authors: Rigo Caterina
Published: September 2018

Hillel played a crucial role in the response of the philosophers in the Jewish community to the attacks made upon them by their enemies. He stoutly defended Maimonides while at the same time opposing the allegorical interpretation of miracles. Far less radical than Maimonides or Averroes, he tended to follow the approach of Aquinas. He also translated many philosophical texts from Latin into Hebrew. He was influenced by scholastic ideas and especially by the anti-Averroistic controversy. His major work, Tagmule ha-Nefesh (The Rewards of the Soul), completed in Forlì in 1291, deals with the nature of the soul and the intellect and with the spiritual requital of the soul after death. The chief purpose of this work is ‘to explain the existence of the soul, its essence and its rational faculty, which continues to exist externally after death’.
Judah ben Moses of Rome (c.1292–after 1330)
Authors: Rigo Caterina
Published: September 2018

Judah Romano, translator and Maimonidean philosopher, participated in the intellectual climate of Latin scholasticism, introducing a large number of the ideas of the Christian philosophers into Hebrew. He gained his knowledge in the various branches of philosophy through meticulous study of the writings of Aristotle and the scholastic commentaries to his works (particularly those of Albert the Great, Aquinas and Giles of Rome), of the Maimonidean-Tibbonian school, and of some Arabic philosophical treatises in Latin translation. Influenced by Albert the Great, Aquinas and Maimonides, he discussed all the major philosophical topics, and especially the idea of creation through intermediaries, the origins of the human soul, the cognitive process, which represents the real purpose of man, the nature of prophecy and prayer.
Atheism
Authors: Rowe William L.
Published: September 2018

Atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief. Since many different gods have been objects of belief, one might be an atheist with respect to one god while believing in the existence of some other god. In the religions of the west – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – the dominant idea of God is of a purely spiritual, supernatural being who is the perfectly good, all-powerful, all-knowing creator of everything other than himself. As used in this entry, in the narrow sense of the term an atheist is anyone who disbelieves in the existence of this being, while in the broader sense an atheist is someone who denies the existence of any sort of divine reality. The justification of atheism in the narrow sense requires showing that the traditional arguments for the existence of God are inadequate as well as providing some positive reasons for thinking that there is no such being. Atheists have criticized the traditional arguments for belief and have tried to justify positive disbelief by arguing that the properties ascribed to this being are incoherent, and that the amount and severity of evils in the world make it quite likely that there is no such all-powerful, perfectly good being in control.
Barth, Karl (1886–1968)
Authors: Seban Jean-Loup
Published: September 2018

Karl Barth was the most prominent Protestant theologian of a generation shaken by the traumatic experience of the First World War and concerned with giving Christian theology a new grounding. He took a creative part in the struggle of the German Church against National Socialism, and, after the Second World War, exerted a worldwide influence that reached beyond the bounds of Protestantism. Although influenced at first by Christian socialism, Barth came to repudiate such ‘hyphenated’ versions of Christianity, which, he felt, underemphasize or ignore the otherness of God. There is an infinite qualitative distinction between the divine and the human; the Enlightenment attempt to historicize and secularize revelation was profoundly mistaken. This ‘dialectical theology’ attracted a number of leading theologians in the 1920s. Later, however, Barth felt compelled to close the gap with the divine, and developed a ‘theology of the Word’ to this end. Central to this approach is the concept of the knowledge conferred by faith, which makes theological understanding and rationality possible. It was on the basis of this that Barth constructed his massive Die Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics) (1932–70). In this, he emphasizes the self-expounding nature of Scripture (by contrast with nineteenth-century biblical scholarship, which stressed the need for a historical approach to the text) and the importance of Christ in the understanding of theology and human nature. He was a determined opponent of natural theology, and was critical of the idea that philosophy could complement theology.
Boehme, Jakob (1575–1624)
Authors: Seban Jean-Loup
Published: September 2018

Boehme was a Lutheran mystic and pantheist. He held that God is the Abyss that is the ground of all things. The will of the Abyss to know itself generates a process that gives rise to nature, which is thus the image of God. Life is characterized by a dualistic struggle between good and evil; only by embracing Christ’s love can unity be regained. Boehme was highly regarded by such diverse writers as Law, Newton, Goethe and Hegel.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–45)
Authors: Seban Jean-Loup
Published: September 2018

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a twentieth-century Lutheran theologian who associated Christian belief and political action in an exemplary fashion. His part in the struggle of the Confessing Church and of the German resistance against the National-Socialist dictatorship cost him his life. Christocentric and ecclesiocentric, he stressed personal and collective piety and revived the idea of the imitation of Christ; the concepts of obedience and of the suffering God are central to his view. His Ethik (1949) was widely influential; in it, he argued that Christians should not retreat from the world, but have a duty to act within it. His answer to the secularization of the modern world was a ‘religionless Christianity’, a communocentric, pietistic, personal discipline.
Bowne, Borden Parker (1847–1910)
Authors: Yandell Keith E.
Published: September 2018

Bowne was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of the American personalist school of philosophy. His position is theistic and idealistic, and finds in human persons the key to meaning in the world. Knowledge comes only through personal experience, through which we understand ourselves to be enduring thinking entities with a certain degree of freedom. The uniformity of God’s activity is such as to make nature intelligible to us, but our minds are nevertheless independent of God’s.
Brunner, Emil (1889–1966)
Authors: Seban Jean-Loup
Published: September 2018

Emil Brunner was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. He was a minister of the Swiss Reformed Church, a professor at the University of Zurich, and held distinguished lectureships in England, the USA and Japan. He joined the ‘dialectical school’ early in his career, but tried to rehabilitate natural theology, which led to a rift with Barth. His works were widely read and often served as basic texts in Reformed and Presbyterian seminaries. He rejected the historicist reduction of Christ to a wise teacher figure that was characteristic of neo-Protestantism. He was also critical of modern philosophical anthropologies – as propounded by Marx or Nietzsche, for example – because he felt that they reduced human essence to a single dimension. Only theological anthropology can fully interpret human essence; and of central importance here is the ‘I–Thou encounter’, whereby the fulfilment of the human ‘I’ is achieved through a relationship with the divine ‘Thou’. Brunner also unfolded an original view on the relation of theology to philosophy. Reason, he argued, is essential for the elucidation and communication of faith. Philosophy, in so far as it indicates the limitations of reason, can serve to prepare us for the revelation of the Absolute.
Calvin, John (1509–64)
Authors: Feenstra Ronald J.
Published: September 2018

John Calvin, French Protestant reformer and theologian, was a minister among Reformed Christians in Geneva and Strasbourg. His Institutes of the Christian Religion (first edition 1536) – which follows the broad outline of the Apostles’ Creed and is shaped by biblical and patristic thought – is the cornerstone of Reformed theology.

Calvin’s religious epistemology links self-knowledge and knowledge of God. He identifies in humans an innate awareness of God, which is supported by the general revelation of God in creation and providence. Because sin has corrupted this innate awareness, Scripture – confirmed by the Holy Spirit – is needed for genuine knowledge of God. Scripture teaches that God created the world out of nothing and sustains every part of it. Humanity, which was created good and with free will, has defaced itself and lost significant freedom due to its fall into sin. Calvin sees Christ the mediator as the fulfilment of the Old Testament offices of prophet, priest and king.

Calvin insists that God justifies sinners on the basis of grace and not works, forgiving their sins and imputing Christ’s righteousness to them. Such justification, received by faith, glorifies God and relieves believers’ anxiety about their status before God. On the basis of his will alone, God predestines some individuals to eternal life and others to eternal damnation.

Calvin dignifies even ordinary occupations by seeing them as service to God. He recognizes the distinction between civil government and the Church, although he says that government should protect true worship of God and Christians should obey and support their government. Calvin’s thought was dominant in non-Lutheran Protestant churches until the eighteenth century and has enjoyed a resurgence since the mid nineteenth century.
Deism
Authors: Rowe William L.
Published: September 2018

In the popular sense, a deist is someone who believes that God created the world but thereafter has exercised no providential control over what goes on in it. In the proper sense, a deist is someone who affirms a divine creator but denies any divine revelation, holding that human reason alone can give us everything we need to know to live a correct moral and religious life. In this sense of ‘deism’ some deists held that God exercises providential control over the world and provides for a future state of rewards and punishments, while other deists denied this. However, they all agreed that human reason alone was the basis on which religious questions had to be settled, rejecting the orthodox claim to a special divine revelation of truths that go beyond human reason. Deism flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, principally in England, France and America.
Edwards, Jonathan (1703–58)
Authors: Wainwright William J.
Published: September 2018

Jonathan Edwards’ work as a whole is an elaboration of two themes – God’s absolute sovereignty and the beauty of his holiness. God’s sovereignty is articulated in several ways. Freedom of the Will (1754) defends theological determinism. God is the complete cause of everything that occurs, including human volitions. Edwards is also an occasionalist, idealist and mental phenomenalist. God is the only real cause of events. Human volitions and ‘natural causes’ are mere ‘occasions’ upon which God produces the appropriate effects. Physical objects are collections of sensible ‘ideas’ of colour, shape, solidity, and so on, and finite minds are collections of ‘thoughts’ or ‘perceptions’. God’s production of sensible ideas and thoughts in the order which pleases him is the only ‘substance’ underlying them. God is thus truly ‘being in general’, the ‘sum of all being’.

The beauty or splendour of God’s holiness is the principal theme of two late works – End of Creation and True Virtue (both published posthumously in 1765). The first argues that God’s end in creation is the external manifestation of his internal splendour. That splendour primarily consists in his holiness and its most perfect external expression is the holiness of the saints, which mirrors and depends upon it. True Virtue defines holiness as ‘true benevolence’ or ‘the love of being in general’ ([1765b] 1957–, vol. 8: 546), and distinguishes it from such counterfeits as rational self-love, instincts like parental affection and pity, and natural conscience. Since beauty is defined as ‘agreement’ or ‘consent’ and since true benevolence consents to being in general, true benevolence alone is truly beautiful. Natural beauty and the beauty of art are merely its image. Only those with truly benevolent hearts, however, can discern this beauty.

Edwards’ projected History of Redemption would have drawn these themes together, for it is in God’s work of redemption that his sovereignty, holiness and beauty are most effectively displayed.
Eusebius (c. AD 264–c.339)
Authors: Stead Christopher
Published: September 2018

Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine from c.314, was the foremost Christian scholar of his age and wrote extensively on history, geography, chronology, apologetics and philosophical and biblical theology. He is best known for his pioneering History of the Church, but philosophers may prefer to consult his Preparation of the Gospel, which argues that basic Christian doctrines had been foreshadowed by well-known philosophers and preserves valuable extracts from writers whose works have otherwise been lost. In his own philosophical ideas, Eusebius was strongly influenced by classical philosophy, especially Platonism, and sought to reconcile this with Christian theology.
Evil, problem of
Authors: Adams Marilyn McCord
Published: September 2018

In this context, ‘evil’ is given the widest possible scope to signify all of life’s minuses. Within this range, philosophers and theologians distinguish ‘moral evils’ such as war, betrayal and cruelty from ‘natural evils’ such as earthquakes, floods and disease. Usually the inescapability of death is numbered among the greatest natural evils. The existence of broad-sense evils is obvious and spawns a variety of problems, most prominently the practical one of how to cope with life and the existential one of what sort of meaning human life can have.

Philosophical discussion has focused on two theoretical difficulties posed for biblical theism. First, does the existence of evils show biblical theism to be logically inconsistent? Is it logically possible for an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good God to create a world containing evil? One classical response to this, following Leibniz, is to argue that such a God would create the best of all possible worlds, but that such a world may contain evil as an indispensable element. Alternatively, evil may be an unavoidable consequence of the boon of free will, or it may be part of a divine plan to ensure that all souls attain perfection.

The second difficulty for biblical theism is, even if we grant logical consistency, does evil (in the form, for instance, of apparently pointless suffering) nevertheless count as evidence against the existence of the Bible’s God? One frequent theistic response here is to argue that the apparent pointlessness of evil may be merely a result of our limited cognitive powers; things would appear the same to us whether or not there were a point, so it is not legitimate to argue from the evidence.
Freedom, divine
Authors: Rowe William L.
Published: September 2018

In the theistic tradition, many thinkers have held that God is infinitely powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good and perfectly free. But since a perfectly good being would invariably follow the best course of action, what can be meant when it is said that God acts freely? Two different views of divine freedom have emerged. According to the first view, God acts freely provided nothing outside him determines him to act. So when we consider God’s action of creating a world, it is clear that on the first view he acts freely since there is nothing outside him to determine him to do as he does. The difficulty with this view is that it neglects the possibility that God’s own nature might require him to create one particular world rather than another or none at all. According to the second view, God is free in an action provided it was within his power not to perform that action. Unlike the first view, on this view God acts freely only if nothing beyond God’s control necessitates his performing that action. The problem for this view is that since it is impossible for God, being perfectly good, not to choose to follow the best course of action, it is difficult to see how God could be free in such an action.
Frei, Hans (1922–88)
Authors: Wolterstorff Nicholas P.
Published: September 2018

Frei was concerned with two particular questions: why had the traditional Christian mode of biblical interpretation collapsed in the modern world, and how could it be recovered? He argued that, while the traditional interpretation of the Bible treated it as realistic narrative, in the modern period it had become accepted to treat the events described in it as myths and allegories. He argued for a more literal interpretation of the Gospels, which could lead to a more realistic interpretation of the person and nature of Jesus.
Gnosticism
Authors: Stead Christopher
Published: September 2018

Gnosticism comprises a loosely associated group of teachers, teachings and sects which professed to offer ‘gnosis’, saving knowledge or enlightenment, conveyed in various myths which sought to explain the origin of the world and of the human soul and the destiny of the latter. Everything originated from a transcendent spiritual power; but corruption set in and inferior powers emerged, resulting in the creation of the material world in which the human spirit is now imprisoned. Salvation is sought by cultivating the inner life while neglecting the body and social duties unconnected with the cult. The Gnostic movement emerged in the first and second centuries ad and was seen as a rival to orthodox Christianity, though in fact some Gnostic sects were more closely linked with Judaism or with Iranian religion. By the fourth century its influence was waning, but it persisted with sporadic revivals into the Middle Ages.
God, concepts of
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: September 2018

We think of God as an ultimate reality, the source or ground of all else, perfect and deserving of worship. Such a conception is common to both Eastern and Western religions. Some trace this to human psychology or sociology: Freud regarded God as a wish-fulfilling projection of a perfect, comforting father-figure; Marxists see belief in God as arising from the capitalist structure of society. Believers, however, trace their belief to religious experience, revealed or authoritative texts, and rational reflection.

Philosophers flesh out the concept of God by drawing inferences from God’s relation to the universe (‘first-cause theology’) and from the claim that God is a perfect being. ‘Perfect-being’ theology is the more fundamental method. Its history stretches from Plato and Aristotle, through the Stoics, and into the Christian tradition as early as Augustine and Boethius; it plays an important role in underwriting such ontological arguments for God’s existence as those of Anselm and Descartes. It draws on four root intuitions: that to be perfect is perfectly to be, that it includes being complete, that it includes being all-inclusive, and that it includes being personal. Variously balanced, these intuitions yield our varied concepts of God.

Criticisms of perfect-being theology have focused both on the possibility that the set of candidate divine perfections may not be consistent or unique, and doubts as to whether human judgment can be adequate for forming concepts of God. Another problem with the method is that different accounts of perfection will yield different accounts of God: Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, for instance, appear to have held that God would be the more perfect for lacking some knowledge, while most Christian writers hold that perfection requires omniscience.

Views of God’s relation to the universe vary greatly. Pantheists say that God is the universe. Panentheists assert that God includes the universe, or is related to it as soul to body. They ascribe to God the limitations associated with being a person – such as limited power and knowledge – but argue that being a person is nevertheless a state of perfection. Other philosophers, however, assert that God is wholly different from the universe.

Some of these think that God created the universe ex nihilo, that is, from no pre-existing material. Some add that God conserves the universe in being moment by moment, and is thus provident for his creatures. Still others think that God ‘found’ some pre-existing material and ‘creates’ by gradually improving this material – this view goes back to the myth of the Demiurge in Plato’s Timaeus, and also entails that God is provident. By contrast, deists deny providence and think that once God made it, the universe ran on its own. Still others argue that God neither is nor has been involved in the world. The common thread lies in the concept of perfection: thinkers relate God to the universe in the way that their thoughts about God’s perfection make most appropriate.
Grace
Authors: Braine David
Published: September 2018

Grace is a gift of personal relationship with God surpassing the powers of nature. Such relationship presupposes the relation every creature has with God as immediately dependent on him for its very existence and continuance, but goes beyond it in its distinctive personal character and the resulting more intimate dependence.

Such personal relationship necessarily depends upon some will or expression of will. The development of the relationship must be free in relation to what has gone before – it must in no way be necessitated. Therefore, if the relationship arises within some established natural system involving some degree of conformity to law at some levels of description (physical or otherwise), such a system and laws must leave some degree of indeterminacy. This allows the possibility that free actions, physically and psychologically contingent, should be among the ultimate determinants of what unfolds. For the workings of grace must always be free or contingent in relation to such a system of nature, concordant with and fulfilling nature, but working according to distinct principles – grace and nature are both equally God’s gift, but always distinct.

The notion of grace has no place outside some kind of theism. Implicit in Judaism, its explicit development has been in Christian theology, which sees human beings as radically dependent upon God not only for redemption from personal sin, but for any personal or ‘supernatural’ relationship to God at all. This emphasis on grace is peculiar to Christianity, although the general conception seems implicit in most theistic religions; it can perhaps be found in the more theistic forms of Hindu devotion, although it is absent from Buddhism and the stricter forms of Hinduism.
Hell
Authors: Adams Marilyn McCord
Published: September 2018

The ancient idea that the dead go to a dark subterranean place gradually evolved into the notion of divinely instituted separate postmortem destinies for the wicked and the righteous. If the former lies behind the Psalms, the latter version appears in apocalyptic works, both canonical and deutero- or non-canonical, and is presupposed by numerous passages in the New Testament. Through the patristic and medieval periods the doctrine gradually achieved ecclesiastical definition, stipulating eternal torment (both physical and spiritual) in a distinctive place for those who die in a state of mortal sin. Most reformers recognized biblical authority for this doctrine. Philosophically, the notion of postmortem survival raises many questions in the philosophy of mind about personal identity. Recent discussion, however, has concentrated on the specialized version of the problem of evil to which the doctrine gives rise.
Hermeneutics, biblical
Authors: Thiselton Anthony C.
Published: September 2018

Hermeneutics has traditionally been defined as the theory of interpretation. Biblical hermeneutics concerns the interpretation of biblical texts. But ‘interpretation’ tends to reflect the nature of the discipline only from ancient times to about 1960. Increasingly it has come to be seen not as a tool used for difficult or obscure texts, or even for the application of such texts to the present, but as a theory of understanding in the broadest sense. It currently also relates to views of contextual theories of meaning and truth, in contrast to formalist approaches.

From ancient times until about 1800, philosophy played a minimal role in biblical hermeneutics. The subject concerned theology in the context of grammatical, philological, historical and linguistic inquiry. With the work of Schleiermacher in the early years of the nineteenth century, however, hermeneutics entered a new phase. It became a transcendental discipline, seeking to explore the conditions under which the understanding of texts becomes possible at all. In the era following Schleiermacher, theorists drew on the work of Dilthey and Heidegger, among others.

A third phase began with the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer in the early 1960s. Gadamer replaced the Enlightenment preoccupation with ‘method’ in the context of ‘science’ and ‘reason’ with a hermeneutics which took full account of the interpreter’s prior situatedness within a given historical tradition. This angle of approach was developed further by Habermas, who noted the role of ‘interest’ in understanding, and by Ricoeur, who, in dialogue with Freud and others, stressed the role of ‘suspicion’ as well as ‘listening’ in hermeneutics. Barthes and Derrida challenged the very notion of a ‘given’ text, shifting emphasis to construals by society and by readers which reflect motivations not immediately apparent from the supposed messages of texts.

This raises a multitude of fundamental questions for biblical hermeneutics and theology. If texts are no more than shifting constructs, what may still be said about divine grace or revelation? Do sacred texts merely mediate idolatrous constructs? How may hermeneutics serve to unmask interests which interpreters bring to the text and tempt them to use texts manipulatively?
Immutability
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: September 2018

The doctrine of divine immutability consists in the assertion that God cannot undergo real change. Plato and Boethius infer divine immutability from God’s perfection, Aristotle from God’s being the first cause of change, Augustine from God’s having created time. Aquinas derives divine immutability from God’s simplicity, his having no parts or attributes which are distinct from himself. All of these arguments finally appeal to aspects of God’s perfection; thus, the doctrine of divine immutability grew from a convergence of intuitions about perfection. These intuitions dominated Western thought about God well into the nineteenth century.

The doctrine’s foes argue that God’s power, providence and knowledge require its rejection. Their arguments contend that since the world does in fact change through time, this must entail change in God. If God responds to changing historical circumstances and to prayers, that would seem to require some sort of change in him (from not responding to responding). And if he does not intervene to prevent a war, for example, then after the war, he will have lost the power to prevent it (assuming, as many do, that God cannot alter the past), so again there is a change of state. Finally, it is argued that God’s knowledge of tensed truths (for example, ‘it is now noon’) must change as what time ‘now’ is changes. Some responses to these arguments appeal to the claim that God is in some sense outside time.
Liberation theology
Authors: Haight Roger
Published: September 2018

Also known as theology of liberation, liberation theology is simultaneously a social movement within the Christian Church and a school of thought, both of which react against human suffering due to poverty and various forms of oppression. The essence of liberation theology consists in an interpretation of Christian salvation that retains its transcendent eschatological content and draws out its historical dimensions and their implications for personal life, the social sphere and the public action of the Church. Salvation contains various levels of liberation.

Liberation theology is most commonly associated with Latin America, where it emerged during the 1960s. As both movement and theology, it is at present a worldwide phenomenon, taking on different characteristics according to culture, situation, the kind of oppression that predominates, and concrete political and social exigencies. Although some liberation theologians have employed Marxist language as a tool for social analysis, the underpinnings of liberation theology lie in Christian faith.

Liberation theology is predominately Roman Catholic in Latin America because of the Catholic majority; but as a movement and a school of thought it unites Catholic and mainstream Protestant Churches. Evangelical Christians are often antipathetic to liberation theology because of their individualism and other-worldliness.
Loisy, Alfred (1857–1940)
Authors: Yandell Keith E.
Published: September 2018

Loisy was a French biblical exegete who worked in the tradition of biblical criticism whose earlier members included D.F. Strauss and Ernest Renan. His critical views involved a sharp separation between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Catholic faith, and he came to regard the doctrine of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, a central Christian doctrine, as merely metaphorical and symbolic. He has been called the father of Catholic modernism.
Manicheism
Authors: Kirwan Christopher
Published: September 2018

Manicheism is a defunct religion, born in Mesopotamia in the third century ad and last attested in the sixteenth century in China. Its founder, Mani (c.216–76), had some familiarity with Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and aimed to supplant them all. He taught a form of dualism, influenced by earlier Gnostics: God is opposed by forces of darkness; they, not God, created human beings, who nevertheless contain particles of light which can be released by abstemious living. Two points of contrast with Catholic Christianity are particularly striking. First, in Manicheism, sinfulness is the natural state of human beings (because of their creators), and does not stem from Adam’s Fall. Second, the Manichean God did not create and does not control the forces of darkness (although he will eventually triumph); hence the problem of evil does not arise in as stark a form as it does for the all-powerful Christian God.

Although Mani’s own missionary journeys took him eastwards, it was in the Roman Empire to the west that the main impact of his teaching was first felt; Augustine of Hippo was an adherent for nine years. The religion was eventually suppressed in the Roman Empire, and driven east by the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia. In the West, various Christian heresies were loosely called Manichean throughout the Middle Ages.
Maritain, Jacques (1882–1973)
Authors: McInerny Ralph
Published: September 2018

Maritain was one of the most influential twentieth-century interpreters of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. His interests spanned many aspects of philosophy, including aesthetics, political theory, philosophy of science, metaphysics, education, liturgy and ecclesiology.

His acknowledged masterpiece is The Degrees of Knowledge (1932). In this work, Maritain expands on Thomistic thought and seeks to explain the links between philosophy, science and religion as branches of wisdom. Rather than being a close study of Thomism, this work expands on Thomistic ideas and puts them into the context of the modern world. In natural science, for example, he distinguishes between empirical knowledge of nature and philosophy of nature; the latter consists in the knowledge of essence, while the former is concerned with the knowledge of form.

In moral philosophy, Maritain expands on Aquinas, holding that no true conception of the human ultimate end is philosophically possible, and that moral philosophy therefore must be subordinated to moral theology. Later in his career, Maritain concentrated more strongly on theology, but throughout his life his Roman Catholic faith informed all of his works. He continues to be read widely today, with a worldwide reputation which is especially strong in France and North America.
Miracles
Authors: Basinger David
Published: September 2018

Does God at times miraculously intervene in earthly affairs? That is, do some events occur because God has entered our space-time continuum and directly modified or circumvented the relevant natural laws? Few philosophers today deny that this is possible. But many question whether we could ever justifiably maintain that such intervention has taken place.

According to some philosophers, it is not even necessary to grant that the types of events believers label miracles – for instance, healings or resurrections – actually occur as reported. Since the evidence supporting the occurrence of such events is the personal testimony of a few, possibly biased, individuals, while the basis for doubt is the massive amount of objective research upon which the relevant laws are based, it is always justifiable, according to this view, to conclude that such reports are erroneous. Others contend, however, that the presence of some forms of evidence – for instance, independent confirmation from reputable sources – could make it most reasonable in some cases to acknowledge that even the most unexpected of events had actually occurred.

Some philosophers also deny that we could ever justifiably conclude that an event could not have been produced by natural causes alone. Since we will never be in a position to identify all that nature can produce, they declare, it will always be most reasonable for the scientist facing a currently unexplainable counterinstance to a natural law to continue to look for a natural explanation. Many believers, however, are quite willing to grant that nature could in principle produce any event, since what they wish to maintain is only that nature does not do so in the case of miraculous interventions.

Finally, while many philosophers acknowledge that belief in direct divine intervention may at times be justifiable for those who already believe that God exists, some also argue that no single event or series of events could ever compel all thoughtful individuals to acknowledge the existence of a perfectly good supernatural causal agent, given all we experience – for instance, the tremendous amount of horrific evil in our world. Many believers, though, are also willing to grant this point.
Monotheism
Authors: Mavrodes George I.
Published: September 2018

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are usually cited as the major monotheistic religions. These are religions which acknowledge only a single god, and which construe that god as transcendent – that is, as a being who is distinct from the ordinary world and superior to it. They also construe this god as a person or as very much like a person. The polytheistic religions agree with monotheism, for the most part, in construing the gods in personalistic terms, but they acknowledge a plurality of gods. Pantheists, on the other hand, usually accept the singularity of the deity, but reject the transcendence, identifying the deity more closely with the ordinary universe, perhaps as a certain aspect of the universe or as the totality of the universe considered in a certain way. They also are likely to reject the personalistic idea of the deity.

This entry will discuss some philosophical aspects of the contrast between monotheism and polytheism. There are different ways of understanding ‘acknowledge’ in the characterization of monotheism given above. One may believe that there exists only one god. Or one may believe that more than one god exists, but worship only one, or hold that it is wrong to worship more than one. A closely related issue concerns the concept of deity that is employed in such beliefs and claims. The ‘high’ Anselmian conception of Christianity’s god – a being than whom no greater can be conceived – is only one account. Perhaps of most philosophical interest is the problem as to whether logical argument can demonstrate polytheism to be false and establish the truth of the Anselmian account.
Negative theology
Authors: Braine David
Published: September 2018

The term ‘negative theology’ refers to theologies which regard negative statements as primary in expressing our knowledge of God, contrasted with ‘positive theologies’ giving primary emphasis to positive statements. The distinction was developed within Muslim, Jewish and Christian theism. If the negative way (via negativa) is taken to its limits, two questions arise: first, whether one may speak of God equally well in impersonal as in personal terms (blurring the distinction between theism and, say, the philosophical Hinduism of Śaṅkara); and second, whether it leads ultimately to rejecting any ultimate being or subject at all (blurring the distinction between theism and, say, the atheism of Mahāyāna Buddhism). However, within their original theistic context, positive and negative statements about God are interdependent, the second indispensably qualifying the first, the negative statements taken alone useless.

Negative qualifications on positive statements attributing so-called ‘perfections’ to God – for example, existence, life, goodness, knowledge, love or active power (‘strength’) – are obviously necessary if God is unimaginable. If his presence is always of his whole being and life all at once, in each place in space and time, he must be non-spatial and non-temporal in being and nature, and clearly he must be unimaginable. However, his supposed ‘simplicity’ and ‘infinity’ imply that he is much more radically outside the reach of understanding or ‘comprehension’, imposing the negative way at a deeper level than mere unimaginability. This unimaginability and incomprehensibility are key to theistic accounts of prayer and the mystical life.
Niebuhr, Helmut Richard (1894–1962)
Authors: Marty Martin
Published: September 2018

After early writings interpreting the social dimensions of US religious life from a Protestant point of view, Helmut Richard Niebuhr came increasingly to focus on theology, the interpretation of the Word and experience of God, and ethics, the attempt to live a responsible life grounded in the deepest values. More successfully than any contemporary, he brought into creative tension two major strands of modern Christian thought. From the liberal tradition, he came to stress the relativity of all statements about God and accented the situation of the believer who makes them. Niebuhr matched or countered this perspectival approach with an inheritance from ‘neo-orthodoxy’ which stressed the otherness of God, the distance between God and all human experiences, statements and perspectives. While preoccupied with witness to ‘God beyond the gods’, Niebuhr was also devoted to understanding the human in the light of the experience of God. He developed comprehensive views of the responsible self as the focus of ethics and emphasized the communal dimensions of human life.
Occasionalism
Authors: Schmaltz Tad
Published: September 2018

Occasionalism was a theory of causation that played an important role in early modern metaphysics. In its most radical form, this theory holds that God is the only genuine cause, with natural events serving merely as ‘occasions’ for divine activity. According to an old textbook view, which has its source in the seventeenth century, occasionalism was introduced as an ad hoc solution to the problem, deriving from Descartes’s dualism, of how mind and body can causally interact. In fact, however, occasionalism has a history that dates from long before Descartes, and it was initially offered as a solution to theological rather than purely metaphysical difficulties. After Descartes, moreover, occasionalism remained significant for reasons that go far beyond the issue of mind-body interaction.
Omnipresence
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: September 2018

Western Scripture and religious experience find God present everywhere. Western thinkers make sense of this as their concepts of God dictate. Pantheists hold that God’s being everywhere is every bit of matter’s being a part or an aspect of God. Panentheists say that as God is the soul of the universe, God’s being everywhere is his enlivening the whole universe as souls enliven bodies. But most theists reject these views, as most think that if God is perfect, he cannot be, be made of, or be embodied in a flawed and material universe. Most theists think God intrinsically spaceless, that is, able to exist even if no space exists. Still, theists argue that God’s knowledge of and power over creation make him present within it without occupying space or being embodied in matter. Some add that God is present in space not just by power and knowledge but in his very being. These try to explain a spaceless God’s presence in space by likening it to the presence of a universal attribute like hardness. Hardness is not spread over hard surfaces, occupying them by having parts of itself in parts of them. Each part of a hard surface is hard. So all of hardness is in each part of a hard surface. So too, theists say, God is not spread out over space, filling parts of it with parts of himself. Rather, all of God is wholly present at each point in space and in each spatial thing.
Omniscience
Authors: Flint Thomas P.
Published: September 2018

The concept of omniscience has received great attention in the history of Western philosophy, principally because of its connections with the Western religious tradition, which views God as perfect in all respects, including as a knower. Omniscience has often been understood as knowledge of all true propositions, and though several objections to any simple propositional account of omniscience have been offered, many philosophers continue to endorse such an analysis. Advocates of divine omniscience have discussed many problems connected with both the extent of omniscience and the relation between this property and other alleged divine attributes. Three such issues are: Can an omniscient being properly be viewed as immutable? Would an omniscient being have knowledge of the future, and is such knowledge consistent with our future actions’ being genuinely free? And should omniscience be thought of as including middle knowledge? That is, would an omniscient being know (but have no control over) what other free beings would in fact freely do if placed in various different situations?