bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A New Programme for Religious Language: The Transformational Generative Grammar
Authors: MacCormac Earl R.
Published: October 2008

Recent defenders of the cognitive significance of religious language have had to face opponents from two directions; from those who demand that religious language be capable of some form of empirical verification (or falsification) and from those who demand that for religious language to be meaningful it must be capable of being understood in ordinary language. Apologists who have taken the first challenge seriously have strained to show that religious statements can be verified by ‘religious experience’, or by an ‘odd discernment’ or by an ‘eschatological verification’. Each of these responses raises further problems for the defender of religion, but in general they all are subject to their failure to provide an adequate criterion or standard by which they could be inter-subjectively tested. Facing in the other direction, theological apologists have attempted to justify religious expressions by showing that they could be subsumed under special categories of ordinary language; namely those of ‘convictional language’ and ‘performative language’. Although these defenders have shown that religious language has an ‘ordinary usage’, they have not shown that the cognitive elements of this usage can be reduced to the ‘use of ordinary language’.
Sankara, Ramanuja, and the Function of Religious Language
Authors: Wilson J. G.
Published: October 2008

In the opening sections of his Brahma-sutra-bhasya, Ramanuja makes a very forceful assault on Sankara's Advaita theory. This assault anticipates in a striking way modern western attacks on metaphysical religious positions, attacks which stem from Hume and are associated today with names like A. J. Ayer and Antony Flew. In this paper I wish to argue that certain aspects of Sankara's position, as enunciated in his Brahma-sutra-bhasya, suggest that Ramanunja's assault, and therefore by implication a modern western attack on Sankara also, depends for its success on a misinterpretation of Sankara's views. I wish then to suggest a possible alternative interpretation of Sankara's Advaita in terms viable for today, drawing, though indirectly, on such writers as R. B. Braithwaite and R. M. Hare. An incidental implication of this paper is that these two philosophers of religion would meet less opposition from the religious if they were Hindu rather than Christian! A more important implication is that light could be thrown on the present religious controversy in the west by a study of Indian philosophy of religion, if only we were more disposed to treat it as a living tradition which might teach us something, rather than as an antique.
Does Christology Rest on a Mistake?
Authors: Wiles M. F.
Published: October 2008

So presumptuous a title calls for some justification. Christology has never ceased to puzzle and to perplex the minds of Christians from earliest times. It would be outrageous to assert that because something in the realm of theology remains mysterious it must for that reason alone be being misunderstood. Nevertheless modern historical thought has posed the problem of the intelligibility of traditional Christology in a particularly acute way and this fact places an obligation upon Christians to ask once again whether it is unmistakably clear that their Christological beliefs do represent the faithful response to a mystery and are not the outcome of some mistake.
‘Negative’ Criticism of the Gospels?
Authors: Morgan Robert
Published: October 2008

‘There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus’, wrote Schweitzer at the end of The Quest of the Historical Jesus. The subsequent history of Gospel research in Germany was to reinforce this judgement beyond its author's expectations. The signpost to the future turned out to be Wrede's book on The Messianic Secret in the Gospels which had appeared five years earlier on the same day in 1901 as Schweitzer's own Mystery of the Kingdom of God, and which is still the classical example of redactional criticism of the gospels. Schweitzer's final alternative: either consistent eschatology or thoroughgoing scepticism proved to be unnecessary. Both won and took prizes. But whereas Schweitzer has slain his thousands, Wrede has slain his ten-thousands.
Religious Authority and Divine Action
Authors: Wiles M. F.
Published: October 2008

‘Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: and then stop.’ The King of Hearts' advice is not as easy to follow as might seem on first hearing. It is not simply that I want to speak about the interrelation between two major subjects and there is a certain arbitrariness in choosing with which of the two to start. The problem is far more fundamental than that. Where for the theologian is ‘the beginning’? At whatever point he does begin he is always uneasily aware that way back behind the point that he has chosen there probably lie a number of unquestioned assumptions which have largely prejudged the kind of answer he will give to the very question he is setting out to investigate. This difficulty is not, of course, peculiar to the theologian. None of us, whatever the subject of our investigation, can ever really ‘begin at the beginning’. But if this is a difficulty which the Christian theologian shares with other scholars it is none the less real for that. One obvious and important feature of the tradition in which the Christian theologian stands is that it gives some kind of special authority to the Bible, to the Church and above all—though it is sometimes a little bit elusive to know exactly what is meant by saying this—to Christ himself.
Christian Mysticism: A Study in Walter Hilton's The Ladder of Perfection
Authors: Owen H. P.
Published: October 2008

Many writers (including professional philosophers) often generalise about mysticism without a sufficiently close analysis of texts. Consequently the generalisations are often invalid. My present aim is to analyse one text and, in the light of this analysis, to offer some observations concerning mysticism in general and Christian mysticism in particular.
The Problem of the Meaning of ‘Miracle’
Authors: Langford Michael J.
Published: October 2008

The problems that arise over the concept of the miraculous are of continuing importance for the philosophy of religion, and because of their relation to issues such as the nature of explanation, and of scientific laws, they are of considerable interest to philosophy in general.
Religion and the Future: Teilhard de Chardin's analysis of Religion as a Contribution to Inter-religious Dialogue
Authors: King Ursula
Published: October 2008

‘The whole future of the Earth, as of religion, seems to me to depend on the awakening of our faith in the future.’
God and Human Attitudes
Authors: Rachels James
Published: October 2008

Kneeling down or grovelling on the ground, even to express your reverence for heavenly things, is contrary to human dignity.
The Argument from Design—a Reply to R. G. Swinburne
Authors: Olding A.
Published: October 2008

Of all the arguments for the existence of God, the argument from design is in many respects the most impressive, as everyone remarks that Kant remarked. Certainly it is an argument which seems to have appealed to the popular imagination and even today does not lack philosophical proponents. The purpose of the present paper is to examine a recent formulation of the argument. In particular I shall be concerned to bring into the open its dualist assumptions and to show how these militate against its general plausibility.
Referring to God
Authors: Shepherd John J.
Published: October 2008

It is a current commonplace that if the concept of deity is incoherent then no significant truth-claim is made for a formula like ‘God exists’, for it is neither true nor false but meaningless. This is the problem of factual meaning on which such emphasis is laid by critics like A. Flew, R. W. Hepburn, C. B. Martin, K. Nielsen and P. Edwards. I wish here to counter their challenge.
Some Remarks on ‘Physicalism and Immortality’—Reply to David Mouton
Authors: Anderson Tyson
Published: October 2008

In a recent articles David Mouton has argued that immortality is compatible with one sort of physicalism. I believe that he fails to establish this thesis and that, moreover, this article contains several misconceptions having to do with the topic of immortality.
Reply to Peter Slater
Authors: Gastwirth Paul
Published: October 2008

In his recent comment (Religious Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, June 1973, pp. 233–5) on my brief essay on concepts of God in this journal (Vol. 8, No. 2, June 1972, pp. 147–52) Peter Slater raises some pivotal questions that I feel obligated to answer.
Evolution and the argument from design
Authors: Nelson Kenneth V.
Published: October 2008

The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of Natural Selection has been discovered. Charles Darwin
Concepts, anti-concepts and religious experience
Authors: King Sallie B.
Published: October 2008

The linguistic expression of religious experience is problematic for both the experiencer and the philospher. For instance: is the religious experience nonverbal, i.e. does it utterly transcend all words, concepts, and thought? Or is it ineffable – not amenable to verbal expression? In either case, what can one make of all the talk and writings of those who do report religious experiences? The frequent references to ineffability, transcendence of thought and the like, lead one to wonder if the experiencers themselves are not dis-satisfied with these expressions. If this is indeed the case, what is it about these expressions that produces this dissatisfaction? Are some expressions better suited to the experience than others?
Vagueness and the verifiability of ordinary faith
Authors: Sullivan Denis F.
Published: October 2008

The analysis of religious assertions in terms of a language game or in terms of eschotological verification are the two most notable defences today of the factual significance of religious language. But both of these approaches, I believe, are to be found wanting, not only on philosophical grounds, but especially on the grounds of faith. Neither of these approaches reflects ordinary faith, the faith of ordinary believers. And it is in terms of such ordinary faith that we can find the key to a more adequate answer to the challenge of verifiability.
An essay in speculative mysticism
Authors: Šuligoj Herman F.
Published: October 2008

I entitled the paper ‘An Essay in Speculative Mysticism’ because it undertakes, in the tradition of such ancient and mediaeval mystics as Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Hugh and Richard of St Victor, Nicholas of Cusa, Ruysbroeck, and Meister Eckhart, to mate psychological introspection with ontological speculation, focusing on the rather fundamental themes of Identity, Alterity, Transcendant Identity, and Illusion. I acknowledge my more recent, general indebtment to the rich reservoir of contemporary research in the area of Transpersonal Psychology, a research amply documented in the journal of Transpersonal Psychology, as well as in the bibliographies, most notably provided among others, in the respective works of Charles Tart, John White, and Ken Wilber. Since Transpersonal Psychology embraces within its attempts at controlled studies such sundries as altered states of consciousness, parapsychological phenomena, yoga, as well as doctrines which skirt the very frontiers of psychology's experimental ingenuity, namely the tenets of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, H. P. Blavatsky, Oscar Icazo, John Lilly, Roberto Assagioli, and many others, the rapport between a speculative study in mysticism and the background data supplied by Transpersonal Psychology becomes readily apparent. Furthermore, I accede to any reader's deft detection in my essay of a rather uncommon medley of remnants from Thomism, German Romanticism, British Neo-Hegelianism, Vitalism, and Structuralism. If, at last, I were to be questioned on the methodology of my paper, I would have to respond that it probably resembles most closely the methodology of two French Reflective thinkers, viz., Jean Nabert and Henry Duméry, and the French existential metaphysician, Jean Wahl. Since I owe so much to so many, I simply acknowledge my general indebtedness at the beginning and allow the essay to emerge with its own internal cogency. The paper's rationale should, therefore, emanate from a clear inner coherence of its ideas as these reflect communicable psychological experience and unfold some of the latter's ontological implications.
God, time, and eternity
Authors: Craig William Lane
Published: October 2008

God is the ‘high and lofty One who inhabits eternity’, declared the prophet Isaiah, but exactly how we are to understand the notion of eternity is not clear. Traditionally, the Christian church has taken it to mean ‘timeless’. But in his classic work on this subject, Oscar Cullmann has contended that the New Testament ‘does not make a philosophical, qualitative distinction between time and eternity. It knows linear time only…’ He maintains, ‘Primitive Christianity knows nothing of a timeless God. The “eternal” God is he who was in the beginning, is now, and will be in all the future, “who is, who was, and who will be” (Rev. 1:4).’ As a result, God's eternity, says Cullmann, must be expressed in terms of endless time.
The religious option is a genuine option
Authors: Gellman Jerome
Published: October 2008

In ‘The Will to Believe’, the religious hypothesis for William James says, first, ‘that the best things are the more eternal things’, and second, ‘that we are better off now if we believe her first affirmation to be true’ (p.26) He later qualifies the first affirmation: ‘The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form’ (p.27).
Immortality and Light
Authors: Torrance T. F.
Published: October 2008

To rise from the dead and live in the age to come is the appointed destiny of the children of God. In that continuing personal life they are like angels and can no longer die, for as children of the resurrection they are children of God. He is the God, not of the dead, but of the living, for in him all are alive. That was the message of Jesus handed down to us through the Evangelists as an essential part of the Gospel. Jesus did not speak of an ‘immortality’ which depends on the natural force of the soul to resist the corruption of death, but spoke instead of a life-relation with God which cannot terminate for it is anchored beyond our mortal existence in the ever-living God himself. He preferred to speak of this as ‘eternal life’ which is freely given by the heavenly Father to his children on earth and which, far from ending with death, results in a resurrection to a fullness of imperishable life in God.
Ritual Elements in Community
Authors: Schmitz Kenneth L.
Published: October 2008

The Oxford English Dictionary says that a rite is ‘a formal procedure or act in a religious or other solemn observance’. The word comes into English through the French rite from the Latin ritus. Its original meaning escapes etymologists; and this is a mixed blessing, for we neither can nor must attempt a retrieval of its hidden roots. We are told by respectable etymologists (if such there be) that the word is associated from earliest times with Latin religious usage, but that even in the early Latin it was already extended to ‘custom, usage, manner or way’ of a non-religious sort. [Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary.] So, too, in modern languages the terms ‘rite’ and ‘ritual’ have specifically religious meaning, but they are also used in social and cultural settings that we would not call religious. What first strikes us about the terms ’ and ‘ritual’ is an emphasis upon a certain formality, upon a regular and stable way in which an action or set of actions is to be performed. A ritual is more than a formalism, however, since there are formalisms that are not rites, such as the logical rules for making a valid argument. Moreover, the term is frequently associated with the terms ‘myth’, ‘symbol’ and ‘faith’. These, too, are primarily religious, but are also extended to non-religious contexts. Indeed, there seems to be a network of such terms whose usage touches upon some extraordinary quality in things. Like them, the term ‘ritual’ shares both a wide variety of meanings and a certain hint of impropriety. The variety of ritual forms is notorious, ranging from the most sacred religious liturgies to the absurdities of a fraternity initiation; and the impropriety of the term breaks out whenever we brand a certain action ‘ritualistic’, just as we sometimes refer slightingly to an assertion, saying it is ‘mythical’, ‘merely symbolic’ or ‘credulous’.
Some Problems in Process Theodicy
Authors: Frankenberry Nancy
Published: October 2008

What good is divinity if it can come only in dreams and shadows…? (Wallace Stevens)

It is a well-known and rarely challenged assumption that one of the chief merits of Whitehead's cosmology is that it enables religious thinkers to come at the problem of God in relation to the presence of evil in an entirely new way. Among the virtues most commonly appealed to in praise of the Whiteheadian theodicy are its emphasis on God's persuasive, rather than controlling power; its defence of the moral goodness of the God whose nature is reconceived in the light of the problem of evil; and its provision for a realistic hope in the redemptive processes operative in divine and human history. However, none of these aspects of process theodicy is without serious problems. In what follows I will present certain reasons why I do not believe process theism has made good its claim to have solved, with the help of Whitehead's philosophy, the problem of evil. Rather, I will suggest that like the story of what happened to the donkey laden with salt, who took to the water, process theology's ‘solution’ to the problem of evil dissolves in the dialectic river of life, until nothing is left but the verbal sack in which it is contained. Much of the force of this critique will hinge on recognizing the systematic implications of the role of ambiguity in a processive-relational universe, a position I will summarize in conclusion.
On Disembodied Resurrected Persons: A Study in the Logic of Christian Eschatology
Authors: Gooch P. W.
Published: October 2008

I believe in…the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. (The Apostles' Creed)

The ancient Christian affirmation of a bodily resurrection still echoes today, and admittedly makes this paper's title sound odd. Resurrected persons are supposedly people with bodies, at least within Christian eschatology. How then can they be disembodied?

The counter-question is whether the notion of bodily-resurrected persons can satisfy certain problems raised by that same Christian eschatology, and this paper is an exploration of these issues. The first part draws attention to the importance of resurrection in contemporary philosophical discussion, in particular for John Hick's notion of eschatological verification. Part II examines critically the adequacy of this view of resurrection. In Part III we turn to a thesis about St Paul's concept of the resurrection body which avoids some of the problems raised in Part n. But the thesis raises its own difficulties, and the paper concludes with a sketch of further complexities in the logic of Christian eschatology.
Comment on Professor Kuitert's paper
Authors: Sutherland Stewart
Published: October 2008

The questions set in the draft programme for this session of the conference are:

Is it possible to understand the religion of somebody else, or must one be committed to a religious position in order to understand it? Is belief a condition for understanding?

These questions give the contemporary form of the debate about the perennial problem of the relationship between belief and understanding, and I sympathise with Professor Kuitert's sense that these questions themselves require further definition. Fortunately for the sake of philosophical dialogue I do not fully accept his conclusions. This however, is not because he wants to deny that belief is a condition for understanding, whereas I wish to affirm this. The main part of my paper will be devoted to showing what I find to be unsatisfactory in such an antithesis.
Two Traditions and the Philosophy of Religion
Authors: Meynell Hugo
Published: October 2008

I want in what follows to suggest – it would take a great deal of space to argue the matter in detail – that each of the prevailing schools of philosophy, the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and the ‘Continental’, has its characteristic strengths and weaknesses; and that to make effective progress in the philosophy of religion, one needs the virtues of both.
Comment on Dr Meynell's paper
Authors: Härle Wilfried
Published: October 2008

Dr Meynell calls the two traditions he is writing about ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘Continental’ instead of ‘Analytic’ and ‘Hermeneutic’. His main argument for this choice is that ‘Continental’ philosophers also practice some kind of analysis. But if we use ‘Analytic’ in its terminological meaning for that kind of philosophy (of religion) which is aiming at sharp and clear distinctions between concepts (including their uses), then we can well differentiate an analytic tradition from a hermeneutic one which has fundamental objections to present to that kind of ‘language-dissection’ (or better: ‘vivisection’) and which tries to understand religion in its irreducibly individual forms as a whole by means of empathy and description. (By the way: I do not affirm that this distinction between analytic and hermeneutic tradition is a complete one.)
Religions Traditional and New in the Encyclopedia of Religion
Authors: Clarke Peter B.
Published: October 2008

A comedy, unlike a tragedy which the experts maintain has to succeed greatly if it is to succeed at all, can be evaluated on a more or less basis. The former can likewise be great, but it can also be quite funny or only mildly amusing and remain a worthwhile comedy and it is this kind of relativist assessment that this writer believes is appropriate with regard to the sections of this encyclopaedia dealing with ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ religions. The former section, taken in the round, is impressive in terms of its range, the quality of the entries and the back-up or support material, the latter is somewhat less so in all of these areas but nonetheless worthwhile.
Reichenbach on Natural Evil
Authors: Martin Michael
Published: October 2008

InEvil and a Good GodBruce Reichenbach presents a theodicy for natural evil. According to Reichenbach, natural evil consists in suffering and pain and ‘states of affairs significantly disadvantageous to sentient beings’ which have either nonhuman causes or human causes for which no human being can be held morally responsible. He attempts to provide a morally sufficient reason why natural evil exists. In this paper I will evaluate this reason.
Middle Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil
Authors: Hunt David P.
Published: October 2008

According to the thesis of divine ‘middle knowledge’, first propounded by the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina in the sixteenth century, subjunctive conditionals stating how free agents would freely respond under counter-factual conditions (call such expressions ‘counterfactuals of freedom’) may be straightforwardly true, and thus serve as the objects of divine knowledge. This thesis has provoked considerable controversy, and the recent revival of interest in middle knowledge, initiated by Anthony Kenny, Robert Adams and Alvin Plantinga in the 1970s, has led to two ongoing debates. One is a theoretical debate over the very intelligibility of middle knowledge;1 the other is a practical debate over its philosophical and theological utility.2
Pascal on Self-caused Belief
Authors: Davis Stephen T.
Published: October 2008

Let me begin with a true story. Years ago, early in my career as a professor of philosophy, I had a fascinating series of conversations with a student whom I will call Peter. He was a bright and incisive senior, with a double major in philosophy and psychology. Raised in a religious family, the son of a Christian minister, he was himself unable to believe. His doubts were too strong. But the odd fact was that he genuinely wanted to believe. His religious scepticism deeply troubled him; part of him envied the faith of his parents. How do you go about making yourself believe?, he asked me. How do you go about having the kinds of religious experiences that lead people to faith? These were long and intense conversations, and I was unable (though I tried) to move Peter away from his doubts. So far as I know he is still a sceptic.
Universe Indexed Properties and the Fate of the Ontological Argument
Authors: Sennett James F.
Published: October 2008

If the contemporary rebirth of the ontological argument had its conception in Norman Malcolm's discovery of a second Anselmian argument ([2]) it had its full-term delivery as a healthy philosophical progeny with Alvin Plantinga's sophisticated modal version presented in the tenth chapter of The Nature of Necessity ([8]). This latter argument has been the centre of a huge body of literature over the last fifteen years, and deservedly so. One is impressed that this version of Anselm's jewel is valid and sound if any is.
Religious Experience and Religious Diversity: A Reply to Alston
Authors: Schellenberg J. L.
Published: October 2008

William Alston's Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) is a most significant contribution to the philosophy of religion. The product of 50 years' reflection on its topic (xi), this work provides a very thorough explication and defence of what Alston calls the ‘mystical perceptual practice’ (MP) – the practice of forming beliefs about the Ultimate on the basis of putative ‘direct experiential awareness’ thereof (pp. 103, 258). Alston argues, in particular, for the (epistemic) rationality of engaging in the Christian form of MP (CMP). On his view, those who participate in CMP are (in the absence of specific overriding considerations from within CMP) justified in forming beliefs as they do because their practice is ‘socially established’, has a ‘functioning overrider system’ and a ‘significant degree of self-support’; and because of the ‘lack of sufficient reasons to take the practice as unreliable’ (p. 224).
The Most Brutal and Inexcusable Error in Counting?: Trinity and Consistency
Authors: Yandell Keith E.
Published: October 2008

The Anglican Thirty Nine Articles join catholic Christendom in affirming that:

There is but one living and true God…and in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Pike's Mystic Union and the Possibility of Theistic Experience
Authors: Forgie J. William
Published: October 2008

In his long-awaited Mystic Union, Nelson Pike offers a phenomenology of mysticism. His account is based on the reports and descriptions of third parties, not on his own, first-person experience. So he calls his enterprise ‘phenomenography’, an attempt to describe the experiential content of conscious states by way of reports of them. Pike finds in the Christian mystical tradition three different kinds of experiences of mystic union, the ‘prayer of quiet’, the ‘prayer of union’ and ‘rapture’. These experiences differ phenomenologically, i.e. in experiential content. But they are all ‘theistic’ experiences; that is, they are all phenomenologically of God. By this Pike means: (a) whether these experiences are veridical or not, their object – what they are veridical or hallucinatory experiences of – is God; and (b) that they are of God is part of, or given in, the phenomenological content of the experiences themselves.
What's the Difference? Knowledge and Gender in (Post) Modern Philosophy of Religion
Authors: Jantzen Grace M.
Published: October 2008

Donna Haraway, in her ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs’, issues a warning that in the postmodern world where grand narratives increasingly fail and subjects are seen to be irremediably fragmented, ‘we risk lapsing into boundless difference and giving up on the confusing task of making a partial, real connection. Some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. Epistemology is about knowing the difference’. Such an account of epistemology, which sees its central task to be a knowledge of the significance of difference and a capacity to discern between innocent and oppressive forms of difference, is perhaps not one that would most readily occur to British philosophers of religion. It is, however, an account which has resonances both with many contemporary continental thinkers and with feminist epistemologists. Notwithstanding the many areas of divergence between and among these groups, on two points at least they converge: that the recognition and discernment of difference has become inescapable for epistemology, and that of the differences which must be dealt with, gender difference has a paradigmatic status.
Is Theistic Experience Phenomenologically Possible?
Authors: Corcoran Kevin
Published: October 2008

William Forgie's negative conclusion concerning the possibility of theistic experience in particular turns on a sophisticated, if idiosyncratic, phenomenology of experience in general. Forgie introduces us to his position by having us imagine two people, Tim and Tom Tibbetts. He then asks us to suppose that Tim and Tom are identical twins who live next door. Imagine that looking over the fence one fine sunny day you have what you take to be a veridical visual experience of someone who looks like one of the Tibbetts. If you were required to rely solely on the content of your experience, says Forgie, and not on any extra-experiential information to which you may be privy (e.g. you know Tom is away at aunt Millie's), there would be no way to identify the object of your experience as Tim, rather than Tom, Tibbetts. An experience of one would be phenomenologically indistinguishable from an experience of the other and there would be, therefore, nothing in the experience itself which guarantees that it's Tim, rather than Tom.
Trinity or Tritheism?
Authors: Clark Kelly James
Published: October 2008

In The Christian God (hereafter CG), Richard Swinburne offers a series of arguments which a priori support the necessity of the doctrine of the Trinity. If his arguments are successful, he has dramatically narrowed the field of logically possible religious beliefs to (Christian) trinitarianism. I contend that Swinburne's arguments necessitate the existence of more than one quasi-independent divine being; indeed Swinburne's arguments move us in the direction of tritheism rather than orthodox trinitarianism.
Interpreting Hume's Dialogues
Authors: Coleman Dorothy P.
Published: October 2008

This paper provides a methodological schema for interpreting Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion that supports the traditional thesis that Philo represents Hume's views on religious belief. To understand the complexity of Hume's ‘naturalism’ and his assessment of religious belief, it is essential to grasp the manner in which Philo articulates a consistently Humean position in the Dialogues.
Scepticism, Evidentialism and the Party Argument: A Pascalian Perspective
Authors: Holyer Robert
Published: October 2008

Sceptical arguments, it is commonly claimed, may succeed in disarming some powerful objections to religious belief, but they do nothing more than establish a state of parity between the believer and the objector. For this reason, they make no positive contribution to the justification of religious belief and therefore are of value only to the fideist who insists that religious beliefs do not have and do not need rational support. However, while this opinion is widely held by philosophers of religion, it ignores the fact that sceptical arguments have given rise to a constructive tradition in epistemology: what is often referred to as naturalism. In what follows I shall develop a suggestion from this tradition, and that is that sceptical arguments lead not to an abandonment of claims to justified belief but to a revision and contextualization of our epistemic standards. Though this suggestion can be found in a number of philosophers in this tradition, my inspiration for it comes from Pascal, who made an important place for scepticism in the evidentialist argument for Christianity which we find in the Pensées. To develop this suggestion, I shall first sketch a position inspired by Pascal and then argue that the possibilities it suggests have been insufficiently considered in a number of recent discussions of the importance of sceptical arguments in the epistemology of religious belief.
God and Time: Toward a New Doctrine of Divine Timeless Eternity
Authors: Padgett Alan G.
Published: October 2008

In this essay I wish to defend the intuition that God transcends time, of which he is the Creator. To do this, I will develop a new understanding of the term ‘timeless eternity’ as it applies to God. This assumes the inadequacy of the traditional notion of divine eternity, as it is found in Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas. Very briefly, the reasons for this inadequacy are as follows. God sustains the universe, which means in part that he is responsible for the fundamental ontological status of things. Because the universe is an everchanging reality, things do change in their fundamental ontological status at different times – a change we must ascribe to God, and cannot ascribe to the objects themselves, since this has to do with their very existence. God himself, therefore, does different things at different times. This implies change in God. Whenever a change occurs, a duration occurs. Therefore, God is in time. But I do not think it is proper to say that God is in our time. God transcends time, and he is the Creator of our space-time. It is theologically more proper to say that we are in God's time, and I will adopt this language here.
The Vulnerability of Action
Authors: Ellis Robert
Published: October 2008

Human agents, unless they be crazed by some impediment of mind, are usually all too painfully aware of the risks inherent in their task of exercising agency. We are vulnerable as we act to forces not fully within our control, to unsound judgements which we ourselves make, and to the limits of our own reach which we sometimes miss or ignore. However, it is common enough in orthodox Christian circles, when transposing the concepts of action and agency to the divine, to remove the element of risk which so closely accompanies our own experience of action. God, it is claimed, is the perfect agent – who never fails – who accomplishes all and everything he sets out to do.
‘Nice Soft Facts’: Fischer on Foreknowledge
Authors: Craig William Lane
Published: October 2008

During the last several years, philosophers of religion have witnessed a long-drawn debate between Nelson Pike and John Fischer on the problems of theological fatalism, Fischer claiming in his most recent contribution to have proved that even if God's past beliefs are ‘nice soft facts’, still theological fatalism cannot be averted. Unfortunately, this debate has not – at least it seems to this observer – served substantially either to clarify the issues involved or to move toward a resolution of the question, but has instead confused matters by its use of misleading terminology and diverted the discussion into unpromising side roads.
Religious Insight and the Cognitive Problem
Authors: Smith John E.
Published: October 2008

Despite the title, I do not intend to launch another expedition into the domain of epistemology. I wish instead to call attention to some problems which have arisen for philosophical theologians and philosophers of religion, as a result of two facts about the development of modern philosophy and its bearing on the analysis and interpretation of religious insight. Following these considerations, I shall propose in brief compass a programme for the future which I believe will prove fruitful for the philosophical treatment of religious concerns.
Universal Salvation: A Reply to Mr Bettis
Authors: Adams Marilyn McCord
Published: October 2008

In his article ‘A Critique of the Doctrine of Universal Salvation’, J. D. Bettis criticises the argument that all men will be saved because ‘God's love is both absolutely good and absolutely sovereign’ (p. 330). I would like to argue that either some of Bettis's criticisms are confused, or else that he is not using ‘love’ in anything like its ordinary sense. I will not attempt a full defence of universalism here, however. In particular, I will not try to defend it against the sort of criticisms Bettis says an Arminian might raise (p. 336).
Contemporary Philosophy and the Christian Faith
Authors: Ramsey I. T.
Published: October 2008

I am not so insular and I hope not so presumptuous as to suppose that there is no contemporary philosophy apart from that empiricism which dominates very much of Great Britain, North America and Scandinavia. So let us notice that contemporary philosophy embraces broadly three points of view, though it will be part of my argument that they largely combine in the lessons they have to teach us, and in many of their implications for theology.
The Structure of Religion
Authors: Smith John E.
Published: October 2008

The popular belief that religion is the same everywhere or that all religions are ‘at bottom’ identical in essentials is a widespread falsehood that is saved from being completely worthless by the fact that religion does exhibit a universal or common structure wherever it appears. This structure is intimately related to the structure of human life in the world. The enduring pattern that enables us to understand religions widely separated in both time and space depends largely on the fact that man and the process of human life in the world have their own structures which remain, despite the undeniable variety introduced by vast differences of culture, ethnic features, geographical location, climate etc. Structure means pattern or form; it is reality significantly organised. It can be grasped as that which endures above and beyond changing historical details. Because human life has a structure, we are able to understand the wrath of Achilles or sympathise with the love of Abélard for Héloïse although we are separated from both by centuries of time.
Truth Claims for Religious Images
Authors: Gualtieri A. R.
Published: October 2008

A rough circumscription of our area of study will be achieved when I say that by images I mean the kind of thing about which Ian Crombie and Austin Farrer have written in Faith and Logic and Farrer also in The Glass of Vision. In the latter work Farrer cites as examples of religious images the Kingdom of God, the Son of Man, the Israel of God and the ‘infinitely complex and fertile image of sacrifice and communion, of expiation and covenant’. Farrer's images are essentially verbal pictures whose function is to interpret and elucidate revelatory events. He writes:

The great images interpreted the events of Christ's ministry, death and resurrection, and the events interpreted the images; the interplay of the two is revelation. Certainly the events without the images would be no revelation at all, and the images without the events would remain shadows on the clouds. The events by themselves are not revelation, for they do not by themselves reveal the divine work which is accomplished in them: the martyrdom of a virtuous Rabbi and his miraculous return are not of themselves the redemption of the world.
Buddhist Mysticism
Authors: Ling Trevor
Published: October 2008

The word mysticism serves to draw attention to certain similarities in religious experience in both Western and Eastern religion, and it is difficult to find a really satisfactory substitute. What is important is that we should not suppose it to be a simple term, but should recognise that it has many variations. There are varieties of mysticism, recognisable by a certain family resemblance, and it is probably safer therefore to use the word with some qualifying adjective, e.g. Christian mysticism, Jewish mysticism, and so on.
The Origin of Death in some Ancient Near Eastern Religions
Authors: Brandon S. G. F.
Published: October 2008

The Irish poet W. B. Yeats once wrote, with great sapience and perception:

Nor dread, nor hope attend

A dying animal;

A man awaits his end

Dreading and hoping all.

That death has ever been a problem to man is attested as far back as we can trace our species in the archaeological record—indeed, it seems to have been a problem even for that immediate precursor of homo sapiens, the so-called Neanderthal Man; for he buried his dead.
The Theological Methodology of John Oman and H. H. Farmer
Authors: Langford Thomas A.
Published: October 2008

Two successive theologians at Westminster College, Cambridge, John Oman and Herbert H. Farmer, represented a distinctive theological development which extended over fifty years of the present century. Oman with his original mind was the inaugurator; Farmer was the disciple who followed with great devotion, but who also exhibited independence and attempted to bring his teacher's insight into creative relation with later theological emphases, especially with the renewed interest in Christology.
Religious Statements and the World
Authors: Wainwright W. J.
Published: October 2008

In the past few years philosophers of religion and theologians have devoted much attention to the status of religious statements. There are three main positions: (1) The statements as generally understood are (false) empirical statements. The people who make them have either made honest mistakes (they are unaware of the counter evidence) or they are irrational. This view may be coupled with the claim that religious language can be reconstructed in such a way that we may continue to use it and yet avoid making false assertions. (The position Braithwaite outlines in An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief seems to be close to this.) (2) The statements are not empirical and are therefore not significant. (3) The statements are not empirical— common sense and science are irrelevant to the truth and falsity of religious claims—and yet they are significant.
The Concept of God
Authors: Coburn R. C.
Published: October 2008

My aim in this essay is to elucidate in a certain way the concept of God. I shall begin with several brief remarks in clarification of this aim and the terminology I shall employ in pursuing it.
God, Happiness and Evil
Authors: Khatchadourian Haig
Published: October 2008

In a recent article, George Schlesinger adds his thoughts to the quite extensive literature on the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Suffering. What is noteworthy about this article is the fact that the author, after briefly discussing a number of familiar arguments for and against the traditional theistic conception of God as both omnipotent and perfectly good, attempts to dissolve the problem itself as a pseudo-problem. In the present paper I wish (1) to try to show that Schlesinger's attempt fails, whether or not he is right in his conclusion that the problem of evil is not a genuine problem; and (2) to raise, in the course of my criticism, certain fundamental questions that must be answered if the controversy between theists and their critics is to become logically capable of resolution. Further, in relation to (1) and (2), I shall (3) offer a very preliminary sketch of some of the fundamental terms or concepts involved in the discussion of the problem of evil and related issues of philosophical theology. I shall begin by saying a few things about Schlesinger's discussion of some of the familiar attempts of theists to resolve the problem, and the equally familiar attacks of the sceptics. I shall then pass to a criticism of Schlesinger's main thesis.
Is Existence a Predicate in Anselm's Argument?
Authors: Lochhead David M.
Published: October 2008

One of the most annoying things to many a student of St Anselm's Proslogion is the way in which many philosophers assume that they can make Anselm's argument disappear simply by uttering the incantation, ‘Existence is not a predicate’. Some recent studies of the argument1 have tried to rescue it from Kant's dictum by showing that this criticism does not apply to Anselm's so-called ‘second’ ontological argument. This argument appears in chapter III of Proslogion and depends on a distinction between ‘necessary existence’ and ‘contingent existence’. Both Malcolm and Hartshorne are content, however, to let the better known ‘first’ argument (Proslogion, chapter II) rest in the oblivion to which Kant assigned it.
The Symbolic Relationship and Christian Truth
Authors: Hall Richard C.
Published: October 2008

The philosophical problem of the relation of symbol to truth is far from solved, but there have been significant advances toward its solution. It is the common Christian understanding that God is Truth (among other things), and that all truths must ultimately find union in him. This is to say that all genuine truths must be compatible. The true conclusions of genuine science must be compatible with the true conclusions of genuine theology. Or, to bring this general statement to a more particular level, the true conclusions of Biblical scholarship must be compatible with the true conclusions of the natural sciences. When this compatibility is lacking, and it so often is, we must assume that the conclusions of one field of truth-seeking or the other do not partake of the Truth which is God. And there is no guarantee that theology as a field of truth-seeking cannot err. Another characteristic of genuine truth is that it is not dependent upon any particular environment or milieu—either social, cultural, philosophical, or even theological. Unless we are to make the common but dangerous division of sacred and secular, of holy and profane, claim that these areas of human experience have nothing to do the one with the other, compartmentalise our thought, and ask, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’, it must be concluded that there is no one specifically Christian milieu. Genuine truths must be true at all times, in all places, and for all men. But since we are not gods, we must hold these truths in what St Paul called earthen vessels (II Cor. 4:7), vessels shaped and moulded by our particular milieu.
Transcendence in Traditional China
Authors: Smith Huston
Published: October 2008

China's regard for nature, as expressed (for example) in Sung landscape painting, is clear and well recognised. What the Chinese believed to exceed the natural world, the realm of ‘the ten-thousand things’, is less clear. The present essay tries to explore this question systematically.
Incarnation and Process Philosophy
Authors: Barnhart J. E.
Published: October 2008

The purpose of this article is to develop a Christian doctrine of the Incarnation in the light of a process philosophy of the type expounded by A. N. Whitehead and E. S. Brightman. Rather than offer at this time a detailed defence either of the idea of incarnation or of process philosophy, I wish to show that the two can be coherently related in such a way that each receives a greater degree of completion and clarity. Of course risks are unavoidable in any attempt to make Athens and Jerusalem respond to one another. But the risks and losses would be even greater if the way of isolation and of mutually ignoring one another were accepted.