bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Wisdom and Dilman and the Reality of God
Authors: Nielsen Kai
Published: October 2008

Reacting against philosophers such as Braithwaite, Hare and Van Buren, caught in what not a few would believe to be an essentially positivist rut, John Wisdom and Ilham Dilman forcefully argue that there is more to religion than commitment to a way of life and yet they both are, like Braithwaite and Hare, adamant in maintaining that believers and non-believers need not differ, and indeed will not differ, when they are informed, reflective and philosophically sophisticated, ‘in what they expect by way of a life after death’ and more importantly still – they will not differ in what ‘they infer about what lies beyond the reach of the senses’ (494).1 Moreover, they agree that not only can we not make any valid inferences about what lies beyond any possible reach of the senses, we cannot directly know - encounter, become acquainted with - such a reality either.
The Study of Religion in Poland
Authors: Kee Alistair
Published: October 2008

Religion is widely practised in Poland. This fact is well known in the West, though it is always a matter of some amazement. What is less well known and perhaps more amazing is the extent to which religion is studied in Poland. Before World War II there were of course the well-established faculties of theology in Warsaw, Wilno (now in the U.S.S.R.) and the fourteenth-century foundation in the ancient capital of Krakow. The Catholic University of Lublin is a private institution set up by the Church in 1920. It has some very distinguished scholars and its degrees are recognised by the State. Some courses in theology are also taught there, mainly for the training of priests but also for lay people who may intend to work with, for example, K.I.K., the circle of Catholic intellectuals.
God, Christ and Possibilities
Authors: Sturch R. L.
Published: October 2008

I propose to begin with some fairly unexciting and uncontroversial remarks about possibility-statements, and then in their light to examine two problems philosophers have raised about certain statements of this kind which might be made in Christian theology where it touches on the doctrine of the Incarnation.
The Argument from Evil: Reply to Professor Richman
Authors: Langston Douglas
Published: October 2008

The problem of evil has traditionally been formulated as a claim about the incompatibility of the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’. Hume, for example, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part x, claims that the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’ are incompatible. In his esssy ‘Hume on Evil’, Nelson Pike argues that it has not been shown that the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’ are incompatible because it has not been shown that God could not have a morally sufficient reason for permitting suffering he could prevent.1 Moreover, according to Pike, the theist who is convinced that God must have a morally sufficient reason for permitting suffering he can prevent will claim that the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’ are not incompatible. He will claim this even though he cannot specify the morally sufficient reason why God permits suffering he can prevent. The theist will thus maintain that God exists even given the occurrence of suffering in the world.2 Robert Richman, in his essay ‘The Argument from Evil’, argues that Pike is too generous to the theist. According to Richman, only if the theist can specify the morally sufficient reason why God permits suffering he can prevent will the theist be rationally justified in maintaining that God exists in the face of suffering in the world. Richman supports his position by reformulating the argument from evil in terms of what he calls ‘the logic of our moral judgmentsr’.3 Richman thinks that his formulation of the argument from evil is successful against the theist who cannot specify the morally sufficient reason why God permits evil he can prevent. In this paper, I shall argue that Richman's argument is not successful against the typical theist, i.e. the person who accepts the existence of God on the basis of faith or a priori arguments.4
Man's Religious Quest
Authors: Williams Cyril
Published: October 2008

The written material for this course will be ofinterest and value to all engaged in the study of religion not least for its pedagogical enterprise. The course is divided into six blocks containing thirty-two units which are presented in fourteen booklets. These are designed to be read in conjunction with the Course Reader (Whitfield Foy, ed., Man's Religious Quest, The Open University, 1978) and other components such as films, cassettes, sixteen television programmes, twenty-four radio programmes, a wallet of maps and a pronunciation cassette tape. Very little is left to chance. Interspersed throughout the written texts is a symbol to signal the need to pause for reflection and precise instructions are given as to when an exercise is to be completed. Specimen answers are provided to specific questions. Those who would criticise this apparently overpowering prescription should bear in mind that the course is designed for what is in the main learning at a distance, and it is better to err on the side of over solicitude than to leave unsaid what ought to be said. The more resourceful student will find abundant guidance for further independent exploration in the well chosen lists of recommended books and lists of works of reference.
Faith and Reason: a False Antithesis?
Authors: Mitchell Basil
Published: October 2008

‘I can't believe that,’ said Alice.

‘Can't you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.’

Alice laughed. ‘There's no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can't believe impossible things.’

‘I dare say you haven't had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
Can I Die?–An Essay in Religious Philosophy
Authors: Kesarcodi-Watson Ian
Published: October 2008

Often we feel there is something odd about death, and especially about our own. This latter at least we often feel beyond our ken. Well, I think in a sense it may be; but in another, clearly is not. Among those who have felt this strangeness is Ramchandra Gandhi who, in an excellent recent work, The Availability of Religious Ideas (Macmillan, 1976), maintained –

There is no difficulty in seeing that I cannot intelligibly conceive of my own death – the ceasing to be, for good, of myself, my consciousness. I can conceive of temporary lapses into unconsciousness, always overcome by a return to consciousness. The difficulty is this: in asking myself the question 'What will it be like to be irreversibly unconscious?' (and the state of affairs here sought to be visualized would exclude all dream activity and dream-thinking of all types), I want both to remain self-conscious and visualize actual loss of capacity for self-consciousness. This cannot be done (p. 39; italics mine).
Can God Know That He Is God?
Authors: Creel Richard E.
Published: October 2008

While reflecting one day on the enormous difficulties that men have in knowing that there is a God, a completely unexpected and unfamiliar question drifted into my purview – perhaps as a kind of ultimate expression of my philosophical frustration. ‘Indeed’, the question asked, ‘can even God know that he is God?’ At first I thought this query merely amusing. ‘Wouldn't it be funny if God cannot know that he is God! But of course he can.’ So my mind wandered on to other things. The question did not leave me alone, though. It insisted that I take it seriously, and the more I did, the more legitimate, complex, and significant it came to seem - and still does.
The Logical Status of ‘God’
Authors: Walker Ian
Published: October 2008

We are all of us by now familiar with the argument that God's existence is necessary. The argument takes many and varied forms but generally contains a premiss to the effect that our conception of God, or God's nature, entails necessary existence. Professor H. D. Lewis writes:

It is not part of the nature of anything normally that it must exist. We find that there are certain things — we could not deduce this from the concept of them. We also sense that in the last resort nothing could just be by chance, but the element of necessity here is not to be found directly in finite things themselves but in a Reality beyond themselves and in their dependence, in some way we cannot further comprehend, upon it. It is thus part of the nature of this Ultimate Reality that it must be; and this, along with the perfection which this kind of existence carries with it, is all that we can know directly about God. He is a Being who exists by necessity.
Phenomenology and Religion: Some Comments
Authors: Struckmeyer Frederick R.
Published: October 2008

In recent decades, particularly since the publication of Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy (1917; Eng. trans., 1923) and Gerardus Van der Leeuw's Religion in Essence and Manifestion (1933; Eng. trans., 1938), what is known as the ‘phenomenological’ approach to the study of religion has become extremely popular. I myself, in teaching courses in religious studies, have for a number of years used Van der Leeuw's classic study; it is a work of amazing insight and scholarship, and perhaps the single greatest example ofjust how successful the method of phenomenology can be when applied to a distinct field of study. But it is not only in the domain of religious studies that phenomenologists have made important contributions; in the spheres of social and political theory, for example, as well as in the philosophy of art, the philosophy of psychology, and other areas, there have been notable accomplishments.
Language, Logic and Reason in Calvin'sInstitutes
Authors: Ayers Robert H.
Published: October 2008

Of fundamental importance for any epistemology is what philosophers today call ‘semiotics’ which entails a consideration of the issues of semantics, logical syntax, and pragmatics. Semantics has to do with the significations or meanings of the terms or expressions in any particular language. It concentrates on the expressions and their designata. Syntactical analysis is concerned with the rules governing the formal relations among the signs of the language such as in inference or the relation of derivability. And pragmatics is concerned with the meanings the speaker intends to convey by his use of language.Obviously, linguistic and logical nonsense and/or failure to take into account the context of the concrete world, especially that of human interests and intentions, and the issue of applicability would produce a death blow for any attempt at an epistemology.
C. A. Campbell and the Problem of Suffering
Authors: Collins John
Published: October 2008

Although C. A. Campbell's account of the problem of suffering is articulated in the context of making out a case for rational Theism, it does not stand or fall with the case for rational Theism. It has independent merit as a sustained effort of reason to grapple with the problem of whether the goodness and omnipotence of God are consistent with the prima facie badness of so much of the suffering that exists in God's world. Campbell's views on suffering are to be found in On Selfhood and Godhood (SG), pp. 287–306, and in an earlier article ‘Reason and the Problem of Suffering’ (RPS), published in Philosophy, x 1935, pp. 154–67. In the first section of what follows, I give a summary of Campbell's line of argument. In the second I offer some critical comments on certain aspects of his treatment.1
The Study of the Purānas and the Study of Religion
Authors: Coburn Thomas B.
Published: October 2008

Ever since the work of Horace Hayman Wilson in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the Purānas have had a certain fascination for Western scholars which, if not rivaling the fascination that they have had for Hindus themselves, has at least been substantial. This seems particularly to have been the case in recent years, as both anthropologists and textual scholars, their appetites whetted by the development of various scholarly methods, have cultivated the Purānic field with diligence, and apparent fruitfulness. Especially when considered in conjunction with the often allied inquiry into the Hindu epics, it seems safe to say that we have here a field in which the labourers are many, and the crops diverse.
To Glorify: The Essence of Poetry and Religion
Authors: Martland T. R.
Published: October 2008

Martin Heidegger's explication of Pindar's assertion that ‘to glorify was the essence of poetry’ puts it quite well. He tells us that for Pindar the word does not derive its force from what is already complete in itself. For then man would be glorifying what is already glorious, that which already has the power to impress men. At best the word then would denote an acknowledgment or a confession of being impressed. Instead, he insists, the word denotes the power of making to appear, or to extol a place.1
The Concept of Revelation
Authors: Shepherd John J.
Published: October 2008

The concept of revelation is a pivotal one, both in the study of religion in general, and with regard to Christianity in particular. Yet it is a fluid concept that has undergone notable transformations down the ages as succeeding generations have re-interpreted it in the light of fresh presuppositions which they have come to share. My purpose here is to offer a re-interpretation in the light of some contemporary presuppositions which, though not universal, are, I shall argue, sufficiently widely held, sufficiently basic, and sufficiently secure, to warrant accommodation. I shall be concerned primarily, though not in principle exclusively, with the concept of revelation in a Christian context.
Natural Evil and the Love of God
Authors: Allen Diogenes
Published: October 2008

There is some important data which has not as yet found its way into philosophic discussions on the problem of evil. Some religious people report that suffering, instead of being contrary to the love of God, is actually a medium in and through which his love can be experienced. This looks highly paradoxical, but it will be our purpose to show that it is intelligible and that it has important consequences for philosophical discussions of the problem of evil.
God, Probability and John Hick
Authors: Londis James J.
Published: October 2008

Whether or not any notion of probability is meaningful in the philosophy of religion has been the subject of considerable discussion. Ranging from our common sense usage in which probability implies ‘possibly’ but not ‘certainly’ to its highly sophisticated usage in pure mathematics, the question of its philosophical foundations is one of the most controversial in logical theory. Some thinkers argue that statistical frequency is the only legitimate notion of probability, and, inasmuch as such frequency is tied to discrete observable phenomena, probability judgments have little, if any, application to religious explanations of the entire universe. Foremost, perhaps, among philosophers of religion in Anglo-American thought who support this concept is John Hick. In this article, I shall delineate Hick's attitude towards probability and evidence and how it relates to his concept of faith. Then I shall raise some critical questions about his analysis and try to show that his view is unnecessarily restrictive – even inconsistent – in places. To look at Hick and probability in focus, however, we must look through the lens of his general approach to epistemological issues.
The Quest for the Historical Nicodemus
Authors: Cantwell Laurence
Published: October 2008

The quest for the historical Jesus was assumed by Schweitzer to have started from Reimarus in the eighteenth century; in fact it began with Mary, John, Peter, Caiaphas and many others in the first, and was found by them to be futile and doomed to frustration. The Gospels are a witness, all the stronger for being unreflective, implicit and probably unwitting, that Jesus was impossible to know as men are known. The Gospels tell you what people heard Jesus say, and what they saw him do. They record the effect he had on people, the things he prompted and provoked them to do and say. They enable you to know about Jesus, about his teaching, his activity and even his emotions. But to know Jesus, to enter his mind and heart, to see the world from his point of view, they recognized to be not susceptible to ordinary human empathy, and therefore to be beyond the scope of their narrative. Knowing Jesus is an act of faith and spiritual recognition or it is nothing. Getting to know others is a human gift, but getting to know Jesus is the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The Onus of Proof in Arguments About the Problem of Evil
Authors: Fitzpatrick F. J.
Published: October 2008

Faced with the problem of evil, theistic philosophers, in their endeavour to show that religious belief is coherent and tenable, usually produce an argument running along the following lines: The presence of evil in the world is justified by the fact that some evils are positively required for the achievement of a certain good (or, perhaps, certain goods) which God wants to achieve; and this good is of such great value as to make the evils which we encounter well worth enduring. Since, then (so the argument goes), the evils of this world are necessary conditions for the attainment of much greater good, God is justifed in permitting their occurrence.
Literal and Figurative Language of God
Authors: Whittaker John H.
Published: October 2008

One of the most peculiar features of the belief in God is the accompanying claim that God is an indescribable mystery, an object of faith but never an object of knowledge. In certain contexts – in worship, for example – this claim undoubtedly serves a useful purpose; and so I do not want to dismiss the idea altogether. But when pious remarks about the ineffable nature of God are taken out of context and turned into philosophy, the result is usually an epistemological muddle. The trouble, of course, is that those who insist on God's mysteriousness still manage to say all sorts of things about him; he is an incorporeal spirit, he created the world, he loves his creatures, and so on. To assert these things is to presume some understanding of God, but no understanding is possible if God is completely incomprehensible. So if that is how it is, if the object of religious belief is utterly incomprehensible, then it makes no sense to say – or believe – anything about God.
Metaphor amongst tropes
Authors: Martin Janet
Published: October 2008

Despite years of philosophical preoccupation with language, figurative discourse remains a sadly neglected topic. Biblical scholars and theologians still make use of a rag–bag of terms such as myth, metaphor, image, allegory, and analogy according to their own lights, with little or no help from philosophers in distinguishing or relating the categories involved. Too often these terms are used as equivalents.
Mysticism versus Philosophy in earlier Islamic History: The Al–Tūsi, Al–Qūnawi correspondence
Authors: Chittick William C.
Published: October 2008

To say ‘mysticism versus philosophy’ in the context of Islamic civilization means something far different from what it has come to signify in the West, where many philosophers have looked upon mysticism as the abandonment of any attempt to reconcile religious data with intelligent thought. Certainly the Muslim mystics and philosophers sometimes display a certain mutual opposition and antagonism, but never does their relationship even approach incompatibility.
Some Remarks about the Embodiment of God
Authors: Hunt W.Murray
Published: October 2008

In two recent articles Grace M. (Dyck) Jantzen has argued that an embodied God could be both a being worthy of worship (in the Judaeo-Christian tradition) and omnipresent. In arguing for neither of these claims has she attempted to prove that God (if he exists) is embodied, or even that God (if he exists) must be embodied. Rather, she has urged acceptance of the more modest claim there is no good reason for denying the possible embodiment of God (if he exists) on grounds either connected with his being a worthy object of worship or in terms of a supposed entailment of incorporeality on God's omnipresence. Yet contemporary thinkers with as radically divergent views about God as Kai Nielsen and Father Copleston forward ‘the argument that an embodied God is inadequate for sophisticated theism’; and, Jantzen avers, there is a ‘widespread belief that if God is indeed omnipresent, as we are clearly taught in Scripture, then that doctrine of omnipresence entails immediately that God must be incorporeal’. The purpose of my remarks in this note is not to dispute Jantzen's conclusions, but to question the strength and/or satisfactoriness of some of her arguments for those conclusions. Perhaps the most pervading misgiving arises over her unquestioned equating of ‘embodiment’ with ‘having a body’. Surely at first blush such synonymy appears both obvious and innocuous. But where the notion of embodiment itself is the crux of the issue, careful reflection needs to be given to just what the notion involves. Yet she simply accepts the synonymy ‘without any further ado, as though it were just obviously true’, just as she accuses Findlay of doing regarding ‘the claim that only a being who exists necessarily would be worthy of our worship’.
The Flew–Nielsen Challenge: A Critical Exposition of its Methodology
Authors: Colwell Gary
Published: October 2008

Nearly three decades have passed since Antony Flew first issued his now famous falsification challenge: ‘What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?’ The purpose of the question is to challenge the sophisticated believer to describe a state of affairs in which a basic putative theistic assertion like ‘God exists’ would be false. If the believer admits that he cannot provide such a description then, Flew would argue, he is admitting that at least his putative theistic assertion is compatible with every state of affairs; consequently it is factually meaningless. The reason for this is that every factually significant assertion must deny that some describable state of affairs obtains. To illustrate, just as when we draw a circle we simultaneously draw in and draw out two particular areas, so when we state a fact we simultaneously deny a fact(s). Here is the difficulty, Flew would say, in which the sophisticated believer puts himself when he uses putative theistic assertions: factually he denies nothing, hence factually he asserts nothing.
The Śaiva Mystic and the Symbol of Androgyny
Authors: Olson Carl
Published: October 2008

In probably the earliest Upanisad text, one learns that at the beginning of the world there was only Ātman in the form of a person. Discovering that only he existed, he declared ‘I am’. After losing his fear of being alone, he found that he did not have pleasure because of his solitary condition. Thereupon, he divided himself and became a man and a woman. When the two beings copulated other beings and forms of life were produced. Thus the original universal principle is androgynous. By knowing itself, it became all that there is in the universe. The philosophical implication of this myth is that he who knows that he is Brahman becomes the All. It is unclear, however, whether or not the author of this section of the text means to imply that the one who knows becomes androgynous.
Thoughts on the Gnosis of St John
Authors: Findlay J. N.
Published: October 2008

The background and purpose of this paper require some explanation. It is not the product of a New Testament scholar, able to weigh and balance theories as to date, origin and doctrinal background of the text attributed to St John, nor to assess the identification of its author with the beloved Disciple elsewhere mentioned or with the author of the Apocalypse, nor to consider his relationship to Gnostics or Stoics or Essenes or other influences in the contemporary Jewish or Christian ambience. It is only the effort of one who recognizes in St John's Gospel, if read with an appropriate hermeneutic, a supreme mystico-religious document which can provide guidance at every turn of the spiritual life, but which, if read in another manner, becomes only the expression of a hard-line particularism, which is not less unacceptable in that it acclaims a particular standing in a special relation to another particular on which we all depend for our existence and for all our properties. Conceive of God, or the supreme object of worship, as a particular among particulars, and as much other than ourselves as other things and persons are other, and religious reverence becomes a repugnant form of heteronomous idolatry, wrought up, moreover, with the blind acceptance of a large number of historic and cosmic myths. But conceive of God as being something beyond category-differences, and which as much transcends particularity as it transcends any form of abstract universality, and which incorporates in strict identity all those values of Truth, Love, Beauty, Justice, etc. which are all simply universality in action, and which, moreover, as much transcends personality and personal relationships as it also may have in them its supreme expression, and religion and worship at once acquire a perfect sense and reference.
On Grading Religions
Authors: Hick John , Wood H. G.
Published: October 2008

The idea of grading religions and placing them in an order of merit is to some repugnant, as involving a pretence to a divine perspective, whilst to others it seems entirely natural and proper, at least to the extent of their confidently assessing their own religion more highly than all others. We shall have to consider precisely what it is that might be graded, and in what respects and by what criteria. But if we think for a moment of the entire range of religious phenomena, no one is going to maintain that they are all on the same level of value or validity. Indeed the most significant religious figures, the founders and reformers of great traditions, have invariably been deeply critical of some of the religious ideas and practices around them. Thus Gautama rejected the idea of the eternal atman or soul, which was integral to the religious thought of India in his time; the great Hebrew prophets criticised mere outward observances and sacrifices, proclaiming that what the Lord requires is to ‘let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5: 24); Jesus, in the same tradition, attacked the formalism and insincerity of some of the religious leaders of his own time who ‘tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God’ (Luke 11: 42); Muhammad rejected the polytheism of his contemporary Arabian society; Guru Nanak in India and Martin Luther in Europe attacked much in the accumulated traditions into which they were born; and so on. Thus some kind of assessing of religious phenomena seems to be a corollary of deep religious seriousness and openness to the divine.
The Natural Roots of Religious Experience
Authors: Clarke W. Norris
Published: October 2008

This paper is devoted to the task of exploring just what there is in man's nature which makes it possible for him to be open to religious experience, to be positively disposed to receive it. By ‘natural’ here I mean only that which all men are in fact endowed with when they enter this present world of human history before they enter into any particular religious context. Hence I am not going to get involved in the difficult theological controversy as to whether this initial endowment includes only what is due to human nature as a created nature or also some supernatural extra gift of God as orienting man in a special way towards himself in this existential historical order, which could have been otherwise. What he begins life with in the present historical order I shall call natural, whatever its origin.What I mean by ‘religious experience’ must be left somewhat vague, so as to include its many varieties. Let us describe it roughly as any direct existential awareness of the presence or activity of an ultimate, absolute, transcendent dimension of reality, especially the more intense forms of unitive awareness of this Transcendent which have traditionally been called ‘mystical experience’. Before beginning our exploration, let me stress that my purpose here is not to establish or validate that there is such a thing as authentic religious experience. I presuppose that as known or accepted from elsewhere, at least as a hypothesis for discussion.
The Obligation to Believe
Authors: Brinton Alan
Published: October 2008

Do we ever have an obligation to choose to hold beliefs, religious or otherwise? The relations between belief, volition and moral responsibility are the subject of William James' widely discussed essay ‘The Will to Believe’. James first takes up the relationship between volition and belief: Does it make sense to speak of choosing to believe a proposition? His answer is that it does, in the sense that we can choose to act in ways which encourage the production of a believing attitude in ourself. For example, we can be selective in attending to evidence, and we can incline ourselves toward belief by acting as though we already believe. By avoiding certain influences and subjecting ourself to others, we can encourage the development of belief. In so doing, we in effect treat ourself as a third person, and our behaviour is analogous to what we might engage in when encouraging others toward favourable evidence. The question of moral responsibility then becomes appropriate in our own case in a way analogous to that in which it does with respect to our belief-producing actions toward others. Just as the deception of others raises moral questions, so does the deception of ourselves.
Can the Argument from Evil be Decisive after all?
Authors: Lugenbehl Dale
Published: October 2008

The argument from evil is an argument which attempts to prove that God does not exist by arguing that the amount of evil (pain, suffering, injustice) in the world is incompatible with the existence ofan all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect being. Theists have traditionally responded to this argument by saying that God is not morally responsible for failure to prevent evil because he cannot do so consistently with maintaining human free agency, because the evil is necessary to build our personal character and develop our talents, because it is necessary to provide a test of our faith, etc.
The Nature of Mystical Experience
Authors: Overall Christine
Published: October 2008

In the philosophy of mysticism, an important and foundational problem concerns the nature of mystical experience. The problem is both significant and basic because an understanding of the nature of mystical experience is a necessary precondition for the evaluation of its epistemological, ontological, and ethical significance, and will in fact influence that evaluation. In other words, our ideas about the nature of mystical experience are premises for our conclusions about the role of mystical experience in human knowledge, about the ‘object (s)’, if any, of mystical experience, and about the value and moral implications of mystical experience.
Stanley L. Jaki's Critique of Physics
Authors: Sharpe Kevin J.
Published: October 2008

Disorder and suffering are increasing significantly in our society. Violent crime, unemployment, escape through drug-taking are all on the increase. It is apparent, also, that much of this disorder and suffering, and the anxiety it fosters, is rooted in science and its technological off-spring. The un-employment produced by a micro-technology is only one small example. It is also apparent that one of the principal foundation stones for the scientific enterprise was Christianity.
Discussion – Infallibility
Authors: Martinich A. P.
Published: October 2008

Patrick McGrath has argued that my defence of papal infallibility does not succeed. His basic strategy is to establish that, contrary to my arguments, infallible papal utterances are statements and not merely declarations. He wants this result in order to go on to show that the Pope, in possession of no priviliged epistemic access to the world, is not infallible. I agree that the Pope has no priviliged epistemic access; so that is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the fundamental question of whether infallible papal utterances are statements or declarations. I want to show that McGrath's arguments against my position do not work. If I am successful, then the Pope's infallibility is secure.
Zen, Wittgenstein and Neo-orthodox Theology: The Problem of Communicating Truth in Zen Buddhism
Authors: Cheng Hsueh-Li
Published: October 2008

One of the problems religious men and philosophers often face is how to convey enlightenment or wisdom to others so that sentient beings can be enlightened or awakened from dogmatic views. This problem is also the question of how truth (the Word of God or Buddha's Dharma) is made known to men. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of communicating truth in Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism.
Why the Incarnation is a Superfluous Detail for Kierkegaard
Authors: Levine Michael P.
Published: October 2008

Why does the paradox (i.e. the incarnation) play such a crucial role in Kierkegaard's notion of truth as subjectivity? Richard Schacht explains it as follows:

Eternal happiness is possible for a man only if it is possible for him to relate himself to God. A man, however, is a being who exists in time; and it would not be possible for such a being to enter into a ‘God-relationship’ if God had not also at some point existed in time. Through the ‘leap of faith’ in which one affirms the proposition that God did exist in time, one is able to enter a ‘God-relationship’ and thereby attains ‘an eternal happiness’.
Josiah Royce, a Source of New Insight for Religion Today
Authors: Kegley Jacquelyn Ann
Published: October 2008

Josiah Royce wrote three major works dealing with religion, The Religious Aspects of Philosophy, The Sources of Religious Insight and The Problem of Christianity. In these are insights which I believe need to be recalled today in order to achieve a fresher vision of the nature of religion and more particularly of the nature of Christianity. Moreover, Royce treats various aspects of individual and communal development which I believe are of some philosophic importance.
On Disembodied Resurrected Persons: A Reply
Authors: Reichenbach Bruce R.
Published: October 2008

In a recent article in Religious Studies, Professor P. W. Gooch attempts to wean the orthodox Christian from anthropological materialism by consideration of the question of the nature of the post-mortem person in the resurrection. He argues that the view that the resurrected person is a psychophysical organism who is in some physical sense the same as the ante-mortem person is inconsistent with the Pauline view of the resurrected body; rather, according to him, Paul's view is most consistent with that which affirms the disembodied survival of the person. ‘I want to argue’, he writes, ‘for the thesis that a Pauline resurrection body may well be ontologically the same as a disembodied person (204).’ I intend to show that Professor Gooch has failed to provide any support for this view and indeed that his own view falls prey to the criticisms which he has raised against other views.
Reply to Professor Reichenbach
Authors: Gooch P. W.
Published: October 2008

In the above reply Professor Reichenbach repeatedly announces or suggests that my thesis is this: the view that persons are resurrected in some physical sense is inconsistent with the Pauline view of the resurrected body. Having consulted both my original intentions and my text, I must affirm again my basic point in section III of the article: the belief that resurrected persons are not embodied is not incompatible with what Paul says about resurrected bodies. While not wishing to attribute such a belief to Paul himself (pp. 205, 211), I claimed that seeing resurrected persons as non-corporeal is a ‘supportable interpretation’ of the Pauline concept (p. 205), not forbidden by the text (p. 211), whereas the materiality of the resurrected body is ‘not necessarily implied’ (p. 209). So, of two interpretations, I have not attempted to show one inconsistent with the text; I have instead tried to argue that a rival interpretation is also consistent with the same text.
The Doctrines of a Religious Community About Other Religions
Authors: Dinoia J. A.
Published: October 2008

A member of a religious community might have occasion to ask of the teachers in his community: What do we have to say about other religions? What is the value of their beliefs and ways of life as compared with ours? How are we to regard other religous people? How are we to act towards them?
The Student of Religion as Critic: A Marxist View
Authors: Thrower James
Published: October 2008

That the study of religion can be pursued and, as a matter of fact, has been pursued, from a variety of standpoints - some overt and some covert - is today something of an uncomfortable commonplace to those involved in teaching Religionswissenschaft and Religionsgeschichte in Western university departments of Religious Studies. In thus exhibiting a diversity of approach the study of religion is, however, not alone among the humane disciplines: the study of history, of politics, of society, of art and of literature are equally beset by problems of Problematik and of methodology that take up much of the time and much of the energy of their practitioners. The student of each of these disciplines must confront, both at the outset of his studies and continually throughout their pursuit, questions relating to point, purpose and meaning, and in the study of any of the disciplines I have mentioned - of history, literature, art, politics, society and, today, we must add, of science also - there is in the contemporary Western world little, if any, agreement among those involved in the pursuit of learning in these areas either on the Problematik - that is, on the questions to be put to the material that forms the subject matter of the discipline concerned, or about the methods to be employed in describing, understanding, analysing and ultimately synthesising the material of these disciplines into a coherent and meaningful whole.
Faith and History: A Critique of Recent Dogmatics
Authors: Thomas J. C.
Published: October 2008

A great deal of modern Protestant theology looks very much like an attempt to conduct a salvage operation which is designed to make clear how it is possible to retain belief in Jesus Christ, and at the same time remain intellectually honest. For the same sceptical challenge which faces the secular historian also faces the theologian. If Christians are correct in arguing that the locus of God's revelation to man is in Jesus of Nazareth, then in order to know about this supposed revelation, it is necessary to know about a period of time in the past; it is necessary to know the history of the man's life and actions. Theologians are therefore faced with the question: how, if at all, is it possible to bridge the logical gap between statements describing what Jesus of Nazareth said and did, and statements describing the evidence for what Jesus of Nazareth said and did. The solution found to this question by theologians tends to be determined by their conscious and unconscious philosophical presuppositions; just as it did in the examples discussed above of secular critical philosophies of history.
Towards a New Dialectic of Religions
Authors: Meynell Hugo
Published: October 2008

‘Dialectic’ or ‘dialectics’ has been defined as the ‘art of investigating the truth of opinions, testing of truth by discussion’. What can usefully be said about the art of investigating or testing the truth of religious opinions by discussion?
God and the Tao
Authors: Chryssides George D.
Published: October 2008

In his highly important work I and ThouMartin Buber speaks of God as the ‘Eternal Thou’, ‘who can only be addressed, not asserted’. Buber might therefore aptly be described as an ‘anti-theologian’: one may legitimately enter into a relationship with God, which is the appropriate response, but any attempt to theorize about God is not simply irreverent or excessively academic, but a genuine impossibility. At best, statements about God can only be understood ‘allegorically’.
A Neglected Argument For Immortality
Authors: Sherry Patrick
Published: October 2008

The claim has often been made over the centuries that the presence of the spirit of God, seen especially in saintly people, is an anticipation of immortality. My purpose in this paper is to see why this claim is made and to lay bare the structure of the argument which underlies it. Although there has been a renewed interest in the question of immortality, both among philosophers and theologians in recent years, this particular aspect of it has been neglected.

The claim being discussed is not, as we shall see, restricted to Christianity; and even within the Christian religion it is expressed in many different ways. John Wesley, for instance, says in his sermonOn the Holy Spirit:
Can Theological Language Have Hidden Meaning?
Authors: Morreall John
Published: October 2008

Any reflective account of theological language acknowledges very early that words drawn from our experience with creatures have special meanings when applied to God. Because God transcends the created world, we cannot take predicates which apply to creatures and apply them to God without modification. And the more transcendent God is understood to be, the more modified will our language taken from creatures have to be when it is used in theology. A primitive theism which thinks of God simply as a very powerful person will view the difference between God and creatures as merely a matter of degree and not of kind. In such a view God transcends things in the world only in that he has a greater degree of the properties we find in creatures, so that predicates taken from creatures, ‘wise’ and ‘strong’, for example, can be applied to God in almost a straightforward way. The only change in meaning is that God is moreknowing and stronger. In a more sophisticated theism such as Judaism or Christianity, on the other hand, God' transcendence is seen not simply as a difference in degrees of properties, but as a difference in kind. The being God is is radically other than the kinds of beings we find in the created world. Indeed, it is sometimes claimed that God is not even ‘a being’, a thing which exists; rather God is ‘being itself’, ‘pure existence’. Aquinas, for instance, held that God does not haveproperties. God is absolutely simple, and so if we can talk about properties at all in talking about God, we have to say that God is identical to God' properties. God, too, differs radically from creatures in that he is not in time and space, nor is he dependent on anything else. But our language used with creatures is full of explicit or implicit references to time and space and to dependence, so that we cannot take our ordinary terms derived from our experience with spatio-temporal, dependent creatures and apply them straightforwardly to God.
Pascal's Wager as an Argument for Not Believing in God
Authors: Martin Michael
Published: October 2008

Can Pascal's wager for the existence of God be turned against the religious believer and used as an argument for not believing in God? Although such an argument has been very briefly sketched by others its details have remained undeveloped. In this paper this argument is worked out in detail in the context of decision theory and is defended against objections. The result is a plausible argument for atheism.
On Grading Religions, Seeking Truth, and Being Nice to People – A Reply to Professor Hick
Authors: Griffiths Paul , Lewis Delmas
Published: October 2008

Professor Hick's recent contribution to Religious Studies, ‘On Grading Religions’, is, like all his work, lucidly written and full of philosophical meat. A complete discussion of his paper in the light of his earlier work would require a lengthy study for which there is no space here; the intention of this short reply to Professor Hick is different. We feel that the view expressed in this and other works of Professor Hick's is in danger of becoming the conventional wisdom about the functions of reason in assessing religious truth-claims among philosophers of religion on both sides of the Atlantic, and that this should not be permitted to happen without some wider ventilation of the extremely important philosophical issues at stake. This reply is thus an attempt to stimulate controversy and to explore alternatives.
Landscape, Consciousness, and Culture
Authors: Gualtieri Antonio R.
Published: October 2008

A longstanding but inchoate preoccupation of mine is the geography of religions. How are landscape and religious faith related? In the context of this question, the definition of religion with which I work entails two considerations: first, what landscape features are incorporated into traditional religious symbol systems? I shall make a few observations about this geographic symbology below. Second, what is the existential connection between landscape and personal faith, i.e. between physical land features and human perceptions, values and commitments. It is this latter enquiry that is the main concern of this paper.
A Science of Pure Consciousness?
Authors: Franklin R. L.
Published: October 2008

I have come to believe that the whole framework of our current thought is about to begin a long and radical transformation, based on what I shall call a new science of pure consciousness. The content of most of the matters to be considered by this science have hitherto been the concern of some areas of religion, particularly what in our culture we call ‘mysticism’; but the treatment of it would legitimately be called scientific. Thus one aspect of the transformation would be to overcome that apparent conflict between ‘science’ and ‘religion’, which has been so characteristic of our culture over the last few centuries.
Theism, Evil and the Onus of Proof – Reply to F. J. Fitzpatrick
Authors: O' Connor David
Published: October 2008

The theism which I consider in this paper is one which affirms each of the three following propositions: ‘God exists’, ‘Omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection are all defining traits of God’ and ‘Evil exists in the world’. I will not be concerned at all with any variety of theism which might deny the truth of any of the foregoing propositions. Broadly put, my concern, therefore, is with orthodox, traditional theism.
Newman and the ‘Ethics of Belief’
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie
Published: October 2008

The last thirty years have seen a number of major contributions to the philosophical discussion of the possibility and character of an ‘ethics of belief’. In so far as the concern was focused on the problem of what constitutes ‘sufficient’ or ‘insufficient evidence’, the question of the ‘ethics of belief’ has turned into the current philosophical preoccupation with the question of the character of ‘rationality’ and the possibility of criteria of rationality which are either universal or at least cross-contextual. On the other hand, in so far as the concern was focused on the debated thesis that ‘believing is subject to moral appraisal (including the determination of “duties” to believe)’ the question of the ‘ethics of belief’ is with us today as the double inquiry into the question of the ‘will to believe’ and the relation of belief to action. Though the two concerns are not entirely separable, I will pay more explicit attention in this paper to the latter one in assessing some recent claims concerning the position held by John Henry Newman on these matters. After addressing some of the main points in the modern philosophical discussion of the ‘ethics of belief’, I will attempt to clarify Newman's place in the ‘ethics of belief’ discussion and argue that recent evaluations of Newman misrepresent his position in crucial ways and obscure his contributions to that discussion.