bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Problem of Evil and Modern Philosophy — I
Authors: Davies Brian 
Published: July 2007

God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good. But there is a great deal of evil in the world. People inflict suffering on others and on themselves. And there is suffering which is not caused by what anybody does. So must we not conclude that there can, after all, be no God? This question is an ancient one, but in what follows, I shall briefly try to indicate how it has been answered by modem philosophers of religion. Then I shall comment on the answers to which I refer.One popular line of reasoning holds that in view of the existence of evil God’s existence is simply disprovable. The charge here is that someone who believes in God is caught in a straight logical contradiction given that he also accepts that evil is a reality. Many modem philosophers take this line (which is, incidentally, sharply raised as a topic for discussion by St Thomas Aquinas in Question 2 of the First Part of the Summa Theologiae). H J McClos- key, for example, writes:
Evil is a problem for the theist in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil, on the one hand, and the belief in the omnipotence and perfection of God on the other.The late John Mackie expresses a similar viewpoint. He says:
... it can be shown, not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively irrational, that the several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another ... In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.
Stories of the Soul
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

When it comes to the crunch, how does one know what other people are thinking, feeling etc? One way — the classical modern-philosophical way — of dealing with this question is to say that one knows what others are thinking etc. from analogy with one’s own case. Another way, however, is to go back to the Aristotelian conception of the soul as form of the body — which rules out radical scepticism about other people’s minds. In comparison with the Platonic story, at any rate, Aristotle’s view seems like plain common sense. On the other hand, the imaginative power of the Platonic story is so immense that liberation from it cannot be easily achieved. It is possible to read Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as an intervention in this long debate. By resorting to St Augustine’s picture of how (why) an infant acquires language, as he does at the beginning of the Investigations, isn’t Wittgenstein inviting his readers to learn to tell a different story about the soul from the one that is so entrenched in the Christian spiritual tradition?Scepticism about our knowledge of other people’s minds, feelings, etc., may thus be met by the argument that one infers the existence of such hidden entities from analogy with one’s own case. But this concedes far too much to scepticism. This argument remains under the spell of the myth of the homunculus peeping suspiciously through the eyelet-holes of his face-mask at the surrounding horde of similarly masked creatures, all no doubt engaged in equivalent inferences. One alternative to this radically paranoid-solipsist conception is to return to the relatively ‘physicalist’ approach to be found in Aristotle (and perhaps, by qualified extrapolation, in Thomas Aquinas).
Archetypes, Stereotypes and Humanity
Authors: Thomas Ronwyn Goodsir 
Published: July 2007

The work of C. G. Jung, in particular his theory of female and male archetypes, has had a marked influence on the way women and men see themselves in modem society. This influence has been particularly noticeable among some feminist writers, especially those with religious interests. How much reliance should be placed on this theory of Jung’s is debatable in the light of modern philosophical and anthropological thought. There are, of course, serious difficulties in any discussion of archetypes. As Jung himself said, “The archetypal representations (images and ideas) — Should not be confused with the archetypes as such. . . Every archetype, when represented to the mind is already conscious and therefore differs to an indeterminate extent from that which caused the representation.” In view of the changes that have been taking place in human consciousness in recent years and the fact that there is the possibility that these changes may lead to changes in human understanding, it may be helpful to examine Jung’s writing on the Syzygy. Anima and Animus, in relation to present day philosophical and anthropological thinking.A dictionary defines an archetype as “the original pattern from which copies are made — a prototype”; a stereotype is “something copied or constantly repeated without change”. It is in relation to the differences between these two concepts that Jung’s theory of male and female archetypal representations will be considered, for Jung claims that in his theory he has uncovered the original pattern of the female and male psyches i.e. archetypes.
Schillebeeckx's Anatomy of Experience
Authors: Lefébure Marcus 
Published: July 2007

I should like to begin this paper on a personal note. I suppose it was in my late teens that God began to make a really personal claim on me and over the next four years or so I found that more and more of what I experienced and read spoke to me of God — not only the Mass and spiritual books but all my experience and reading: travelling in the London underground in the rush hour as well as visits to the country; my first experience of girls as well as my discovery of contemplation; films, novels, articles in the secular as well as Catholic journals. It was as if my experience of the present enabled me to begin to understand what I received from my culture and Christian past, but also as if what I thus, so variously and fragmentarily, received from the past put in question, corrected and filled out what I experienced in the present. Present and past thus interacted, sometimes challengingly, sometimes consolingly, sometimes shockingly, but vitally. Everything tended to become a medium and an occasion of the experience of God.Then I entered the Order and was gradually initiated into traditional Church studies, and little by little I had it impressed on me that the right and proper way to become a theologically-minded persdn was to start from the beginning in the person of Jesus Christ and the Scriptures and then to move through the various reformulations of this fontal inspiration in the various forms of the Tradition (to be spelled now, I discovered, with a capital T).
Animals in Heaven?
Authors: Quinn Edward 
Published: July 2007

“Fido is wagging his tail in heaven to-night”. According to Evelyn Waugh, this was the greeting sent out from Forest Lawn to the owners on the anniversaries of their pets buried in the cemetrey. No one, of course, asked if the owners would also deserve a place in heaven if they had killed their dogs by overfeeding or whether the latter would have the joy of interrupting the heavenly choirs by their barking. But the false assumption behind this attitude was perhaps less the hope of reunion with animal friends than the idea of a heaven where we shall all congregate cosily with our pets and former neighbours. If some of us do not relish the prospect of an eternal menagerie, can we nevertheless in all charity welcome the company of human beings who never hurt us but often threaten to bore us to death?Even from traditional theology we get the impression that we shall not be troubled with bores, but equally that our joy in the beatific vision will be solitary and even then frustrated by the delay in the restoration of the body or by a reunion with the soul to which it will be no more than a glorified appendage. We look for the restoration of the whole personality, redeemed in Christ and therefore in Christ’s company and in the company of those we have loved on earth. The lonely person in particular asks if the affection of his or her pet, expressed in an outstretched paw, in a purring response, is not somehow transfigured also and not forever extinguished.
John Hick's Copernican Revolution: Ten Years After
Authors: Costa Gavin D. 
Published: July 2007

It was in 1973, in his book God and the Universe of Faiths, that Professor John Hick argued for a Copernican revolution in the Christian theology of religions. His argument met quite a lot of criticism, and it is fairly widely thought that the debate is today a dead one. How true is this?In his book he characterised as “Ptolemaic” the view which has been allegedly held for at least the last “fifteen centuries” which proclaims that “all men, of whatever race or culture, must become Christians if they are to be saved”. He cites the Decree of the Council of Florence (1438—1445) which upheld the traditional Catholic position, summed up in the axiom, extra eeclesiam nulla salus—there is no salvation outside the Church. He maintains that Vatican II and modem theologians such as Karl Rahner propound further epicycles of the same Ptolemaic view, as they still assume “without question that salvation is only in Christ and through incorporation into his mystical body, the Church”. He feels that there is little difference between Roman Catholics and Protestant positions on this issue.The Ptolemaic system held that the earth was at the centre of the universe and explained the movement of the planets (which did not conform to the theory) through “epicycles”. The increasing number of epicycles rendered the Ptolemaic view less and less plausible until finally the Copernican view, in its simple explanation of the facts by the theory that the sun rather than the earth was the centre of the universe, replaced it.
Chenu's Little Book
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

Chenu is ninety. Although he may remain far less renowned in the English-speaking world than many of his juniors, such as Congar and de Lubac among his compatriots, not to mention Rahner, Lonergan, Hans Küng, and perhaps Hans Urs von Balthasar now, his intervention in the history of reading Aquinas, as well as the part that he played in the profound shift of Catholic consciousness that was precipitated by Vatican II, may well hold much greater promise of continuing significance.What that significance might be is suggested by the republication, at the insistence of some of his friends, of the small book which he published in 1937, and which the Holy Office placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1942.(As a young Dominican, in 1958, I remember being admonished by the librarian, the late Fr Cornelius Ernst, who had himself drawn my attention to it, that, although the book stood on the open shelves of the study-house library, I needed special permission to read it. The Index was abolished in 1966.)
Paradox and Paradigms: defending the case for a revolution in theology of religions
Authors: Loughlin Gerard 
Published: July 2007

Thus Hick has shown little reason to change the traditional Christian paradigm of the world religions from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican model of the universe of faiths; from a system with Christ and his church at the centre, around which the other religions revolve, to a Copernican model with all the religions, including Christianity, revolving around the central mystery of ultimate reality. It must be said that D’Costa’s critique is both powerful and ingenious. But is it correct?In a recent article in New Blackfriars, Gavin D’Costa argued that Professor John Hick’s call for a Copernican revolution in the Christian theology of religions is both unnecessary and incoherent. It is unnecessary because the paradox it is intended to resolve can be met without radically changing Christianity’s traditional selfunderstanding; and incoherent because it assumes a premise denied by its conclusion, namely the Christian conception of an all-loving God definitively revealed in Jesus Christ.In order to answer our question we must first assess whether or not Hick’s argument has been adequately represented. For we will be in danger of wrongly dismissing Hick’s call for a Copernican revolution if we have not rightly understood the reasons which have led him to make it. And it is precisely at this point that we may suspect several of Hick’s commentators and critics, including D’Costa, of misunderstanding the nature and force of the considerations that weigh with Hick—and should be weighed by us when considering his proposal.
Pohier's Apologia
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

Finding myself at Le Saulchoir, the French Dominican study-house near Paris, towards the end of September 1962, was a daunting and exciting experience. My first meal, in the meticulous asceticism of that lofty gymnasium-like refectory, consisted of half an artichoke, a lump of cheese, and as much thin beer as one wanted. A month later, as complaining letters home would confirm, I felt hungry, cold, lonely, alien, and profoundly depressed by the oppressive weight of lectures. The liturgy, with its drilled schola, ran with praetorian precision. When my week came to preside at the conventual mass I was told that my performance was ‘détraqué’ and ‘relâché’—and these were not complimentary epithets. At the end of the academic year I was told that my dissertation was too ‘literary’—that I needed to be more ‘scientific’. With the two laid-back Brazilians and the three irrepressible Dutchmen, I constituted the handful, in this pagoda of exact ceremonial and dedicated cerebration, who knew that other Dominican ways were possible.On the other hand, with sermons and lectures by Chenu, Congar, and so many others of that character, in the inaugural year of the Council, how could I not delight at being in a great theological power-station at such a time? The lectures were often dreary—but I remain grateful to have had that experience of good old-fashioned Thomist scholasticism. I shall not forget my excitement at Claude Geffré’s exposition of Thomas Aquinas on the Passion of Christ, or the recreation of his treatise on the Virtue of Charity by Jacques Pohier ...
Dear, Dear Maude
Authors: Hebblethwaite Peter 
Published: July 2007

Baron Friedrich von Huegel wrote to Maude Domenica Petre in February 1910:My dear, dear Maude,You, now that Fr. T. is gone, are about the only English Catholic, with whom I have felt, with whom I feel, profoundly at one in these most complex and straining transition-problems (Michael de la Bedoyère, The Life of Baron von Huegel, p. 240).Fr. T. was of course George Tyrrell, who had died, excomunicated in 1909. Maude, born in 1863, belonged to an old Catholic family which had combined dying for the Pope with a tradition of Cisalpine resistance to intolerable papal decrees. In childhood she resolved to become, when she grew up, a saint, a philosopher and a martyr (p. 6). When doubts assailed her, a learned Jesuit recommended that she should go to Rome to study the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas.Off she went, accompanied by a chaperon, and her puzzled aunt, Lady Lindsay, used to explain to inquisitive friends: ‘Maude has gone to Rome to study for the priesthood’ (p. 8). Though she wrote ceaselessly and well, her books have long been unobtainable. She has been referred to and exploited in all writings on the Modernist crisis, but she has always appeared as a subordinate figure, the devoted slave of Tyrrell and vestal virgin guarding his sacred flame. Clyde F. Crews has written the first book’ which treats her as interesting in her own right, and not merely as an appendage of others.She emerges with enhanced reputation from this full-scale treatment.
Raised a Spiritual Body: bodily resurrection according to Paul
Authors: Pamment Margaret 
Published: July 2007

The aim of this study is to understand what Paul means by his statement about the resurrection in I Corinthians 15:44: ‘It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body’. We must examine Paul’s use of the terms body (soma), physical (psychikon and psyche) and spiritual (pneumatikon and pneuma). One of the fullest recent expositions of Pauline usage is Robert Jewett’s Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Brill 1971), which criticises idealistic treatments of the subject and seeks definitions in particular historical settings. This is a sensible approach to the subject, since it allows for both development and contradiction, but it meets with the difficulties that we do not know for certain which of the epistles attributed to Paul are really Pauline; and we know neither in what circumstances nor in which order they were written.Most sholars agree with Jewett in judging Ephesians, Colossians and the Pastoral epistles to be Deutero-Pauline, and I shall not include references from them in my argument. I have not followed Jewett in attempting to define the development of Pauline thought in terms of an historical schema, but have noted related uses together, in order to show the range of particular kinds of usage more clearly.
A Relationship of a New Kind: Marxism as a Transcendental Atheism
Authors: Hoffman John 
Published: July 2007

The atheistic character of Marxism has often been regarded as an obstruction to dialogue and debate between Marxists and Christians. A recent contributor to this discussion suggests that if Marx has anything to offer Christians, it is ‘in spite of his atheism’, while others have pressed for a modus vivendi between science and faith; materialism and religion. Yet the atheism of the Marxist tradition is, I want to argue, an atheism which ‘transcends’. It is an atheism which translates the preoccupations of world religions into the language of a dialectical science and in this way offers a way out of the conceptual rigidities in which conventional materialists and believers alike find themselves increasingly trapped. It is an atheism which is far more positive and liberating than is commonly assumed.I shall begin by presenting the Marxist case for atheism both in historical terms and as I believe it stands in logic. Once this is done, it will become clearer why Marxism has an essentially affirmative attitude to the religious heritage which it transcends.
Home Truths from Nicaragua
Authors: Alison James 
Published: July 2007

Recently the distinguished Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar accused the almost equally distinguished Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff of not believing in Jesus’s divinity, and dismissed the liberation theology of Latin America as an export from Europe. What do Church leaders who know Boff well and have an intimate understanding of the pastoral situation in Latin America think of that?Pedro Casaldaliga is not a familiar name even to those in the English speaking world who take an interest in the Latin American Church. Yet within Latin America he is one of the most highly regarded figures in the ‘radical’ wing of the Church. A spry, fifty-seven year old Spaniard, he is one of those figures that move the Latin American heart more than any other type of hero—a Catholic bishop committed to the poor. His diocese of Sao Felix in the Matto Grosso in Brazil has been the constant scene of struggles between the multinational corporations and estate-owning landlords on the one hand, and the indians and landless poor on the other. Bishop Pedro’s stance in favour of the latter has caused him to be the target of many assassination attempts. He arrived in Managua, Nicaragua, in late July to show public support for the fast being carried out by the foreign minister, Father Miguel “Escoto, long a friend of his. As a European, though one who has lived in Brazil since 1967, he was particularly keen to draw more European attention to that struggle of which Nicaragua is the focal point.
A Mistake about Error
Authors: Hamnett Ian 
Published: July 2007

In a recent stock-taking essay on the current state of the sociology of religion, Richard Fenn writes:
The functionalist synthesis in the sociology of religion has disappeared ... Functionalism provided a privileged methodological stance from which the sociologist could interpret and transcend the accounts of groups and individuals. As a trained interpreter. the sociologist could provide a coherent text of a community’s beliefs, but as one skilled in delving below surface appearances the sociologist could also identify ‘latent’ functions and, in the process, call into question a community’s account of its own life. These methodological approaches are still adopted, but the sociologist does not enjoy a privileged position from which to put them together. The result is parallel and competing perspectives without a single viewpoint (Fenn 1982:101).Later, Fenn goes on to assert that
To abandon functionalism is therefore to abandon a privileged methodological stance and a synthetic theoretical viewpoint. Some might therefore argue that sociologists of religion have exchanged their functionalist birthright for a mess of ethnomethodological and philosophical pottage. It is unlikely that sociologists of religion will abandon the search for a privileged standpoint from which to improve on the accounts that others, lay or professional, give bf their religious activities. The claim that a sociologist’s account of a given religious group or practice is an improved and not merely adequate translation of that group’s own experience and understanding rests on the sociologist’s more direct and complete access to common sources of knowledge (1982:123—4).Most of what I want to say accords with Fenn’s account of what has happened, but presents a case against the conclusions he draws.
To be a Sociologist and a Catholic: A Reflection
Authors: Flanagan Kieran 
Published: July 2007

The total number of Catholic sociologists in Great Britain could fit comfortably at the back of the Clapham omnibus. Among the many exotic ideological species of sociologists, the feminists, the cat fanciers, and the vegetarians, it is reasonable to assume a believing Catholic could be found somewhere. Those found seem to occupy a peculiar ideological limbo, their religious and sociological gaze doomed to be misunderstood by Church and discipline alike. This tiny band of sociological hopers forms a dispersed breed, invisible in their own Church, and for some, best kept so; within their discipline, they seem as a holy huddle on a tiny rock discernable in a sea of analytical uncertainty, odd, but interesting. Doubtless every occupation carries a burden, a witness to a calling out of improbable circumstances.Although some sociologists wear their ideological beliefs heavily in public, most carry their burdens privately. Few biographies of sociologists have been written, and even fewer about those who are also Catholic. Sociologists are a reticent breed, and theologically they are unlikely to be able to say much about why they believe in Catholicism. Doubtless coming back to Catholicism was a surprise for some: maybe reading Althusser by candlelight, or an account of the ceremonies of the Dinka in bed, or spotting the moral similarities between the plight of Goffman’s actor and Job in a pub, drove some unsteadily further along the road to Damascus. To be a Catholic and a sociologist is to occupy a place not necessarily of one’s own choosing.