This research consists of two studies with interrelated objectives. The purpose of the first study is to develop and validate scales measuring whistle-blowing subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions. The objective of the second study is to test a model of whistle-blowing intentions, motivated by the theory of reasoned action, across two contrasting cultures: the collectivist Thai and the individualistic American. To achieve cross-cultural comparisons, we first perform measurement and structural invariance tests. Tests of latent mean differences lend support for our (...) prediction that individuals in the collectivist Thai culture have higher means on subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions for whistle-blowing than members of the individualist American culture. Our models indicate that subjective norms for whistle-blowing, even though significantly different for American and Thai participants, have a direct effect on whistle-blowing attitudes as well as direct and indirect effects on reporting intentions for both subject groups. Compared to American subjects, the whistle-blowing intentions of Thai participants are more strongly influenced by subjective norms for whistle-blowing. (shrink)

Although the basic ideas of the ontological argument can be found in Aristotle and Philo Judaeus, the argument received its classical formulation in Anselm's Proslogion and his Reply to the objections raised by Gaunilo. During the succeeding nine centuries the argument has had a chequered career. It was supported by some scholastic theologians but rejected by Aquinas. Descartes and Leibniz offered their own versions of the proof but Kant's refutation of the argument has generally been accepted as conclusive during the (...) past century and a half. Nevertheless, interest in the proof has never completely disappeared—perhaps provoked by Aquinas' suggestion that the proof may be valid for God even though it cannot be valid for us because of the inadequacy of our knowledge of God. Recently there has been a revival of interest in the ontological argument. J. N. Findlay put the argument into reverse to show the necessary non-existence of God in an article in 1948 but in later writings he has suggested that the argument may have positive significance. In 1960 Norman Malcolm published a paper in which he distinguished two basically different forms of the ontological argument in the Proslogion and defended the possible validity of the second of them. (shrink)

In his autobiographical-biographical study, Father and Son, Edmund Gosse describes how one evening, during his childhood, while his father was praying at - or, rather, over - his bed, a rather large insect dark and flat, with more legs than a self-respecting insect ought to need, appeared at the bottom of the counterpane, and slowly advanced… I bore it in silent fascination till it almost tickled my chin, and then I screamed ‘Papa! Papa!’. My Father rose in great dudgeon, removed (...) the insect and then gave me a tremendous lecture. 1. (shrink)

The problem of God today In some famously — some might say infamously — provocative letters from prison in June and July Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on the ...

This study looks at the various ways in which theological conclusions are affected by the rationality of those who produce them. The author's critique of the study of theology arises out of a conviction that theology has to establish its credibility as a mode of understanding if it is to be of value. In considering what follows once it is recognised that - since theologians are human - their conclusions are affected by the nature of human thought, Dr Pailin (...) offers a clarification of faith, belief and reason, and how they are related to each other. The book shows that while theology can no longer credibly pretend to divine authority in determining the truth in all disciplines, it is committed to understanding the fundamental character of reality as a whole. Against the conservative backlash in religious thought, and the secularist trend towards scepticism when references are made to the reality of God, the author takes up the challenge of current thinking to show that it is possible for theology to affirm God's reality in a positive way which is, at the same time, self-critically aware of the human character of thought. (shrink)

This book is a lively and readable introduction to the basic problems in the philosophy of religion. As well as dealing with traditional questions about the relationship between faith, belief, theology and reason, the attributes and existence of God, the possibility of immortality, the character of morality and its place in religious belief, and the significance of claims about experience, Dr Pailin discusses fundamental and searching questions about the relationship between faith and culture, the nature of interpretation, the theological (...) significance of references to the past, and the complexity of religious language. The result is an illuminating introduction whose probing honesty will challenge as well as stimulate its readers' reflections on the fundamentals of religious faith and whose references to other works will indicate to readers where they may follow up its ideas. Book jacket. (shrink)

Since theistic faith involves the notion of God as personally agential and since it faces difficulties in establishing its credibility in view both of problems in warrantably ascribing natural, historical and personal states to divine activity and of the counterevidence of evil, this paper takes up the story of a quadriplegic patient and certain remarks by Whitehead and Hartshorne to explore the viability of a concept of divine activity that is non-coercive but significant. In order to develop this concept of (...) God's agency and to warrant its credibility, the essential kenoticism of the divine is also discussed. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between theology and the natural sciences by considering four realist and five nonrealist interpretations of theological understanding. These are that theology expresses biblical affirmations, the faith of the community, revelatory declarations, or a prioriconclusions, and that it is reducible to expressions of feelings, attitudes, naturalism, liberating praxis, or moral convictions. Because these views are unsatisfactory, the author calls for an imaginative form of natural theology that shows how faith's understanding of the purpose, value, and meaning (...) of reality fits how the world is actually found to be. (shrink)

Towards the end of Way to Wisdom , after noting how specialization has fragmented modern thought, Karl Jaspers writes that One might wish for a philosophy that would encompass and assimilate the whole tradition, that would be equal to the intellectual situation of our time, that would express the contents common to all of us, and this both in sublime intellectual constructions and in simple propositions capable of finding resonance in every man.

Contemporary uncertainty about faith finds its roots in the nineteenth century. The first chapter of this book indicates how philosophical, ethical, scientific, literary, historical, and democratic developments during that century brought about a fundamental crisis for faith. This crisis was reflected in Newman's attempts, both as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic, to understand the nature of faith and of its certainty. A survey of Newman's intellectual background and of his discussions of the problem of faith, in unpublished as (...) well as published writings up to 1870, is followed by a searching analysis of his definitive study of faith, The Grammar of Assent. This analysis shows that, in spite of certain criticisms, Newman provides a way of understanding the assent of faith that is of major importance today. This study of Newman, which is fully annotated, is both a historical study and a contribution to the contemporary theological debate about faith. (shrink)

Professor MacKinnon, in an essay on Philosophy and Christology , remarks that Christology confronts theology with difficult but ‘inescapable problems’ because logically ‘it is unique; and yet it overlaps here, there and everywhere’. The complexity of the task, however, does not excuse the theologian from the need to determine the logical nature of the concept of ‘incarnation’ if he wishes to use it in his work—and, as I hope to show, any theology which attempts to describe the actual nature of (...) God probably cannot avoid using this concept in some form or other. Only by appreciating the logic of this concept can the theologian be confident that he understands its proper content and implications and that he offers appropriate justification for his claims about it. In this paper I want to suggest one possible way of viewing the logic of incarnational talk in theology which is based upon the attempt to treat such talk in terms of the notion of ‘revelation’. (shrink)

This is a theological response to two programmatic essays, “Science and the Future of Theology: Critical Issues,” by Arthur Peacocke and “What Game is Being Played? The Need for Clarity about theRelationship between Scientific and Theological Understanding,” by David A. Pailin. It argues that the two authors, well informed by the recent developments in science, are reduplicating some methodological and epistemological trends common to nineteenth‐century theology. The feasibility of their project should, therefore, be examined on whether they succeed in (...) answering the questions posed to the liberal project that dominated theological and philosophical scholarship in the last century. They are found to be wanting in their inadequate response to three considerations: (1) the persistence of particular manifestations of religion and theology's enduring refusal to accept thoroughly scientific “enlightened” criteria, (2) the epistemological implications of the eschatological character of the Christianmessage, and (3) the trinitarian paradigm for Christian theology and the life of faith. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:694 BOOK REVIEWS Exercises in the Work of HUvB," Antonio Sicari writes on "Theology and Holiness," and Georges Chantraine writes on the relationship of "Exegesis and Contemplation." Missing from Henrici's account of Balthasar's philosophical presup· positions, as well as from the other contributions, are further sugges· tions for exploring possible relationships with some of the current con· cerns in North America like the hermeneutical debates or those surrounding other (...) methodological issues. Much work is still needed in this area, especially a more thorough encounter between the position of Balthasar and those of Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, and Paul Ricoeur, to name but a few of the dominant figures in North American theological circles. Schindler's volume is highly to be praised as an invaluable introduction to the work of one of the giants of our century. Let us hope that more such studies will be forthcoming. Concordia University Montreal, Quebec CHRISTOPHE PoTWOROWSKI The Anthropological Character of Theology: Conditioning Theological Understanding. By DAVID A. PAILIN. New York: Cambridge Uni· versity Press, 1990. Pp. 300. $54.95 (cloth). That the discipline of theology is an activity of human beings whereby even in the most pronounced theologies of revelation the " creaturely form" of theology is acknowledged is not a matter of dispute. What is debated is the extent to which this Barthian rendering of the anthropological moment of theology " conditions " our theological understanding. It is in the interests of sorting this out that David Pailin, Reader in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Manchester in England, devotes this volume. The result is a rather systematic study in which the author explores the various angles where one can register theology's human dimension-from basic theistic claims to doctrinal formulations-while simultaneously justifying the integrity of theological inquiry in philosophical perspective. Indeed, throughout, it is the hand of a philosopher of religion that is at work, synthesizing and categorizing the contemporary theological landscape and carving out the true subject matter of theology, namely, that which is "ontologically, valuatively and rationally ultimate" (p. 4). The book is best read with an eye to each of these poles. On the one hand, the ostensible project is to examine, evaluate, and clearly affirm the human character of the theological enterprise. Simply BOOK REVIEWS 695 acknowledging the theological identification of human being, ergo the theologian, as a creature addressed by the divine word is inadequate. Even if this should require the practitioner to engage in a " laborious movement from one partial human insight to another" (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I, 1, p. 14), it does not give due recognition to the formative influence exercised by the theologian's fallible and culturally specific situation in life. These include language, conceptual perspective, metaphysical commitments, social location, and religious experience. On the other hand, Pailin is mindful that attention to theology's anthropological character and his methodological accentuation of it is in danger of yielding to the reductionist charge that religion is a complex of human projection and anthropomorphic description. In response Pailin consistently argues the case for the justifiability of religious belief, theistic claims, and theological predication. In this respect his work is not only descriptive of what theologians are doing but it attempts a revisionary intervention in the realms of philosophical and systematic theology. Classical theistic renditions of the divine attributes are subjected to critical scrutiny, e.g., divine impassibility and its relationship to divine love, and traditional interpretations of Christian doctrines are relativized by their cultural context, e.g., Anselm's theory of atonement. His own constructive subtext betrays a clear preference for neo-classical process theology and its conceptualization of God's relationship to the world and history. The key issue that governs Pailin's view of the integrity and limits of theological understanding revolves around the relationship between formal and material predication. What we mean by God and what we say about God are inextricably bound up with our speculative efforts to understand the nature of ultimate reality. The theologian and the metaphysician are in pursuit of similar quests with the proviso that the farmer's judgments are ensconced within a religious perspective. This does not exempt theological judgments from being rationally... (shrink)

IN "THE INCARNATION AS A CONTINUING REALITY," RELIGIOUS STUDIES 6,303-27 (DECEMBER 1970), DAVID PAILIN CLAIMS THAT THE INCARNATION REVEALS THE NECESSARY, EMPIRICALLY NON-FALSIFIABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S "ACTIVE ACTUALITY". GOD’S "PASSIVE ACTUALITY," THE WAY HE EXPERIENCES THE WORLD, IS METAPHYSICALLY KNOWN, BUT NOT HIS "ACTIVE ACTUALITY," THE WAY IN WHICH HE RESPONDS TO THE WORLD, FOR HE COULD HAVE RESPONDED OTHERWISE. NEVERTHELESS GOD’S CONCRETE RESPONSE IS EMPIRICALLY NON-FALSIFIABLE, FOR EVERYTHING THAT CAN POSSIBLY HAPPEN IN THE ACTUAL WORLD WILL REFLECT THAT (...) RESPONSE. I REPLY THAT THE METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES AS WELL COULD CONCEIVABLY BE OTHERWISE, BUT GOD’S PRIMORDIAL DECISION DETERMINES WHICH MUST BE EXEMPLIFIED BY ALL POSSIBLE ACTUALITIES WHATSOEVER. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF GOD’S RESPONSE TO THE WORLD IS THEREBY METAPHYSICALLY KNOWABLE. THE INCARNATION OF THE CHRIST REVEALS TO US THE CONTINGENT CHARACTER OF GOD’S RESPONSE TO THE PARTICULARITIES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, AND THIS. (shrink)

International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, Vol. 196. -/- Introduction, S. Hutton; Nicholas of Cusa : Platonism at the Dawn of Modernity, D. Moran; At Variance: Marsilio Ficino Platonism And Heresy, M.J.B. Allen; Going Naked into the Shrine:Herbert, Plotinus and the Consructive Metaphor, S.R.L.Clark; Commenius, Light Metaphysics and Educational Reform, J. Rohls ; Robert Fludd’s Kabbalistic Cosmos, W. Schmidt-Biggeman; Reconciling Theory and Fact:The Problem of ‘Other Faiths’ in Lord Herbert and the Cambridge Platonists, D. (...) Pailin; Trinity, Community and Love: Cudworth’s Platonism and the Idea of God, L. Armour; Chaos and Order in Cudworth’s Thought, J-L. Breteau; Cudworth, Prior and Passmore on the Autonomy of Ethics, R. Attfield; Substituting Aristotle: Platonic Themes In Dutch Cartesianism, H. van Ruler; Soul, Body, And World: Plato’s Timaeus And Descartes’ Meditations, C. Wilson ; Locke, Plato and Platonism, G.A.J. Rogers; Reflections on Locke’s Platonism, V. Nuovo; The Platonism at the Core of Leibniz’s Philosophy, C. Mercer; Leibniz and Berkeley: Platonic Metaphysics and ‘The Mechanical Philosophy’, S. Brown; Which Platonism for which Modernity? A Note on Shaftesbury’s Socratic Sea-Cards, L. Jaffro; Platonism, Aesthetics and the Sublime at the Origins Of Modernity, D. Hedley. (shrink)