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. (shrink)

When what is known as the Thomistic Revival began in the latter part of the nineteenth century, it was first the Aristotelian content and attitudes of St. Thomas's philosophy, so explicit and obvious all through his texts, that received the dominant stress. The commentaries on Aristotle were drawn on heavily as a source of Thomistic doctrine and the continuity between the two thinkers was emphasized in every way.

W. Norris Clarke's metaphysics of the universe as a journey rests on six major positions: the unrestricted dynamism of the mind, the primacy of the act of existence, the participation structure of reality, and the person, considered as both the starting point of philosophy and the source of the categories needed for a flexible contemporary metaphysics. Reflecting on his conscious life and the universe around him, the finite person mounts by a two-fold path to its Infinite source, who, though immutable (...) in His natural being, is mutable in the intentional being of His personal knowledge and love. The personal God is the efficient cause from whom the universe comes and the final cause to whom it returns.Less optimistic than Norris Clarke, John Caputo wonders about his metaphysics of the person. In a hermeneutical interpretation of the human face, the person through whom Being "sounds" discloses an ambiguous Being that both reveals and conceals itself. Far from grounding a casual ascent to God, hermeneutical phenomenology allows us no more than the right to interpret the world and its transcendent source through our own free decision.Although impressed by Norris Clarke's attempt to introduce mutability into God, Lewis Ford still finds Clarke's Thomistic God unacceptable. As a Whiteheadian, he proposes in place of Thomas' God, whose perfection consists in static unity, a God whose perfection consists in a never-ending process of unification. John Smith argues against the traditional dichotomy made between the ontological and cosmological arguments. Rather than opposed methods of proving God's existence, they should be taken as complementary journeys to the divine presence which discloses itself, although diversely, in the soul and in the world. There are parallels between Smith's historical study of two arguments and Clarke's two-fold path to God. Yet Smith is critical of Thomas' cosmological journey to God and does not share Clarke's confidence in its validity. Significant studies in their own right, the three essays as a group challenge Clarke's whole metaphysics of the universe as a journey. Meeting the challenge, Clarke clarifies and refines his own thought.An account of Clarke's philosophy by Gerald A. McCool, S.J. preceds this unified and stimulating philosophical discussion. (shrink)

2. The equal status mentioned in Thesis 2 need not mean, "equally concrete" or "inclusive," but only, "equally real," where "real" means having a character of its own with reference to which opinions can be true or false. But becoming or process is alone fully concrete or inclusive, since if A is without becoming, and B becomes, then the togetherness of AB also becomes. A new constituent means a new totality. In this sense, becoming is the ultimate principle.