The aim of this article is to argue that the sharing of ‘being’ between Jesus and the Godhead, professed in creedal Christianity and based on the Nicaean creed, pertains to a ‘sameness in divine substance’. This substance refers to divine wisdom, justice and mercy. The article attempts to demonstrate that there exists a congruence between textual evidence in the New Testament and these ‘orthodox’ belief tenets, especially represented in the Athanasian creed. This is explained in terms of an (...) analysis of the origins and development of creedal formulae. This process represents a movement from a fundamental religious experience to a ‘use’ of metaphorical language, to the origins of confessional formulae that lead to the formulation of dogma. In light of the insight into the ‘building blocks’ of the formation of confessional formulae, the article concludes with a ‘deconstruction’ of the concepts ‘anathematisation’ and ‘heresy’. (shrink)

Following Anthony Downs’s classic economic analysis of democracy, it has been widely noted that most voters lack the incentive to be well-informed. Recent empirical work, however, suggests further that political partisans can display selectively lazy or biased reasoning. Unfortunately, political knowledge seems to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, these tendencies. In this paper, I build on these observations to construct a more general skeptical challenge which affects what I call creedal beliefs. Such beliefs share three features: (i) the costs to (...) the individual of being wrong are negligible, (ii) the beliefs are subject to social scrutiny, and (iii) the evidential landscape relevant to the beliefs is sufficiently complex so as to make easy verification difficult. Some philosophers and social scientists have recently argued that under such conditions, beliefs are likely to play a signaling, as opposed to a navigational role, and that our ability to hold beliefs in this way is adaptive. However, if this is right, I argue there is at least a partial debunker for such beliefs. Moreover, this offers, I suggest, one way to develop the skeptical challenge based on etiological explanation that John Stuart Mill presents in On Liberty when he claims that the same causes which lead someone to be a devout Christian in London would have made them a Confucian in Peking. Finally, I contend that this skeptical challenge is appropriately circumscribed so that it does not over-extend in an implausible way. (shrink)

The division of Christianity into two: Orthodox Christian and Western Civilizations by Arnold Toynbee should be understood to describe not a difference of creedal belief but different spiritualities. Christian spiritualities are the animating forces for the material disposition of religious resources and the motivation that patterns individual behavior. The past offers many examples of how spirituality provides discipline to believers to overcome conflictive social pressures and follow doctrinal obligations. The monastic orders recast the evangelical counsel to holding material (...) goods in common during the Middle Ages and groups like the Franciscans, Jesuits, Methodists, Quakers, etc. have performed similar functions. Despite the erosion of institutional resources since the Enlightenment and contemporary secularism, Christianity has produced various new spiritualities. For the III Millennium, it appears the two major characteristics of Christian spirituality include the discipline to “let go” that rejects the dystopia of contemporary society; and the embrace an earth spirituality that extends respect for life to the environment and an equitable distribution of material resources. (shrink)

With the 2015 publication of Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si', many people of faith have found themselves challenged to seek new ways of addressing serious ecological questions -- issues essential to the flourishing of all creatures and not just human beings. This volume brings together fifteen select scholars to consider pressing contemporary environmental concerns through the lens of Catholic theology. Drawing from the early church fathers and other authoritative voices in the Christian tradition, the contributors to On Earth as It (...) Is in Heaven show how ancient, creedal Christianity offers significant insights into our current ecological dilemmas and speaks powerfully about what it means for us today to care well for God's good creation. CONTRIBUTORS and TOPICS Robert Louis Wilken on honoring centipedes and toads -- and all of God's created works Christopher J. Thompson on not reducing creatures to "resources" solely to be "used" Steven A. Long on understanding the created order as a participation in the divine, eternal law Marie George on human stewardship of creation as both kingship and kinship Matthew Levering on "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" -- a good idea? Dawn M. Nothwehr, OSF, on sustainability from a Franciscan perspective John A. Cuddeback on land use and household stewardship Faith Pawl on animal flourishing and suffering Paul M. Blowers on evolutionary theory and the promise of restoration for all creation Christopher A. Franks on Job, poverty, gratitude, and "a gentle life" Jonathan J. Sanford on how Aristotle and Maritain illuminate our obligation to care for creation Paige E. Hochschild on contemplating rather than dominating nature, building on Augustine and George Grant Chris Killheffer on how monastic sources help us rethink gluttony and its remedies David Vincent Meconi, SJ, on the wonderful, awe-filled interrelationship between creatures and their Creator Esther Mary Nickel, RSM, on the liturgy as the space in which all creation is consecrated before the cross of Christ. (shrink)

This article forms part of the commemoration of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who died 185 years ago on 12 February 1834. It focuses on the aspects of Schleiermacher’s life and work that have influenced the author the most. The article consists of personal annotations, Schleiermacher’s understanding of ‘divine’ hermeneutics, his notion of congeniality and his ‘subscription’ to creedal Christianity while promoting the freedom of the exegete to interpret the Bible and ecclesiastical confessions robustly and critically.

The present essay contends that progressive readings of Smith ignore the influence of theological concepts and religious ideas on his work, notably three distinct strands: first, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural theology; second, Jansenist Augustinianism; third, Stoic arguments of theodicy. Taken together, these theological elements help explain why Smith’s moral philosophy and political economy intensifies the secular early modern and Enlightenment idea that the Fall brought about ‘radical evil’ and a ‘fatherless world’ in need of permanent divine intervention. As such, Smith (...) views the market as divine regulation of human sinfulness and an instrument to serve God’s providential plan. Indeed, the ‘invisible hand of the market’ represents a nominalist realm where human cooperation intersects with divine providence, blending private self-interest with the public commonweal. I will also argue that Smith’s conception of a morally neutral market is ultimately incompatible with creedal Christianity, in particular orthodox catholic Christian ideas of the common good in which all can share and the practice of charity for those most in need who have been abandoned by state bureaucracy and the marketplace. The main reason is that Smith, not unlike Calvin, tends to divorce human contract from divine gift by dividing the theo-logic of gratuitous reciprocal giving from the economic logic of contract – a dualism that bears an uncanny resemblance with Suárez’s Baroque scholasticism of which Smith’s friend David Hume was rightly critical. In particular, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation theology of Calvin, Luther and Suárez sunders ‘pure nature’ from the supernatural and develops a ‘two ends’ account of human nature, according to which human beings have a natural end separate from their supernatural finality. So instead of participating in the divine oikonomia of asymmetrical gift-exchange, human society and the economy operate autonomously and are ordered towards a purely natural end. Smith conceptualises the market mechanism as both a fundamental precondition for interpersonal relationality and at the same time separate from the sociality it engenders. Smith’s anthropology hovers half-way between Machiavelli and Mandeville’s homo œconomicus in search for maximal profit, on the one hand, and the diametrically opposed conception of man as a gift-exchanging animal striving for mutual social recognition, on the other hand. By viewing market exchange as separate from the private virtues of benevolence, justice and prudence, he introduces a split between the exercise of moral virtues and the operation of commercial society. Such a divide is wholly foreign to the project of an overarching civil compact in the writings of Smith’s contemporary Antonio Genovesi and other members of the Italian schools of civic humanism and civil economy. In consequence, Smith’s œuvre marks a decisive shift from civil to political economy. (shrink)

A Christian approach to the issues that constitute bioethics is inevitable for us who cherish the truth of historic, creedal, trinitarian Christianity. Scripture teaches and the Greek and Latin Church Fathers as well as the Reformers aver that man, created in the image of God, has an inherent, if vestigial, sense of right and wrong and a conscience however marred by the fall and by rebellion. We must believe that we share this most basic ecumenism with all humanity, (...) not because of rational observation and analysis of nature, but because Scripture reveals it. We who are convinced of the truth of historic, creedal, trinitarian Christianity have a high view of Scripture and hold it to be infallible and utterly trustworthy irrespective of the importance we assign to our specific post-biblical traditional distinctives. This is a narrower but much more vital ecumenism than the first. Faithful adherence to Scripture inevitably manifests itself in remarkably similar priorities and values, often, lamentably, not because of, but in spite of, ourselves. (shrink)

Baldwin and McNabb explore how non-Christian religious traditions can utilize Plantinga’s epistemology. This book pays particular attention to the question, if there are believers from differing religious traditions that can rightfully utilize his epistemology, does this somehow prevent a Plantingian’s creedal-specific belief from being warranted?

The classical Christian creeds generally address historical and metaphysical issues, such as the Trinity and the work of Christ. These doctrines are commonly construed as definitive of Christian orthodoxy or right belief. But are there behavioral standards that are essential to Christian living? If so, are beliefs about such matters as crucial to the faith as the creedal points? I introduce the concept of “moral heresy” as an ethical-doxastic category, which may be useful as a conceptual tool in addressing (...) these questions. There are potentially serious implications here for how Christians should approach some critical issues of our time, particularly regarding sexual ethics. (shrink)

The meeting of worlds and the principle of sola Scriptura. Rather than function as a catalyst for unity, the Bible can be the cause of conflict among Christian believers. The Bible is also often the reason for strife, specifically in the Reformed tradition, even though Protestants uphold the creedal truism of sola Scriptura and though the authority of the Bible is seen as selfmandatory, transcending the normative power of ecclesiastical or confessional traditions. This article focuses on biblical interpretation as (...) both a cause of disunity and a possible means to achieve greater unity. The point of departure is that biblical interpretation consists of a fusion of horizons; it is primarily about the fusion of two horizons, namely that of the Bible and that of the reader. However, both these horizons represent a great diversity of perspectives. A variety of readers interpret the Bible from diverse contexts. The Bible itself also communicates a diversity of ideas. Even the notion ‘Jesus Christ’ does not function as a unified or unifying concept. The article proposes that the idea of ‘Jesus’ cause’ could provide continuity between the world of the reader and the world of a biblical passage. (shrink)

The thesis that dualism is a Greek import into Christianity and that the Christian hope of eternal life does not presuppose dualism has recently begun to win adherents. This paper is a defense of this thesis. One philosophical argument for dualism (that dualism best explains the phenomenon of sensuous experience) is briefly discussed and is rejected. The body of the paper addresses the relevant creedal and biblical data. The paper closes with a discussion of the question whether the (...) doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead, on which the Christian hope of eternal life is founded, presupposes dualism. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore, as a Christian and a parish pastor, what drew me into the religion‐science dialogue and what keeps me involved. Encounters with nature and readings of evolutionary theory answer some questions and raise others, especially questions about chance and the nature of God. I persist in my quest for understanding because creedal affirmations of God as Creator demand an examination of the relationship between God and the world, and because I want to proclaim the Christian (...) message in a credible way to parishioners raised with a scientific worldview. Along the way I am reaping unexpected spiritual dividends. (shrink)

Angelika Neuwirth has argued that sura 112 of the Quran is intended as an intertextual corrective commentary on key Jewish and Christian creedal statements. This theory, consonant with recent scholarship considering the Muslim scripture to be a text of late antiquity, would match the enigmatic phrase Allāh al-ṣamad with the Nicene creed’s description of God as “almighty” (pantokrator) and sura 112’s statement that God has no equal (kufuʾ) with the Nicene creed’s homoousia, the term that throughout the seventh century (...) CE remained central to the bitter doctrinal conflict wracking Eastern Christianity. This article surveys the wide debate in the scholarly literature over these quranic verses, and specifically the hapax legomenon of al-ṣamad, and compares the early Muslim exegetical treatment of al-ṣamad with the approach of contemporaneous Christian polemical writing of the late eighth century. It suggests that the key to unlocking the meaning of the sura and al-ṣamad, which has long vexed both premodern and modern scholars, could lie in the concept of Aristotelian substance and its articulation in the trinitarian formula and ensuing christological disputes. (shrink)

If one goes to the fountainhead of the Gospel accounts concerning women as witnesses to Christ's resurrection, one has good reason to posit the following: (a) that women were the first to hear the Easter message; (b) that women, in gathering Jesus' disciples together again, played a crucial role in the founding of the earliest Christian community; and (c) that Mary Magdalene deserves a place in the creedal formulas that cite the names of those to whom the risen Christ (...) first appeared. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AFTER VATICAN II INTRODUCTION IT HAS BECOME commonplace to observe that the doctrine of God is in crisis, an acknowledgement that is softened somewhat in discerning that this is less a crisis of faith itself than of the cultural mediation of faith. For some this is theological disaster, marking the loss of the traditional concept of God to the forces of atheism and secularism. To (...) others it is a liberating factor in that it signals the displacement of an alienating idea of God that clears the way for a long overdue theological reconstruction. One undeniable benefit has been a return of the doctrine of God to its rightful place of centrality in theological discourse--a privileged position it occupied in the 13th century thought of Aquinas and Bonaventure, in the 16th century thought of Luther and Calvin, one retained by Schleiermacher in the 19th century and regained by Karl Barth in the 20th century. Once again, God has become the focus of theological questioning. The difference lies in the way the question has shifted: now the burning issue is the absence or silence of God. THE NEW WAY OF RAISING THE QUESTION OF GOD Heretofore the starting point for religion and theology was Credo in unum Deum, the creedal distillate of the Christian Gospel. This was the Archimedian point of belief upon which depended anthropology, christology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, etc. Such is no longer the case due to the success of the atheist critique beginning with Feuerbach. The atheist challenge remains, either in the negative form of a massive indifference (here the very question of God's existence pales into insignificance, Sartre tells us, because it makes no difference 395 396 WILLIAM J, HILL, O.P. whatsoever to the quality of life: believers kill one another just as do unbelievers, and even do so in the name of God), or in the positive form of a religious humanism, even in some quarters of a theology without God. More radical still is what has been called " semantic atheism ", i.e. the contention that the very word "God" is without meaning, any meaning, that is, that can be validated in the public forum. Nietzsche's cry " God is dead " gives way now to the assertion that the very term "God" has no referent other than that arbitrarily given to it by believers; no objectively real referent, that is. What has occurred, in a spontaneous dialectic of history, whether for good or for bad, is the overthrow of classical theism, i.e. of that understanding in which God is the Supreme Being explaining the existence of everything else-a preunderstanding that precedes revelation and makes the latter credible. This Hellenic and Medieval notion of God was called into question when the cultural world that gave it birth ceased to exist. What was rejected was an objectifying of God, cognitively, by way of metaphysics. This could no longer be the point de depart for the doctrine of God; it was no longer possible to begin with an idea that was then subsequently given content from the sources of revelation. This rendered suspect any demonstrating or verification of God's existence-though it must be said that the atheist premise was equally incapable of validation. This precipitated a radical shift in the question about God. No longer was the concern "Does God exist? ", "Is he real? '', but rather now "Is God present and operative in human life?", and" Does that presence make a difference?". This was in fact a return to the biblical question concerning God's role in human history both individual and social, a question especially urgent in the post-exilic period. God now meant, not" He who is" (lpsum Esse Subsistens), nor even "He who is with us" (mit- Sein), but" He who will be who he will towards mankind", "He who will be the God of our future". The new note being sounded is that of futurity; somewhat muted is the note of divine transcendence, at least in the sense that transcendence was being deferred. THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AFTER VATICAN II 397 The shift then was to the God of revelation, more concretely to the God encountered... (shrink)

The focus of Through Your Eyes: Religious Alterity and the Early Modern Western Imaginations is the (mostly Western) understanding, representation and self-critical appropriation of the "religious other" between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Mutually constitutive processes of selfing/othering are observed through the lenses of creedal Jews, a bhakti Brahmin, a widely translated Morisco historian, a collector of Western and Eastern singularia, Christian missionaries in Asia, critical converts, toleration theorists, and freethinkers: in other words, people dwelling in an 'in-between' space (...) which undermines any binary conception of the Self and the Other. The genesis of the volume was in exchanges between eight international scholars and the two editors, intellectual historian Giovanni Tarantino and anthropologist Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, who share an interest in comparatism, debates over toleration, and history of emotions. (shrink)

It is well known that Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas participated in a tradition of philosophical theology which determined God to be simple, perfect, immutable and timelessly eternal. Within the parameters of such an Hellenic understanding of the divine nature, they sought a clarification of one of the fundamental teachings of their Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. These classical theists were not dogmatists, naively unreflective about the very possibility of their project. Aquinas, for instance, explicitly worried about and (...) fought to dispel the seeming contradiction between the philosophical requirement of divine simplicity and the creedal insistence on a threefold personhood in God. 1 Nevertheless, doubts abound. Philosophers otherwise friendly to Classical Theism still remain unsure about the coherence of affirming a God that is at once absolutely simple and triune. 2 A less friendly critic has even suggested that the theory of divine simplicity pressured Augustine and his medieval followers away from recognizing that real complexity within the life of God which Trinitarianism expresses. 3. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Trinity:An Ecumenical ConversationIsidoros C. KatsosIntroductionThis paper explores the potential impact of Fr. Thomas Joseph White's impressive new book on the Trinity for the ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches.1 In doing so, the paper responds to the editors' kind request for an explicitly ecumenical approach to the book. Therefore, this paper concentrates on the issue of the Trinity from an ecumenical perspective. But (...) this is not a simple task. Before reading the book, the reader might have thought that Eastern and Western theologians had somehow reached a gentlemen's agreement that the insertion of the Filioque clause in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed had happened sometime somewhere in the Wild West (namely, at the local Council of Toledo in 589). Building on an honest misunderstanding, the Latin Church gradually added to the initial statement of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, according to which the Spirit proceeds "from the Father" (ek tou patros), that the Spirit proceeds "from the Father and the Son" (ex Patre Filioque).2 In the absence of an ecumenical council that would have settled the issue, the creedal addition became the thorniest issue of theological contention between East and West, leading to the "Great Schism." Things took a new [End Page 493] turn during the twentieth century when Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras decided that a new rapprochement was desirable and possible.3 Since then, Eastern theologians have showed willingness, for the first time in centuries, to quiet down their concerns about the Filioque as unwarranted speculation, if not falsification, of the Trinitarian doctrine of the Church Fathers.4 In exchange, they saw their Western colleagues quieting down their own normative claims about the theological necessity of the Filioque.5 The general sentiment in the theological schools, in the East at least, was that the true reasons of the Schism had relocated from the sphere of theology to the sphere of terminology, history, and culture.6 The controversy over the Filioque could be seen as an infelix culpa that shaped Eastern and Western Christianity as religious communities, a historic misunderstanding of historical proportions. Contextual rather than doctrinal—that seemed to [End Page 494] be the shift achieved in the last century.7 After reading the book, however, the reader might think that we are about to return to the previous state. For White now argues that the Filioque is not "just" an accident of language, history, and culture, something that could have happened or not, but the only correct interpretation of the Nicene faith:When the Father spirates the Spirit from all eternity, he necessarily does so as Father of the Son and so also in the Son and with the Son.(108; emphasis mine)As to the historically contested question of the Filioque, there are … many scriptural and traditional bases in favor of its affirmation. In addition, Aquinas affirms it as a necessary component of Trinitarian theology.(504; emphasis mine)If White's argument is correct, it has serious impact on the ecumenical dialogue: it suggests that, regardless of what happened in Toledo in the sixth century, Christian theologians in East and West ought to understand the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as entailing that the third person of the Trinity always proceeds from the other two together. To put it more pointedly: if the argument of the book is correct, the Orthodox rejection of the Filioque must betoken a failure to grasp something true and important about the life of the Trinity.Clearly, the resurgence of the Filioque as a normative claim poses a genuine challenge for the Orthodox reader. If the Filioque is the correct Trinitarian doctrine, what room is there left for the Orthodox contrary position? In situations like this in the past, an Orthodox theologian would consider whether to meet the argument head on by producing contrary readings of the same patristic sources or to entirely undermine it by softening its conclusions. I presume this would still be the instinctive reaction of the average Orthodox reader. I find this kind of response not conducive to ecumenical dialogue. Let me then probe here with something new. In what follows, I want to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MORE THAN METAPHORS: MASCULINEGENDERED NAMES AND THE KNOWABILITY OF GOD LYNNE C. BOUGHTON Chicago, Illinois W:HAT WAS ONCE a phenomenon confined to advocacy groups has appeared in ordinary Catholic parishes. Priests celebrating liturgies offer blessings "In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Holy Love." Such invocations of Persons of the Trinity by names indicative of divine action, as well as the " naming " of God (...) with either gender-combined (Mother-Father) or gender-neutral (Friend) designations of personal relationships, suggest that the way in which God is addressed need not be different from the way in which one describes divine actions. Many argue that since one may refer to God's specific act as " Creator," characterize God's eternal and temporal activity as " Love," or note that in certain ways people experience God's care as that of a "Friend" or "Mother," these terms are suitable for addressing a divine Person. In early 1992 the Catholic Church's International Commission on English in the Liturgy endorsed non-gendered invocations by proposing that English language liturgical texts delete all masculine pronouns referring to God and replace "Father" in several prayers with gender-neutral names. Willingness to depart from the Father/Son/Holy Spirit terminology found in scripture and the Church's creedal statements is often grounded in the belief that God does not merely excel beyond human comprehension the fatherhood and sonship traditionally attributed to divine Persons, but rather that God, as transcendent being, is essentially unlike any quality that can be named. Those who define transcendence in this " epistemologi283 284 LYNNE C. BOUGHTON cal" way maintain that God is free of definition or distinction and that Persons of the Trinity negate and contradict, in their acts of existence, any permanent identity that the human mind may have " attributed " in scripture or Church doctrine to divine Personhood. Theologians such as Karl Rahner and David Tracy see no departure from the Church's authoritative theological teachings in their definition of transcendence as God's existential freedom from the limitations of eternally existing attributes of Persons. According to Rahner the names most indicative of who God is as God are " ineffable one," " nameless one," " silent one." For Tracy, the central " metaphor " and " doctrine" of Christianity is a " triune understanding" of the words " God is Love." 1 For theologians who define transcendence as God's being unconfined by categories, names by which divine Persons are addressed in Scripture are merely ways in which inspired communities or individuals likened God's dealings with them to lifeaffirming actions or admired personal qualities. If traditional names for God were " revealed" in this way, modern worshippers could reasonably address God in terms of likenesses to other, more 1 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, tr. William Dych (NY: Crossroad, 1982), pp. 46-71; David Tracy, "The Hermeneutics of Naming God," The Irish Theological Quarterly, 57 (1991) : 253-264. For an analysis and defense of the concept of transcendence as absence of metaphysical reality see Mark I. Wallace, "Can God Be Named Without Being Known?: The Problem of Revelation in Thiemann, Ogden, and Ricoeur," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59/2 (1991): 281-308. Although the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) listed "ineffable " among the attributes of God, God was not named in this way and, moreover, the context of other listed attributes (omnipotence, eternity) suggests that " ineffable " does not mean God is without anything that can be described but that descriptions of God are not comprehensible to humans [H. J. D. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 30th ed., trans. Roy Deferrari (London: Herder & Herder, 1955), # 428]. This point is illustrated by the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) which refers to God as "ineffably most high above all things " and then proceeds to list a series of attributes (Denzinger, # 1782). In the Council of Toledo, "ineffable" was used as a modifier ("ineffable Trinity," "ineffable substance," "ineffably begot") for terms that were defined in the Council's creed (Denzinger # 275-276). Further discussion of " ineffable" is in note 6, below. MORE THAN METAPHORS 285 inclusive, human qualities. Invoking, rather than merely describing or praising, God with names derived from creative/redemptive... (shrink)

The nineteenth-century philosopher F. W. J. Schelling exerted considerable influence on Christian theology, although among his contemporaries he is typically assigned a lesser role in this respect than is Hegel or Schleiermacher. During his lifetime his impact was greatest upon Roman Catholic theologians; after his death it was more strongly felt by certain Protestants. I shall not explore instances of Schelling’s actual influence on specific theologians, even though more research could be done on that topic. Instead my purpose is to (...) single out several of Schelling’s ideas that are intrinsically significant for theology, including some not fully utilized by his contemporary or subsequent disciples. Hence I address the systematic topic of Schelling’s potential theological importance rather than the historical topic of his actual influence. The themes discussed derive chiefly from my own interpretation of Schelling and my view of what is important and sound in theology. They pertain more to the philosophical foundations of theology than to the specifics of creedal formulations. But first, a brief comment about Schelling as a philosopher, followed by his own observations on his relation to theology. (shrink)

This paper is not merely an attempt to come to terms with Edward Schillebeeckx’s theology and his philosophical mindset. Such attempts have already been made years back, when his ties with phenomenology, and also with postmodern hermeneutics and culture were pivotal for us in order to better understand his influence on mid-20th century Continental philosophy. This present study partially remains on those premises, but also brings Schillebeeckx’s thought closer to the 21st century, since nowadays concepts like salvation and resurrection tend (...) to embed particular meanings, such as well-being and ancestrality, which until recently were considered halfway synonyms of the previous images, and thus were looked upon with less persuasion. This study follows their interchangeable use in Schillebeeckx’s doctrine of creation, where the purpose of the Christian creedal formula is to appease in a tribal sense, rather than to fun­ction as a confession of faith. On the other hand, Schillebeeckx’s take on the resurrection as a means to reconnect humanity to its ancestral faith will further be inspected as the starting point of his rehabilitated anthropology or the humanum. The initial discussion on the relationship between God and Jesus in the history of salvation finalized with Jesus’ death receives a new turn in Schillebeeckx’s thought when in this same context he talks about the resurrection. Jesus’ status after the resurrection is analyzed here considering the tribal flavors it receives in Schillebeeckx’s work with an accent on its outcome for the new humanity and its well-being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reclaiming the Integration of Body and MindDeborah SpragueThe week before New Year’s Day has often spurred me to evaluate my personal path. I courted my own permission to apply to graduate school, charting scenarios, figuring options, but still I held back. Browsing the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School website, I found a unique course offering: Deepening the Heart of Wisdom: Buddhist Christian Contemplative Practice and Dialogue. I knew I (...) had to take it! Class was going to start in a week and as yet I hadn’t even applied to the school’s graduate program. In a flurry I requested transcripts, garnered recommendations, and considered childcare options. My desire to engage this particular dialogue grew through my Christian practice of Centering Prayer1 and my Episcopal parish’s contemplative interfaith Vital Conversations program.These vital conversations began with an intentional time of silence in which we prepared the “eye of the heart” to perceive the conversation at a deeper level. Our rector invited a guest from a different faith tradition each month.2 He engaged the guest in questions and dialogue regarding his or her spiritual practices and personal story. Then, the guest received questions from the group. After hearing a Buddhist guest and visiting the local Zen center, I knew my own spiritual formation would be broadened and deepened by taking the two-week, intensive format course. Because actual spiritual practice from both traditions comprised a significant portion of the class, I surmised this course would foster a more complete, integrated form of understanding the two traditions.This essay will explore the contemplative pedagogy of this course, wherein the instructors hoped “students [would] walk away with a visceral understanding of these traditions as full-body disciplines for transforming the mind and heart.”3 First, I will give a brief description of the class participants and discuss the types of spiritual practices we encountered from each tradition. Then, I will share my experiences related to those practices and how the structure of the course supported an integrated epistemology. Finally, I will consider the phenomenon of Christian interest in Buddhist practices and what that implies about popular Christianity and its potential to become a fuller version of itself. [End Page 101]The student population of this class was largely Christian, with some Unitarian Universalists, a pagan, and an agnostic as well. That said, the spectrum of Christians reflected mainline denominations as well as some persons with roots in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. As might be expected from a varied group, the Christologies of participants varied from creedal to acreedal. This group came together to participate in a variety of Christian and Zen Buddhist spiritual practices.The class engaged the following practices according to Sōtō Zen: zazen, contemplative walking as a group, and, near the end of the course, Rev. Dr. Hickey led us in a portion of the Sōtō-shū morning service. Every class began with at least fifteen minutes of zazen, which gradually increased as the class progressed. Daily practice of the same meditation technique allowed us to enter that particular practice in a sustained way.In contrast to our Zen practice, we experienced a different type of Christian spiritual practice with each class session. This approach acquainted students with a variety of traditions but did not allow experiential depth in any one particular mode. The students and instructors took part in Taizé chanting,4 chanting of the Psalms from the Daily Office, lectio divina,5 praying with icons,6 the Jesus Prayer,7 the Rosary,8 and two guided reflections: an Ignatian9 meditation on a gospel text, and a meditation developed by Christian contemplative Anthony De Mello. I wondered how our experience of the class would have changed had the Christian practice focused on one or two types, in a sustained, daily manner. Perhaps the rationale for surveying a wide variety of practices reflected the need for Western Christians to gain familiarity with their own contemplative traditions.I consider Christianity’s analog to zazen to be Centering Prayer, because it is also based in no-thought. However, Centering Prayer was not included in our experience of spiritual practices. If we conceive of two... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Identity and Openness in a Pluralistic WorldRita M. GrossIn our final sessions after twenty years of working together, we have been asked to reflect in some way on identity and openness in a pluralistic world. Specifically, the question is, "How do I understand my own identity as a religious Buddhist or Christian in light of the fact that I am open to the validity of the beliefs held (...) by the other tradition?"Frankly, this puzzle seems like a no-brainer to me and always has. Religions are language systems, and no language is universal and absolute. End of problem. In one fell swoop, as we concede the relativity of all our language games, we also recognize that more than one language could be "valid," whatever that might mean. There is no reason to assume that all people speak my language and it would be illogical to claim that people who don't speak my language are deficient. The worth and utility of my language is in no way diminished because it is not the only language in the world. Language is a tool through which we communicate, and any language could be a useful tool, so long as we don't endow it with universal relevance, more freight than it can bear.There may or may not be a formless absolute that grounds all finite existence. All religions assert that there is, whether as a being or as an experience. But beyond that assertion nothing can be determined because all such assertions must be expressed in language or some other limited expression—an expression in form. There is no other option. Much as we might long to transcend expression in form and leap into mind-to-mind transmission, in a public medium that is not possible. Many of us may have intuited such experiences of mind-to-mind transmission, but when we open our mouths to speak, we can only do so in the realm of form. And so we are stuck with our myriad expressions of a formless, transcendent absolute and cannot even determine for sure if we are talking about the same thing when we try to express the inexpressible.Therefore, we are compelled to concede the limits of language. This is the solution to the problem of the coexistence of a strong individual religious identity with openness to the relevance of other religious languages. Other religions, as well as my [End Page 15] own, are nothing more than highly relative language systems. There is no logical or spiritual way for them to be anything more. It seems to me that copping to the limitations of language, to the inability of language ever to capture truth completely, is completely essential in the pluralistic world we now inhabit. It is hard to imagine how people could believe that the deity speaks Arabic, not Hebrew, or Hebrew, not Arabic, and biblical Hebrew (rather than any other version of Hebrew) at that! It is hard to imagine how people could believe that they have the actual words of Jesus in the red print in their new testaments, even though those words were originally written in a language he never spoke and were translated into an archaic English that we no longer speak and barely understand. Nothing but egotistical pride can drive such self-aggrandizement, such identification of my viewpoint, my verbal attempts to express my experience, with the eternal and ultimate Way Things Are.In light of the historical and cross-cultural information that is now more than abundantly available, the only rational and humane conclusion to be drawn is that all religious institutions and creedal systems are human constructions dependent at least in part, if not wholly dependent, on the particular circumstances of those who construct and utter them. Therefore, they are of limited rather than universal relevance. Their cultural specificity is too obvious for any other conclusion to be feasible. Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and English are not universal languages, and only extreme hubris could claim the Formless Absolute speaks my language, not yours. Thus, even if our religions owe their genesis to some transcendent, nonhistorical source, they can be codified and captured only in a relative... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SOME DOGMATIC CONSEQUENCES OF PAUL F. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM PAUL D. MOLNAR St. John's University Jamaica, New York EACTIONS TO Paul Knitter's No Other Nanie? vary from criticizing his "unitarian theocentrism" 1 and his sliding away from "creedal Chrisitology" 2 to unequivocail endorsement of his" less Christocentric approach to a theo1ogy of religions;" 3 this shows the challenge Knitter poses to current dogmatics. This 1arHcile w1ll explore three (...) critical dogmatic issues related to Knitter's non-normative ChristoJogy. First, can the idea that Jesus is one savior among others be defonded froni within the Christian-Catholic 1tradition without yie1ding the truth of Christology? Second, if "Jesus remains universailly normativ ;e " for Christians while " other revelations or rev;ea:lers might also be universaUy normative," then does this not p:vomote some form of docetic Christology and lead to a unitarianism, exduded by the naiture of the God revealed in Christ? Third, on the basis of " l'eligious experience " Knitter olaims to perceive an" evolution from ecolesiocentrism to chrfatocentrism to theocentrism" and finally to "soteriooentrism." 4 Is there 1!1ea1ly such an evolution? And if there is noit, oan those who de- ~end the tradition succeed by arguing from experience and praxis rather than from revelation and faith? 5 Moreover, if 1"Review Symposium: Paul Knitter's No Other Name?: A Critical Survey of OMistian Attitudes toward the World Religions," in Horizons 13 (1986): 116-135. This is the view of Daniel Sheridan, p. llS. 2 This is the view of Denise Carmody. Ibid., p. 122. s This is the view of William Cenkner. Ibid., p. 127. 4 Ibid., pp. 133-34. 5 Denise Carmody, e.g., believes that we should stress praxis more than 449 450 PAUL D. MOLNAR we think the tradition should not be defended, have we not ceased to think about theological truth? Rather, have we not made divinity itself indis:tingiuishab1e from our human experiences and praxis at the outset? And does this not open the door to both polytheism allJd pantheism? By making God hut noit Christ normative, Knitter's " nonnormati ¥e" Christology re-1transiates the truth of Jesus' oonsubstantiality with the Father into the content of a myth, an experienice or a vailue judgment having no re1ality in itseH.6 It then defines :reveiLation and salvation.aocording to a unitarian view of God. While Knitter denies this,7 his reasoning aictuaUy is unitarian: In my proposed model, Jesus remains universally normative, but I am asking whether Christians can recognize that other revelations or revealers might also be universally normative. Could there be a complementary uniqueness among the religious traditions of the world? To try to answer that question, 'intellectual conversion;... is a requisite. But it will have to be an intellectual conversion that walks more than' the way to Nicea and Chalcedon'... only on the basis of the praxis of authentic dialogue-grounded in intellectual, moral, and religious conversion-can we know the unique~ ness of Christ.8 doctrine without relativizing Christ. Thus, for her, Rahner's Christology does not mean " that Christians cannot be open to the Buddha or Lord Krishna," Ibid., p. 126. The problem is that this very thinking already relativizes Christ. 6 Even theologians who do not intend the radical views of John Hick run a similar risk by beginning Christology from below in the manner of Paul Knitter. Cf., e.g., Edward L. Krasevac, O.P., "' Christology From Above' And 'Christology From Below '," The Thomist, 51 (1987) : 299-306, arguing that "Christological faith is an apostolic faith that has its origins in a historical process which began with the public ministry of our Lord...." (p. 300) causes us to ask what makes Christology true? Is it "the actual apostolic process " (306) or is it Jesus as the Lord who is and remains the sole foundation and validation for faith in any age? Does this approach not leave the door open to the kind of evolution which Knitter claims to have discovered in Christianity, which then enables him to move beyond Jesus as the only Lord and Savior? 1 Review Symposium, Horizons, p. 131. s Ibid., p. 133. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 451 Here the ha:.sis... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mystery of Problems for Modern Theological MethodologyBruno M. Shah O.P.Recent trends in Catholic theology emphasize the category of "mystery." But "problems," which can seem distinct from and even opposed to mysteries, have a constitutive role in the work of theology as well. If the object of faith is God, and if theology's goal is typically defined as "faith seeking understanding," then the object of theology must include the (...) seeking's problematical quotient. At the very least, problems condition the faith-and-reason labor of theological enquiry. This essay claims that problems philosophically orient and index the theological articulation of mysteries—not the mysteries themselves—particularly in a modern key, and that they require explicit attention in theological methodology and pedagogy.First, I explain my concern with the "return to mystery" in conciliar-era Catholic theology. This explanation entails, second, describing the special attention to "problems" in neo-Kantianism, which bequeaths the tension between the empirical world and transcendental freedom to modern theology. These two historiographical matters in methodology set up the tension between problems and mysteries for Catholic thinking. Third, I briefly return to Aristotle's thoughts on the matter, which are a lodestone for the tradition. Fourth, I evaluate the positions of Jacques Maritain and Gabriel Marcel, the most important conciliar-era thinkers who thematized the relationship between problems and mysteries. My treatment will show how both ontological (Maritain) and existential (Marcel) dynamics of mystery are necessarily linked to metaphysical and spiritual problems. The [End Page 1265] critical ascertaining of theological mystery formally requires orientation via philosophical problems.My concern here is fundamental, ecclesial, and professional, interested that those who serve the Church through theological writing and teaching do so in a recognizably common or compatible manner, and in a way that can meaningfully stimulate theological interest. If the teaching of theology would invite students to embark upon the via inventionis and not merely yield to the via doctrinae, there must be fundamental advertence to ontological and existential problems as the theologically constitutive point of departure.1 Theologians do well to think in correlative terms of problems and mysteries. As a fifth and final point, then, I suggest that the quintessential starting point for (fundamental) theology today is the problem and mystery of the human person.Historical Context 1: The Return to MysteryContemporary Church life and theology have witnessed a "return to mystery."2 "Mystery" refers to some range or dynamic of reality that is essentially inaccessible apart from some feature of religious or spiritual practice. Christian reference to "mystery" or "mysteries" etymologically intimates that there are realities of which we cannot and/or ought not to speak, even as these mysteries have in some way been disclosed.3 Mysteries, therefore, are tensional in that they indicate at once contact and transcendence, knowledge and nescience. Christians and others communicate in religious mysteries through liturgical exercise and creedal confession, as well as through personal prayer and even existential trial. They are mediations of what is categorically transcendent, of what constitutively eludes or escapes [End Page 1266] the categories of our objectifying consciousness. Accordingly, the mysterious regards the inarticulable.That the substance of religious mysteries is real or true cannot be proven beyond all question, not according to commonly accessible human criteria of justification. For Christians, the gift of faith provides the convincing motive to believe in the reality of Christian mysteries through a kind of thinking with felt decision. Granting this claim, the work of theology is to reflect upon the mysteries of faith and develop expressible knowledge. Theology articulates (the) faith, extrapolating upon the reasons that the heart has for its belief. To do this work, theology trades upon fixed standards of confessional speech, liturgical practice, and perhaps also moral action, which provide lexical cogency and communicable intelligibility.The late nineteenth century witnessed attacks upon theology's claims to objectively or universally valid expression, owing especially to challenges from both epistemology and historiography.4 The surge of post-Enlightenment liberalism was surely catalytic as well. The Catholic Church initially aggregated these attacks in terms of "modernism." But then—as the standard history continues—conciliar theology gave fresh and viable riposte to what was... (shrink)

This chapter examines certain claims made for near‐death and out‐of‐body experiences (ND/OBE), adding neuro‐physiological and theological insights. ND/OBE aredecidedly this‐worldly events and have nothing to do with supposed journeys to spiritualized or nonphysical realms, nor amalgamations with so‐called cosmic consciousness. Classical spiritual encounters were discussed by William James, and by William P. Alston. The chapter compares classic examples of divine disclosure with those given by NDE subjects. Considering the “spiritual” properties of NDE reports, one might be somewhat reluctant to credit (...) them with any serious divine import, or, like some of the otherreports, of enlightening revelatory content. The chapter also summarizes author's analysis that offers arguments against any serious import to NDE phenomenology, other than deriving from stored material in brains of subjects reporting. It continues in critically examining the notion of afterlife, as envisioned throughout the NDE literature, compared with Christian precepts of the creedal “Life Everlasting”. (shrink)

William Alston has written that religious belief is justifiable because it is based upon epistemic practices similar to those justifying belief in sensory facts. In this paper I argue for a different understanding of religious belief. What is called for in religious belief is not affirmation of factual truth-claims but devotion to God. The significance and validity of creedal formulae lie in their capacity to elicit and express such devotion, not in their factual and/or informational character. My paper considers (...) four fundamental questions with respect to religious belief: 1. What is a religious belief? 2. What is the basis upon which one should adopt a religious belief? 3. What is the relation between belief and salvation/sanctification? 4. What attitude should one adopt toward alternate belief systems? I argue that these questions are best answered when we recognize the radical dissimilarity of creedal formulae to empirical truth-claims. (shrink)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s account of a transnational “confessing” church, developed with allusion to W.E.B. Du Bois, offers critical potential for addressing the problem of the global color line. To make this case, I first trace the ways in which Du Bois’s and Bonhoeffer’s German–American exchange studies contribute to their critical standpoints. Bonhoeffer’s “Protestantism without Reformation” is then examined to show that its view of American denominations is not mere German paternalism but a critique of how atomized churches can mask racial segregation, (...) even as it takes seriously America’s founding as a “nation of refugees.” Finally, Bonhoeffer’s references to intercultural encounter, particularly with respect to the Jewish diaspora in his later Ethics, provide for the extension of his ecclesiology beyond Germany and the “West.” Specifically, Du Bois’s own creedal language and pan-Africanism require that a truly global confession of the “form of Christ” must attend to unrecognized histories from the “Black Atlantic.”. (shrink)

This article examines a thread that runs through Martin Luther’s biblical and catechetical writings: his appropriation of a Messianic logic in light of a creedal interpretation of the whole of Scripture. Situating my case in relation to recent philosophical scholarship on the apostle Paul, I contend that this biblical hermeneutic may well be Luther’s signal ethical contribution for our age. Drawing on the solae and relating them to three themes central to his biblical hermeneutics—the Word of God, Scripture, and (...) the Creeds—I discuss how he develops a Messianic ethics that intrinsically links faith and love in relation to the biblical motifs of command and promise and the Christological themes of cross and incarnation. I conclude by discussing the relevance of Luther’s biblical hermeneutics for a post-secular age. (shrink)

This collection provides the first in-depth introduction to the theory of the religious imagination put forward by renowned philosopher Douglas Hedley, from his earliest essays to his principal writings. Featuring Hedley's inaugural lecture delivered at Cambridge University in 2018, the book sheds light on his robust concept of religious imagination as the chief power of the soul's knowledge of the Divine and reveals its importance in contemporary metaphysics, ethics and politics. Chapters trace the development of the religious imagination in Christian (...) Platonism from Late Antiquity to British Romanticism, drawing on Origen, Henry More and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before providing a survey of alternative contemporary versions of the concept as outlined by Karl Rahner, René Girard and William P. Alston, as well as within Indian philosophy. By bringing Christian Platonist thought into dialogue with contemporary philosophy and theology, the volume systematically reveals the relevance of Hedley's work to current debates in religious epistemology and metaphysics. It offers a comprehensive appraisal of the historical contribution of imagination to religious understanding and, as such, will be of great interest to philosophers, theologians and historians alike. (shrink)

Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. (...) Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

From 1968 to 1991 the acclaimed film theorist Christian Metz wrote several remarkable books on film theory. These books set the agenda of academic film studies during its formative period. Metz's ideas were taken up, digested, refined, reinterpreted, criticized and sometimes dismissed, but rarely ignored. This volume collects and translates into English a series of interviews with Metz, who offers readable summaries, elaborations, and explanations of his sometimes complex and demanding theories of film. We also discover the contents of his (...) unpublished manuscript on jokes, his relation to Roland Barthes, and the social networks operative in the French intellectual community during the 1970s and 1980s."--Back cover. (shrink)

In recent centuries Christians of various denominations have endorsed many different political philosophies that they see as being truly biblical in their approach. Over this time there has been an increasing hostility, by some Christians, towards free markets and political philosophies that hold human liberty as the highest goal such as libertarianism and classical liberalism. This criticism is unwarranted and misplaced as libertarianism and free markets are not only compatible with Christianity, they are also the most biblically sound of (...) all economics systems and political philosophies endorsed by Christians today. Therefore, this paper will argue that Christians of all denominations should endorse free markets and libertarianism if they wish to create a world that follows biblical principles and the teachings of Jesus. (shrink)

The situationist movement in psychology and, more recently, in philosophy has been associated with a number of striking claims, including that most people do not have the moral virtues and vices, that any ethical theory which is wedded to such character traits is empirically inadequate, and that much of our behavior is causally influenced, to significant degrees, by psychological influences about which we are often unaware. Yet Christian philosophers have had virtually nothing to say about situationist claims. The goal of (...) this paper is to consider whether Christians should start to be worried about them. (shrink)

Über die weitreichende Bedeutung von Briefwechseln für die Formierung der frühneuzeitlichen Gelehrtenrepublik besteht seit längerem ein für geisteswissenschaftliche Verhältnisse ungewöhnlicher Konsens. Die großen Briefwechsel von Grotius, Leibniz oder Haller machen deutlich, dass die Innovationsdynamik der Gelehrtenkultur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert im Wesentlichen auf Kommunikationsstrukturen zurückzuführen ist, die durch Korrespondenzen und durch die damit verbundenen Netzwerke etabliert wurden. Obwohl der in Halle lehrende Jurist und Philosoph Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) zu den,,schlechthin zentralen Persönlichkeiten" der deutschen und - über deren Rezeption - (...) auch der europäischen Aufklärung gehört, ist eine Edition seiner Korrespondenz zwar verschiedentlich als Desiderat benannt, tatsächlich aber noch nie in Angriff genommen worden. Die hier vorgelegte Ausgabe will diesem Desiderat abhelfen und bietet eine vollständige und kommentierte Edition der aktiven und passiven Korrespondenz von Christian Thomasius. Damit soll bislang unbekanntes Quellenmaterial erschlossen und über die Kommentierung ausgewertet werden, das einerseits der Erforschung des Oeuvre von Christian Thomasius und seinem Umfeld neue Impulse geben wird und andererseits geeignet ist, wichtige Aufschlüsse über die frühaufklärerische Gelehrtenkultur im Übergang vom 17. zum 18. Jahrhundert zu verschaffen. Hierbei ist sowohl an die Veränderungen innerhalb der Kommunikationsstrukturen der Res publica litteraria zu Beginn der Aufklärung als auch - und zwar in erster Linie - an die Rekonstruktion der Genese und der Lösung von einzelnen theoretischen wie praktischen Problemen im Kontext der im ausgehenden 17. Jahrhundert sich vollziehenden sozialen und politischen Veränderungen zu denken. (shrink)

Contemporary Christian ethics encounters the challenge to communicate genuinely Christian normative orientations within the scientific debate in such a way as to render these orientations comprehensible, and to maintain or enhance their plausibility even for non-Christians. This essay, therefore, proceeds from a biblical motif, takes up certain themes from the Christian tradition (in particular the idea of social justice), and connects both with a compelling contemporary approach to ethics by secular moral philosophy, i.e. with Axel Honneth's reception of Hegel, as (...) based on Hegel's theory of recognition. As a first step, elements of an ethics of recognition are developed on the basis of an anthropological recourse to the conditions of intersubjective encounters. These conditions are then brought to bear on the idea of social justice, as developed in the social-Catholic tradition, and as systematically explored in the Pastoral Letter of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice For All (1986). Proceeding from this basis, aspects of a Christian ethics of community service with regard to long-term care can be defined. (shrink)

Christian Garves Texte wurden im späten 18. Jahrhundert als heraustragende Beispiele für eine gelehrte und populäre Schreibweise bewundert. Zugleich genoss der Breslauer Aufklärer auch unter Fachkollegen aus der Philosophie und der Philologie große Reputation. Mit seinen Übersetzungen und Kommentaren englischer Autoren und lateinischer Klassiker beeinflusste er Generationen von Literaten und Philosophen. Der Band bietet erstmalig eine zwiesprachige Edition seiner frühen Dissertation zur Logik sowie seine ebenso berühmte wie umstrittene Studie zum Verhältnis von 'Moral und Politik'. Ergänzt wird diese Auswahl aus (...) seinen monographischen Arbeiten durch kommentierte Editionen von Aufsätzen, dem Kommentar zur Fergussson-Übersetzung sowie repräsentative Rezensionen. (shrink)

The present collection of essays is devoted to the Christian philosophy of the most prolific and most speculatively ambitious of the Cambridge Origenists, Henry More. Not only did More revere Origen, whom he extolled as a "holy sage" and "that miracle of the Christian world", but he also developed a philosophical system which hinged upon the Origenian notions of universal divine goodness and libertarian human freedom. Throughout his life, More subscribed to the ancient theology of the pre-existence of souls and (...) took issue with the early modern philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Baruch de Spinoza. His vision of God's goodness, experienced in his early school years at Eton, became the cornerstone of an Origenist rationalism which envisaged an extended world animated by divine thought and inhabited by self-moving rational agents. More's philosophy is the crowning attainment of the early modern rediscovery of Origen as well as a neglected major rationalist system in its own right which went on to exert decisive influence upon all subsequent western metaphysics. The essays collected in the first part provide a detailed introduction to More's voluminous writings. After a comprehensive general overview of his metaphysical and ethical system, the essays expound More's historical context and his philosophical development from his early poetry in the 1640s to his mature philosophical and theological prose works of the 50s, 60s and 70s. In addition, the reception of More and Origen in the later Cambridge Origenists and in Isaac Newton is outlined. The second part contains several excerpts from More's influential Latin works first translated into English by the editor. (shrink)

Arab Christians and the Qurʾan from the Origins of Islam to the Medieval Period. Edited by Mark Beaumont. History of Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 35. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xiv + 216. $120, €104.

We like to think of ourselves, our friends, and our families as decent people. We may not be saints, but we are still honest, relatively kind, and mostly trustworthy. Miller argues here that we are badly mistaken in thinking this. Hundreds of recent studies in psychology tell a different story: that we all have serious character flaws that prevent us from being as good as we think we are - and that we do not even recognize that these flaws exist. (...) But neither are most of us cruel or dishonest. Instead, Miller argues, we are a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of us in a group of bystanders will do nothing as someone cries out for help in an emergency. Yet it is also true that there will be many times when we will selflessly come to the aid of a complete stranger - and resist the urge to lie, cheat, or steal even if we could get away with it. Much depends on cues in our social environment. Miller uses this recent psychological literature to explain what the notion of "character" really means today, and how we can use this new understanding to develop a character better in sync with the kind of people we want to be. (shrink)