Browse

This book explores the methodological connections between two quintessentially American traditions: liberation theology and pragmatism. It examines how pragmatism can lend philosophical clarity and depth to some of liberation theology’s core ideas and assumptions. In turn, it also shows how liberation theology offers pragmatism a more nuanced and sympathetic approach to religious faith, especially its social and pedagogical dimensions. Ultimately, this work seeks to craft a philosophical foundation that ensures the continued relevance of liberation thought in today’s world. Keeping true to the method of pragmatism, the book begins inductively with a set of actual experiences: the Good Friday liturgies at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas. The author offers a thick description of the way these performative rituals integrate the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith. Subsequent chapters probe this integration deductively at three levels of theoretical analysis: experience/metaphysics, sociality, and pedagogy. At all three levels, the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith emerge in different yet related ways. The author argues that utilizing the categories of the aesthetic and ethical enables a richer understanding of the dynamic relationship between faith and politics. This book builds new bridges between a number of discourses, including pragmatism, Latin American liberation theology, U.S. Latino/a theology, feminism, ritual studies, and the philosophy of education.

This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely engaged with Greek philosophical and scientific texts, whose translation into Arabic he oversaw. Some of the philosophical views for which al-Kindī is known are reactions to Greek thinkers. For instance, he used ideas from Philoponus in arguing against the eternity of the world, and his discussion of divine attributes is based on Neoplatonic texts. However, the book also places al-Kindī’s thought within the context of 9th century Islamic culture, especially contemporary theological developments. The book covers every aspect of al-Kindī’s extant philosophical corpus, including not only his philosophical theology but also his theory of soul, his epistemology, and his ethics. Two chapters are devoted to al-Kindī’s works on the natural sciences (in particular pharmacology, optics, music, and cosmology). The book concludes by discussing how al-Kindī used Greek cosmological ideas in his account of divine providence.

Nils Ole Oermann vividly describes the many-sided life of Albert Schweitzer (1975–1965), who achieved world renown through his selfless work as a doctor in the African jungle and as a pioneer of an ethical principle, Reverence for Life, that crosses all cultures and religions. This biography provides a fresh look at one the greatest icons of the twentieth century, from theologian and philosopher to musician and physician, husband, writer, and political activist. Though a mediocre student, he wrote a major theological work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, and a path-breaking study of Johannes Sebastian Bach. But it was his ethical worldview of Reverence for Life, explored in three volumes on the philosophy of civilization, that was to be his most important intellectual achievement. His life’s work, an embodiment of the principle of Reverence for Life, was the hospital that, together with his wife, Helene, he built up in Lambarene, Gabon. Though he was revered in many quarters, he was also criticized for his paternalistic treatment of the indigenous people of Africa. Following the award of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1953, Schweitzer became a key voice in the nuclear debate, speaking out against the dangers of nuclear weapons. What Schweitzer tried to do was to live by the universal principle of Reverence for Life. And this was for him more important even than his hospital.

This book offers an examination of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive occult iconoclasts. Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was a study in contradictions. He was born into a Fundamentalist Christian family, and then he was educated at Cambridge where he experienced both an intellectual liberation from his religious upbringing and a psychic awakening that led him into the study of magic. He was a stock figure in the tabloid press of his day, vilified during his life as a traitor, drug addict and debaucher; yet he became known as perhaps the most influential thinker in contemporary esotericism. The practice of the occult arts was understood in the light of contemporary developments in psychology, and its advocates, such as William Butler Yeats, were among the intellectual avant-garde of the modernist project. Crowley took a more drastic step and declared himself the revelator of a new age of individualism. Crowley's occult bricolage, Magick, was a thoroughly eclectic combination of spiritual exercises drawing from Western European ceremonial magical traditions as practiced in the nineteenth-century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley also pioneered in his inclusion of Indic sources for the parallel disciplines of meditation and yoga. The summa of this journey of self-liberation was harnessing the power of sexuality as a magical discipline, an instance of the “sacrilization of the self” as practiced in his co-masonic magical group, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The religion Crowley created, Thelema, legitimated his role as a charismatic revelator and herald of a new age of freedom under the law of “Do what thou wilt.” The influence of Aleister Crowley is not only to be found in contemporary esotericism—he was, for instance, a major influence on Gerald Gardner and the modern witchcraft movement—but can also be seen in the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in many forms of alternative spirituality and popular culture. This book provides insight into Crowley's critical role in the study of western esotericism, new religious movements, and sexuality.

This book offers a compelling and provocative argument against the application of postmodern thought to religious studies, showing how such radically skeptical thinking undermines, subverts, and distorts the study of religion. It shows that religious studies is an ongoing experiment with various types of methodological approaches to the study of religion, which is itself a human construct with limited cross-cultural application. Without a commonly agreed-upon method for the study of its subject, religious studies is characterized by the use of multiple methods, which tend to be adopted based on the latest trends in the field. Most recently, these trends have been dominated by postmodern thought. Because the discipline of religious studies is a product of the European Enlightenment with its values and representational mode of thinking, it is challenged and even threatened by postmodern thought, which calls into question many of its values, basic presuppositions, and convictions. The author examines various postmodern positions related to the study of religion, including those of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Mauss, Michel Foucault and Edward W. Said. He contrasts the thought of traditional history of religions scholars Mircea Eliade and Wendy Doniger with selected postmodern thinkers on the topics of hermeneutics, comparison, and difference. The book concludes by exploring the postmodern challenges to such accepted concepts of religion and considers the long-term implications of a scholar's adoption of postmodern methods. Regardless of whether they are transformed by postmodern thought, it suggests all methods and concepts should be subject to pragmatic review.

Philosophy in the English-speaking world is dominated by analytical approaches to its problems and projects; but theology has been dominated by alternative approaches. Many would say that the current state in theology is not mere historical accident, but is, rather, how things ought to be. On the other hand, many others would say precisely the opposite: that theology as a discipline has been beguiled and taken largely deleterious. The methodological divide between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers of religion is ripe for exploration. This book attempts to bring a much-needed interdisciplinary conversation about the value of analytic philosophical approaches to theological topics. Most of the chapters are sympathetic to the enterprise of analytic theology; but with an eye towards balance.

This book offers a brief introduction to the life and thought of Saint Anselm (c. 1033–1109). Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury for the last sixteen years of his life, is one of the foremost philosopher-theologians of the Middle Ages. His keen and rigorous thinking earned him the title “The Father of Scholasticism”, and his influence is discernible in figures as various as Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, the voluntarists of the late-13th and 14th centuries, and the Protestant reformers. Part I of this book lays out the framework of Anselm's thought: his approach to what he calls “the reason of faith”, his account of thought and language, and his theory of truth. Part II focuses on Anselm's account of God and the divine attributes, and it shows how Anselm applies his theory of language and thought to develop a theological semantics that at once respects divine transcendence and allows for the possibility of divine rational knowledge. In Part III, the book turns from the heavenly to the animal. It elucidates Anselm's theory of modality and his understanding of free choice, an idea that was, for Anselm, embedded in his conception of justice. The book concludes with a discussion of Incarnation, Atonement, and original sin, as the chapters examine Anselm's argument that the death of a God-man is the only possible remedy for human injustice.

The nine essays in The Appearing of God are situated on the fluid border of philosophy and theology, and follow a path leading from classic modern philosophical discussions of experience to some leading themes in contemporary phenomenology. After an introductory exploration of Kierkegaard’s classic text that straddles the border between philosophy and theology, the reader is introduced to Husserl’s account of perception, with its demonstration that the field of phenomena is wider than that of perceptible entities, allowing phenomena that give themselves primarily to feeling. Husserl’s theory of reduction is then subjected to a critique, which identifies phenomena wholly resistant to reduction. John Paul II’s encyclical on Faith and Reason elicits a critical rejection of its attempt to reify the boundary between natural and supernatural, the author asserting in its place that love is the distinguishing mark of the knowledge of God. This theme is continued in a discussion of Heidegger’s Being and Time, where a passing reference to Pascal invites interrogation of the work’s “methodological atheism,” which is found to leave more room than appears for love of the divine. The next three chapters deal with the themes of Anticipation, Gift, and Self-Identity, all exploring aspects of a single theme, the relation of present experience to the passage of time, and especially to the future. The final chapter, which is also the most personal, draws the main themes of the book together in asking how theology as an intellectual enterprise relates to the practice of worship.

This work explores the role of Aristotelian concepts, principles, and themes in Thomas Aquinas’s theology. Each of the ten chapters investigates the significance of Aquinas’s reception of Aristotle in a central theological domain: the Trinity, the angels, soul and body, the Mosaic law, grace, charity, justice, contemplation and action, Christ, and the sacraments. In general, the chapters focus on the Summa theologiae, but some range more widely in Aquinas’s corpus. For quite some time, it has been the influence of Aristotle on Aquinas’s philosophy that has been the center of attention. Perhaps in reaction to philosophical neo-Thomism, or perhaps because this Aristotelian influence appears no longer necessary to demonstrate, the role of Aristotle in Aquinas’s theology presently receives less theological attention than does Aquinas’s use of other authorities (whether Scripture or particular Fathers), especially in domains outside of theological ethics. Indeed, in some theological circles the influence of Aristotle upon Aquinas’s theology is no longer well understood. Readers will encounter here the great Aristotelian themes, such as act and potency, God as pure act, substance and accidents, power and generation, change and motion, fourfold causality, form and matter, hylomorphic anthropology, the structure of intellection, the relationship between knowledge and will, happiness and friendship, habits and virtues, contemplation and action, politics and justice, the best form of government, and private property and the common good. The ten chapters of this work engage Aquinas’s reception of Aristotle in his theology from historical, philosophical, and constructively theological perspectives.

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by “the disenchantment of the world.” Max Weber’s statement remains a dominant interpretation of the modern condition: the increasing capabilities of knowledge and science have banished mysteries, leaving a world that can be mastered technically and intellectually. And though this idea seems empowering, many people have faced modern disenchantment. Using intimate encounters with works of art to explore disenchantment and the possibilities of re-enchantment, this book addresses questions about the nature of humanity, the world, and God in the wake of Weber’s diagnosis of modernity. It focuses on a handful of artists—Walter De Maria, Diller and Scofidio, James Turrell, and Andy Goldworthy—to show how they introduce spaces hospitable to mystery and wonder, redemption and revelation, and transcendence and creation. What might be thought of as religious longings, the book argues, are crucial aspects of enchanting secularity when developed through encounters with these works of art. Developing a model of religion that might be significant to secular culture, it shows how this model can be employed to deepen interpretation of the art we usually view as representing secular modernity.

While a rational consciousness grasps many truths, this book argues for an even richer knowledge through a confrontation with the stuff of visions and dreams. Spanning both Buddhist and European forms of visionary experience, the book pursues the symbolic, nonrational depths of such phenomena, reawakening the intuitive, creative impulses that power greater understanding. The book argues for a combination of psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. The book begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, a person is able to witness hundreds of thousands of their past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. It then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space. The book follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. It develops the term “dream-ego” through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and it defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. This book translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry.

Today, in the age of terrorism and an unsafe world, there is a fresh need to understand the core meaning of the world religions, to reshape the educational system, and to strengthen the United Nations (UN) in a manner that can help people to build a better future. Drawing upon sources from the ancient roots of Indian culture and his experience as an international civil servant, B.P. Singh presents an essential framework for addressing the core twenty-first century global conflict and rebuilding for the post-September 11 world, while integrating the concept of the bahudhā philosophy. The futility of promoting violence and conflict in the name of religion is obvious to all except a few. Together, people have to recognize that many factors drive public opinion, including education and media, and that a global view is required. Underlining the need to transcend age-old peace mechanisms and reconstruct the language of discourse, this book propounds the concept of bahudhā — an eternal reality or continuum, a dialogue of harmony, and peaceful living. Bahudhā recognizes the distinction between plural societies and pluralism, facilitates exchange of views, and promotes understanding of the collective good. This book argues that the answer to terrorism lies in respecting human rights and appreciating various cultures and value systems. This is crucial for facilitating and enhancing dialogue processes eventually leading to amity and a peaceful world.

The book argues that the doctrine of election in Karl Barth's early theology shows a striking resemblance to the position of Friedrich Schleiermacher, and that his later christological revision of the doctrine overcomes the limitations of his earlier ‘Schleiermacherian’ position. Initially, both agree that predestination is not a pre‐temporal decision by which God has decreed once and for all who will believe and who will not believe. Instead, the outcome of the divine decision is determined when God addresses a human being here and now. Schleiermacher's concept of a single divine decree is consistent with Barth's assertion that God addresses every person in the same way, but the responses to the address are diverse. Their doctrine of election is theocentric and envisions a teleological relation between reprobation and election, in which the former always serves the purpose of the latter, without an endorsement of universalism. Whereas Schleiermacher rejects the concept of double predestination, Barth modifies it twice. In Church Dogmatics II/2 it refers no longer to the twofold possibility of faith and unbelief but to the double determination of individual human beings and God's own being. It explains that God sees every human being and also Himself in Christ.

For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, this book shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world. Examining a wide array of ancient writings, the book demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, it offers an account of the emergence of the concept of religion.

Over the last two decades, scientific accounts of religion have received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention both because of their intrinsic interest and because they are widely viewed as constituting a threat to the religion they analyse. This book aims to describe and discuss these scientific accounts as well as to assess their implications. The volume begins with essays by leading scientists in the field, describing these accounts and discussing evidence in their favour. Philosophical and theological reflections on these accounts follow, offered by leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. This diverse group of scholars address some fascinating underlying questions: Do scientific accounts of religion undermine the justification of religious belief? Do such accounts show religion to be an accidental by-product of our evolutionary development? And, whilst we seem naturally disposed toward religion, would we fare better or worse without it? Bringing together dissenting perspectives, this provocative collection will serve to freshly illuminate on-going debate on these perennial questions.

“Big dreams” are rare but extremely vivid forms of dreaming that make a strong, lasting impact on waking consciousness. Experiences of big dreaming have played prominent roles in religious and cultural traditions throughout history. This book provides an original, evidence-based analysis of big dreams drawing on research from cognitive science and the comparative history of religions. The goal is to shed new light on the classic theory of Nietzsche, Tylor, and others that the origins of religion can be found in dreaming. This theory has always appealed to anthropologists and philosophers, but it has never been tested using current scientific research. Big Dreams is the first book to make that attempt. It builds on findings from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology to illuminate the dreaming‒religion connection. The book provides a mapping of four “prototypes” of big dreaming: aggressive, sexual, gravitational, and mystical. Each prototype is associated with a distinct kind of emotional and physiological arousal—a fight/flight response in a chasing nightmare, an actual orgasm in a “wet” dream, a startled sensation of vertigo in a falling dream, a joyous feeling of freedom and power in a flying dream. Scientific research on these big dream prototypes has revealed a naturalistic basis for religious beliefs arising from intensified modes of sleep and dreaming. Big Dreams looks at cross-cultural and historical cases of dreams involved in demonic seduction, prophetic vision, ritual healing, and contemplative practice to argue that Nietzsche and Tylor were essentially right—dreaming is a primal wellspring of religious experience.

Blaise Pascal on Duplicity, Sin, and the Fall: The Secret Instinct presents Pascal’s account of the cognitive consequences of the Fall. The central claim is that for Pascal, the Fall is a fall into duplicity. He holds that, as fallen selves in a fallen world, human beings have an innate aversion to the truth that is also, at the same time, an aversion to God. According to Pascal, we are born into a duplicitous world that shapes us into duplicitous subjects, and so we find it easy to reject God continually and deceive ourselves about our own sinfulness. Pascal’s account of the noetic effects of sin has long been overlooked by theologians, but it is both traditional and innovative. It is robustly Augustinian, with a strong emphasis on the fallen will, the darkened intellect, and the fundamental sin of pride. Yet it also embraces a view of subjectivity that seems strikingly contemporary. For Pascal, the self is a fiction, constructed from without by an already duplicitous world. The human subject is habituated to deception because it is the essential glue that holds his world together. This work offers more than just a novel interpretation of Pascal’s Pensées. It demonstrates, by exegetical argument and constructive example, that “Pascalian” theology is both possible and fruitful.

This book provides, for the first time, a philosophical study of the whole range of Boethius's writings (except his textbooks on music and arithmetic): the commentaries and monographs on logic, the Opuscula sacra (short treatises on theology) and the Consolation of Philosophy. It also offers a reassessment of Boethius as a philosopher. Boethius, Marenbon argues, was not merely of importance in transmitting ancient Platonism and Aristotelian logical doctrines of the late ancient Platonic schools to the Latin Middle Ages, but was also a subtle and interesting original thinker. In his Opuscula sacra, he makes innovations in the theological method that would mould medieval thinking. The Consolation both directly tackles problems such as the compatibility of human free will and divine prescience and providence, and through its complex use of the dialog form, probes the relation between philosophy and religious belief, Christian and pagan.