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Dark Contemplation and Epistemic Transformation: The Analytic Theologian Re‐Meets Teresa of Ávila

Sarah Coakley

in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology

This chapter explores the mystical writings of St Teresa of Ávila with an eye to providing certain correctives to analytic appropriations of St Teresa's work. It begins with a playful feminist ... More

This chapter explores the mystical writings of St Teresa of Ávila with an eye to providing certain correctives to analytic appropriations of St Teresa's work. It begins with a playful feminist analysis of some of the most important turns to religious experience in analytic philosophy of religion in recent decades, which lead on, in the light of a feminist critique, to an analysis of how Teresa's project might suggest how contemplative practice (as opposed to passing religious experiences) could help provide justification for certain sorts of theistic claim, and what role an apophatic sensibility would play in such a move. This final chapter not only attempts to extend some of the main moves made by William Alston in his Perceiving God in such a new way, but also responds to Alston's own recent attempt to press his epistemological project in this apophatic direction. It is argued that Alston's new ‘turn’ has considerable potential, but one still in need of further development and critique.Less

Jewish Theology as a Religious and Doxastic Practice

in Contemplative Nation: A Philosophical Account of Jewish Theological Language

This chapter examines two related problems: what can replace the systematic and dogmatic approach to theology within Judaism, and what account of Jewish theology can embrace the resources of ... More

This chapter examines two related problems: what can replace the systematic and dogmatic approach to theology within Judaism, and what account of Jewish theology can embrace the resources of hermeneutic theory while maintaining the possibility of theological truth claims. It addresses these issues by offering a critical analysis of Pierre Hadot's work on the role of spiritual exercises in ancient philosophy and William Alston's contribution to analytic religious epistemology. Hadot's complex account of the functions of ancient philosophical discourse implies that the systematic and dogmatic conception of theology can be replaced with an account of theology in which theory and practice are inextricable. In his Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Alston proposes a religious epistemology that is primarily concerned with the contribution of religious experience to religious belief. Alston's externalist epistemology claims that we have no alternative but to rely upon socially established belief-forming practices, which he calls doxastic practices.Less

Responses to Evidential Ambiguity: Isolationist and Reformed Epistemologies

John Bishop

in Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious Belief

This chapter considers whether fideism might be avoided through alternative approaches to the (assumed) evidential ambiguity of theism. Isolationist (Wittgensteinian) epistemology (often linked to ... More

This chapter considers whether fideism might be avoided through alternative approaches to the (assumed) evidential ambiguity of theism. Isolationist (Wittgensteinian) epistemology (often linked to theological non-realism) takes theistic doxastic frameworks to be epistemically isolated in the sense that their framework principles are necessarily not assessable in the light of external evidence. Reformed epistemology maintains that holding certain theistic beliefs may be evidentially justified because their truth is basically, non-inferentially, evident in the believer's experience. It is argued that both these epistemologies must ultimately be regarded as fideist, and a critique is provided, in particular, of William Alston's appeal to an alleged parity with perceptual beliefs and Alvin Plantinga's appeal to his epistemological externalist theory of warrant. It is argued that reflective believers must recognize that their commitment to basic theistic beliefs involves a faith-venture.Less

The Ethics of Belief

Richard Feldman

in Evidentialism: Essays in Epistemology

Discusses the merits of versions of doxastic voluntarism, the thesis that we form beliefs voluntarily. It criticizes some forms of doxastic voluntarism, but concedes that we do have a kind of ... More

Discusses the merits of versions of doxastic voluntarism, the thesis that we form beliefs voluntarily. It criticizes some forms of doxastic voluntarism, but concedes that we do have a kind of indirect control over our beliefs. The chapter also examines various theses about the attitudes that we epistemically ought to have. An evidentialist thesis about the attitudes we epistemically ought to have is supported.Less

Conclusion: Navigating the Divide between Liberal and Postliberal Theology

John Allan Knight

in Liberalism versus Postliberalism: The Great Divide in Twentieth-Century Theology

The concluding chapter connects the concerns of liberals and postliberals with their respective positions on religious and theological language. Liberal theology is driven to a descriptivist or ... More

The concluding chapter connects the concerns of liberals and postliberals with their respective positions on religious and theological language. Liberal theology is driven to a descriptivist or truth-conditional understanding of meaning by its concern to defend the truth of religious or theological assertions via criteria that are truly public. Conversely, postliberal embrace of the later Wittgenstein is driven by the concern to vindicate the particularity of God’s self-revelation in Jesus, thus avoiding vulnerability to Feuerbach’s critique. Such concerns are frustrated by the Hobson’s choice between descriptivism and Wittgenstein. The chapter thus points to developments in philosophy of language that can move theology past the liberal/postliberal impasse. These include the development of theories of meaning-as-use, by philosophers like William Alston that incorporate a Kripkean view of direct or causal reference. The chapter describes how such developments could be put to use in correcting liberal and postliberal shortcomings in theological method. The chapter closes by suggesting areas in which further work could be done on meaning, reference, interpretation and truth—the four elements of theological method mentioned in the introduction. In all these areas, recent analytic philosophy could prove to be a fruitful conversation partner.Less

Saving Divine Action within Later Analytic Philosophy

William J. Abraham

in Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume I: Exploring and Evaluating the Debate

One of the most important philosophers who applied a concept of intentional action to God was William P. Alston. In this chapter, the author engages Alston’s proposals, and argues that even a robust ... More

One of the most important philosophers who applied a concept of intentional action to God was William P. Alston. In this chapter, the author engages Alston’s proposals, and argues that even a robust notion of intentional action predicated of God yields very little when it comes to understanding claims about divine action that are of prime importance to the Christian tradition. The author also begins to query the concept of God as an acting agent. The author also indicates again how most philosophers commit themselves to a thin version of a doctrinal tradition even without explicitly stating it, and that the debate about divine action is better served by thick engagement with the Christian doctrinal tradition.Less

A Cross-Cultural Approach to the Problem of Evil: Sri Ramakrishna, the Rowe-Alston Debate, and Hick’s Soul-Making Theodicy

Ayon Maharaj

in Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion

This chapter adopts a cross-cultural approach to the problem of evil by bringing Sri Ramakrishna into conversation with recent analytic philosophers. Maharaj begins by exploring the philosophical ... More

This chapter adopts a cross-cultural approach to the problem of evil by bringing Sri Ramakrishna into conversation with recent analytic philosophers. Maharaj begins by exploring the philosophical resonances between Sri Ramakrishna’s skeptical theism and William Alston’s skeptical theist refutation of William Rowe’s argument from evil. On the one hand, Maharaj draws on Alston’s skeptical theist response to Rowe as a means of developing and defending Sri Ramakrishna’s own skeptical theist position. On the other, Maharaj argues that Alston’s failure to consider Indian karma-based theodicies significantly weakens his argument. Maharaj then brings Sri Ramakrishna’s saint-making theodicy into dialogue with Hick’s “soul-making” theodicy. Hick’s convincing arguments for the necessity of evil in a soul-making environment lend support to Sri Ramakrishna’s saint-making theodicy. However, Maharaj also identifies major weaknesses in Hick’s soul-making theodicy, which stem from Hick’s assumption of a one-life-only paradigm and his neglect of mystical experience. On this basis, Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna’s mystically grounded saint-making theodicy, which presupposes the doctrines of karma and rebirth, has significant advantages over Hick’s theodicy.Less

The speech act of assurance

Krista Lawlor

in Assurance: An Austinian View of Knowledge and Knowledge Claims

We start with Austin’s suggestion that we should compare ‘I know’ with ‘I promise.’ Assurances, routinely expressed with an explicit ‘I know’, offer an unlimited guarantee to one’s addressee. This ... More

We start with Austin’s suggestion that we should compare ‘I know’ with ‘I promise.’ Assurances, routinely expressed with an explicit ‘I know’, offer an unlimited guarantee to one’s addressee. This guarantee can be understood in terms of the assurance giver offering exclusionary reasons to the hearer. This distinguishes the speech act of assurance from that of assertion. Alston’s theory of speech acts provides a framework for articulating the distinctive features of assurance. We find that assurance givers and receivers have commitments that they can shoulder only by appeal to a standard of reasonableness. As in the law, a reasonable person standard allows for coordination of judgments about the relevant normative commitments. Further, we find that a link between assurance-giving and knowledge is forged by the notion of reasonableness; the result is a reasonable alternatives theory of knowledge.Less

Transcending Place and Time: A Response to David Brown on Enchantment, Epistemology, and Experience

Charles Taliaferro

in Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture: Responses to the Work of David Brown

After an overview of some of the main themes of God and Enchantment of Place, this chapter defends the continuing importance of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Brown criticizes the ... More

After an overview of some of the main themes of God and Enchantment of Place, this chapter defends the continuing importance of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Brown criticizes the formal character of the various appeals to religious experience made by William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, and Richard Swinburne. The chapter argues in reply that although Brown demonstrates the enchanting allure and compelling interest of Christian faith, particularly for an aesthetically-oriented audience, we still need the work of Alston, Plantinga, Swinburne and others to secure a stable epistemology. The chapter concludes with friendly observations and suggestions to strengthen Brown's project: notably how Brown's work offers an interesting reply to the ‘hiddenness of God’ objection, Brown's affinity to Cambridge Platonism, and how his focus on the enchantment of space may usefully incorporate more reflection on the enchantment of time and of our encounter, in time, of the eternal God.Less

Reflection

Declan Smithies

in The Epistemic Role of Consciousness

Chapter 8 motivates accessibilism by appealing to William Alston’s hypothesis that the value of epistemic justification is tied to reflection, an activity that is the distinctive mark of persons who ... More

Chapter 8 motivates accessibilism by appealing to William Alston’s hypothesis that the value of epistemic justification is tied to reflection, an activity that is the distinctive mark of persons who can be held responsible for their beliefs and actions. Section 8.1 argues that epistemic justification is what makes our beliefs stable under an idealized process of reflection. Section 8.2 uses this proposal in arguing for the JJ principle, which says that you have justification to believe a proposition if and only if you have justification to believe that you have justification to believe it. Sections 8.3–8.6 defend this proposal against a series of objections raised by Hilary Kornblith: the overintellectualization problem, the regress problem, the empirical problem, and the value problem. Section 8.7 concludes with some reflections on the debate between internalism and externalism about epistemic justification.Less

A Cross-Cultural Defense of the Epistemic Value of Mystical Experience: Sri Ramakrishna, Self-Authentication, and the Argument from Experience

Ayon Maharaj

in Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion

This chapter explores how Sri Ramakrishna’s mystical testimony and teachings enrich contemporary analytic debates about the epistemic value of mystical experience. These debates center on a key ... More

This chapter explores how Sri Ramakrishna’s mystical testimony and teachings enrich contemporary analytic debates about the epistemic value of mystical experience. These debates center on a key question: are we warranted in taking mystical experiences—either our own or those of others—to be veridical? After briefly delineating Sri Ramakrishna’s views on the scope of theological reason, Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna’s mystical testimony lends strong support to the philosopher Robert Oakes’s position that self-authenticating experiences of God are possible. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the argument from experience, the argument that it is reasonable to infer God’s existence from the testimony of people claiming to have experienced Him. Maharaj draws on Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings and mystical testimony in order to bolster contemporary philosophical defenses of the argument from experience. He contends, moreover, that Sri Ramakrishna’s distinctive approach helps defuse two serious objections to the argument from experience: namely, lack of adequate cross-checkability and the conflicting claims objection.Less

Christian Character Formation and the Infusion of Grace

Ray S. Yeo

in Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology

This chapter makes the claim that character and virtue formation in the Christian tradition is distinct from its non-religious counterparts in its foundational insistence that genuine Christian ... More

This chapter makes the claim that character and virtue formation in the Christian tradition is distinct from its non-religious counterparts in its foundational insistence that genuine Christian character formation can only be achieved through the gracious gift of God, and cannot be had simply through human endeavors. However, the precise relationship between the transforming grace of God and the character transformation of the believer has not always been well understood. In light of this obscurity, the chapter attempts to provide a theoretical model for understanding the nature of the Spirit’s indwelling in transforming grace by synthesizing Jonathan Edwards’s theological psychology with William Alston’s model of indwelling. The significance of the proposed model for Christian character formation is then explored.Less

Divine Presence in a Material World

Michael C. Rea

in The Hiddenness of God

This chapter, together with Chapter 6, presents a theory about encounters with God according to which experience of God’s presence is much more widely available than is typically credited in the ... More

This chapter, together with Chapter 6, presents a theory about encounters with God according to which experience of God’s presence is much more widely available than is typically credited in the literature on divine hiddenness. The present chapter further develops the account sketched in Chapter 6 and, in so doing, locates the account in relation to a few important decision points in the literature on religious experience. The chapter concludes with some reasons for thinking that the view of divine encounters sketched here is the most plausible account of how creatures like us might experience divine presence in a material world.Less

The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Natural Theology

Herman Philipse

in God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason

Chapter 2 offers a structured synopsis of the history of natural theology from Xenophanes to Richard Swinburne. It is argued, for example, that the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas are outdated, and that ... More

Chapter 2 offers a structured synopsis of the history of natural theology from Xenophanes to Richard Swinburne. It is argued, for example, that the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas are outdated, and that the decline of natural theology in the nineteenth century was due largely to Kant’s and Hume’s philosophies of science. However, since these philosophies of science have turned out to be problematic, there is no reason for religious believers to stick to some blend of religious irrationalism à la Kierkegaard or William James, or to hold that natural theology must be meaningless. In principle, natural theology can be a perfectly decent intellectual enterprise.Less

Why Justification Matters

Declan Smithies

in Epistemic Evaluation: Purposeful Epistemology

This chapter is guided by the hypothesis that the point and purpose of using the concept of justification in epistemic evaluation is tied to its role in the practice of critical reflection. Section ... More

This chapter is guided by the hypothesis that the point and purpose of using the concept of justification in epistemic evaluation is tied to its role in the practice of critical reflection. Section one proposes an analysis of justification as the epistemic property in virtue of which a belief has the potential to survive ideal critical reflection. Section two uses this analysis to argue for a form of access internalism on which one has justification to believe a proposition iff one has higher-order justification to believe that one has justification to believe that proposition. Section three distinguishes between propositional and doxastic versions of access internalism and argues that the propositional version avoids familiar objections to the doxastic version. Section four argues that the propositional version of access internalism explains and vindicates internalist intuitions about cases. Section five concludes with some reflections on the relationship between critical reflection, responsibility, and personhood.Less

Knowing Religion

James W. Jones

in Living Religion: Embodiment, Theology, and the Possibility of a Spiritual Sense

Taking embodiment seriously impacts the way religion is theorized in the discipline of cognitive psychology and in other religious studies disciplines, including theology. This chapter describes new ... More

Taking embodiment seriously impacts the way religion is theorized in the discipline of cognitive psychology and in other religious studies disciplines, including theology. This chapter describes new avenues of research that follow from adopting an embodied perspective. An embodied perspective also transforms the way we think about traditional topics concerning religious knowledge. The often argued parallel between ordinary perceptual experience and certain religious experiences commonly described as religious perceptions is analyzed and an appreciative critique of William Alston’s 1991 book Perceiving God is offered. Arguments for conceiving of religious experience as a form of perception are strong but the argument as currently framed is seriously flawed psychologically. Reframing the argument in terms of an embodied-relational model strengthens it and supports the argument in this book that reason is on the side of those who choose a religiously lived life.Less

On Perceiving God: Prospects for a Cognitive Science of Religious Experience

Mark Baker and Dean Zimmerman

in Metaphysics and Cognitive Science

This chapter focuses on a gap in existing cognitive scientific explanations of religion: although they may explain various religious beliefs, they are weak at explaining religious ... More

This chapter focuses on a gap in existing cognitive scientific explanations of religion: although they may explain various religious beliefs, they are weak at explaining religious experiences—including the very perception-like experiences that believers often take as grounding their belief in God. The account argues that cognitive science of religion (CSR) to date provides neither the full-blown concept of a deity nor dedicated cognitive resources for arriving at the perception of one. The gap is not inevitable, however: it is shown how certain religious experiences could indeed qualify as direct perceptions of God, on a traditional model of perception. Moreover, one can explain how humans acquired the conceptual and computational resources to perceive supernatural beings by supposing that human beings have actually interacted with such beings in evolutionarily significant ways throughout history. The chapter closes with some epistemic implications of looking at CSR in this “reformed” way.Less

Hiddenness and Transcendence

Michael C. Rea

in The Hiddenness of God

Following on from Chapter 3, which described a continuum on which characterizations of divine transcendence generally fall, this chapter makes a case for avoiding both poles, thus locating the ... More

Following on from Chapter 3, which described a continuum on which characterizations of divine transcendence generally fall, this chapter makes a case for avoiding both poles, thus locating the correct understanding of transcendence somewhere in between. Rather than advocating for a specific analysis of transcendence, however, the chapter aims to identify several consequences of a theologically adequate understanding of divine transcendence, followed by an explanation of how these consequences undercut the argument from divine hiddenness against the existence of God.Less