The Euthyphro Dilemma is named after a particular exchange between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato‟s dialogue Euthyphro. In a famous passage, Socrates asks, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (Plato 1981: 10a), and proceeds to advance arguments which clearly favor the first of these two options (see PLATO). The primary interest in the Euthyphro Dilemma over the years, however, has primarily concerned the relationship between (...) God and morality in the monotheistic religious tradition, where God is taken to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, having created the universe initially and still actively involved in it today. But as we will see at the end of this entry, there has also been a recent surge of interest in a version of the Dilemma which applies to so-called response-dependent accounts of normative properties in meta-ethics. (shrink)

In my original paper, I claimed that our moral obligations are real, objective, and grounded in the supernatural. In particular, I endorsed the claim that God's will is the basis or source of our moral obligations, where “God” is to be understood as the theistic being who is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, who created the universe, and who is still actively involved in the universe after creating it. In his critical article, Michael Shermer has raised a number of important challenges (...) to my view. Here I try to defend the position and respond to at least his most serious objections. (shrink)

This paper deals with Swinburne’s project of developing a theodicy. We criticise this project from both an external and an internal perspective. Regarding the first strategy, the target of our critique is Swinburne’s construal of God’s attributes—especially omniscience—and the related issue of incorrigible foreknowledge. We argue that Swinburne has to clarify and improve his position to deal with the fideist or the atheist. Regarding the second strategy, we focus on Swinburne’s notion of God’s right. In this context, the parent-child-analogy (...) strikes us as particularly problematic. Hence, we argue that Swinburne should either rethink it or drop it altogether. (shrink)

In a comparative study of karma theodicy and atonement theodicy, as developed by some Hindu and Christian theologians, this article argues that they present teleological visions where individuals become purged, purified, and perfected in and through their worldly suffering. A karma theodicy operates with the notion that there is some form of proportionality between past evil and present suffering, even if such correlations can only be traced by an enlightened sage or are known to the omniscient God. Christian mystics too (...) seek not so much to explain suffering as to identify suffering with the agony of Christ on the cross, and they envision such suffering as part of a unitive journey where their love of Christ is purified. In these ways, both styles of theodicy use rational resources towards the goal of explanation, while reminding their adherents that the faltering intelligibility that they seek is to be seen as an integral component of their active participation in a sense of theological mystery that enfolds, and yet transcends, their finite existences. (shrink)

Libertarians such as J.R. Lucas have abandoned traditional Christian doctrines because they cannot reconcile them with the freedom of the will. Traditional Christian thinkers such as Augustine have repudiated libertarianism because they cannot reconcile it with the dogmas of the Faith. In Free Will and the Christian Faith, W.S. Anglin demonstrates that free will and traditional Christianity are ineed compatible. He examines, and solves, puzzles about the relationships between free will and omnipotence, omniscience, and God's goodness, using the (...) idea of free will to answer the question of why God allows evil, and presenting arguments that link free will to eternal life and to the nature of revelation. Topics covered include the meaning of life, the soul and Lesbegue measure, and strategies for discerning the voice of God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ignorance, Knowledge, and Omniscience: At and Beyond the Limits of Faith and Reason after Shinran:Reflections on The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science, with Special Attention to Dennis HirotaAmos YongAlthough published in the series Religion, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, Paul Numrich's edited volume is really about epistemology in religion and science, in particular about human knowing in Buddhist and Christian traditions shaped by the world of (...) science on the one hand, and how such knowing might also inform scientific knowledge on the other hand.1 The panoply of positions is presented by both Buddhist and Christian thinkers.From the Buddhist side, the following arguments are sketched:• that religion and science are complementary modes of knowing and that "understanding the true nature of the physical world" opens up "the way to enlightenment" (Trinh Xuan Thuan).2• that Buddhism is both continuous with (and hence deserving of serious consideration amidst) the epistemic discourses of modernity in many respects and yet also discontinuous with (and hence capable for critically interrogating) modernity's epistemology in other respects as well (David L. McMahan).3• that a Shin Buddhist approach to human knowledge—which in this chapter is brought into dialogue with Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) notion of truth—opens up to a Kuhnian philosophy of science that emphasizes how paradigmatic shifts occur when new perspectives replace older frameworks (Dennis Hirota).4• that the questions raised by theoretical and quantum physics provide a scientific framework for discussing fundamental epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical questions that Buddhists and Christians might otherwise disagree about (Mark T. Unno).5From the Christian side, the following theses are explored: [End Page 201]• that boundary constraints confront not only working scientists but also Buddhists and Christians, and that these constraints can thus serve as a springboard for a science and religion "trilogue" (Paul O. Ingram).6• that the mystery of creative becoming (God, in traditional Christian terms) is the dynamic backdrop to the ongoing human quest for knowledge (Gordon D. Kaufman).7• that it is at the boundaries of knowledge that genuine creativity occurs (not only scientific creativity but also theological creativity emerges, i.e., the apophatic tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy or the theory of coincidentia oppositorum of Nicholas of Cusa [1401-1464]), and where, as a result of such creative approaches, distinct fields of inquiry open up and different domains of knowledge emerge (Antje Jackelén).8• that theological discourse is paradoxical precisely because such discourse marks the fluid boundaries demarcating sense and nonsense (Tom Christenson).9And, befitting a volume on the encounter between religion (i.e., Buddhism and Christianity) and science, there is a concluding chapter from a physicist on the limits of scientific knowledge that both is encouraged by the gains made by science (presuming a critical realist approach to science's modeling of reality) and yet also is honest about there being much more to learn on small and big questions (John R. Albright).10The foregoing summaries do not do justice to the complexity and sophistication of the chapters in the book. However, they provide a broader context for my interactions with Dennis Hirota's chapter on Shinran's (1173-1263) epistemology and its implications for both religious and scientific knowledge. As an evangelical Christian, I am particularly intrigued by the challenges confronting a Shin Buddhist approach to the sciences, even as I am hopeful that such a consideration will precipitate creative insights both for the Buddhist-Christian encounter and for the religion-science dialogue. I am all the more motivated since I have long been convinced that the religion-science dialogue has been dominated by generically religious approaches and that it is time for more particularistic or even confessional positions to be registered in the discussion.11 I am optimistic that the specificity of the Shin tradition will provide both complementary and contrasting perspectives to the contemporary Buddhist encounter with science that has so far been dominated by the broadly Tibetan approaches of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (1935-) and those in his circle of dialogue partners,12 and that this will in turn open up new trajectories—even initiate new paradigms, as Hirota suggests—for the Buddhist... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:716 BOOK REVIEWS phies for each section (20 in all); (2) the summaries of major conclusions at the end of many chapters; (2) the explanations of how one body of texts (or its traditions) has been re-read (i.e., re-worked) by later texts; and (4) how one body of texts (e.g., the Psalms), provides for understanding a certain perspective other parts of the Old Testament (e.g., the Pentateuch). Some shortcomings (...) are evident. He relies heavily on the prophets for guiding insights, while law, priesthood, temple, and blessing play minor roles. Is this really faithful to the canonical shape of the Old Testament in its pre-Christian witness~ I find particularly inadequate the treatment of purity laws (p. 86) and priestly roles (pp. 150-53), and suspect the author needs to apply a hermeneutics of suspicion to his own Protestant presuppositions! In a similar way, the decalogue gets extended attention because Childs sees its theology as relevant to modern questions of violence, war, etc.; but he never seriously wrestles with those counter-passages whose theology encourages a divine warrior or a conquest motif. A similar problem arises when he ends the book with the theme of "Life under Promise." This is a judicious choice for the summarizing theme of the Old Testament and includes treatment of judgment versus salvation,.eschatology, messianic hope, the promise of the land, and eternal life. But it lacks any reference to liturgy and temple as symbols of hope, the book of the law, or the commandments of Torah, and no mention at all of the " blessing " theology of P that informs the whole Old Testament from Genesis 1 onwards. Clearly Childs has begun an important project, but much more clarity and balance is still needed in his continuing work during the years ahead. Washington Theological Union Silver Spring, Maryland LAWRENCE BOADT, C.S.P. Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives. Edited by TAMAR RUDAVSKY. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985. Pp. ix + 299. $54 (cloth). Since this book originated from revised papers and commentaries presented at a conference (held at the Ohio State University on March 3 and 4, 1982.), it is not surprising to find that the completed edition displays wide variety both in its subject matter and in the quality of the chapters. The chapters reflect the quality of papers very often presented at conferences -some are excellent, others are not. In addition, some chapters deal BOOK REVIEWS 717 with problems and solutions which help significantly to advance medieval scholarship, while the problems and solutions raised in other chapters do. not add much to medieval research; indeed, some chapters seem to present arguments lacking both in plausibility and in an understanding of the dominant spirit of medieval thought. The book is divided into three specific parts which deal with Islamic, Jewish, and Christian authors respectively, and the chapters in each part are arranged in historical order. There is also an introduction and an extensive bibliography. In chapter 1, Calvin Normore gives a helpful, but tediously written, introduction and overview of the logical and epistemological problems which were involved in medieval discussions of divine omniscience and omnipotence. Chapter 2 focuses upon Boethius's account of the nature of contingency, and adopts a view which i;e:fl.ects a misunderstanding both of Boethius and of the theological spirit of medieval thought in general. Ignoring sage comments from Richard Sorabji (see p. 49, footnote 68), Norman Kretzmann argues that for Boethius free human choice is the source of all contingency. How the Christian, Boethius, could so badly confuse human choice with divine choice, Kretzmann fails to explain. Chapters 3-6 constitute Part Two of the text and contain some of the most scholarly research in the book. In chapters 3 and 4, Josef Van Ess, rightly noting the juridical foundations of Mu'tazilite thought, examines wrongdoing and divine omnipotence in the fragmentary work of Abu Ishaq An-Nazzam. His discussion is particularly helpful in its treatment of the Islamic understanding of God as not physei agathos, but good merely by doing what is good. This understanding is a necessary element for any sound grasp... (shrink)

Orthodox Christian theists frequently petition God in the sense that they ask him to bring about some state of affairs which they believe may not occur without divine intervention. Such petitions basically fall into three categories: requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly the natural environment – e.g. calm a hurricane, requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly the lives ofother individuals – e.g. reconcile the broken marriage of friends, and requests in (...) which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly his or her own life – e.g. soothe his or her troubled mind. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Works cited.

Paul Helm presents a new, expanded edition of his much praised 1988 book Eternal God, which defends the view that God exists in timeless eternity. Helm argues that divine timelessness is grounded in the idea of God as creator, and that this alone makes possible a proper account of divine omniscience.

Vardy (philosophy, U. of London) summarizes the main features of many of the central debates concerning God's reality and how God is to be understood. Among the views he includes are realist, cosmological, ontological, the design argument, religious experience, prayer, omnipotence and omniscience, God's action in the world, miracles, and eternal life. Summaries and questions for each chapter would support classroom use. First published by Fount in London. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., (...) Portland, OR. (shrink)

According to one antitheist argument, the necessarily omniscient, necessarily omnipotent, and necessarily omnibenevolent Anselmian God does not exist, because if God is necessarily omnipotent it is impossible for Him to comprehend fully certain concepts, such as fear, frustration and despair, that an omniscient being needs to possess. Torin Alter examines this argument and provides three elaborate objections to it. I argue that theists would not accept any of them because they con ict with traditional Judaeo-Christian doctrines concerning divine attributes.

Spinoza is a pantheist: he believes that everything that is, is God. Traditional Judaeo-Christian theologians dislike the idea, and Spinoza has always been unpopular for it. Nevertheless, I want here to suggest that, simply by following out the logic of omniscience and omnipotence—two attributes of God on which both Spinoza and his opponents are agreed—it is possible to arrive at a conception of God which is at least very close to Spinoza's own. I do not claim that any of (...) the arguments I use are to be found in Spinoza, but I do think that this way of thinking helps to explain the motives behind his ‘hideous hypothesis’. (shrink)

Suppose that God exists: what difference would that make to the world? The answer depends on the nature of God and the nature of the world. In this book, William E. Mann argues in one new and sixteen previously published essays for a modern interpretation of a traditional conception of God as a simple, necessarily existing, personal being. Divine simplicity entails that God has no physical composition or temporal stages; that there is in God no distinction between essence and existence; (...) that there is no partitioning of God's mental life into beliefs, desires, and intentions. God is thus a spiritual, eternal being, dependent on nothing else, whose essence is to exist and whose mode of existence is identical with omniscience, omnipotence, and perfectly goodness. In metaphysical contrast, the world is a spatial matrix populated most conspicuously by finite physical objects whose careers proceed sequentially from past to present to future. Mann defends a view according to which the world was created out of nothing and is sustained in existence from moment to moment by God. The differences in metaphysical status between creator and creatures raise questions for which Mann suggests answers. How can God know contingent facts and necessary truths without depending on them? Why is it so easy to overlook God's presence? Why would self-sufficient God create anything? Wouldn't a perfect God create the best world possible? Can God be free? Can we be free if God's power is continuously necessary to sustain us in existence? If God does sustain us, is God an accomplice whenever we sin? Mann responds to the Euthyphro dilemma by arguing for a kind of divine command metaethical theory, whose normative content lays emphasis on love. Given the metaphysical differences between us, how can there be loving relationships between God and creatures? Mann responds by examining the notions of piety and hope. (shrink)

In God, Chance and Purpose, statistician David Bartholomew chides Christians who cling to, in his words, a “naive orthodoxy.” Such Christians view God as exhibiting a set of perfections (especially omniscience and omnipotence) and as satisfying a set of propositions (a creed). Such a view is, according to Bartholomew, unworthy of God. In place of a “naive orthodoxy,” he therefore proposes a “critical orthodoxy.” At the center of his “critical orthodoxy” is the skeptical claim that “all knowledge is uncertain, (...) in varying degrees” (p. 232). Question: To what degree is that claim uncertain? Bartholomew’s claim does not pass its own test. (shrink)

This paper argues that God is not logically able to condemn a person to Hell by considering what is entailed by accepting the best argument to the contrary, the so-called free will defense expounded by Christian apologists Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. It argues that the free will defense is logically fallacious, involves a philosophical fiction, and is based on a fraudulent account of Scripture, concluding that the problem of postmortem evil puts would-be believers in a logical and moral (...) straightjacket from which there is no escape without heresy or contradiction. -/- 1. Imagining an Afterlife in Hell -- 2. Essential Doctrines of Christianity -- 3. The Logical Puzzle Involved -- 4. Plumbing the Depths of Christian Doctrine a Little - 4.1 Christianity’s Commitment to Theism - 4.1.1 God’s Omnipotence - 4.1.2 God’s Omniscience - 4.1.3 God’s Omnibenevolence (Moral Perfection) - 4.2 The Doctrines of Salvation and Damnation - 4.2.1 Salvation and Heaven - 4.2.2 Damnation and Hell - 4.2.3 The Inhabitants of Hell – 5. The Issue of Inconsistency Again - 5.1 The Missing Concept of Responsibility - 5.2 God’s Responsibility for Evil in General - 5.3 The Charge of Inconsistency Reinforced -- 6. The Christian Cross: A Logical Straightjacket -- 7. The Art of Apologetics -- 8. Craig’s Apologetics - 8.1 Craig’s Purported Proof of Consistency - 8.1.1 A Problem with the Entailment Condition - 8.1.2 A Problem with the Consistency Condition - 8.1.3 Is Craig’s Optimal World the Best God Could Create? - 8.1.4 A Heavenly Refutation - 8.1.5 “Heaven Isn’t a Possible World” - 8.1.6 “Heaven Isn’t a Feasible World” -- 9. Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Predestination - 9.1 Compatibilist versus Incompatibilist Meanings of “Free Will” - 9.2 Free Will, Predestination, and Being Sent to Hell - 9.3 Consequences of Being Predestined to Hell -- 10. Summary. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a striking resurgence of interest in the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of God. This anthology contains a representative sample of some of the best contemporary philosophical work on this central religious idea, covering such topics as the existence of God, the physical nature of God, and the "divine attributes"--goodness, omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, immutability, and simplicity.

To say that God is omniscient, most philosophers and theologians agree, is to say that he knows all true propositions and none that are false. But there is a great deal of disagreement about what is knowable. Some believe that God's knowledge is limited to everything that is actual and that which will follow deterministically from it. He knows, for example, exactly what Caesar was thinking when he crossed the Rubicon and how many horses he had in his army that (...) day. And he knows exactly how Gorbachev feels about the use of nuclear weapons. And since he knows how the ‘laws of nature’ function, he knows, for example, how certain weather systems will develop and what their effects will be on certain natural environments. But with respect to any future state of affairs which includes free human decision-making as a causal component, God is said not to know what will occur. God, as the ultimate psychoanalyst or behaviourist, can with great accuracy predict what we will freely decide to do in the future in many cases. He might well, for example, be able to predict quite accurately who will win the 1988 Presidential election. But a God who possesses only ‘present knowledge’ cannot know who will win. Given that the election in question is dependent on free choices which have yet to be made, there is presently nothing for God to know. (shrink)

A knowledge argument is offered that presents unique difficulties for Christians who wish to assert that God is essentially omniscient. The difficulties arise from the doctrine of the incarnation. Assuming that God the Son did not necessarily have to become incarnate, then God cannot necessarily have knowledge de se of the content of a non-divine mind. If this is right, then God’s epistemic powers are not fixed across possible worlds and God is not essentially omniscient. Some options for Christian theists (...) are discussed, including rejecting traditional theism in favour of some version of pantheism or panentheism. (shrink)

The problem of evil has generated varying attempts at theodicy. To show that suffering is defeated for a sufferer, a theodicy argues that there is an outweighing benefit which could not have been gotten without the suffering. Typically, this condition has the tacit presupposition given that this is a post-Fall world. Consequently, there is a sense in which human suffering would not be shown to be defeated even if there were a successful theodicy because a theodicy typically implies that the (...) benefit in question could have been gotten without the suffering if there had not been a Fall. There is a part of the problem of evil that would remain, then, even if there were a successful theodicy. This is the problem of mourning: even defeated suffering in the post-Fall world merits mourning. How is this warranted mourning compatible with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? The traditional response to this problem is the felix culpa view, which maintains that the original sin was fortunate because there is an outweighing benefit to sufferers that could not be gotten in a world without suffering. The felix culpa view presupposes an object of evaluation, namely, the true self of a human being, and a standard of evaluation for human lives. This book explores these and a variety of other topics in philosophical theology in order to explain and evaluate the role of suffering in human lives. (shrink)

According to traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. This volume shows that philosophy of religion needs to take seriously alternative concepts of the divine, and demonstrates the considerable philosophical interest that they hold.

In this paper, we show that God is portrayed in the Hebrew Bible and in the Rabbinic literature—some of the very Hebrew texts that have influenced the three major world religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as One who can be argued with and even changes his mind. Contrary to fundamentalist positions, in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts God is omniscient but enjoys good, playful argumentation, broadening the possibilities for reasoning and reasonability. Arguing with God has also had (...) a profound influence upon Jewish humor, demonstrating that humans can joke with God. More specifically, we find in Jewish literature that humor’s capacity to bisociate between different domains of human experience can share a symbiotic relationship with argumentation’s emphasis on producing multiple, contested perspectives. Overall, once mortals realize that figures such as God can accept many perspectives through humor, teasing, arguing, criticism, and in at least one case, even lawsuits, a critical point emerges: citizens should learn to live, laugh, and reason with others with whom they disagree. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I will examine the problem of theological fatalism in St. Augustine and, specifically, whether or not Augustine was philosophically justified in his belief that his views on divine grace and human freedom could be harmonized. As is well-known, beginning with his second response To Simplician (ca. 396) and continuing through his works against the semi-Pelagians (ca. 426-429), Augustine espoused the Pauline doctrine of all-inclusive grace: that the fallen will’s ability to accomplish the good is totally a function (...) of God’s elective grace. What, then, does the fallen will do to work out its own salvation? There is the further issue of how to reconcile Augustine’s rather extreme emphasis on grace in his later works with the more balanced picture we receive in his sermones ad populum, written throughout his forty-year preaching career. In many of these sermons, even those written during the Pelagian controversy, Augustine is careful to leave space for both divine and human initiative in the process of our justification within the totus Christus, or ‘whole Christ.’ How we can understand Augustine in his role as doctor gratiae and as preacher of human freedom will be a major inquiry of this dissertation.The most serious obstacle to moving forward on these problems has been and remains the essentialist interpretation of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology by most commentators. On their interpretation, Augustine thought that there were no real distinctions within the Trinity, with each of the three divine persons and their actions sharing in the absolute unity of the divine essence. Holding this interpretation not only does away with the distinctness of each of the persons, but also requires all of God’s different powers and attributes, including willing and foreknowing, to be coalesced into one another without distinction in the divine essence. God’s foreknowledge is thereby identified with God’s will, which necessarily leads to theological fatalism: God would have to will everything that He foreknows, and God would have to foreknow everything that He wills. Since God is omniscient, He wills everything that will happen, including the future willings of the fallen human will.It cannot be denied that there are texts in the Augustinian corpus that seem to point to a reading of the Trinity as absolutely simple. But this study will endeavor to show that there are also other largely overlooked texts in On the Trinity, the Confessions, and his Commentaries on the Literal Interpretation of Genesis (among others) that argue for various distinctions within the Trinity to make sense of the relation between Creator and creature, and the differences between the divine processions of generation/spiration, and the act of creation. These texts will be shown to parallel very closely the position of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, which consistently uses the real distinction between God’s essential being and energetic activities (also known as the essence-energy distinction) to avoid the problem of theological fatalism. This rich theological and philosophical tradition, from the time of the fourth-century Greek Fathers to the Byzantine tradition that followed, differs less with Augustine concerning the essentials of Trinitarian theology and its practical implications for solving the problem of making human freedom and divine grace compatible than has been hitherto thought. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * Incoherency Objections * Objections to Theistic Arguments * Empirical Arguments a gainst God’s Existence * References * Further Reading.

This essay evaluates two arguments found in John Morreall’s Taking Laughter Seriously: That Christianity is incompatible with a sense of humor since the latter requires that a person take nothing with absolute seriousness, and that God can have no sense of humor because he is omniscient. I point out that seriousness about something is a necessary condition of humor and that what people find funny is in part a function of what they take seriously. I illustrate these points with (...) examples from Samuel Johnson and SorenKierkegaard. Then I show how ultimate seriousness is compatible with a sense of humor, by appeal to Kierkegaard’s notion of a “way out” of responsibility for the object of one’s seriousness. Here I illustrate with St. Francis of Assisi, William James, and Kierkegaard.Morreall’s claim that God’s omniscience rules out his having a sense of humor turns on the thesis, fundamental to his book, that humor depends on “psychological shift,” which he mistakenly identifies with surprise. I distinguish these concepts, show that humor should not be construed even in terms of the (weaker) concept of psychological shift, and suggest a way of understanding God’s omniscience such that it is compatible with his sense of humor. (shrink)

This essay considers what the logical implications for God's free will would be if God possessed the characteristics that he is often said to have, such as Immutability. If God does not have free will it undermines the Free Will Defense for the Problem of Evil and the case for free will generally. Those who believe in human free will often believe that it exists because humans possess an immaterial soul; however, if God does not have free will then the (...) religious case for free will is weakened. (shrink)

There are good reasons for envisioning a global discourse about God, premised necessarily agreed upon perfections considered to be by definition proper to God, and for thinking through the implications of our understanding of God for morality. Philosophically, it makes sense to hold that claims about omnipotence, omniscience, and other superlative perfections are indeed maximal, and define “God” wherever the terminology of divine persons is taken up. Religiously too, it makes sense to assert that a deity possessed of perfections (...) is not just the deity of one’s own tribe or religion, but also the deity of the whole world, whether acknowledged as such or not. This essay delves into the larger set of rich complexities by three moves. First, I look into a single extended historical case of the extension of the discourse about God beyond the Christian West, the discourse on God proffered by Western Jesuit missionaries in India from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Second, I place next to that Jesuit learning the instance of a famed Hindu theologian’s discourse on God, God’s perfections, and their moral implications. Third, I briefly step back and assess the dangers and fruitful prospects inherent in thinking about God and morality in an interreligious context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 147 The Godly Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to Aquinas. By ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Studies in historical theology. v. 6. Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1990. Pp. xxiv + 214. $14.95 (paper). The Godly Image presents a retouched version of the author's dissertation, first published in 1982 as Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas: Towards a Personalist Understanding (Washington, DC: University Press of America). Seeking (...) a broader audience, the author has dropped the dissertation's numerous Latin footnotes, shortened and enlivened the chapter titles, and streamlined some of his arguments (e.g., pp. 9395 ). He has as well corrected (e.g., on Pannenberg, p. xxii; on Anselm, p. 157) or toned down (e.g., the description of monastic theology, p. 1) earlier statements. Reference to the possibility that Aquinas suffered a nervous breakdown disappears (p. 18). Still, the work remains substantially the same, reproducing even some typos (e.g., William of St. Armour [sic], p. 3) from the original. The new subtitle, Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to Aquinas, is unfortunate. First, it leads one to expect a survey of the major soteriological positions articulated in the period between the two, hut such is not forthcoming. The work remains what the original title indicated, a study in the thought of Aquinas. Second, in that work Anselm plays hut a perfunctory role, serving as the foil from whose mercantile model (p. 73) or juridical mentality (p. 91) Thomas can advance to a more appropriately interpersonal grasp of the mode of our salvation. This reading of Anselm, however, leaves him in the hands of liberal Protestant historians of doctrine of the nineteenth century, and, as the bibliography indicates, it ignores more recent literature which rightly stresses the metaphysical and religious depth of Anselm's key concept of iustitia. For a precise rendering of the relation between Anselm and Aquinas, one may wish to place greater emphasis on ST III, q.14, a.I, ad 1. In that text Aquinas accomplishes two things. First, he integrates Anselm's concept of satis· faction with the traditional religious insight that, in some sense, Christ suffered what sinners deserve to suffer. At the same time he deepens the concept by rendering explicit the place of love and obedience as the formal element in satisfaction and thus rejoins Anselm in rejecting any strict notion of penal substitution. These reservations aside, the author's thorough, comprehensive, and competent investigation into Aquinas fills a lacuna in the history of soteriology, a lacuna, one regrets to say, still left open by the work of his immediate predecessor, B. Catao. At the same time the scope 148 BOOK REVIEWS of the author's work offers a further and important contribution. By researching Thomas's thought on satisfaction in the context of penance as well as soteriology, the author manages to suggest, and explicitly, that the generative matrix for Thomas's theoretic work in both areas lies in the cruciform dynamics of Christian conversion, the life of grace. With this insight he opens a door from historical theology to a contemporary systematics. Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. WILLIAM P. LOEWE Free Will and the Christian Faith. By W. S. ANGLIN. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Pp. vii + 218. $55.00 (cloth). W. S. Anglin, a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Mathematics at McGill University, has produced a highly compact and compelling volume which attempts in just 218 pages to prove God's existence, to argue for personal immortality, to defend the coherence of theism against the problem of evil, to provide cogent analyses of both omnipotence and omniscience, and to examine criteria for distinguishing divine revelation from other forms of communication. The thread holding these rather motley swatches of cloth together is the author's concentration on libertarian freedom which weaves throughout the above issues in one way or another. It shows up in the expected places (e.g., in the so-called 'free will defense' of the problem of evil) but also in places hitherto unexpected (Anglin nicely argues that if humans are truly free in the libertarian sense, then it is appropriate and necessary that the Scriptures take the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to Amos Yong's "Ignorance, Knowledge, and Omniscience"Dennis HirotaAmos Yong has provided a detailed outline for a comparison of parallel topics in Shinran and Calvinist thought, as well as reflections on epistemological issues he believes confront both traditions in similar ways. I have long sensed that the turn of thought by which the Augustinian problematic of predestination and free will became the Calvinist idea of unconditional election reflects (...) a kind of thoroughgoing critique of self-power characteristic of Japanese Pure Land perceptions. Nevertheless, in this limited reply, I will focus chiefly on the understanding of Shinran in Yong's paper.In my chapter in The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science, as well as my essay above, both of which Yong responds to, I suggest that the dominant Western paradigms for approaching Shinran have tended to obscure what is salient in his thought by presupposing the nature of religious engagement and focusing on conceptual analogues to Western ideas. For Shinran, however, self-power and Other Power are not simply subjective attitudes of the practitioner toward doctrinal teachings, but distinct modes of human existence; between them lies a transformative shift that Shinran terms the realization of shinjin. Thus, I wonder if, despite the resemblances Yong sets forth in his treatment of the Calvinist TULIP, Shinran's concern with the overcoming of the false reification of self and attainment, in some sense, of nondiscriminative wisdom or reality does not indicate a significant and persistent dissonance at the core of the thinking of the two religious figures.It appears that the central concern in the Calvinist narrative is the relationship between human beings and God as agents of will. From the bedrock predicament of estrangement and need for reconciliation emerges the problems of sin, election, atonement, grace, and preservation from apostasy. Although noteworthy structural analogies between the traditions might be pursued, of these terms, it is only grace, perhaps, that has an unforced counterpart in Shinran's thought. Amida Buddha is not sinned against and does not select, judge, make righteous, or forgive. The dilemma that beings face is not disobedience and expiation, but the pain arising from clinging to a delusional self, one falsely imagined to be an enduring, transcendent subject and autonomous agent.For this reason, moreover, Shinran's stance in his writings might better be characterized as phenomenological and hermeneutical than epistemological. When he [End Page 211] states, "Whether the nembutsu is truly the seed for being born in the Pure Land, or whether it is a karmic act that causes one to fall into hell, I do not know," he is manifesting a world of lived experience and challenging ontological presuppositions. From a Shin perspective, modern scientific knowledge belongs among human modes of apprehending the world but does not displace all others or resolve fundamental ignorance. Yong repeatedly refers to the notion of the last dharma-age, as though the times were a distorting medium that condemns its human inhabitants to lives of dissoluteness. Rather, for Shinran, human existence itself is irrevocably conditioned, and salvation lies in being pervaded by wisdom-compassion while remaining possessed of falsity and afflicting attachment. [End Page 212]Dennis HirotaRyukoku UniversityCopyright © 2011 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

After a mild indoctrination into the Christian faith, at the age of 15 I discovered myself to be a non-believer: the idea of an invisible, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God suddenly seemed simply unbelievable. Years later I decided to re-examine the question. Perhaps I had missed something. This in turn led to a fascination with God questions and religious belief, but a re-confirmation of my earlier discovery: the traditional Christian concept of God was not only unbelievable, but incoherent and morally muddled. (...) But further reflection has yielded a qualifying conclusion: God—or rather gods, many gods—do exist but as ideas, tremendously powerful ideas that shape our reality. The crucial concern is that these be good ideas, which has not always been the case. (shrink)

The Market as God captures how our world has fallen in thrall to the business theology of supply and demand. According to its acolytes, the Market is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. It knows the value of everything, and determines the outcome of every transaction; it can raise nations and ruin households, and nothing escapes its reductionist commodification. The Market comes complete with its own doctrines, prophets, and evangelical zeal to convert the world to its way of life. Cox brings that (...) theology out of the shadows, demonstrating that the way the world economy operates is neither natural nor inevitable but shaped by a global system of values and symbols that can be best understood as a religion. -/- Drawing on biblical sources, economists and financial experts, prehistoric religions, Greek mythology, historical patterns, and the work of natural and social scientists, Cox points to many parallels between the development of Christianity and the Market economy. At various times in history, both have garnered enormous wealth and displayed pompous behavior. Both have experienced the corruption of power. However, what the religious have learned over the millennia, sometimes at great cost, still eludes the Market faithful: humility. (shrink)

Most debate in the philosophy of religion centres on “thin theism,” the thesis that there is a deity who is omnipotent, omniscient, etc. But few if any theists are just thin theists. For most, thin theism is at best the abstract skeleton of a fuller set of religious beliefs— Christian, Jewish, or Moslem. Thus, there is another set of issues philosophers of religion might but rarely do discuss: with what sort of warrant might one add to thin theism the beliefs (...) of a particular religious tradition? In other words, supposing that thin theism is true, what reasons might there be to be, say, a Christian? Is Christianity True? takes up this last question. Successive chapters ask whether there would be moral benefit in worshipping the Christian God, whether it is reasonable to accept Christianity’s distinctive claims though other traditions which embed thin theism deny them, whether the doctrine of the Incarnation makes sense, whether the doctrine of the Atonement is morally acceptable, whether we know enough about Jesus’s sayings and doings to warrant Christian claims about him, whether the doctrine of the Trinity is coherent, and whether there is a coherent conception of life after death; an appendix takes up Marx on religion. (shrink)

Even if an argument from religious experience can show that the subjects of religious experience are in contact with something which can justifiedly be named 'God', this does not settle the matter because, 'God' has a use other than its use as a proper name, in which use the term had descriptive content. To be of interest to Natural Theology, the argument from religious experience must show that the object of religious experience has the properties associated with the term 'God' (...) in this descriptive sense. In particular, it must show that the object of religious experience is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly loving, and the creator of the physical universe. ;I consider five ways of making that further argument: a descriptivist theory of names, whereby the name has as its content the predicates in the description; an account of religious experience whereby the subject perceives that God has those properties named in the description; an argument from the testimony of God concerning his own properties; an argument from the effects of religious experience on its subjects to the effect that since it makes them better, the experiences must be at least of a benevolent being; and an argument that Christian practice is a well-founded doxastic practice, and so beliefs formed in this practice are prima facie justified, including the belief that the object of religious experience is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly loving. I find all these arguments inadequate to make the case. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century TheologyFrancis Oakley[W]e must cautiously abandon [that more specious opinion of the Platonist and Stoick]... in this, that it... blasphemously invades the cardinal Prerogative of Divinity, Omnipotence, by denying him a reserved power, of infringing, or altering any one of those Laws which [He] Himself ordained, and enacted, and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters of Destiny.Walter (...) Charleton, The Darknes of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature : A Physico-Theologicall Treatise (London, 1652)Of the various attributes characteristically ascribed to God in the Christian tradition—goodness, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotence, and the like—it is omnipotence which of recent years has most persistently been the object of focused attention among philosophers and historians alike. That that should be the case with philosophers working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition is not altogether surprising. While it is doubtless a development few would have predicted half a century ago, the years since then have seen something of a recrudescence of interest in a legislative or divine-command ethic. 1 Had that [End Page 437] not itself conspired to make omnipotence an obvious focus of philosophic attention, the deepening contemporaneous preoccupation with modal logic or the logic of possibility would surely have succeeded in so doing. Understood classically as affirming of God the ability to do all things and connoting a virtual capacity for action (as opposed to a power exercised in actuality), omnipotence has proven to be something of a troublesome notion, inviting unrestrained speculation about hypothetical divine action and generating a veritable cat’s cradle of philosophical conundrums concerning the relationship of God’s power to his will, wisdom, goodness, and justice.Medieval theologians and philosophers alike were forced to grapple with these taxing problems, 2 and philosophers of our own era have found them no less directly pertinent to their own logical and ethical concerns. 3 In 1955 Mackie inaugurated what was destined to become an ongoing discussion of omnipotence in the philosophical journals, 4 and such philosophers as Kenny and Keane, Cowan and Wolfe, Dummett, Plantinga, Swinburne, and Geach have been drawn into the fray. Since then, as a result, the pages of Mind, Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and even The Listener have been punctuated by their efforts to grapple with those venerable questions concerning the divine power that had exercised St. Peter Damiani in the mid-eleventh century, brought Abelard to grief a half-century later, and subsequently led Peter Lombard to devote to them a crucial and influential section of his Sentences—whether God of his omnipotence could undo the past, whether he could have made things other than he had, or created a world better than he did, and so on. 5 [End Page 438]While no medievalist can be expected to be anything but gratified by this unexpected testimony to the enduring significance and power of medieval scholastic concerns, those of us interested especially in the intellectual developments of the later-medieval centuries have particular reason to be energized by it. The years since Mackie launched this contemporary philosophical debate have also seen an intensification of interest on the part of historians in the ways in which, during these particular centuries, medieval thinkers themselves came to terms with the implications of the divine omnipotence and dealt with the theological and philosophical puzzles characteristically generated by that notion. Unlike the philosophers, whose concerns have been somewhat more broad-ranging, the historians have focused in particular on a quintessentially scholastic distinction that was developed, it has been said, “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and grace.” 6 The distinction in question is that between God’s power understood as absolute and as ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata), which the theologians and philosophers of the period deployed as part of their great effort of accommodation between Greek philosophical and biblical notions of the divine, and the historical significance of which the scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to vindicate. 7 But while that distinction has been... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 191-216 [Access article in PDF] In the Beginning: Hebrew God and Zen Nothingness Milton ScarboroughCentre College, Danville, KentuckyIn the 1960s, during the heyday of the so-called "Marxist-Christian dialogue," Leslie Dewart, one of the participants in the exchange, delivered himself of what I took to be a stunning and memorable utterance: "To put it lightly: the whole difference between Marxist atheism and Christian theism has to (...) do with the existence of God." 1 Now, at the end of the millennium, we are several decades into a Buddhist-Christian dialogue, precipitated by a shrinking globe, the growing presence of Buddhist communities and institutions in the West, and the initiative of the Kyoto School of Zen Buddhism. The dialogue has occurred along a variety of fronts. In terms of monastic life, for example, monks from the two traditions have discovered that they often feel a more powerful bond with each other than with laypersons of their own faiths. Some years ago I was a retreatant at Gethsemane Abbey in central Kentucky. Looking down from the sanctuary's balcony, where laypersons and other guests were required to sit, I noticed three Tibetan Buddhist monks in the choir, surrounded by Trappists and engaged in chanting the liturgy, something I, as a Christian, was not, at the time, permitted to do. In the domain of ethics, similarities and differences between Buddhist compassion (karuna) and Christian love (agape) have been carefully noted. In soteriology, comparisons have been made between Christ as savior and the bodhisattva as savior. Nevertheless, when it comes to an examination of ultimate reality in the two religions, the differences are obvious and stark. Traditionally, and still today for the most part, Christians are committed to some variety of theism. On the other hand, Masao Abe observes, "Unlike Christianity, however, Buddhism is fundamentally not theistic and does not accept one personal God as the ultimate reality but sunyata.... In Buddhism there is nothing permanent, self-existing, and absolutely good." 2 In this regard, I am tempted to parallel Dewart's comment by saying, "The whole difference between Buddhist atheism and Christian theism has to do with the existence of God." 3The parallel, however, is not entirely accurate because more recently some members of the Kyoto School of Zen have shown a willingness to speak of God, most notably, Masao Abe himself. 4 On the other hand, they contend that God might be described better in conceptual categories other than 'being,' which is habitually used in the West. Abe, for example, has proposed a reformulation of the idea of God in [End Page 191] terms of sunyata. 5 Like many other participants in the Buddhist-Christian dialogue, he finds an initial justification for such a reconceptualization in Philippians 2:5-8, where Christ's self-emptying (kenosis) has its biblical grounding. According to traditional Christian theological understanding, between the incarnation and resurrection Christ either abandoned, concealed, or restrained--these words represent variant interpretations--his divine nature, such as his attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, in order to condescend to his humanity and, hence, to ours. This leads to the heart of Abe's proposal, which consists of bringing to bear on the trinitarian view of God Mahayana Buddhism's ample resources for critiquing the idea of substance, in which the traditional version of the doctrine is cast. Just as the Buddha attacked the Brahmanical doctrine of the atman, a spiritual substance underlying the self of all things, and Nagarjuna attacked the Sarvastivadins' notion of svabhava, a material substance underlying all Dharmas or fundamental elements constituting reality, so Abe provides a critique of the Christian view of God as three persons in one ousia or substance. 6 Both the three persons of the trinity, on the one hand, and the relation of the trinitarian God to the rest of the universe, on the other, he understands as interdependent and co-existent rather than as independent and self-existent. Thus, the theory of the trinity is purged of the Greek concept of substance and its implications.Abe's proposal represents... (shrink)

Crescas’s position on human freedom is dialectically rooted in the philosophy of his medieval predecessor, Gersonides. Crescas accepts Gersonides’s view that although the celestial bodies influence human affairs, human beings have the ability to overcome their predetermined fate. However, Crescas rejects Gersonides’s premise that God only knows the universal aspect of the particular. Crescas contends that God’s commandments give their followers the means to obtain freedom from the effects of the heavenly bodies, without denying that practical deliberation is still required (...) in order to actualize God’s promises, even if God knows how the individual will achieve the promised outcome. (shrink)

This paper examines the significance of Epicureanism for Nietzsche’s critique of Christian monotheism and his subsequent attempt to reanimate a kind of this-worldly, affirmative religiosity of immanence. After a brief overview of the pivotal role that Epicurus’ thought plays in the death of God, I focus on Epicurus’ own residual conception of the gods and the ways in which Nietzsche strategically retrieves it and puts it use in his writing. Nietzsche juxtaposes the distant, serene, indifferent Epicurean gods with the omniscient, (...) intrusive, jealous and needy God of middle-Eastern monotheisms. One might say that they constitute a ‘halfway house’ of sorts between Christianity and Nietzsche’s new Dionysian religion of the earth. But they also figure prominently in his own conflicted desire to intervene in the aleatory course of natural history and legislate the the future of humanity: Nietzsche finds he cannot simply look down with “the mocking and aloof eyes” of an Epicurean god upon the degeneration and diminution of the human being under Christian ascetic regimes of cultivation. Ultimately, Nietzsche fails to achieve the divine temperament of the Epicurean gods (looking down from afar on human ignorance, desire and suffering with a noble pathos of distance). Forthcoming 2022. (shrink)

As the journal is effectively defunct, I am uploading a full-text copy, but only of my abstract and article, and some journal front matter. -/- Note that the pagination in the PDF version differs from the official pagination because A4 and 8.5" x 11" differ. -/- Note also that this is not a mere repetition of the argument in /Mind/, nor merely an application of it; there are subtle differences. -/- Finally, although Christians are likely to take this as applicable (...) to a God who can enter time, Jewish readers who wish a full understanding of its intent are referred to M.R. II:13:3. Note that /some/ free will, however miniscule, must remain, exactly as argued. Also, Maimonides speaks differently, albeit metaphorically, elsewhere, and nothing here contradicts his statements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sunyata and Otherness:Applying Mutually Transformative Categories from Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in ChristologySusie Paulik Babka“The universe is expanding,” the physicists tell us. “But doesn’t an expansion of something mean the presupposition of boundaries?” my naïve mind inquires, thinking too much in terms of discrete substances. Can “something” expand “into” nothing, “into” emptiness? Shot through with “dark energy” (the name an intellectual signifier allowing physicists to speak of the ineffable), the immensity (...) of the universe teaches a lesson in humility before mystery and the radically new. Dark energy makes up 74 percent of the universe and is responsible for increasing the rate of the universe’s expansion; it may be explained as the energy of empty space, or space devoid of matter and gravity. Although an unobservable phenomenon, dark energy penetrates the known universe as that which counteracts gravity’s relationship to matter, causing a negative pressure in regions of the universe devoid of matter to expand. Hence, the energy of emptiness is the reason for the universe’s expansion; emptiness is the reason reality is better described by rapid change and impermanence than stasis and immutability.While it would seem that these developments do not impact religious thinking, the Dalai Lama and others have argued that because science helps us understand the nature of reality, it affects the paradigm in which we consider the veracity of religious ideas. In his words, “if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”1 This is a bold statement, challenging both East and West to consider that when derived from only one source, even our most treasured religious ideas are narrowly conceived.The Western worldview has kept pace neither with the challenges of cosmic and subatomic physics nor with a more sophisticated global community. Since Parmenides in the pre-Socratic era, Western thought has been dominated by Greek philosophical categories, in which the perfection of beings is regarded in immutability and stasis, and things ideally tend toward independence or self-sufficiency. These categories [End Page 73] not only are inadequate to describe reality discovered through scientific means but also fail to articulate the meaning of the religious and cultural encounters taking place between East and West. Writes Joseph O’Leary, “The encounter with Buddhist thought enhances the hermeneutical task of theology, by opening up the possibility that Christian truth today can be more luminously presented in a discourse influenced by Buddhist analytical methods and ontological insights than in the old frameworks formed in dialogue with Greek ontology.”2Deconstructing substance ontology in the West suggests not only that science is a valuable conversation partner to religion but also that religions be conversation partners with each other. Christians should consider how divine or ultimate reality is manifest in other religions and abandon claims to exclusive truth. As Joseph O’Leary argues,The religions need each other, whatever their utter self-sufficiency on the plane of abstruse theological claims. The religions, as human historical trajectories, are inevitably marked by incompleteness and tragic failures. The tensions between them are not to be suppressed by dogmatic self-affirmation, but to be interpreted as the tension of “truth” itself, making itself felt within the finitude and brokenness of the human language striving to express it.3Truth for the Dalai Lama is “pursued by means of critical investigation,” requiring conversation with modern thought forms as well as both religious and secular Western traditions. If Christian theology is to be relevant today, it must continue to deconstruct the classical metaphysical categories that impede the appreciation of what is possible or true, especially in the encounter with non-Christian and non-Western thought, culture, and religious practice. Interreligious encounter necessitates the questioning of ontotheology, the classical metaphysical logic that refers to the rational basis for naming God, the supreme being, with supreme attributes, such as eternity, immutability, omniscience, and omnipotence. Ontotheology is related to the substance ontologies that describe the relation between God and the world and East and West in terms of dualism that according to Paul Knitter “so stresses the difference between two realities, so separates them... (shrink)

The sixteen chapters, commissioned specially for this volume, are written by an internationally recognized team of scholars and examine topics such as the Trinity, God's necessary existence, simplicity, omnipotence, omniscience, ...

This volume provides a contemporary account of classical theism. It features sixteen original essays from leading scholars that advance the discussion of classical theism in new and interesting directions. It's safe to say that classical theism--the view that God is simple, omniscient, and the greatest possible being--is no longer the assumed view in analytic philosophy of religion. It is often dismissed as being rooted in outdated metaphysical systems of the sort advanced by ancient and medieval philosophers. The main purpose of (...) this volume is twofold: to provide a contemporary account of what classical theism is and to advance the scholarly discussion about classical theism. In Section I, the contributors offer a clear and cutting-edge account of the nature and existence of the God and the historical and theological foundations of classical theism. Section II contains chapters on a variety of topics, such as whether classical theism's doctrine of simplicity needs revision, whether simplicity is compatible with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, and whether the hypothesis of a multiplicity of divine ideas is consistent with divine simplicity, among others. Classical Theism will appeal to scholars and advanced students in philosophy of religion who are interested in the nature of God. (shrink)

Surveillance is sometimes spoken of as a God’s eye view of the world. This idea is explored in relation to the ‘objective gaze’ of disengaged reason in the Enlightenment and its technologically-reinforced modes in the twenty-first century. The rise of the eye-centred viewpoint is coincident with the ‘great disembedding’ of individuals from the social. This in turn also prompted the self-disciplines of modernity, which are now key aspects of the power-base of modern institutions. A crucial moment in this shift was (...) Bentham’s panopticon proposal, in which the knowledge regime of secular ism started to shape social imaginaries in relation to surveillance. While secular omniscience was sought through the surveillance gaze, and explored later in the work of Foucault, Debord and others, the eye-centred view is not without critics. We draw upon some biblical resources, notably, the story of Hagar, that query the centrality of ‘objective vision’. Instead, an ethic of care is proposed, based in part on a fresh understanding of the ‘eye of God’. It is argued that the implications of the care ethic go far deeper than current appeals to privacy, data protection, civil liberties or human rights. (shrink)

In this paper, the attributes of Jesus as the second person of Trinity in Christianity and Muhammadan Reality in Islamic Theosophy were compared. The term ''Muhammadan Reality'' in Islamic Theosophy refers to transcendental and divine being of Muhammad rather than his human and historic existence. According to this research, both Jesus and Muhammadan Realities have divine attributes. They are lights of God, the Word or the Pen of God, the creators of the word, omniscience, omnipotent, omnibenevolent as well (...) as the intermediaries between God and humans. In this study, it is demonstrated that what happened to Jesus in Christianity, it has also happened to Muhammad in Islamic theosophy with some differences. The influence of Greek philosophy, especially Platonic, in ascribing these attributes to Jesus in Christianity and Muhammad in Islamic theosophy is undeniable. There is a strong temptation among the scholars of both religions, Islam and Christianity, to extend Jesus and Muhammad to the level of divinity and godhead. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Isaac Barrow on the Mathematization of Nature: Theological Voluntarism and the Rise of Geometrical OpticsAntoni MaletIntroductionIsaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy embodies a strong program of mathematization that departs both from the mechanical philosophy of Cartesian inspiration and from Boyle’s experimental philosophy. The roots of Newton’s mathematization of nature, this paper aims to demonstrate, are to be found in Isaac Barrow’s (1630–77) philosophy of the mathematical sciences.Barrow’s attitude (...) towards natural philosophy evolved from his earnest interest in medicine of around 1650, when a young Cambridge graduate, to natural philosophy (apparently under Henry More’s influence); from his thesis on the insufficiency of the Cartesian hypothesis to geometrical optics and the strong program of mathematization of natural philosophy of the middle 1660s; from Lucasian professor of Mathematics to Chaplain of his Majesty and eminent Restoration divine. Contemporary accounts of Barrow’s life suggest that he grew ever more skeptical about the worth of natural philosophy and mathematics. 1 In his last years he became a prolific [End Page 265] author of sermons and theological works. Published shortly after his death by John Tillotson (1630–94), later archbishop of Canterbury, they occupy over two thousand folio pages. Overloaded with involved philosophical arguments, Barrow’s sermons were apparently not very popular, but they were highly regarded by scholars and the Anglican hierarchy. 2 It is on certain of his sermons, as well as on the philosophical discussions contained in the Mathematical Lectures that our account of Barrow’s philosophy of the mathematical sciences will rest. 3 Barrow’s understanding of the mathematical sciences will allow us to discuss together three issues often analyzed independently: the theological background to English natural philosophy, the changing notion of mixed mathematical sciences during the seventeenth century, and finally the philosophical foundations of modern geometrical optics.It has long been recognized that significant relationships exist between theological voluntarism or intellectualism and views on natural philosophy. In particular Robert Boyle’s theological voluntarism is seen as grounding his experimentalist approach to natural philosophy. It is not quite so clear, however, how well theological voluntarism may relate to a strong program of mathematization such as the one embodied in Newton’s Principia Mathematica. In fact it has been suggested that the relationship is a negative one. This is derived from the necessary character of mathematical laws, which would put unwanted restrictions on God’s absolute dominion over nature, and also from the notion that theological intellectualism is conducive to a deductive, a priori science—the paradigm of which is of course geometry. However, Barrow’s theological voluntarism lead him to heighten the role of mathematics within natural philosophy.During the seventeenth century the so-called mixed or subalternate mathematical sciences changed profoundly. In the Enlightenment mixed mathematics—meaning above all rational mechanics—became one of the most prestigious and influential disciplines. The mixed mathematics of the Enlightenment, however, was markedly different from the Aristotelian [End Page 266] mixed mathematical sciences. The differences are noticeable both in the subject matter and in the substitution of mathematical infinitesimal analysis for geometrical synthesis, but also in the way of grounding mathematical theory on empirical evidence. Barrow’s Mathematical Lectures (delivered at Cambridge from 1664 to 1666) offer a fresh insight into the metamorphosis of these sciences just when Newton’s “mathematical principles” were in the making. Not the least interesting feature of Barrow’s discussion is that God’s omnipotence allows an evaluation of the truth of mathematical theories that do not apply to this world. Therefore, Barrow is led to introduce the distinction between the internal consistency, or mathematical truth, of a mathematical theory and its physical truth. This, in turn, leads him to the notion that theories need testing.Barrow on Matter and GodRecent literature has established significant correlations between theological voluntarism and empiricism, as well as between theological intellectualism and rationalism. As E. B. Davis writes, “the Christian doctrine of creation is a dialogue between God’s unconstrained will, which utterly transcends the bounds of human comprehension, and God’s orderly intellect, which serves as the model for the human mind.” Intellectualist theology considers God’s omniscience His... (shrink)

What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as readers (...) before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue. Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past. (shrink)

The morality of war has been debated from a variety of perspectives. However, it has rarely been intertwined with the topic of the existence of God. Sometimes anti-theists argue that the existence of a Western Judeo-Christian God who is omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect is inconsistent with the existence of evils such as war. We will argue that there is no such logical inconsistency between the God of the African traditional religions and the evil of war. First, we contend that (...) such a logical inconsistency does not exist because God in African traditional religions is not seen as omnipotent, omniscient or morally perfect, and therefore, it would not be logically inconsistent for such a God to co-exist with the evil of war. This is mainly because African moral realism entails that war is a legitimate means for an imperfect being in an imperfect world to pursue morally permissible goals. Second, even if God is omniscient, omnipotent and morally perfect, when considered from the African religious viewpoint, a God of harmony, like the one in African traditional religions, can permit some evils for a greater good such as “harmony”. (shrink)