Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence, because it vigorously rejects every appeal to the beyond, is often presumed to be indifferent to the concerns of religion. This book argues against such a presumption. It does so, first of all, by emphasising how both Deleuze’s thought and the notion of religion are motivated by a demand to create new modes of existence, or to imagine and enact a future that would substantively break with the present configuration of being. If Deleuze’s thought and (...) the notion of religion intersect in this regard, then their divergence must be located elsewhere, namely in the distinction between immanence and transcendence. The book thus argues that the enemy of Deleuze’s thought is not religion in general but instead the specific operation of transcendence. Furthermore, it argues that since Deleuze’s thought is not simply anti-religious, it cannot be identified with secularism. Along these lines, the book shows how Deleuzian immanence is able both to oppose religious transcendence and to enter an allliance with immanent accounts of the name of God. The effect of this is to suspend the paralysing debate between religion and the secular in order to attend to the ways in which immanence – whether “religious” or “secular” – is able to break with the present and to create the future. (shrink)

A monster stalks the earth—a sluggish, craven, dumb beast that takes fright at the slightest noise and starts at the sight of its own shadow. This monster is the market. The shadow it fears is cast by a light that comes from the future: the Keynesian crisis of expectations. It is this same light that causes the world’s leaders to tremble before the beast. They tremble, Jean-Pierre Dupuy says, because they have lost faith in the future. What Dupuy (...) calls Economy has degenerated today into a mad spectacle of unrestrained consumption and speculation. But in its positive form—a truly political economy in which politics, not economics, is predominant—Economy creates not only a sense of trust and confidence but also a belief in the open-endedness of the future without which capitalism cannot function. In this devastating and counterintuitive indictment of the hegemonic pretensions of neoclassical economic theory, Dupuy argues that the immutable and eternal decision of God has been replaced with the unpredictable and capricious judgment of the crowd. The future of mankind will therefore depend on whether it can see through the blindness of orthodox economic thinking. (shrink)

Résumé On observe une tendance accrue en science économique à favoriser les méthodes formelles, car elles sont selon certains plus « rigoureuses », et (donc) plus « scientifiques » (Lawson 1997; Fullbrook 2004). Mais cela ne va pas de soi. Cette tendance est plutôt préoccupante, pour plusieurs raisons. En effet, l’attribution a priori d’un statut supérieur à une méthode donnée crée un climat anti intellectuel peu favorable au progrès scientifique. Par ailleurs, l’orientation méthodologique en question se propage auprès des autres (...) sciences sociales. Si les questions de méthodologie, bien que centrales pour le bon avancement de la science, sont trop souvent reléguées au domaine de la philosophie des sciences, ceci est l’occasion de pointer à nouveau leur importance. Dans cet article, je propose d’examiner 1) quelles peuvent être les limites de l’usage des méthodes formelles en sciences sociales, d’après les apports du Réalisme Critique et/ou de la Cambridge School, et 2) l’étendue du phénomène méthodologique en question, tenant compte de sa composante dogmatique. Enfin, j’encourage la communauté scientifique à (re)trouver une démarche réflexive en matière de méthodologie, et à constituer des alliances interdisciplinaires visant à préserver la liberté intellectuelle qui sous tend tout progrès scientifique. (shrink)

A monster stalks the earth—a sluggish, craven, dumb beast that takes fright at the slightest noise and starts at the sight of its own shadow. This monster is the market. The shadow it fears is cast by a light that comes from the future: the Keynesian crisis of expectations. It is this same light that causes the world’s leaders to tremble before the beast. They tremble, Jean-Pierre Dupuy says, because they have lost faith in the future. What Dupuy (...) calls Economy has degenerated today into a mad spectacle of unrestrained consumption and speculation. But in its positive form—a truly political economy in which politics, not economics, is predominant—Economy creates not only a sense of trust and confidence but also a belief in the open-endedness of the future without which capitalism cannot function. In this devastating and counterintuitive indictment of the hegemonic pretensions of neoclassical economic theory, Dupuy argues that the immutable and eternal decision of God has been replaced with the unpredictable and capricious judgment of the crowd. The future of mankind will therefore depend on whether it can see through the blindness of orthodox economic thinking. (shrink)

What is God? What does it mean to believe in God? What happens to God after the death of God? This book examines “the death of God” from a philosophical standpoint. It focuses on monotheism, polytheism, and nature, and it discusses the renewed importance of spirituality—and the “spiritual but not religious”—in response to the death of God. In recent years, religious belief has been in decline, but secularism cannot satisfy our spiritual needs. We are now living in a “post-secular” age (...) in which the relationship between philosophy, spirituality, and religion must be re-examined. As an exploratory essay, this book engages the reader at a profound level, and considers a variety of modern thinkers, including Nietzsche, Hegel, Freud, Levinas, Assmann, and Buber. It offers a sustained meditation on the origin of God, the death of God, and the future of “God” as a guiding ideal. (shrink)

Fifty years after his death, the thought of the French scientist and Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) continues to inspire new ways of understanding humanity’s future. Trained as a paleontologist and philosopher, Teilhard was an innovative synthesizer of science and religion, developing an idea of evolution as an unfolding of material and mental worlds into an integrated, holistic universe at what he called the Omega Point. His books, such as the bestselling The Phenomenon of Man, have influenced generations (...) of ecologists, environmentalists, planners, and others concerned with the fate of the earth.This book brings together original essays by leading experts who reflect on Teilhard’s legacy for today’s globalized world. They explore such topics as: the idea of God and the person; quantum reality and Teilhard’s vision; spiritual resources for the future; politics and economics; and a charter for co-evolution. (shrink)

The Heideggerian critique of onto-theology has attained a semi-canonical status for continental philosophy of religion. But is the critique itself sound, and does it actually result in a richer philosophical and theological discourse concerning God? In this paper, I argue that Heidegger’s onto-theological critique suffers from serious difficulties. First I examine the critique, summarizing and condensing the critique in its essentials. I use Westphal’s fourfold criteria as a way of giving it some precision, while presenting it in relative independence from (...) Heidegger’s own account of Being. In section III, I examine the results of non-onto-theological discourse on God post-Heidegger, suggesting, using the examples of John Caputo and Richard Kearney, that Heidegger’s onto-theological critique has not inspired a less problematic religious discourse. In the fourth and final section, I question the legitimacy of the critique itself. While Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology has the seemingly admirable goal of rendering our discourse about God less instrumental and idolatrous, a careful analysis of the criteria themselves reveals that onto-theology either misinterprets natural theological discourse on God or subjects it to impossible requirements. (shrink)

In their _Unfit for the Future_, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu argued that there is no moral right to privacy, which resulted in a string of papers. This paper addresses their most recent contribution, arguing that—contrary to their claims—there is no conflict between God and a moral right to privacy.

Loyal Rue suggests that religion is not about God as such but about the cultivation of personal and social well-being. Religion may employ cultural resources that include concepts of supernatural agencies, but religion's essential functionalities are not dependent on that particular resource. I largely endorse Rue's view of religion and employ Rue as a guide to thinking through its consequences for the future of Christianity. For Rue, two challenges face Christianity: the erosion of confidence in personal-god concepts and the (...) ecological crisis engulfing the planet. In the face of these twin momentous changes, I suggest ways in which certain cultural tropes in the Christian matrix will rise to the fore and others will erode. (shrink)

To be human is to humanize; a radically empirical aesthetic, by J. J. McDermott.--Dream and nightmare; the future as revolution, by R. C. Pollock.--William James and metaphysical risk, by P. M. Van Buren.--Knowing as a passionate and personal quest; C. S. Peirce, by D. B. Burrell.--The fox alone is death; Whitehead and speculative philosophy, by A. J. Reck.--A man and a city; George Herbert Mead in Chicago, by R. M. Barry.--Royce; analyst of religion as community, by J. Collins.--Human experience (...) and God; Brightman's personalistic theism, by D. Callahan.--William James and the phenomenology of religious experience, by J. M. Edie.--Pragmatism, religion, and experienceable difference, by R. W. Sleeper.--How is religious talk justifiable, by J. W. McClendon, Jr. (shrink)

This audio recording contains a lecture led by Dr. William Christian, Dr. Shirley C. Guthrie, and Dr. Stanley R. Hopper on November 20, 1965 as a part of the America and the Future of Theology Lecture Series. Dr. William Christian discusses the possibility of interaction between metaphysics and theology, the concept of God in Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics, the relation of Whitehead’s metaphysics to Platonism, and the relation of Whitehead’s metaphysics to Christian theology. Dr. Guthrie responds to Dr. Christian (...) by accepting the interaction of metaphysics and theology as a possible subject and how metaphysics is necessary to theology, but only as an instrument not a dictator. Dr. Stanley responds to Dr. Christian by posing two questions: Can the relationship between theology and philosophy or theology and metaphysics be adequately represented when the concept of God has a strong family resemblance according to Whitehead, and What is the relationship between metaphysics and theology? Lastly, Dr. Christian responds to both Dr. Guthrie and Dr. Stanley. (shrink)

Anti-capitalist thinkers in the West have long argued that the expansion of markets creates new wants faster than it can satisfy them, and that consumption under capitalism is a form of addictive behavior. Recently, however, the relentless expansion of desire has come to be seen as a strength rather than a weakness of capitalist regimes. To understand this change socialists must consider whether there is a point to consumer spending that goes beyond satisfaction with what one gets. Freud's notion of (...) instinctual ambivalence illuminates the ways in which spending itself is a fusion of the desires to lose and to gain. This helps to explain how the socialist distinction between satisfying and addictive consumption misses the mark. Broadening this insight, we can see that Western thought about justice, originating in Judeo-Christian theology, conceals a fundamental ambivalence about both domination and gain by suggesting that inequality (beginning with that between God and man) is justified when the dominating party loses and the gainer submits. Ironically, however, the new post-utilitarian rationale for capitalism undermines this putative justification of social inequality in consumer-oriented capitalist societies by bringing our internal ambivalence about gain and dominance to the surface. This development creates an opportunity for a new beginning in Marxian social theory. The final sections of the essay suggest that social theory has been trapped in a debate over whether predators (and their human counterparts) kill in order to eat or eat in order to kill (Marx vs. Nietzsche). To break this trap we must shift the basis of social criticism from the metaphor of predation to the metaphor of parasitism. This changes the focus of critical analysis from unmasking the predator in every situation to identifying in every social structure the mechanisms of incorporation, mutual subversion, asymmetrical exchange, and surplus-creation (as distinct from equilibrium). If neither the desire for gain nor the desire for dominance are self-explanatory, then the Marxian critique of Nietzsche and the Nietzschean critique of Marxism both have valid points. The essay concludes with reflections about the importance of addressing the post-utilitarian rationale of capitalism with the same depth and comprehensiveness that we find in Marx's critique of its utilitarian rationale. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Touching TestAI and the Future of Human IntimacyMartha J. Reineke (bio)Each Friday, the New York Times publishes Love Letters, a compendium of articles on courtship. A recent story featured Melinda, a real estate agent, and Calvin, a human resources director.1 They had met at a market deli counter. On their first date, a lasagna dinner at Melinda's home, Calvin posed the question, "What are you looking for (...) in a man?" To his surprise, Melinda reached into her pocket and pulled out a two-page list, "Melinda's Husband Traits." Her 46-item list begins with "Christian, honor God, put Him first" and includes as entry number 37, "He likes to be touched and likes to touch me." Notwithstanding laudable features of Melinda's inventory, if David Levy, President of the International Computer Games Association and an expert on artificial intelligence (AI), is correct in his predictions, in the years ahead, women like Melinda who know exactly what they are looking for in a husband will desire something radically new: a robot. After all, artificial agents will soon possess or improve on every quality the romantically inclined previously have sought in a human partner. [End Page 123]Levi predicts robots will be preferred romantic partners by the middle of this century.2 Capable of providing erotic satisfaction and creating deep emotional bonds with human partners, these robots will be an achievable outcome of AI engineering that already has brought to market industrial and service robots, virtual pets, and caregiver robots for the elderly. Levi offers a research-based inventory of traits a robot will offer its human partner: kindness and understanding, a sense of humor, expressiveness, intelligence, and sociability.3 He pinpoints additional features that will facilitate romance: The ideal robot partner will elicit erotic attraction, give evidence of readiness for a serious relationship with its verbal assertions, and possess a capacity for mutual intimacy.4 Levi's argument is intentionally provocative, for he emphasizes the centrality of sex to future robot/human pairings, waxing rhapsodic about the performative superiority of robots to humans in the sexual act.5Elaborating on potential human love relationships with robots, Levi asserts that a robot will need to master imitation if a human is to want it as a romantic partner. Not only is imitation a central aspect of every human-to-human relationship, but also imitation has been identified by researchers as a crucial element in romantic desire.6 Levi states that human-to-human attraction is founded on similarities between prospective partners in appearance, personality, and social context. It is sustained only through what Levi calls "reciprocal liking."7 For romantic relationships between humans and robots to flourish, they too must engage in acts of reciprocal imitation.In highlighting the necessity of imitation in effective robot and human interactions, Levi draws close to René Girard's theory of "mimetic desire." According to Girard, imitation structures all "wanting,"8 delineating what we aspire to look like or hope to possess and determining what we value, take comfort in, or experience as a threat. Indeed, the individual is never the origin point of its desires. Each of us always desires mimetically—according to the desire of the other.9 As Scott Garrels confirms in Mimesis and Science, researchers studying imitation in developmental, comparative, and social psychology, as well as in neurophysiology and cognitive neuroscience, support Girard's claims: Imitation is fundamental in human life.10 Likewise, Girard concurs with Levi that romantic relationships are primary examples of imitative desire. As described by Girard in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, imitative behaviors form the romantic triangles that feature prominently in fiction: for example, Odette and the many men enchanted by her in Proust's In Search of Lost Time; Anselmo, Lotario, and Camilla in Don Quixote; and Velchaninov and Troussotzki, along with Troussotzki's deceased wife and prospective fiancée, in Dostoyevsky's The Eternal Husband.11 [End Page 124]Notwithstanding similarities in Levi and Girard's views of imitation, they differ in a crucial respect. Only Girard acknowledges just how extraordinarily fraught mimesis can become. When imitators compete (e.g., for things, status, and experiences), they will contest... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between Wolfhart Pannenberg's idea of God and his conception of history, with the intention of determining the precise nature of the link that, in his view, connects both philosophical and the theological reflection on the meaning of history. We shall first analyze Pannenberg's response to the traditional criticism of Christianity as an anthropomorphic projection of the human being. Then we shall pay attention to the features of any possible fundamentum of (...) history. We will show that, according to Pannenberg, a transition from a philosophical into a theological consideration of history is needed in order to provide a rationally acceptable foundation for both the unity and the meaning of universal history. (shrink)

This article concentrates on a number of publications such as Marcel Gauchet, Le Désenchantement du monde. Une histoire politique de la religion, Paris, Gallimard 1984. Luc Ferry, L'homme-Dieu ou le sens de la vie , Gianni Vattimo, Credere di credere, Garanti Editore 1996. Gabriel Ringlet, Evangile d’un libre penseur. Dieu serait-il laïque? Paris, Albin Michel 1998. All these books are concerned with the theme of secularization. Gauchet's eminal book sees Christianity as “the religion of the exit of religion”. This means (...) that Christianity itself has been the main influence in changing the very relationship between the Infinite and the finite, between God and the world. In stressing the divine Transcendence, the world becomes fully autonomous. Ferry recognizes the impact of Christianity on contemporary culture. Christianity is not just the religion of the incarnation of God; it is also the religion of the divinization of man. According to Ferry, contemporary humanism has many transcendental traits which are derived from its roots in Christianity. The author thinks that there is large support for the idea that Christianity and contemporary humanism are not so opposed to oneanother as many have thought. It might rather be the case that those two phenomena are sides of the same coin, at a different period of critical awareness. It would follow from this that religion can only survive if it takes far more seriously the challenges addressed by it by contemporary humanism, and starts to see in it not so much its opposite as its ally. All this is the result of a major shift in the very meaning of the word “God” in Christianity as the religion of the Incarnation. (shrink)

What is the meaning of life? In the post-modern, post-religious scientific world, this question is becoming a preoccupation. But it also has a long history: many major figures in philosophy had something to say on the subject, as Julian Young so vividly illustrates in this thought-provoking book. Part One of the book presents an historical overview of philosophers from Plato to Hegel and Marx who have believed in some sort of meaning of life, either in some supposed 'other' world or (...) in the future of this world. Part Two looks at what happened when the traditional structures that provided life with meaning ceased to be believed. With nothing to take their place, these structures gave way to the threat of nihilism, to the appearance that life is meaningless. Julian Young looks at the responses to this threat in the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Foucault and Derrida. This compelling and highly engaging exploration of fundamental values will captivate anyone who's ever asked themselves where life's meaning really lies. It also makes a perfect historical introduction to philosophy. (shrink)

Arguing against militant atheist thought, the author maintains that faith and spirituality are valuable practices that should be maintained, and outlines a path toward discovering God within intended to transform everyday life.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 144-149, January 2022.

There is reasonable evidence suggesting that humans have an innate tendency toward being religious. Consequently, religion is unlikely to disappear; the question then is how this feature will impact on future society. Three scenarios are discussed: One, science will dominate; two, religion will dominate; and three, the present conflict between the two is resolved. The latter scenario may happen through a realization that religion has the potential for doing more good than bad, in terms of individual quality of life (...) and in improving society. Obtaining maximum benefit of religion will require a concept of God that is compatible with science, and that can be accepted as a common core for the various faiths. Science may help in this endeavor. (shrink)

_New observations on the persistence of God in modern times and why “authentic” atheism is so very hard to come by_ How to live in a supposedly faithless world threatened by religious fundamentalism? Terry Eagleton, formidable thinker and renowned cultural critic, investigates in this thought-provoking book the contradictions, difficulties, and significance of the modern search for a replacement for God. Engaging with a phenomenally wide range of ideas, issues, and thinkers from the Enlightenment to today, Eagleton discusses the state of (...) religion before and after 9/11, the ironies surrounding Western capitalism’s part in spawning not only secularism but also fundamentalism, and the unsatisfactory surrogates for the Almighty invented in the post-Enlightenment era. The author reflects on the unique capacities of religion, the possibilities of culture and art as modern paths to salvation, the so-called war on terror’s impact on atheism, and a host of other topics of concern to those who envision a future in which just and compassionate communities thrive. Lucid, stylish, and entertaining in his usual manner, Eagleton presents a brilliant survey of modern thought that also serves as a timely, urgently needed intervention into our perilous political present. (shrink)

The shape of theological humanism -- Ideas and challenges -- The humanist imagination -- Thinking of God -- The logic of Christian humanism -- On the integrity of life -- The task of theological humanism -- Our endangered garden -- A school of conscience -- Masks of mind -- Religion and spiritual integrity -- Living theological humanism.

Conflicts over the proper role of religion in schools-and particularly in public schools supported by tax monies-are frequently featured in news reports. For example, in the United States there currently are conflicts over the teaching of evolution, inserting the word God in the pledge of allegiance, conducting school holiday celebrations, posting the biblical Ten Commandments in schools, and praying at school functions. People who are interested in such controversies often-or, perhaps, usually-fail to understand the historical backgrounds to the conflicts and (...) therefore do not recognize the very complex factors that affect why the controversies become so heated. To help readers gain a better understanding of such matters, this book focuses on the seven major types of conflicts that have become particularly confrontational during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The cases on which the chapters focus concern issues that currently are being hotly debated in America. Controversies are described in relation to their historical origins and the author shows how the history affects current understanding of the issues. Thomas does not take sides in the arguments; rather, he lays out the arguments, their historical and cultural contexts, and the groups that debate them and their goals. Anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the controversies surrounding religion in American schools will be happy to find here not just a review of the issues, but a deeper consideration of the causes, consequences, and future of the debates and the role of religion in our public schools. (shrink)

The Future of Man is an introduction to the thoughts and writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the few figures in the history of the Catholic Church to achieve renown as both a scientist and a theologian. Trained as a paleontologist and ordained as a Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin devoted himself to establishing the intimate, interdependent connection between science--particularly the theory of evolution--and the basic tenets of the Christian faith. At the center of his philosophy was (...) the belief that the human species is evolving spiritually, progressing from a simple faith to higher and higher forms of consciousness, including a consciousness of God, and culminating in the ultimate understanding of humankind's place and purpose in the universe. The Church, which would not condone his philosophical writings, refused to allow their publication during his lifetime. Written over a period of thirty years and presented here in chronological order, the essays cover the wide-ranging interests and inquiries that engaged Teilhard de Chardin throughout his life: intellectual and social evolution; the coming of ultra-humanity; the integral place of faith in God in the advancement of science; and the impact of scientific discoveries on traditional religious dogma. --From publisher's description. (shrink)

This paper discusses the treatment of "infinity" in philosophy of religion, including its use in discussions of divine attributes, and its use in various arguments about the existence of God (including the kalam cosmological argument and Pascal's wager). The aim of the paper is to set out -- and where possible, to resolve -- various foundational problems about infinity.

The recognition that female embodiment and feminine experience are legitimate and specific sites of the revelation of God’s love has been one of the most significant developments in theology in the last hundred years. However, an over-emphasis on feminine experience as supervening on female embodiment risks erasing unusual sex-gender body-stories and perpetuating the idea that only some bodies can mediate the divine. Feminist Theology’s future must involve a re-examination and re-negotiation of what it is to be feminist theologians without (...) fixed gender essences. Does Feminist Theology have space to hear from and nurture the voices of those whose gender experiences challenge a binary, either-or model? Can Feminist Theology, in contrast to much secular feminist theory, give space at the table to those whose sex-gender life stories undermine the notion that there is such a thing as a common or biologically-contingent feminine experience in the first place? (shrink)

Braaten is correct when he argues that "the Christian Gospel can expect to get a hearing in modern culture only when it has some important news to bring about our human future, when it is really concerned about the world's tomorrows". The theology of hope is about the Christian's attempt to speak in terms congruent with the Left's demand for a new heaven and a new earth. It is the attempt on the part of the Christian community to relate (...) New Testament eschatological notions to recent demands for radical social change and even revolution. Braaten's book is a good introduction for the American audience to this latest innovation in Protestant theological thought. He relates the theology of hope directly to the particular American cultural and political environment. He includes a brief chapter on "Toward a Theology of Revolution," and urges others who are proto-insurrectionists to have a go at fleshing out his skeletal ideas. Braaten has interpreted the whole of Dogmatic Theology in the light of the eschatological hope of the Bible. For Braaten, theology is Eschatology--and therefore everything is changed, and Braaten can write easily of "Hope and the Human Condition," "The Mediation of Hope through History," "Jesus and the Power of the Future," "An Eschatological Concept of the Trinity," "The Future of the Church Mission," etc. It is to Braaten's wisdom that he has made us all see again how essential hope is in the theological game.--W. A. J. (shrink)

In Godard's Le Mépris [Contempt, 1963], Fritz Lang, playing a fictional version of himself, evokes the complex relationship between cinema's future and the end of cinema by citing a famous verse from the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, according to which what counts in respect of poetry is henceforth no longer the secret persistence of the gods, nor their covert proximity, but their enduring absence. This paper explores the implications of that insight as they come to affect first Godard's film, (...) then the three films based on Hölderlin's works directed by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub between 1986 and 1992: Der Tod des Empedokles [The Death of Empedocles]; Schwarze Sünde [Black Sin]; and Die Antigone des Sophokles nach der Hölderlinschen Übertragung für die Bühne bearbeitet von Brecht (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1948) [Sophocles? Antigone Based on Hölderlin's Translation, as Adapted for the Stage by Brecht (published by Suhrkamp, 1948)]. At issue in all those films, and similarly in Straub and Huillet's 1974 film of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, is the tension between the project or dream of sacrifice as a form of fusional politico-religious redemption and its very impossibility as such, attributable (among others) to the necessary subordination of film to spatio-temporal differentiation and, by that token, to what is irreducible to the visible and the invisible alike. Through careful analysis of Huillet and Straub's filmmaking strategy, the paper examines both the aesthetic and political consequences of their interruption of the logic of sacrifice, and seeks to show how the future of cinema is not reducible to the aesthetics of the spectacular but is inseparable from the promise of that which, before or beyond spectacle, has not yet ever been seen before. (shrink)

Paradigms of unity and plurality -- Unity or plurality of religions? -- The healing and poisonous fruits of the unity of religions -- The synthesis and aporia of religious pluralism -- The promise of mysticism -- Polyphilic pluralism -- Negotiations of multiplicity -- Convergences and divergences: juncture or bifurcation? -- Pluralism of pluralisms? -- Horizontal and vertical pluralism -- An experiment in incompatibilities: green acre -- The mystery of distinction and unity -- Transreligious horizons -- The transreligious discourse -- Other (...) religions: from coinherence to coinhabitation -- The earth and other worlds: a story of cosmic magnitude -- The future of religions -- One with all religions. (shrink)

This article discusses critiques raised by historians of religion concerning Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), offering some defense of Norenzayan's position, but also discussing in detail the more substantive challenges. It concludes with some reflections on the current position of the history of religion within the Academy, and an argument for why large-scale explanatory projects and interdisciplinary collaboration should be part of the future of our field.

This article examines two recent examples of feminist dystopias: Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God and Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks. True to their genre, these novels act as w...

What is the Bible? -- What is religion? -- Enlightenment theology -- Covenant theology -- Jesus the teacher of nothingness -- Creating God in 325 -- Meet the new Jesus, a Christian Avatar -- When God stopped working -- Religion and the God who almost is -- Saving apocalypticism -- Theology and the opening of time.

In the eleventh book of the Confessiones Augustine puts forward several considerations about the nature of time. The received view is that he held that only the present exists, while the past and the future do not exist. This received view has recently been attacked by Paul Helm and Katherin Rogers, who have offered alternative interpretations according to which Augustine held that the present has no privileged ontological status, and that past, present and future all equally exist. The (...) aim of this paper is to defend the received view vis-à-vis these attacks. I argue that the received view fits best Augustine’s view of God’s eternity and relation to time and should therefore be preferred. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religion within the Limits of History Alone: Pragmatic Historicism and the Future of Theology by Demian WheelerNancy FrankenberryReligion within the Limits of History Alone: Pragmatic Historicism and the Future of Theology. Demian Wheeler. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. ix+511pp. $95.00 hardcover.The history of Christian theology since the Enlightenment has been a series of unsuccessful attempts to evade a stark dilemma: either fundamentalism or atheism. Contemporary liberal theologians (...) have argued that this dilemma is [End Page 97] entirely too stark, too eliminative of the creative possibilities of revisionism. Liberal theology has wanted to revise and reinterpret Christian faith in conformity with history, reason, a scientific worldview, and a sophisticated grasp of the significance of symbol, analogy, and metaphor in the lives of religious practitioners. Eliminating both supernaturalism and anthropomorphism, liberal theology would make Christianity more intellectually tenable, rescuing it from the literalist hands of fundamentalists, without collapsing it into the equally literalist arms of atheism.The extreme difficulty of evading the either-or dilemma of choosing either fundamentalism or atheism landed liberal theology in a catch-22: either it rejected the intellectually untenable elements of belief, in which case it eliminated just those beliefs that constituted its appeal to popular piety, or it retained certain supernaturalistic and anthropomorphic beliefs, understood as “symbolic,” in which case it forfeited intellectual intelligibility and any appeal to sophisticated moderns. The first version is far too weakened for ordinary American Christians, and the second is still too religious for the masters of suspicion and their followers.It is for this reason that the history of American religious thought reveals a grave irony that complicates the hopes of pragmatic historicists, the protagonists of this superbly clear and rich, deep dive into authors that most readers of this journal will have read, but perhaps not have synthesized as thoroughly as has Demian Wheeler. That irony, as Wheeler knows, is that the more intellectual changes pragmatic historicists make to traditional Christian belief, the more they help to make unbelief viable. The question then arises as to whether pragmatic historicism is simply a half-way house on the road to an atheistic destination. Or, if the word “atheism” sounds too old-fashioned, like something that went out with steamships and girdles, then “agnosticism.” Or, if “agnosticism” still smacks too much of stale debates, why not “pantheism,” as recently revived by Mary-Jane Rubenstein?The detailed development, the verbal bravura, and the measured knowledge in this book are astonishingly impressive. Wheeler’s initial thesis is that liberal theology, particularly of the early Chicago School, and American pragmatism, particularly C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, provide important resources for meeting the challenges posed by the rise of historical consciousness. Sheila Davaney has designated this tradition “pragmatic historicism,” and Wheeler aims to show its compelling import for the future of theology itself. A good deal of the book is devoted to exposition and defense of the views of: Ernst Troeltsch, James, Dewey, George Burman Foster, Shirley Jackson Case, Shailer Matthews, and Gerald Birney Smith, down to Delwin Brown, Sheila Davaney, and William Dean (Wheeler’s teachers at Iliff), along with Gordon [End Page 98] Kaufman and Sallie McFague. In the last chapter, Wheeler draws expertly on the theological views of Bernard Loomer, Michael Hogue, Donald Crosby, and Wesley Wildman. Such an all-star cast deserves to receive all the attention they can get. Wheeler’s occasional emendations come as glittering nuggets of constructive engagement. He does not simply call for a pragmatic historicist approach to theology, but he executes one as well, showing in more detail than his predecessors what it means for such topics as religious diversity (chapters 3 and 4), the nature of authority (chapter 5), the meaning of critical realism, fallibilism, and an altered correspondence theory of truth (chapters 6 and 7), and the doctrine of God (chapter 8). With the same exhaustive treatment that his doktorvater Gary Dorrien has devoted to liberal theology’s history and contemporary expressions, Wheeler carefully saves pragmatic historicism from relativism, expertly critiques all the leading theologians of the “inclusivist,” “exclusivist,” and “pluralist” theologies of religions, while arguing the superiority of his own “particularist” corrective to pluralistic... (shrink)

“Daddy, is God real or is he a part of people's imagination?” The brain constructs reality by bottom‐up, genetically programmed mechanisms. Nature selected the human holistic, symbolically thinking, aesthetic brain using a mechanism of brain‐language coevolution. Our religious nature and moral capabilities are rooted in this brain, and in the real images it constructs.