In my essay, I offer an interpretation of Giorgio Agamben’s political thought as a case of philosophical perversion. According to Lacan, perverse practice is based on a structural non-personal enjoyment, in which a pervert assumes the role of an executioner, meticulously executing his task. My analysis will focus on Agamben’s perverse use of the messianic discourse, the aim of which is to explode it from within: while applying all elements of the messianic idiom, Agamben assumes a mission the goal of (...) which is to deactivate all mission and revoke all vocations. As he states in reference to Bartleby the Scrivener as the possible figure of the Messiah, to fulfill the Torah, i.e. the religious law, is to “destroy it from top to bottom.” I will thus claim that Agamben’s strategy of deactivation – a vocation to end all vocation – can be interpreted as a deliberate methodical use of perversion, that is, a position which simultaneously obeys and destroys the law. Although critical of Agamben’s method, I will not use the Lacanian frame of perversion in a value-charged manner. I want to present it as one of the late-modern philosophical modes of thinking, which became so widely seductive precisely of its powerful perverse component. (shrink)

Speech : an eye that sees, an ear that hears -- Time : considerations of temporal priority or posteriority do not enter into the Torah -- Space : the land of Israel is holier than all lands -- Analysis : hierarchical classification and the law's philosophical demonstration of monotheism -- Mixtures -- Analysis : intentionality -- Integrating the system -- Living in the kingdom of God.

Art, like Christian faith itself, is at home in the region of symbol - that realm in which meanings are not so much stated as they are evoked or illuminated, and in which events are not so much described as they are remembered and celebrated. This common zone is fertile, inexhaustible, and highly volati≤ therein lie both its powers and its dangers. Yet it claims the effort and allegiance of us all, insofar as we are humanly capable of fashioning and (...) responding to the world in which we live. Art and faith stand here on common ground, more common than the devotees of each ordinarily realize, and this ought to be pointed out and better understood. (From the Preface). (shrink)

The idea of the genetic unity of all mankind is an integral part of Christian teaching. The purpose of this brief survey is to illustrate its role within the Greek patristic tradition, and then to point to a few examples from modern science which lend support to this ancient idea.

The hardest thing in appropriating [a] holistic natural law perspective is to recognise the invisible mean of judgement, which alone contains the limits of all things... The notion of mean and limits - so fundamental to ethics - calls for inner understanding that the nature of the mean cannot be defined 'a priori', because it involves an exercise of judgement, ethical judgement.

Global dynamics and the integrity of life -- Pluralism in creation -- Reconsidering greed -- Timing moral cosmologies -- Love in the end times -- From toleration to political forgiveness -- Sacred texts and the social imaginary -- Comparing religions, comparing lives -- On moral madness -- Presenting theological humanism.

Moral philosophers have frequently criticized theological ethics for its dependence upon divine authority and its consequent lack of autonomy. To test their perception of religious ethics and mentality, this paper examines the ways in which Paul justifies his ethical advice in I Corinthians 7. Analysis of his reasoning reveals that Paul invokes his own authority as well as the Lord's rulings and the commands of God. These are, however, related in ways which encourage freedom of interpretation and application. In (...) this text at least, theological ethics cannot be reduced to simple obedience to religious authority. (shrink)

Throughout his ministry, Jesus spoke frequently and unabashedly on the now-taboo subject of money. With nothing good to say to the rich, the New Testament -- indeed the entire Bible -- is far from positive towards the topic of personal wealth. And yet, we all seek material prosperity and comfort. How are Christians to square the words of their savior with the balances of their bank accounts, or more accurately, with their unquenchable desire for financial security? While the church has (...) developed diverse responses to the problems of poverty, it is often silent on what seems almost as straightforward a biblical principle: that wealth, too, is a problem. By considering the particular context of the recent economic history of Ireland, this book explores how the parables of Jesus can be the key to unlocking what it might mean to follow Christ as wealthy people without diluting our dilemma or denying the tension. Through an engagement with contemporary economic and political thought, aided by the work of Karl Barth and William T. Cavanaugh, this book represents a unique and innovative intervention to a discussion that applies to every Christian in the Western world. (shrink)

This paper is a sequel to my 'Theological Misinterpretations of Current Physical Cosmology' (Foundations of Physics [1996], 26 (4); revised in Philo [1998], 1 (1)). There I argued that the Big Bang models of (classical) general relativity theory, as well as the original 1948 versions of the steady state cosmology, are each logically incompatible with the time-honored theological doctrine that perpetual divine creation ('creatio continuans') is required in each of these two theorized worlds. Furthermore, I challenged the perennial (...) theological doctrine that there must be a divine creative cause (as distinct from a transformative one) for the very existence of the world, a ratio essendi. This doctrine is the theistic reply to the question: 'Why is there something, rather than just nothing?' I begin my present paper by arguing against the response by the contemporary Oxford theist Richard Swinburne and by Leibniz to what is, in effect, my counter-question: 'But why should there be just nothing, rather than something?' Their response takes the form of claiming that the a priori probability of there being just nothing, vis-à-vis the existence of alternative states, is maximal, because the non-existence of the world is conceptually the simplest. On the basis of an analysis of the role of simplicity in scientific explanations, I show that this response is multiply flawed, and thus provides no basis for their three contentions that (i) if there is a world at all, then its 'normal', natural, spontaneous state is one of utter nothingness or total non-existence, so that (ii) the very existence of matter, energy and living beings constitutes a deviation from the allegedly 'normal', spontaneous state of 'nothingness', and (iii) that deviation must thus have a suitably potent (external) divine cause. Related defects turn out to vitiate the medieval Kalam Argument for the existence of God, as espoused by William Craig. Next I argue against the contention by such theists as Richard Swinburne and Philip L. Quinn that (i) the specific content of the scientifically most fundamental laws of nature, including the constants they contain, requires supra-scientific explanation, and (ii) a satisfactory explanation is provided by the hypothesis that the God of theism willed them to be exactly what they are. Furthermore, I contend that the theistic teleological gloss on the 'Anthropic Principle' is incoherent and explanatorily unavailing. Finally, I offer an array of considerations against Swinburne's attempt to show, via Bayes's theorem, that the existence of God is more probable than not. (shrink)

"Ask two religious people one question, and you'll get three answers!" Why do religious people believe what they shouldn't--not what others think they shouldn't believe, but things that don't accord with their own avowed religious beliefs? This engaging book explores this puzzling feature of human behavior. D. Jason Slone terms this phenomenon "theological incorrectness." He demonstrates that it exists because the mind is built it such a way that it's natural for us to think divergent thoughts simultaneously. Human minds (...) are great at coming up with innovative ideas that help them make sense of the world, he says, but those ideas do not always jibe with official religious beliefs. From this fact we derive the important lesson that what we learn from our environment--religious ideas, for example--does not necessarily cause us to behave in ways consistent with that knowledge. Slone presents the latest discoveries from the cognitive science of religion and shows how they help us to understand exactly why it is that religious people do and think things that they shouldn't. He then applies these insights to three case studies. First he looks at why Theravada Buddhists profess that Buddha was just a man but actually worship him as a god. Then he explores why the early Puritan Calvinists, who believed in predestination, acted instead as if humans had free will by, for example, conducting witch-hunts and seeking converts. Finally, he explains why both Christians and Buddhists believe in luck even though the doctrines of Divine Providence and karma suggest there's no such thing. In seeking answers to profound questions about why people behave the way they do, this fascinating book sheds new light on the workings of the human mind and on the complex relationship between cognition and culture. (shrink)

The famous triad of ‘rational proofs’ of God’s existence may, if their underlying intuitions are taken at face value, be reversed to prove the contrary, namely the non-existence of God. The ontological argument, for example, proceeds from the notion of God as the ‘real most’ or ‘absolutely real’ being. However, the existence of an entity thus defined must be beyond doubt, for if distinguishing between ‘levels of reality’ makes any sense at all, ‘more real’ must also mean ‘more manifest’. And (...) since a being whose existence is beyond doubt is greater than that whose existence is in doubt, God, to fit the definition provided by St. Anselm, must be a being the existence of which cannot be doubted or, more strictly, the existence of which can only come to be doubted if He did not exist to dispel all doubts. Hence it follows that God does not exist, because it is an undeniable fact that His existence is subject to doubt. This paper is not, however, about theexistence of God, it is about the inherent dialectic of theological reason that seeks non-natural or supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. (shrink)

The paper is a critical notice of Margaret Osler, "Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy". Criticism focuses on Osler's claim that theological voluntarism and intellectualism and associated ideas about the necessity of physical laws and the certainty of scientific beliefs provide an underlying framework for understanding Gassendi's and Descartes's natural philosophies.

It is sometimes said that changes in academic philosophy in the twentieth century reflected a process in which a discipline that had been earlier closely tied to institutional religion became increasingly laicized and secularized.1 In line with this idea, the idealist philosophy that had flowered within British philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century can look like the last and ill-fated attempt of a Victorian religious sensibility to guard itself against a post-Darwinian God-less view of the world and ourselves.2 (...) Such a view generally represents, I believe, the attitudes of many contemporary philosophers to British philosophy prior to the transforming work of Russell and Moore of about one hundred years ago. Against the luxuriant and mystical metaphysics of the idealists, fuelled by religious longing, the “new philosophy”, it is thought, affirmed the brute materiality of the world and its independence from mind, be it divine or human. A similar development is commonly understood as carrying from Hegel through the “young Hegelians” to the mature Marx. Thus for Feuerbach, for example, Hegel’s idealist doctrine that “nature or reality is posited by the idea” was “merely the rational expression of the theological doctrine that nature is created by God”.3 Hegel’s philosophy had thus provided a “last place of refuge and ... rational support of theology”, and escaping from this condition (more prison than refuge) required rejecting idealism and confronting the fact that “the true relation of thinking and being is simply this. Being is subject and thinking a predicate but a predicate such as... (shrink)