Cover of Philosophy and Theology
Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-10 of 10 documents


1. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Raja Bahlul Avicenna and the Problem of Universals
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The main object of this paper is to clarify and evaluate Avicenna’s view of universals, in light of some modern and contemporarydiscussions. According to Avicenna, universality is a contingent attribute of entities that are in themselves neither universal norparticular. An account of universality as a contingent attribute is offered which clarifies and gives additional support to Avicenna’sview. Nevertheless, it will be argued that Avicenna, through his use of such terms as “nature” and “quiddity,” faces the same problemswhich he attributes to his predecessors.
2. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Sr. Mary Bernard Curran Malebranche on Disinterestedness: Treatise on the Love of God
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Nicolas Malebranche in the Treatise on the Love of God argues against the Quietists, who thought that the pure love of God required the extinction of self-interest, understood to include a stance of disinterestedness with regard to happiness, even to eternal happiness. Ipresent Malebranche’s essay as structured by contrasts the resolution of which Malebranche maintains leads to union with God, whichis love and happiness. By referring to several thinkers, past and present, I suggest alternative ways of thinking about God, love of God, and self-interest. I conclude that although Malebranche is in a long line of thinkers who hold that the object of the will is the good, and who equate this good with God, and God with happiness, and although he offers correctives to a too easy-going spirituality, certain theses that he defends are not in line with classical views of God and His attributes.
3. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Teodor Bernardus Baba The Use of Husserl’s Method in Bernard Lonergan’s Trinitarian Theology
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The question that arises in this article is whether we can find elements of phenomenology in Bernard Lonergan’s Trinitarian theology.With help of other Lonergan scholars, I have discovered that modern thinking plays an important role in the theology and philosophy ofthis Jesuit author. Moreover, the terminology of modern philosophy coexists with the terminology of classical and especially Tomisticthought. This article is interested in the elements that Lonergan takes from the modern philosophy and emphasizes the centrality ofHusserlian phenomenology among the other modern authors used by Lonergan. Following the research of the Jesuit thinker, I speakabout two parallel realities coexisting in his Trinitarian theology. Lonergan tries to realize their synthesis, but at the same time healso recognizes their distinctiveness. The most relevant result of this coexistence is obtained through the replacement of the metaphysical differentiation between the level of substance and the level of the three Persons, so that, instead of having the elements of classical theology, Lonergan predicates at the same time that God subsists as well as the Trinitarian Persons subsist. Through this assertion he emphasizes the identity between God’s existence and the existence of the three divine Persons, and eliminates the classical differentiation that might be closer to the danger of subordinating the three Persons to the one God.
4. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Drew M. Dalton Otherwise than Nothing: Heidegger, Levinas, and the Phenomenology of Evil
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Central to Emmanuel Levinas’s critique of Martin Heidegger is his assessment that Heidegger’s phenomenology delimits the possibility of dealing with ethical questions in any sincere way. According to Levinas, Heidegger ontologizes these questions, reducing them to mere means to a deeper understanding of Being. Levinas, by contrast, attempts to forge a phenomenology which can providea metaphysical account of ethics which goes beyond being. In this paper we will explore the nature and validity of Levinas’s critiqueof Heidegger by comparing his approach to the question of evil to Heidegger’s as presented in his 1936 lecture course on Schelling’sFreiheitschrif.
5. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Teed Rockwell No Gaps, No God?: On the Differences between Scientific and Metaphysical Claims
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Darwinian atheists ridicule the “God of the Gaps” argument, claiming that it is theology and/or metaphysics masquerading as science.This is true as far as it goes, but Darwinian atheism relies on an argument which is equally metaphysical, which I call the “No Gaps,No God” argument. This atheist argument is metaphysical because it relies on a kind of conceptual necessity, rather than scientificobservations or experiments. “No Gaps No God” is a much better metaphysical argument than “God of the Gaps,” because the latteris based on a clearly false conditional inference. However, there are also good, but not decisive, arguments against the “No Gaps NoGod” argument. Because metaphysical arguments never resolve as decisively as scientific research questions, there will probablyalways be a legitimate controversy at the metaphysical level on this topic, even though there is no serious controversy about Darwinianscience itself. If this fact were more widely acknowledged, it could help to defuse the controversy over teaching Darwin in the public schools.
6. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Stacey Ake Does God Exist or Does He Come to Be?
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The following is an examination of two possible interpretations of the meaning of the “existence” of God. By using two different Danishterms—the word existence (Existents) and the concept “coming to be” (Tilværelse)—found in Kierkegaard’s writing, I hope to show that two very different theological outcomes arise depending upon which idea or term is used. Moreover, I posit which of these twooutcomes is closer in nature to the more famously used German term Dasein.
7. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Adam Wood Faith and Reason: The Condemnations of 1277 and the Regensburg Address
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
I compare two historical moments: Bishop Stephen Tempier’s 1277 condemnation of 219 “errors” in circulation at the University ofParis, and Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Address. Both the condemnation and the address, I argue, were intended to defendparticular views of the relationship between faith and reason against forms of relativism and rationalism prevalent in their own day. Reflecting on the mixed success of Tempier’s condemnation’s in this enterprise can help to make clear some of the difficultiesinherent in Benedict’s.
8. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Adriaan Peperzak How Natural Is Reason?
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Is human reason natural? After the crisis of the modern idea that genuine philosophy is based on rational autonomy, the context forthis question has drastically changed. If a philosopher who is also a self-conscious and reflective Christian, tries to reformulate thequestion of reason’s independence, what can he or she learn from a close reading of Rom 1:18–23?
9. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
Robert Wood Living with the Mystery
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Philosophy develops the direction towards the Whole opened up by the Notion of Being that makes the mind to be a mind. It isgrounded in awe that can increase as inquiry continues, though it tends to fall back into the routines of its exercise, like every otherhuman activity. In a time when it is common to think of ourselves as just another combination of elements in the evolutionary universe,reflection upon our own awareness turns the tables on materialists by re-minding the earliest phases called “mere matter” and setting the cosmos back into the encompassing realm of absolute Mystery.
10. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1/2
James B. South Editor’s Page
view |  rights & permissions | cited by