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Displaying: 1-11 of 11 documents


1. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Jane Duran Christianity and Women's Education: Anna Maria van Schurman and Mary Astell
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A contrast is developed between the educational views of van Schurman and Astell, revolving around their sense of Christian piety and their stance on women’s place in the social and political sphere. The work of Irwin, Hill, and others is cited, and it is concluded that important differences between the views of the two thinkers can be delineated, and that doing so helps us to understand the intellectual and philosophical milieu of the seventeenth century. In addition, the debate sheds light on today’s gender-essentialism controversies in education, and the extent to which intellectual rationality is a general human virtue.
2. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Tadd Ruetenik Beauty, Horror, and Tragedy: The Idea of Hell in Jonathan Edwards and William James
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Among theologians and philosophers in the American tradition, the idea of Hell is understood best through the works of Jonathan Edwards and William James. Both Edwards and James understood the idea of Hell as part of a worldview in which humans were humbled by their fallible nature. There are important differences between the views of Edwards and James, however, and these differences involve how each of them apprehends the suffering of other people. Edwards remains aesthetically aloof regarding the suffering of others, while James remains tragically tied to such suffering.
3. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Hannah Venable Situating Melancholy in Kierkegaard's "The Concept of Anxiety"
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In this article, I draw on Kierkegaard’s often over-looked work, The Concept of Anxiety, to gain deeper insight into the tenor of melancholy. We discover that Kierkegaard labels anxiety, due to its connection to hereditary sin, as the source for melancholy. Thus, contrary to the usual interpretation of Kierkegaard, I argue that melancholy is more than an individual’s struggle with existence, but is intimately tied to the historical environment, because it is steeped in an ever-increasing, ever-deepening anxiety. This link be­tween anxiety and melancholy clears away misunderstandings about Kierkegaard’s description of melancholy and suggests implications in psychology, philosophy, and theology.
4. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
J. Caleb Clanton Josiah Royce on Job and the Problem of Evil
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This article reconstructs and evaluates Josiah Royce’s treatment of the problem of evil. I begin with an explanation of how Royce understands Job’s situation in the biblical account to be representative of the human predicament with respect to God and evil (§1). Next, I assess Royce’s account of three relatively familiar responses to the problem of evil he means to reject (§2), and then I provide an analysis of his own proposal for addressing the problem (§3). In the final section of the paper, I raise four objections to Royce’s idealist theodicy (§4).
5. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Mark Graves Gracing Neuroscientific Tendencies of the Embodied Soul
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Advances in scientific study of the brain now enable the examination of nature and grace in human rationality’s embodiment in the brain’s biological processing. I model the brain’s biology using the dispositional tendencies of nature—characterized by Jonathan Edwards, C. S. Peirce, and the Jesuit philosophical theologian Donald Gelpi—to examine gracing of the mind’s habit formation (habitus) in terms of memory, learning, and decision making. This turn to tendency suggests a shift from understanding soul as Aristotelian act to instead emphasizing the potentiality informing the body and clarifies a scientifically plausible Rahnerian interpretation of obediential potency.
6. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Stuart Jesson On the Ambiguity of Forgiveness
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This article highlights some of the difficulties that accompany any attempt to articulate an understanding of forgiveness that is at once coherent, just and desirable. Through a close examination of Charles Griswold’s book Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, I suggest that there are good reasons to think that forgiveness is intrinsically ambiguous, both conceptually and morally. I argue that there is an underlying tension between the concerns that shape the definition, and those that are invoked when affirming the good of forgiveness. Using Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, I then provide some commentary concerning this ambiguity and make some brief suggestions about how this ambiguity might be theologically fruitful.
7. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Ulrich Schmidt An Examination of C. Stephen Evans’s “Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments”
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In his excellent book Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments, C. Stephen Evans argues that what underlies the classical theistic arguments are theistic natural signs. The awareness of our own contingency underlies the cosmological argument, beneficial order underlies the teleological argument, our experience of feeling moral obligations underlies the moral argument, and the intrinsic value of human beings underlies the axiological argument. Natural signs point to an entity without forcing belief in this entity upon the perceiver. Therefore, natural signs can be interpreted in different ways. Understanding the classical theistic arguments as an expression of underlying theistic natural signs explains why the reactions to the arguments have been so different.
8. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Mark Glouberman On One Leg: The Stability of Monotheism
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A potential proselyte asks Hillel to explain the Torah “while I stand on one leg.” The Talmudic anecdote is always read as critical of those who want a Torah for Dummies. I offer an alternative. The Torah’s position rests on one principle alone, God. “Won’t an account of the creation that rests only on one principle teeter, like a person on one leg?” Hillel’s response homes in on what God does and what pagan deities cannot do. But God’s contribution, while needed to account for the human sector of the creation, cannot manage the extra-human sector. Required for that is a pagan principle. The whole can stand steadily only on two legs. So the proselyte’s conversion cannot be unreserved.
9. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Micah D. Tillman Genesis 1's Solution to the Euthyphro Problem
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Plato’s Euthyphro presents a puzzle about priority: is deity prior to morality, or vice versa? A Neoplatonic solution identifies God with the Good, claiming the dilemma to be illusory. If we treat the orders of being and power as distinct, however, the God of Genesis 1 may seem to be prior in one order, while goodness is prior in the other; the picture becomes complex, with the various senses of priority apparently balancing out. Without being either Neoplatonic or following other ancient theologies, therefore, Genesis 1 challenges Plato’s dichotomy, highlighting the potential for finding philosophical resources in theological texts.
10. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
Spencer Moffatt Sallie McFague and the Dawn of Metaphorical Theology
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Drawing upon the works of I. A. Richards, Max Black, and Paul Ricoeur, Sallie McFague’s metaphorical theology aims to recover the central role of metaphor within biblical narrative-parables. This paper claims that metaphorical theology is not just a constructive approach to religious discourse but is linguistically unavoidable. The scope of this paper is an in-depth review of Sallie McFague’s metaphorical theology while demonstrating its valuable contribution to the growing conversation regarding the limits and possibilities of religious discourse. Through expositions on narrative, parable, and metaphor, Sallie McFague challenges contemporary theology to move beyond self-imposed boundaries though the power of linguistic critique and embodied imagination.
11. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1
James South Editor's Page
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