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Displaying: 1-20 of 21 documents


1. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Jonathan S. Marko Justification, Ecumenism, and Heretical Red Herrings in John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity
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This essay argues that Locke’s presentation of justification and the soteriological framework in which it is placed in The Reasonableness of Christianity is broad enough to encompass all “Christian” views on the topics except antinomian ones. In other words, the focus of the treatise is not Locke’s personal views of justification and the broader doctrine of salvation but an ecumenical statement of them. Locke’s personal conclusions on certain theological issues discussed in the opening pages of The Reasonableness of Christianity has led most to assume that the soteriological discussion that follows reveals Locke’s own personal theological position despite clear indications of his ecumenical intent in The Reasonableness of Christianity and elsewhere.
2. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Thomas F. O'Meara Martin Heidegger’s Remarks following the First Mass of a Newly Ordained Priest
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The nephew of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church for the Archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Heinrich Heidegger, born in 1928, was the son of Fritz Heidegger (1894-1980), the younger brother of the philosopher. Soon after the ordination of a Roman Catholic to the priesthood he celebrates his First Mass, and after that special Eucharist there follows a dinner and reception enhancing the day. The following pages give a translation of the remarks made in 1954 by Martin Heidegger at the dinner after the First Mass of his nephew Heinrich. There are then some reflections on themes from this brief discourse relating to Heidegger’s thinking, motifs like the disclosure of Being, the centrality of individual existence, and the pervasiveness of history. In 2002, Fr. Heinrich Heidegger responded to an inquiry about the priest’s close relationship to his uncle, and that essay gives a further context for information on Heidegger and faith and church.
3. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Duane Armitage Heidegger's God: Against Caputo, Kearney, and Marion
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This essay argues that Heidegger’s theological thinking, best expressed by his “last god” from his 1930s Contributions to Philosophy, is a radicalization of his early Pauline phenomenology from the 1920s. I claim that Heidegger’s theological thinking, including his onto-theological critique, is in no way incompatible with Christian philosophy, but in fact furthers the Christian philosophical endeavor. The tenability of this thesis rests on disputing three critiques of Heidegger’s theology put forth by John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, and Jean-Luc Marion, all of whom argue that Heidegger and Christianity are incompatible.
4. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Richard Fafara Étienne Gilson in Charlottesville
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Gilson became familiar with American academic life and language during the summer of 1926 when he first visited the United States and taught two summer courses at the University of Virginia. His international renown as well as his popularity at the University of Virginia resulted in a second visit in 1937 to present the Richard Lectures on Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, which focused on the challenging theme of attempting to bring faith and knowledge into an organic unity. His dissection of three main philosophical traditions in the Middle Ages constituted an important step in Gilson reaching a satisfactory understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology within the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
5. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
James R. Pambrun Interiority, Cognitional Operations, and Aesthetic Judgment: In Dialogue with John Dadosky and Mikel Dufrenne
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This article proposes to elaborate aesthetic judgment. The context is John Dadosky’s call for such an elaboration in light of the theological and philosophical import of a recovery of beauty. Following Dadosky’s suggestion that this be set within Lonergan’s appeal to interiority, the article signals two points in Dadosky’s program: patterns of experience and the role of cognitional operations. The article turns to Mikel Dufrenne’s work on the phenomenology of aesthetic experience. Based on this work, data is presented on behalf of configuring a pattern of cognitional operations that is specific to aesthetic experience and that exemplifies Lonergan’s general empirical pattern of cognitional operations: experience, understanding, judgment.
6. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
James B. South Editor's Page
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rahner papers
7. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Richard Shields Karl Rahner's Theological Project: A Response to R. R. Reno
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This article responds to the article by R. R. Reno that appeared in the May 2013 issue of the journal First Things. In that article, Reno calls Rahner a restorationist, an integralist, and the “ultimate establishment theologian,” who reassured but failed to challenge the mind-set of the Church before Vatican II. Reno also claims that Rahner had a negative impact on the Church, blaming him for the many deficiencies Reno sees in contextual, feminist, liberation, and revisionist moral theology. The first part of this current article looks at the term intégrisme, and rebuts Reno’s suggestion that Rahner is an integralist. The second section explores Reno’s charge that “Rahner’s time has passed.” The third part examines the ecclesiologies of Reno and Rahner, highlighting the differences between the two and the implications for theology. The article concludes with a brief discussion of Rahner’s contribution to theology in his own right.
8. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Nancy Dallavalle Gender Issues in the Light of Rahner's Theological Perspective
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Rahner’s work offers several starting points for Catholic theology’s necessary conversion on gender issues. His theology of the symbol sets the stage for an analysis of how “woman” functions in theological anthropology, and for a discussion of how “male” and “female” should be understood in the light of the critique of feminist thought. In short, how do we understand symbols, theologically, as expressive? Linking Rahner’s day and ours, I will then consider how Marian themes were treated by Lumen Gentium and Sacrosanctum Concilium, and how ecclesial questions since then further illustrate the ongoing struggle over the symbol “woman.” Finally, Rahner’s approach to conversion will be employed, as a way of illustrating the intimacy and ubiquity of sexism, given his sense that conversion engages not only isolated actions, but “the whole human being.”
9. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Mark F. Fischer Karl Rahner's Transcendental Christology
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Karl Rahner’s transcendental Christology examined the conditions for the possibility of faith in Christ and presented human nature as developing in response to God’s grace. This article affirms Rahner despite the critiques of Michel Henry, Roger Haight, John McDermott, Patrick Burke, and Donald Gelpi. Rahner’s Christology is not a phenomenology (Henry) but a theology that affirms God’s presence in history. To be sure, some critics have attacked Rahner for emphasizing God’s initiative and diminishing human responsibility (Haight) and for uncritically accepting Greek metaphysics (Gelpi). Yet Rahner rightly depicted Christ as a sacrament of the Father’s will, an event in history with consequences for all time. Other critics have accused him of obscuring the distinction between God and humanity (McDermott) and suggesting that there are two conscious subjects in Christ (Burke). This article accepts Rahner’s view of Jesus as both the presence of God’s Word and the human response to it.
10. Philosophy and Theology: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Richard Penaskovic Rahner Papers Editor's Page
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11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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).
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.