The prevailing interpretation of Augustine’s theory of divine illumination suggests that illumination provides the human mind with the content of our a priori concepts. While there is strong textual evidence to support this view, I contend it offers an incomplete picture of the work illumination does in Augustine’s epistemology. Based on an analysis of Augustine’s solution to the paradox of language acquisition in De magistro, I argue illumination also supplies the mind with the content of all our empirical concepts. In this text, Augustine calls our attention to the problem that learning the meaning of words by even the simplest of means—through direct acquaintance (i.e., by having an object pointed out to us and labeled with a name)—turns out to require a relatively sophisticated grasp of the word’s usage in the first place, one that depends on illumination to provide the content of all our universal concepts.

Since the time of Darwin the conception of evolution has developed beyond the boundaries of science to include philosophy and now theology in its scope. After noting the positive reception of the evolutionary idea by theologians even in Darwin’s time, the article traces its philosophical development from Hegel to the work of Karl Rahner. It then uses the philosophical anthropology developed by Rahner to reformulate the essentials of Christian faith (“Christology within an evolutionary view of the world”). in a way that is consonant with a scientific and secular world view. It is the author’s view that secularity—understood as in the recent work of Charles Taylor—is the result of an evolution in the sphere of culture and provides both a standard for truth in religion and a basis for dialogue between the religions of the world.

This paper examines the extent to which certain aspects of the philosophies of Emmanuel Lévinas and Jean-Luc Marion are directed toward the divine, especially in regard to how they employ religious imagery or even explicitly biblical metaphors, namely those of the face of the neighbor, the glory of the Infinite, the response of the witness, and the breaking or sharing of bread. This will show important parallels and connections between their respective works, but it will also highlight where they diverge from each other. In respect to all four symbols or (biblical) images, I suggest that while it is indeed one (or even the primary) goal of Marion’s work to open phenomenological discourse to enable talk about the divine, Lévinas is instead interested in emptying biblical language of its theological import for purely philosophical (or ethical) purposes.

In this paper I argue that Karl Rahner’s theological method, properly understood as a method of transcendental hermeneutics, overcomes the impasse in contemporary theology between foundationalist and nonfoundationalist methods. Though Rahner is indeed a metaphysical foundationalist, his method is nevertheless epistemologically nonfoundational. In short, Rahner’s understanding of the radical contingency of subjectivity disallows the possibility of reliance on certain and indubitable principles of knowledge. I contend that an understanding of the nonfoundational elements of Rahner’s method will point towards the continued relevance of his method for our present period.

This article reflects on the struggle for recognition, in particular on the question of how to avoid people becoming battle-weary. Where do people find the strength to continue this struggle without lapsing into violence? These are questions which we derive from one of Paul Ricoeur’s latest publications Course of Recognition. Ricoeur claims that the only way to avoid the struggle for recognition degenerating into violent conflicts, is to place it in a horizon of hope—the hope that the struggle does not have the final word on interpersonal relations. In this article we take up Ricoeurs suggestion and elaborate it successively from a broad religious perspective and a Christian-Biblical perspective. This also allows us to develop new anthropological insights concerning the Struggle for Recognition.

Plato held that the Agathon (Being itself in its font) is the source or ‘common cause’ both of being(s) and of our understanding, both of the world (cosmos) and of our intellectual grasp thereof, both of the world beyond us (objectivity) that yet includes us and of the world of our inner thoughts (subjectivity) that yet stretches out to embrace the entire universe. This divine presupposition, found ‘philosophically’ in Plato and ‘religiously’ in Augustine’s doctrine of divine illumination, is that God is the common cause of us and our world, for both are held within the same divine/cosmic embrace, by the same Spirit operating within us and beyond us. This leads us to a ‘hand-in-its-glove’ or ‘mind-in-its-world’ proportionate realism that avoids the epistemological defects of Kant’s transcendental realism and Bhaskar’s critical realism. Finally, we should regard knowing by acquaintance as paradigmatic, as the fundamental form of knowing in terms of which the other types are best approached and understood. There is, I suggest, an important sense in which ‘all knowing is knowing in the biblical sense.’

Arguments from the nineteenth century concerning whether Hegel was an atheist or a theist are still ongoing. This paper examines Hegel’s philosophical and theological milieu, his influence on the history of philosophy and on politics, his unique interpretation of the unity of theology and philosophy, and his unusually sanguine interpretation of the relationship between church and state, along with special problems he discerned in the emergence of democracies.

In this article, it is inquired which reasons are decisive for acting in accordance with divine commands, and whether these can be regarded as moral reasons; the emphasis lies on Christianity. To this effect, the position of God as a—basic—lawgiver is expounded, with special attention to the role His power plays. By means of an account of the grounds given (in the Bible) to obey God, the selfish motives in this respect are brought to light. It is questioned whether any other elements can be discerned, particularly from a meta-ethical perspective.

This paper explores two main arguments. The first argument is that religious persons—because they are religious persons—are likely to be more intolerant than non-religious persons. This argument is supported by decisive empirical evidence. The second argument is that there are meaningful, clear and unique theoretical links between religion, or, more precisely, certain types of religion, and intolerance. It is submitted that the special links between religion and intolerance are the result of seven characteristics of religion which are specified in the paper. Both arguments should encourage us to re-evaluate the proper place that religion should have in the legal and political sphere.

This article responds to Merold Westphal’s assertion that Paul Tillich suffers from “ontological xenophobia.” Westphal 1) subverts Tillich’s Augustinian/Thomistic typology into a Neoplatonist/Augustinian one and 2) critiques Tillich via Levinasian alterity. In response I show that 1) Westphal has misunderstood Tillich’s notion of Augustinianism insofar as he minimizes the role of estrangement in this viewpoint and that 2) Tillich’s notion of personhood and responsibility are anything but incompatible with Levinasian Ethics as First Philosophy. Tillich’s endorsement of theonomy in contradistinction to autonomy and heteronomy overcomes both the arbitrariness of pure autonomy and the tyranny of pure heteronomy.

The primary goal of this essay is to demonstrate that Leibniz’s objections to theological voluntarism are tightly connected to his overarching metaphysical system; a secondary goal is to show that his objections are not without some merit. Leibniz, it is argued, holds to strong versions of the imago dei doctrine, i.e., creatures are made in the image of God, and imitatio dei doctrine, i.e., creatures ought to imitate God. Consequently, God and creatures must possess similar structures of moral psychology, and must be motivated in similar ways. Yet, Leibniz argues, a thoroughgoing voluntarism would obstruct both doctrines in philosophically unsettling ways, impeding the possibility for creatures to genuinely imitate God.

Karl Rahner believed that orthodox Christology is too often perceived as mythology, irrelevant to the lives of contemporary Christians. As a result, he felt, the role of conversion as the gateway to an authentically Christian morality has been neglected. Influenced by existentialist philosophy and life-stage theories that were popular during his lifetime, Rahner established a basis for a new ethical system that would integrate psychological theory and techniques into his theological existentialism in order to provide a cohesive structure within which individuals can be guided towards conversion. It is the purpose of this article to suggest a theoretical framework for Rahner’s proposed “Existential Ethics” and to make some suggestions for its concretization.

While theories about interpreting biblical and other parables have long realised the importance of readers’ responses to the topic, recent results in social psychology concerning systematic self-deception raise unforeseen problems. In this paper I first set out some of the problems these results pose for the authority of fictional thought-experiments in moral philosophy. I then consider the suggestion that biblical parables face the same problems and as a result cannot work as devices for moral or religious instruction in the way that they are usually understood to work. I examine a number of influential theories about interpretation of the parables which might appear to deflect the problems, and argue that none of them are ultimately successful in doing so.

This essay tries to demonstrate two distinct but complementary visions to a central theme of Christian faith: humanity’s redemption in the crucified Christ. It will attempt to show how the poetics of Simone Weil (1909–1943) and the poetic art of Georges Rouault (1871–1943) embody different understandings of Christian faith. Considering faith from a philosophical approach, Weil detaches the sufferings of Christ from the totality of salvific history. Viewing faith from the artistic approach, Rouault places the crucified Christ in the context of the history of salvation, including Mary and the Church. Though different from one another, these two visions reveal to us a light in the midst of our dark or suffering existence that makes audible or perceptible the silence of God’s love in Christ that is its source.

“Narrativity and the Symbolic Vacuum” examines the descriptive and the prescriptive narrativity claim in the context of a claim that there are narratives in the biblical literature that resist both. The descriptive narrativity claim maintains that it is not an option for a person to conceive of their life without narrative coherence. The prescriptive claim holds that narrativity is a necessary condition for a good and successful human life. Phenomenological thought and Aristotelian virtue ethics, expressing a critical stance towards modernity (modernity with its desire for objective, narrative-free criteria for truth), encourage narrativity claims. Biblical theology, despite its pervasive use of narrative strategies, offers a space in which narrativity claims are relativized. It is especially in confrontation with death where human life cannot be narratively managed. That is why it is in particular the cross in the New Testament which defies both descriptive and prescriptive narrativity claims.

This essay develops a Rahnerian view of kairos and proposes its contemporary utility in addressing the multiple prophetic calls to action in our media-saturated environment. In Rahner’s theology, kairos is the time of grace and opportunity, inaugurated by the event of Jesus Christ, in which each human person must accept or reject God’s loving self-communication. Because the chronos of daily life takes place within the kairos of Jesus Christ, there is kairos in every moment of chronos. Thus, the typical depiction of chronos and kairos is inverted. Instead of occasional moments of kairos interrupting the ongoing stream of chronos, Rahner portrays chronos as set within the larger reality of kairos. Our chronos takes place within the kairos of Jesus Christ. Such a view does not mitigate or prioritize the many prophetic calls contemporary Christians receive. It can, however, place them in appropriate theological context of the history of God that succeeds. Kairos is a reality created by God’s salvific activity and an opportunity to participate in the salvific love of God.

Although philosophers have long agreed that Anselm’s PROSLOGION contains what is often called the ontological argument (but not by Anselm himself), they do not agree about just what that argument is. In this paper, I do two things: (1) I set out a careful, precise statement of the argument in the PROSLOGION, taking due account of the historical, personal, philosophical, and theological contexts of Anselm’s thought. (2) Having disembarrassed the argument of some common misunderstandings and placed it in its proper setting, I argue that it is more complicated and much stronger than all but a very few philosophers have realized.

This article discusses the definitions of faith of three twentieth-century Jewish-Christian mystic philosophers: Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Gillian Rose. Weil’s “attente de Dieu” (waiting for God), Arendt’s “natality,” and Rose’s immanence each reflect an attention to the world in understanding the workings of faith. In this context, faith and hope are not cheap optimisms or escapisms into the transcendent, but a patient reckoning with the pains of the world and human relationships.