Bøker i Religion in Philosophy and Theology-serien

Karl Barth's rigorous and singular focus on God's reconciling and revealing activity in Jesus Christ yields a profoundly compelling ontological vision. In this study, Tyler J. Frick explores Barth's understanding of God's being and particularly Barth's contention in Church Dogmatics II/1 that God is essentially gracious in God's original and proper triune life. The author argues that Barth's doctrine of election expounded in Church Dogmatics II/2 provides Barth with the sufficient conceptual framework to ensure that there is no bifurcation between what God does in the economy of grace and who and what God is as triune. This analysis demonstrates the Trinitarian consequences present in Barth's later volumes, which arise from Barth's insistence that the doctrine of election is the eternal decision in which God graciously elects Godself to become humanity's God in the covenant-fulfilling existence of Jesus Christ.

Was ist das Gute? Was bedeutet es, dass eine Handlung moralisch geboten ist? Anders als die normative Ethik fragt die Metaethik nicht danach, welche Handlungen konkret gut oder geboten sind, sondern danach, was mit diesen Ausdrücken überhaupt gemeint ist. Wie es ihrer Herkunft aus der analytischen Philosophie entspricht, ist sie damit wesentlich sprachanalytisch ausgerichtet. Hendrik Klinge diskutiert verschiedene Ansätze der Metaethik von theologischer Warte aus und bezieht ausführlich Entwürfe einer dezidiert religiös ausgerichteten Metaethik ein. Ein Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf dem Werk des amerikanischen Religionsphilosophen Robert Adams. Durchgehende Frage der Studie ist, wie eine theologische Metaethik mit dem Phänomen des religiösen Pluralismus umgehen sollte: Reden Gläubiger und Nicht-Gläubiger über dasselbe, wenn sie vom Guten und Gebotenen sprechen? Abschließend präsentiert Klinge selbst einen Vorschlag für eine theologische Metaethik im Zeitalter des Pluralismus und deutet an, wie diese konkretisiert werden könnte.

Die Frage nach der Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von Glaube und Wissen gehört noch immer zu den zentralen Fragen der Theologie und Religionsphilosophie. Auf diese Frage gibt Martin Schmuck eine Antwort, indem er die auf Erfahrung, common sense und Pragmatismus aufbauende Religionsphilosophie von Charles Sanders Peirce im Sinne einer strengen Komplementarität des religiösen und (natur-)wissenschaftlichen Zugangs zur einen Wirklichkeit entfaltet. Aus der Kritik an Peirces indeterministischer Metaphysik entwickelt er die Alternative einer naturalistischen Ontologie auf dem Stand der aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Diskussion um Dispositionen und Naturgesetze, die wichtige Aspekte der Philosophie Peirces - insbesondere den objektiven Idealismus, die Modalontologie und die Kontinuumsphilosophie - in neuer Weise zur Geltung bringt. 'Religion of Science' und Ontologie werden anschließend für das Projekt einer modernen Theologie des christlichen Glaubens fruchtbar gemacht, welche die christlichen Glaubensaussagen konsequent naturalistisch interpretiert.

This volume brings together both young and mature philosophers from the analytic and process traditions to dialogue on central questions in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and philosophy of language. The papers not only fill a massive gap in the intersections of interest between analytic and process scholars of religion but also demonstrate beyond any doubt that two traditions of process and analysis are integral to current philosophical movements and debates. The main questions discussed here include the nature of 'good' metaphysics, the application of modal discourse to the understanding of God's reality, God's epistemic nature, and the grammar of 'the world'.With contributions by:Vincent Colapietro, Daniel A. Dombrowski, Roland Faber, Patrick N. Horn, James A. Keller, George R. Lucas, Jr., D. Z. Phillips, Randy Ramal, Jay W. Richards, Peter Simons, Charles Taliaferro, Donald W. Viney

Josiah Royce was undoubtedly one of the most interesting thinkers of classical American philosophy in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. His works cover a wide range of subjects from psychology and issues of social philosophy to metaphysics. Surrounded by philosophers such as William James or Charles Sanders Peirce, Royce developed a concept of pragmatism which he himself called "absolute pragmatism" and which was centred around a theory of community. The essays in this edited volume deal with this pragmatistic approach in his work and discuss it from various points of view. Among other things, they explore Royce's relationship to German idealism, the foundation of his ethics as well as his philosophical doctrine of God and his philosophy of religion. This results in rather divergent assessments of his philosophy, each of which is evidence of the enduring relevance of his thinking for the world of today.

A renewed focus on the role of interpersonal relationships in the cultivation of religious sensibilities is emerging in the study of religion. Matthew Ryan Robinson addresses this question in his study of Friedrich Schleiermacher's notion of "free sociability". In Schleiermacher's ethics, the human person is formed in and consists of intimate, tightly interconnecting relationships with others. Schleiermacher describes this sociability as a natural tendency prompted by experiences of physical and existential limitation that lead one to look to others to complete one's experience. But this experience of incompleteness and orientation to "the completion of humanity" also constitute the fundamental structure of religion in Schleiermacher's theory of religion as orientation to "the universe and the relationship of humanity to it." Thus, Schleiermacher not only presents sociability as basic to human nature, but also as inherently religious - and, potentially, redemptive. What making such a claim means and the implications it raises are central considerations of this study of Schleiermacher's ethics, theory of religion and ecclesiology.

This volume explores existential questions within the following three thematic fields: first, experiences of anxiety and despair as related to the question of what these phenomena show about freedom and its difficulties; second, hermeneutical theories as related to the question of how we can develop an existential hermeneutics that can account for the ambiguities of self-understanding between transparency and opacity, and, third, selfhood between self-understanding and self-alienation as a focal point of existential psycho(patho)logy. What can disturbances to or breakdowns in self-understanding teach us about personhood? Making visible one¿s own blindness by articulating the shadows of our knowledge and abilities is at the core of a negativistic approach to existential questions discussed in a dialogue between philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, theology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry.

Religious, philosophical, and theological views on the self vary widely. For some the self is seen as the center of human personhood, the ultimate bearer of personal identity and the core mystery of human existence. For others the self is a grammatical error and the sense of self an existential and epistemic delusion. In Western psychology, philosophy, and theology, the term 'self' is often used as a noun that refers not to the performance of an activity or to a material body per se but rather to a (gendered) organism that represents the presence of something distinct from its materiality. This volume documents a critical and constructive debate between critics and defenders of the self or of the no-self that explores the intercultural dimensions of this important topic. Contributors:Fidel Arnecillo, Jr., Yuval Avnur, Marlene Block, Sinkwan Cheng, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Iben Damgaard, Duncan Gale, Jonardon Ganeri, Stephanie Gehring, W. Ezekiel Goggin, Leah Kalmanson, Trevor Kimball, Kate Kirkpatrick, Gereon Kopf, Dietrich Korsch, Deena Lin, Alexander McKinley, Eleonora Mingarelli, Joseph S. O'Leary, Robert Overy-Brown, Raymond Perrier, Joseph Prabhu, Friederike Rass, Marcelo Souza

Asle Eikrem strives to develop a systematic philosophical understanding of the constitutive structures of religious discourses. Different philosophical traditions (phenomenology, hermeneutics, pragmatics, metaphysics or analytical philosophical thinking) have articulated these structures in their own distinctive ways. The author aims to show how insights from partly conflicting traditions can be coherently reconstructed within the framework of a comprehensive philosophical presentation. The central thesis guiding his work is inspired by the deep-metaphysics of German philosopher Lorenz B. Puntel, and states that the relation between the pragmatic, semantic and ontological structures of religious discourses must be understood as internally necessary. They cannot be thought independently from each other. The pragmatic and semantic structures of religious discourses must be understood as substructures in a comprehensive ontological dimension (Being) that is characterized as practicable and expressible.

Hope is a fundamental but controversial human phenomenon. For some it is Pandora's most mischievous evil, for others it is a divine gift and one of the highest human virtues. It is difficult to pin down but its traces seem to be present everywhere in human life and practice. Christianity as a comprehensive practice of hope cannot be imagined without it: Christians are not believers in dogmas but practitioners of hope. In other religious traditions the topic of hope is virtually absent or even critically rejected and opposed. Half a century ago hope was at the center of attention in philosophy and theology. However, in recent years the discussion has shifted to positive psychology and psychotherapy, utopian studies and cultural anthropology, politics and economics. This has opened up interesting new vistas. Contributors: William J. Abraham, Daniel Ambord, Nancy Bedford, Michael Ulrich Braunschweig, Aaron D. Cobb, John Cottingham, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Yaniv Feller, M. Jamie Ferreira, Duncan Gale, Kirsten Gerdes, Deidre Green, Arne Grøn, Michael Lamb, Richard Livingston, Yi Shen Ma, Alan Mittleman, Hirokazu Miyazaki, Jürgen Moltmann, Bruce Paolozzi, Raymond E. Perrier, Friederike Rass, Hartmut von Sass. Bernard N. Schumacher, Ola Sigurdson, Tyler Viale, Claudia Welz

Revelation is a central category in many religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism or Unificationists are difficult if not impossible to imagine without it. For some, revelation signifies a decisive event in the past, for others it is a present reality. It plays a central role in shaping religious identities, and it is the reason for much criticism. Some follow a religion only because of its claim to divine revelation, whereas others criticize it as "hearsay upon hearsay" (Paine) on which they would never rest their belief. Some religions have built elaborate institutions of priests and privileged interpreters to safeguard their revelation, control access to it and to protect the right way of interpreting and communicating it. But claims to revelation have also been criticized as strategies of self-immunization, which allow religions to avoid critical public debate of their views and teachings, or legitimize the position of those in power. The 33rd Conference of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in 2012 addressed these complex issues by concentrating on three areas of debate: I. Revelation and Reason, II. Hermeneutics of Revelation, III. Phenomenology of Revelation. Contributors:William J. Abraham, Marlene Block, John D. Caputo, Thomas Carlson, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Stephen T. Davis, Oona Eisenstadt, James L. Fredericks, Kirsten Gerdes, Eric E. Hall, Joshua Kira, Jeff Murico, Bruce Paolozzi, George Pattison, Michael Ch. Rodgers, Claudia Welz

The termreligionis indispensable to the subject matter of both religious studies and theology. Many approaches attempt a reductive , essentialist, functionalist, or other type of unifying definition, but these approaches tend to rest on various, often controversial sets of presuppositions. Indeed, it seems impossible to overcome the vast plurality of understandings ofreligionas the academic fields that deal with religion splinter and proliferate, thereby inhibiting the rational treatment of a very important dimension of modern society. The present volume undertakes an intense interdisciplinary examination of a seminal modern text that religious scholars agree helped spawn religious studies and modern theology as we know it, namely Schleiermacher'sReden über die Religion, which lays out the most important and controversial themes under discussion by theologians and religious studies scholars: first, the significance of emotion for the understanding of religion; second, the role of imagination and religious utterances in religious belief; third, the importance of religion for the social world; and fourth, the political implications of religion. Mit Beiträgen von: Andreas Arndt,Thorsten Dietz,Andrew Dole,Thomas Erne,Volker Gerhardt,Wilhelm Gräb,Mathias Gutmann,Hans Joas,Jörg Lauster,Georg Northoff,Wayne Proudfoot,Thandeka,Theodore Vial

In spite of the plethora of Bonhoeffer studies there is a large lacuna regarding studies that have addressed Bonhoeffer's intellectual grounding in a thorough, comprehensive and methodical manner. Scholarly attention to this important subject matter has indeed been scarce. However, without an attempt to examine, trace, and weigh these influences in Bonhoeffer's theological formation it is hardly possible to gain a comprehensive and complete understanding of his thought. In the studies, the different authors seek to address the decisive questions and issues in this regard.As such, the essays collected in this volume have the one focal point and common scope in the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In each of the essays, the authors discuss one or two philosophers or theologians and demonstrate how specific ideas penetrated and shaped Bonhoeffer's intellectual formation. These various studies converge on the thought of Bonhoeffer as a whole in such a way as to illuminate the growth and maturation of his own intellect vis-à-vis the philosophical and theological ideas articulated in the thinkers discussed in the essays. Put differently, the objective of the essays is to open up the intellectual window of Bonhoeffer's thought, as it were, and thereby allow more light to fall on the structure, extension and formation of that thought.