Philosophy of Religion for a New Century represents the work of nineteen scholars presented at a conference in honor of Eugene T. Long at the University of South Carolina, April 5-6, 2002.
This volume is a good example of philosophy in dialogue; there is both respect and genuine disagreement. First, an account of our present situation in the Philosophy of Religion is given, leading to a discussion of the very idea of a 'Christian Philosophy' and the coherence of the traditional concept of God. The implications of science and a concern for the environment in our concepts of God are carefully examined. A discussion follows on the possibility of speech about God and silence about God. Since much of modern European philosophy is concerned with the Death of God' theme, the positions of Nietzsche and some of his twentieth-century interpreters are presented. There are presentations on Feminist Approaches to Philosophy of Religion, and Comparative Religion is examined in relation to cultures and the demands of rationality. The volume concludes with a critical dialogue on the relation of Religious Discourse to the Public Sphere.
Developing global awareness has led to significant change in the Philosophy of Religion. One-dimensional approaches have given way to honest dialogue. The traditional boundaries between the secular and the religious have shifted, and new approaches to traditional problems are required. This volume presents examples of these new approaches.

Hegel is a thinker who haunts modern Christian theology. Although forever being refuted and rejected, he is also forever resurgent as an influence. Here Andrew Shanks diagnoses that rejection, very largely, as a defensive reaction against the sheer, troubling, prophetic open-mindedness of his thought. No doubt there is some justice to the charge that Hegel is religiously one-sided; in particular, as this criticism has been developed by Kierkegaard and, more recently, William Desmond. Against Desmond, however, Shanks argues that the critique itself is no less one-sided. The argument focuses especially on the dialectic of the Unhappy Consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, seeking to open up its relationship to recent developments in neuropsychology. Key Hegelian terms are also retranslated, in a bid to minimise the off-putting awkwardness of Hegel's jargon. What is at issue here is, surely, the most explosive element in Hegel's thought as a whole. And this is discussed not just as an item of intellectual history, but, rather, very much as a still-living option.

Holiness and Ministry: A Biblical Theological of Ordination is a response to the call of the World Council of Churches for renewed theological reflection on the biblical roots of ordination to strengthen the vocational identity of the ordained and to provide a framework for ecumenical dialogue. The volume is grounded in the assumption that the vocation of ordination requires an understanding of holiness and how it functions in human religious experience. The goal is to construct a biblical theology of ordination, which is embedded in broad reflection on the nature of holiness. The study of holiness and ministry interweaves three methodologies. First, the History of Religions describes two theories of holiness in the study of religion, as a dynamic force and as a ritual resource, which play a central role in biblical literature and establish the paradigm of ordination to Word and Sacrament in Christian tradition. Second, the study of the Moses in the Pentateuch and the formation of the Mosaic Office illustrate the ways in which the two views of holiness model ordination to the prophetic word and to the priestly ritual. And, third, Canonical Criticism provides the lens to explore the ongoing influence of the Mosaic Office in the New Testament literature. Holiness and Ministry is a resource for candidates of ordination to discern their call-experience and to establish professional identity within individual traditions of Christianity, while also providing a resource for ecumenical dialogue on the nature and purpose of Christian ordination.

This volume provides the first comprehensive treatment of the central topics in the contemporary philosophy of religion from a Thomist point of view. It focuses on central themes, including religious knowledge, language, science, evil, morality, human nature, God and religious diversity. It should prove valuable to students and faculty in philosophy of religion and theology, who are looking for an introduction to the Thomist tradition.

This book is a concept-by-concept analysis of the thought of Mircea Eliade and a re-evaluation of his analysis of religion. It illustrates how a thorough familiarity with Eliade's work can produce an interpretation of his thought as systematic, coherent, and fully rational.

"Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason" examines Coleridge's understanding of the Pantheism Controversy - the crisis of reason in German philosophy - and reveals the context informing Coleridge's understanding of German thinkers. It challenges previous accounts of Coleridge's philosophical engagements, forcing a reconsideration of his reading of figures such as Schelling, Jacobi and Spinoza. This exciting new study establishes the central importance of the contested status of reason for Coleridge's poetry, accounts of the imagination and later religious thought.

Should technology be used to improve human faculties such as cognition and longevity? This thought-provoking dialogue between "transhumanism" and religion examines enhancement technologies that could radically alter the human species. "Transhumanism" or "human enhancement" is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates the use of emerging technologies to change human traits. Although they may sound like science fiction, the possibilities suggested by transhumanism are very real, and the questions they raise have no easy answers. If these enhancements-especially major ones like the indefinite extension of healthy human life-become widely available, they would arguably have a more radical impact on humankind than any other development in history. This book comprises essays that explore transhumanism and the issues that surround it, addressing numerous fascinating questions posed by scholars of religion from various traditions. How will "immortality" or extreme longevity change our religious beliefs and practices? How might pharmaceuticals enhance spiritual experiences? Will "post-human" technologies be available to all persons, or will a superior "post-human race" arise to dominate the human species? The discussions are as intriguing as the future they suggest. Introduces some of the hardest and most pressing issues that will determine the future of the human race Examines current scholarly questions and thoughts about transhumanism Asks new questions relative to the intersection of human enhancement and religion Explores what it means to be human in a technologically changing world

Liberalism in religion grew strong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, then collapsed. Why, when so many people hunger for religious expression unhampered by traditionalism? Duncan Howlett argues that a fatal flaw at the heart of the movement undercut its progress. The Liberals were unwilling or unable to hold to their own central principle: the need to maintain a free and open mind, heart, and spirit in religion.In the end, Liberalism always fell back on its understanding of the basic traditions and dogmas of the organised religions. Alert minds drawn to Liberalism by the prospect of complete freedom of thought in religion felt betrayed, and many abandoned the movement. Howlett summons us to a new and self-consistent Liberalism, one that tests to the uttermost the validity of every belief we hold. True Liberalism means a continuing quest for ever broader and deeper concepts of truth. It means allowing no exceptions to the standards of inquiry that religious Liberals inherited from the Enlightenment and from science.

Since its development as a field over the last part of the twentieth century, scholars in science and religion have been heavily concerned with methodological issues. Following the lead of Thomas Kuhn, many scholars in this interdisciplinary field have offered proposals that purport to show how theology and science are compatible by appropriating theories of scientific methodology or rationality. Arguing against this strategy, this book shows why much of this methodological work is at odds with recent developments in the history and philosophy of science and should be reconsidered. Firstly, three influential methodological proposals are critiqued: Lakatosian research programs, Alister McGrath's "Scientific Theology" and the Postfoundationalist project of Wentzel van Huyssteen. Each of these approaches is shown to have a common failing: the idea that science has an essential nature, with features that unite "scientific" or even "rational" inquiry across time or disciplines. After outlining the issues this failing could have on the viability of the field, the book concludes by arguing that there are several ways scholarship in science and religion can move forward, even if the terms "science" and "religion" do not refer to something universally valid or philosophically useful. This is a bold study of the methodology of science and religion that pushes both subjects to consider the other more carefully. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies, theology and the philosophy of science.

Heidegger has often been considered as the proponent of the end of metaphysics in the post-Hegelian philosophy, due to his persistent attempts to overcome the onto-theological framework of traditional metaphysics. Yet, this dismissal of metaphysical, theological, and religious motives is deeply ambiguous since new forms of metaphysical and religious experience re-emerge in his philosophical works. Heidegger shares this ambiguous relation to the notions of faith and religion with authors such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein whose works are also marked by a critique of metaphysics and by a characteristic rethinking of the role of faith and religion. In fact, all three still remain, among other things, reference points for contemporary philosophical debates relating to the phenomenon of religion and faith. Rethinking Faith explores how the phenomena of religion and faith are present in the works of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, and how these phenomena are brought into play in their discussion of the classical metaphysical motives they criticize.

Marking a major new reassessment of Camus' writing, this book investigates the nature and philosophical origins of Camus' thinking on "authenticity" and "the absurd" as these motions are expressed in "The Myth of Sisyphus" and "The Outsider", showing these books to be the product not only of a literary figure, but of a genuine philosopher as well. Moreover, the author provides a complete English-language translation of Camus' "Metaphysique Chretienne et Neoplatonisme" and underlines the importance of this study for the understanding of the early Camus. The book also contains analyses of the influence of St Augustine and Nietzsche on Camus.

B. W. Young describes and analyses the intellectual culture of the eighteenth-century Church of England, in particular relation to those developments traditionally described as constituting the Enlightenment. It challenges conventional perceptions of an intellectually moribund institution by contextualising the polemical and scholarly debates in which churchmen engaged. In particular, it delineates the vigorous clerical culture in which much eighteenth-century thought evolved. The book traces the creation of a self-consciously enlightened tradition within Anglicanism, which drew on Erasmianism, seventeenth-century eirenicism and the legacy of Locke. By emphasizing the variety of its intellectual life, the book challenges those notions of Enlightenment which advance predominantly political interpretations of this period. Thus, eighteenth-century critics of the Enlightenment, notably those who contributed to a burgeoning interest in mysticism, are equally integral to this study.

Theological concepts continue to maintain political concepts well after those theological concepts are no longer supported by belief. "Cities on the Plains" examines some of these concepts in the light of five different times and places. It is both a response to theological concerns in contemporary political theory and broadly accessible examination of familiar political issues touched by the divine--such as gay marriage, 911, or the French tradition of "laicite." Concerns of difference and the divine are pursued through broadly familiar texts (the Bible, and Gore Vidal), significant texts of political theory (Plato and Augustine), and less common texts (Averroes). Gods, or the intellectual territory they used to occupy, are treated as important features of the political; contesting with these gods can help us visit, defend, and desire, (to paraphrase Deleuze and Guatarri) new cities and new peoples.

"Natural Social Order, Moses, and Jesus" demonstrates that the most realistic and practical foundations for life are not those that people choose in order to try to create what they imagine to be a better world. The most realistic and practical foundations inhere in a world and order that people did not create, the natural world and its order.

Discover those foundations and a way of life based upon them. See from an objective, natural worldview, instead of from the more familiar perspectives of artificial worldviews which present subjective, biased, and misleading views of reality and practicality. Instead of focusing on idealistic or other worlds of human imagination and design, be inspired by the real world, the natural world and order that inspired Moses, Jesus, and the Bible.

Learn how much more realistic, practical, and beneficial life can be when it is oriented and adapted to God's creation and order, instead of to man-made worlds and orders which invariably conflict with God's creation. Learn how to live within the original context for life, as life was made to be, as part of the only world and order that gave birth to life and upon which all life depends.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a group of prominent Muslim theologians began to critically examine classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence and devised a new approach to Islamic theology. This new approach was nothing short of an outright rebellion against Islamic orthodoxy, displaying an astonishing compatibility with nineteenth century Enlightenment-era thought. In the 20th century this modernist movement declined, to be replaced by another cultural episode, characterized by the growing power of Islamic fundamentalism. This volume looks at these two very different approaches to Islam. The editors have selected the most prominent Islamic thinkers of modernist and fundamentalist viewpoints, diverse nationalities, and from both the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the 20th century. The writers discuss their own views with regard to such issues as philosophical and political perceptions of democracy, the state, the history of Islam, women’s rights, personal lifestyle, education, and the West.

This book offers the rare opportunity to assess, within a single volume, the leading schools of thought in the contemporary philosophy of religion. With contributions by well-known exponents of each school, the book is an ideal text for assessing the deep proximities and divisions which characterize contemporary philosophy of religion. The schools of thought represented include philosophical theism, Reformed epistemology, Wittgensteinianism, Postmodernism, Critical Theory, and Process Thought.

The early essays in this volume proceed on the assumption that a compatibility system can be fashioned that will not only bring religious knowledge claims into harmony with scientific claims but will also show there to be a fundamental similarity of method in religious and scientific thinking. They are not, however, unambiguously successful. Consequently Professor Wiebe sets out in the succeeding essays to seek an understanding of the religion/science relationship that does not assume they must be compatible. That examination, in the final analysis, reveals a fundamental contradiction in the compatibility system building programme which more than suggests that religious belief (knowledge) is beyond legitimation.