The commonly held view that Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is fideistic loses plausibility when contrasted with recent scholarship on Wittgenstein's corpus and biography. This book reevaluates the place of Wittgenstein in the philosophy of religion and charts a path forward for the subfield by advancing three themes.

A collection of essays which explores the significance of Wittgenstein for the Philosophy of Religion. Explorations of central notions in Wittgenstein's later philosophy are brought to bear on the clash between belief and atheism; understanding religious experience; language and ritual; evil and theodicies; miracles; and the possibility of a Christian philosophy.

The articles in this volume are dedicated to Professor Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani for the breadth and depth of his interests and his influence on those interests. They attest to the fact that his fervor and rigorously surgical attention to detail have found fertile ground in a wide variety of disciplines, including (among others) Persian literature and philology; Islamic history and historiography; Arabic literature and philology; and Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence. The volume has brought together some of the most respected scholars in the fields of Islamic studies and Islamic literatures, all his prior students, to contribute with articles that touch on the fields Professor Mahdavi Damghani has so permanently touched with his astonishing scholarship and attention to detail.

The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.

Happiness is a paradoxical thing. In our heart of hearts we all want to be happy, but we do not talk much about it, lest we seem sentimental or too optimistic. But what would happiness be like if we could find it? The second section deals with happiness in three major world religious traditions. The third section deals with various issues regarding the meaning and even the uses of happiness.

This volume contains essays that examine infinity in early modern philosophy. The essays not only consider the ways that key figures viewed the concept. They also detail how these different beliefs about infinity influenced major philosophical systems throughout the era. These domains include mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, science, and theology. Coverage begins with an introduction that outlines the overall importance of infinity to early modern philosophy. It then moves from a general background of infinity (before early modern thought) up through Kant. Readers will learn about the place of infinity in the writings of key early modern thinkers. The contributors profile the work of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. Debates over infinity significantly influenced philosophical discussion regarding the human condition and the extent and limits of human knowledge. Questions about the infinity of space, for instance, helped lead to the introduction of a heliocentric solar system as well as the discovery of calculus. This volume offers readers an insightful look into all this and more. It provides a broad perspective that will help advance the present state of knowledge on this important but often overlooked topic.

This book explores religious epiphanies in which there is the appearance of God, a god or a goddess, or a manifestation of the divine or religious reality as received in human experience. Drawing upon the scriptures of various traditions, ancillary religious writings, psychological and anthropological studies, as well as reports of epiphanic experiences, the book presents and examines epiphanies as they have occurred across global religious traditions and cultures, historically and up to the present day. Primarily providing a study of the great range of epiphanies in their phenomenal presentation, Kellenberger also explores issues that arise for epiphanies, such as the matter of their veridicality (whether they are truly of or from the divine) and the question of whether all epiphanies are of the same religious reality.

This book examines how the beliefs and practices of each of the major world religions, as well as other belief systems, affect the variables that influence growth and development in the Global South. Evidence suggests that as countries develop, the influence of religion on all aspects of society declines. In stark contrast to the developed world, in the Global South, the role of religion is highly pervasive - the distinctive conclusion of this book is therefore that a lessening of religiosity is a sine qua non for growth and development, including secular laws and constitutions. Offering a ground-breaking study in an area little explored in the English language, this book will satisfy an important gap in the literature on the political economy of development, sociology of religion, law, and anthropology.

The film "The Passion of the Christ" raised anew the question why did Jesus suffer such an excruciatingly painful death. For centuries, those afflicted with suffering have been counseled by the church to unite their sufferings to those of Jesus. This book asks the question how the cross of Jesus can be reimagined in such a way as to offer a path of hope rather than resignation. Drawing upon resources as diverse as Simone Weil, William Lynch, Dorothee Soelle, Karl Rahner, and Jon Sobrino, as well as the author's personal experience of deep loss, the book explores the terrain of suffering, from the universal loss of loved ones to the imprisonment of mental illness and the global catastrophe of AIDS. The book also questions the extra burden of suffering put upon gay Catholics by the church's teaching of life-long celibacy for homosexuals.

Taking Hugh of St. Victor's magisterial 'On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith' as his source text, Dillard applies the methods of analytic philosophy to develop a systematic theology in the spirit of Christian Platonism. The themes examined include the existence of God, creation ex nihilo, modality and causality, divine immutability and eternity, divine exemplarity, sin, dualism, personhood, evil, ecclesiology, and resurrection, and beatitude.

Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning analyses the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on natural philosophy in a series of contexts within which they may best be explored and understood. Its aim is to place Edwards's writings on natural philosophy in the broad historical, theological and scientific context of a wide variety of religious responses to the rise of modern science in the early modern period - John Donne's reaction to the new astronomical philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, as well as to Francis Bacon's new natural philosophy; Blaise Pascal's response to Descartes' mechanical philosophy; the reactions to Newtonian science and finally Jonathan Edwards's response to the scientific culture and imagination of his time.

The first comprehensive and critical overview of Christian perspectives on the relationship between social justice and ecological integrity, this annotated bibliography focuses on works that include ecological issues, social-ethical values and problems, and explicitly theological or religious reflection on ecological and social ethics and their interrelations. This body of moral reflection on the relationship between ecological ethics and social and economic justice (sometimes called eco-justice) will be of interest to those involved in religious education, research, liturgical renewal, public policy recommendations, community action, lay witness, and personal life-style transformation. The work is comprised of an introductory review essay followed by over 500 complete annotations. As a contemporary subject, much has been written in the past 30 years about the Christian approaches to the relationship between ecological integrity and social justice. The literature comes from a variety of disciplines and perspectives: from biblical studies to philosophical theology and cultural criticism; and from evangelical theory to process, feminist, and creation-centered theologies. Although there have been significant movements and developments in this literature, much writing seems unaware of other or earlier discussions of the interrelationships. This volume brings all the works together.

The shadow of David Hume, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher, has loomed large against all efforts to prove the existence of God from evidence in the natural world. Indeed from Hume's day to ours, the vast majority of philosophical attacks against the rationality of theism have borne an unmistakable Humean aroma. The last forty years, however, have been marked by a resurgence in Christian theism among philosophers, and the time has come for a thorough reassessment of the case for natural theology. James F. Sennett and Douglas Groothuis have assembled a distinguished team of philosophers to engage the task: Terence Penelhum, Todd M. Furman, Keith Yandell, Garrett J. DeWeese, Joshua Rasmussen, James D. Madden, Robin Collins, Paul Copan, Victor Reppert, J. P. Moreland and R. Douglas Geivett. Together this team makes vigorous individual and cumulative arguments that set Hume's attacks in fresh perspective and that offer new insights into the value of teleological, cosmological and ontological arguments for God's existence.

Hud Hudson offers a fascinating examination of philosophical reasons to believe in hyperspace. He begins with some stage-setting discussions, offering his analysis of the term 'material object', noting his adherence to substantivalism, confessing his sympathies regarding principles of composition and decomposition, identifying his views on material simples, material gunk, and the persistence of material objects, and preparing the reader for later discussions with introductory remarks on eternalism, modality and recombination, vagueness, bruteness, and the epistemic role of intuitions. The subsequent chapters are loosely organized around the theme of hyperspace. Hudson explores nontheistic reasons to believe in hyperspace in chapter 1 (e.g. reasons arising from reflection on incongruent counterparts and fine-tuning arguments), theistic reasons in chapter 7 (e.g. reasons arising from reflection on theistic puzzles known as the problem of the best and the problem of evil), and some distinctively Christian reasons in chapter 8 (e.g. reasons arising from reflection on traditional Christian themes such as heaven and hell, the Garden of Eden, angels and demons, and new testament miracles). In the intervening chapters, Hudson inquires into a variety of puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects that are either generated by the hypothesis of hyperspace, focusing on the topics of mirror determinism and mirror incompatibilism, or else informed by the hypothesis of hyperspace, with discussions of receptacles, boundaries, contact, occupation, and superluminal motion. Anyone engaged with contemporary metaphysics will find much to stimulate them here.

The recovery of nature has been a unifying and enduring aim of the writings of Ralph McInerny, Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame, director of the Jacques Maritain Center, former director of the Medieval Institute, and author of numerous works in philosophy, literature, and journalism. While many of the fads that have plagued philosophy and theology during the last half-century have come and gone, recent developments suggest that McInerny's commitment to Aristotelian-Thomism was boldly, if quietly, prophetic. In his persistent, clear, and creative defenses of natural theology and natural law, McInerny has appealed to nature to establish a dialogue between theists and non-theists, to contribute to the moral and political renewal of American culture, and particularly to provide some of the philosophical foundations for Catholic theology.

This volume brings together essays by an impressive group of scholars, including William Wallace, O.P., Jude P. Dougherty, John Haldane, Thomas DeKoninck, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Solomon, Daniel McInerny, Janet E. Smith, Michael Novak, Stanley Hauerwas, Laura Garcia, Alvin Plantinga, Alfred J. Freddoso, and David B. Burrell, C.S.C.

Kierkegaard and the Refusal of Transcendence challenges the standard view that Kierkegaard's God is infinitely other than the world. It argues that his work immerses us in the paradoxical nature of existence itself, and opposes any flight into another world.

In the twentieth century, many contemporary epistemologists in the analytic tradition have entered into debate regarding the right to belief with new tools: Richard Swinburne, Anthony Kenny, Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Peter van Inwagen (who contributes a piece in this volume) defending or contesting the requirement of evidence for any justified belief. The best things we can do, it seems, is to examine more attentively the true notion of "right to believe", especially about religious matters. This is exactly what authors of the papers in this book do.

This book pursues the implications for linking Lenin with theology, which is not a project that has been undertaken thus far. What does this inveterate atheist known for describing religion as 'spiritual booze' (a gloss on Marx's 'opium of the people') have to do with theology? This book reveals far more than might initially be expected, so much so that Lenin and the Russian Revolution cannot be understood without this complex engagement with theology.
It also seeks to bring Lenin into recent debates over the intersections between theology and the Left, between the Bible and political thought. The key names involved in this debate are reasonably well-known, including Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zižek, Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Terry Eagleton, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Boer has written concerning these critics, among others, in Boer's earlier five-volume Criticism of Heaven and Earth (Brill and Haymarket, 2007-13). Lenin and Theology builds upon this earlier project but it also stands alone as a substantial study in its own right. But it will be recognised as a contribution that follows a series that has, as critics have pointed out, played a major role in reviving and taking to a new level the debate over Marxism and religion.
The book is based upon a careful, detailed and critical reading of the whole 45 volumes of his Collected Works in English translation - 55 volumes in the Russian original. From that close attention to the texts, a number of key themes have emerged: the ambivalence over freedom of choice in matters of religion; his love of the sayings and parables of Jesus in the Gospels; his own love of constructing new parables; the extended and complex engagements with Christian socialists and 'God-builders' among the Bolsheviks; the importance of Hegel for his reassessments of religion; the arresting suggestion that a revolution is a miracle, which redefines the meaning of miracle; and the veneration of Lenin after his death.

"Individualism Old and New" is a serious study of public and cultural issues surrounding the place of the individual in a technologically advanced society. Dewey outlines the fear that personal creative potential will be stomped on by assembly-line monotony, political bureaucracy and an industrialized culture of uniformity. Dewey beoieves in the power of critical intelligence and says that individualism has in fact been offered a unique higher kevek of technological development upon which to grow, mature and redine itself. In "Liberalism and Social Action" Dewey looks at earlier forms of liberalism where the State sunction is to rotect its citizens while allowing free reign to social-economic forces. He believes that as a society matures, so must liberalism. He believes that liberalism must redefine itself in a world where government must play a dynamic role in creating an enviornment in which citizens can achieve their potential. Dewey's advocacy of a posiive role for government - a new liberalism - is a natural application of Hegel's dialetic. "A Common Faith" presents a compelling prescription for a union of religious and social ideals, inluding consistency in both idea and action. His thesis is thought provoking. This book should not only be read by social scientist, but also people if faith who wish to intelligently enhance their own faith. A Collector's Edition.