This is a new interpretation of Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov that scrutinizes it as a performative event (the “polyphony” of the novel) revealing its religious, philosophical, and social meanings through the interplay of mentalités or worldviews that constitute an aesthetic whole. This way of discerning the novel’s social vision of sobornost’ (a unity between harmony and freedom), its vision of hope, and its more subtle sacramental presuppositions, raises Tilley’s interpretation beyond the standard “theology and literature” treatments of the novel and interpretations that treat the novel as providing solutions to philosophical problems. Tilley develops Bakhtin’s thoughtful analysis of the polyphony of the novel using communication theory and readers/hearer response criticism, and by using Bakhtin's operatic image of polyphony to show the error of taking "faith vs. reason", argues that at the end of the novel, the characters learned to carry on, in a quiet shared commitment to memory and hope.

This book surveys the 8 basic approaches to religious pluralism, ranging from exclusivism (evangelical right) through classic inclusivism (Rahner), revised inclusivism (DuPuis), particularism (Paul Griffith), radical diversity (S. Mark Heim), pluralism (Knitter), comparative theologies (Frank Clooney), and dual belonging (Raimundo Panikkar). The unique contribution of this book is the ability to situate the issue of pluralism in the cultural site in the US (here relying on "thick" cultural analyses of Robert Wuthnow, Vincent Miller, and others) and in the religious site of Roman Catholicism (as offering mainstream Christian responses to religious diversity).

By exploring a practical, rather than propositional, understanding of religious belief, this book provides a new construct through which to view philosophy of religion. Terrence W. Tilley shifts the focus of debate from the justification of rational belief to the exercise of wisdom in making or maintaining a commitment to religious practices. It is through practices, Tilley concludes, that religious belief is formed. After analyzing the strengths and limitations of the modern approaches, Tilley applies the concept of wisdom to the process of making a religious commitment. Wisdom, as explored by Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and John Henry Newman, may be thought of as the bridge between intellectual and moral virtues. Roughly, it can be described as the ability to put intellect into action in a context. Because wisdom is a virtue requiring concrete display, the book discusses the wisdom of commitment to specific religious practices of a range of traditions. These examples demonstrate the issues and complexities involved in the wisdom of making a religious commitment. This important challenge to contemporary philosophy of religion will be of special interest to students and teachers of theology and philosophy of religion.

Religious diversity is a persistent theological predicament for Christian thinkers. Historically, theologians have wrestled with the relationship between believing Christians and religious others. The clash between the Christian doctrine of salvation and non-Christian belief systems often comes down to the question, can non-Christians be "saved"? In a pluralist world, a second question arises: can believers of divergent traditions reconcile their theological differences? Is the logical answer that one believer abandon her faith convictions and promote a relativistic mindset? This book draws upon original research, documenting conversations by women in an interreligious dialogue group, to show that when believers converse in honesty, empathy, and patience--in short, when engaged in virtuous dialogue--they can bridge the gap left by theory. When believers from different faiths come together in open conversation, it need not lead to relativism but, instead, can lead to strengthened belief. Sharing convictions with people who believe differently, sincere believers find they often come to hold their own core beliefs with newfound strength. "With her textured study of a women's interreligious dialogue group, Brecht offers a refreshing epistemology of religious belief attentive to how people actually believe. She allows her reader to learn not from abstract theories alone, but from these live and lively women. Through them we are introduced to the virtuous practices that might allow us to truly converse across the lines of religious difference. From them we learn the value of forming religious beliefs in interfaith contexts. By taking seriously both current epistemologies and these women's experiences, Brecht offers an epistemological theory accountable to the practical exercise of interreligious dialogue. This book is a significant contribution for interfaith studies and epistemology alike." --Jeannine Hill Fletcher, author of Monopoly on Salvation: A Feminist Approach to Religious Pluralism "In this important argument for a new way of doing religious epistemology, Mara Brecht ranges widely and deeply to make her case. . . . Contemporary theories have moved to a 'best practice' approach, a 'naturalized' epistemology that looks at what people do when they know. But when the naturalized epistemologists turn to religious belief, they fail to analyze religious practice, but apply norms from science and common sense--and religious faith is neither of these. . . . Rather than leaving her theory in the abstract realm, Brecht argues for four cardinal virtues and some necessary 'meta-level' dispositions that are required for a virtue epistemology of religious belief in the context of diversity--as exemplified by the group she studied for years." --Terrence W. Tilley, from the Foreword Mara Brecht is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

This book surveys the 8 basic approaches to religious pluralism, ranging from exclusivism (evangelical right) through classic inclusivism (Rahner), revised inclusivism (DuPuis), particularism (Paul Griffith), radical diversity (S. Mark Heim), pluralism (Knitter), comparative theologies (Frank Clooney), and dual belonging (Raimundo Panikkar). The unique contribution of this book is the ability to situate the issue of pluralism in the cultural site in the US (here relying on "thick" cultural analyses of Robert Wuthnow, Vincent Miller, and others) and in the religious site of Roman Catholicism (as offering mainstream Christian responses to religious diversity).

While some might say that theology after the death of God is like biology after the end of life - a discipline without a subject - Postmodern Theologies identifies four general patterns of "postmodernisms" in theology today: "constructive" theologies (with Helmut Peukert, David Ray Griffin, and David Tracy cited as examples); postmodernisms of "dissolution" (Thomas J. J. Altizer, Mark C. Taylor, and Edith Wyschogrod): postliberal theologies (George Lindbeck); and "communal praxis" (exemplified by Gustavo Gutierrez and other Latin American theologians, and James W. McClendon and Sharon Welch among North Americans). These theologies eschew debates on traditional religious foundations to define true religion as the result of - rather than the impetus to - living one's beliefs.

The thesis of this book is straightforward: Tilley argues that theodicy as a discourse practice creates evils while theodicists ignore or distort classic texts in the Christian tradition, unwittingly efface genuine evils in their attempts to justify God, and silence the voice of the suffering and the oppressed by writing them out of the theological picture. The result is often a theological legitimation of intolerable social evils.

In order to carry forward the discussion occasioned by Archbishop Quinn's lecture, this volume presents the text of the Oxford lecture, responses by five prominent Catholic thinkers who examine the issues raised from a variety of perspectives, and a final response by Archbishop Quinn.