This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms of an entirely secular world-view, but which is more in line with a Christian understanding of man.

This essay explores the convergence of theoretical or foundational, historical, and comparative concerns in religious ethics through the examination of two religiously informed traditions on statecraft, that shaped by Augustine's idea of the civitas dei and that shaped by classical Islamic juristic thought on the dar alislam. Three issues are examined for each tradition: the concept of normative political order, the nature of justified use of force, and the implications of their rival claims to universality. The essay shows how (...) the normative logic and implications of each tradition can be properly understood only by attention to its historical development. It further argues that possibilities for conversation between these traditions, difficult or even nonexistent in terms of the original statements of the Augustinian and juristic ideals, may be identified by attention to the historical working out of these ideals in the practice of statecraft within the two cultures. (shrink)

This is a multidisciplinary and multicultural study of traditional and contemporary terms and issues in religious studies. It “is intended as a guide for people who are seeking a more adequate understanding of the history as well as the contemporary significance of religion”. This work is neither a dictionary nor an encyclopedia. It is a collection of essays discussing terms meaningful to religion in its postmodern context. The essays are not intended to provide a basic outline (...) for the undergraduate. They are for the serious student or scholar who seeks an ongoing dialogue with what has been written in the past as it is transformed into future meaning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE IN HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Francis X. Clooney, SJ. Boston College Outline I.Violence, Sacrifice and Ritual 1. Some basic attitudes toward the killing of animals 2.Resolving the problem of sacrificial violence by internalization 3.Substitutions 4.Renunciation and nonviolence: an elite pathway 5.Violence andnonviolenceinrelation to vegetarianism: Hans Schmidt's theses?. Traditional Hindu Theorizations of Violence in Mimamsa Ritual Theory and Vedanta Theology 1. The ritual analysis (at Mimamsa (...) Sutra 1.1.2) of the Shyena rite which is performed in order to harm enemies 2.The Vedanta analysis (at Uttara Mimamsa Sutra 3.1.25) of ritual violence in relation to the prohibition of violence??. Violence in the Life of the State HOFrancis X. Clooney, S.J. 1. The royal power to punish (danda) 2.The synthesis of the ideals of brahmin and king a..The distribution and management of violence in the Laws ofManu (1st century CE) b. Policy toward warfare in the Arthashastra of Kautilya 3.The collapse of the brahmanical synthesis—and the emergence of a (seemingly) more nonviolent Hinduism 4.A comment on Gandhi (1 869-1948) and the contemporary emergence of post-Gandhian Hindu perspectives IV.Alternate Views from Outside the Sanskritic Tradition 1. Tamil Wisdom on Violence and Nonviolence: a.Tirukkural (c. 2nd century CE) b.Cilappatikaram (5th century CE) 2.Blood and Goddesses 3.From a Village Perspective a. Some Trouble with Cows b.Mahasweta Devi and the Literary Exposure of Violence V.The Question of a Christian Perspective on the Hindu Treatment of Violence and Religion: Are Victims Necessary? Some Presuppositions: • The following reflections, complex as they are, are governed by a reluctance to simplify Hindu teaching. I seek to avoid the view that the Hindu traditions had only one view of violence and nonviolence. • I use the term "Hindu" loosely and as a shorthand, without claiming that there is a single Hindu tradition, or a single creed shared by all Hindus, or a single attitude toward violence. But neither do I claim that there are simply many traditions without any common elements which justify the appellation "Hindu." • I am reluctant to idealize the Hindu traditions as if nonviolence must necessarily be taken as the epitome ofHindu thought. India's traditions are complex, and require complex treatment. • A serious artificiality of this paper is that I treat Hinduism without simultaneously lookinginto Buddhist andJain materials, though both were traditions with important and enduring commitments to nonviolence. Particularly with respect to the renunciant, marginal components of traditions, one ought not to make overly neat or decisive distinctions Violence and Nonviolence in Hindu Religious Traditions 1 1 1 between the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain theories and practices related to violence and nonviolence. • I attempt to give preference to indigenous discussions ofissues related to violence and nonviolence; the context and mode of thinking are important, notjust the conclusions drawn. I therefore avoid simply mining Hindu texts for an answer to a contemporary question, "What is the Hindu attitude toward violence and nonviolence?" • In most ofwhat follows we must distinguish contexts where "violence" indicates "physical action which causes pain to some living being," from contexts where "violence" indicates "an intention, rooted in anger or malice, to hurt someone." I use the word "violence" for both in order to highlight the complex issues of distinction involved. In considering the Sanskrit formulations, one likewise has to distinguish himsa as "causing pain" from himsa as "intending to harm." • It is often difficult to date ancient texts, and even when one narrows down a date—within 200-300 years—its significance still depends on other, often equally broadly stated dates. Nevertheless, I do offer dates throughout, as summarized here: •ancient Vedic sacrificial practices, from before 1200 BCE •Vedic ritual analyses and reformulations of sacrifices as ritualized acts, in the Brahmanas, from after 1000 BCE •the Upanishadic exploration of the deeper meanings of ritual and interiorized alternatives to ritual, from after 900 BCE •the Buddha, c. 500 BCE •key texts in the theorization of royal power, The Laws of Manu (beginning of Common Era) and Arthashastra (c. 150 CE) •the Tamil wisdom text Tirukkural (100 CE) •Goddess texts as evidenced in Sanskrit formulations, from after 500 CE... (shrink)

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There (...) is a strong tendency among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.]. (shrink)

Religious Pluralism Religious pluralism, broadly construed, is a response to the diversity of religious beliefs, practices, and traditions that exist both in the contemporary world and throughout history. The terms “pluralism” and “pluralist” can, depending on context or intended use, signify anything from the mere fact of religious diversity to a particular kind of philosophical … Continue reading Pluralism, Religious →.

The cultural nature of religion is closely linked with the characteristics of religion. The interaction between religious culture and secular culture is shown as the alternation and coexistence of benign and malignant. In fact, the development of religious culture has a very close relationship with human beings in ancient times. Some activities of human worship, summarized and promoted from generation to generation, have gradually spread and developed widely among various nationalities and regions, and finally formed a series of (...) spiritual theories and behavior norms, which are more systematic. In terms of the external communication of religious culture, we should also pay attention to it. Although the help of mass media has appeared in this regard, it has had little effect. It enables the believers to change from passive to active, and understand and accept the religious culture more deeply. This paper analyzes the relationship between traditional religious culture and Chinese calligraphy art, and discusses how to better inherit Chinese calligraphy art. In religious and cultural communication, the eastward communication of calligraphy has existed in ancient times and has become mature, while the westward communication has become a focus of attention in recent years under the influence of comprehensive factors such as the national cultural development strategy and cultural soft power competition. (shrink)

In The Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur'án Toshihiko Izutsu analyses the guiding spirit of the Islamic moral code, the basic ethical relationship of man to God. Izutsu asserts that, according to the Qur'anic conception, God is of an ethical nature and acts upon man in an ethical way. The resulting implications for man are enormous, requiring devotion not merely to God but to living one's life ethically.Izutsu shows that for the Qur'an our ethical response to God's actions is religion (...) itself; it is at the same time both ethics and religion. Izutsu explores these themes by employing ethnolinguistics, a theory of the interrelations between linguistic cultural patterns, to analyse the semantic structure of major concepts in the Quar'an. Islam, which arose in the seventh century, represents one of the most sweeping religious reforms ever to appear in the East.The Quar'an shows in vividly concrete terms how time-honoured tribal norms came into bloody conflict with new ideals of life, and finally yielded to the rising power. This transitional epoch is of particular importance in the whole of Islamic thought, a time during which the key terms of a traditionally fixed system of values were transformed in their connotative structure, modified in their combinations, and finally integrated into an entirely different system.Originally published in 1959 as The Structure of the Ethical Terms in the Koran and revised under the current title in 1966 this 2002 reprint makes this classic work of Islamic studies once again available. (shrink)

Religious therapeutics is the term I use to designate relations between health and spirituality, and medicine and religion. Dimensions of religious therapeutics include religious meanings that inform medical theory, religious means of healing, health as part of religious life, and religion as a remedy for human suffering. Classical Yoga is analyzed to establish an initial matrix of religious therapeutics with 5 branches: philosophical foundations, soteriology, value theory, physical practice, and cultivation of consciousness. Through comparative (...) criticism of classical Yoga, the study presents a heuristic of religious therapeutics: a model for interpreting relations among healing and liberative functions in world religions. ;Body and health are of instrumental but not ultimate value in classical Yoga: the body is used to transcend itself for attainment of Yoga's soteriological goal, realization of self as pure consciousness. Yoga's Samkhya-based metaphysics contains an unreconciled dualism, and while practice of Yoga is paradigmatic of mind/body holism, Yoga prescribes realization of a spiritual self, independent of material and psychological nature. The study rehabilitates the body in respect of the compatibility of embodiedness with religiousness. ;Other Indian and world traditions suggest dimensions of religious therapeutics both resonant with classical Yoga and lacking from it. India's Ayurvedic medicine represents the sixth branch of religious therapeutics: medical therapeutics. I distill from Ayurvedic and Western sources a set of determinants of health: biological, medical/psychological, cultural, and metaphysical. Significant determinants of health are wholeness, self-identity, and freedom; these are incorporated in discussion of the complementary functions of medicine and religion, grounding the claim that in classical Yoga, liberation is healing in an ultimate sense. ;Tantric yogas utilize material nature for human spiritual progress, and unlike classical Yoga, esteem nature, body/mind, the feminine, and relationality. Tantra provides another branch of religious therapeutics: aesthetic therapeutics. The study anticipates elements of health/medicine in western religions, Buddhism, and Lakota religious philosophy. Sacred speech and song are explored to demonstrate comparative inquiry into religious therapeutics; some Native American Indian and Hindu applications of sacred language are considered. Finally, the model of religious therapeutics is supplemented with community, embracing ecological, social, and religious relationality and communication. (shrink)

Through an analysis of key themes in Heidegger's work, the book challenges the traditional theological appropriation of Heidegger and the usual characterizations of religious thinking in terms of faith or belief in, or experience of, some ultimate reality. Heidegger, it is argued, offers a unique approach to a variety of issues and problems in contemporary religious thought and philosophy of religion that results in understanding religious thinking as a resolute openness to the holiness and meaningfulness (...) of the world. (shrink)

Ultimate reality is often characterized in terms of a variety of what are thought to be incompatible concepts, like God, Dao, Brahman, etc. This book examines the plausibility of a genuine religious pluralism, arguing against relativism but in favor of the authenticity of a plurality of the world's major religious traditions.

Religious communities that speak of faith typically affirm the ideal of a highly confident faith. If we understand confidence in terms of the quality of assent to faith-claims, however, it is difficult to reconcile a high degree of confidence with intellectual virtue. As an alternative, I propose to construe confident faith as a kind of trusting perception. The sort of confidence that I envision here makes sense as a religious ideal. In addition it leaves room for the (...) recognition of epistemic risk needed for intellectual humility as well as for the kind of openness to revising the content of faith in the light of relevant evidential considerations that intellectual integrity demands. Furthermore, someone with this type of confidence can find a particular faith compelling, while also acknowledging some faiths that make conflicting claims to be reasonable options. (shrink)

Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis represents the first fusion of genomics and assisted reproduction and the first reproductive technology that allows prospective parents to screen and select the genetic characteristics of their potential offspring. However, for some, the idea that we can intervene in the mechanisms of human existence at such a fundamental level can be, at a minimum, worrying and, at most, repugnant. Religious doctrines particularly are likely to collide with the rapidly advancing capability for science to make such interventions. (...) This paper focuses on opinions and arguments of selected religious scholars regarding ethical issues pertaining to PGD. In-depth interviews were conducted with religious scholars from three different religious organizations in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. Findings showed that Christian scholars are very sceptical of the long-term use of PGD because of its possible effect on the value of humanity and the parent-children relationship. This differs from Islamic scholars, who view PGD as God-given knowledge in medical science to further help humans understand medical genetics. For Buddhist scholars, PGD is considered to be new medical technology that can be used to save lives, avoid suffering, and bring happiness to those who need it. Our results suggest that it is important to include the opinions and views of religious scholars when it comes to new medical technologies such as PGD, as their opinions will have a significant impact on people from various faiths, particularly in a multi-religious country like Malaysia where society places high value on marital relationships and on the traditional concepts of family. (shrink)

This chapter surveys recent work on philosophical issues raised by religious diversity or pluralism. It focuses on four topics. The first is the epistemological challenge of religious diversity. The rationality of commitment to any particular religious tradition seems to be threatened by the existence of rival traditions. The second is the political problem of religious toleration. Religious conflict throughout the world suggests a need for better arguments against religious intolerance than those currently available. The (...) third is the task of understanding the concept of religion. Religious pluralism fuels debate about whether the concept of religion can be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions or, if it cannot, whether it must be analyzed in terms of family resemblances. And the fourth is the enterprise of making constructive comparisons in religious ethics. Similarities and differences between the virtue theories of diverse religious traditions illuminate strengths and weaknesses in the ethical thought of the religions subjected to comparison. The chapter argues from these examples to the conclusion that religious diversity gives rise to several exciting and important problems that ought to be high on the agenda of philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Ineffability—that which cannot be explained in words—lies at the heart of the Christian mystical tradition. It has also been part of every discussion of religious experience since the early twentieth century. Despite this centrality, ineffability is a concept that has largely been ignored by philosophers of religion. In this book, Bennett-Hunter builds on the recent work of David E. Cooper, who argues that the meaning of life can only be understood in terms of an ineffable source on which (...) life depends, and engages with the work of continental philosophers, such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Karl Jaspers. This is the first book to explore the concept of ineffability within contemporary philosophy of religion and provides a starting point for further scholarly debate. It will be of interest to scholars of philosophy of religion, theology, existentialism and phenomenology. -/- 'Bennett Hunter’s book is a timely contribution to the growing theological and philosophical literature on mystery and ineffability. Written in a lucid and elegant style, the book makes a convincing case for the ineffability of religious experience and explores its relationship to a sense that our lives are answerable to such experience.' — David E. Cooper. -/- 'Philosophers have long concentrated on linguistic forms in a way that has isolated language from the rest of life, and this isolation has increasingly obscured for them the vast range of things that cannot be spoken. Bennett-Hunter is not the first philosopher to try and map this distracted field, but he is remarkable in the width and sympathy of his approach to the highly various thinkers whom he invokes to illuminate it.' — Mary Midgley. (shrink)

There is a curious asymmetry in cases where the use of religious language involves a breakdown in communication and leads to a seemingly intractable dispute. Why does the use of religious language in such cases almost always arise on the side of patients and their families, rather than on the side of clinicians or others who work in healthcare settings? I suggest that the intractable disputes arise when patients and their families use religious language to frame their (...) problem and the possibilities of solution. Unlike clinicians, they are not bilingual and thus lack the capacity to understand and negotiate differences in terms that are responsive to those who work in healthcare settings. After considering a representative case, I explore whether an ethics consultant or chaplain can function as a translator and suggest that, at best, such efforts at mediation depend on contingent aspects of a case and will only be partially successful. To appreciate limits on the role for bilingual translators, I consider a futility dispute where a parent using religious language demands that everything be done for a permanently unconscious child. I challenge the traditional interpretation that says the parent values “mere duration of biological life irrespective of quality.” From a religious perspective, human life is never “merely biological.” This effort to slot the dispute into standard philosophical schemas misses what is crucial in the dispute. I suggest that a better interpretation views the dispute at a meta-level as one about whether withholding and withdrawing care is morally distinguishable from killing. Curiously, this interpretation makes the advocate of futile care into an ally of those “quality of life” advocates who also challenge this distinction. The crux of their dispute now rests on the normative ethics of killing. While I think my interpretation comes much closer to the views of many who demand ‘futile care,’ I suggest that it still falls short because of the way it reconstructs the religious concerns in nonreligious terms. I close by considering an analogy between the language of suffering and the language of faith, suggesting that both require a much richer understanding of the narratives that orient the lives of patients and their families. (shrink)

The Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics introduces readers to basic issues in moral inquiry, a selection of moral traditions, and surveys a range of moral issues. Each of the three volumes covers one of these three elements of religious ethics, with Volume I focusing on moral inquiry. What distinguishes "religious" ethics from other approaches to ethics is, first and foremost, its connection to the religions. While there is much debate in modern scholarship about the precise meaning of the (...) term "religion" there is at least a widely shared conviction that there are such things as religions, by which is meant social groups and traditions of thought and practice that are in one way or another about the deepest human questions and the ultimate goal(s) of human life, including but not limited to reverence for a divine being or beings. Thought about or practice in relation to what is held to be ultimately real and important seems to be a longstanding feature of human life across historical periods, geography, and cultural traditions. (shrink)

There is a general recognition that there are various self-identifying religions. Many people find the idea that these religions differ in significant ways altogether too distressing to accept. Thus Religious Pluralism is often taken to define the only unbiased, rational, and acceptable approach to the diversity of religions. In fact, the Pluralist route is anything but unbiased or rational. Rather than being the only acceptable approach, it should be flatly rejected. While proclaiming its respect to all nice religious (...) traditions (ones that are not nice are simply cast out), it proposes a radical reshaping of religious traditions along the lines that it favors. Coming to clear terms with this imperialistic fact concerning Religious Pluralist procedures is no part of their agenda. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 43-49 [Access article in PDF] Double Religious Belonging:Aspects and Questions Catherine Cornille College of Holy Cross at Worcester, Massachusetts The idea of double or multiple religious belonging seems to have become an integral feature of the religious culture of our times. It is no longer surprising to hear people refer to themselves as partly or fully Christian and Buddhist, and the hybridizing (...) of Jewish and Buddhist religious identities has even led to a new terminology (Jubu). While this phenomenon has been part of Asian religious cultures for centuries, it is relatively new to the West, where a combination of political and religious forces have shaped religious identities around comparatively rigid and exclusive boundaries. With the gradual dissolution of traditional geographical and spiritual monopolies by particular religions, the religious field has become wide open and religious belonging increasingly a matter of choice and degree. The phenomenon of multiple religious belonging may be found in any combination of any number of religions. There are the Jews for Jesus; Christians who have become deeply involved in Muslim (mostly Sufi) religious practices; and Hindus who also consider themselves partly Christian or—more often—vice versa. But by far the most common phenomenon in the West is that of Christians or Jews who also profess to be Buddhist, hence the importance of discussing this phenomenon in this meeting on Buddhist-Christian dialogue.In this paper, I wish to outline the different contexts in which double or multiple religious belonging seems to manifest itself so as to reflect on the possibilities and limits of the very concept or category. While different religions may have various ways of defining or circumscribing the issue of religious identity and generally allow for different degrees of belonging, I will discuss the possibility of double religious belonging on the basis of a strong—and for most religions, ideal—understanding of religious belonging. Double Religious Belonging and New Age One of the contexts in which the phenomenon of double or multiple religious belonging may seem to present itself most readily is that of the late modern or postmodern form of religiosity called "New Age." Whereas New Age religion is essentially elusive, one of the most prominent scholars of New Age, Wouter Hanegraaf, defines it as a "popular Western culture criticism expressed in terms of a secularized [End Page 43] esotericism" and refers to general characteristics such as this-worldliness, holism, evolutionism, psychologizing of religion and spiritualizing of psychology, and, of course, the belief in the advent of a New Age. 1 In addition to these characteristics, one of the most noted features of New Age religiosity is its openness toward all religious traditions and the freedom with which it combines beliefs and practices from mainly the Asian religions, the mystical strands of the monotheistic traditions, and various forms of Shamanism. This has led to the image of New Age as a form of religious bricolage or a religion of the supermarket. Often underlying New Age religiosity is the belief that all religions derive from or meet in the same ultimate religious experience, and that one may thus belong to all religions at the same time.While New Age religion may therefore be regarded as a form of multiple religious belonging, it might be more appropriate to speak here of a complete absence of religious belonging. As scholars of religion such as Joachim Wach have pointed out, religious belonging is taken to involve a "total response of the total being (feeling, will and intellect) to Ultimate Reality." 2 It involves abandonment to a transcendent reality mediated through the concrete symbols and rituals of a particular religion. Surrender is thus not to the ultimate as such, but through—and in the end—to the teachings and practices embedded in a concrete religious tradition. Religious belonging in this strong sense of the term implies the acceptance, on faith, of a particular truth revealed and transmitted outside of the immediate experience of the individual and expressed in a particular body of teachings and practices. It also generally has a certain social dimension in which individuals celebrate... (shrink)

This book has argued that problems of religious luck, especially when operationalized into concerns about doxastic risk and responsibility, can be of shared interest to theologians, philosophers, and psychologists. We have pointed out counter-inductive thinking as a key feature of fideistic models of faith, and examined the implications of this point both for the social scientific study of fundamentalism, and for philosophers’ and theologians’ normative concerns with the reasonableness of a) exclusivist attitudes to religious multiplicity, and b) theologically-cast (...) but bias-mirroring trait-ascriptions to religious insiders and outsiders. It is important to keep the descriptive/explanatory and normative concerns properly separated, but philosophy of luck and risk are relevant to both. More specifically, inductive risky theological strategies,we have argued, are a relevant concern both descriptively and normatively. The descriptive/explanatory relevance of measures of high inductive risk connects it with cognitive and social psychology of religion, while its normative relevance connects with critical concerns with epistemology of testimony, the epistemology of disagreement, and the ethics of belief. A research program to examine fideistic orientation and its relation to epistemically risky doxastic strategies is one of potentially numerous research programs on which philosophers and psychologists might work collaboratively. So this concluding chapter of our study culminates with the outline of a proposed research program at the intersection of shared concerns. I term this research program CICI, because it examines what lies at the intersection of CSR’s standing interest in the appeal of counter-intuitive ideas, and our own study’s focus on the fideistic penchant for counter-inductive thinking. Religious Studies scholars typically focus on particular traditions and teachings, while CSR scholars tend to eschew such content-focused approaches in favor of a study of evolutionary and hence generic or trans-religious functions and processes. I argue that CICI has the added benefit of effectively mediating this generic-specific contrast between CSR and Religious Studies, allowing CSR research to be more closely connected with and relevant to comparative fundamentalism. (shrink)

One main kind of etiological challenge to the well-foundedness of someone’s belief is the consideration that if you had a different education/upbringing, you would very likely accept different beliefs than you actually do. Although a person’s religious identity and attendant religious beliefs are usually the ones singled out as targets of such “contingency” or “epistemic location” arguments, it is clear that a person’s place and time has a conditioning effect in all domains of controversial views, and over all (...) of what in the epistemology of disagreement are termed our nurtured beliefs. Still, given the absolutism that has often attended religious truth claims, together with the great contrariety of teachings based upon purported divine revelation, arguments from contingency have often been presented as having special force against religious ‘enthusiasts.’ Chapter Two argues that if we are to explicate the force of problems of religious luck, we need to think more carefully about the scope and force of skeptical arguments of this general type. Contingency problems are not often considered serious objections to faith, since there are narrative theological explanations about differences between “home” and “alien” religious traditions, which any adherent of a particular tradition might appeal to. But what I term the New Problem tries to present a qualified and re-focused set of concerns, rather than a sweeping sort of skepticism. First, I carefully delimit the scope of the de jure challenge which the contingency and insensitivity of belief suggests. In general terms, a de jure challenge implicates dereliction of epistemic duty, intellectual viciousness, or some other sense of epistemic unacceptability to some target class of religious belief, narrow or broad (Plantinga 1995). Next, I redirect that challenge through a new thought experiment aimed at clarifying how the mind-set of religious exclusivism is enabled only through counter-inductive or “pattern-breaking” thinking. Much more focused than any overbroad argument from continency, the New Problem of religious luck is presented as a strong de jure challenge to the reasonableness of religious exclusivist a) conceptions of faith and b) responses to religious multiplicity. (shrink)

Religious ethics was founded on a commitment to inclusion, welcoming projects from and about different religious and philosophical traditions. This paper argues that the increasing welcome of feminist ethics in the JRE also reveals a tension in the field between inclusion and critique: where feminist ethics is included as another tradition of ethical inquiry, its critical claims can be escaped by appeal to difference from the traditions it seeks to engage. The response to feminist critique should not be (...) to applaud its inclusion without responding to its claims. Where this occurs, religious ethicists must renegotiate the terms of inclusion and the borders of difference. Feminist critique thus requires a return to founding questions of this journal, and the field, about the terms on which different traditions can be discussed and engaged in a common, critical conversation of religious ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religious Epistemology Through Schillebeeckx and Tibetan Buddhism by Jason VonWachenfeldtRobert MagliolaRELIGIOUS EPISTEMOLOGY THROUGH SCHILLEBEECKX AND TIBETAN BUDDHISM. By Jason VonWachenfeldt. T&T Clark: London, 2021. 240 pp.In his "Introduction," Jason VonWachenfeldt explains the "crisis of authority" experienced by many religious believers, and then commits his book (hereinafter RET) to a "dialogic negotiation" offering middle ways between religious tradition and postmodernity. The "dialogic negotiation" is between the (...) brilliant but controversial Catholic theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–2009), and the brilliant but controversial Tibetan monk (then ex-monk), Gendun Chopel (1903–1951). They both deconstruct the epistemologies of their respective traditions, but insist on the orthodoxy of their "middle ways."VonWachenfeldt opts for Aaron Stalnaker's methodology of "bridge concepts" (topics enabling interfaith comparison) and the comparison of two "historically situated" individuals (13). He names "religious epistemology" as RET's "bridge-concept," and to further facilitate comparison, three epistemological "categories" are posited: "perspectivalism, hermeneutics, and apophaticism" (64). Schillebeeckx's "phenomenological Thomism" constitutes his perspectivalist first phase, and holds that revelation includes both a "concrete-existential" and non-conceptual "implicit intuition" of the divine reality (32). There is an antinomy between the individual's act of abstraction and the "implicit intuition" of the "reality of God in Godself" (33).Chopel's negative way is more extreme. Chopel is a Madhyamakin but rejects Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka's version which affirms the "conventional validity" of the mundane. For Chopel, all formations lack even conventional validity but "common [End Page 404] beings" falsely affirm them (35). The few "noble ones" (the enlightened) are those aware of pure emptiness (understood as "absence," not "openness"). Schillebeeckx's second phase affirms that one is embedded in ongoing history and cannot escape mundane finitude. God must be seen as "mystery" active within it (45). Chopel's second phase extends the notion that an unbridgeable chasm exists between the conventional and the ultimate but that the Buddha can manipulate the mundane so the leap to enlightenment can occur (49). Schillebeeckx's third phase practices a "negative realist metaphysic": The individual encounters the "really real" external to oneself only by way of "glimpses negative in nature" (58). Chopel's apophaticism describes ultimate reality in terms of a "nonaffirming negative" (63).Next, RET treats the role of religious community in knowledge formation (67). For Schillebeeckx, our "non-divine finitude is precisely the place where the infinite and the finite come most closely into contact" (90). The later Schillebeeckx retains loyalty to the institutional Church but because of the finitude of language and human nature he deems it necessarily subject to critique (92). Chopel practices a "pious skepticism" (97), and increasingly satirizes institutional monasticism (circa 1934, he disrobes). Addressing the role of historical founders of religions, Schillebeeckx maintains that theology should shift from an unsalvageable truth lost in the past to the more eschatological language of "the [always] Coming One" (123). Jesus's epistemological authority does not reside in his ability "to supply answers" as much as it is to open up individuals to "a future reality in the making" (148). Honorific titles such as "Savior" or "Christ" as such are not serviceable. Jesus's story is an exemplar of how to construct meaning in our lives by the "praxis" of helping the suffering. Chopel likewise demythologizes Sakyamuni Buddha (151), but—unlike Schillebeeckx—insists he does so endogenously. For example, he enters the definitive/provisional (nītārtha/neyārtha) debate, but argues that all the teachings of Śākyamuni are both—they are definitive for those whom they help toward emptiness and merely provisional for all others (157, 158).RET's chapter 5 addresses the authority of personal experience in the apophatic knowledge of ultimate reality. How is it possible for "true knowledge" to be "primarily experiential in nature as distinct from being conceptually or linguistically based?" (163). Schillebeeckx holds that our very experience of human finitude brings us negatively in contact with the "unknown ultimate reality itself" (169). He maintains that the apparent lack of ontological contact between beings and ultimate reality (God) is "one-sided," persisting only from the side of our finitude and not from the side of ultimate reality: Though humans can never directly... (shrink)

Using the terms "cosmology" and "cultivation," the religious nature of Confucianism is explored, beginning with a discussion of the ambiguity surrounding Confucianism and its political uses, which often obscure its religious dimensions. It is also assumed that categories of Western theology such as immanence and transcendence are not adequate to describe Confucianism as religious. In this spirit, it is suggested that beyond political distortions or theoretical interpretations, Confucianism has religious dimensions that need to be explored (...) further. The interaction of the microcosm of the self with the macrocosm of the universe is a central dialectic for establishing inner and outer harmony. Thus, cultivating oneself, responding morally to the social and political order, and resonating with the patterns in nature are at the heart of Confucian religiosity. This is illustrated by two examplars of the Japanese Neo-Confucian tradition: Yamazaki Ansai (1618-1682) and Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714). (shrink)

This article presents the results of a preliminary multidisciplinary research of the specificities of youth’s response to various descriptors. Using the semiotic, in-depth psychological, theological and mathematical analysis of the collected associative chains, the author compares the responses of youth representatives to religious and ethical terms with colloquial lexemes, as well as determines sensitivity to these terms and proclivity for their logical and sensory-emotional perception. Particularly, method of semantic multiplication allows identifying strong and weak descriptors of semiosis (...) under consideration. The author determines the trends that outline a number of structural and psychodynamic characteristics of psychic reality of modern Russian youth. The following conclusions were made in the course of this research: 1. Sensitivity (and corresponding awareness) to religious descriptors was demonstrated by less than half of the respondents, and a fifth of the entire sample of terms appeared to be unfamiliar to the respondents; 2. The analysis of ethical associative chains at the level of interpretation, indicated the existence of such a phenomenon as “indeterminate religiosity”, which implies a certain spiritual pursuit, which at the moment does not comply with the familiar to a respondent religions traditions; 3. The acquired data, on the one hand, correspond to the classic “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs”, while on the other hand, spiritual pursuit of respondents and simultaneously scarce character of “existential” associations may testify in favor of the dominance of “ethical-spiritual” paradigm in psychic reality of respondents (which also complies with the Maslow’s research of later period in the area of “existential needs” and “peak experiences”; 4. All of the aforementioned means that the key to interaction with modern youth (including didactical and educational) is the paradigm of ethical values, which can also be connected with a latent spiritual pursuit. (shrink)

The title of this book should be read as a pun, for Smith thinks that the term "religion" has no precise or useful meaning and should be put an end to. He argues primarily as an historian, but his book poses a serious and deliberate challenge to the philosopher of religion. He proposes a mild language reform, the substitution of the two categories "cumulative tradition" and "faith" for the single one "religion." He gives some good positive reasons for this. But (...) too much of his book is devoted to historical accounts of the origins and use of the term "religion" within various cultures, and of the different proper names of religions. As the arguments progress, it becomes clear that the language reform he really wants to make is to employ only the category of "faith" understood as personal piety. There is a good deal of confusion at the theoretical level, but the issue is important, the positive contribution valuable and the challenge to clarity much needed.—W. G. E. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Dualism and the Problem of Dual Religious IdentityJonathan A. SeitzThe word “dualism” is used in many senses. It can refer to the separation of mind and body in classical Western philosophy or to the separation of divine and human in some religious traditions, but religious dualism is also used in the social sciences to describe how two religious systems may relate to each (...) other. Personally, I am interested in this topic because I teach at a Taiwanese seminary, where students draw deeply on Taiwanese culture even as they assert a very clear Christian identity that often challenges or clashes with the broader culture. Like many Protestants, my students generally reject an idea of syncretism while simultaneously affirming Taiwanese culture and many popular beliefs. This dual identity fascinates me.“Dualism” in anthropological research is sometimes used to describe the attachment to two discrete religious or cultural traditions, such as Buddhism and Christianity. An important early theorist was anthropologist June Nash, whose work grew out of ethnographic research in Bolivia and Mexico. Nash looked at Bolivian miners and studied their popular devotion. She wrote that “this technique of syncretizing elements as developed by the Spaniards in the early years of conquest seems alien to the Bolivian way of thinking. It relates to a mode of thinking that accepts only a single, hierarchically defined system of ideas. Indigenous thought is capable of entertaining coexistant and apparently contradictory world views.” Nash says that she “hope[d] to clarify this point of the segmentation in time and space of the two systems, since it defies the model of acculturation as a homogenous blend.”1In this understanding, “dualism” better describes the reality with which many people live than do more general terms like “indigenization” or “acculturation,” and it also resists an understanding that religious traditions simply blend together—rather, they are segmented and retain elements of coherence even when held simultaneously.languages of dual belonging“Dualism” has been helpful because it allows for the recognition that people may belong to two or more distinct traditions. More recently, “dual religious belonging” has been used by theologians such Paul Knitter and Rose Drew. In the past, Buddhist-Christian [End Page 49] Studies has devoted considerable space to the topic.2 The theological step is a step further beyond anthropological dualism, but it is also interested in affirming the “both-ness” of holding to two traditions simultaneously.In this essay I want to grapple with the ways in which dualism can be understood. I believe this systemic language holds some real benefits over other approaches, particularly over more general process terms like “contextualization,” “accommodation,” “indigenization,” “acculturation,” “vernacularization,” and so on. These “-ation” words are helpful in pointing to how conversion or Christianization occurs over time, but they also assume a sort of final synthesis or resolution, and for most people this is probably not how it works. This paper briefly treats two approaches to dual belonging, Nicole Constable’s study of Hakka Protestants in Hong Kong and Jon Kirby’s analysis of northern Ghanaian Catholic communities, and then contrasts these with the more theological language of dual religious belonging found in papers by scholars like Paul Knitter.Essentially, dualism proposes a “both/and” understanding, a type of personal or religious emulsion where two systems are mixed together but resist a full integration. For some scholars, this is fundamentally a positive thing, since it allows for the integrity of the different systems. In others, it is seen as a type of failure to arrive at a reconciled identity, or the bifurcation of an indigenous tradition because of the arrival of Christianity (or another religion).Part of the reason I am interested in this topic is precisely because it gets at a tension—a real ambivalence (i.e., two valences)—that other approaches may not reach. For instance, there is a wide range of uses of contextualization, appropriation, enculturation, vernacularization, indigenization, and so on. My hunch is that scholars use these terms in part because they reduce the cognitive dissonance involved in simultaneously living or working in multiple cultures. Contextualization is a process that may assume a type of full integration, while with dualism the tension is... (shrink)

Measures of inductive risk and of safety-principle violation help us to operationalize concerns about theological assertions or a sort which, as we saw in Part I, aggravate or intensify problems of religious luck. Our overall focus in Part II will remain on a) responses to religious multiplicity, and b) sharply asymmetrical religious trait-ascriptions to religious insiders and outsiders. But in Part II formal markers of inductive norm violation will supply an empirically-based manner of distinguishing strong from (...) moderate fideism. As we develop these markers we will elaborate their more specific connections with comparative study of religious fundamentalisms (chapters 3 and 4), with exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity (chapter 5), and with working hypotheses in cognitive science of religion (chapter 6). In Chapters 3 the special focus is on the need for comparative fundamentalism (hereafter CF), and on how a better inductive risk ‘toolkit’ can empower its development. The “Enemy in the Mirror” is a metaphor which researchers of CF have sometimes used to describe a phenomena of special concern. This allows that religious fundamentalism per se need not be morally or socially problem, and that the terms such as “fundamentalism” and “fideism should not be over-used by scholars. But the enemy-in-the-mirror phenomena, which gives rise to what I term “bias-mirroring” attributions of good/bad traits to religious insiders and outsiders, carries enormous moral risks. I argue that this is something researchers would do well to study. On the view to be developed, the enemy in the mirror phenomenon is a direct consequent of counter-inductive thinking when applied to a multiplicity of narrative testimonial traditions. (shrink)

Previous research indicates that spirituality expressed in tradition-specific terms may initiate, invigorate, and integrate Muslim religious commitments, suggesting a 3-I Model of Religious Spirituality. In a test of this model, Islamic seminarians, university students, and office workers in Iran responded to Muslim Experiential Religiousness, Religious Orientation, and mental health scales. The tradition- specific spirituality of MER displayed correlation, moderation, and mediation results with Intrinsic and Extrinsic Personal Religious Orientations that pointed toward initiation, invigoration, and integration (...) effects, respectively. MER also clarified the ambiguous implications of the Extrinsic Social Religious Orientation. These data most generally confirmed the heuristic potential of the 3-I Model. (shrink)

Multicultural education was attacked by antiracists in Britain in the 1980s. Although it is arguable that not all of the criticisms were valid, the debate raises questions about the efficacy of religious education in countering racism. The paper argues that a lack of analysis of the concepts 'religions' and 'cultures' in British RE has led to a representation of religious traditions which essentialises them, playing down their internal diversity, and which assumes a 'closed' view of cultures. A more (...) flexible approach is suggested, drawing on work in ethnography and other social science disciplines, which might better combine with antiracist stances than earlier approaches. The work of the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit is introduced briefly as an example of an attempt to address some of the above issues in terms of an integrated approach to theory, the study of religions in the community and the development of religious education curriculum materials. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS I05 1120a): these and much else form models of the meticulousness and also the daring with which such discussions should be conducted. THOMAS G. ROSENMEYER University of Washington Religious Philosophy, A Group ol Essays.By Harry Austryn Wolfson. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1961. Pp. xii + 278. $6.00.) For those who have never dared to take the plunge into one of Professor Wolfson's massive studies--the two-volume (...) sets on Philo and Spinoza, for instance, or the first part of The Philosophy of the Church Fathers--these ten essays offer a series of brief but enlightening introductory paddles. The eleventh piece, a concluding Sermonette, is neither enlightening nor a happy introduction to a rigorous mind. The essays, ranging over a considerable number of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular thinkers, are entitled as follows: "The Philonic God of Revelation and His Latter-day Deniers"; "Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas"; "Immortality and Resurrection in the Philosophy of the Church Fathers"; "Philosophical Implications of the Theology of Cyril of Jerusalem"; "Philosophical Implications of Arianism and Apollinarianism"; "Saint Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy"; "Ibn Khaldun on Attributes and Predestination "; "Causality and Freedom in Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume"; "The Veracity of Scripture from Philo to Spinoza"; "Spinoza and the Religion of the Past." Despite this wide variety of topics, the book is held together, Wolfson assures us, by a "common theme" (p. v). To accept this theme is, in effect, to look at the history of Western religious philosophy from New Testament times to Spinoza's in a very special way. Picking up three histories of philosophy at random, I find that Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy mentions the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20? mC.--A.D. 54?) on two pages; B. A. G. Fuller's History of Philosophy devotes about three and a half pages to Philo but concludes that "Philo seems to have had no disciples of note and no direct influence, at any rate, upon the century and a half that intervenes between his death and the birth of Plotinus" (p. 305); W. T. Jones in his History of Western Philosophy (Vol. I) rates Philo's worth at just over a page and a caustic footnote. If, however, we look at religious philosophy in Wolfson's way, we see Philo as the root and determining origin of all medieval philosophizing, Jewish, Christian and Muslim ; we further see the medieval philosophy begun by Philo as a homogeneous system of thought, lying between pagan Greek speculations and the secular systems of the seventeenth century. Wolfson writes: 106 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Ostensibly Philo is only the interpreter of the Hebrew Scriptures in terms of Greek philosophy. But actually he is more than that. He is the interpreter of Greek philosophy in terms of certain fundamental teachings of his Hebrew Scripture, whereby he revolutionised philosophy and remade it into what became the common philosophy of the three religions with cognate Scriptures, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (p. v). In all the essays the topics are taken partly as Philonic in origin; it is Wolfson's aim to make the quarrels of medieval and later thinkers more intelligible in the light of their positions' intellectual ancestry. The result of his approach is a series of amazingly dexterous historical investigations; the reader moves with quite unexpected ease through intricate thirty-page discussions, each carrying some hundred or so footnotes of far-flung references to Plato, Aristotle, Scripture, Jewish and Arabic commentators, Patristic hagglers, Spinoza, Hume, Mill, et alii. The burden of erudition is wielded with simplicity and grace. Where there are historical obscurities and misunderstandings to be cleared up, one reads Wolfson with gratitude and enjoyment. Perhaps I can best fulfill my role as reviewer by summarizing part of his sixth and most exciting chapter, that on the controversy of Pelagius and Augustine over human freedom. Here Wolfson sets out to reverse history's verdict: to show Pelagius' account of freedom as keeping to "the original Christian belief"; to show Augustine's views as heretical by the measure of previous Christian tradition. He begins with much-documented observations that Greek pagan philosophy establishes a tension in man between the powers of... (shrink)

This book asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities. Exploring the (...) lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, Relating to Islam in Kurdistan provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan. Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. (shrink)

My paper characterizes religious beliefs in terms of vagueness. I introduce my topic by providing a general overview of my main claims. In the subsequent section, I develop basic distinctions and terminology for handling the notion of religious tradition and capturing vagueness. In the following sections, I make the case for my claim that religious beliefs are vague by developing a general argument from the interconnection between the referential opacity of religious belief content and the (...) long-term communitarian history of the precisification of what such content means. I start from describing an empirical example in the third section, and then I move to settle the matter in a conceptually argumentative frame in the fourth one. My conclusions in the final section address a few of consequences relevant to debates about religious epistemology and religious diversity. (shrink)

Translators of Aristotle’s and Averroës’ metaphysical works into 14th C Hebrew often associated important philosophical concepts with Hebrew terms that were also used to signify central Jewish and Biblical religious concepts. Here I examine how two such terms, “mofet” and “devequt”, were used to refer to extraordinary, divine wonders and to clinging (in particular to God) respectively in the religious texts, but to Aristotelian demonstration and continuity (especially noetic continuity) respectively in the translations of Averroës’ Long (...) Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. This kind of convergence of metaphysical and religious terms makes possible, indeed encourages, a re-interpretation of the religious concepts along Aristotelian lines. Biblical expressions of God’s wonders are thus to be interpreted to refer to Aristotelian demonstration and the mystical desire to cling to God is to refer to unifi cation with the Active Intellect.Translatores, qui Aristotelis et Averrois opera metaphysica in linguam Hebraicam saeculi 14. transferebant, notabilibus conceptibus philosophicis saepe nomina Hebraica assignaverut, quibus et principales notiones religiosae Judaicae ac Biblicae solebant exprimi. In hac dissertatione investigatur, quomodo duo talium nominum, scil. “mofet” et “devequt”, quae in textibus religiosis “extra ordinaria miracula divina” et “adhaerentiam” (praecipue ad Deum) proprie significant, in translationibus Averrois Commentarii Magni in Aristotelis Metaphysicam ad demonstrationem Aristotelicam et continuationem (praecipue noeticam) significandas transumebantur. Huiusmodi nominum metaphysicorum cum religiosis coniunctio conceptus religiosos iuxta sensum Aristotelicum denuo explicari permittit, imo suadet. Hinc dicta Biblica quae miracula Dei olim significaverunt ad demonstrationes Aristotelicas relata sunt; item desiderium mysticum adhaerendi ad Deum de unione cum Intellectu Agenti intellectum est. (shrink)

Directive 36 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services gives guidance to health care professionals on the reactive administration of contraceptives to women in instances of isolated rape. This paper examines the moral permissibility of long-term proactive contraceptive use in instances of repeated marital rape by comparing it to the moral permissibility of reactive contraceptive use in cases of isolated rape found in directive 36.

How is it possible to develop an identity that lives from the meaningful relationship to a concrete tradition without falling into fundamentalist self-closure when trying to maintain this relationship? The present study addresses this question by interpreting Alasdair MacIntyre's traditional concept in response to the lack of orientation in contemporary society. The American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre assumes that modern societies can only convey identity through the traditions they contain. He defines "tradition" as a discussion about the correct interpretation of (...) the traditional content. MacIntyre sees coexistence in plural societies as a permanent encounter of different, traditional identities that struggle to convince each other of the truthfulness of their own worldview. The consequence is not blind conflict, but rather the acquisition of cultural language skills: Real encounters occur when a tradition learns to understand its counterpart from its genuine perspective. In this way, MacIntyre makes communicative competence the guiding factor of its model. In conversation with Karl Barth's theology, the study further develops this model from a Protestant perspective. Barth is received as the 20th century theologian who most consistently thought of Christian identity in particular terms. Even more than for Barth, the self-assurance of Christian tradition is being put to the test today. The study develops a model of Christian orientation in pluralism, which is based on the interplay of cultural competence and trust in the sustainability of one's own religious identity. (shrink)

Religious naturalism is an emerging construct that relies greatly on science and yet affirms attitudes and practices that are distinctly religious in nature. This article explores the meaning of the term as it is used by various proponents, contrasts it to some similar constructs , and examines some objections andoutstanding issues from within the science‐religion community: postmodernist objections; whether religious naturalism is sufficiently respectful of traditional religious expression; and whether religious naturalism seeks to be (...) a descriptive or a prescriptive enterprise or both. Overall, religious naturalism is affirmed as a potentially productive new variant of naturaltheology, one that can preserve religious sensibilities without relying on supernatural constructs while maintaining a basic affirmation of other religious traditions. (shrink)

As we have seen in the transition form Part I to Part II of this book, the inductive riskiness of doxastic methods applied in testimonial uptake or prescribed as exemplary of religious faith, helpfully operationalizes the broader social scientific, philosophical, moral, and theological interest that people may have with problems of religious luck. Accordingly, we will now speak less about luck, but more about the manner in which highly risky cognitive strategies are correlated with psychological studies of bias (...) studies and human cognitive ecology. Chapter Four is concerned with connections between psychological study of biases and heuristics, and the comparative study of fundamentalism. The first section looks at work by psychologists and philosophers on our bias blind spot. Later sections ask, ‘In what ways might biases and heuristics play a special role in aiding our understanding of, and response to, fundamentalist orientation?’. The judgments we make in ignorance of our own biases Montaigne calls our importunate presumptions, and he suggests a host of practical factors that make them appealing. Montaigne, as I discuss in the first section, associates many of our errors with one or another kind of presumption, often about our similarity or differences from others, or from God. Our obvious psychographic diversity, and the polemical ground dynamics involved in our ‘culture wars’ are compounded on the agential side by the invisibility of our biases to ourselves. A number of person and social biases are described that plausibly affect all of our beliefs in domains of controversial views, religious views included. The second section continues to study of how etiological symmetry (similar patterns of belief-uptake) gives rise to religious contrariety (diverse narratives and theologies) in testimonial faith traditions, and what the implications of this are for philosophy of religion, generally, and for an improved comparative study of fundamentalism, in particular. Utilizing the work of philosophers such as Rachel Fraser and psychologists such as Emily Pronin and her co-authors, I offer a four-step genealogical account for how etiological symmetry so easily gives rise to religious contrariety. This account begins with the narrative nature of testimony in the Abrahamic family of religions, and how narrative content confounds our “source monitoring.” My genealogy also introduces what I term biased-closure inferences (BCI) as one of the key enablers of religious exclusivism and absolutism. These are the seemingly ‘logical’ but actually very self-serving inferences people often make, inferences from their own belief being true, to any belief contrary to it being false. Those who claim unique truth, epistemic access, and/or virtue and religious value for the home religion are no exception to the broad pertinence of bias studies across domains of controversial view. The proximate causes of belief are all that we can study, and in these there may be significant etiological symmetries. Yet those groups themselves, especially to the extent that they are exclusivist, are tunnel-visioned on claims of doctrinal uniqueness: on content differences of a theological sort. Comparative philosophy is met with the puzzlement that symmetric or essentially similar doxastic strategies should give rise not just to cognitive diversity, but to what we can call polarized or polemical contrariety, contrariety of a kind where each view adamantly rejects all others. Arguably, the more that theologies offer explanations of a counter-inductive sort, or profess counter-inductive thinking as exemplary of faith, the better evidential ground there for inferring that bias involved in the acquisition or maintenance of beliefs. This provides more substance to the question of when censure, and etiological challenges to faith-based beliefs are philosophically well-motivated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the WorldAndrew KeittIn 1688 Anglican divine William Wharton published a short tract entitled The Enthusiasm of the Church of Rome demonstrated in some observations upon the life of Ignatius Loyola. Typical of the confessional propaganda of the day, Wharton's work contrasted the "rationality" of Protestantism with what he considered to be the superstition and obscurantism of the Catholic faith:It (...) has been the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to create a right sense of Religion and Piety in all her Communicants, and secure to them the practice of a rational Devotion. She makes no pretensions to private Inspirations, and extraordinary Illuminations of the Holy Ghost; and all her Children are more apt to deride, than admire the follies of the Enthusiasts.... Not so the Church of Rome, which in all her Offices and publick Ceremonies promotes and foments it, hath on many occasions given publick applause and approbation to it, and oweth the greatest part of her peculiar Doctrines, and present prosperity to the Enthusiasm of her Followers.1The "enthusiasm" to which Wharton refers had become the object of intense controversy in late seventeenth-century England. The term enthusiasm in this context meant highly emotional, deeply embodied religious experience in [End Page 231] the form of inspired raptures, miraculous revelations, and prophetic power. It was an epithet used with increasing frequency during this period to condemn not only Catholics but also members of radical Protestant sects such as the Diggers, Levellers, and Fifth Monarchy Men.The efforts of mainstream Protestant denominations to distance themselves from the "ultrasupernaturalism" of religious enthusiasts would seem to fit within a Weberian paradigm in which the Protestant Reformation functions as a catalyst for the "disenchantment of the world," the process by which the boundaries of the supernatural were supposedly rolled back in the modern West.2 Indeed, many historians of early modern Europe have adopted, either implicitly or explicitly, such a model. Lawrence Stone, for example, reflects this school of thought with his assertion that by the end of the seventeenth century, Protestantism's "more rational and coherent view of nature and its relationship to God's providence" created a worldview in which magical or miraculous explanations of events became increasingly untenable.3Catholicism, on the other hand, has often been portrayed as maintaining a more porous boundary between nature and supernature. Summarizing what he calls the "Weberian consensus," sociologist Peter Berger offers the following analysis, which reads remarkably like a translation of Wharton's characterization of Catholicism into the language of the social sciences:The Catholic lives in a world in which the sacred is mediated to him through a variety of channels—the sacraments of the church, the intercession of the saints, the recurring eruption of the "supernatural" in miracles—a vast continuity of being between the seen and the unseen.4In recent years, however, as historians have emphasized the structural parallels between the various confessions in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such stark contrasts have become increasingly suspect.5 Consequently, scholars have underscored the need for comparative work on the topic. Michael Heyd, for example, has suggested such a strategy in his work on the reaction to religious enthusiasm in seventeenth-century Europe.6 [End Page 232] Although Heyd focuses primarily on the English case, he recommends an integrative, comparative approach. He describes how religious enthusiasm became "the subject of detailed analysis—theological, social, psychological and even medical" in the closing decades of the seventeenth century in England, and he details the efforts of both religious and secular authorities "to distinguish carefully between true inspiration and a false one, between the natural realm and the truly supernatural."7 Heyd links this reaction against religious enthusiasm to the disenchantment of the world and asks to what extent these trends were unique to the Anglican tradition in England.8Lorraine Daston has emphasized the need for comparative study as well. Religious enthusiasm plays an important role in Daston's "historical epistemology," which traces the development of modern notions of "fact" and "evidence," and their relationship to changing attitudes toward the miraculous in early modern Europe. The... (shrink)

In Defense of Religious Liberty contains David Novak’s vigorous—and paradoxical—argument that the primacy of divine law is the best foundation for a secular, multicultural democracy. Novak presents his claim, which will astound both liberal and conservative advocates of democracy, in political, philosophical, and theological terms. He shows how the universal norms of divine law are knowable as natural law, that they are the best formulations of the human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that (...) their assertion includes an explicit recognition of God as cosmic lawgiver. Furthermore, Novak maintains that the seemingly disparate ideas of divine command, natural law, and human rights can be integrated into one overall political theory. Novak reveals this integration at work in the classical texts of his own Jewish tradition, as well as in the canonical philosophical tradition of the West, from Plato to the Stoics to Grotius to Kant. He also convincingly makes the case that those who reject any legitimate role for religion in discussions of public morality inevitably substitute arbitrary human power for divine command, arbitrary positive law for natural law, and arbitrary governmental entitlements for human rights that exist prior to the establishment of the state. Novak concludes that religious traditions like Judaism, precisely because they incorporate the doctrines of God the cosmic lawgiver, natural law, and human rights, provide the most coherent ontological foundation for democracy in today’s world. (shrink)

"Featuring a carefully selected collection of source documents, this tome includes traditional teaching tools from the Zen Buddhist traditions of China, Korea, and Japan, including texts created by women. The selections provide both a good feel for the varieties of Zen and an experience of its common core.... The texts are experiential teachings and include storytelling, poetry, autobiographies, catechisms, calligraphy, paintings, and koans. Contextual commentary prefaces each text. Wade-Giles transliteration is used, although Pinyin, Korean, Japanese, and Sanskrit terms (...) are linked in appendixes. An insightful introduction by Arai contributes a religious studies perspective. The bibliography references full translations of the selections. A thought-provoking discussion about the problems of translation is included.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels." --_Choice_. (shrink)

The Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews produced The Gifts and Calling of God Are Irrevocable, in which supersessionism is firmly rejected. In this document, the term fulfillment occurs frequently to describe the relationship between the Old and New Covenant. It implies an evolutionary development from old to new, or from promise to fulfillment. Therefore, the use of this term may lead one to suspect that it is merely a synonym for supersession or a progression from good to (...) better. To avoid this connotation, I redefine this term by locating it within the Israelite cult. Through a study of Aaron’s ordination to the high priesthood in Leviticus and the claims for Jesus’s high priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews, I show that fulfillment already occurs in the Old Covenant by relating the historical, earthly cult to the eternal, heavenly cult. (shrink)

Some cases of countries and cultures in which traditional Catholicism has played a major role in defining public culture are undergoing accelerated secularization processes; the result should be relevant for the diagnoses underlying contemporary post-secular proposals. It is argued, first, that in these countries (Spain has been taken as a main example), where the Catholic Church lost its institutional power, it is also losing its ethical hegemony. While public and political debates still retain the sense of symbolically laden, communal (...) ethical accord, they are no longer understood with religious overtones. It is suggested, second, that laïcité — a non-aggressive stance concerning religion — could adequately describe this predicament, though it retains a trait of self-defence vis-à-vis the Church that is normally attached to the term ‘laicism’. It is proposed, third, that secularization takes place at the ethical level, in which no sense of loss can be attached to the secular citizen. It is at this level, where the conflicts around meanings and values, which can be framed in religious or secularized terms, set the agenda for legal and political discussions, and where the equal standing of religious and secular interpretations should be assessed. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the religiosity ihai is expressed by the mysticism of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, which moves away from ihe traditional “narratives” of revealed religion, with Wittgenstein’s later expressions of religiosity, which endorse those “narratives” and take place within them. The paper discusses the importance of this development in Wittgenstein’s religious experience in relation to the developments in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Both religious and philosophical developments are placed in the context of Wittgenstein’s self-directed anti-Semitism, which is interpreted in (...) class='Hi'>terms of the anomalies of Jewish assimilation and acculturation in the inhospitable environment of European anti-Semitism. The outcome is an account of Wittgenstein as a historical figure, which can shed light on many aspects of his philosophy. To gain credibility, the account proceeds by means of a close exegesis of some Wittensteinian passages that were not adequately explained before. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the religiosity ihai is expressed by the mysticism of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, which moves away from ihe traditional “narratives” of revealed religion, with Wittgenstein’s later expressions of religiosity, which endorse those “narratives” and take place within them. The paper discusses the importance of this development in Wittgenstein’s religious experience in relation to the developments in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Both religious and philosophical developments are placed in the context of Wittgenstein’s self-directed anti-Semitism, which is interpreted in (...) class='Hi'>terms of the anomalies of Jewish assimilation and acculturation in the inhospitable environment of European anti-Semitism. The outcome is an account of Wittgenstein as a historical figure, which can shed light on many aspects of his philosophy. To gain credibility, the account proceeds by means of a close exegesis of some Wittensteinian passages that were not adequately explained before. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Comparative Religious Ethics: Everyday Decisions for Our Everyday Lives by Christine GudorfFred GlennonReview of Comparative Religious Ethics: Everyday Decisions for Our Everyday Lives CHRISTINE GUDORF Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. 256 pp. $49.00In Comparative Religious Ethics, Christine Gudorf identifies her primary audience as those “seeker-skeptical students” who see value in the study of religion but who eschew organized religion. She contends that a comparative study of (...) religious ethics—in which students explore the ethical decisions they face every day within the context of a range of religious traditions—will draw them into exploring not only their own moral sensibilities but also those religious traditions. I submit that her textbook accomplishes exactly that.No stranger to textbooks in religious ethics, Christine Gudorf has presented us with a well-organized book. The initial chapter is fairly traditional in its approach to the question of ethical method. She rehearses the same threefold pattern found in most textbooks centering on rules, ends, and virtues. Gudorf does much more with rule-based ethics than with teleological ethics, giving the impression that religious ethics is fundamentally rule-based. While this may be true to some degree, there has been far more attention given to teleology in religious ethics than she acknowledges. Her emphasis on connecting theological and religious frameworks to social analysis is helpful and reflects the orientation of many who teach undergraduates in this area. A weakness of the book is that some chapters connect the religious traditions with ethical issues more directly than others. While I tend to be in agreement with much of Gudorf’s own perspective, I sensed at times that she could have made more direct connections between ethical issues and particular religious tradition’s ethical teachings. I might also note that at points the social analysis was a bit long—especially in discussing the history of certain ideas—which might be boring for some undergraduates.Gudorf covers topics that have more experiential relevance for undergraduates than is usually found in social ethics textbooks. This is a good thing because it enables her to cover issues that have the most interest for undergraduates. By drawing on what they are interested in, this textbook is able to lead them into an analysis of the structural components of these issues (rather than zoning out, as undergraduates are prone to do). For the most part, the chapters treat each issue evenly, although the chapter on clothing is a bit short. While there [End Page 236] might be some topics I would like to see added, no text can adequately address everything.The author has a great deal of expertise with case studies, and for the most part the case studies she includes are helpful primarily because their narrative structure and length lend themselves to more sustained and nuanced discussion. The discussion questions, film suggestions, and web resources at the end of each chapter are helpful pedagogical aids. The addition of a glossary is important, but I am glad that she explains most of the terms in the chapters (most students do not take the time to review the glossary).Undergraduates will be able to understand the material Gudorf covers in this book because it connects well with the issues they face on a daily basis. In bringing in her own perspective and experiences as she deliberates about ethical issues—I especially like the discussion of what to do with the homeless on street corners—Gudorf makes this book a bit more distinctive and personal than some other textbooks that attempt to be more “objective.” In all likelihood, I will use this book in my comparative religious ethics class. There is a wealth of material and insight in it that my students and I would find engaging. [End Page 237]Fred GlennonLe Moyne CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In this paper I will take it for granted that Zagzebski's position articulates a broadly Catholic perspective, and that Plantinga's position accurately represents a broadly Calvinist one. But I will argue that so construed, the Catholic and the Calvinist are much closer than Zagzebski implies: both views are person-based in an important sense of that term; both are internalist on Zagzebski's usage and externalist on the standard usage; and Plantinga's position is consistent with the social elements that Zagzebski stresses in (...) her view. In the second part of the paper I will identify what I think is the real issue between Zagzebski and Plantinga. Namely, Zagzebski thinks that knowledge requires epistemic responsibility, in the sense that instances of knowledge must be appropriately praiseworthy. Plantinga thinks that no such condition is required for knowledge or warranted belief. I will argue that on this issue Zagzebski is right, and that her virtue approach gives us resources for seeing why. Finally, I will look at the consequences for religious knowledge. Here I will argue that the consequences are minimal. Even if knowledge requires responsibility, Plantinga can still make a good case that religious belief is properly basic. And even if religious belief is properly basic, natural theology can still have an important role in the justification of religious belief. (shrink)

Philosophers and theologians acknowledge that "fideism" is difficult to define but rarely agree on what the best characterization of the term is. In this article, I investigate the history of use of "fideism" to explore why its meaning has been so contested and thus why it has not always been helpful for resolving philosophical problems. I trace the use of the term from its origins in French theology to its current uses in philosophy and theology, concluding that "fideism" is helpful (...) in resolving philosophical problems only when philosophers scrupulously acknowledge the tradition of use that informs their understanding of the word. (shrink)

Kant has attempted to develop a foundation of his metaphysics of morals and this foundation ultimately turns out to be a religious one. Consequently, the question for Kant is whether morality also provides a practical foundation for independent religious faith. In contrast, we see Confucianism as providing a system of morality which has its own religiousness or sense of ultimateness in terms of a robust form of moral life and its practice of li 禮 and reflective thinking (...) on humanity. In this article, I wish to present these two forms of moral thinking which can be respectively titled moral theology and onto-ethics. A relative evaluation shows how a world morality could be consistent or justified within one's own religious tradition and yet can be and should be open to a common people humanity we experience as couched in an open cosmos we observe. (shrink)