Saving God: Religion After Idolatry

Princeton University Press (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalism is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences. Princeton University Press is publishing Saving God in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book Surviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Saving God: Religion after idolatry. [REVIEW]Lynne Rudder Baker - 2009 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Mark Johnston: Saving God: Religion After Idolatry. [REVIEW]Elizabeth Burns - 2009 - The Philosophers' Magazine 47 (47):110-111.
Idolatry In The New Testament.Joel Marcus - 2006 - Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 60 (2):152-164.
Saving God: Religion after Idolatry.Donald J. Dietrich - 2013 - The European Legacy 18 (6):759-760.
Pride and Idolatry.R. R. Reno - 2006 - Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 60 (2):167-180.
Surviving Death.Mark Johnston - 2010 - Princeton University Press.
Surviving Death – Mark Johnston.Steven Luper - 2011 - Philosophical Quarterly 61 (245):884-887.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-09-15

Downloads
123 (#136,076)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?