This chapter focuses on philological and historical scholarship as applied to the Bible in late-seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism. This theme has been overlooked due to the historiographical dominance of rationalist philosophy in the Dutch Early Enlightenment, as embodied by Spinoza. In that sense the historiography of the late-seventeenth-century Dutch Republic lags behind that of neighboring countries, notably England. Both the philosophical and philological implications of Spinoza’s biblical criticism provoked responses from his contemporaries and the first generations after his death. The textual (...) legacy, languages, antiquities, and historical context of the biblical texts were felt to complicate an adequate understanding of the Bible, as much so as shifts in the conceptualization of God, Creation, Providence, and Divine Law. The Bible as the foundation of the confessional state weakened, not only under the influence of Cartesian or Spinozist philosophy but also because it was studied as the textual vestige of a distant past. (shrink)

Review of Pr. Ioan Chirilă, Scara cuvântului. Eseuri omiletice [ The Ladder of the Word. Homiletic Essays ],.

Review of: God's word 2019: Daily reflections, liturgical diary, by Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls, 2018), pp. 464, $16.95; 365 days with the lord 2019: Liturgical biblical diary, by Makati City, Philippines: St Pauls, 2018), pp. 400, $22.95.

In his list of essential reading, Richard Baxter includes a section on “affectionate practical English writers.” Among others, he mentions George Swinnock. While essentially forgotten today, Swinnock's contemporaries held him in high esteem as a skilful physician of the soul. The focus of this article is Swinnock's view of Scripture meditation as necessary for bridging the gap between head and heart in Christian experience. He encourages his readers to “retire out of the world's company, to converse with the word (...) of God.” He believes this “conversing” warms the heart, causing it to “boil with love” for God. With that basic premise in view, this article is organized around three main sections. The first establishes Swinnock's place in the Puritan meditative tradition, stretching back to Joseph Hall. The second analyzes Swinnock's faculty-focused approach to meditation, whereby it begins in the understanding, extends to the affections, and ends in the will, resulting in practical knowledge. The third section considers Swinnock's teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit in Scripture meditation. As with the other means of grace, meditation is ultimately dependent upon the Holy Spirit to work through it and along with it directly upon the faculties of the soul. The article concludes with Swinnock's threefold approach to transformative Scripture meditation. (shrink)

This article explores the idea that, just as the Jewish-Christian dialogue today benefits from the historical consciousness of critical biblical scholarship, so might the dialogue further benefit by a stronger engagement with the corporeal consciousness that permeates both Christian and Jewish traditions in relation to Sacred Scripture. That is, the well-attested 'turn toward history' is also a 'turn toward the body'. Attention to the corporeality of God's word enables a deeper reception of Scripture as 'body' and therefore, I (...) argue, enables Christians to recognise more clearly the word of God embodied in the Torah-centred traditions and living presence of the Jewish people today. The catalyst for my enquiry is Pope Benedict XVI's encouragement of a 'deeper understanding of the sacramentality of God's word' in the mystery of revelation.After examining this theme from the perspective of magisterial, theological and rabbinic sources, I consider its implications for Jewish-Christian relations. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty claims that we as body-subjects have an immediate sensational understanding of the world. A body that perceives and experience the world before any thought and word can render it. The words we use describing sensations are interpretations of sense-experiences, and will never render the total bodily understanding of the world. This article gives a brief insight of what an understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s body-subject implies for the researcher in body-phenomenological studies of toddlers.

In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly straightforward, Walzer examines the laws, the histories, the prophecies, and the wisdom of the ancient biblical writers and discusses their views on such central political questions as justice, hierarchy, war, the authority of kings and priests, and the experience of exile. Because there are many biblical writers with differing views, pluralism is a (...) central feature of biblical politics. Yet pluralism, Walzer observes, is never explicitly defended in the Bible; indeed, it couldn’t be defended since God’s word had to be as singular as God himself. Yet different political regimes are described in the biblical texts, and there are conflicting political arguments—and also a recurrent anti-political argument: if you have faith in God, you have no need for strong institutions, prudent leaders, or reformist policies. At the same time, however, in the books of law and prophecy, the people of Israel are called upon to overcome oppression and “let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream.”. (shrink)

In the ‘Rectoral Address’, of 1933, Martin Heidegger indicates that the crisis of the West, articulated by Nietzsche as the ‘death of God’, was a central concern in his attempt to rethink and reform higher education in 1933–1934. While Heidegger soon thereafter appears to have abandoned serious efforts at any practical transformation of the modern university, his reflection on Nietzsche, the ‘death of God’, and ‘European nihilism’ becomes deeper and more urgent throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The question then arises: (...) What are the consequences of this confrontation with Nietzsche and the problem of nihilism for our thinking about the current state and task of education? The following article takes up this question through a consideration of Heidegger’s essay, ‘Nietzsche’s Word: “God is Dead”’. (shrink)

“?… may we not say in the words of Bacon? — ‘The introduction of new inventions seemeth to be the very chief of all human actions. The benefits of new inventions may extend to all mankind universally, but the good of political achievements can respect but some particular cantons of men; these latter do not endure above a few ages, the former for ever. Inventions make all men happy without either injury or damage to any one single person. Furthermore, new (...) inventions are, as it were, new erections and imitations of God's own works.’”. (shrink)

Each book in the series includes six 40-minute studies designed to draw you into God’s Word through basic inductive Bible study.

The 2014 movie God’s Not Dead is a clear argument for the truth of its title; in other words, it is an argument that God exists. It does this, primarily, by having its protagonist, college freshman Josh Wheaton, present a number of arguments for God’s existence in front of his philosophy class. It is the purpose of this chapter to evaluate those arguments. In the end, we will see that the movie fails, pretty dramatically, at accomplishing its task, while also (...) unfairly demonizing those who deny its thesis along the way. (shrink)

I discuss the relations between God and spatial entities, such as the universe. An example of a relation between God and a spatial entity is the relation,causes. Such relations are, in D.M. Armstrong’s words, ‘realm crossing’ relations: relations between or among spatial entities and entities in the realm of the spatially unlocated. I discuss an apparent problem with such realm crossing relations. If this problem is serious enough, as I will argue it is, it implies that God cannot be the (...) creator of the universe I also discuss that if God cannot be the creator of the universe, then God does not exist. (shrink)

Does preaching bring God on stage? Protestants assume an intimate relationship between the ‘Word of God’ and preaching. However, the principle that ‘preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God’ caused intense debates about the status of God language. The author highlights the classic disputes of the 19th and 20th centuries and argues that the old dilemma must be overcome. Sermons address the subjective-contextual conditions of the listeners, and this in no way precludes the (...) attention for divine disclosure. On the contrary, there is a true reciprocity between personal spirituality and the sense of God as really other. The author defends the thesis that the renewed attention for the human condition in the theological debates of the last decades should also include a positive stand towards the believer’s spiritual awareness of God’s real existence and presence. (shrink)

Paton, Margaret It was the unfamiliar word dewfall that kept my attention and the relation of dewfall to God's Spirit. It will fall on the bread and wine like dew falling. What is it that connects God's Spirit with dew falling that makes it so memorable for me? It is because in the midst of Mass dewfall is a symbol of the powerful outpouring of God's love for Christ crucified and for me, as I praise Him (...) for His goodness. There is also the sheer beauty of dew when it is first seen in the morning that can overwhelm me with its pristine freshness and purity of shimmering brightness with not a mark of a footprint on it. Dew can freshen our spirits, making them receptive. However, the question remains, What does dew have to do with the Spirit of God? What is the likeness between dewfall and the Spirit of God? (shrink)

In God, Chance and Purpose, statistician David Bartholomew chides Christians who cling to, in his words, a “naive orthodoxy.” Such Christians view God as exhibiting a set of perfections (especially omniscience and omnipotence) and as satisfying a set of propositions (a creed). Such a view is, according to Bartholomew, unworthy of God. In place of a “naive orthodoxy,” he therefore proposes a “critical orthodoxy.” At the center of his “critical orthodoxy” is the skeptical claim that “all knowledge is uncertain, in (...) varying degrees” (p. 232). Question: To what degree is that claim uncertain? Bartholomew’s claim does not pass its own test. (shrink)

Founder of GotQuestions.org, the most popular online biblical resource, S. Michael Houdmann answers 100 of the most-asked questions on the site in a compassionate, accessible, and straightforward manner. Cutting through the confusion on even the hardest of topics, he offers the biblical truth we all need to understand God's Word and apply it to our lives.

A dispute about the symbolism of the lingam, a cylindrical votary object that represents the Hindu god Shiva, has been going on for many centuries: is its meaning inexorably tied to a particular part of the physical body of the god, or is it abstract, purely spiritual? This essay will trace the history of this dispute, considering both icons made of carved stone in India that may or may not represent lingams and images made of words in Indian texts that (...) refer to lingams in contexts that are sometimes ambiguous but often quite clear. Underlying this particular debate is the more general problem of the ambiguity of the symbolism, particularly the religious symbolism, of the body and of forms that represent the divine body. The history of interpretations of the lingam in India reveals the ways that the actions of the state-in this case, the presence of foreign powers, Muslim and British, who viewed the lingam negatively-have deeply influenced native Hindu perceptions of the body of their own god. (shrink)

The philosophical idea of the death of God has had various semantic operations within dominant modern positions on human empowerment. Beginning with the significance of this, the article aims to discuss the half-life of a God who has become a metaphor. In other words, it explores the reverberation of God and God's death in secularized philosophy as well as the consequences of this for ethics and the conception of the Good. Then, the article illustrates the complex connection of this (...) aim with the Occidental delimitation of human potentialities through gleanings from Murdoch, Arendt and Badiou´s ideas about the constellation ‘worldlessness, rupture, human frailty and everydayness’. It shows that such delimitation, operative in theories that share most of the assumptions surrounding the above constellation, re-sacralizes the justification of ethics as humanist programme. Finally, it indicates how this particular delimitation of human potentialities can be revisited through the revival of the dead metaphor of the angelic and the kind of ethics it can animate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bonaventure's Reductio of the Nine Choirs of Angels:How Bonaventure Compressed Two Monumental Traditions into Nine Words and Nine Short PhrasesRandall B. Smith"There is probably no better illustration in medieval thought of how the genius of the symbolic imagination also involves deep speculative insight." So wrote Bernard McGinn of Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in deum in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Woman in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350.1 There is no (...) question that the Itinerarium is a book suffused with symbolic imagery; so much so, in fact, that it can sometimes seem to lapse into a confusing jumble.Certainly there are many sections of the Itinerarium that have baffled readers over the years, often because Bonaventure's use of imagery is so unique and creative and the truths he is attempting to enunciate are so far beyond our normal ways of thinking about God. But there is a short passage in chapter 4 of the Itinerarium that seems to defy interpretation precisely because of what one might describe as an almost austere terseness and brevity. The point Bonaventure wishes to make is one he communicates in little more than a list of nine words and nine short, parallel phrases.The passage I have in mind is this one in Itinerarium 4.4.When these things have been accomplished, and our spirit has been brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem, it is ordered [End Page 583] hierarchically so that it can ascend upward. For no one enters into that city unless that city has first descended into the person's heart by means of grace, as John sees in his Apocalypse. It descends into the heart when our spirit has been made hierarchical by the reformation of the image, by means of the theological virtues, the enjoyment of the spiritual senses, and the ecstasy of rapture; for it has been purged, illumined and brought to perfection.In this way our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels when within it the following are found in an appropriate order: announcing, dictating, leading, ordering, strengthening, commanding, receiving, revealing, and anointing. These correspond to the nine choirs of angels. The first three of the foregoing levels in the human mind relate to nature; the next three relate to work; and the final three relate to grace. When it has attained these, the soul, by entering into itself, enters into the heavenly Jerusalem where, as it considers the choirs of angels, it sees in them the God who dwells in them and who works in all their operations.Therefore, Bernard says to Pope Eugene that "God loves in the Seraphim as charity; knows in the Cherubim as truth; sits in the Thrones as justice; reigns in the Dominations as majesty; rules in the Principalities as a guiding principle; protects in the Powers as salvation; is at work in the Virtues as strength; reveals in the Archangels as light; assists in the Angels as kindness." From all this, God is seen as all in all when we contemplate God in our minds where God dwells through the gifts of the most generous charity.2Notice in the passage I have quoted above that Bonaventure says our spirit must be "brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem," and that this requires it be "ordered hierarchically so that it can ascend upward." This serves as a transition into a rather odd pair of lists—one with nine words and the other with nine short, parallel phrases—that Bonaventure associates with the nine angelic choirs. These two lists of the nine choirs of angels do not, however, correspond exactly with one [End Page 584] another, for reasons I will explain below. And although these two lists of the nine ranks of angels in the angelic hierarchy take up just a few lines in Bonaventure's text, there is a lot of background information we will need to fill in to provide the necessary context to appreciate them. Indeed, as we will see, in this short passage, Bonaventure was able using the methods of the thirteenth-century sermo modernus style to reduce two monumental commentary traditions regarding the nine choirs of angels—one that... (shrink)

The love of God -- Faith in God -- The presence of God -- The Word of God.

This article opens up a dialogue between two strands of Luther research, which until now have had limited contact: a German strand interested in the influence of Luther’s mystical education on his Reformation theology, and a German and Anglo-American strand concerned with Luther’s doctrine of the three estates and understanding of politics, emphasising in particular God’s constant activity in our daily life. This article has a twofold aim: first, to undertake a historical reconstruction of the influence of mysticism on the (...) late Luther, and second to draw some systematic conclusions for our contemporary situation. The conclusion emphasises that the mystical tradition helps us to gain a better understanding of God’s manifold present activities, namely, because it helps us to perceive that God does not work through spoken words alone, but also through gestures, gazes and other embodied activities. (shrink)

In the present article I explain the role of the figure of “the last god” in Heidegger’s thought after the so-called Heideggerian “turn.” Drawing on Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), it is argued that the figure of “the last god” demonstrates Heidegger’s path to “being itself,” which I distinguish from the path to being presented by him in his earlier thought, mainly laid out in Being and Time. The figure of the last god is not to be understood as (...) a god in a religious framework, but rather as an explication of metaphysical radical thinking, rendered as Heidegger’s view of “divinity of the other beginning.” The notion of the last god is presented against the background of several of Heidegger’s ideas (as specifications) discussed in Contributions namely: disclosure of being itself, the renewal of metaphysics, the understanding of nothing/nothingness in relation to being, the problem of the “sign” (Wink) or the ontic and ontological differences. In a metaphorical form, Heidegger leads us – by means of the specifications given – towards the experience of the “last god,” whose “passage” is for Dasein the experience of being itself, is the event of being. In the text presented here, I will “lead” the reader along such “path.” At the same time, I will engage Heidegger’s language without neglecting its semantic “depth,” showing how Heidegger extracts hidden meanings from words. (shrink)

The Word of God refers not to how man has construed the notion of God, but rather God's Word as He himself speaks and lives it. As such, Word in this context represents the activity and personal mode attributed to God's Being. However, our notion of what the Word of God entails is limited to how it had been introduced to us, and it is this Word that had earned response through how we (...) had been able to hear, understand, and live by the said Word. As such, we do not look at the components individually, but instead adopt a point of view in which man and God are conceived together towards creative self-communication which is initiated by God's Word. It is through this Word that God is able to create and maintain the different surrounding realities and certain relations with Him may be established. (shrink)

Review of Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God , (Harvard University Press, 2013), 180 pages.

Muʻtazilite thinkers put forward the first systematic ideas for the relationship of essence and attributes, one of the most fundamental and complicated issues of Islamic theology, and comprehensive explanations to the question of God’s names. Although almost all the thinkers agreed on uṣūl al-khamsa, they differed in their approach to the principle of unity (tawḥīd). ‘Abbād b. Sulaymān, who lived in the period when these approaches emerged, is a scholar who reveals his distinctive view of God’s names and attributes in (...) which heslightly differs from his contemporaries such as Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allāf, Mu‘ammar b. ‘Abbād al-Sulamī and Ibrāhīm b. Sayyār al-Naẓẓām from the Basran Muʻtazila, by his extreme opinions on the Muʻtazilite principle of tawḥīd. He is one of thefour principle thinkers who presented original opinions in the early Basran Muʻtazila. Also he is the only known student of Hishâm al-Fuwaṭī and constitutes the last major circle of this tradition of knowledge that ended after him. This article aims to reveal the relationship between essence and attributes, the names and attributes of God in a holistic and systematic way in the thought of ‘Abbād b. Sulaymān. Unfortunately, his works have not survived to the present day and has not received the attention he deserves. Since his views were scattered in the classic books, our study was focused primarily on these classical sources. The modern literature was not ignored, either. The relevant records, analysis and criticism were re-contextualized. According to ‘Abbād b. Sulaymān, the view that “Allah is a thing” is the same with the view that “Allah is other (ghayr)”, he draws attention to a definite distinction between Allah and human beings. In his thought about the relationship between Allah and space, he rejects the idea that God could be related to space or anything spatial in order to refrain from an anthropomorphic conception of God. In the case of visibility (ru’ya) of Allah, he radically opposes the idea of “seeing Allah with the heart,” which was adopted by the majority of the Muʻtazila. He tries to solve the issue in his own terms by avoiding the terms essence (dhāt) and nafs in the relationship between God’s essence and His attributes. He reveals a unique classification of names and thus adopts the method of analogy. He does not accept essential attributes as the majority of the Mu’tazila did. On the other hand, he tacitly accepts that Allah’s names have their own meanings in a way that they are not merely words (aqvāl). By a true comparison or perfect analogy (fī ḥaqīqati’l-qıyās), while he rejects that God is ālim, qadīr etc., he tries to ground that human beings is ālim, qadīr etc. He does not admit that God is eternally samʻi and baṣīr. Without interpreting samʻi as His knowledge or baṣīr as His power, he accepts that each name has a distinctive functionality. He rejects the assumption that God knows conditionally. Regarding the issue of whether living beings are in the knowledge of Allah before they exist, it makes a dual distinction: “a direction that can be subject to the eternal knowledge” and “the direction in which it actually came to existence”. Because of his view of non-existent and creatures, Ibn al-Rāwandī and modern resources refer the view of the eternity of objects to him. However, when the relevant records are examined, it is seen that this claim is not valid. According to ‘Abbād, Allah is capable of creating possible things that he knows, although He does not create impossible things that he knows, even though He is capable of creating them potentially (bi-al-quwwa). Allah has not created evil, neither literally nor figuratively; so much so that He created only man, not faith and unbelief. It is not possible to talk about any good that he did not create. He defends the createdness of the Qur’an (Khalq al-Qur’ān) by saying that the Qur’ān was created of accidents. About God’s names, he states that God has the names indicating His relationship to the universe. He does not accept that in eternity He is a willing agent, creator etc. However, he also does not accept the otherwise. He emphasizes that creation is reserved only for Allah. On the other hand, according to him, Allah creates without secondary causes and thus does not create things for a specific purpose. Regarding the revealed attributes (or informative attributes, khabarī), he recites these expressions only when reading of the Quran.He states that these expressions should not be used for Allah under any circumstances. He avoids naming Allah as wakīl, kafīl, laṭīf, kā’in, fard and mutakallim as he says that the name wāḥid should be used only for praising Him. (shrink)

Esta reflexão pretende mostrar o discurso racional cartesiano na segunda prova da existência de Deus. Para tanto, Descartes se depara com uma pergunta central: qual a causa da existência da res cogitans que é finita e possui a ideia de infinito? A resposta é encontrada na desproporcionalidade ontológica entre o finito e o infinito. Essa desproporcionalidade é elucidada mediante dois conceitos: o princípio de causalidade que determina que a causa deve ser igual ou superior a coisa causada e o princípio (...) de criação contínua em que a causa que criou o ser não é menor do que aquela que o conserva em sua existência. As objeções destacadas no texto contra os argumentos cartesianos foram escolhas deliberadas que servem para elucidar a importância da racionalidade como fundamento para a prova da existência de Deus. A relação entre o entendimento e a liberdade, apresentada no texto sucintamente, justifica a impossibilidade da res cogitans ser causa de si mesma. Palavras-chave: Infinito; finito; causalidade; criação contínuaThis essay aims to show the rational Cartesian discourse on the second proof of God’s existence. In order to do so, Descartes faces a core question: which is the cause for the existence of the res cogitans that is finite in front of the idea of the infinite? The answer is found in the ontological disproportionality between the finite and the infinite. This disproportionality is elucidated through a couple crucial concepts: the principle of causality, which determines that the cause must be equal or superior to the caused thing and the principle of continuous creation, in which the cause that created the being is not inferior than the one that preserves its existence. The objections highlighted in the text against the Cartesian arguments were deliberated choices, to elucidate the relevance of rationality as the foundation for the proof of God’s existence. The relation between the understanding and the liberty, showed on the text even if succinctly, justifies the impossibility of the res cogitans to be the cause of itself. Key words: Infinite; finite; causality; creation continuous. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion debate what is meant by the word 'God,' in the conclusion of proofs of God's existence. If'God' is a proper name, there seems to be no good proof that a non-empirical entity has this name. If it is a common name, it seems that it must mean what classical theists mean by 'God' - and the existence of such a being is hard to prove. I defend a third possibility: that 'God' names a common name (...) that is the least prescriptive possible, while being sufficient to signify one kind of thing different from all others. (shrink)

Koran manuscripts that fit comfortably within the palm of one’s hand are known as early as the 10th century CE.For the sake of convenience, all dates will be given in the common era (CE) without further mention, and not in the Islamic or Hijra calendar. Their minute and sometimes barely legible script is clearly not intended for comfortable reading. Instead, recent scholarship suggests that the manuscripts were designed to be worn on the body like pendants or fastened to military flag (...) poles. This is corroborated by some preserved cases for these books which feature lugs to attach a cord or chain, but also their rare occurrence in contemporary textual sources. While pendant Korans in rectangular codex form exist, the majority were produced as codices in the shape of an octagonal prism, and others as scrolls that could be rolled up into a cylindrical form. Both resemble the shapes of similarly dated and pre-Islamic amulets or amulet cases. Building on recent scholarship, I will argue in this article that miniature or pendant Koran manuscripts were produced in similar forms and sizes because of comparable modes of usage, but not necessarily by a deliberate imitation of their amuletic ‘predecessors’. The manuscripts’ main functions did not require them to be read or even opened; some of their cases were in fact riveted shut. Accordingly, the haptic feedback they gave to their owners when they carried or touched them was not one of regular books but one of solid objects (like amulets) or even jewellery, which then reinforced this practice. (shrink)

«Palabra de Dios» no se dice sólo con referencia a las Sagradas Escrituras; Jesucristo es la Palabra de Dios por antonomasia frente a la cual las demás expresiones de Palabra de Dios, incluyendo la Biblia, lo serán en sentido análogo y dependiente. Esto significa que tras la hermenéutica bíblica cristiana subyace la fe cristológica, de tal modo que lo que se predica de la naturaleza de la Sagrada Escritura, Palabra de Dios puesta por escrito, sea consecuencia directa de lo que (...) se predica de Jesucristo, Palabra de Dios encarnada. Ello, además de incidir en la vida y la fe del creyente, tiene importantes implicaciones epistemológicas, metodológicas y práxicas para la hermenéutica bíblica hoy. «Word of God» doesn’t onlj refer to the Holj Scaptures; Jesús Christ is the Word of God par excellence against which all other expressions of God’s Word, including the Bible, are anahgous and dependent. This means that behind Christian biblical hermeneutics lies faith in Christ, so that what is preached on the nature of the Holj Scripture, the written Word of God, is directlj dependent on what is preached about Jesús Christ, the Word of God incarnate. This, besides influencing the ufe and faith of the beüever, has important epistemological, methodological and practical consequences for current biblical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Much of the contemporary discussion of religion seems to do away with the very possibility of revelation. In this article, I use Lacoste’s phenomenology of la parole to rethink a theology of revelation in terms of God’s personal self-giving in experience. After examining Lacoste’s views of the relationship between philosophy and theology, his liturgical reduction and what this means for an understanding of experience and knowledge, and his thought of la parole more broadly, I give critical consideration to how he (...) thinks the possibility of God’s address to humanity. Lacoste maintains that God’s presence in experience may be known through affection, and, indeed, that the word may so move us that we are able to recognise that presence. He uses the notion of self-evidence rather than the usual phenomenological category of evidence to evince the reasonableness of this response. I argue that while Lacoste accords due deference to a traditional understanding of revelation as the repetition or unfolding of a word addressed to us in the past, his thought also allows us to think revelation as a contemporary event, the hermeneutics of which allow us to know God in ways that are new. (shrink)