Distinction between Existence and Essence in Avicenna’s Ontology and Its Influence on Christian Philosophical Theology with a Focus on Aquinas’ Views

Michael Raposa has offered his readers a compelling method for philosophical theology in his Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning—one that is steeped in the Peircean logic of relations, pragmaticistically oriented toward action, and advances a “semiotic consciousness” (to use a John Deely-ism). My task in this essay is to further query Raposa in order to learn the extent to which it might be compatible with the aims of Christian theology, specifically a form of which I call “semiotic theology.” Given theosemiotic's and semiotic theology's common conceptual grounding in Peirce's philosophy, there is, ostensibly, considerable promise; however, there are certain ambiguities that remain in Theosemiotic that require explanation, especially those which are rooted in the claim that it may make ground in theological inquiry “without any practical or strategic purpose.”1 I am hoping that Raposa might then clarify his project so that a confessional, philosophical theologian like myself might better understand its relation to semiotic theology.Toward that end, I have identified three specific subject matters about which I would be grateful for further elucidation: (1), the extent to which theosemiotic could endorse a kataphatic theology (or any specific theology at all), which would permit determining “God” in certain important respects; (2), whether theosemiotic would welcome any doctrinal claims about humanity's final end that might sharpen its emphasis on religious action; and, (3), whether semiotic complementarity is able to maintain the distinctions of lived religious traditions for preserving unified, communal practices. Having these questions answered, it would go a long way toward understanding how, and in what senses, theosemiotic might become partner with semiotic theology. But, before exploring these matters in depth, I will briefly address the character of semiotic theology.Semiotic theology may be described as an effort to revise Christian theology into a form of discourse that operates upon a semiotic rationale. It attempts to take the history of biblical, theological, and doctrinal reasoning and critically judge and reinterpret its conclusions according to a framework that embraces the paradigm-shifting work of semiotics, especially Peirce's and the community of inquiry that has followed in his footsteps. I believe this is important for Christian theological discourse to advance beyond various impasses that have been created by centuries of misplaced philosophical and theological bases (e.g., substance metaphysics; the division between nature and supernature; conception/perception dichotomies; and so on) and am personally committed to a project that seeks to rethink what a confessional theology should look like given the insights of semiotics.To give some concreteness to this project, my own attempt to describe the foundational structures of semiotic theology—insofar as it concerns the reasonableness of speaking about a meaningful relation between God and creatures—was offered in my recent book, The Analogy of Signs: Rethinking Theological Language with Charles S. Peirce.2 Therein, I argued that discourse about God in the Christian tradition is untenable if framed as sufficiently described through an analogy of being (i.e., an ontological principle establishing a connection between God's being and the creature's being), grammatical analogy (i.e., a linguistic practice that connects God and creatures through an expressive performance), or analogy of faith (i.e., a relation that enables the creature's acts of free obedience to God in imitation of Jesus Christ). That is because these views reflect a dependence upon deceiving metaphysical dualisms, largely derived from classical Greek philosophy. For instance, the distinction between matter and form has done much to create an unbridgeable gap between divine and human realms. It holds that, whereas form is the basis of the cognizable, matter is merely the unintelligible stuff that receives a form to be cognized. Such a distinction effectively negates any possible continuity between God and creatures when theologians presume God is pure form and human conception is inextricably based in sense experience mediated by material stuff (as in, say, Aquinas). On such a set of views, speech about God can only be non-sense, for no association of ideas to conceptual objects can be allowed to be determinately meaningful for an object totally different from what is conceived.By my lights, the only sufficient way to enable theological discourse is to found it on an analogy of signs: God and creatures are commensurate in the action of signs, for both are meaningful through the univocity of semiosis—that is, the triadic relational process wherein representamen, object, and interpretant interact. The pivotal, confessional component in such an account is establishing Jesus Christ at the intersection of the analogy of signs’ formula: Jesus the God-Man demonstrates by his life the compatibility of divine and human signs. So, in Jesus is disclosed the reality of semiotic univocity, and divinity is determinately knowable and interpretable in his person as a result. Any metaphysical claim is contingent upon that semiotic univocity, but inferences made from Jesus’ sign activity must be analogical insofar as those signs are abstracted and rendered generalizable with our own. Yet, whatever inequality those signs might express in their constant fluctuation (whether through growth or atrophy), the univocity of semiosis establishes their core commensurability.Having recognized the semiotic touchstone for Christian theology, the rest of it must be based on this prolegomenal framing for the discourse to be intelligible. In so doing, all doctrinal claims must be made semiotically interpretable—that is, they must be subject to semiosis's triadic relation, and potentially instantiated within a taxonomy of signs (which is not to say entirely reducible to any particular sign-type; but, rather, could be articulated as belonging among sign-types). The theologian cannot merely jump from a study of what appears in experience (i.e., phenomenology) to the most general categories of reality (i.e., metaphysics), but must mediate them with semiotic (including, in Peircean terms, both the study of signs proper in speculative grammar, and the study of arguments in logical critic). The upshot is that—to borrow a metaphor from Peirce—all religious reflection must have first come through the gate of semiotic, or be “arrested as unauthorized by reason.”3 Whether that concerns theology proper, protology, anthropology, Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, etc., all theological expressions stand on the solid rock of semiosis. Conversely, putative religious or theological symbols that are incompatible with semiotic classification are useless at best, and—under the guise of meaningful expression—destructive at worst; in either case, a theologian should have nothing to do with such symbols.Thus, the theologian must not be simply aware of the discipline of semiotic, or have some speculations about how certain doctrines can be interpreted along semiotic lines; no, the theologian must be a semiotician. If Christians might generally agree with Paul Tillich that theology is “the methodological interpretation of the contents of Christian faith,”4 interpretation must here be understood as the practice of rendering judgments intelligible through sign-action and its specific classes. A theologian who cannot regard her claims with semiotic consciousness should be regarded with the utmost suspicion. This is not to say that her claims populate a semantic wasteland, but rather to advocate the suspension of judgment over their theological veracity until the claims are semiotically coherent.So much, then, for a précis of semiotic theology. What I hope has been made clear is the following about it: (1), operating within the Christian theological tradition, it does not seek to do away with that tradition's sources of theological truth, but to primarily reinterpret its contents while excising those elements that play no semiotic role;5 (2), it takes the insights of semiotics to be crucial to structuring theological discourse, both for establishing its intelligibility and acting as a judge over its constructive claims; and, (3), it understands the theologian as semiotician: as reasonably reflecting upon Christian revelation in semiotic consciousness.To turn to the main objective of this essay, my question for Raposa is this: to what extent may theosemiotic become a partner with semiotic theology in its efforts to rethink and reframe Christian theology? Surely, Raposa's goals for his book are not identical with mine for semiotic theology; however, our common interest in theology that is constructive, spiritually edifying, important for the health of living religious traditions, and keen to read the universe of signs purposively, seems to go some way to prepare a potential convergence and, perhaps, symbiotic relationship between the two. It is this potential that intrigues me about Raposa's project, and so I will begin by questioning him on theosemiotic's ultimate referent.“God, of course,” one might reply. But, Raposa continually reminds his reader about the imprecision of the idea of God, and this leads me to ask about what sort of claims can be applied to the object of religious thought and devotion. He writes that theosemiotic “embrac[es] a form of apophatic or negative theology, a theology of mystery,” and this is informed by Peirce's logic of vagueness, which consequently must hold that “all talk about God must be necessarily and exceedingly vague” (TS, 7). Much of chapter 3 explores what this means.Before proceeding, though, it is worth spending a moment to consider Peirce's logic of vagueness, for it will be important as the paper proceeds, and Raposa himself does not offer an explicit description of its logical function in the book. Peirce takes vagueness to be a property of signs, those gears upon which logic turns: “a sign that is objectively indeterminate in any respect is objectively vague in so far as it reserves further determination to be made in some other conceivable sign, or at least does not appoint the interpreter as its deputy in this office” (EP 2:351, 1905). In other words, a vague sign requires some other sign—and not the interpreter of the vague sign—to either affirm or deny some character or predicate to the vague sign. Until that other sign is presented, the principle of contradiction “does not apply”6 to that character or predicate. Thus, “That pen is mine . . . ” allows the recipient of the statement to neither affirm nor deny the pen is the black, blue, or red one in a group; rather, the speaker (or something else) would need to offer some other sign to further determine the vague sign (say, “ . . . the black one,” “ . . . not the black one,” or by gesturing in the black one's vicinity). We should notice three things here: (1), the initially vague sign itself is not entirely indeterminate of character: it is a statement about a known kind of object in some proximate space belonging to the utterer; (2), the recipient may still be successful in guessing the correct pen without the “other conceivable sign,” but nothing in the vague sign by itself will establish the correctness of the guess made; and, (3), only the other sign—the statement or gesture, in this case—is privileged to determine positively or negatively the character or predicate for the recipient. Thus, (a), the usefulness of vague signs is contingent upon the respects in which it is determinate; (b), vague signs will not affirm or deny the truth of further determinations made by the interpreter; and, (c), vague signs require another sign, not vague in the same respect, to further determine them.As I said, Raposa makes much use of the notion of vagueness, which for him seems to amount to “determining a range of possible meanings [wherein a symbol's] interpretation [is] left indeterminate to some extent and in certain respects” (4). But, compared to what was just said above, this presents an incomplete picture: specifically, it leaves out the interpreter's limitations in further determining the vague sign or symbol, and the requirement for the “other conceivable sign” to accomplish that task. It is not surprising that Theosemiotic presents this partial view of vagueness, since it is being used with an eye toward one of its particular aspects: it opens up the door to many possible meanings for the idea of God without affirming or denying their truth status. But the result is that the other side of the coin of vagueness, the consequent loss of particular meaning, is treated with less scrutiny. The upshot is that Raposa seems more concerned to avoid “idolatry,” and less “vacuous nonsense” (85). On the one hand, he says, theosemiotic need not hold to the “personal deity” of theism in order to pursue “genuine theological reflection” (TS, 75–76). Of course, following Peirce's lead in the “Neglected Argument,” Raposa will claim that some classical idea of God as creator is a legitimate and fruitful hypothesis; however, the idea that follows from that argument is itself quite indeterminate, and holding to its conclusion is no requirement for belonging within theosemiotic's bounds (hence the inclusion of Buddhism, Daoism, and contemporary forms of religious naturalism within its parameters [e.g., 76, 85, 218, 252]). Indeed, theosemiotic distinguishes itself by marking “the limits of semiosis,” and upholds the notion that takes ultimate reality to be “no-determinate-thing” (85), and potentially the totally different “ground of being” of all determinate things, which therefore would “not possess consciousness, have purposes, or display agency” (90).But, on the other hand, closing the door against a “collapse into meaninglessness” is Scotus's view of the univocity of being—the claim that ultimate reality and contingent reality share in a single sense of “being.” But, given theosemiotic's brand of apophaticism mentioned above, this looks to be a vacuous affirmation if not joined with some semiotic sense of similarity; alone, it is a distinction from non-univocity without a difference. The appeal to continuity between ultimate and contingent reality needs to be demonstrated in some specific way. Raposa is not ignorant of this problem: he writes that the apophaticism espoused by theosemiotic must be a qualified one, wherein the “extreme vagueness of [“God”] does not rule out the critique of various ways in which it might be interpreted, nor does it suggest that in the matter of such interpretation ‘anything goes’” (95). But, the explanation for this qualification leaves much unanswered.Raposa claims, with Peirce, that some kind of anthropomorphism is appropriate for understanding “God,” yet it is likely also a term more capaciously inclusive of senses than even “love” (TS, 87). He also says that God is “living” and “personal” as love's perfect object (95), but it is difficult to see how those terms could be made meaningful by theosemiotic, given how capacious the concept of ultimate reality may be within it. It is not satisfying to be told the idea is one that is instinctual (88). Instinct is that “inherited [or acquired] disposition” representing “some general principle working in a man's nature to determine how he will act” (CP 2.170, 1902); the judgments resulting from instinct are vague, yes, but not overly indeterminate, as evidenced by the fact that they lead one to act in general ways (“Fight back against an attacker!”), which then may be refined upon receiving some other information (e.g., “Strike the bear in the eyes!”).But, in the case of the idea of God, one sees a double challenge in its necessary and exceeding vagueness: first, discerning the particular character that may be known of its idea that leads us to act; and, second, securing the character and authority of the “other conceivable sign” that may affect the interpreter's thought and action about that vague idea. I am not so sure that theosemiotic meets this challenge adequately. In one case Raposa writes that, though “divine reality” cannot be “perfectly captured in signs,” these signs can somehow be “seized by” that reality to “get itself thought” (TS, 138). But, however that reality may “crus[h] our symbols, and then bring new ones to life in the semiotic debris,” we still trade in semiotic vocabulary that forms its residue—so, what is therein discerned about divine reality, if only so slight, fleeting, or fragmentary? do the new symbols have any authority in the for truth over those that In another case, he says that the God of Peirce's theosemiotic is mediated by signs,” but this seems to any if those signs “all of the signs that it is possible for one to Surely, if any particular is to make then some signs must be at of to But, how would one be able to judge their if ultimate reality is just as by nothing in particular as in a specific would be to the If theosemiotic might be used to a notion that God is if and so on (CP then it is to see how it could Raposa seems to suggest it the of (TS, or It would be one to say that theosemiotic makes no claims one way or the other about but such a of ideas would not for a philosophical theology that Raposa to So, to the double what does such an idea of God that is to such and what meaningful signs vague may to the vague idea to make it more determinate in a way that the interpreter's without being some to the idea of God or some authority to certain signs to make that idea more I am of what can be said for on these in the and the of wherein is the sort of inquiry that Peirce's it is not clear what about a in God is to one to The object of that form of inquiry is understood to have an in the of the and then to lead one into in with the (TS, But, what sort of about the object are that should then have this Surely, this must be more than the in a (EP what about the (TS, would suggest authority over my and practical What is there to in the in to simply does one for the being of because of it to questions like I to see how theosemiotic could its object of or what it could be I that being framed as a method many to itself into the of indeterminate and Peirce's anthropomorphism will not the to it into the the resulting vagueness both intelligible speech about the object of religious and other religious that would further determine the object signs may offer . . . potential of (TS, but that potential has to be other signs to something specific for there is nothing to lead our thought or action in one way or the I do not see how theosemiotic has the apophaticism and with respect to its kataphatic elements in this philosophical theology, then, I am to say that theosemiotic's God is it rather, just and Such a conclusion is, of course, to be incompatible with semiotic theology, which with Christian theology and other living religious traditions a to speaking reasonably about God as certain (i.e., determining and not (i.e., determining as (TS, because they are or that are of something general or living such as on a are things with of specific semiotic This seems to be for a should not be to some abstracted (i.e., or (i.e., but should be regarded as a wherein of through as Raposa the as living can only be so understood for this of is some through the and for some But it is this more view that I about when one the what is this specifically, what are the toward which theosemiotic the to seems to be a question for many of the book, but I will three to here: and the first, Raposa out the notion of as one that is to the one and that does so without any will not to what or but to whatever to just as it (TS, But what seems from this of is what one's in its should for the of the On the most we can say, as Raposa that it would the however, to that as the end of is to express something with use for What is the that is to be and that toward which one how is that with what is in the Peirce says in that seeks out the of in the it into and makes it for sees the as an of itself (EP Thus, seems to be for some in the hope of the by a (TS, something But the question what is the or of the that one might seek to into its is its own If and are in the way that Peirce seems to then what can we about them that makes them Raposa seems to be aware of concerns like He of as a as a in between (TS, The described is one made out of for the of that sign presents to one who is to and to But, while this might describe a of and in the it does not what the object of is other than that which to offer meaning, which could be does it address that for which one to be a for the of seems to be important for marking a between the that Raposa one Peirce's and the religious naturalism that would that on the one hand, for God as the vague of all is rather on the other hand, the religious of a for being as such at a vague of there that would make this of Peirce's theism more if a of is what a person should come to what is that to be If is to the of a theology as then what about that and for instance, the of the which Raposa upon at various for my (i.e., do I and do or just of what might amount to a in theosemiotic If in what regard to one of the of chapter we another of the least the form about which Raposa a to to through some (TS, Theosemiotic embraces the notion that theology is a that the religious of the in which we (e.g., and the one in it (e.g., But, the character of the to be in such is Raposa to or but what do these He on the of various forms of action that such a as as but the aims of these remain what do the and what is If the of is certain of the to to which ones should we and If theology toward what is the character of a better be I neither seek from Raposa that his will not nor some . . . in it is about the that might be offered about these to be to the in the of as would any should this be If there is some of (TS, that is for by a religious it seems important to what that if it is as a sort of (as in the of in to a of and advance into divine (say, the within of the to these would turn out to be quite those Thus, it makes sense that theosemiotic to take a more on the to This up against the first matter if the subject of is the as living and some of its growth is the of then we still must for what does one we into the of what an may and what sort of is within theosemiotic's Raposa reminds his reader that will some of the question is, what as He does that by theosemiotic must be and so as to what “all would (TS, I am not so certain that the final on would be so vague, but, at any the of ideas from and Peirce does not to bring to any clear rule for to the reader does to become something more than when a of it is the for to be to not own What are for that are to consider the to or believe is the object of the and theosemiotic to some and of these ideas to a concept for practical action, and that can toward Raposa at one how far the concept of community can without if and with I whether theosemiotic has itself been by vagueness so that it cannot these questions about of in chapter first seems to us in a Raposa writes that is act of (TS, as his is of love's relational not its or it is difficult to the and of what is one what is the of and in what sense are these done in “a certain in love's display as as and without a

The paper deals with relations between philosophy of religion, theology and phenomenology within the changeable structure of scientific knowledge. It is religion itself as religious life in its immediacy and almost physical reality (without any unnecessary 'super' structures) rather than philosophical or theological knowledge as knowledge of religion, which becomes the subject matter of phenomenology. With this immediacy (the non-metaphysic and non-theoretical nature), potentialities of the scientific phenomenological approach are preserved because life does not remain indifferent to questions of the subject who cognizes and is open to reflexion, questions, doubts and research. Phenomenology is regarded as via media, tsar's way, which combines potentialities of philosophy of religion and Christian theology. Philosophy of religion remains external and neutral to the processes, Christian theology being internal and involved in the latter. Phenomenology is used to make Christian theology at least partially accessible for philosophy of religion. In this way the role of phenomenology is intermediary and integrative. In propinquity to philosophy of religion and theology, phenomenology which serves both and enriches itself through both can be reasonably called 'vіa medіa'.

150 BOOK REVIEWS Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology. Edited by SCOTT MACDONALD. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. Pp. 328. $43.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. The quality of these (mostly) new essays and the modest price make Being and Goodness recommendable, almost as two anthologies in one. This ambitious collection has a split personality: careful interpretations of medieval texts (in part I) are yoked to intriguing contributions to contemporary discussions in metaethics and philosophical theology (in part II). Four essays by Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzman, or both, appear to he the heart and inspiration of this anthology. Their contributions are about 40% of the length of the volume; and their collaborative essay, "Being and Goodness" (the only reprinted essay included), pro· vides both the collection's title and its theme, which is to enrich con· temporary debate in philosophical theology and virtue ethics by :mining the resources of the ancient and medieval tradition that " the terms ' being ' and 'goodness ' are the same in reference, differing only in sense" 99). Other contributors (Scott MacDonald, Jan A. Aertsen, Ralph Mc· Inerny, Mark D. Jordan, and Jorge J. E. Gracia analyze medieval texts in the tradition from Augustine to Suarez; William E. Mann and Thomas V. Morris contribute essays in philosophical theology) do not integrate historical analysis and original speculation. The editor frames this collection with a fine introductory survey of the being/goodness tradition from Plato through the Middle Ages, a considerable (13 page) bibliography, and a new translation of Boethi.us's De hebdomadibus, which was an influential text in the tradition. There are two distinct ways of conceiving the necessary connection between being and goodness. The " participation approach," which sees being as metaphysically and causally dependent upon goodness, tends to a theological and relational account of goodness: creatures are good only because they are created by God, who is goodness in itself. The "nature approach," on the other hand, derives from Aristotle and tends to neither a theological nor a relational account of goodness. It identifies the good with the end, or telos of a being: an existing thing is good when it fully actualizes its intrinsic nature. The tension he0 tween these approaches can lead to confusion or to fruitful synthesis. For example, Albert the Great took up contradictory accounts of goodness in part hecause he failed to distinguish the two senses of " end " {as intention and as nature) characteristic of the pm:ticipation and BOOK REVIEWS 151 nature approaches, according to MacDonald's "The Metaphysics of Goodness and the Doctrine of the Transcendentals." On the other hand, Aquinas successfully combined approaches in his exploration of the tension between the views that ' good ' is a common name applicable to all beings (Aristotelian) and that only God is 'good' (Platonic), argues Jan A. Aer·tsen in "Good as Transcendental and the Transcendence of the Good." Stump and Kretzmann begin " Being and Goodness " with a lucid summary and defense of Aquinas's metaethics as a worthy contender for " the metaethical foundation that recent virtue-centered morality has been criticized for lacking" (p. 98). Aquinas's view that goodness is a property which supervenes upon a natural property, the actualiza· tion of the individual's " substantial form," follows the nature approach. Their derivation of Aquinas's normative ethical rules from this metae· thics responds to critics who claim virtue-theoretical approaches do not illumine the role of deontological rules in morality. They explore implications for theories of religious ethics (the divine-command theory is avoided) and certain solutions to the problem of evil; these explorations are relatively undeveloped, but intriguing. Stump builds on this collaborative essay in her "Aquinas on Faith and Goodness" when she argues that Aquinas's being/goodness meta· ethics explains why God would want humans to accept propositions about God on faith rather than knowledge, why having faith is meri· torious, and why epistemological weighing of evidence plays only a minor part in adult religious conversions. Stump's conclusions are based on her thesis that when one assents to the proposition " God exists" on faith, one is "metaphysically justified" in this belief because one hungers for perfect goodness, perfect...

In discussing philosophical theology (PT) before and after Kant there are at least five stories to be considered. They all start with the theistic project, i.e. natural and rational theology as purely philosophical accounts of God based on grounds independent of Christian theology and the traditions of faith. They all run into the fundamental crises of philosophical theism in the wake of Hume and Kant. Critical PT (CPT) is Kant's constructive alternative to DPT after the collapse of natural and rational theology. In many versions, PT has been practised as the mistaken attempt to provide religious orientation itself, a better, more comprehensive, more rational, better justified orientation than a particular religious tradition of lived and practised communal faith is allegedly supposed to do. That is true of the foundationalist versions of philosophical theism (DPT), subjective transcendentalism (IPT), realist panentheism (RPT) as well as the directive versions of philosophy of religion. Keywords: Christian theology; critical philosophical theology (CPT); Kant; philosophical theism; philosophy of religion; realist panentheism (RPT); subjective transcendentalism

This article examines the Islamic metaphysical tradition in the context of medieval thinking. The main goal of the study is to identify the role of Islamic metaphysics in the space of medieval religious and philosophical discourse. The scientific significance of the article is to prove how close the metaphysics of the Muslim Middle Ages was to the true understanding of the universe. The practical significance of the article is reflected in the fact that to this day representatives of Islamic traditional theology use the achievements of the Eastern Peripatetics in describing the basic laws of the worldview. The article also uses two methods: comparative analysis and synthesis of the historical and logical. In the article, the authors highlight three main results: (1) compared to other metaphysical layers, Islamic metaphysics is unique, (2) Islamic metaphysics is not limited to Islamic philosophical theology, (3) Islamic metaphysics still exerts a huge influence on religious ontology. The main value of this work is its practical applicability. The conclusions and ideas of this study can be applied both in the social life of the Muslim world and within the framework of various disciplines of the socio-humanitarian direction. Also, the use of materials from this study will help in a deeper understanding of the methodological ontology of Arabic-language philosophy of the Middle Ages. This, in turn, significantly expands the application of metaphysics both in the historical-philosophical perspective and in the context of modern philosophy. Keywords: metaphysics, religious thinking, philosophical discourse, the Middle Ages, rationalism.

One of the merits of John Cobb’s chapter is his deft and fair-minded delimitation of what, for his purposes, is to be understood by ‘process thought’. Accepting his delimitation, which I have no trouble doing, I would have to say that, if I am a ‘process thinker’ at all, I belong to the same group of such thinkers to which he identifies himself as belonging, that is, those who associate themselves with the thought of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne in their concern with cosmology and metaphysics; who have a particular interest in religion, and thus in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology; and who pursue this interest, not as professional philosophers, but because of their calling as Christian theologians. It will hardly seem strange, then, if I also confess to sharing, to a considerable extent, the same point of view that Cobb represents in his chapter.

The thought of Albert the Great belongs to an important stage in the development of scholastics of the 13th century, which was marked by a reinterpretation and adaptation of the ancient and Arab philosophical heritage with its subsequent integration into Christian theology. The article examines some aspects of this process in relation to Albert’s philosophical theology (in particular, in relation to his attempts to synthesize on the basis of various sources a certain general scheme of proving the existence of God), and for this purpose, both his philosophical commentaries on the Aristotle’s treatises and his “Summa theologiae” are considered. As a result, firstly, it was shown that contrary to the widespread modern interpretation, according to which scholastic proofs of the existence of God were considered by their authors not as proofs properly, but as a kind of quasirational “structuring of faith”, Albert considered them as universally valid arguments going back to philosophical exercises of ancient pagan thinkers. Secondly, it was identified the sources of Albert’s philosophical and theological argumentation and the difficulties he encountered when combining various historical approaches to proving the existence of God (in particular, different approaches to proof “from motion” and different interpretations of the Aristotle’s first mover from eighth book of “Physics”). Finally, thirdly, it was assumed that, although the fundamental features of Albert's philosophical theology are largely determined by the essentially eclectic scholastic discourse of the first half of the 13th century, it nevertheless became the basis on which later innovative systems (such as the philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas) were build.

BOOK REVIEWS 103 rialistic" atheism, the other with the "humanistic" one. Arvon adopts the historical approach and shows that, although materialistic ideas can br traced back to antiquity, the current meaning of "materialism" is due to I~scartes and the line of thought he initiated. After a lucid discussion of the leading ideas of the materialistic thinkers of ancient Grcece and Rome, he turns to the various forms which materialism and its attendant atheism have taken in France, England, and Germany. He clearly points out the differences in the intellectual climates of these countries and the effects they had on the development of philosophical thought. The basic ideas of the various philosophers are presented in concise form supported by relevant quotations from their writings. The second part is devoted to the study of "humanistic" atheism which had its origin in German idealistic philosophy. Here he analyzes the Marxian, Nietzschean, and existentialist varieties and points out that the latter type, far from becoming a closed system as did the previous forms of materialism and atheism, opens up new horizons on the basis of humanely richer and decpcr experiences and therefore is itself of religious significance. Mr. Arvon's book is a mine of information about a problem that is often wilfully misunderstood . HERBERT V. C~.rEN'FI~R University of Saskatchewan An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. By J. L. Goodall. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1966; New York: Humanities Press, 1967) The title of this book is seriously misleading. L L Goodall introduces Christian apologetics or philosophical theology, not the philosophy of religion. He intends to fulfill the need "for a provisional presentation of the Christian position, a mapping of the ground on which the Christian may stand and remain intellectually respectable" (p. vii). He describes his considerations of concepts such as soul, God, Trinity, and prayer as an attempt "to justify their use, and relate them in a comprehensive system of thought" (p. 145). This is clearly an enterprise in Christian philosophical theology, not in the philosophy of religion. One cannot pretend any longer that the distinction between philosophical theology and philosophy of religion is vague.~ There is no excuse for the confusion in the rifle, a confusion which betrays an unfortunate religious parochialism. This is a shin volume, intended for beginners in philosophical theology. It is refreshingly well written, and free from the flat self-conscious jargon that marks too many introductory texts) The author has grasped the nettle of the problems posed by traditional Christian concepts and has resisted the temptation to reduce the content of the Christian faith in order to commend it. He does not merely review the various classical and modern approaches to his discipline; rather he argues his own position. This kind of introduction is greatly preferable to the preliminary reviews of what the great minds have said on the subject, which sometimes serve as introductions. Since it is an introduction which argues a position, we must estimate the success of the argument. Tbe first three chapters are devoted to a review of linguistic analysis and of the answers to its strictures against religious language submitted by Christian apologists such as I. T. Ramsey, I. N. Crombie and Basil Mitchell. Goodall's debt to Ramsey is great (p. viii),s and the constructive part of his argument is founded on Ramsey's demonstration that the 1 Cf. Frederick Ferr6, Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion (New York: Scribners, 1967), pp. 9-11. Ferr6 describes philosophy of religion as a non-religious examination of religion--a "metareligious" study--while philosophical theology is a religious undertaking, "a species contained within the theological genus." Cf. J. Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Scribners, 1966), pp. 2, 35, and God Talk (New York: Harpers, 1967), p. 121, who substantiates Ferrd's distinction and explains the function of philosophical theology more fully than Ferrd. s E.g., FerrY, p. 56: "Lucid, beginning-level, treatments of the definition-making enterprise .... " 8 Religious Language (New York: Macmillan, 1957). 104 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY logical oddness of religious language corresponds to the oddness of actual religious experience , which is an experience of a situation of disclosure and commitment, usually within the...

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Analytic theology is a thriving research program at the intersection of theology and analytic philosophy. Prior to Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea’s launch of “analytic theology” in 2009, the discipline functioned under the moniker “philosophical theology.” Considerable ink has been spilled on what is analytic theology in the past decade, and most recently by William Wood (2021). Some theologians (e.g., Abraham 2009) have argued that it is systematic theology while others (e.g., Coakley 2013) have been content to remain in a family resemblance class rooted in philosophical theology. At the same time, analytic theology has welcomed Christian philosophers (e.g., Beall 2021) who have migrated into Christian doctrine via philosophy of religion. These philosophers are not systematic theologians, but, rather, philosophical theologians. This essay analyzes the relation between analytic theology, philosophical theology, and philosophy by examining their starting points and how they perceive and access truth, and then proposes a spectrum to graph their overlapping zones of research. I conclude that philosophical theology stands at the heart of the disciplines and thus remains an appropriate term for analytic theologians and Christian philosophers working somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

In the 20th century, a particularly acrimonious relationship took place between analytic philosophy on the one side and Christian theology on the other. Analytic philosophy has been the dominant mode of philosophical engagement in the English‐speaking world. After a long period of hostility or apathy toward religion, it has surged back to the investigation of religious, theological, ethical, and metaphysical questions. The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century witnessed the explosion of Christian analytic philosophical theology and its exploration of standard doctrines of the Christian faith. I survey the history and nature of analytic philosophy and explore arguments from Christian theology against analytic philosophy to unearth sources of the division between the two. Several positive appropriations of analytic thought are discussed, including analytic philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, postliberalism, process theology, speech–act theory, and proper functionalism. Finally, I briefly propose a mode of future engagement between the two disciplines and will consider the program of analytic theology.

The sections on the questions of medieval influence in the five parts of this commentary have touched upon exceedingly diverse topics-from hierarchy and allegory through the choirs of angels and the aesthetics of Gothic architecture to liturgical hermeneutics, philosophical theology, and medieval mysticism. In adding to my own commentary these five sketches about the medieval uses of the Areopagite's works, my primary intention has been simply to introduce some of the material and to assemble bibliography on those points. Perhaps it is rash to venture into dialogue with experts in so many historical and theological specialities, scholars who can and should point out errors or misleading generalizations. Nevertheless, the Dionysian corpus and its legacy simply transcend modem specializations, and its readers must do so as well if they wish to appreciate its integrated character and multifaceted influence. The encyclopedic interests of medieval thinkers like Albert the Great point the way. "Study everything," said Hugh of Saint-Victor-and everything to do with the Dionysian corpus is worth studying. In addition to tracing the varying uses of the individual treatises on specific topics, as attempted above, the story of the Dionysian legacy in the Middle Ages could also be told as a unified narrative about the corpus as a whole, at least until the thirteenth century. Since few Western readers were able or courageous enough to examine Dionysius in the original Greek, most of them sought the help of the translations, paraphrases, comments, and commentaries that gradually constituted the Latin Dionysian corpus. At each stage a stratum of interpretation was added, which then influenced the next layer. Thus the influence of the medieval Dionysius cannot be appreciated from the Greek text and a modem translation, but only from these Latin translations and aids. Since many of them are not yet carefully edited or widely available, the full picture of Dionysian influence requires much more work.

In this article, it is argued that Hans Albert's criticism of Christianity is stronger than the logical positivist as well as the classical, e.g. Feuerbachian, criticism, since it rests on less questionable presuppositions. Other than those other forms of criticism, it does not presuppose an ontology or epistemology (respectively methodology) which is a priori hostile towards Christianity. Its strong feature is that it appears to be ontologically and epistemologically neutral, or, rather, relatively neutral compared to those other forms of criticism. Yet, closer scrutiny of Christian ontology reveals that it might imply epistemological and methodological consequences which are a priori ruled out by Albert's methodology. For example, it is well conceivable that Christian ontology implies a particular kind of cognitive certainty which is incompatible with Albert's insistence on a principled fallibilism. Thus, the feature which makes Albert's criticism stick out from those other forms of criticism, i.e., its relative neutrality, is jeopardized. In particular, the argument proceeds as following: In ch. I, the theoretical background of Popperianism is provided, in ch. II, Albert's application of Popperianism for the purposes of criticizing Christian (existentialist) theology is sketched, in ch. III, the strength of Albert's criticism is compared with the strength of the logical positivist and classical criticisms of Christianity, in ch. IV, Albert's criticism is criticized with the help of two theological tenets, in ch. V, an alternative to Albert's principled fallibilism is sketched that retains the idea of criticism without being a priori hostile to theology, in ch. VI, reasons are provided as to why Albert's criticism should not be discarded off-hand from the theological side.

One of the central claims advanced in my book on Theosemiotic is that human experience consists of continuous acts of reading and rereading. The “texts” under examination can be as massive as the “book of nature” conceived in the broadest possible terms or as determinate as another human being with whom I am now engaged in conversation. In the remarks to follow, my reading is of the latter type, although my “conversation” with the five individuals who represent my interlocutors here is mediated by the written texts that constitute their critical reviews of my book. I have had the opportunity since receiving them to read and then reread them several times. The brief reply that is presented in these pages only serves to initiate what I hope can be a sustained dialogue with these individuals, concerning philosophical and theological issues that I clearly regard as being of the utmost significance.Given such a hope, my purpose has been to discern and then select for discussion a particular issue with which each review essay seems to be preoccupied, rather than responding to my interlocutors’ comments in all their detail. This is only a general rule of thumb for how I intend to proceed; obviously one topic can be so closely related to another that any adequate engagement with the former requires that the latter cannot be completely ignored. Nevertheless, my discussion is organized around certain clearly identifiable foci of concern that emerged as prominent early on and then shaped my reading experience of each of these reviews. Since the journal's editor has also invested considerable care in making the decision about how to arrange the five review essays in this issue, my reply will correspond to the order in which they are presented, with a few additional comments attached at the end in the form of a general (albeit quite “slender”) conclusion.I should observe at the outset of these remarks that each of my reviewers is himself the author of an important book devoted to exploring the significance of Peirce's philosophy for understanding religion. Brandon Daniel-Hughes, my first interlocutor, has developed an imaginative and pragmatically useful account of how religious communities can be conceived as embodied or “inhabited experiments.”1 I had the opportunity to review the manuscript for that book prior to its publication, but the conversation that continues here has roots that run even deeper, in exchanges concerning a series of scholarly presentations and journal articles that paved the way for this book's arrival in 2018.No author could hope for a more thoughtful and perceptive reading of his work than the one that Daniel-Hughes supplies.2 He recognizes clearly that I am preoccupied in my book with the task of complicating the standard account of Peirce's theory of inquiry. This requires decentering certain articles published by Peirce in the 1870s—typically included on any short list of his most important and best-known writings—while simultaneously shifting attention toward some later essays written early in the next century. Most notable among the latter, at least for my purposes in the book, is Peirce's 1908 article, “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God.” In my evaluation, it embodies one of the most useful summaries of his mature theory of inquiry, a philosophical position that by 1908 Peirce had chosen to distinguish from certain others (most notably, the “pragmatism” of William James and the “humanism” of F. C. S. Schiller) by identifying it as “pragmaticism.”It would be impossible for me to summarize effectively here the argument in my book as it was developed for various purposes. Suffice it to say that, on the standard account, inquiry for Peirce is a response to the irritation of a doubt that has arisen to unsettle some hitherto established belief; recovering the lost security that such a belief provided creates a problem that the inquirer is now motivated to solve. This portrayal of inquiry as a form of problem-solving is consistent with how Peirce typically described it in the famous series of articles alluded to earlier, published in the 1870s in Popular Science Monthly. Nevertheless, it is inadequate as a Peircean account of how and why inquiry occurs given the full range of his writing on that topic in publications spanning nearly half a century. What Peirce described as “musement” in the Neglected Argument, for example, is a playful form of inquiry that is unmotivated by any particular purpose established in advance and would be ruined if it was reduced to an exercise in problem-solving.Daniel-Hughes carefully observes the centrality and significance of my discussion of musement throughout the book; this is hardly surprising, since the Neglected Argument is undeniably Peirce's most important publication devoted to a religious topic and musement is the form of inquiry that he thought was most likely to result in the formulation of a religiously meaningful hypothesis. Daniel-Hughes appreciates the attention that I devote to this concept, apparently agreeing with my assertion that, of the “two stories” that might be told about Peirce's theory of inquiry, the one that traces it back to this form of playful meditation is far less frequently narrated. He wants to direct his own reader's attention, however, to the fact there is another story, that inquiry can be extended far beyond musement in order to engage a great variety of thorny issues and “serious” problems with which, among other inquirers, philosophers of religion and theologians must eventually be concerned (not least of all, the question of whether there is really any compelling evidence for the existence of a personal Deity).My own reading of Daniel-Hughes's book on Pragmatic Inquiry and Religious Communities clarified for me several years ago that—at least when it comes to matters Peircean—we concur about a great deal more than we disagree. But for the sake of stimulating the conversation that this special journal issue is intended to initiate, let me suggest that we may not agree perfectly about precisely how “serious” the play of musement ought to be perceived. I have become a grandfather in recent years, causing me also to recollect my experiences as a young father several decades ago, and it is important to recognize how terribly earnest toddlers (who after all are the “experts” in such matters) can be about their play behavior. To be sure, Peirce himself seemed to suggest that it can be a problem for the muser if her inquiry becomes a bit too specialized so that it is “converted into scientific study” (CP 6.459)3; indeed, he explicitly characterized musement as involving a “casting aside of all serious purpose” (CP 6.458). On my interpretation, as paradoxical as it may sound, this simply shows how serious Peirce was about maintaining this kind of activity as an exercise in pure play. Its very “purpose” (Peirce uses that word) is not to be constrained in advance by any particular practical purpose or agenda. That is why it is a tad misleading to characterize musement as “purposeless.” Its teleology is genuinely “developmental” in the sense that Peirce carefully described elsewhere, allowing goals that might shape the activity to arise spontaneously in the process of musement itself.Now, Daniel-Hughes is anxious not to be caricatured as a “spoil sport” who is constantly urging the muser to “put away childish play and engage in serious adult inquiries.” In his view, “there is nothing inherently immature in cultivating a taste for musement.” Nevertheless, he adds—and this may be the key to understanding our subtle difference of opinion—“from the perspective of the more serious inquiries that come later, it may always be viewed as a preparatory exercise” (emphasis added). What I wanted to suggest in Theosemiotic, however, is that nothing should be considered “more serious” than falling/being in love with the God encountered in musement. Moreover, this playful form of cognition is not merely the preparation for other forms of inquiry but also in a very really sense their telos. In fact, the book concludes by making precisely that point, as I indicate in my Postlude the necessity of a continuous “return” to the “space” of musement, so that (much as Peirce recommended) it becomes a “regular” practice rather than a “sporadic” activity.4All of this is to suggest that Daniel-Hughes and I might want to explore further in our conversation how each of us understands my claim that musement is both a kind of experiment5 and a type of spiritual exercise, both a reading of the book of nature and a continuous practice of rereading (relegere). I take great pains in the book not to isolate musement from the other “stages” of inquiry with which I consider it to be naturally continuous. I point out on several occasions (as Daniel-Hughes acknowledges) that proto-deductions and proto-inductions are always already occurring even in this first abductive stage of inquiry. Moreover, it should be counted as “first” only insofar as we think of inquiry episodically, isolating and abstracting a particular sequence of thoughts from the ongoing stream of semiosis in which it is embedded. It is the “spiral” movement of inquiry that I wanted most especially to emphasize, with our inductive practices constituting the upshot of inquiry when viewed from one angle, but also resulting in the continuous formation of habits that then play a crucial role in shaping the process of abduction.In musement, we are encouraged to treat all of our belief-habits with a certain playful lightness of touch, to have them “as though we did not have them.” I argue that induction supplies many of those beliefs and that they can serve as the rules by which we play. (This includes the type of induction involved when musement itself is treated as an experiment to be repeated.) I am not suggesting that our inductive praxis has no other purpose then to facilitate musement as an exercise. Daniel-Hughes is correct when he underscores the importance for my theosemiotic project (especially insofar as it is conceived as a liberation theology) of the question: “What then must I (we) do?” He thinks that there is “no way to answer this question within the playful spaces of musement,” but if Peirce is correct, the very ideals to which the muser will want to shape her life and behavior in conformity arise and become the objects of devotion in the practice of meditation itself. Daniel-Hughes's extended and insightful exploration of religious communities as “embodied experiments” certainly does nothing to undermine my claim that habitual practices—what we consistently do because of our religious beliefs—serve as the ultimate logical interpretants of those beliefs (including the belief that something ultimately personal is discernible in the depths of nature). Spiritual exercises are among the things that we do, sometimes alone but most frequently as members of religious communities. And it is the continuity of both selves and communities as forms of semiosis that makes it plausible for properly motivated persons to embrace the goal of transforming all of life into prayer.6 (This is an explicitly religious version, I would suggest, of the point that Daniel-Hughes himself makes when he talks about “ubiquitous inquiry.”)My second interlocutor, Roger Ward, is the author of an important and recently published book that explores the significance for Peirce's philosophy of certain religious beliefs to which he was committed; that book blends philosophical with biographical analysis in a manner that encourages its reader to evaluate Peirce's religious convictions as being highly relevant to the task of interpreting his writings on a broad range of topics.7 Our ongoing conversation about Peirce, however, traces a path back several decades ago to a pleasant evening in the mountains of North Carolina, where we both had gathered for a meeting of the organization that sponsors this journal. Like Brandon Daniel-Hughes, Ward's reading of Peirce is basically congenial to my own; we differ primarily on certain nuances and matters of emphasis in our respective interpretations.One of those areas where some divergence might be visible is in our understanding of Peirce's voluntarism, a topic that Ward has made central to the account supplied in his review of my book. Ward reads the chapters of my book as being divided into two “triads,” with the opening chapter on “A Brief History of Theosemiotic” serving as an introduction to the whole. He announces early on that it is the second of these triads, on “Community/Discernment/Prayer,” that he has chosen to make his primary topic in the review, with a particular emphasis on community. On my reading, Ward is concerned that my stress placed on the “will to interpret” (borrowing Royce's phrase) of its members in the building up of any community may be excessive.I want to begin my reply by noting that obedience is an important concept for Ward, both in his own book and in the response that he has supplied to mine. It is not a term that I use frequently in my discussions of Peirce, but I have no real objection to the way that Ward employs it. Peirce was most assuredly a metaphysical realist, one who insisted on secondness as a genuine element of human experience. That is to say, experience is not a matter of simply imagining and constructing a world that we then choose to inhabit, but rather, it involves an openness to and acceptance of whatever forcefully and consistently presents itself to us as real. This does not mean for Ward (or for me) that there is no element of or room for creativity in human experience. It does mean, however, that there is something given in experience; even if we have no direct access to it in a way that is unmediated by signs, nevertheless, it places certain constraints on our interpretive activity.In my book, I strenuously and consistently emphasize the role that attention places in shaping experience-as-semiosis. For pragmatists like James and Peirce (also Royce, I would suggest), human volition is primarily an exercise of attention, a choosing to attend to one thing rather than another and in a certain distinctive fashion that lays the foundation for whatever else we then choose to do. I do not think that my account in any way rules out the sort of volitional act that Ward would classify as an act of obedience. To some extent (and here there may be a lack of clarity in how I develop the account in my book), Ward's concerns seem to presuppose that the pragmatic voluntarism I am embracing is more explicitly Jamesian than Peircean. I do take pains to soften James's somewhat “muscular” portrayal of attention-as-volition by juxtaposing it to Simone Weil's approach to this issue, her rather sharp contrast (and for reasons that are religiously motivated) between attention and volition. Nevertheless, the Jamesian philosophy does seem more directly focused on individual, episodic acts of will, on how one chooses at each moment to direct attention and thus to shape the quality of one's experiences and the character of one's memories. As a Peircean, I am ultimately concerned about the development of certain habits of volition, many of which are dramatically shaped by our participation in certain communal practices. And so, I would absolutely agree with Ward that “Peirce does not balance the community of interpretation completely on the will of individuals.”I also affirm in the book the importance of a kind of freedom that consists in saying “yes” to certain experiences and events that would occur willy nilly, for example, as in the religiously meaningful case of developing an acceptance of and relationship to one's own death. In all of these instances—an inquirer being open and responsive to the “secondness” of experience; the shaping of habits of attention through participation in traditional activities and communal practices; the exercising of freedom in a way that may change the meaning but not the fact of what occurs—it might make sense from a certain religious perspective to follow Ward and to talk about “obedience.” I have no serious objection to doing so.This raises questions that Ward does not pursue in his comments, however, about the function of theosemiotic as critique, about both the possibility and necessity of submitting not only ourselves, but also those habit-forming institutions and communities to which we pledge and to serious critical if one obedience as a response to the will of God as it is to human inquirers, the volition is always mediated by to or To recognize that the established by communities of interpretation are typically more than those by as Ward does in his review, is not to the for theosemiotic as Ward that of meaning as communal is in inquiry, no on the or life of Nevertheless, communities as as individuals can in their individuals sometimes to in a in order to exercise a type of volition that acts as a form of to communal is a continuous act for any reader of Peirce, that to balance creativity in interpretation with what Ward to as obedience to communal and I think that the at the very of Peirce's as he insisted that a its clarity about what this not an to whatever any given will it makes a certain of sense to regard musement as the most of all forms of interpretation, the muser has the to play with even the most clearly established of certain Nevertheless, I the point that Ward is to make here when my own concern that Peirce's emphasis on musement may be too As Ward the matter in his discussion of the relationship between community and is both as the and of Ward my of both and Simone perspective on the practice of to God into the of think that he is a bit in his of Royce's of the to as a On my reading, Ward's analysis of obedience is quite consistent with what had to say about (or what and both by Royce, in their of Royce's of an or an community was not at the of our in traditional communities it is by an the to that does serve as a standard for the of such I to make this argument in chapter of my book, on the concept of also to Royce's of the with his of a certain kind of I cannot that of analysis but I do think that it does more to my with Ward on this issue than any difference of is the father of that philosophical and theological of thought as for some years has as its and articles devoted to its exploration and is the for a particular of that has chosen to in his own work and with a analysis published a and are among the most in which have extended Peirce's for theological purposes. For both and the of and certain other philosophers that of Peirce in shaping their of Peirce himself as being a of (CP in some of his early with my theosemiotic as an approach to doing philosophical by suggesting that the latter underscores the to the of rather than the of Peirce's In my account, however, I to the of theosemiotic to its both and It is that a bit more of my attention than does in that account, but this is not the issue with which is preoccupied in his review of my most recent of a certain kind of in his philosophy is quite among religious who to be to many of his This topic was by Daniel-Hughes in his who that I do a that Peirce does by a rather than to embrace a of Daniel-Hughes's concern (and for the most when I the topic in my book's is about whether or not there is a for the ultimate as being personal (as Peirce and as is also more than to But this is not primary In whatever fashion the ultimate might be he is a question about whether other than the human might also properly be as my in the book that Peirce's does not the that he must be of but he about the embodied in my theosemiotic approach that might this sort of Like Ward, is quite in my of the concept of community. however, he is less invested in the task of traditional human communities than in the possibility of the concept so that a community might be extended beyond the human to a great variety of other This is for the concept of as Since Peirce insisted that love is something properly to since communities not only of persons but can a certain distinctive wants to argue for a more of what it to be a is an important with this As early in his to the possibility of which could result from within theosemiotic is one intended to a more sense of and community that would human and is an and I that I could have a of developing those of my book's argument that might have to its making a very to that however, I to reply (also quite to claim that my to a difference between human and other that is one of not I think this is at one I distinguish as with an to use and I am not suggesting that we are the only members engage in behavior. That difference is one of noting the of and that the developed by the with which they a great variety of and the But it is one thing to engage in interpretive behavior Peirce insisted was the way to characterize and quite another thing to recognize what one is doing as In the book, I carefully make this between and something as a I would not to the that the latter is a that other or some of them do, but I think that is something that would to be question here is about whether this of a or is a human involving the of a thing (and not merely the use of that as a further relevant only if one chooses to Peircean for what is whether or not the kind of behavior that he as a requires this sort of for its a theosemiotic the is a in a that the about both to itself and to This is a constantly being and as with purposes also being and a the sort of by being both an author and a reader of its own it would be to being in the behavior of other even those that make use of a variety of for the purpose of To that each human or a life as is to nothing about its to that for itself and these may have some on whether or not other ought to be as a decision about this question would at least on the extent to which one a Peircean perspective on the nature of persons and they are inadequate as a response to that our communities ought to be more and for compelling as as philosophical As already I am not that my book's argument can be characterized as directly to such a As an here to such a I can only point to those places in the book where I toward what might regard as an adequate also possible that my book's argument does for the development of a more and of community. regard to the I do out in the book (as if it would make sense from a Peircean perspective to talk about a I that any theosemiotic properly in a religious (and conceived as a liberation theology) would a to the and habits of other than the key that I want to suggest my book supplies for in the that is is its emphasis on the use of a of rather than of for understanding the that and constitute a genuine community. The relationship of not for what makes a community nevertheless, is for the purposes of my Peirce's and Royce's of to both the significance of a attention to a being toward those quite from in the book of a on in the discussion of Peirce's theory of inquiry with talk about with this stress on those that as as lays the for an argument of the sort that is we want to the meaning of the concept of in order to classify other as such or choose to use the in a more there is on these for those as members of what the if they lack the to their own we have a to them in our my interlocutors the most and critical review of my book on our conversation about Peirce and his significance for theological inquiry it was in a fashion that was quite continuous and the a few up to the publication of my book in and also of his own work a my of those I that had a understanding of those in which our a of individuals have invested in to Peirce's for their to the

At least in the English-speaking world, those who study the philosophy of religion are usually introduced at an early stage to cosmological proofs of the existence of God, and in particular to the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. This directs them to a conception of the task of philosophy of religion in general, as well as to certain conception of how to read Aquinas, neither of which is as incontestable as is often assumed. Recent developments in philosophy at large have not always been absorbed in the philosophy of religion Similarly, changing approaches to the study of Aquinas have not yet much affected standard expositions of his arguments for the existence of God. Now that the borders between the philosophy of religion and Christian theology are shifting, however, it seems worthwhile to stand back a little and reflect on the continued plausibility of the standard view. Certain developments outside philosophy challenge received interpretations of Aquinas.