Philosophical Theology Research Articles

Pathways in African Philosophical Theology

The article seeks to describe one trend within the theological scene in South Africa, a trajectory that could be called “African Philosophical Theology”. In the first part of the article, some methodological problems surrounding such a descriptive category are discussed. Thereafter, I attempt to give a summary of the contributions of two thinkers could be grouped within this category, namely Augustine Shutte (1938-2016) and Gerrit Brand (1970-2013). In this regard, Shutte’s approach can be viewed as a philosophical synthesis of Thomistic and African accounts of personhood, while Brand’s constitutes a meta-theology, a postfoundationalist attempt to articulate those criteria that are fundamental to adjudicating doctrinal and religious change. While their respective projects are distinctive, I argue that both of them can be classified as practicing a variety of metaphysics and theology that takes seriously the deliverances of African thought, performing thereby a “decolonial” gesture within philosophical theology.

What Philosophical Theology & Religion Can Do for One Another

Although philosophical theology is, in part, an academic discipline aimed at a theoretical understanding of such topics as faith, revelation, divine attributes, divine action, and various conceptually challenging doctrines, it can be more than merely a branch of scholarship. This paper argues that application of philosophical tools to “divine things” can both benefit from cooperation with religion and contribute to the attainment of the good of religion. The paper’s method is that of Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Its foundation lies in the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, about the virtue of religion and about the relation of faith and reason, ideas the application of which to the needs of theology has an established place in Catholic theological thought, but which are equally relevant to Orthodox and Protestant concerns. The paper begins by distinguishing various senses of the terms “philosophical theology” and “religion” and then shows by argument and example what it is that the each one can do for the other. This will be of particular help (1) in justifying (e.g., to students) the inclusion of philosophical theology in seminary curricula, as well as more broadly both (2) in showing philosophy students how their chosen discipline can be connected to their religious commitments, and (3) in showing religious believers the value of giving attention and respect to philosophical theology.

Философия религии Дж. Уиздома и философская теология в раннем витгенштейнианстве

The article deals with the question of whether and how the early Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion could be related to the idea of philosophical theology. Despite the bearing the Wittgensteinian tradition has had on a variety of theological developments, it remains unclear what from its philosophical practice and which of its philosophical hinges could be connected to theology in the first place. The argument proposed in the article is that philosophical theology within the early Wittgensteinian tradition (1930s–1940s) was concerned with the philosophical problems which were irrelevant to the theological ones. Outlining the context of the Wittgensteinian reasoning on religion and showing that it was crucial for a few of Wittgenstein’s followers, especially for John Wisdom (1904–1993), gives additional ground to this argument. It appears that the hinges Wisdom adopted from Wittgenstein – most importantly the descriptivist attitude and the idea of language as the only appropriate field for being observed philosophically – follow philosophical, rather than religious, commitments. One can see this by comparison of Wisdom’s views, esp. “the garden” argument, with those of Antony Flew, Richard Hare, and Basil Mitchell, who participated in the discussion, which can be regarded as the rise of the new philosophical theology. Whereas each of these philosophers developed one of Wisdom’s ideas – the discursive, the referential, and the contextualist aspects of God-talk – Wisdom had held the combination of these ideas. Paradoxically, this complexity came from Wisdom’s uncertainty as to the existence of a strict line between the analytic and the empirical propositions in real language. However, as a result, the philosopher understood the ontological dimension of God-talk, and yet could not make ontological verdicts, which makes this type of reasoning philosophically insightful yet theologically insignificant.

Self-Explanation and Empty-Base Explanation

AbstractThis paper explores a novel notion of self-explanation that combines ideas from two sources: (1) the tripartite account of explanation, according to which a proposition can help explain another either in the capacity of a reason why the latter obtains or in the capacity of an explanatory link, and (2) the notion of an empty-base explanation, which generalizes the ideas of explanation by zero-grounding and explanation by status. After having introduced these ideas and the novel notion of self-explanation, I argue that the latter has the potential to resist extant arguments against the possibility of self-explanation. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss candidates for such self-explanatory propositions and suggest possible applications for Humeanism about laws of nature, the debate on the grounds of ground, the rationalist tradition, and philosophical theology.

Life After Death and Death Before Dying: Mullā Ṣadrā and Śaṅkara on the Postmortem States

Here is demonstrated an approach toward comparative philosophy of religion by comparing the views and approaches of two philosophical theologians from the Hindu (Vedānta) tradition and the Islamic tradition on the postmortem states of the soul. This article will attempt to highlight the many advantages of philosophical theology for the field of comparative philosophy of religion.

Teorijski i empirijski aspekti odnosa morala i ekonomije

That economics is devoid of any moral, ideological, or theological philosophy is a widespread view among major economists in recent times. In relation to issues of a moral nature, modern economics is focused on key postulates such as rational calculation, scientific neutrality and basic material goals. In connection with the aforementioned gap, which is deepening, the primary goal of the paper is to point out the need to establish a new alliance between economics and morality (ethics) as a specific value criterion, all in order to better understand the complex nature of human reality and contributing to more effective and constructive solutions to economic problems. In doing so, one bears in mind the fact that attempts to portray the economy as morally neutral have largely ended in failure, or with little success.

William James, Radical Empiricism, and the Affective Ground of Religious Life

William James, Radical Empiricism, and the Affective Ground of Religious Life

The Voice of Reason: Medieval Contemplative Philosophy

Scholastic debates about the activity of our final end—happiness—become famously heated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with intellectualists claiming that the primary activity through which we are joined to God is intellective ‘vision’ and voluntarists claiming that it is love (an act of will). These conversations represent only one set of medieval views on the subject, however. If we look to contemplative sources in the same period—even just those of the Rome-based Christian tradition—we find a range of views on our final end that runs the gamut from ‘self-less union with an unknowable God’ to ‘embodied fulfilment of human nature.’ In this article, I argue that these differing conceptions push their holders to develop a correspondingly wide range of attitudes toward the human faculty of reason, particularly with respect to its value (or lack thereof) in helping us achieve our ultimate end. Medieval thinking on this topic is thus much more complex—and offers more points of connection with contemporary philosophical theology—than is typically recognized.

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theopolitical Problem

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theopolitical Problem

Основное богословие профессора Н.П. Рождественского и рациональная теология синодального периода

The article attempts to critically review a lecture course by St. Petersburg Theological Academy professor, Nikolay Rozhdestvensky’s (1840–1882), a course that is seen as basic for Russian fundamental theology, in the context of his contemporaries’ achievements and modern philosophical theology. While speaking of the latter, the author compares two rational-theological disciplines to uncover both their close thematic connections and differences, mainly of a communicative nature. A structural analysis of the text of Rozhdestvensky’s lecture course is provided, revealing its methodological features. It is demonstrated that the fundamental theology developed by Rozhdestvensky, in its main idea, anticipates the integrative model of the discipline that was later established in modern Western fundamental theology. It is noted that in the second part of the course that corresponds to the traditional section of the fundamental theology demonstratio christiana, or Revelation, Rozhdestvensky follows the methodology developed by his teacher, Bishop Chrysanthus (Retivtsev; 1832–1883), that strengthens the justification of Christianity as a divinely revealed religion. The content of the course section devoted to the cosmological, teleological, ontological and ethical proofs for the existence of God is critically examined as akin to the subject matter of rational theology. The article attempts to reconstruct Rozhdestvensky’s thorough study of the issue of the scientific status of the proofs and their authentic “evidentiary force”, as well as the refutation of the main objections to them. Rozhdestvensky not only reveals the content of each proof meticulously, but also analyzes Kant's criticism of these in detail, offering his own counterarguments. He goes into detail about the four aforementioned proofs that should not be considered separately, as, taken together, they produce a cumulative effect. A special attention is paid to comparison of Rozhdestvensky’s presentation of the arguments for the existence of God with those of other Russian academic philosophers of the Synodal period, in the first place Theodor Golubinsky, Victor Nesmelov and Michail Gribanovsky.

Revelation and the Veridicality of Narratives

On Christian doctrine, God is love; and the love of God is most manifest in Christ’s passion. The passion of Christ thus matters to philosophical theology’s examination of the divine attribute of love. But the passion of Christ is presented in a biblical story, and there are serious methodological questions about the way in which a biblical story can be used as evidence in philosophical theology. And these questions in turn raise deeper epistemological questions. How does any narrative transmit knowledge? And what counts as veridicality in a narrative? This paper deals with some of the questions for philosophical theology and then concentrates on the more general epistemological questions about narratively transmitted knowledge.

Abraham’s Empty Altars

In this paper I examine the ritual life of Abraham as it is presented in the book of Genesis. Paying close attention to the language of the narrative, I try to reconstruct the evolving philosophical theology that seems to underlie the modes of worship that Abraham develops over time. Read in this light, the life of Abraham can help us to rethink the extent to which theistic religiosity requires a personal God, and the extent to which it can survive in the face of a more austere impersonal theology.

God in a Single Vision: Integrating Philosophy and Theology. By David Brown. Edited by Christopher R. Brewer and Robert Mac Swain

Few can compare to David Brown in depth and range of learning, and this collection of essays is strong testimony to his contribution to British theology. The earliest piece published here first saw the light of day in 1985—the same year as his landmark work in philosophical theology The Divine Trinity—and the essays, individually and collectively, demonstrate Brown’s overall concern for the doctrinal well-being and the spiritual health of the Christian community. Some of the essays had their first outing in learned journals, others in a variety of church settings. Readers already familiar with Brown’s work will find retractations and modifications of earlier positions in this collection, and it would make a very good introduction to his work, too. The book is divided into four parts, with three or four essays per part: ‘The Created Order’, ‘Experience and Revelation’, ‘Incarnation, Trinity, and Redemption’, and ‘Heaven and our Communal Destiny’....

THE INDIGENOUS MUSIC OF CHRIST APOSTOLIC CHURCH IN NIGERIA AND THE DIASPORAS: A PROOF OF CHRISTIAN TRANSFORMATIVE MUSICALITY

One of the distinguishing identities of any Church movement is music. Christ Apostolic Church (C.A.C) in Nigeria and the Diasporas at her inception came with her peculiar music firmly rooted in the Pentecostal theology of the church and in indigenous African musical culture. It became a great tool in the spirituality, evangelisation and proselytisation processes in the Church. Today, not only has C.A.C. influenced Nigerian Christian music greatly, but also dominated the gospel music, one of the most popular music genres in Nigeria. This paper, hinged on transformative and functionalism theories, aims at exhuming the philosophical theology, performance practices and the evolution of this Pentecostal brand of music, both at home and abroad. Employing theological, musicological and historical approaches, the paper as a sacred musicological study, discovers that C.A.C. music is highly functional with deep metaphysical connotations. From indigenous native airs, anthems, hymnody, art music and lyric-airs to gospel music, its style forms one of the manifestations of indigenous Pentecostalism; as it has been instrumental to the diverse operations, spread and acceptability of the Church. The Church extended overseas through migration, had her music ‘carried’ along, though not without re-contextualised modifications. This paper concludes on the note that the Church, bearing in mind her leadership roles, should strive to uphold the legacies that earned her identity; especially her musical culture.

The Church Is Christ Present: Luther’s Theological Realism and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Understanding of the Church as Unity of Act and Being

Facing the challenge of modern individualism Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) corrected the contemporary interpretation of Martin Luther’s theology regarding the sacramentality and communal understanding of the Church. From the perspective of philosophical theology he discussed the “transcendental” and “ontological” approaches to explicate the presence of God’s revelation in the Church through word and sacraments. Ecclesially and pastorally based theology required a participatory, ecclesially oriented ontology as the basis of theological epistemology. Philosophical concepts should be adapted in a theological context to explicate and construct theological content. For Bonhoeffer the Church was the place of revelation in which the human being could understand his or her existence in relation to others and lead a “personal life.” More clearly and systematically than Luther, Bonhoeffer saw the Church as the Body of Christ as the place of transformation into the shape of Christ. Every individualistic idea of the Church must be wrong. Communion, doctrine, and theology belonged together. The intentions of Luther and Bonhoeffer regarding the Church’s Christological and Pneumatological foundation as a sacramental communion in the Triune God, sent into the world in shared witness and service in mission and ministry still seems to have ecumenical potential concerning for example Lutheran and Catholic understandings of Church, ministry and Eucharist.

Probing the mind of God: divine beliefs and credences

AbstractAlthough much has been written about divine knowledge, and some on divine beliefs, virtually nothing has been written about divine credences. In this article we comparatively assess four views on divine credences: (1) God has only beliefs, not credences; (2) God has both beliefs and credences; (3) God has only credences, not beliefs; and (4) God has neither credences nor beliefs, only knowledge. We weigh the costs and benefits of these four views and draw connections to current discussions in philosophical theology.

Modern Evolutionist Naturalism And Šankara’s Arguments Contra Sankhya

This comparative study aims at juxtaposition of modern Western naturalistic evolutionism and the mostly similar attitude in the classic Indian philosophy in the shape of Sankhya’s cosmology in the context of their corresponding critiques by contemporary creationists and Advaita-Vedanta. The long and pointed polemics with Sankhya in the Brahmasutrabhasya by Šankaracharya (7th-8th centuries A.D.) is in the focus of this investigation along with numerous references to the Sankhya-karika by Isvarakrsna (5th century A.D.) as the basic text of the philosophical school criticized by its most powerful opponent. Comparing Western and Indian evolutionism reveals some very important differences to such a degree that the Indian species of the genus would be, in the author’s opinion, better identified as not evolutionism in the strict sense but as a “développisme” combining features of evolutionism with those of emanationism. As to Sankhya’s naturalism, it turns to be much more “sophisticated” than that, e.g., of Thomas Huxley or the so-called New Atheists because its “stuff” is more psychological than material. Nevertheless, crucial logical gaps remain the same in both cases (along with an antitheistic “faith” instead of rationalism), while their taking into account by opponents of naturalism offers a challenge for comparative philosophical theology.

Aquinas on Evil and the Will: A response to Mackie

AbstractThis article argues that, without being reducible to a version of the Free Will Defence, Aquinas' theodicy and philosophical theology can offer contemporary versions of the Free Will Defence stronger metaphysical and theological foundations from which a response to Mackie's compatibilistic challenge – probably the most serious challenge against this defence – can be derived. Mackie's challenge to the Free Will Defence is the argument that the possibility of evil is not a necessary condition for the existence of free will, for God – if He existed and was omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient – could have and would have created rational and free agents such that they would always freely choose the good. I claim, following Aquinas' hylomorphic ontology, that the creation of such a will is logically impossible as it would require the creation of a will containing naturally and invariably the formality of the universal and perfect good, and so the creation of a will indistinct from God's, which is by nature uncreated.

A Phenomenology of Utterance and Prophetic Teaching in the Threshold

Abstract In this essay, the authors explore the phenomenon of utterance we find in speech and teaching. Jean-Luc Marion’s third phenomenological reduction serves as a methodological foundation for this exploration which moves through Biblical literature and autobiography – both centred on the story of the election of Samuel – before leading into a meditation on the Call of and Response to the Other. The Call and Response guide the essay to a theory of prophetic teaching emerging within its phenomenology of utterance that situates itself between philosophical anthropology and philosophical theology, and between Jewish and Catholic traditions.

Myth and Truth in Republic 2-3

This paper argues that myth in Kallipolis is used to communicate philosophical truths, rather than distribute politically motivated falsehoods. It first considers the function of myth in the ideal artistic culture of Kallipolis (I), and the philosophical theology that informs it (II). On this basis, it is argued that the discussion of medicinal falsehoods at 382a-d is more focused on the truth-content of myth than usually assumed (III). The latter part of the paper (IV and V) explores the connection between this new understanding of myth in books 2-3 and the philosophical myths in the central books of the dialogue.