Theory Of Religion Research Articles

Faces in the clouds: a new theory of religion

Faces in the clouds: a new theory of religion

Otherness and the rhetorical exigences of theistic religion

The emergence of the epoch of transcendence identified by John Angus Campbell can be better understood by a closer look at one of its constituting elements—the development of Hebrew monotheism. The rhetorical character of monotheism is a direct consequence of its symbolic engagement with the wholly Other. Out of this engagement emerges three distinctive rhetorical exigencies—prophecy, gospel, and praise—which call forth rhetorical acts. Rhetorical activity within monotheistic religion is continuous, since successfully addressing one exigence will typically intensify another.

New Religious Movements in Poland and the Stark-Bainbridge Theory of Religion

No abstract available

Reflections on the Fourth Buddhist-Christian Conference

Buddhist-Christian dialogue now flourishes as never before as a global encounter of two religious traditions. In many respects, the relationship between Buddhists and Christians serves as a model for what contemporary interfaith dialogue can achieve in terms of the scope and sophistication of the other conversations.1 Contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue (hereafter BCD) can be divided into three main types of activities: the dialogue of life; the dialogue of meaning; and the dialogue of the heart.2 Yet, as we shall see, there is always room for improvement and expansion. Part of the reason for the harmonious nature of the dialogue derives from the previous history of Buddhist-Christian interaction. History always plays a pivotal role in dialogue even if it is sometimes a painful topic. For instance, dialogue among Christians, Jews, and Muslims has to account for the centuries of conflict, distortion, and misunderstanding-not to mention mutual contempt, slaughter, and the Holocaust. While most Christians, Jews, and Muslims will deny that their religions intrinsically have anything to do with promoting these terrors, there is little doubt that religion in theory and practice lies at the root of much of this communal evil between those the Muslims call the People of the Book. At the other end of the spectrum, we can contemplate the relatively easy relationship among Christianity, Buddhism, and other East Asian traditions such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism.3 The first caveat about BCD is that it is usually initiated by academicians or contemplatives. This means that the participants and the audience are inevitably educated members of the middle class. While there is nothing fundamentally disturbing about this, there is a frequently voiced desire to find some way to enlarge the circle of conversation beyond those already convinced of the positive nature of the interchange.4 This is especially the point when the conversation moves from scholarly or spiritual interests to the question of social action. Along with the desire to expand the circle of conversation beyond the academic and contemplative world is the recognition that the participants need to discover ways to invite new people to join the dialogue. BCD must escape becoming a comfortable club where the partners talk only to each other.

Book Review: A Theory of Religion

Book Review: A Theory of Religion

Can anthropology be the source of a theory of religion?

Can anthropology be the source of a theory of religion?

Discerning Difference: A Taxonomy of Culture, Spirituality, and Religion

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscerning Difference: A Taxonomy of Culture, Spirituality, and ReligionDaniel P. SheridanDaniel P. Sheridan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 66, Number 1Jan., 1986 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/jr.66.1.1562393 Views: 25Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1986 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Zehavit Gross A Quest for the Realm of Spirituality, (Jan 2009): 563–579.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9018-9_30Barbara Pesut, Marsha Fowler, Elizabeth J Taylor, Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham, Richard Sawatzky Conceptualising spirituality and religion for healthcare, Journal of Clinical Nursing 17, no.2121 (Nov 2008): 2803–2810.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2008.02344.xRichard A. Engnell The spiritual potential of otherness in film: The interplay of scene and narrative, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no.33 (Sep 1995): 241–262.https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039509366936Richard A. Engnell Otherness and the rhetorical exigences of theistic religion, Quarterly Journal of Speech 79, no.11 (Feb 1993): 82–98.https://doi.org/10.1080/00335639309384020

Between Gnosticism and Jehovah: The Dilemma in Kafka's Religious Attitude

IKAKFA WAS CERTAINLY not religious in a conventional dogmatic sense. One of his few statements about God, for instance, suggests that belief in a personal God may be the cover under which man's faith in something indestructible in himself is concealed-a view which resembles Feuerbach's humanism rather than theistic religion.' Kafka views his lack of religion as symptomatic of his historical situation: have not been led into life like Kierkegaard by the already heavily drooping hand of Christianity and I have not, like the Zionists, still caught the last corer of the Jewish prayer shawl that is flying away. I am end or beginning (H 121). The great religions of the Western world themselves appear from this perspective as historical phenomena, not as absolute truths. Kafka mocks religion where, as in the case of his father's remnants ofJudaism, it has been reduced to social convention and meaningless ritual. He found the obligatory visits to the synagogue of his childhood an occasion for boredom relieved by the comedy of the spectacle (H 197 98). Hugo Bergmann, Kafka's friend from his school days, attests to Kafka's inclination toward atheism and recalls that his own faith was threatened by Kafka's arguments against the existence of God (Bergmann 742)arguments which Kafka himself also remembers in his diary. His strong and growing interest in Judaism, ever since the profound encounter with the Warsaw Yiddish Theater group in Prague in 1911, seems often more ethnically, morally, and existentially motivated rather than religious, a concern with rootedness in a communal way of life rather than with God.2

Between Gnosticism and Jehovah: The Dilemma in Kafka's Religious Attitude

IKAKFA WAS CERTAINLY not religious in a conventional dogmatic sense. One of his few statements about God, for instance, suggests that belief in a personal God may be the cover under which man's faith in something indestructible in himself is concealed-a view which resembles Feuerbach's humanism rather than theistic religion.' Kafka views his lack of religion as symptomatic of his historical situation: have not been led into life like Kierkegaard by the already heavily drooping hand of Christianity and I have not, like the Zionists, still caught the last corer of the Jewish prayer shawl that is flying away. I am end or beginning (H 121). The great religions of the Western world themselves appear from this perspective as historical phenomena, not as absolute truths. Kafka mocks religion where, as in the case of his father's remnants ofJudaism, it has been reduced to social convention and meaningless ritual. He found the obligatory visits to the synagogue of his childhood an occasion for boredom relieved by the comedy of the spectacle (H 197 98). Hugo Bergmann, Kafka's friend from his school days, attests to Kafka's inclination toward atheism and recalls that his own faith was threatened by Kafka's arguments against the existence of God (Bergmann 742)arguments which Kafka himself also remembers in his diary. His strong and growing interest in Judaism, ever since the profound encounter with the Warsaw Yiddish Theater group in Prague in 1911, seems often more ethnically, morally, and existentially motivated rather than religious, a concern with rootedness in a communal way of life rather than with God.2

Knowing Persons and Knowing God

KNOWING PERSONS AND KNOWING GOD I AM GOING TO propose an account of affirming God's existence which runs counter to a prominent trend in recent philosophy of religion, a trend which defends the meaningfulness of theism by either giving up the concept of God's existence as a category mistake or defining it in terms of the practical value the idea has for religious life. Such defenses are reductionist. They reduce the meaning of ' God exists ' to its functions within what they variously call ' religious language,' the ' religious language game,' or the ' religious form of life.' 1 I, too, want to defend theistic thought and life, but I do not believe that the reductionist defenses work.2 In another paper,3 1 I have in mind especially the following: R. B. Braithwaite, "An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief," The Philosophy of Religion, ed. Basil Mitchell (Oxford, 1971), 72-91. Paul Holmer, "Language and Theology: Some Critical Notes," Harvard Theological Review, LVIII, S (July, 1965), 242-261; "The Nature of Religious Propositions," Religious Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge, ed. Ronald E. Santoni (Bloomington, 1968); " Wittgenstein and Theology," Refiection, Vol. 65, 4 (1968). Gordon Kaufman, God the Problem (Cambridge, Mass., 1972). See especially chapter 5. D. Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer (London, 1965); Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (New York, 1971). P. F. Schmidt, Religious Knowledge (New York, 1961). Elmer Sprague, Metaphysical Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). Paul van Buren, The Edges of Language: An Essay in the Logic of Religion (New York, 1972); "Anselm's Formula and the Logic of God," Religious Studies, vol. 9 (1973), 279-288. 2 Many have said as much, but few have argued the case. Kai Nielsen is a notable exception. See his "Wittgensteinian Fideism," Philosophy, Vol. 42 (1967). More frequently one encounters an off-handed rejection of reductionism, as in Patrick Sherry's Religion, Truth, and Language Games (London, 1977) where he notes that "... it often seems as if Phillips is reducing God to a concept or to some 394 KNOWING PERSONS AND KNOWING GOD 395 I argued that while claiming to leave the practice of theistic religion as it is, reductionist views would, when integrated into believers' lives, lead to so fundamental a change in religious life that instead of defending they would undermine or, as Ninian Smart put it, cause a " colossal revolution " in faith.4 Be that as it may, I also believe that the reductionist defenses of the uses and meaning of religious language do not take their analytic and phenomenological task sufficiently seriously when it comes to the meaning of affirming God's existence. They attend to other functions of religious language without examining the sense affirming God's existence actually has in the practice of theistic faith. They view religions as complex forms of life organized by peculiar language systems, conceptual schemes, or models which perform practical functions for believers. We have learned much from the concern with the uses of religious language, but the question about God's existence persists. In this paper I shall argue that affirming God's existence is a necessary part of theistic religion and that the affirmation follows the logic of the most certain affirmation of existence we make, viz. affirmations of the existence of human individuals or persons. That being so, if it is rational to affirm the existence of persons, it is rational to affirm the existence of God. In order thus to support the rationality of affirming God's existence, I will develop four main theses: (1) that practicing theistic religion presupposes the idea of God as a personal or suprapersonal individual; (2) that the actual practice of theism involves affirming the existence of God in a sense of existence appropriate to such finite individuals as human persons; (3) that affirming the existence of human persons takes place through an act which attributes intentions and values to something encountered in action; (4) that affirming God's existence follows the same logic as affirming the existence of persons. aspect of the world. . . ." (p. 53) . See also Ninian Smart in The Cncept of Worship (New York, 197!'l). 3 "Theistic Reductionism and the...

La théorie systémique dans la sociologie de la religion dans les pays de langue allemande

Within the last decade, Niklas Luhman, one of the best known German Sociologists, has developed a concept of systems theory which is closely related to problems of religion. It is one of the core concepts of recent German sociology of religion. Luhmann follows Parsons' and Bellah's views of societal and religious evolution, but he does it with a Durk heimian bias and in a specific German manner. Luhmann believes in the end of civil religion. In his theory religion enables man to cope with general contingencies of society and personality by ciphering them. Implementing this function Christian theology has to deal more with relevation than with humanism, and more with interpreting than with changing society.

Science and Creation

Previous articleNext article No AccessScience and CreationRobin AttfieldRobin Attfield Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 58, Number 1Jan., 1978 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/486589 Views: 4Total views on this site Copyright 1978 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Fromm's Theory of Religion

Fromm's Theory of Religion

Religious Commitment and Salvation: Readings in Secular and Theistic Religion

Religious Commitment and Salvation: Readings in Secular and Theistic Religion

A. C. Ewing—A Critical Survey of Ewing's Recent Work

Is the existence of God a reasonable metaphysical hypothesis? So asks A. C. Ewing in his important posthumous work, Value and Reality. Thus the topic of the book is theistic religion, not in its entirety, but rather merely in its intellectual part. That it does have such a part, and further that it makes claims ‘to objective truth in the field of metaphysics’ (p. 24), is defended on the grounds (a) that a fictional ‘story’ about God has what religious or ethical impact it may have because, or at least mainly because, it is taken precisely not as fictional, but as expressing an objective theological truth; and (b) that a story, or an account, can constitute a good reason for one's acting in a certain way only if the account is, in fact, objectively true. Bearing on both points is Ewing's observation that ‘emotion, at least except in pathological cases, requires some objective belief about the real, true or false, to support it for long, and if it exists without knowledge or rationally founded belief with which it is in agreement, it is to be condemned as irrational or unfitting, as it would be unfitting to rejoice at something disastrous or be angry with an inanimate thing’ (p. 27). The claim is not, we are told, that religious statements are literal as distinguished from symbolic. The door would seem to be left open, in fact, to their all being symbolic. What is essential is that some of them symbolise distinctively metaphysical truths, or truths ‘going beyond the realm of science’ and ‘throwing some light on the general nature of the real’ (p. 30). We should indeed distinguish, Ewing notes, ‘belief in’ from ‘belief that’. Yet the former is not possible without the latter. ‘Unless I believe that God exists I cannot believe in God’ (p. 28). So in Ewing's opinion, statements of metaphysics—if not concerning God, then at least concerning certain general aspects of reality—are most important for religion as a whole, and are, in being true, conceptually necessary to its validity, or to its ‘fittingness’.

Monotheism's Euthyphro Problem

The object here is to develop a moral argument against theism. By “theism” is meant the worship of a (supposed) omnipotent, all righteous God. An attitude of worship, it may be assumed, would not be an attitude of worship if it did not preclude all doubt as to the worthiness of the object of worship. At any rate, it is only this attitude whose castigation as immoral is meant to be argued for here.There are, of course, as many theisms as there are theistic religions, sects, cults, denominations et cetera. let M be the moral code of one such theism. It is immaterial here whether the moral code M is or is not dogmatically spelled out in the theistic religion in question. The present argument will follow equally well if the believers claim nothing more than an imperfect, incomplete, and uncertain knowledge of M.

Will we get McLuhan to the church on time? The “religious” dimensions of television

SUMMARY The social significance of television and film as the most powerful means of mass communication in Western civilisation today cannot be underrated. The mass media, and television and film in particular, are not merely neutral carriers of messages. They confer power, legitimate systems and provide ways of looking at the world. They supply the context in which information is learned, attitudes and values formed and decisions made, thereby fulfilling the functions previously filled by the medieval church. The general functions of the mass media, and television and film in particular, are entertainment, the provision of information and education, socialization and the handing down, or propogation of culture. However, these can be suggested to be merely surface functions and effects of the media's deeper power. There is a hidden role which transcends all surface effects. It may be proposed that it is the media, rather than the church which provides individuals with a worldview which reflects to them what is of ultimate value, and which justifies their behaviour and way of life. Television itself is becoming a kind of religion and has become a prime cultivator of culture, providing the myths, teachings and expressions of religion. Various authors suggest that television needs to be seriously considered as an operative religious activity. This does not mean that the television and film industry would see itself in religious terms, nor that the mass media can be seen to be replacing theistic religion, but that the correspondence between the content and uses of television and the traditional functions of religion and religious practice is significant. This article, based on a literature survey, explores the provocative parallel between the traditional functions of religion and the church, and commercial television.

Feuerbach and Theology

The first form of atheism is an inheritance from the skepticism of Hume, though one rather suspects that it is the common distillate of the thought of both rationalists and empiricists who were skeptical in matters religious. But undoubtedly Hume gave it classical expression, perhaps nowhere more succinctly than in the eleventh essay of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, where he suggests the foolishness of trying to establish theistic religion on principles of reason. Specifically, the grounding of particular events in particular providence and let us remember that no doctrine was held in higher esteem by the common heritage of traditional theism, to which men as diverse as Calvin and Leibniz had given expression in the early modern period is a purely speculative notion that really explains nothing. As Hume says, We can never be allow'd to mount up from the universe, the Effect, to Jupiter, the Cause; and then descend downwards, to infer any new Effect from that Cause.... The knowledge of the Cause being deriv'd solely from the Effect, they must be exactly adjusted to each other, and the one can never point towards any thing farther, or be the Foundation of any new Inference and Conclusion.2 The thrust of this comment is much the same as Laplace's famous remark to Napoleon that he had no need of the theistic hypothesis. In a universe made up solely of specific items and movements, the hypothesis of a divine cause for particular events explains nothing. Indeed, the hypothesis is meaningless, and were we to use the metaphor God is in connection with this point of view, we would have to say that he is dead only in the sense that he never lived in the first place.

On Hearing the Word of God

E ACH time through a college course in Bible which I have taught for several years, the importance of a single figure of speech has grown in my mind. The figure of speech is this: God speaks and man listens and obeys. For the Bible the human response to God is to listen and obey, to hear and do. Since man is thus called by God into his service, religious experience is an experience of vocation, of being called, or put under orders, in such fashion that the whole meaning of one's existence consists in the quality of one's response to the orders. This paper is an attempt to understand some aspects of this experience, and of the metaphor which expresses the experience, particularly as we find it in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament. The biblical metaphor of audition stands in sharp contrast to that of vision which occurs frequently in Greek thought and in Oriental religions. To be sure, the Bible also sometimes speaks of seeing God. Isaiah saw God in the temple. Jesus taught that the pure in heart would see God. Paul saw as well as heard on the Damascus road. Conversely, in some documents of Asiatic religion the metaphor of audition is employed. Usage is likewise mixed in such traditional Christian writers as Augustine who describes the relation of man on this earth to God in terms of hearing and doing, but the state of final blessedness in terms of seeing God. But despite the variations and exceptions of usage, what I want to argue is that for theistic or biblical religion 'to hear and do' is normative, while for mystical or pantheistic religion 'to see and enjoy' is normative. Such a distinction corresponds roughly, I think, to the difference between a prophet and a mystic. In a similar way we may contrast religions which aim at contemplation with the biblical faith which involves the primacy of action. The will of God is for the Bible first and fore-

The Task of Modern Religion

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Task of Modern ReligionHu ShihHu Shih Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 14, Number 1Jan., 1934 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/481383 Views: 7Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.