Philosophical Theology

As followers of the Jewish Messiah Yeshua, the Messianic Jewish movement has the task of communicating the divinity of Messiah to the Jewish world. A popular method for recontextualizing the incarnation as a Jewish concept has been to cite ancient Jewish precedents for the idea. This historical-textual approach, as popularized by Daniel Boyarin and others, has significant benefits. However, it also ignores underlying theological and philosophical issues that make the idea of incarnation nonsensical or redundant in the eyes of religious Jewish people. In order to address the objections of religious Jewish people, the Messianic Jewish movement may need to increase its proficiency in theological and philosophical discourse. This paper outlines a second approach to explaining the deity of Messiah, called the Theological-Philosophical approach.

It is hard to think of an area of Christian theology that provides more scope for interdisciplinary conversation than the doctrine of creation. This doctrine not only invites reflection on an intellectual concept: it calls for contemplation of the endlessly complex, dynamic, and fascinating world that human being inhabit. But the possibilities for wide-ranging discussion are such that scholars sometimes end up talking past one another. Productive conversation requires mutual understanding of insights across disciplinary boundaries. Knowing Creation offers an essential resource for helping scholars from a range of fields to appreciate one another's concerns and perspectives. In so doing, it offers an important step forward in establishing a mutually-enriching dialogue that addresses, amongst others, the following key questions:

- Who is the God who creates?
- Why does God create?
- What is "creation"?
- What does it mean to recognize that a theology of creation speaks of a natural world that is subject to the observation of the natural sciences? What does it mean to talk about both a "natural" order and a "created" order?
- What are the major tensions that have arisen between the natural sciences and Christian thinking historically, and why? How can we move beyond such tensions to a positive and constructive conversation, while also avoiding facile notions such as a "god of the gaps"?
- Is it feasible for a natural scientist to maintain a belief in God's continuing creative activity?
- In what ways might a naturalistic understanding of the natural world be said to be limited?
- How can biblical studies, theology, philosophy, history, and science talk better together about these questions?

At a time when the doctrine of creation - and even a mention of "creation" - has been disparaged due to its supposed associations with anti-scientific dogma, and theological offerings sometimes risk appearing a little more than reactionary exercises in naive apologetics, ill-informed by science or distinctly wary of engagement with it, it is more important than ever to offer a cross-disciplinary resource that can voice a positive account of a Christian theology of creation, and do so as a genuinely broad-ranging conversation about science and faith.

Con i contributi di: Anthony Kenny · Andreas Speer · Jocelyn Benoist · Francesco Fronterotta · Enrico Berti · Riccardo Chiaradonna · Mauro Zonta · Francesco Marrone · Marco Lamanna · Paul Richard Blum · Siegrid Agostini · Igor Agostini · Alice Ragni · Francesco Campagnola · Jan Čížek · Pietro Montani · Pierluigi Valenza · Antonello D’Angelo · Jean-François Courtine · Marco Damonte · Emmanuel Cattin · Vincent Holzer · Andrea Grillo · Andrea Bellocci · Francesco Valerio Tommasi · Philippe Nouzille

This paper deals with the relation between God and the secular legal systems of Western liberal democracies. It provides a normative argument for the compatibility of God and secular legal reasoning. In our age, in which believing in God is no longer socially axiomatic and the right to religious freedom protects all kinds of theistic and non-theistic religious beliefs, creeds, and first philosophies, it seems contrary to religious neutrality for secular legal systems to single out God. This paper instead argues that, although God and religion are inextricably intertwined, they affect the legal system in different ways because they are ontologically different. God cannot be reduced to a mere component of theistic religion. This paper argues that a proper understanding of secularization might call for keeping God outside the legal system but not for driving God out of the public sphere of democratic societies. Secular legal systems are not atheist legal systems. Secular legal systems are legal systems 'without religion' but not 'without God.' Secularization implies some degree of minimal recognition of God as a metalegal concept. The specific degree of recognition of God appropriate for any given political community depends on its cultural and communitarian identity and should be subject to the rules of democratic procedures and majorities. This is the metalegal God.

"Michel Weber et Pierfrancesco Basile (sous la direction de), Chromatikon III. Annuaire de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2007. (300 p. ; ISBN 978-2-8746-3083-5 ; 23 € ; http://www.i6doc.com/fr/livre/?GCOI=28001100028210 ; http://www.i6doc.com/en/livre/?GCOI=28001100028210; http://www.i6doc.com/doc/chromatikon3 & http://www.i6doc.com/doc/chromatikon3-eng)

Table
Michel Weber, Avant-Propos & Foreword
I. Séminaires de recherche — Research Seminars
Pierfrancesco Basile, The Reality of Forms
Jean-Marie Breuvart, Husserl et Whitehead, sur l’Intentionnalité
Didier Debaise, Life and Orders
Ronny Desmet, The Rebirth of the Ether
Guillaume Durand, Les objets perceptuels du Professeur Whitehead
Franck Robert, Penser la couleur avec Process and Reality
Xavier Verley, Sentir : Whitehead et Merleau-Ponty
II. Etudes critiques — Critical Studies
Jean-Pascal Alcantara, Le rôle des mathématiques dans la genèse whiteheadienne
Une Sœur de Saint-Jean, Un Principe que les religions appellent « Dieu »
Laura Ilinescu, Vérité et pouvoir dans le Léviathan de Thomas Hobbes
Marc Maesschalck, Raison et événement chez Jean Ladrière
Pierre Montebello, Nietzsche, une philosophie de la nature
Michel Weber, Contact Made Vision: The Apocryphal Whitehead
III. Comptes rendus — Critical Reviews
Stéphan Galetic : James, Essais d’empirisme radical
Ronny Desmet : Lacoste Lareymondie, Une philosophie pour la physique quantique
IV. Informations réticulaires — Reticular News
Discussion: David Ray Griffin, A Reply to Alexander Cockburn
Notes : Peter H. Hare, On Gertrude Stein and Mathematical Logic
Interview : Carlo Sini, Luca Gaeta and Luca Vanzago, The Milano School
Tribute: Leemon McHenry, T.L.S. Sprigge, the Last Idealist
Séminaires — Seminars
Publications
Table des matières — Table of Contents
"

This essay was published in The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology, edited by Christopher A. Beeley and Mark E. Weedman, for the CUAP Studies in Early Christianity (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018); this is the uncorrected proofs. Exploring the humanity and divinity of Jesus, the Son's relation to the Father, and the agency of the Holy Spirit, it is one of five essays suggesting Johannine contributions to trinitarian discussions in the early church.

Kierkegaard and Kant on Radical Evil and the Highest Good is a major study of Kierkegaard's relation to Kant that gives a comprehensive account of radical evil and the highest good, two controversial doctrines with important consequences for ethics and religion. Fremstedal offers an original account of Kierkegaard and his role in the history of philosophy that reconstructs several of his central ideas by relating them to Kant and partially also to contemporary debates. By offering a comparative presentation, the book shows how Kant and Kierkegaard offer different solutions to the problem of evil and its complex relation to religious faith and happiness. Fremstedal sheds new light on Kierkegaard's argument against secular thinking, and shows that there are more Kantian elements in Kierkegaard than has been acknowledged. Kierkegaard's use of Kantian ideas is instructive, since it points to problems with Kant's philosophy of religion and indicates how Kantian philosophy can be used to defend religious faith and hope.

Edith Stein (1891–1942) was a German-Jewish philosopher who joined the Carmelite Order after her conversion to the Roman Catholic faith in 1922. She has written a number of books, out of which the Potency and Act (1931) and the Finite and Eternal Being (1937) stand as monumental works, in which she probes the wonder and mystery of human being in relation to the divine being. She suffered an untimely death under the
Nazi regime at Auschwitz in 1942. She was later canonized as a martyr and saint by Pope John Paul II in 1998 as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
In this book, Donald Wallenfang is presenting a holistic theological anthropology as he distills this theme from the works of Edith Stein.

Inhalt
Christoph Binkelmann: Enthusiasmus und Skepsis. Das europäische Pendel
Burkhard Nonnenmacher: Kants Postulatenlehre als Prüfstein für Heideggers »These der neuzeitlichen Ontologie«?
Günter Zöller : Ex aliquo nihil. Fichtes Anti-Kreationismus
Kai U. Gregor: Eine Kritik innerhalb der Grenzen der Vernunft. Wilhelm Weischedels Grundlegungsversuch einer Philosophischen Theologie im Zeitalter des Nihilismus und ein Gedanke Fichtes
Marco Rampazzo Bazzan: Die Staatslehre Fichtes unter dem Aspekt der
politischen Theologie nach Carl Schmitt
Cristiana Senigaglia: Die Spur der Andersheit: Fichte und Levinas
Detlev Pätzold Hegels Philosophie der Religion: Die Stellung der Religion zwischen Kunst und Philosophie
Arthur Kok: Absoluter Geist und Schöpfung. Jan Hollaks neothomistische Hegelkritik
Kazimir Drilo: Kritik des religiösen Bewusstseins. Falk Wagners theologische Interpretation von Hegels »Wissenschaft der Logik«
Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz: »Der Mensch lebt in zwei Welten […]«. Religion und Staat in Hegels Ansicht und in der heutigen Debatte
Elena Ficara: Der ontologische Gottesbeweis bei Hegel und in der analytischen Philosophie 
Robert Marszałek: Die Gegenwart der Religionslehre des mittleren Schelling
Mildred Galland-Szymkowiak Philosophie und Religion bei K.W.F. Solger.
Ein Beitrag zur nachkantischen Frage nach dem Prinzip der Philosophie
Patrick Grüneberg: Der transzendentale Gott
Wibke Rogge: Emmanuel Lévinas: Über die Beziehung des Unendlichen zum Seienden als Gemeinschaft in der Trennung
Ansgar Lyssy : Darwin, Gott und Neurotheologie. Was können uns die Biowissenschaften über die Religion sagen?

It is frequently charged by critics of classical Christian theism that its core tenets are incompatible with the doctrine of the Incarnation. This accusation is plausible so long as one is compelled to hold either that the divine Word subtracted something from himself in assuming a human nature or added something to himself. But contrary to widespread recent opinion, subtraction and addition are not the only options. Thomas Aquinas, among others, repudiates both these approaches, expounding instead a doctrine of terminative assumption. Termination eludes the liabilities of subtraction and addition by requiring neither privation of being nor passive potency in the divine Word in order to account for his becoming man. If terminative assumption is the correct way to understand the Word's assumption of a human nature, then classical theism is not in conflict with the doctrine of the Incarnation.

An overview of Augustine of Hippo's views about freedom. I argue that Augustine the bishop was one of the first theological compatibilists, who believed that responsibility is compatible with at least certain kinds of necessity and that human freedom requires determination by divine grace.

The primary purpose of this article is to analyze the government-debt crisis in Greece between 2008 and 2015 from a historical and psychological perspective, utilizing Jungian theory of archetypes. Thus, the proposed archetypes, responsible for the internal and external culture clashes, are the Intellectual, the Merchant, and the Patriarch. The secondary purpose of this article is to draw an analogy between the happenings of the Greek government-debt crisis and the current chaos of coronavirus era and offer several lessons that may help to change the course of the history, or at least individual perception of it.

In this short essay, we sketch a theory of faith that features resilience in the face of challenges to relying on those in whom you have faith. We argue that it handles a variety of both religious and secular faith-data, e.g., the value of faith in relationships of mutual faith and faithfulness, how the Christian and Hebrew scriptures portray pístis and ʾĕmûnāh, and the character of faith as it is often expressed in popular secular venues.

In this paper, I present a theodicy in response to Rowe’s Argument from Particular Horrors that relies on God’s ability to empathize with His creation through love and suffering. First, I examine what makes Rowe’s Argument from Particular Horrors such a compelling argument on the problem of evil. Second, I argue that the existence of particular horrors is necessary for God to have a genuinely loving relationship with His creation. Third, I explain how a suffering God is consistent with traditional theistic beliefs. I conclude that God’s suffering increases the reasonableness of the theistic position.

Art & Spirituality
Art as an Essential Form of Worship
including some Cautionary Thoughts for Christian Artists

Abstract

Through his works of art, the Christian artist can “magnify the Lord” by “telling of His glory”, often without words, through reflecting on the attributes of God, which are “the radiance of His glory”. This is an essential form of worship which, like other forms or worship and prayer, can act as a bridge – a “Jacob’s Ladder”, as it were – in which a work of art can be used by the Spirit of God as – a door, or a window, or a portal - between the physical and spiritual realms, through which God can reveal Himself?     

But in all his creative endeavors, the Christian artist must avoid “worshipping the creature rather than the Creator”, being ever aware that “the artist is not superman”, and that “art is not religion”. In order to truly “magnify the Lord”, the artist must view himself and his art – including his understanding of “catharsis” - from a consistent biblical worldview. 

W.D. Furioso ~ ACTpublications (2020) ~ www.AtChristsTable.org

Da sich in den letzten Jahren das Paradigma einer von der analytischen
Philosophie inspirierten analytischen Theologie zu einem
leistungsfähigen theoretischen Ansatz zur Diskussion religionsphilosophischer
und theologischer Fragestellungen entwickelt hat,
wird im Folgenden zunächst der Versuch unternommen, die Struktur
einer analytischen Theologie der Geschichte zu erarbeiten.
Dazu wird der Begriff der analytischen Theologie skizziert, um darauf
basierend zu argumentieren, dass eine analytische Theologie
der Geschichte unter Zuhilfenahme offenbarungstheologischer,
naturwissenschaftlicher und philosophischer Erkenntnisse Theorien
über das Ganze der Geschichte der Welt als Geschichte der
Welt sub specie deitatis entwickelt und sich dabei wesentlich auf
die anhand möglicher Welten definierten Begriffe temporaler Möglichkeit
und Notwendigkeit stützt. Im Anschluss daran werden
zentrale Grundpfeiler einer analytischen Geschichtstheologie gerechtfertigt
bevor in einem letzten Schritt argumentiert wird, dass
die zentrale Herausforderung einer metaphysisch allumfassenden
Geschichtstheologie neben der Rechtfertigung der Möglichkeit des
Bösen in der Geschichte der Welt darin besteht, ontologischen Zufall
und menschliche Freiheit mit göttlicher Allwissenheit und Vorsehung
zu vermitteln.

It is an exciting time to pursue philosophy of religion, not least because of an earnest and widening conversation about what philosophers of religion should be doing in the future. This conversation is driven by factors including the growing presence of philosophers who do not presume as normative the subject position of so-called western traditions of thought, the relentless historicization-especially along Foucaultian lines-of the modern study of religion (or 'religion') by critics working across the range of implicated disciplines, and by newly energized emphases in existing methods of the study of religion upon embodiment and upon materiality more generally.

1. We look through the mind and we gaze within awareness…becoming aware of awareness is the path of gazing (whether eyes or open or closed)…we can gaze into awareness and we are immediately the field, the field of being. If we look and look for awareness with our mind only blankness arises, a blank state. Sunyata, primordial knowingness is not blankness, it is not blanking out. As we become aware of awareness we enter the gaze, we become the place of the gaze…this gazing from within awareness opens the multidimensionalness….the different dimensions of the field manifest within the gaze, within us. The gaze is both within us and beyond us. Within the gaze, there is neither simple inside nor simple outside. The gaze is place...a vast place beyond inside and outside.

The paper analyzes the correlation of time and creation in St. Augustine. Building upon researches of recent decades, it subdivides the issue into three topics, which facilitates the treatment of memory as a philosophical and theological problem, and thus enables to deal with the problem of time. First, it is the question about the content of memory, or rather, of its ability to keep some content, which may be called synthetic ability. This question not only clarifies psychological objectives of memory — the possibility to keep impressions, feelings, and images, to bring together and hold whatever experience of thinking — but also exposes any synthesis whatsoever as dependent on the ability of memory to constitute the duration. The second question fo-cuses on the analysis of memory as a guarantee of self-identity of the subject. The human being, taken in her spiritual existence, is viewed by St. Augustine through the Trinitarian schema of «memoria-intelligentia-voluntas», expounded in his treatise On the Trinity. Hypostatized memory is a representation of God the Father who embodies the principle of being within the Trinity. Besides the obvious influence on the further elaboration of the Trinitarian dogma and the doctrine of filioque, this idea of St. Au-gustine reveals an additional anthropological dimension, since the Trinitarian unity implicates the unity of soul, perception and thought. The third aspect conveys the ontological significance of memory, which explicates the nature of creation and its associate mutability. Undoubtedly, the doctrine of memory contains a Platonism, which is inherent in all  Augustinian epistemology. Attempting to clarify the effect of this combination of Platonism and Christianity on the dealing with the problem of time, the author also probes a modern phenomenological interpretation of the doctrine of memoryformulated by J.-L. Marion.

"The purpose of this analysis is to provide an overview of the North Korean situation in order to design effective mission strategies among the North Korean people.  This analysis will provide a summary overview of the current North Korean culture, current missionary work, and possible strategies for the future.  Due to the intense suspicion of foreigners and extreme resistance to religious activity, missionaries will have to rely heavily on political, social, and humanitarian methods in order to evangelize the North Korean people" (taken from the introduction).

Niniejsza praca ma na celu przedstawienie teorii mitotwórczej J. R. R. Tolkiena, z perspektywy jej wymiaru duchowego. Od czasów antycznych teorie, tudzież filozofie, opierały się na myśleniu abstrakcyjnym i miały za zadanie wyjaśnienie ówczesnemu człowiekowi otaczającej go rzeczywistości. Nie inaczej było z Tolkienowską teorią, na potrzebę której ukuł swój termin Mitopoeia. „Duchowy wymiar Tolkienowskiej Teorii Mitotwórczej” – tłumacząc tytuł tej pracy na język Polski – przekłada się na wiele sfer życia Tolkiena. Pierwsza z tych płaszczyzn, to przypisywany mu przez niektórych krytyków program filozoficzny. Na tym wymiarze skupia się pierwszy rozdział tej pracy: „The Philosophical Disenchantment.” Jednak jak sugeruje tytuł, stanowi on zaledwie tło wszelkich dalszych poszukiwań, gdyż oferuje badaczom Tolkienowskiej myśli jedynie jej racjonalizację i demitologizację. Życiowa pasja Tolkiena, filologia komparatywna, daje wystarczające zrozumienie jego fenomenu, a przynajmniej zdaniem kilku krytyków. Niezaprzeczalnie stanowiła ona inspirację, a zarazem była narzędziem, którego Tolkien użył podług swej ogromnej wiedzy z zakresu językoznawstwa. Pomimo, iż w tej pracy „Comparative Philology” jest omawiana w drugiej kolejności, to właśnie ta dyscyplina była źródłem znajomości filozofii u Tolkiena. Podążając krokami Tolkieniany nie można jednak na tym poprzestać. Trzeci wymiar, jakże metafizyczny i filozoficzny w swych założeniach i implikacjach to odkrycie Owena Barfielda, znajomego Tolkiena. Barfield odkrył Teorię „Jedności Semantycznej,” co Tolkienowi przyszło łatwo przyjąć do wiadomości: język jako narzędzie może również być transcendentny, ze względu na swe początki. Dla Tolkiena była to jedna z tych rzeczy, która pozwoliła mu uwierzyć w smoki. „Philological Philosophy: Let There Be Dragons” – jest zatem łącznikiem między dwoma światami. Jednakże Tolkien nie był byle fantastą, oderwanym od ziemi. Teoria Barfielda, obudziła w nim nadzieję. Pomimo to, tak jak każdy rozsądny i racjonalny człowiek Tolkien musiał dowiedzieć się, „czy to prawda.” Potrzebował czegoś, aby idee odnieść do nie tyle rzeczywistego doświadczenia, ile prawdy. Prawda, bowiem wyzwala. Mimo nieustannego negowania jego wiary, to właśnie ona umożliwiła mu dalsze rozważanie tych teorii. I nie da się inaczej wytłumaczyć jego mitotwórstwa, jak przez uznanie jego wiary. Miłości do Boga, która była tak głęboka, że aż sięgała wiedzy teologicznej. Tego, między innymi, tyczy ostatni rozdział tej pracy: „Myth Becomes Truth.”
Liczba stron: 51

En este ensayo se aborda un aspecto específico de los cristianismos de Medio Oriente, a saber, sus cristologías. Me interesa particularmente destacar la importancia del vocabulario filosófico utilizado para definir la naturaleza de Cristo, puesto que fue una de las cuestiones que suscitó buena parte de las polémicas más tempranas en la historia intelectual del cristianismo de Medio Oriente. Aunque estos desencuentros reflejan también la rivalidad entre los patriarcados de Antioquía, Alejandría
y Constantinopla, más que reconstruir la historia política de una lucha
por la primacía en el patriarcado, mi objetivo es esclarecer sus respectivas posturas en torno a la naturaleza de Cristo, con la intención de reafirmar que las sutilezas terminológicas que en un momento dividieron a los primeros cristianos son, como en algunos casos lo ha mostrado la historia, superables, aunque eso no suponga la disolución de ciertas diferencias.

During the years in which France succumbed to nazi ideology and was occupied by German forces, Henri de Lubac, a French cardinal and one of the great contemporary thinkers the Catholic Church can boast of, played a decisive role in the French resistance to anti-Semitism. Active as a priest, de Lubac collaborated in the composition of ''official'' proclamations such as the famous 1941 ''Chaine Declaration" and also arranged conferences, wrote books, and participated in various resistance activities. One of de Lubac’s most intimate friends, Yves de Montcheuil α student companion among others, was shot to death in July 1944 by the Gestapo. De Lubac made clear his commitment to oppose what he termed Europe's "collective apostasy" under Nazism in α confidential letter to his religious superiors in April 1941. The commitment is amply demonstrated in a 260-page book of de Lubac's memoirs published in France, entitled Résistance Chrétienne et l'Antisémitisme: Souvenirs 1940-1944.

In this paper I take a closer look at Fr. Georges Florovsky’s original view on the relation between philosophy and theology. I argue that he tried to formulate an approach based on patristic experience and opposed to the dominating secular paradigm of philosophy. In some sense he wanted
to reverse the traditional account. As Teresa Obolevitch aptly suggested, he wanted to replace the  principle fides quaerens intellectum by the rule intellectus quaerens fidem. In that first default case the faith needs to be justified or proved by the reason, in the second, unobvious one, the faith has an absolute priority and illuminates itself the natural thought. According to Florovsky, philosophy should not attempt to ground the theology, formulating arguments for the existence of God or proving
the coherence of theism, but rather should accept theology as a fundamental premise and then develop a new, non-secular account for the old philosophical topics.

While many versions of the problem of evil aim to show that the existence of horrendous or gratuitous evils make atheism more likely than not or render belief in God’s existence unreasonable, this paper will focus on how experiences of supposedly horrendous or gratuitous evils can give an individual grounds to abandon trust in God or to initially refuse to trust God. While an actually gratuitous or horrendous evil is one that an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being could prevent without sacrificing anything of greater moral worth or without failing to prevent something equally bad or worse, an instance of evil would be supposedly or apparently horrendous if upon consideration, we have no reason to think that a being like God could not have prevented it without sacrificing anything of greater moral worth or without failing to prevent something equally bad or worse. So, the existence of supposedly gratuitous or horrendous evil is perfectly consistent with there being no actual instances of such evil. Even if the skeptical theist is right about the fact human beings may not have the right kind of capacities to be aware of how apparently horrendous evils are not actually horrendous, that in itself does not make the instances of evil themselves any less apparently gratuitous or horrendous.
Whether or not an individual is warranted in trusting another will depend upon certain conditions being met; in particular, the individual being trusted needs to have the relevant properties that render them trustworthy and the individual exercising trust needs to have some occasion or opportunity for thinking that the individual being trusted actually has those properties. With respect to trusting God, one could say that to trust God is to have some confidence that God is a being that is capable of acting on their behalf in relevant ways and that God is a being of moral character that has that individual’s best interest in mind. So, the individual trusts that God loves her; that God will sovereignly protect her; that God has her best interests in mind and that God can be a source of strength and comfort in times of trouble. Furthermore, to trust God involves some confidence that God will favorably respond to one’s trust. It is that type of confidence that is undermined in the face of supposedly gratuitous or horrendous evil. If God allows such evils to occur knowing full well that 1) such instances of evil will strike individuals as apparently gratuitous or horrendous; 2) individuals lack the appropriate epistemic capacities to see that such instances of evil are not actually gratuitous or horrendous and 3) allowing such instances of evil will erode the individuals’ confidence that God can be trusted and may even be seen as an instance of God betraying individuals’ trust, God’s allowing such evils to occur under those circumstances does not bode well for those individuals continuing to trust in God or initially placing their trust in God. As such, even if experiences of supposedly horrendous or gratuitous evils may not justify one in being an atheist, they may justify one in being an apostate.

Abstract
To what extent can a natural theology be derived from general revelation? Discuss the implications of your answer for the fate of the ‘unevangelised’.
This essay answers the question of what we can know about God through general revelation, and in particular what that means for those people who have not had the opportunity to ever hear the gospel message.  The essay begins by looking at the different knowledge that a person can attain about God through general revelation, but before delving into the different arguments it starts by outlining a case against the argument that there is no general revelation of God.  From this the essay delves into what can be known about God through what is revealed in history, what can be known by considering the origins of the universe, what knowledge of God can be seen by the evidence of intelligent design of the world, and also what our own moral conscience tells us about God.  The essay argues that although significant knowledge about God may be determined through His general revelation, the knowledge of who He is or a more intimate knowledge of Him cannot be attained apart from special revelation.  It shows how without the special revelation of God through Jesus, salvation is not possible, then it cites various different Biblical examples to show how, regardless of whether people have been “evangelised” or not, they are still able to receive God’s special revelation that leads unto salvation.  The conclusion of the essay is that general revelation is what gives a person faith to believe that God exists, and therefore pursue Him further, but that a special revelation of Jesus is needed through scriptures, visions, messengers, angels etc., for them to be saved.

What does it mean to say that the Bible has authority ? The author introduces and develops J. M. Bochen ! ski's philosophical theory about the nature of authority. On this basis, he distinguishes between different kinds of authority, which he applies to the authority of the Bible. Subsequently, he shows that the theory of Bochen ! ski should be improved by reworking it from the perspective of speech-act theory. This leads to the presentation of an overall theory of authority that matches authority in general as well as the authority of the Bible.

Dawkins" "The God Delusion" renews an old debate concerning the existence or nonexistence of God at the instance of moral and physical/natural evil in society. He repudiates all theistic claims because theistic belief is the basis of evil in the society. He installs atheism in place of theism, claiming the former is a better alternative. Using the approach of ethical inquiry, the article responds to Dawkins" claim that theistic belief is the basis of evil. The article studies the connection between theistic belief and reality, theism and the presence of evil, and the relevance of atheism in present-day society. The article reveals that evil is caused neither by theism nor atheism. Rather, it resides in the corrupt human nature that occurred shortly after the creation of humanity. Thus the article concludes that evil is caused and maintained by humanity"s inordinate desire for self-preservation at any cost.

Conference draft of the article: "Intellectual Elitism and the Need for Faith in Maimonides and Aquinas," forthcoming: Anuario Filosófico, Vol. 48, no. 1, "Aquinas and the Abrahamic Traditions" (2015).

Copyright © 2013-15 Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo.
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Abstract: In his Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate 3.1, Aquinas cites Maimonides as giving five reasons for why faith is necessary for mankind.  Yet when one turns to The Guide for the Perplexed 1.34, one immediately sees that Maimonides is actually giving five reasons for why the study of metaphysics, which he considers to be the ultimate path to human perfection, must be restricted to the learned and must be hidden from the unlearned masses.  Interpreters tend to see Aquinas as therefore misappropriating Maimonides' thought, or in the words of one scholar, as "standing Maimonides on his head": his use of Maimonides is seen as a reversal (albeit a "benign reversal") of Maimonides' own thought.  In this paper, however, I place Maimonides' text on the five reasons for concealing metaphysics within the context of his rational mysticism and compare it to Aquinas' own Christian mystical thought in an attempt to show that in his own mind Aquinas is not misquoting, reversing, or doing violence to Maimonides' text; rather, Aquinas is completing Maimonides' natural, rational mysticism with what he understands to be the supernatural perfection of the theological virtue of faith.

Der am Institut für Evangelische Theologie der Universität Osnabrück lehrende Systematiker Gregor Etzelmüller (E.) legt eine theologische Anthropologie vor, die ihren interdisziplinären Sitz im Leben im Heidelberger Marsilius-Projekt "Verkörperung als Paradigma einer evolutionären Kulturanthropologie" hat.

In Metaphysics A 6-7 Aristotle gives a more precise elaboration of several features which characterize the mode of being of the first principle (eternal, pure actuality, free of matter, metaphysically simple; moving without itself being moved, in the highest degree intelligible and desirable; pure thinking, best and eternal life). In this article I will be concerned exclusively with the feature of thinking in the sense that the first principle is not only the highest object of thinking, but it is itself pure thinking. When at Met. A 7, 1072b14-26 Aristotle ascribes to the first principle a certain kind of life, and qualifies this more specifically as the activity of reason in the mode of contemplation, he argues for this feature in a significantly different way from the previous ch aracte ristics. In what f o llows I will develop and defend an interpretation of this passage according to which we are here dealing with an argument � rom analogy. _ On my reading, Aristotle wants to show in this passage how lt is that we can determine the 'pure actuality' of the first principle based on � he highes t realization of human thought. He succeeds in doing so by show ing that in human thinking there is a special 'structure of actuality', which, h ? wever, due to his ontological perfection has to be present in God in a hig her form. I will show that, contrary to the usual reading of this passage, t � e inte rpretation developed in this essay requires fewer additional assump tio ns, is closer to the text and, in general, can better accommodate the unique to pic discussed at Met. A 6-7. The following article is a reworked and shortened version of chapter 4 of Herzberg, S. 2013: Menschli che und göttliche Kontemplation. Eine Untersuchung zum bios theoretikos bei Arist oteles, Heidelberg. I thank Manfred Weltecke for translating my text into English. 4 Cf. also E. N. X 4, 1175al2: iJ 6e �Tl tvepyeux �-5 See Laks, A. 2000: Metaphysics A 7, in: M. Frede/D. Charles (eds.), Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda. Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford, 232: "Whether one renders the term by 'way of life' or, perhaps more neutrally, by 'occupation', something more than mere existence is presupposed, namely a life." See also Bordt, M. 2006: Aristoteles' Metaphysik XII, Darm stadt, 116 f. 6 Cf. Met. A 6, 1071b19 f.: 6ei 6.pa elvat apxi)v-rowiiT11V �<; iJ ou<rla tv&pyew. See also A 7 , 1072a32; A 8, 1074a35 f. 7 Cf. Bordt (see note 5), 101. God as Pure Thinking. An Interpretation of Metaphysics A 7, 1072b14-26 159 something that can guarantee an eternal and continuous motion must be conceived. This then leads him to the concept of 'pure actuality'. This con cept describes the essence of the first principle of motion and the other (two) cha racteristics are connected with this concept via a conceptual necessity. 8 Within a second series of predicates the first principle is qualified further; more precisely, it is thus qualified with regard to the eternal and uninterrupt ed motion of the first heaven. The first feature in this series characterizes the first principle as moving other things, while it itself is unmoved.9 In support of this claim Aristotle gives the following argument: "There is therefore also something which moves them. And since that which is moved and moves is in ter mediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eter nal, substance, and actuality" (A 7, 1072a23-26). 10 Aristotle develops this argument further at Phys. VIII 5. Here he proves the necessary existence of some unmoved moving being. 1 1 The eternal and immaterial substance, which essence consists in actuality and which is identified as unmoved, moves in the way an object of desire and thought moves other things, and this is the second feature in this series of predicates. For objects of desire and thought �ove as mere final causes, without being moved themselves. In order to JUstify that the first principle does de facto move other things in this way, 12 Aristotle tries to show that the primary instances of what is desirable and what is thinkable are identical: The primarily desirable is not that which just 8 9 To this first series other characteristics can be added, e.g. that owing to its pure actuality this principle "can in no way be otherwise than as it is" (A 7, 107268) and that it is "absolutely necessary" (b13); or the characteristics that this principle exists "separate from sensible things" (1073a4 f.), is "without parts and indivisible" (1073a6f.; see also A9, l075a6 f.) and "one both in formula and in number" (A 8, 1074a36 f.; I owe this last point to Lloyd Gerson). Following Horn (see note 3) one may indeed call these "divine attributes" (32 f.) or also "predicates of perfection" (41). Bordt, M. 2011: Why Aristotle's God is Not the Unmoved Mover, in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 40, 91-109 is right to point out that to be an unmoved mover is not an essential feature of the first substance, but merely a relational one, i.e., it has this feature only in relation to the realm of the perceptible and changeable substances (see previously Menn, S. 1992: Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good, in: Review of Meta physics, 45, 545). The first substance is later identified with God (1072b30), not insofar as it is an unmoved mover but insofar as it leads the best kind of life, which is the activity of reason. lO At this point it becomes clear that the second series of predicates is joined with the first Series (CXfaWV tcai ouoia Kai 6V&pr6UX OOO'll). 11 There is no agreement as to which passage of Phys. VIII 5 Aristotle is referring here. See Laks (see note 5), 217-219, for more details on this question. 12 See Bordt (see note 9), 107: "Aristotle is not interested only in some general claim to the effect that there are cases where something unmoved can move something eise; rather, he is aiming eo show that one very particular state of affairs actually obtains, namely that the unmoved mover in fact does move (what it moves) as an object of thought and desire". 1028 h27-32 (x6tepov e!al nv� ,rapa t� alalhJt� ii ou,c eia{, Kal CMal itli><; sla{, Kal x6tepov llan � XOJPIO'rr(ouala ...) and A 1, 1069a33 f.

Philosophical theology is the study of the conditions, forms, claims and significance of religious faith with methods and approaches characteristic of philosophy. It may be understood in one of three overlapping senses: to denote philosophical prolegomena to theology; approaches within theology that prioritize sources and methods independent of revelation; and a field within theology partly co-extensive with systematic theology.
This encyclopaedia article briefly sets out the uses of 'philosophical theology', the history of the field, and key areas of study.