Download or read book Talking about God written by Mr Roger M White and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-06-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fundamental question for theology is the question how we are to understand the claims that we make about God. The only language we can understand is the language we use to talk about human beings and their environment. How can we use that language to talk about God while respecting the infinite difference between God and humanity? The traditional answer has been to appeal to the concept of analogy. However, that appeal has been interpreted in widely different ways. This book aims to clarify the question and this answer by an analysis of the concept. It begins with an exploration of the way the concept was evolved by Aristotle out of Greek mathematics as a technique for comparing "things that were remote"; followed by a critical examination of three very different classical accounts of the way religious language works: those of Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant and Karl Barth. The book finally investigates the way in which analogy could be applied to answer the question initially posed - how is it possible to use human language to talk about God. This is a question of fundamental significance for the whole of religion and theology, concerning as it does our whole understanding of what we mean when we talk about God.
Download or read book Problems and Perspectives in Religious Discourse written by John A. Grimes and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1994-02-03 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious discourse uses ordinary language in an extraordinary way. This book surveys Western and Indian discussions of the nature and aspects of religious discourse. It presents the first cross-cultural elucidation of Advaita Vedānta Implications as religious discourse.
Download or read book Religious language an empirical placing of theological phrases written by Ian T. Ramsey and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2015-05-13 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The whole subject of religious and theological language is one that is likely to receive increasing attention. Professor Ramsey's original and suggestive book cannot fail to have a notable influence on future discussions, and it is indispensable to anyone who wants to follow these discussions intelligently.' So wrote John Macquarrie in the Expository Times in 1958. Subsequent events have proved him right. While invaluable for philosophers and theologians, it is clearly of more than specialist interest, as David Cairns pointed out in the Church of England Newspaper: 'written with such gusto that the reader is tempted to note passages and inflict them on his friends. It is no small achievement to have written in such a lively manner without conveying the impression of frivolity.'
Download or read book Honest to God written by John A. T. Robinson and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On first publication in the 1960s, "Honest to God" did more than instigate a passionate debate about the nature of Christian belief in a secular revolution. It epitomised the revolutionary mood of the era and articulated the anxieties of a generation.
Download or read book Doubt Ethics and Religion written by Luigi Perissinotto and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores Wittgenstein's conception of ethics, religion and philosophy. It aims at providing us with the tools necessary for assessing to what extent the Austrian philosopher can be considered an anti-Enlightenment thinker. The articles collected in this volume explore the relationship between Wittgenstein's thought and that of several authors who were, in various ways, key to the counter-enlightenement, authors such as Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, James and Pierce. One of the central issues examined here is Wittgenstein's opposition to the Cartesian method of doubt – a cornerstone of the enlightened movement against prejudice and superstition.
Download or read book Problems of Religious Luck written by Guy Axtell and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong tendency among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize.
Download or read book What is this thing called Philosophy of Religion written by Elizabeth Burns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is this thing called Philosophy of Religion? grapples with the core topics studied on philosophy of religion undergraduate courses including: the meaning of religious language, including 20th century developments the nature of the Divine, including divine power, wisdom and action arguments for the existence of the Divine challenges to belief in the Divine, including the problems of evil, divine hiddenness and religious diversity believing without arguments arguments for life after death, including reincarnation. In addition to the in-depth coverage of the key themes within the subject area Elizabeth Burns explores the topics from the perspectives of the five main world religions, introducing students to the work of scholars from a variety of religious traditions and interpretations of belief. What is this thing called Philosophy of Religion? is the ideal introduction for those approaching the philosophy of religion for the first time, containing many helpful student-friendly features, such as a glossary of important terms, study questions and further reading.
Download or read book Wittgenstein and the Limits of Language written by Hanne Appelqvist and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The limit of language is one of the most pervasive notions found in Wittgenstein’s work, both in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later writings. Moreover, the idea of a limit of language is intimately related to important scholarly debates on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, such as the debate between the so-called traditional and resolute interpretations, Wittgenstein’s stance on transcendental idealism, and the philosophical import of Wittgenstein’s latest work On Certainty. This collection includes thirteen original essays that provide a comprehensive overview of the various ways in which Wittgenstein appeals to the limit of language at different stages of his philosophical development. The essays connect the idea of a limit of language to the most important themes discussed by Wittgenstein—his conception of logic and grammar, the method of philosophy, the nature of the subject, and the foundations of knowledge—as well as his views on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. The essays also relate Wittgenstein’s thought to his contemporaries, including Carnap, Frege, Heidegger, Levinas, and Moore.
Download or read book An Introduction to Religious Language written by Valerie Hobbs and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why religious language? -- What is religion? : what is religious language? -- Functions of religious language -- Investigating religious language : contexts, text types and strategies -- Investigating religious language : vocabulary, archaism and parallelism -- Investigating religious language : metaphor and intertextuality -- Religious language and prayer -- Religious language at the time of human death -- Religious language here, there, everywhere -- Religious language : an open horizon.
Download or read book Making Sense of God written by Timothy Keller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
Download or read book Between Naturalism and Religion written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.
Download or read book Faith and Knowledge written by John Hick and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revision of his widely read study, John Hick has taken advantage of constructive comments on the first edition to make the book more useful. New material has been added and the overall structure of the volume has been changed to strengthen it both as an introduction to the problem of religious knowledge and as an exposition of the view of faith that seems to him most adequate. There is a new chapter on the Thomist-Catholic view of faith; a new treatment of the controversial notion of eschatological verification, taking account of various published critiques of the concept; and a new section on the way in which the Christian faith-awareness of God expresses itself in a distinctive way of life.
Download or read book The Significance of Religious Experience written by Howard Wettstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-12 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume of essays, Howard Wettstein explores the foundations of religious commitment. His orientation is broadly naturalistic, but not in the mode of reductionism or eliminativism. This collection explores questions of broad religious interest, but does so through a focus on the author's religious tradition, Judaism. Among the issues explored are the nature and role of awe, ritual, doctrine, religious experience; the distinction between belief and faith; problems of evil and suffering with special attention to the Book of Job and to the Akedah, the biblical story of the binding of Isaac; the virtue of forgiveness. One of the book's highlights is its literary (as opposed to philosophical) approach to theology that at the same time makes room for philosophical exploration of religion. Another is Wettstein's rejection of the usual picture that sees religious life as sitting atop a distinctive metaphysical foundation, one that stands in need of epistemological justification.
Download or read book Dynamics of Faith written by Paul Tillich and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2001-10-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the greatest books ever written on the subject, Dynamics of Faithis a primer in the philosophy of religion. Paul Tillich, a leading theologian of the twentieth century, explores the idea of faith in all its dimensions, while defining the concept in the process. This graceful and accessible volume contains a new introduction by Marion Pauck, Tillich's biographer.
Download or read book The God Problem written by Robert Wuthnow and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The message of this book is that we can learn something important about faith by listening closely to the language people use in talking about their faith" -- Preface
Download or read book Glossolalia and the Problem of Language written by Nicholas Harkness and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, has long been a subject of curiosity as well as vigorous theological debate. A worldwide phenomenon that spans multiple Christian traditions, glossolalia is both celebrated as a supernatural gift and condemned as semiotic alchemy. For some it is mystical speech that exceeds what words can do, and for others it is mere gibberish, empty of meaning. At the heart of these differences is glossolalia’s puzzling relationship to language. ? Glossolalia and the Problem of Language investigates speaking in tongues in South Korea, where it is practiced widely across denominations and congregations. Nicholas Harkness shows how the popularity of glossolalia in Korea lies at the intersection of numerous, often competing social forces, interwoven religious legacies, and spiritual desires that have been amplified by Christianity’s massive institutionalization. As evangelicalism continues to spread worldwide, Glossolalia and the Problem of Language analyzes one of its most enigmatic practices while marking a major advancement in our understanding of the power of language and its limits.
Download or read book Philosophy of Religion written by C. Stephen Evans and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 1985-01-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C. Stephen Evans examines the central themes of philosophy of religion, including the arguments for God's existence, the meaning of revelation and miracles, and the problem of religious language.
