Michael Zbaraschuk’s recent article, “Not Radical Enough: William Dean’s Problems with God and History,”1 deserves a published response, because it applies not only to my work but to that of many other philosophical theologians, some of whom read this journal. Before discussing the larger issues, I must attend to an item of scholarly housekeeping. Although Zbaraschuk draws narrowly, i.e., from only two of my books—History Making History (1988) and The Religious Critic in American Culture (1994)—he applies his arguments indiscriminately to (...) my work as a totality, omitting most crucially the score of articles and the book written between 1994 and the present. Of course, there is nothing wrong with an .. (shrink)

This article has two parts, as the title suggests. The first sketches what I call biohistorical naturalism, a naturalistic position in which it is emphasized that the historicocultural development of our humanity, particularly our becoming linguistic/symbolical beings, is as central to our humanness as the biological evolutionary development that preceded (and continues to accompany) it. Apart from such a biohistorical emphasis (or its equivalent), naturalistic positions cannot give adequate accounts of human religiousness. The second part suggests that, although it would (...) not be consistent with biohistorical naturalism to continue thinking of God in the traditional supernaturalistic way as “the Creator,” it would be quite appropriate to understand God as the ongoing creativity (of truly novel realities) manifest in the long history of the universe, particularly in the evolution of life on Earth. (shrink)

The journey of liberal theology in the last couple of centuries is akin to the person who enters a mirror maze with high hopes of finding a graceful and quick way through. Beginning with a clear plan about how to navigate the maze, he winds up confused, disoriented, surrounded by useless self-images. He unwittingly passes through the same places over and over again, never gaining a relevant perspective for guiding decisions about where to go next. For some of these lost (...) souls, the overseer of the maze comes to the rescue, perhaps after sensing rising panic, and for the sake of public safety escorts the exhausted liberal theologian out of the maze and into the sunshine, whereafter the shattered explorer swears .. (shrink)

The plurality of models of ultimate reality is a central problem for religious philosophy. This essay sketches what is involved in mounting comparative inquiries across the plurality of models. In order to illustrate what advance would look like in such a comparative inquiry, an argument is presented to show that highly anthropomorphic models of ultimate reality are inferior to a number of competitors. This paper was delivered as a keynote address during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.

The prediction defended in this paper is that over the next fifty years we will see a return of the ancient tradition of “universal history”; but this will be a new form of universal history that is global in its practice and scientific in its spirit and methods. Until the end of the nineteenth century, universal history of some kind seems to have been present in most historiographical traditions. Then it vanished as historians became disillusioned with the search for grand (...) historical narratives and began to focus instead on getting the details right through document-based research. Today, however, there are many signs of a return to universal history. This has been made possible, at least in part, by the detailed empirical research undertaken in the last century in many different fields, and also by the creation of new methods of absolute dating that do not rely on the presence of written documents. The last part of the paper explores some of the possible consequences for historical scholarship of a return to a new, scientific form of universal history. These may include a closer integration of historical scholarship with the more historically oriented of the sciences, including cosmology, geology, and biology. Finally, the paper raises the possibility that universal history may eventually be taught in high schools, where it will provide a powerful new way of integrating knowledge from the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)