In this paper, we defend universalism, which we understand to be the thesis that all individuals will eventually attain communion with God, in a Vedāntic context. We first outline the specific ontological commitments that our view requires, such as the doctrines of karman and reincarnation, and we note one Vedāntic tradition that holds to all these commitments. We then outline the conceptual merits of our view. We also argue that certain objections to universalism do not undermine our view, as reincarnation (...) and karman provide a means for all individuals to eventually freely choose to devote themselves to God, making it extremely likely that all individuals will attain salvation. (shrink)

This essay examines the analysis of language in The Concept of Anxiety and argues that language ultimately reveals itself as both dangerous and salvific. The pseudonymous author, Vigilius Haufniensis, is suspicious of language, for it divides the individual from herself and thereby makes possible the self-forgetfulness of objective chatter. Indeed, this warning (which commenters have tended to follow uncritically) is a legitimate one – yet it fails to grasp that by rendering the self other than itself, language constitutes the self. (...) In other words, the individual’s very existence depends on language. Moreover, the attempt to establish oneself as absolutely self-identical is precisely sin. Language opens us to alterity, and for this reason the demonic cannot endure it and seeks to control it. Language is uncontrollable, however, to the point that no sign permits us to be certain that we have rightly distinguished good from evil, the salvific from the demonic – and salvation can come only if we renounce the attempt to establish distinctions that are beyond our power. By employing a pseudonymous figure who views language with suspicion, Kierkegaard shows that language is dangerous, even deadly, but also allows us to realize that language is the condition of possibility for salvation. (shrink)

This essay examines the analysis of language in The Concept of Anxiety and argues that language ultimately reveals itself as both dangerous and salvific. The pseudonymous author, Vigilius Haufniensis, is suspicious of language, for it divides the individual from herself and thereby makes possible the self-forgetfulness of objective chatter. Indeed, this warning (which commenters have tended to follow uncritically) is a legitimate one – yet it fails to grasp that by rendering the self other than itself, language constitutes the self. (...) In other words, the individual’s very existence depends on language. Moreover, the attempt to establish oneself as absolutely self-identical is precisely sin. Language opens us to alterity, and for this reason the demonic cannot endure it and seeks to control it. Language is uncontrollable, however, to the point that no sign permits us to be certain that we have rightly distinguished good from evil, the salvific from the demonic – and salvation can come only if we renounce the attempt to establish distinctions that are beyond our power. By employing a pseudonymous figure who views language with suspicion, Kierkegaard shows that language is dangerous, even deadly, but also allows us to realize that language is the condition of possibility for salvation. (shrink)

A brief dialogue on the meaning of Christ's salvation with a Christian evangelical.

I evaluate two claims; that (a) Jesus’ message as recorded in the gospels implies exclusivism with respect to salvation and that, correspondingly, (b) Christians should be exclusivists with respect to salvation. I evaluate these claims through a cataloguing and evaluation of the logical condition involved in each of the claims regarding conditions for salvation made by Jesus in the Gospel of John. As a result, I argue that (a) is false and that, correspondingly, so is (b).

In this paper, I develop a philosophical clarification of the statement "faith in the resurrection of Christ saves men from sin", using some of the main arguments and hypotheses of my recent book, ’The Ways of Salvation (Les Voies du salut’, Paris 2010). I begin with some remarks on the theme of salvation in contemporary language and philosophy. I then sketch a conceptual analysis of the concept of salvation, first in its general sense, then in its specifically (...) Christian one. Finally, I offer a hypothesis on the ’modus operandi’ of salvation, or at least of one aspect of salvation as understood by Christianity. (shrink)

Dynamic Theodicy (DT) is a broad concept we bring up to designate some modern Philosophical Theology attempts to reconcile the necessary and perfect existence of God with the contingent characteristics of human life. In this paper we analyze such approaches and discuss how they have become incomprehensible because the metaphysical assumptions implicit in these explanations have lost their intrinsic relation to the natural human desire for salvation. In the first part we show Charles Hartshorne's DT-model, arising from the modal (...) logic of perfection, and the modern rational problems of this position in making infinite-necessary Being (God) and finite-contingent being (human) compatible. We note that at the heart of the contradictions in this DT account is a dialectical mode of thinking that makes it difficult to find a correct solution to this dichotomy, and to assume a human desire that could be considered related to lifelong goals. In the second part, supported by the proposal of Hans Urs von Balthasar's DT, we develop the concepts of bodily vulnerability, corporeal intentionality, and natural desire for salvation, which come from an Aristotelian-Thomistic thought. This theory is established in order to build an argument, following Alasdair MacIntyre’s ethical framework, on how to make possible the recovery of a metaphysical and anthropological desire that transcends natural aging and goes beyond death. We conclude that both human dependence and the virtues that arise naturally when human beings decide to seek the good of their transcendent condition, make it possible to recover the natural desire for salvation through divine and human love. (shrink)

Avicenna's proof for the existence of God (the Necessary Existent) in the Metaphysics of the Salvation relies on the claim that every possible existent shares a common cause. I argue that Avicenna has good reason to hold this claim given that he thinks that (1) every essentially ordered causal series originates in a first, common cause and that (2) every possible existent belongs to an essentially ordered series. Showing Avicenna's commitment to 1 and 2 allows me to respond to (...) Herbert Davidson's and Richard Swinburne's claim that Avicenna's proof for the Necessary Existent is incomplete and fallacious -/- . (shrink)

Jonathan Kvanvig has proposed a non-cognitive theory of faith. He argues that the model of faith as essentially involving assent to propositions is of no value. In response, I propose a Thomistic cognitive theory of faith that both avoids Kvanvig’s criticism and presents a richer and more inclusive account of how faith is intrinsically valuable. I show these accounts of faith diverge in what they take as the goal of the Christian life: personal relationship with God or an external state (...) of affairs. For this reason, more seriously, the non-cognitivist project likely requires rejecting traditional Christianity and its picture of salvation. (shrink)

Faithful persons tend to relate to their religious beliefs as truth claims, particularly inasmuch as their beliefs have soteriological implications for those of different religions. For Christians the particular claims which matter most in this regard are those made by Jesus of Nazareth and his claims are primarily relational in nature. I propose a model in which we understand divine grace from Jesus as being mediated through relational knowledge of him on a compassionately exclusivist basis, including post-mortem. Supporting this model, (...) I draw from Eleonore Stump’s hypothesis in her 2018 Atonement that the crucifixion of Jesus opens the divine psyche to all human psyches sufficiently for salvific mutual indwelling to occur, and from Gavin D’Costa’s conception of the descensus Christi ad inferos as the mechanism for grace’s accessibility post-mortem presented in his 2009 Christianity and World Religions. This model seeks to address ongoing, justified pastoral concern for the soteriological status of non-Christians while still treating Christianity as objectively true. (shrink)

From the perspective of Aquinas’ Biblical commentaries, the article develops the reflection on pignus / arra haereditatis (Eph 1:5) seeing these essential elements of Thomas’ reflection on salvation in the terminological question of which one is better: pignus or arra, namely the pledge or the earnest/deposit. Thomas develops soteriology, which indicates that human salvation starts “now” and not “later,” through the participation in the Passion of Christ and in His merits. Analyzing Aquinas’ commentary on Ps 21, on the (...) Letter to the Ephesians and on the Letter to the Galatians together with the themes of Christ’s obedience and its soteriological significance as well as His wish of voluntary death for us, the article shows the Biblical roots of Thomas’ soteriology. The author devotes particular attention to the analysis of the logic of inchoatio and consummatio in Thomas’ soteriological grammar and his understanding of faith as the beginning of eternal life and the ensuing consequences. (shrink)

According to Colerus, Spinoza replied affirmatively when his landlady asked if she "...could be saved in her faith." This paper asks what Spinoza could have meant -- and what his landlady would have thought he meant. She was asking about salvation of a certain kind -- a kind that Spinoza did not in fact believe to be possible. When he talks about salvation in his writings, he has in mind a different kind of salvation -- one that (...) his landlady will certainly not achieve "in her faith." So, when he assured her that she could be saved in her faith was he simply lying to her? This question is explored against the background of the controversies regarding Spinoza's sincerity in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus. (shrink)

This contribution discusses Leibniz’s views on key Christian doctrines which were surrounded, in the early modern period, by particularly lively debates. The first section delves into his defence of the Trinity and the Incarnation against the charge of contradiction, and his exploration of metaphysical models capacious enough to accommodate these mysteries. The second section focuses on the resurrection and the Eucharist with special regard to their connections with Leibniz’s metaphysics of bodies. The third section investigates Leibniz’s position on predestination, grace, (...) salvation, and damnation. It comes to the conclusion that salvation, for Leibniz, does not ultimately depend on believing a set of true doctrines, but on a practical attitude: the love of God above all things. Leibniz’s theology is thus fundamentally a theology of love which is ultimately practical, and tries to be both universalist and Christian. (shrink)

Ghazali’s The Beginning of Guidance (Bidayetü'l Hidaye) is a book that represents the beginning for people's salvation. According to Ghazali, in order for the human to be guided, he must first follow the orders of this book and then read the book The Revival of Religious Sciences, which he says contains useful science. According to him, the book of Beginning of Guidance can offer the key to salvation. In this book he made major changes in the understanding of (...) worship of Islam and expanded both the content and the scope of worship. In this book, where the understanding of worship of Islam has become mystical; in addition to the prayers that the Qur'an declares as obligatory, the prophet Mohammed’s worship, the prayers of his companions, the remembrances of the Sufis, the wars made in the life of the ascetics are described in the form of orders that must be made in the way of liberation. Thus, he made the prayer not a part of life, but the whole life, saying that three times as much prayer as the God made obligatory, four times as much as Ramadan fasting, fifty-seven times a day prayer and chant every time of the day. There has been no previous study regarding the issue of Ghazali turning worship into ascetism with the book of Beginning of Guidance. In this paper, in addition to this work of Ghazali, the narrations in his other works will be taken into consideration. Thus, his project of Islam religion and mysticization will be introduced in more detail. There are two important factors that direct Gazali, who presents a way of life based on ascetism and seclusion, as an "ideal life". The first is the Sufi culture that he has been in since his childhood and has never broken. According to Ghazali, the life style of Sufi culture that takes the person away from the world is a prescription for salvation of Muslims who are under the threat of "secularization". The second is the distinction between the community and the upper class in the society with the effect of this Sufi culture. It is not possible to say the same thing for the common people belonging to the religion of 'imitation', while the upper class is liberated with the life of the feast and the deity. The only way of the salvation of the common people is to turn the prayers of the imitation religion to ascertism and to open the way of the seclusion. They can do it with the book Beginning of Guidance. Thus the common people can reach salvation just like the upper class by leaving this world behind. (shrink)

The essay is an English version of the German article "Wissenschaftliche Rationalität, menschliches Bewusstsein und pro-religiöse Ideen". It discusses immanent versus transcendent concepts in the context of the art of living, as well as the understanding of human consciousness in the context of religion. Science provides us with a far reaching understanding of natural processes, including biological evolution, but also with deep insights into its own intrinsic limitations. This is consistent with more than one interpretation on the “metatheoretical“, that is (...) on the philosophical and cultural level, including liberal, enlightened forms of religion as well as agnostic views. Choices and preferences are mainly a matter of wisdom and art of living, and not just of knowledge, and this, in my view, supports metaphysical and anthropological optimism as expressed in liberal pro-religious ideas. Within Christian theology, metaphysical optimism and openness are most characteristic for the ideas of “apokatastasis” – “salvation for all” - repeatedly condemned as heretical, but also widely supported from early Christianity to modern times. (shrink)

Spinoza’s philosophy could be understood as a tireless research of the truth. Nevertheless it can’t be interpreted as a path that leads only the wise to the salvation. The effort to reach the bliss, freedom, the true knowledge of the mind, has to belong to all humanity. So the role of the philosopher must be to encourage men to seek the truth, to love it through the union with God above all else. This is the soteriological fabric of the (...) early works of Spinoza. It will lead to the exaltation of the homo liber and of the Spirit of Christ as the way of salvation in his mature works. Nature’s knowledge will be the lifeblood in the context of the research for the universal salvation of individuals as a happy community. (shrink)

New methods for reading and understanding the religious sources have been applied along with the modern period. Some issues, that have already gained a certain shape in the classical period, have been discussed again as a result of the application of new methods and thus a number of conclusions which exceed the boundaries framed by Ijma (consensus of the Ummah) were reached. In the course of time, these discussions were not limited to transactions [al-Mu`amalat] but also expanded to worship (al-'Ibadah) (...) and faith (al-aqāʾid) issues. One of these debate topics is the issue whether it is mandatory for the Jews and Christians (Ahl al-Kitāb) to believe in and follow prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and the last holy book al-Quran to be on the straight path and to reach salvation. The detection and analysis of these historical breaking points in the modern period is of importance. To analyse these breaking points in the interpretation of the verses, two tafseers which reflect the traditional method and understanding (at-Tibyan and Bilmen’s Tafseer) are compared with two other tafseers (Çağdaş Tefsir and Kuran Yolu) which are written in the last 40 years period. (shrink)

Here is an idea that just might save the world. It is that science, properly understood, provides us with the methodological key to the salvation of humanity.

"All-and-Nought" is the 2nd Edition of a series of books that study the nature of Reality and Being. The first edition of the book, "The Metaphysics of All-and-None", was published by Edwin Mellen Press in January 2022; since then the book has been under severe investigations and reviews by many scholars and pundits worldwide. The 2nd edition of the book contains the original text plus a foreword by Professor Richard Howells from King’s College London and some reports by Physicists, Biologists, (...) and others. Journal of Mind, one the most important journals in Philosophy, paid attention to the book and in its critical review article October 2022, encourages all philosophers and pundits to study the book. -/- The book's core concept is a Scientific/Mathematical, a-priori/synthetic theory called All'n'None Theory. It studies the Symmetry and Asymmetry in Reality and points to a state that indicates the deep Symmetry between "All Beings" and "Nothingness". It deeply studies the relationships between being and non-being from the perspective of Symmetry and symmetry failure and offers a measurement tool and a new method of studding phenomena. -/- It seems All`n`None Theory is a scientific breakthrough and discovery. The book methodologically applies Physics, Conceptual philosophy, Mathematics, and jurisprudence analysis both inductively and deductively to prove its theory. It is the first and the only Theory for Explaining the nature of Existence (being) and provides a technique to measure the amount of existence in each being. -/- Through understanding Existence, the book explains Creation, Cosmos, Consciousness, Mind, Spirit, and Soul scientifically. It is deep enough to initially encompass and then merge all modern Sciences (Physics, Philosophy, Complexity, System Theory, Information Theory, Psychology, Biology, Humanities, Economy, and Management) with Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Theology) and makes the image of Reality clearer for readers. -/- The book proves chaos management in the depth of creation and shows how people can use the only law of creation for their own success and salvation. Therefore the book is an inspirational one too. Readers by reading the book and understanding it not only gain scientific knowledge but also find profound wisdom that heals them. They feel they are enlightened and motivated to construct their meaning of life. Readers can recognize their self/ego structure of being and enjoy the passion to improve. -/- The book tries to explain the mechanism of Thinking with respect to Symmetry and the failure of Symmetry as the foundation of Categorization, Mentalization, and Cognition. By understanding the mechanism of cognition it can study Epistemology and explain the Believing Mechanism and the nature of Beliefs as a kind of being. The theory claims no matter the beliefs originated from Science or Religion the mechanisms that govern both of them are the same. Based on the theory, “Knower or Observer”, “Known or Observed”, and “knowing or observation” are rooted in Symmetry and its failure. The tone, language, and structure of the book are unique to itself. It is not an entertainment or commercial book. The book is written for readers who plan to spend enough time to think about its content. (shrink)

Nurettin Topçu (1909-1975) built religious philosophy on the philosophy of willpower and motion. For him, willpower is the existence of a conscious balance between driving and braking forces that are innate and flowing from the inside out of us. Willpower is constantly rising towards God and infinity with a historical motion. The aim of willpower is to help human reach eternity. This historical motion occurs in accordance with certain steps. Willpower is affected not only by individual habits and passions but (...) also by the social structure. The function of willpower for humans, who are longing for eternity, is to make them recognize the consciousness and anguish of God. With this awareness, the human moves on to the motion. The willpower, which realizes the direction and aim of the motion, emerges in social structures such as State and nation, and takes up the role of establishing and sustaining these structures. Willpower lastly shows itself in art. The artist, who longs for eternity and can’t find a way to reach it, feels the lack in his willpower, acts to complete the lack and gets engaged in an existence or a thing. This engagement is a savior illusion and love that means sheltering someone other than himself with his total willpower is born. Upon the completion of this lacking, faith (love) emerges. The spirit falls in love with motion. Faith has two dimensions. When the artist turns to ‘the only” and “the internal”, this is called religious faith. If he leans to/relies on/believes in plurality and the external, this is called aesthetical faith. When, in time, the body that leans to the external and the spirit that turns to the internal surrenders to the eternity, the transcendent, God as a whole, mystic faith occurs. ‘Truth’ rises from this mystic union and surrender to love and thereby renaissance initiates. Because the driving power that starts renaissance is art. The understanding of religious experience of Topçu is nested with art. As art generates religious experience, renaissance emerges as a result of religious experience and the human reaches salvation in every sense. (shrink)

It is a reasonable worry that God would not truly love us and want our salvation if He fixed a definite point after which He will no longer offer us the graces to repent of our sins. I propose that Thomas Aquinas succeeds in showing us that God would not be cruel or arbitrary in setting up a world where embodied agents end up after death in a state where they will inevitably fail to repent of their sins. Aquinas (...) proposes that being disembodied is to be in a state where a person cannot be mistaken about what they want, given that they know themselves perfectly. If the disembodied state were like this, it would not be surprising that being in that state makes repentance impossible, since a soul would become fully integrated around whatever one desired, without any conflicting desires that could prompt repentance. Thus, humans would persist in whatever desires they had at the moment of death and disembodiment. I conclude by arguing that, while this scenario stands in need of fuller theodicy, Aquinas’ scenario is helpful in defending a view that God is not cruel or arbitrary for creating a world in which post-mortem repentance is impossible. (shrink)

Against those who dismiss Kant's project in the "Religion" because it provides a Pelagian understanding of salvation, this paper offers an analysis of the deep structure of Kant's views on divine justice and grace showing them not to conflict with an authentically Christian understanding of these concepts. The first part of the paper argues that Kant's analysis of these concepts helps us to understand the necessary conditions of the Christian understanding of grace: unfolding them uncovers intrinsic relations holding between (...) God's justice and grace. Parts two and three provide an analysis of two concepts of grace used by Kant. Getting clear on their differences is the key to understanding why Kant's account is not Pelagian. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue against the received view among Unamuno scholars that Miguel de Unamuno was defending a sort of pragmatic argument for religious faith and that his notion of religious faith as “querer creer” (“wanting to believe”) is to be identified with William James’s “the will to believe”. As I will show in this paper, one of the aspects that makes Unamuno’s reasoning philosophically relevant is his ability to formulate a non-pragmatist defense of religious faith (...) without a prior commitment to the truth of any religious or theological statement and grounded in our longing for an endless existence through God’s Salvation. (shrink)

In Religion of Existence, Noreen Khawaja suggests that Kierkegaard is an “ascetic” thinker. By this, she means that he regards religious striving as (1) requiring ceaseless renewal and (2) being an end in itself rather than a means to some further end. In this paper, I raise challenges to both parts of Khawaja’s proposal. I argue that the first part stands in tension with Kierkegaard’s assertion that his infinitely demanding account of religious existence is meant merely as a “corrective.” The (...) second part, I maintain, does not fit well with his claim that our eternal salvation is at stake in religious striving. (shrink)

The aim of the research is to show the need to defend the prosaic reconfiguration of humanity that we set up every day by using temporary resources. This implies to discuss the overvalued achievements of the philosophies that advocate a direct encounter with our raw reality, or that defend an absolutist project of construction of the being of man that ends by suffocating him instead of offering any kind of salvation. The hypothesis states that the possibility of existence of (...) man, understood as the existence of a sense of the human — and, consequently, of a world with a meaning for man — depends on that prosaic configuration of our home that we have to reenact every morning. The development of meaningful worlds — that exist only as long as man exists, and vice versa — is achieved through symbolic resources, such as the metaphor or the concept. This allows us to replace one thing with another, merrily deferring the direct encounter with our constitutive ontological problematicity. To think man's reality is philosophically bearable only through metaphors and concepts, that is, by spreading a mundane prose that does not, that cannot and that should not come to an end. This in spite of the vocation for epic heroism that characterizes philosophy, and in spite of its temerarious impulse to dive into the depths in order to face what we directly cannot speak of, not without becoming speechless. (shrink)

It has previously been argued that Schopenhauer is a distinctive type of virtue ethicist (Hassan, 2019). The Aristotelian version of virtue ethics has traditionally been accused of being fundamentally egoistic insofar as the possession of virtues is beneficial to the possessor, and serve as the ultimate justification for obtaining them. Indeed, Schopenhauer himself makes a version of this complaint. In this chapter, I investigate whether Schopenhauer’s moral framework nevertheless suffers from this same objection of egoism in light of how he (...) conceives of the relationship between morality and ascetic 'salvation'. Drawing upon his published works and letters, I argue that Schopenhauer has the resources to avoid the objection. Because of his idiosyncratic metaphysics, I argue that Schopenhauer can also avoid the problem of self-effacement which may result from the way in which he avoids the egoism objection. The discussion thus intends to establish further nuance to Schopenhauer’s conception of virtue and its value. (shrink)

In this paper, I give an account and critique of what I call ‘Traditional Islamic Exclusivism’ – a specific Islamic interpretation of religious exclusivism. This Islamic version of religious exclusivism rests on exclusivist attitudes towards truth, epistemic justification and salvation. After giving an account of Traditional Islamic Exclusivism by explaining its theological roots in the Qur’an and ahadith, I proceed to critique it. I do so by arguing that Islamic epistemic exclusivism, which forms the main core of Traditional Islamic (...) Exclusivism, is implausible. This criticism subsequently opens up further lines of criticism and discussion of both salvific and alethic exclusivism in an Islamic context. I conclude with some remarks about the implications and significance of my criticisms of Traditional Islamic Exclusivism. (shrink)

Critics of synergism often complain that the view entails Pelagianism, and so, critics think, monergism looks like the only live option. Critics of monergism often claim that the view entails that the blame for human sin ultimately traces to God. Recently, several philosophers have attempted to chart a middle path by offering soteriological accounts which are monergistic but maintain the resistibility of God’s grace. In this paper, we present a challenge to such accounts of the resistibility of grace, namely that (...) they imply that human beings are praiseworthy for omitting to resist God’s grace. Even if such views escape Pelagianism as it is typically defined, they fail to avoid the worry at the heart of prominent criticisms of Pelagianism concerning the praise for a human being’s salvation. At the end of the paper, we suggest three possible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that the feeling of having a body comes in three main varieties. A perceiver sensorily experiences herself (1) as causally connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the body as causing her sensory experiences and as uniquely responsive to her will, (2) as materially connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the perceiver as a material being wrapped up with the body, and (3) as perspectivally connected to her body, in (...) so far as the external senses represent the world from the body’s perspective. In addition to distinguishing these varieties of embodied experience, I explain why the perceiver experiences her connection to the body in these ways. Although Malebranche often casts the experience of embodiment in a negative light, his considered view is that this experience contributes to our survival and salvation. (shrink)

Pre-emption cases have been taken by almost everyone to imply the unviability of the simple counterfactual theory of causation. Yet there is ample motivation from scientific practice to endorse a simple version of the theory if we can. There is a way in which a simple counterfactual theory, at least if understood contrastively, can be supported even while acknowledging that intuition goes firmly against it in pre-emption cases—or rather, only in some of those cases. For I present several new pre-emption (...) cases in which causal intuition does not go against the counterfactual theory, a fact that has been verified experimentally. I suggest an account of framing effects that can square the circle. Crucially, this account offers hope of theoretical salvation—but only to the counterfactual theory of causation, not to others. Again, there is (admittedly only preliminary) experimental support for this account. (shrink)

Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? We answer: it depends. To begin, we clear away some specious arguments surrounding this issue, to make room for the central question: What determines the reference of a name, and under what conditions do names shift reference? We’ll introduce Gareth Evans’s theory of reference, on which a name refers to the dominant source of information in that name’s “dossier,” and we then develop the theory’s notion of dominance. We conclude that whether Muslims’ (...) use of “Allah” co-refers with Christians’ use of “God” depends on how much weight is given to what type of information in the dossiers of these two names, and we offer a two-part test by which the reader can determine whether Muslim and Christian uses of the divine names co-refer: If Christianity were true and Islam false, might “Allah” still refer to God? And: If Islam were true and Christianity false, might “God” still refer to Allah? We explain the implications of your answers to those questions, and we close with a few reflections about what, in addition to reference, might be required for worship, and whether, from a Christian perspective, salvation turns on this issue. (shrink)

This article deals with the action of the Divine Word in the history of salvation by studying the Lectura super Ioannem. The Divine Word expresses perfectly the essence of God by way of intellect. When the Father intends to manifest Himself ad extra, He speaks through His Word. Creatures represent a very imperfect likeness of God. In the prophetic word the Son speaks with human words; however, the only voice entirely united to the Divine Word is the humanity of (...) Jesus. Christ, especially in His paschal mystery, constitutes the culmination of God’s revelation. Even in the beatific vision, the Word will be the mediator of our knowledge of the Father. (shrink)

I show how those with Kantian habits of mind—those committed to maintaining certain kinds of universality in ethics—can still get involved in the project of securing the distinctiveness of Christian ethics by highlighting parts of his moral philosophy that are amenable to this project. I first describe the interaction among James Gustafson, Stanley Hauerwas, and Samuel Wells surrounding the issue of the distinctiveness of Christian ethics, to explain why Kant is generally understood as the opponent of this project in this (...) discourse. Then I lay out his discussions of how his moral argument for postulating divine existence can have beneficial moral-psychological results, and of how we can find moral satisfaction, the sense of pleasure in our moral strivings, as two elements in his moral philosophy that can be turned into a distinctively Christian ethics with revisions that should be allowed within the broad confines of Kantian moral philosophy. I also point out that his own answer to the question of moral satisfaction is already distinctively Christian, in that it is inspired by the Christian tenets of the imputation of righteousness and the assurance of salvation. (shrink)

In this paper I consider Simone Weil’s notion of attention as the fundamental and necessary condition for mystical experience, and investigate Iris Murdoch’s secular adaptation of attention as a moral attitude. After exploring the concept of attention in Weil and its relation to the mystical, I turn to Murdoch to address the following question: how does Murdoch manage to maintain Weil’s idea of attention, even keeping the importance of mysticism, without Weil’s religious metaphysical background? Simone Weil returns to the importance (...) of attention throughout her writing. To attend, for Weil, means to empty oneself of all that is personal, primarily one’s will, which Weil sees as the essence of the human individual. This act imitates God’s act of creation, considered as a withdrawal in order to let something other than himself exist. Since such withdrawal represents God’s supreme act of love, salvation for human beings lies in the attempt to do likewise. By giving up one’s will, while desiring God with all of one’s soul, one creates the conditions for God to descend into the soul. This ‘passive activity’ is attention. Weil’s writings had a deep impact on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy. In particular, Weil’s concept of attention is carried into Murdoch’s thought almost unchanged, with one striking exception: the absence of God in Murdoch’s system. Just as surprisingly, Murdoch at the same time maintains that mysticism and spirituality are crucial for morality, nor does she wish to sever the connection between attention and mysticism. Is Murdoch being inconsistent? I believe not. But the idea of attention as a mystical concept, within a metaphysics which has no room for God, requires further examination. For Murdoch, attention is the central capacity of the morally good person. Attention is, like in Weil, connected with an emptying of the self (for Murdoch the Ego) and a renunciation of will, in order to let something external make an impression in the subject. However, in Murdoch’s philosophy such external impression is not given by God, but by reality itself. Thus far, it appears, the notion of mysticism would be unnecessary. Yet for Murdoch reality is not something that we passively perceive, but something that requires a moral faculty – attention – made up of selflessness and desire for the good, in order to be apprehended. Two elements of mysticism then begin to surface: firstly, apprehension of reality requires a faculty that is not purely intellectual, but that involves the whole of the individual, including intuitions that one may be unable to explain (which Murdoch is happy to call ‘the soul’); secondly, the reality thus apprehended is considered as transcendent, insofar as its truth, infinitely distant, transcends the individual’s complete grasp. Thus the mystic, in Murdoch’s system, is regarded as an ideal moral person, not because s/he is guided by God, but because of his/her selfless ability to attend to the world beyond oneself and intuit its moral and metaphysical truth. (shrink)

Husserl came over to philosophy from mathematics and he devoted many years to the formulation of a firm foundation for Philosophy that could even secure the status of "science" for it. But unlike some of his contemporaries (like Frege and Russell), he did not seek salvation for philosophy in the mathematical method. He argued philosophy (like any other field of study) should pay attention to uninterpreted basic experience and this would lead the way to understanding the essence of things. (...) Essence, then, would become conscious and this process was addressed by him as “phenomenological reduction.”. (shrink)

Natural science, properly understood, provides us with the methodological key to the salvation of humanity. First, we need to acknowledge that the actual aims of science are profoundly problematic, in that they make problematic assumptions about metaphysics, values and the social use of science. Then we need to represent these aims in the form of a hierarchy of aims, which become increasingly unproblematic as one goes up the hierarchy; as result we create a framework of relatively unproblematic aims and (...) methods, high up in the hierarchy, within which much more problematic aims and methods, low down in the hierarchy, may be improved as scientific knowledge improves. Then, we need to generalize this hierarchical, aims-and-methods-improving methodology so that it becomes fruitfully applicable to any worthwhile endeavour with problematic aims. Finally, we need to apply this methodology to the immensely problematic task of making progress towards as good a world as feasible. (shrink)

In his correspondence, John Locke described his close friend Damaris Masham as ‘a determined foe to ecclesiastical tyranny’ and someone who had ‘the greatest aversion to all persecution on account of religious matters.’ In her short biography of Locke, Masham returned the compliment by commending Locke for convincing others that ‘Liberty of Conscience is the unquestionable Right of Mankind.’ These comments attest to Masham’s personal commitment to the cause of religious liberty. Thus far, however, there has been no scholarly discussion (...) of the tolerationist ethic underlying Masham’s 1705 publication, Occasional Thoughts. In this chapter, I argue that Masham’s work appeals to three common tolerationist principles of her time: the idea that the authorities should not use coercion and penalties as ways of imposing religious beliefs on others; the view that God requires human beings to attain salvation through their own efforts, and not by blindly following the dictates of the state-established religion; and the idea that the granting of liberty of conscience helps to ensure the peace and stability of political society. I show that Masham goes further than her tolerationist contemporaries by arguing that together these principles imply that a woman’s intellectual education—or the conscious cultivation of a woman’s ability to reflect critically on her religious beliefs—is vital for the good of the commonwealth. (shrink)

In this article, I show the semantic connection between one pictorial detail of the traditional Annunciation iconography in Christianity and an apocryphal detail of the Virgin Mary biography, dating back to the antique metaphor of the body as clothing or cloth. In the Annunciation scene, the archangel Gabriel and the Mother of God are present, while the Virgin is often depicted with a spindle and a purple yarn in her hands. This detail sends the viewer to the metaphor of birth (...) as the creation of flesh and blood, as the spinning of the body in the womb of the mother, and also symbolically means the entry of God into the corporeal world through the Virgin and the blood sacrifice offered for the salvation of the world. The described “apocryphal” detail of the Annunciation scene can be understood as a visualization of the metaphor, known in antiquity, of the body creation as spinning or weaving. (shrink)

The questions concerning “who we are”, “where we go to”, and “where we come from”, preoccupied the humanity from immemorial times. During the last few decades, with the accelerated improvement of the investigation methods and of the advanced successful interventions allowing the life salvation, there have been reported some attempts to correlate the psychic phenomena with the body status by the recuperation, analysis and explanation of the symptoms recorded during the near-death experiences. Such special situations, in which the heart (...) and the brain, the support of mental activities, cease their activity, has become a fundamental tool to investigate the consciousness associated phenomena during the arrest status of the fundamental processes of the life. The fundamental question actually is whether consciousness really continues to exist even if the body has ceased its function by stopping the heartbeat and brain support activities [1,2]. An answer to such a question goes toward even further questions: can there be “life” beyond the death [3]? This exciting question includes also several aspects: what is consciousness and which is its nature [4]? Could consciousness exist as a disembodied entity? To answer these fundamental questions of existence, the collaboration of several disciplines such as neurology, psychology, medicine, biology, pharmacology and also physics, to call only the most important of them, is necessary, the geriatrics finding suitable responses within the multidisciplinary researches to its various questions related to the life prolongation and the improvement of the life quality. Within such a context, it was recently developed an informational model of consciousness, which can offer response to the above questions, based on the last discoveries of the quantum physics and cosmology [4,5]. (shrink)

Unlike other classical arguments for the existence of God, Pascal’s Wager provides a pragmatic rationale for theistic belief. Its most popular version says that it is rationally mandatory to choose a way of life that seeks to cultivate belief in God because this is the option of maximum expected utility. Despite its initial attractiveness, this long-standing argument has been subject to various criticisms by many philosophers. What is less discussed, however, is the rationality of this choice in situations where the (...) decision-makers are confronted with greater uncertainty. In this paper, I examine the imprecise version of Pascal’s Wager: those scenarios where an agent’s credence that God exists is imprecise or vague rather than precise. After introducing some technical background on imprecise probabilities, I apply five different principles for decision-making to two cases of state uncertainty. In the final part of the paper, I argue that it is not rationally permitted to include zero as the lower probability of God’s existence. Although the conditions for what makes an act uniquely optimal vary significantly across those principles, I also show how the option of wagering for God can defeat any mixed strategy under two distinct interpretations of salvation. (shrink)

After rejecting substance dualism, some naturalists embrace patternism. It states that persons are bodies and that bodies are material machines running abstract person programs. Following Aristotle, these person programs are souls. Patternists adopt four-dimensionalist theories of persistence: Bodies are 3D stages of 4D lives. Patternism permits at least six types of life after death. It permits quantum immortality, teleportation, salvation through advanced technology, promotion out of a simulated reality, computational monadology, and the revision theory of resurrection.

Martin Luther King Jr. claimed that “the salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted”. I elaborate on King’s claim by focusing on the way in which we treat and understand ‘maladjustment’ that is responsive to severe trauma (e.g. PTSD that is a result of military combat or rape). Mental healthcare and our social attitudes about mental illness and disorder will prevent us from recognizing real injustice that symptoms of mental illness can be appropriately responding to, (...) unless we recognize that many emotional states (and not just beliefs!) that constitute those symptoms are warranted by the circumstances they are responsive to. I argue that there is a failure to distinguish between PTSD symptoms that are warranted emotional responses to trauma and those that are not. This results in us focusing our attention on “fixing” the agent internally, but not on fixing the world. It is only by centering questions of warrant that we will be able to understand and expose the relationship between agents’ internal mental states and their oppression. But we also need to ask when someone’s emotional response is unwarranted by their experience (as in the case of someone who develops PTSD after a non-traumatic event). If we fail to do this—as, I claim, both our mental healthcare and the broader social world fail to do—we treat warranted and unwarranted emotions as on a par. This undermines the epistemic judgment of the agent who has warranted PTSD symptoms, resulting in her failing to trust her evaluation of whether her emotional response to her own trauma is warranted by that trauma, and thus failing to recognize her own oppression. (shrink)

While the traditional understanding of the look views it in terms of shame and oppression, I read Sartre’s Notebooks for an Ethics with Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity to argue that the look always gives me the world and inaugurates my freedom. Even the oppressor’s look reveals that I am free and that my existence is conditioned by the existence of other free beings. Because the look gives me the world as the arena within which I act freely, it is a (...) means of grace, and receiving it only in shame is bad faith. Although my existence remains unjustifiable and this grace cannot promise salvation, the look calls me out of shame to the pursuit of my and others’ freedom, and this call is a gift. (shrink)

The article explores critical elements to understand how Origen elaborates his mystical theology in his Commentary on John. The spiritual progress process implies that rational beings are guided, by God’s Logos, from the practical life to the theoretical one becoming son or daughter of God, in the likeness of the Logos. This process aims at knowing the Father as he is known by the Logos. The article has two parts: 1. The Father’s presence, through the Logos, in rational beings, and (...) 2. a brief characterisation of the salvation, particularly in the perspective of the mediation by the Son of God. (shrink)

Throughout the bulk of the Reformed Tradition’s history within both Europe and the United States, most scholars have dismissed pastor and theologian Moïse Amyraut as a seventeenth century French heretic whose actions and theology led to the demise of the Huguenots in France. However, upon further introspection into Amyraut’s claims as being closer to Calvin (soteriologically) than his Genevan successors, one finds uncanny parallels in the scriptural commentaries and biblical insight into the expiation of Christ between Calvin and Amyraut. By (...) comparing key scriptural passages concerning the atonement, this article demonstrates that Reformed theologian Moïse Amyraut in fact propagated a universal atonement theory which parallels Calvin’s, both men ascribing to biblical faithfulness, a (humanistic) theological method, and similar hermeneutic. As such, both Calvin and Amyraut scripturally contend that God desires and provided the means for the salvation of the whole world. Further, the article demonstrates that Calvin’s successor, Theodore de Beza, could not in fact make the same claims as Amyraut, this article demonstrating that Beza went beyond Calvin’s scriptural approach to Christ’s expiation. Therefore, this article supports a more centrist approach from within and outside the Reformed tradition by demonstrating that Calvin and Amyraut concentrically held to God’s gracious provision in Christ for the saving of the whole world, for those who would believe in Christ for salvation. (shrink)

In my first year at the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley); I was required to read Oscar Cullmann's <b> Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Dead? </b> (1956). I was shocked and dumbfounded by what I discovered. Giving my religious instruction under the guidance of the Ursuline nuns at Holy Cross Grade School, it never entered my mind that Jesus did not believe that every person had an immortal soul that survived the death of the body. After a (...) single reading, however, I suddenly realized that Jesus never endorsed the immortality of the soul. I suffered a crisis of faith--I realized that my Catholic upbringing had been contaminated by dubious ideas that originated with Socrates.<br> More recently, the international NT scholar and Bishop N.T. Wright has challenged the Christian churches to drop Socratic ideas and to return to the faith of Jesus:<br> <quote>Mention salvation, and almost all Western Christians assume that you mean going to heaven when you die. But a moment’s thought, in the light of all we have said so far, reveals that this simply cannot be right. . . . If God’s good creation—of the world, of life as we know it, or our glorious and remarkable bodies, brains, and bloodstreams—really is good . . . , then to see the death of the body and the escape of the soul as salvation is not simply slightly off course, in need of a few subtle alterations and modifications. It is totally and utterly wrong! </quote> In my article, I use my personal story to illustrate how Socratic doctrines had distorted my faith in Jesus. I use my training in historical theology to illustrate (a) how Socrates became the patron saint of the Church Fathers; (b) how Jesus' mission in Hades expanded during the first three centuries; and (c) how Hades began as a cool place where the souls of saints and sinners resided together and ended up as a hot place where grave sinners were eternally tormented. Along the way, I show how Socrates failed to resolve key issues such as (a) whether the soul survives death; (b) whether communication between souls is even possible after death; and (c) whether souls in the heavenly realm are locked in a permanent coma. In brief, I supply N.T. Wright with massive evidence of just how "utterly wrong" the "going to Heaven" movement has been.<br><br> Note: I just finished this paper and hope to publish it. Any help you can give me to improve its readability or content, would be appreciated. (shrink)