In an attempt to learn from COVID-19, this essay features six responses to the question: what did COVID-19 teach us, expose in us, or purge out of us when it comes to spiritual formation in Christ? Each response was written independently of the others by one of the coauthors. Diane J. Chandler focuses in on how COVID-19 exposed grievous inequities for ethnic groups in the American church and broader society. Kelly M. Kapic reminds us of the goodness of human finitude (...) and how COVID restrictions have forced many of us to embrace our limitations. Siang-Yang Tan reflects on eight lessons he has learned during this pandemic year in his role shepherding a local church. James C. Wilhoit calls us to consider the structures that are needed for local church leadership to make wise and godly decisions in times of crisis. Richard Peace draws our attention to what might be learned from the forced monasticism brought about by COVID-19 quarantines. Finally, Ruth Haley Barton pauses to consider the interdependence of human life that has been dramatically illustrated by this pandemic. While these six responses certainly do not exhaust all there is for the church to learn from COVID, we present them in the spirit of “O Lord, teach us what we do not see” and hope they will inspire your own reflections. (shrink)

Centering prayer was developed to make accessible the rich Christian contemplative prayer tradition to young North American spiritual seekers. In the fifty years since its development it has become the centerpiece of an international movement, which promotes contemplative prayer through the practice of centering prayer. This paper looks at the history of this movement and its theological assumptions and its connection with mindfulness.

Adrian van Kaam authored an eleven volume integrated work on spiritual formation, authored or co-authored some ninety books on formation, and established two respected graduate programs in formative spirituality. This paper presents some of his major conclusions found in his writings in psychology and formative spirituality. A difficulty in accessing Fr. van Kaam's work is its sheer volume and technical vocabulary. The author suggests an approach for using his theory to address both theoretic and practical concerns in the area of (...) spiritual formation. (shrink)

One of the human dynamics that spiritual formation must address is the set of messages that play over and over in our minds. This self-talk or personal commentary frames our reactions to life and its circumstances and shapes how we relate to God and others. Often, the pattern of self-talk that we employ is negative, and in the past decade Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff have developed a series of self-compassion exercises designed to dispute this negative thinking. Their research and (...) program of Mindful Self-Compassion have been widely reported in the mainstream media and are marketed as being secular and religiously neutral. This article explores ways in which self-compassion practices can be used as a Christian spiritual practice. This article also examines some of the implicit theological assumptions in what is presented as a religiously neutral program and considers how Christians, from a spiritual formation standpoint, might view both self-critical self-talk and its remediation through the practice of self-compassion. (shrink)

This article examines a model of formation within higher education that is committed to educationally based spiritual formation, desiring to see students formed as people who love God and neighbor, devoting their lives to redemptive labor in the world. Deeply influenced by the evolving relationship between the department, the institution, and the broader evangelical culture, the Christian Formation and Ministry department of Wheaton College seeks to equip students with the theological and theoretical foundation, the personal maturity of character and faith, (...) and the practical ministry skills necessary to lead and participate in the formational and caring mission of the church in the world. Wheaton College’s unique approach to teaching spiritual formation and soul care in both their undergraduate and graduate programs is examined through a historical context of the department, a liberal arts and learning-centered approach to education that includes biblical foundations, philosophical framework, pedagogy, and teaching curriculum and assessment. (shrink)

This article is intended to serve as a reminder of the themes that have been present in Christian spiritual formation through the centuries. In a WISDOM orientation we ground our approach to CSF in Scripture, in theology, and in “best practices,” yet we also seek to thoughtfully locate CSF within specific contexts. The WISDOM acronym reminds us that formation must involve: Wise planning, where the leaders prayerfully seek to implement what is needed in a specific situation; Intentionality, calling people to (...) commit to walk differently from the ways of the world; Scripture, salvation, and Spirit, where the Salvation message and the Spirit-led mission of the whole of Scripture provides the framework for CSF; Discipleship, where the end of CSF is the imitation of Jesus Christ; Optimism, where we pursue our formation in an atmosphere of hope and expectation of change; and Means. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have urged those working in Christian higher education to attend more purposefully to student spiritual and character formation. Anchored by the belief that college is a formative time for the development of values, commitments, identity, and life purpose, these calls have taken many different forms. One consistent theme, however, has been the need to expand character formation beyond ethical training and moral decision-making. While such tools are necessary, these scholars note, there is also a pressing need (...) for the development of righteous virtues, affections, commitments, and patterns of living rooted in a right understanding of God and self. How can professors encourage spiritual attentiveness and transformation within the academic setting of a college classroom? What assignments foster spiritual focus and growth into Christlikeness? What helpful practices from the historic Christian tradition can be included in syllabi and course experiences? As professors committed to educationally-based spiritual formation, we are concerned with how to best encourage student spiritual growth. This article is the culmination of conversations, as well as trial and error in our classrooms, in an attempt to answer these questions. (shrink)

One feature of language is that we are able to make mistakes in our use of language. Amongst other sorts of mistakes, we can misspeak, misspell, missign, or misunderstand. Given this, it seems that our metaphysics of words should be flexible enough to accommodate such mistakes. It has been argued that a nominalist account of words cannot accommodate the phenomenon of misspelling. I sketch a nominalist trope-bundle view of words that can.

This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of the event.James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze's work with careful definitions of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure he constructs. This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to (...) his controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and 'meaning' in thinking.This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus has argued that cases of absorbed bodily coping show that there is no room for self-awareness in flow experiences of experts. In this paper, I argue against Dreyfus’ maxim of vanishing self-awareness by suggesting that awareness of agency is present in expert bodily action. First, I discuss the phenomenon of absorbed bodily coping by discussing flow experiences involved in expert bodily action: merging into the flow; immersion in the flow; emergence out of flow. I argue against the claim (...) that flow experience does not involve an awareness of agency for each of these features, while conceding that fluent agency does not involve self-awareness in the thetic sense. I challenge the assumption that the awareness of fluent agency must be understood in terms of a thetic awareness of agency. Instead, I develop an Anscombean account of the awareness of fluent agency in terms of the phenomenal character of knowing one’s aims. I respond to the challenge that if an Anscombean account of the awareness of agency is to succeed, then agents must be able to answer Anscombean questions. I consider the objection that awareness of agency is not a form of self-awareness by outlining an account of self-awareness as self-synthesis that is distinct from self-perception and self-ascription, but which makes room for self-awareness in expert bodily action. (shrink)

A revised, expanded and fully up-to-date critical introduction to Deleuze's most important work of philosophyBy critically analysing Deleuze's methods, principles and arguments, James Williams helps readers to engage with the revolutionary core of Deleuze's philosophy and take up positions for or against its most innovative and controversial ideas.

Do Quine and Carnap distort the social nature of inquiry by privileging individual epistemic subjects? This objection is at the heart of Donald Davidson’s claim that Quine fails to grasp the significance of the concept of truth. In Carnap’s case, the objection may be detected in Charles Morris’s call to ground scientific philosophy in semiotics, the science of signs, rather than syntax, the formal investigation of languages. Drawing out the challenge from Morris’s proposal requires examining a neglected influence on this (...) neglected philosopher: his advisor George Herbert Mead’s social theory of mind. I argue that Morris and Davidson can both be understood as demanding that scientific philosophers socialize their conception of objectivity. (shrink)

Moral philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. As Socrates said, it's about "how we ought to live"-and why. It would be helpful if we could begin with a simple, uncontroversial definition of what morality is. Unfortunately, we cannot. There are many rival theories, each expounding a different conception of what it means to live morally, and any definition that goes beyond Socrates's simple formula-tion is bound to offend at least one of them. (...) This should make us cautious, but it need not paralyze us. In this chapter, I will describe the "minimum conception" of morality. (shrink)

Noted psychologist and philosopher develops his own brand of pragmatism, based on theories of C. S. Peirce. Emphasis on "radical empiricism," versus the transcendental and rationalist tradition. One of the most important books in American philosophy. Note.

A pioneer in early studies of the human mind and founder of that peculiarly American philosophy called Pragmatism, William James remains America's most widely read philosopher. Generations of students have been drawn to his lucid presentations of philosophical problems. His works, now being made available for the first time in a definitive edition, have a permanent place in American letters and a continuing influence in philosophy and psychology. The essays gathered in the posthumously published Essays in Radical Empiricism formulate (...) ideas that had brewed in James's mind for thirty years as he sought a way out of the philosophical dilemmas generated by the new psychology of the late nineteenth century. They constitute the explanatory core of his doctrine of radical empiricism, a doctrine that charts his course between the absolute idealism he could not accept and, at the other extreme, the law of associationism, which reduces knowledge to sheer contiguity of ideas. In his introduction John J. McDermott describes the historical background and the genesis of James's theory and considers the objections raised by its opponents. (shrink)

Founded on in-depth biblical studies and perceptive theological perspective, James Thobaben's book has given us a comprehensive treatment of the myriad ethical ...

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

From the older handbooks to the more recent scholarly literature, Gorgias's professions about his art are taken literally at their word: conjured up in all of these accounts is the image of a hearer irresistibly overwhelmed by Gorgias's apagogic and psychagogic persuasions. Gorgias's own description of his art, in effect, replaces our description of it. "His proofs... give the impression of ineluctability" . "Thus logos is almost an independent external power which forces the hearer to do its will" . "Incurably (...) deceptive," logos has an "enormous power" that acts upon opinion, which is "easy to change" . Surprisingly, the urge to describe or paraphrase Gorgias's art has caused commentators to overlook the very best witness of it that we have: its enactment, which is to say the performative value of Gorgias's writings, especially the speeches. For if Gorgias's literary remains do nothing else, they demonstrate how one can do things with words without being explicit about what is being done, even if this means contradicting, performatively, what is being said-as for instance in his statements, so unconvincingly made, about the ostensible aims of rhetoric. Was Gorgias persuasive in practice? Was persuasion even the goal? Is logos the solitary arbiter of reality that it is so often made out to be? Through close examination of Gorgias's Helen and parts of On Not-Being, I attempt to show that persuasion is manifestly not the goal of his arguments, which in the first instance are aporetic paradoxes that expose the difficulties of defining the nature of either language or reality, and which in the last instance are instruments of cultural demystification. The only deception at work in Gorgias's writings is that of the self-deception of their audience. It is this that gives these curiously revealing documents of fifth-century Greek culture their "dissuasive," not persuasive, character. (shrink)

In its simplest form, hedonism about aesthetic value, the standard account of aesthetic normativity, holds that an object’s aesthetic value is the value it possesses in virtue of its capacity to provide aesthetic pleasure. I argue that hedonism cannot be true because it cannot reconcile itself with our concern to make true aesthetic judgments. Then I argue for an alternative account of aesthetic normativity that is not only consistent with that concern but the very expression of it. The argument for (...) the alternative account largely consists of arguments against two theses associated with Kant: subjectivism, which holds that the ascription of aesthetic value to an object depends on the sentiments of the subject making the ascription and not on the subject’s recognition of a property residing in the object, and disinterestedness, which holds that the ascription of beauty to an object neither depends on nor results in the subject’s having a motive to act in regard to the object. -/- . (shrink)

This first volume contains discussions of the brain, methods for analyzing behavior, thought, consciousness, attention, association, time, and memory.

This article revisits the hope of the First and Fourth Missiological Institute (MI) consultations in 1965 and 1967 regarding the survival of African Spirituality as relevant to the daily life of South African churches. African Spirituality has played a significant role in the cultural context of Africans. In the African context, African Spirituality is intertwined with life, death, and health, which co-exist with material aspects and the economy as gracious gifts from God. The churches in South Africa and elsewhere in (...) Africa have been challenged by the African worldview of healing and culture. Thus, Africans mostly prefer the African-centred church with more African Christianity, instead of Western Christianity. This has been a serious challenge in African church circles for centuries, even in the current 21st century. The question therefore arises whether this is a matter for the Africanisation, indigenisation, and decolonisation of the church in Africa. CONTRIBUTION: The article analyses the two MI consultations and whether the church in the 21st century has Africanised and decolonised itself in service of its African members. The study is a historical approach given the history of the MI's contribution in South Africa. The concept of African Spirituality is unpacked and contextualised within the African Independent Churches' (AIC) Zionist type churches such as the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), the St John's Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), and other Ethiopian type churches such as Lutheran Bapedi Church and others in South Africa and African Traditional Religions (ATR). The article engages the importance of how African Spirituality differs from other spiritualities within the context of Christian spirituality. (shrink)

Every Thing Must Go aruges that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it ...

For this 1897 publication, the American philosopher William James brought together ten essays, some of which were originally talks given to Ivy League societies. Accessible to a broader audience, these non-technical essays illustrate the author's pragmatic approach to belief and morality, arguing for faith and action in spite of uncertainty. James thought his audiences suffered 'paralysis of their native capacity for faith' while awaiting scientific grounds for belief. His response consisted in an attitude of 'radical empiricism', which deals (...) practically rather than ideologically with real-world phenomena. When facing a 'momentous' decision about belief, he says, we both can and must choose the best hypothesis. The first four essays apply this principle to religious faith, and the rest explore the pragmatic approach to such topics as determinism, ethics and individual achievement. James developed his ideas further in The Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism, both of which are reissued in this series. (shrink)

This paper is about the similarity between the appreciation of a piece of art, such as a cherished music album, and the loving appreciation of a person whom one knows well. In philosophical discussion about the rationality of love, the Qualities View (QV) says that love can be justified by reference to the qualities of the beloved. I argue that the oft-rehearsed trading-up objection fails to undermine the QV. The problems typically identified by the objection arise from the idea that (...) love-worthy qualities could be coarse-grained, when in fact they must be fine-grained. The analogy with appreciation of aesthetic qualities helps to draw out this point. Once the fine-grained nature of love-worthy qualities is properly understood, it is clear that critics of the QV cannot rely on the trading-up objection to motivate its rejection. Moreover, the paper’s core argument helps to illuminate the persistently aesthetic nature of interpersonal affections. (shrink)

In this unique work, James P. Sterba argues that traditional ethics has yet to confront the three significant challenges posed by environmentalism, feminism, and multiculturalism. He maintains that while traditional ethics has been quite successful at dealing with the problems it faces, it has not addressed the possibility that its solutions to these problems are biased in favor of humans, men, and Western culture. In Three Challenges to Ethics: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Multiculturalism, Sterba examines each of these challenges. In (...) the case of environmentalism, he argues that traditional ethics must incorporate conflict resolution principles that favor nonhumans over humans in a significant range of cases. In terms of feminism, he maintains that traditional ethics should rule out gendered family structures and implement an ideal of androgyny. In regard to multiculturalism, he contends that traditional ethics must endorse an ethics that is secular in character and that can survive an extensive comparative evaluation of both Western and non-Western moral ideals and cultures. The only textbook devoted to this topic, Three Challenges to Ethics is an engaging text for introductory courses in ethics and moral problems and is also interesting and provocative reading for scholars and general readers. (shrink)

How much understanding should be required of a person with respect to her actions and their implications for her to be autonomous with respect to her decisions to perform them? I defend a thin approach to the question of how much understanding of her acts a person should possess for her possibly to be autonomous with respect to her decisions to perform them: That a person could be autonomous with respect to her decision to perform a certain action if she (...) understood both the nature of the act and its expected implications under the intensional description under which she intentionally performed it. This paper is divided into three sections. First, I argue that a concern for the moral value of autonomy does not undergird the ethical requirement to secure a person’s informed consent to her medical treatment. Second, I respond to several objections that have been leveled against this argument that focus on its implicit premise that only a thin understanding of one’s actions is required for one to be autonomous with respect to one’s decisions to perform them. I conclude by indicating why this minimalist account of autonomy that I defend is preferable to its more robust competitors. (shrink)

The identity and diversity of individual objects may be grounded or ungrounded, and intrinsic or contextual. Intrinsic individuation can be grounded in haecceities, or absolute discernibility. Contextual individuation can be grounded in relations, but this is compatible with absolute, relative or weak discernibility. Contextual individuation is compatible with the denial of haecceitism, and this is more harmonious with science. Structuralism implies contextual individuation. In mathematics contextual individuation is in general primitive. In physics contextual individuation may be grounded in relations via (...) weak discernibility. (shrink)

The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to promote the discussion of 'Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God', and some of the world's most influential thinkers have delivered them. The 1901–2 lectures given in Edinburgh by American philosopher William James are considered by many to be the greatest in the series. The lectures were published in book form in (...) 1902 and have been reprinted many times. James, who was educated in the United States and Europe, and spent much of his career teaching philosophy at Harvard, was very influential in the development of modern psychology, and in these twenty lectures he explores the personal experience of religion. Some of the topics include religion and neurology, 'the sick soul', saintliness, and mysticism. (shrink)

In addition to being one of the world's most influential philosophers, Aristotle can also be credited with the creation of both the science of biology and the philosophy of biology. He was the first thinker to treat the investigations of the living world as a distinct inquiry with its own special concepts and principles. This book focuses on a seminal event in the history of biology - Aristotle's delineation of a special branch of theoretical knowledge devoted to the systematic investigation (...) of animals. Aristotle approached the creation of zoology with the tools of subtle and systematic philosophies of nature and of science that were then carefully tailored to the investigation of animals. The papers collected in this volume, written by a pre-eminent figure in the field of Aristotle's philosophy and biology, examine Aristotle's approach to biological inquiry and explanation, his concepts of matter, form and kind, and his teleology. (shrink)

A radical approach to the environment which argues that by harnessing the power of science for human benefit, we can have a healthier planet As a prizewinning theoretical physicist and an outspoken advocate for scientific literacy, James Trefil has long been the public's guide to a better understanding of the world. In this provocative book, Trefil looks squarely at our environmental future and finds-contrary to popular wisdom-reason to celebrate. For too long, Trefil argues, humans have treated nature as something (...) separate from themselves-pristine wilderness to be saved or material resources to be exploited. What we need instead is a scientific approach to the environment that embraces the human transformation of nature for our benefit. In Human Nature , Trefil exposes the benefits of genetically modified species, uncovers vital facts about droughts and global warming, and points to examples of environmental management where catering to humans reaps greater rewards than sheltering other species. By taking advantage of explosive advances in the sciences, we can fruitfully manage the planet, if we rise to the challenge. Like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb, Human Nature promises to fundamentally alter the way we perceive our relationship to the Earth-but with optimism rather than alarm. (shrink)

James I. The Political Works of James I. Reprinted from the Edition of 1616. With an Introduction by Charles Howard McIlwain. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918. cxi, 354 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

I argue that wrong of plagiarism does not primarily stem from the plagiarist’s illicit misappropriation of academic credit from the person she plagiarized. Instead, plagiarism is wrongful to the degree to which it runs counter to the purpose of academic work. Given that this is to increase knowledge and further understanding plagiarism will be wrongful to the extent that it impedes the achievement of these ends. This account of the wrong of plagiarism has two surprising (and related) implications. First, it (...) follows from this account of the wrong of plagiarism that replication plagiarism might not be an academic wrong at all. (Replication plagiarism consists of the direct quotation or paraphrase of another’s work without attribution. The replication plagiarist thus plagiarizes primary sources, purloining for her own benefit the ideas of their authors). Second, even if replication plagiarism is still held to be an academic wrong, it will be a lesser wrong than bypass plagiarism. (Bypass plagiarism occurs when one quotes from, or provides a paraphrase of, a primary source, but although one cites the primary source one did not identify the quotation or provide the initial paraphrase oneself. Instead, one took the quotation, or drew upon an existing paraphrase, from a secondary source—and one did so without citing the secondary source to credit it as the source of one’s information about the primary source). Holding that bypass plagiarism is worse than replication plagiarizes reverses the usual assessment of the relative wrong of these two types of plagiarism. (shrink)