A History of Western Philosophy and Theology is the fruit of John Frame's forty-five years of teaching philosophical subjects. No other survey of the history of Western thought offers the same invigorating blend of expositional clarity, critical insight, and biblical wisdom. The supplemental study questions, bibliographies, links to audio lectures, quotes from influential thinkers, twenty appendices, and indexed glossary make this an excellent main textbook choice for seminary- and college-level courses and for personal study. Book jacket.

This three-volume series provides a critical examination of the history of theology in Scotland from the early middle ages to the close of the twentieth century. Volume I covers the period from the appearance of Christianity around the time of Columba to the era of Reformed Orthodoxy in the seventeenth century.

This three-volume series provides a critical examination of the history of theology in Scotland from the early middle ages to the close of the twentieth century. Volume II begins with the early Enlightenment and concludes in late Victorian Scotland.

This three-volume series provides a critical examination of the history of theology in Scotland from the early middle ages to the close of the twentieth century. In Volume Three, the 'long twentieth century' is examined with reference to changes in Scottish church life and society.

[from the publisher's website] Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De (...) Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. -/- De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality. (shrink)

Tales of “disenchantment” dominate modern intellectual life, and especially accounts of the cultural history of capitalism. Yet Weberian sociology, and especially Marxist notions of “commodity fetishism”, point to the persistence of “enchantment” in the capitalist imagination. If we reformulate these notions of “enchantment” and “disenchantment” in theological terms of sacrament, then we can write new histories of capitalism, as well as articulate new forms of political and cultural criticism. Borrowing from “radical orthodoxy”, the author takes a Cook's Tour of (...) “disenchantment”, explores the possibilities afforded by “sacramental” conceptions of materialism, and gestures toward an account of American cultural history shaped by a sacramental materialism. (shrink)

Background -- The moral manualists -- Initiating reform : Odon Lottin -- Retrieving Scripture and charity : Fritz Tillman and Gérard Gilleman -- Synthesis : Bernard Häring -- The neo-manualists -- New foundations for moral reasoning, 1970-89 -- New foundations for a theological anthropology, 1980-2000 -- Toward a global discourse on suffering and solidarity -- Afterword: The encyclicals of Pope Benedict XVI.

This article explores the much neglected work of the German philosopher and cultural theorist Hans Blumenberg, a figure still relatively little known in the Anglophone world. The thesis is defended that Blumenberg's conception of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966) offers valuable resources for addressing some important questions about the philosophical self-understanding of the modern social sciences in relation to theological and religious sources of thought and language. The article begins with an assessment of the contemporary relevance of Blumenberg's (...) critique of the idea of modern scientific culture as a merely `secularized form' of theological thinking. This critique is then compared with Blumenberg's account of the relationship of theoretico-scientific inquiry to mythological consciousness in his second major philosophical monograph of 1979, Work on Myth. The article concludes with a range of reflections on ways in which Blumenberg's work helps us understand how certain explanatory constructs and devices employed in the modern social sciences can be said to incorporate, assimilate, and at the same time critically transform figures of thought and language that display a mythic, religious and theological context of historical origination, provenance or genealogy. (shrink)

An introduction to Catholic theological ethics through the lens of its historical development from the beginning of the church until today.

This essay deals with the impact of Hegel's philosophy of religion by examining his positions on religious identity and on the relationship between theology and history. I argue that his criterion for religious identity was socio-historical, and that his philosophical theology was historical rather than normative. These positions help explain some historical peculiarities regarding the effect of his philosophy of religion. Of particular concern is that although Hegel’s own aims were apologetic, his major influence on religious thought was in (...) the development of various historical and critical approaches to religion. (shrink)

This chapter analyses Soren Kierkegaard's thought about the history of theology, discussing different notions of historical theology and evaluating how they apply to the way Kierkegaard engaged with history of theology. It explains the two key elements of the Kierkegaardian historical theology: tracking the process of decline from the Christianity of the New Testament to the enfeebled caricature that passed for Christianity in contemporary Denmark; and recovering the voices of the true Christians of the past who genuinely followed (...) Christ in suffering and martyrdom. (shrink)

THE PRE-SOCRATIC ORIGINS OF NATURAL THEOLOGY § INTRODUCTION St Augustine informs us that pagan philosophers divided theology into three parts: () civic ...

The author believes that it is impossible to resolve the crucial theological issues of our time without an appreciation of the historical roots of the development of theology itself. Congar does not attempt in this volume a systematic analysis of the content of theology, as it is expressed in history. He limits himself to the meaning of the discipline of theology as it expresses itself in six periods in the life of the church, The Patristic Age and St. Augustine, (...) From the Sixth Century to the Twelfth Century, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, The Golden Age of Scholasticism, The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, From the Seventeenth Century to the Present. The work begins with a definition of the word 'theology' from its early pre-Christian usage to its adoption by the Greek and Latin Christians. 'Theology', according to Congar, in its Christian and catholic sense, means a reasoned account about God; it is a "body of knowledge which rationally interprets, elaborates, and ordains the truths of revelation." Unlike the pagan philosophers who thought of theology in a speculative sense, the Christians who had received a revelation, conceived of God in concrete terms, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But the discipline of theology took many forms and shapes over the years of Christian history. The twelfth century seems to be a critical century, at least for the author, because it is in St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa that theology becomes "a defined discipline exposing a rational explanation of revelation." Theology in the sixteenth century is characterized by the growth of intellectual problems and new intellectual needs, the collapse of the synthesis and unity of the Middle Ages, the birth of new forms of intellectual activity and research. Luther's theological position is then characterized as "an enraged Augustinianism shorn of its Catholic ties." Luther interprets Christian theology as salvation, i.e., man's conversion to God through Christ. Luther is anti-ecclesiastical and anti-institutional, anti-scholastic, and anti-rational. But what permits Congar such a simplistic reductionism is that he begins the theological task at the wrong place. I do not think it is an adequate notion of the theological enterprise to ask the theologian what he considers to be the task of theology. Rather I think the theologian looks at the whole of the Christian faith and attempts some rapprochement between it and modern categories of thought. The theological enterprise is the dogmatic enterprise, but it is dogmatic as theology responds to the thought-forms of the modern world. Congar is too restrictive in his understanding of what theology ought to be doing--and what it actually does. This error becomes clear when we observe again and again a parodying of various theological positions.--W. A. J. (shrink)

Cardinal Mercier’s Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy is a standard work, prepared at the Higher Institute of Philosophy, Louvain, mainly for the use of clerical students in Catholic Seminaries. Though undoubtedly elementary, it contains a clear, simple, and methodological exposition of the principles and problems of every department of philosophy, and its appeal is not to any particular class, but broadly human and universal. Volume II contains sections on natural theology, logic, ethics and outlines of the history of philosophy.

With Ukraine gaining independence and its emergence as an independent democratic state, the interest of the scientific community in the Kyiv monuments of the great princely period increases, when Christianity, having come to our lands, has become an important factor in state-building.

Historically, many Christians have understood God’s transcendence to imply God’s properties categorically differ from any created properties. For multiple historical figures, a problem arose for religious language: how can one talk of God at all if none of our predicates apply to God? What are we to make of creeds and Biblical passages that seem to predicate creaturely properties, such as goodness and wisdom, of God? Thomas Aquinas offered a solution: God is to be spoken of only through analogy (the (...) doctrine of analogy). Gavin Hyman argues Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy was neglected prior to the early-modern period and the neglect of analogy produced the conception of a god vulnerable to atheistic arguments. Contra Hyman, in this paper, I show early-modern atheism arose in a theological context in which there was an active debate concerning analogy. Peter Browne (1665–1735) and William King (1650–1729) offered two competing conceptions of analogical predication that were debated through the 19th century, with interlocutors such as the freethinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729), theologian/philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753), and skeptic David Hume (1711–1776). Lastly, I discuss the 18th century debate over theological analogy as part of the background relevant to understanding Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. (shrink)

Here at last is an American counterpart to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The eminent historian Bruce Kuklick tells the fascinating story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the USA, in the context of the intellectual and social changes of the times. Kuklick sketches the genesis of these intellectual practices in New England Calvinism and the writing of Jonathan Edwards. He discusses theology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the origins of collegiate philosophy in the early (...) part of the nineteenth century. We see the development of secular preconceptions and the emergence, after Darwin's writings of the mid-late nineteenth century, of forms of thought hostile to religion. Philosophy is situated in a variety of cultural contexts - the ministry, the growing system of higher learning, the conflict between philosophers and theologians and between amateur and professional thinkers, the suspicion of European ideas, and worries about the relevance of philosophy to public and political life. Kuklick's narrative portrays such great thinkers as Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, W. V. Quine, and Richard Rorty, and assesses their contributions to philosophy. He brings us right up to date with the first historical treatment of the period after pragmatism, and the fragmentation of philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Kuklick steers a controversial course between the divergent views that historians and philosophers take of the significance of philosophy in recent years. Anyone interested in American intellectual history, or in how philosophy got where it is today, will enjoy this book. (shrink)

Although history is the pre-eminent part of the gallant sciences, philosophers advise against it from fear that it might completely destroy the kingdom of darkness—that is, scholastic philosophy—which previously has been wrongly held to be a necessary instrument of theology.

Heidegger's history of hermeneutics discovered nothing more than a “diluted” understanding of hermeneutics in Schleiermacher and Dilthey. In contrast, Gadamer's and Ricoeur's histories of hermeneutics placed little or no emphasis on the premodern period, focusing instead on the rise of the “hermeneutic problem” in Schleiermacher's work and the development of that problematic in works by Dilthey and Heidegger. Ricoeur added Gadamer to that list, recognizing that Gadamer was instrumental in the way he had received and perceived the problem in (...) question. Charles R. Bambach argues that it was, in fact, Karl Barth's “crisis theology” that had inspired Heidegger's “destructive” alternative to the conventional view of historical research. He revealed that he had followed Hegel when writing his history of hermeneutics, noting that his decision to do so had consequences for the way he depicted the rise of hermeneutics; and the way his history of hermeneutics ended. (shrink)

The man or woman of faith living in today's pluralist world must have a theology that will do justice to his or her own faith, and also to the neighbours' - and to the differences between them. Similarly, humanists must have a theory that does justice to their own vision and also to the fact that for most of their fellows on earth the proper way of being human has been one or another of various `religious' ways. Any interpretation of (...) human history, both past and present, must take into serious account the self-consciousness of each major part, as well as the diversity and the dynamic of the whole. This exciting book, first published in 1981 and now also available in paperback, is perhaps our world's first serious endeavour towards a theology in global perspective. Here is a wrestling with the demands of an authentic theology of the comparative history of religion. (shrink)

Theology and Society is the most comprehensive study of Islamic intellectual and religious history, focusing on Muslim theology. With its emphasis on the eighth and ninth centuries CE, it remains the most detailed prosopographical study of the early phase of the formation of Islam. Originally published in German between 1991 and 1995, Theology and Society is a monument of scholarship and a unique scholarly enterprise which has stood the test of time as an unparalleled reference work.

To develop this theory, Karl Löwith—beginning with the more accessible philosophies of history in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries and working back to the Bible—analyzes the writings of outstanding historians both in antiquity ...

We can trace the “evolutionary epic” (named by E. O. Wilson, 1978) back to earlier writers, beginning with Robert Chambers (1844). Its basic elements are: fixation on seeing human history as rooted in biology; an aspiration toward telling the whole history of humankind (in its essential features); and insistence on the overall coherence of the projected narrative. The claim to coherence depends on assuming either that the universe possesses an “embedded rationality,” or that it is guided by divine (...) purpose. This article proposes the term “idealism” to refer to these two assumptions taken together, for in practice they were closely linked. Nietzsche (1881) was perhaps the first thinker to point out the evolutionary epic's dependence on such an idealism, and he also pointed out that the assumptions of embedded rationality and of divine purpose are closely connected. Darwin's theory of descent with modification (1859) was sharply inconsistent with these assumptions: he was not an “idealist” in the sense indicated here, and not a proponent of the evolutionary epic. Proclaiming his “materialism,” Wilson (1978) failed to acknowledge that the epic depends on idealist assumptions; other adherents of the genre (M. Dowd, L. Rue) resurrect (knowingly or not) its theological roots. (shrink)

Building on Lonergan's notion of the scale of values , Robert Doran has provided a framework for a theology of history, consisting of three interlocking dialectics, personal, cultural and social, together with the creating and healing vectors operating in history. This present article considers the much discussed phenomenon of globalization, in light of Doran's theology of history. It analyses the vital, social, cultural, personal and religious issues raised by globalization. It argues that the driving force of globalization (...) is the creative drive of practical intelligence, particularly at the social, economic level. It considers emerging global cultural elements commensurate with this drive, and the reshaping of personal moral virtue needed in a global environment. It identifies the impact of globalization on religion, with particular reference to inter-religious dialogue, and asks how religion may contribute to the healing of the global issues of evil which confront us. (shrink)

. Philip Hefner's focus on contingency and field as the guiding concepts in my thinking and his characterization of my theological enterprise as a Lakatosian research program are appropriate and helpful.I welcome Jeffrey Wicken's holistic approach to the emergence of life. Theology can appropriate the language of self‐organizing systems exploiting the thermodynamic flow of energy degradation for interpreting organic life as a creation of the Spirit of God.However, I cannot sympathize with Lindon Eaves's equation of “hard science” with a reductionism (...) which raises the double helix to the status of icon; the “meaning” of DNA derives from its place in the total phenomenon of life—not the reverse.Frank Tipler's cosmology raises the prospect of a rapprochement between physics and theology in the area of eschatology. A Christian cosmology, however, would require at least three modifications: contingency in the history of creation; the uniqueness of Jesus' resurrection; and the relation of these to the problem of evil. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 527-539 [Access article in PDF] Salvatore Camporeale's Contribution to Theology and the History of the Church Mariangela Regoliosi University of Florence Salvatore Camporeale's research, as rich and varied as it was, revolved around several primary axes and was inspired by several fundamental concerns.1 One of the objectives that certainly oriented his cultural effort was a serious, critical, and passionate (...) desire to reform the church, to recuperate its radical and founding truths, to go beyond all superstructure and pseudo-truth. I believe that, for this very reason, Camporeale engaged with Valla (to whom he devoted most of his scholarly work): because the latter had, with extraordinary lucidity, raised issues and proposed solutions in perfect keeping with his own essential needs.Naturally, arriving at such a perception of the innovativevalue and ideological depth of Valla's thoughtinvolved far more than this. We are indebted to Camporeale for having developed the lesson of his mentor, Eugenio Garin: that is, the view that—against the interpretive limitations widely heldby other scholars and other schools—Lorenzo Valla was not onlythe excellentphilological emender of Livy's text, nor simply the "grammarian" restorer of the Latin language, but that such tangible gifts and capacities were sustained by more general philosophical motives and by an organic project of cultural refounding, that would challenge established categoriesin all fields, from language to history to theology.Camporeale was thus able to identify—beginning with his distinguished book published in 1972, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia—the foundations and ultimate scope of Valla's philosophy of language and, consequently, the unifying elements in his apparently heterogeneous works, which range from historiography to historical criticism, from ethics to linguistics, from [End Page 527] logic to rhetoric, from the philological study of classical works to that of the NewTestament. And he was able to see that, also for Valla, the critical revision of the ecclesiastical tradition, and of the "models" of theological discourse, had been a Leitmotiv or, better yet, an arrival point.It is within this specific, though not limited sphere of inquiry that I intend to situate my study, a personal, brief recollection of the friend we lost. Therefore, I will focus on two particular contributions, one from 1977, Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. "Encomion s. Thomae". 1457, the other from 1988, Lorenzo Valla e il "De falso credita donatione". Retorica, libertà ed ecclesiologia nel '400. As their titles openly declare, they investigate two of Valla's works diverging not only in time but in content as well ("De falso credita donatione" dates from 1440, the "Encomion sancti Thomae" from 1457); the one is intended to denounce the so-called "Donation of Constantine" as a forgery, the other to commemorate Saint Thomas on the day of his liturgical anniversary. And yet, Camporeale correctly identifies a peculiar and intrinsic unity in these works, namely the effort to rediscover an authentic Christianity: an authentic "form" of the church on the one hand, and an authentic "form" of Christian theology on the other.I will start with, and devote special attention to, the Encomion sancti Thomae. Camporeale correctly recognized this short text as Valla's "spiritual testament," not only, or not so much because it is his last piece of writing (he died a few months after the Encomion), but because, in a few dense but clear pages, it sums up Valla's entire logico-linguistic program and, consequently, his stance on the expressive potentialities of human language, up to the highest levels of the expressible, those of metaphysics and of theology. The way Camporeale develops his considerations on the "panegyric" is admirable, as he supports it with the experienced philosophical and theological competence (in the history of theology, and especially Thomistic theology) that he, as a Dominican, mastered so well. (In passing, it is worth noting that such competence alone could allow for a thorough assessment of the historical significance of Valla's discourse, too frequently trivialized or misunderstood by readers lacking the necessary tools). The following... (shrink)

The article starts by observing a parallel between the identification of Christ's humanity and universal human nature, for which Harnack repudiates some church fathers, and David Strauss' claim, in his Life of Jesus, that the subject of the Incarnation must be all humanity. It is argued that this oppositional stance is indicative of fundamental philosophical and theological differences between the Tübingen School and the Ritschl School. Those differences, however, are then explained as emerging from what is ultimately a common project (...) of a radical form of historical theology. This project, it is argued, Ritschl took over from Baur while correcting it in crucial ways. Taken together, the two central theological schools of the 19th century thus illustrate the potential and the limits of christian theology within the historicist paradigm. (shrink)

Exposing the religious roots of our ostensibly godless age, Michael Allen Gillespie reveals in this landmark study that modernity is much less secular than conventional wisdom suggests. Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, (...) Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology. ''Bringing the history of political thought up to date and situating it against the backdrop of contemporary events, Gillespie's analyses provide us a way to begin to have conversations with the Islamic world about what is perhaps the central question within each of the three monotheistic religions: if God is omnipotent, then what is the place of human freedom?''. (shrink)

The history of Zubiri in North America began with his visit to Princeton University in1946. Initial scholarly interest in Zubiri’s philosophy was the product of work by RobertCaponigri and Frederick Wilhelmsen in the 1960s and 70s. Thomas Fowler learned aboutZubiri from these gentlemen and began his work of translation and publishing in the1970s. Caponigri’s translation of Sobre la esencia and Fowler’s translation of Naturaleza,Historia, Dios were published in the early 80s. Others including Nelson Orringer, GaryGurtler, and Leonard Wessell had (...) been investigating Zubiri, and the four met at the I Congreso Xavier Zubiri in Madrid in 1993. Later Fowler decided that a focus for Zubiri studieswas needed for North America and the English-speaking world, and he established the Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America in 1997. Shortly thereafter he completed and theFoundation published his translation of Inteligencia sentiente. The Xavier Zubiri Reviewwas launched in 1998, with papers on Zubiri presented at the XX World Congress of Philosophy. The journal is now in its sixth volume. Interest in Zubiri’s work continues togrow, and now many more people in North America are investigating his thought. NelsonOrringer’s translation of Estructura dinámica de la realidad was published in 2003, bringthe four the number of published translations of Zubiri. Joaquin Redondo has translatedZubiri’s theology trilogy and is now at work on other Zubiri translations.La historia de Zubiri en América del Norte empieza con su visita a la Universidad dePrinceton en 1946. El interés erudito inicial en la filosofía de Zubiri resulta del trabajo deRobert Caponigri y Frederick Wilhelmsen en los años sesenta. Thomas Fowler sabe de Zubiri de estos señores y empieza su trabajo de traducción y publicación en los años setenta.La traducción de Caponigri de Sobre la esencia y la traducción de Fowler de Naturaleza,Historia, Dios se publicaron a principios de los años ochenta. Otros incluso Nelson Orringer, Gary Gurtler, y Leonard Wessell estaban investigando la filosofía de Zubiri, y los cuatrose encuentran en el I Congreso Xavier Zubiri en Madrid en 1993. Después Fowler decideque un enfoque para los estudios de Zubiri es necesario para América del Norte y el mundoangloparlante, y con la ayuda de la Fundación Xavier Zubiri en Madrid, establece la XavierZubiri Foundation of North America en 1997. Dentro de poco él complete y la Fundaciónpublica su traducción de Inteligencia sentiente. La Xavier Zubiri Review se lanzó en 1998,con ponencias sobre Zubiri presentados al XX Congreso Mundial de Filosofía. El periódicoestá ahora en su sexto volumen. Interés en el trabajo de Zubiri continúa creciendo, y ahorahay muchos más personas en América del Norte que están investigando su pensamiento.La traducción de Nelson Orringer de Estructura dinámica de la realidad se publicó en 2003,y con esto ya hay cuatro traducciones al inglés de Zubiri publicadas. Joaquín Redondo hatraducido la trilogía de teología de Zubiri y sigue traduciendo otras obras de Zubiri. (shrink)

Translated by Henrik Rosenmeier, _A History of Ancient Philosophy_ charts the origins and development of ancient philosophical thought. For easy reference, the book is divided chronologically into six main parts. The sections are further divided into philosophers and philosophical movements: *Pre-Socratic Philosophy, including mythology, the Pythagoreans and Parmenides *The Great Century of Athens, including the Sophists and Socrates *Plato, including The Republic, The Symposium and The Timaeus *Aristotle, including The Physics, The Metaphysics and The Poetics *Hellenistic Philosophy, including the (...) Sceptics, the Stoics, the Epicureans and Cicero *Late Antiquity, including Neoplatonism, Origen and St Augustine. This comprehensive and meticulously documented book is structured to make ancient philosophical thought and ancient thinkers accessible. It contains: *full references to primary sources *detailed interpretations of key philosophical passages, including surveys of previous philosophical readings *an overview of the development of ancient philosophical thought *discussions of the relationships between philosophers and their ideas *analyses of key philosophical concepts and ideologies including ontology, epistemology, logic, semantics, moral and political philosophy, theology and aesthetics *explanations of Greek philosophical terminology. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 comprises over sixty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period, and is designed to be accessible to non-specialists. The first part of the book traces the history of philosophy from its remarkable flowering in the 1870s through to the early years of the twentieth century. After a brief discussion of the impact of the First World War, the second part of the book describes further developments in philosophy in (...) the first half of the twentieth century. The essays concentrate on developments across the range of philosophical topics, from logic and metaphysics to political philosophy and philosophy of religion. This volume will be of critical importance not only to teachers and students of philosophy but also to scholars in neighbouring disciplines such as the history of science, the history of ideas, theology and the social sciences. (shrink)