"正是者"的"思"与"爱"

本文分析奥古斯丁三一神学中人的“是”的来源、方式、内容和品质。(1)人的“是”来源于创造主,上帝作为“我正是我所正是”的“正是者”,创造了人的“是”,故而人的“是”是“正是”。(2)由于上帝是一而不是多,上帝有其固有的“同一性”,故而人亦有其“同一性”。(3)但由于人不是上帝,而是介于上帝与虚无之间,因此人“是”的方式不是“永恒”,而是作为“永恒”尘世形象的“时间”。(4)人的时间之“是”中,集中体现了上帝形象的,乃是“现在”或“正是”,作为“活生生的现在”,“正是”将“过去的现在、现在的现在、将来的现在”统一在一起,构成人的活生生的同一性。(5)奥古斯丁对“活生生的现在”分析是与意识分析结合在一起的,过去一记忆、现在一理解、将来一预期。(6)人“正是”的内容主要是“思”。(7)决定“正是”的品质的,是与“思”紧密连结在一起的“爱”。     

笛卡尔永恒真理创造学说的内在悖论

笛卡尔在1630年提出了著名的"永恒真理的创造"学说,并坚持终身。这一学说指出,永恒真理,即形而上学、逻辑学、数学等学科的最首要的真理是上帝所创造并保存的,上帝还同时保证永恒真理的不变性。然而笛卡尔却同时认为上帝是无限而不可理解的,并对其所创造的永恒真理持有完全自由与无分别的态度,由此这些真理的不变性又遭到了威胁。本文通过分析这一学说中上帝的创造、永恒真理与世界的关系以及永恒真理的永恒性与不变性的含义而揭示了这一悖论的内在含义。对于这一悖论的理解有助于我们理解笛卡尔哲学中上帝维度的复杂性,并能够反映笛卡尔将传统神学论题转变为现代形而上学的过程中的困难与挑战。     

奥古斯丁论“现在”的实体化与保罗的末世论时间

奥古斯丁的时间观和永恒观都以实体化的现在为基础:永恒是恒定不动的现在,时间由转瞬即逝的现在构成,这既是基督教时间哲学和古希腊时间哲学的关键区别,也构成奥古斯丁理解自然秩序和生活意义的形而上学基础。本文试图证明,奥古斯丁对现在的实体化理解的思想根源可以追溯至保罗书信对于"末世论时间感"的阐发。只有在末世论生存经验所带来的紧张焦虑的精神处境中,每一个现在才会以实体的方式凸显于信仰者对生活和救赎的思考之中,成为理解时间和永恒的关键。     

论莫尔特曼的时间观

莫尔特曼的时间观具有面向未来的开放性.他认为“创造”基于“救赎”的目的,有了创造便有了时间.时间的流变表明“起初的创造”并不圆满,世界具有无限进步的可能.在以将来为远景的盼望下,时间由暂时性向永恒性过渡,并在上帝临在的同时性与全在性中圆满终结.时间与永恒不是截然对立.时间进入永恒,也就是永恒进入时间.莫尔特曼强调时间中的永恒,俗世中的盼望.俗世之重要,自然之珍贵,价值之永存,是他全部思想的核心.     

笛卡尔永恒真理学说悖论的三种解决

笛卡尔在1630年提出了"永恒真理的创造"学说,并终身坚持。这一学说指出,形而上学、逻辑学、数学等学科最首要的真理是上帝所创造并保存的,上帝还保证永恒真理的不变性。然而笛卡尔却在同时坚持认为上帝是无限而不可理解的,对其所创造的永恒真理持有完全自由与无分别的态度,这样一来,这些真理的不变性又遭到了威胁。这两个方面构成了笛卡尔永恒真理学说的内在悖论。本文认为笛卡尔一共进行了三次不同的努力,即诉诸上帝的单纯性与统一性,诉诸上帝的完满性,以及上帝作为自因的学说,来应对上帝的无限性、不可理解性与永恒真理的不变性之间所形成的张力。这说明笛卡尔一方面试图提高上帝相对于人类理智秩序的超越性,另一方面又试图将上帝作为这一秩序的保证者。因此这三种解决就是笛卡尔试图把不可理解的上帝不断重新拉回人类的理智秩序之中的努力。这是笛卡尔不可能完成,但却必须要完成的任务。     

实践

信仰的实践把单纯的“头脑知识”转化为“心灵的事情”,即整个人的事情。这正是信仰所表示的根本意思。在信里,上帝是真真正正地和我们同在。在祷告中所思索的“上帝”,成了活生生的,可以面对的实在。当我们注意“知道”和“实践”之间的区别时,祷告在整个信仰生活中的地位就变得非常显著了。比如说,知道创造和整个被造世界是上帝的礼物,与把这个知识实践到自己的生活之中,并且以     

道德建设:价值向度的迷失与回归

本文认为道德结构是规范向度和价值向度的内在统一,然而人们往往偏爱前者,忽视后者,造成了规范向度的膨胀和价值向度的迷失,因此本文着重从理论上对道德的价值向度及其功能作了阐释和论证,并对在道德建设中凸显价值向度的途径作了陈述和分析。     

印度佛教讲座:佛教的时间与空间

自从人类脱离野蛮、蒙昧,走向文明以来,就开始对时间、空间的思考。什么叫时间?它的过去、现在、将来是怎样划分的?它是有始有终还是无穷无尽?奥古斯丁提出:既然上帝创造了一切,也包括时间。那么,在上帝没有创造出时间之前,有没有时间?如果有时间,这个时间是从哪里来的?如果没有时间,上帝又是     

怀特海与亚里士多德的宇宙论比较研究

过程哲学在当代越来越成为一种显学,它所强调的"过程"为解决传统形而上学的弊端提供了新的视角。过程哲学从现代哲学的向度出发,超越了最初奠基的形而上学样式的理解,将宇宙看作是处于生生不息的运动过程之中。这与传统形而上学,尤其是亚里士多德的形而上学极力探寻永恒、不动的"神"有着根本的区别。然而,亚里士多德的思想体系中同样也有着生长着的宇宙论思想,而过程哲学的创始人怀特海之所以提出过程哲学的基本思想,与古希腊时期亚里士多德哲学的"实体"思想存在着密切的联系。本文试图通过对亚里士多德的"实体"、"质料"和"形式"以及"神"的概念分析,揭示以其为核心概念的宇宙过程性思想与怀特海以"现实实有"、"永恒客体"以及"上帝"概念为核心的宇宙过程论之间的某种对应的关联,以从新的侧面上揭示怀特海的宇宙论与亚里士多德宇宙论之间的内在联系。     

无底的棋盘上的游戏──德里达解构哲学述评

从尼采到海德格尔,一直企图颠覆西方哲学的形而上学传统。这种形而上学,就是追求一种脱离时间和历史的永恒的东西,比如本质、存在、真理、上帝等等。但是,尼采由于把权力意志作为世界的本源,而被海德格尔称为“最后的形而上学家”。海德格尔本人也在对存在的终极追求中,最终又返回形而上学的故里。德里达认为,所谓形而上学,就是依赖一种无懈可击的基础,一种第一原则或不可怀疑的根据,来建造整个意义等级的思想体系。在这个等级中,“所有与基本原理、原则或中心有关的词,如本质、存在、实体、主体。超越、意识或良知、上帝、人,…     

Augustine's Christian–Platonist Account of Goodness: A Reconsideration

Augustine's metaphysics is a subject little studied, but often much criticized. Among the recent studies of Augustine's metaphysics, Scott MacDonald's interpretation of Augustine's notion of goodness claims that Augustine's account is incoherent. This suggests a reading of Augustine that is somewhat problematic. This article argues that much of the difficulty that MacDonald claims rests on a misunderstanding of Augustine's views about the goodness of creation and existence and the corruptibility of created things. Augustine's position takes for granted an understanding of existence (or being) as a good and the participation of all things in the pre–eminent good, that is God.     

Abstracts of the Major Articles

Aquinas tried to establish his metaphysics of creation theologically and philosophically. Crea- ting belongs to God alone, as means that it is God＇s divine action. For God, as to its essence, is nothing but pure act. The essence of creation is creatio ex nihilo, as means that God the Creator alone creates the entire world out of nothing. Since God is the giver of being, the first principle a- lone, creating is but to give being. And the creatures, as to their existence, were created by God. Although all the things come from God absolutely, they have their own participated being and good. As a new theological paradigm, Aquinas＂ metaphysics of creation was a philosophical ex- pression of the Bible sentence, namely, ＂In the beginning God creates heaven and earth. ＂     

The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: MT. 5:8 in Augustine's Trinitarian Theology of 400

The essay is an analysis of Augustine's solution to what I identify as the Homoian subordinationist understanding of the Son's visibility. This solution lies in Augustine's (re-)interpretation of Old Testament theophanies, and his doctrine of the vision through Christ of the Trinity at the end-time which Augustine supports by an exegesis of Mt. 5:8. Historically, the issue for Augustine is the connection made between doctrines of the Son's inherent "visibility" before the Incarnation and arguments made both against modalism and in support of subordinationism on the basis of that visibility. For Augustine's own Trinitarian theology, any consideration of a sight or vision of God in, e.g., Old Testament theophanies or the Incarnation necessarily raises questions about "sight" as both sensible and noetic knowledge, the structure of our way(s) of knowing, and the role of faith as the means for purifying the knowing capacity in humanity. The question of the vision of God which Augustine addresses in those early books of de Trinitate which are written around the year four hundred is connected to Augustine's epistemological concerns addressed in a variety of writings written before or contemporary to books I-IV of de Trinitate .     

A Computer Scientist's Perspective on Chaos and Mystery

James E. Huchingson's Pandemonium Tremendum draws on a surprisingly fruitful analogy between metaphysics and thermodynamics, with the latter motivated through the more accessible language of communication theory. In Huchingson's model, God nurtures creation by the selective communication of bits of order that arise spontaneously in chaos.     

Cosmology, Cosmic Evolution, and Sacramental Reality: A Christian Contribution

From the Christian perspective, creation exists through the Word of God. The Word of God does not create God again but brings forth the absolute "otherness" of God: creation. The nature of God is to exist. God is existence as unity in the diversity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The gift of created existence reflects the triune nature of the Word of God. It is synthesis of diversity into unity that creates. Nature brings forth new existence by unifying what it already brought forth previously. Therefore, the creative process of nature is self-similar and nonlinear: self-similar because at all levels it is synthesis that brings forth novelty; nonlinear because the properties of the new unities are not present in their (isolated) elements. The new properties of the wholes, however, do not destroy the properties of the parts. Rather, the elements integrated into new wholes become creatively transformed. This is because the parts become carriers of the whole, which transforms the parts through its presence. The parts become and express the qualities of the whole, qualities that the parts do not possess in isolation. Synthesis, therefore, transforms the parts creatively, because synthesis is creative. The qualities of the parts become "elevated" because the whole becomes present in and through the parts. The understanding of creation as the result of sequential, creative transformations offers a glance into the mystery of the Word of God present in the Eucharist. Here, too, the elements of bread and wine are not destroyed but elevated, creatively transformed into the Word of God. The elements (bread and wine) become the carrier of a transcendent "quality," the Word of God. From this perspective, creation and the sacrament of the Eucharist illuminate each other. This is because the Word of God that creates the otherness of creation and the Word of God present in the Eucharist is the same.     

SPACE AND TIME FROM A NEO‐WHITEHEADIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russell Stannard distinguishes between objective time as measured in theoretical physics and subjective time, or time as experienced by human beings in normal consciousness. Because objective time, or four‐dimensional space‐time for the physicist, does not change but exists all at once, Stannard argues that this is presumably how God views time from eternity which is beyond time. We human beings are limited to experiencing the moments of time successively and thus cannot know the future as already existing in the same way that God does. I argue that Stannard is basically correct in his theological assumptions about God's understanding of time but that his explanation would be more persuasive within the context of a neo‐Whiteheadian metaphysics. The key points in that metaphysics are (1) that creation is contained within the structured field of activity proper to the three divine persons of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and (2) that the spontaneous decisions of creatures are continually ordered and reordered into an ever‐expanding totality already known in its fullness by the divine persons.     

Philosophy of Science A Personal Peek into the Future

In this opinion piece, the authors offer their personal and idiosyncratic views of the future of the philosophy of science, focusing on its relationship with the history of science and metaphysics, respectively. With regard to the former, they suggest that the Kantian tradition might be drawn upon both to render the history and philosophy of science more relevant to philosophy as a whole and to overcome the challenges posed by naturalism. When it comes to the latter, they suggest both that metaphysics has much to learn from the philosophy of science and that it offers an array of tools that philosophers of science can themselves appropriate.     

论阿奎那创世形而上学的三个层面

阿奎那在形而上学基础上建构创世信仰,确立创世形而上学体系。此体系包含三个层面:上帝是世界的第一原则,其本质与存在同一,即纯粹的现实活动;创造作为上帝的本质体现和神圣活动就是存在的给予;世界万物,既绝对受造于上帝,又自有其分有之在,表现为存在论上的依存性和自在性。阿奎那的创世形而上学正是对《圣经》"起初,上帝创造天地"信仰告白的哲学表达,代表了新的神学范式。     

God, Time and the Kalām Cosmological Argument

The Kalām cosmological argument deploys the following causal principle: whatever begins to exist has a cause. Yet, under what conditions does something ‘begin to exist’? What does it mean to say that ‘X begins to exist at t’? William Lane Craig has offered and defended various accounts that seek to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for when something ‘begins to exist.’ I argue that all of the accounts that William Lane Craig has offered fail on the following grounds: either they entail that God has a cause or they render the Kalām argument unsound. Part of the problem is due to Craig’s view of God’s relationship to time: that God exists timelessly without creation and temporarily with creation. The conclusion is that Craig must abandon either the Kalām argument or his view of God’s relationship to time; he cannot consistently hold both.