Speaking of God after the Death of God

Abstract :  This article affirms the ability to talk about God in the twenty‐first century 40 years after God died (according to Death‐of‐God theologians) in the 1960s. It does so by an appeal to the proper combination of mystery and revelation ideally expressed in the paradox that God reveals Godself as hidden. The language of God's revealed hiddenness comprises a "middle way" which avoids the extremes of theological hubris on the one hand and atheism or unbelief on the other, making it possible to speak today of God in a faithful yet humble manner.     

On the distinction between the concept of God and conceptions of God

The starting-point is the distinction between concept and conception. Our conceptions of gold, for instance, are the different understandings we get when we hear the word ‘gold’ whereas the concept of gold consists in the scientific determination of what gold is. It depends on the context whether it is more reasonable to claim a concept or to look for fitting conceptions. By arguing against metaphysical realism and for non-metaphysical realism, I will elaborate on some philosophical reasons for dealing with conceptions instead of concepts of God, and secondly, I will discuss how such conceptions should be critically assessed. This article is an amended and enlarged version of a paper delivered at the conference on The Concept of God, arranged by the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion in Oxford, Great Britain, September 11–13, 2007.     

God and the Girl

Philosophia - Abstract Imagine you are an agnostic who wants to maximise your chances of getting the right answer to the question whether God exists. I show that theism and atheism are not on an...     

Hobbes and the Imitation of God

This note discusses the implications of an incorrect quotation that appeared in Ted H. Miller's article, 'Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints that Enable the Imitation of God', from Inquiry42.2 (1999). Although surely inadvertent, this error is significant because the author uses it to support the thesis that Hobbes envisions philosophers imitating God by creating order out of chaos. The correct quotation from Leviathandoes not support such a thesis, and the paragraph in Leviathanfrom which it is taken actually runs counter to it. The correct quotation, taken in its context, and a passage from De Corporecited by Professor Miller reveal that Hobbes encourages philosophers to imitate God by following the order of creation in contemplation. In other words, philosophers imitate God by imitating the creation.     

Silence and the Patience of God

This article considers some of the implications of the assertion that God is patient, and in particular the appeal to God's patience as the ground of the possibility of human patience. Reflection of God's patience raises questions about the terms in which we speak of God's prevenient activity. I explore (via the work of Nelle Moreton) the possibility of characterising silence, divine and human, as active rather than passive, and consequently of qualifying accounts of God's prevenience that focus on the divine speech act. This in turn has implications for theological ethics, which are developed using Rowan Williams' and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thought on silence and listening.     

Anthropomorphism and the Apophatic God

This paper is a warning-shot across more sloppy contemporary invocations of an apophatic God. Such apophatic approaches are thought to avoid anthropomorphic projections onto God of parochial and problematic notions of the human subject. Developing an analysis of two views of the human subject given by Charles Taylor, I suggest that modern constructions of the apophatic God look very much like a projection of an intellectually-compromised and culturally-pervasive notion of the subject. I call this subject the "romantic monad", suggesting Ally McBeal as an example.     

Transference and the idea of God

While many factors influence the course of therapy, based on empirical evidence a strong case can be made for the importance of religious beliefs influencing the process of transference. During a ten-year period of private psychiatric practice, the senior author saw 353 patients suffering from anxiety and neurotic depression. The form of treatment was individual, dynamic, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy with occasional use of psychotropic drugs. Forty percent of the patients who were seen were Catholic; forty percent were Protestant; and twenty percent were Jewish.Protestants, Catholics, and Jews bring differing conceptions of God to the transference phenomenon in individual psychotherapy. Basing findings on extensive clinical evidence, this study seeks to explain why this occurs, and the need for the psychotherapist to be aware of religious factors that influence the course of psychotherapy.He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and Associate Professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Pontifical Gregorial University in Rome, Italy.