PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON RECENT NEUROBIOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES

Abstract. Recent progress in neurophysiology research has created a certain uneasiness in the modes of explanation. Starting with body experiences this research has progressed to borderline experiences and confronts us anew with the age-old mind-body problem. At this point science is especially exposed to the dangers of reductionism as they have been spelled out by Carl Jung. Evolution, understood not as the deployment of pre-existing properties of matter but as the continued emergence of new realities which integrate and transform the pre-existing realities, may lead to a more profound understanding of humanity, which came into being through the emergence of mind. Archetypes and the human religious dimension or the capability to experience God may be the most significant mark of this emergence.     

FINITUDE AND ORIGINAL SIN: CAVELL'S CONTRIBUTION TO THEOLOGY

Stanley Cavell's relation to theology is by no means settled nor is, more generally, his relation to religion. The noted American philosopher's own remarks on these topics are notoriously ambiguous and the commentary literature offers no univocal answer. Taking my cue from Cavell's own suggestions, I argue that there is indeed a fruitful way of positively understanding his relation to religion that proves generative for theology as well. Cavell's highly original understanding of the link between finitude and what he calls scepticism sheds light on the dynamics inherent in the Christian doctrine of original sin.     

SOCIOBIOLOGY AND ITS THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Abstract. The broad character of the arguments used by sociobiologists is assessed, particularly in relation to criticisms coming from anthropology. The implications of sociobiology for theology are developed with respect to the general impact of evolutionary ideas, the reductionist assumptions of sociobiologists, whether or not "survival" can be a value, and more holistic accounts of the physical and biological grounding of the mental and spiritual lives of human beings.     

ECOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY: SCIENCE AND THEOLOGICAL MODELING

Abstract. The possibility of in-breakings of God in science is discussed. A realist philosophy of science is used as a framework in which new paradigms are seen as providing ever better approximations to the true underlying structure of nature, which will be revealed in the eschaton. It is argued that ecology–the study of the earth as a whole–cannot be treated as a natural science because there can be no paradigms for understanding the earth as a whole. Instead technology is used as a means for interacting with God through nature.     

BAKHTIN ON HEARING GOD'S VOICE

Bakhtin's dialogical (not dialectical) philosophy of the everyday, double‐voiced prosaic and poetic discourse of asymmetrically interrelated, embodied selves, each answerable to others and the world, found liberating wisdom in modern novelizing texts, notably those of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, with the Chalcedonian Christ prototype as background. He suggests how language is used in Christian contexts by attending to different voices in confessional utterances that may include God's voice/an interlocutory infinite “third”—heard in and through others’ voices—without collapsing perspectival pluralism into relativism. Current work on comparative theology, contrasted with old‐style comparative religion, echoes his insights.     

PROMETHEUS AND KANT: NEUTRALIZING THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE AND DOXOLOGY

This essay argues that Kant's writings on religion recapitulate or anticipate many of the theoretical moves we find in Promethean discourses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first portion of the article lays out fundamental elements of Promethean discourse from a theological point of view, and distinguishes between "aggressive" and "urbane" Prometheanism. I contend that both types attack divine transcendence and Christian doxology, focus almost entirely on soteriology to the detriment of creation, and advocate a movement from theo-centric discourse to anthropocentric discourse. Yet urbane Prometheanism differs from its aggressive cousin by moving from hatred of God to a non-dialogical mode of indifference to God as an impotent and inconsequential deity. I argue that an urbane Prometheanism is what properly characterizes Kant's philosophy of religion—from his epistemic work in the first Critique , through his way of parsing theological and philosophical discursive responsibilities, to his actual hermeneutics of Christian doctrine.