Contextuality in the Theology of Douglas John Hall

The theology of Douglas John Hall has much to offer us in a time of wanton warfare and social injustices. Hall contends that the modern paradigm, supported by an "eternal, universal theology of glory" proves inadequate for addressing the problems of the world in which we live, and offers us a "contextual theology of the cross." This theology, unlike theologies of glory, is not afraid to "walk" into the darkness; in fact, Hall contends that is the only place where the light of God is revealed.     

THE HEART OF MY CONCERN

Abstract. This brief piece summarizes the author's lifelong personal credo, particularly his attempt to translate traditional religious wisdom into modern scientific concepts. Contemporary science reveals to us the vast system of natural processes that has brought the universe, our planet, and our species into existence. This natural system is in fact a "more-than-human 'Lord of History,'" corresponding to traditional ideas of God. This Lord of History not only has created us but also sustains us—not just externally but also our interior psychic and spiritual nature. We are challenged to discern the requirements that this system of natural processes places upon us; if we conform to these requirements, we shall be blessed, and we will be enabled as co-creators of our future evolution.     

Rationality, Justification, and the Internalism/Externalism Debate

In this paper, I argue that what underlies internalism about justification is a rationalist conception of justification, not a deontological conception of justification, and I argue for the plausibility of this rationalist conception of justification. The rationalist conception of justification is the view that a justified belief is a belief that is held in a rational way; since we exercise our rationality through conscious deliberation, the rationalist conception holds that a belief is justified iff a relevant possible instance of conscious deliberation would endorse the belief. The importance of conscious deliberation stems from its role in guiding us in acquiring true beliefs: whereas the externalist holds that if we wish to acquire true beliefs, we have to begin by assuming that some of our usual methods of belief formation generally provide us with true beliefs, the internalist holds that if we form beliefs by conscious deliberation, we can be conscious of reasons for thinking that our beliefs are true. Conscious deliberation can make us conscious of reasons because it proceeds via rational intuitions. I argue that despite the fallibility of rational intuition, rational intuitions do enable us to become conscious of reasons for belief.

Ministry and mental retardation

Conclusion This has been an attempt to show how the parents of the mentally retarded inspired me to take a second look at my theological views, to show the method I used, and to give a few instances out of many in which my theological views have been affected. If space had allowed, it would have been good to show how this human predicament can cast new light on our theological thinking about grace, redemption, and many other categories. On the other hand, each of us has a chance to pursue in depth any single doctrine, using the added perspective of this particular crisis situation.Each of us has the original theological perspective which we had before beginning our pastoral involvements with the mentally retarded and their families. Then, as we focus on this human situation we become aware of an added theological perspective that helps us to take a second look from a different viewpoint. We then find our original view has been reinforced, modified, or enlarged. It is my feeling that a pastor who becomes involved with these particular persons-who need his services very much—will find a golden opportunity to grow theologically.If any of us feel we know all we need to know about God and life and man, this would be a good time to become involved in a pastoral way with a mentally retarded person and his family and get to know them well.     

在"理性史"与"理念诗"之间--哲学史上经典之解释与人物之个性的关系问题

本论文所欲讨论者,将主要集中于哲学史上个人之性情、个性对该哲学本文所表达之观念的影响,以及我们对此所应持的诠释态度。对于中国传统哲学而言,经典本文之理解与人物个性之品评当得其有机之结合,方能再现“理性史之纹路”与“理念诗之魅力”,如是,我们也便有相当的理由质疑那种一开始就用某种预设了的、严格的因果对应的方式来图解思想家之思想的努力,同时,我们也可以在相当程度上避免因“过度诠释”所导致的诠释者对本文及其所赖于产生的周围世界的轻忽和放逐。     

RESPONSE TO WILLIAMS: SELFISHNESS IS NOT ENOUGH

Abstract. I agree with George Williams's most significant point: both questions and answers about our moral natures lie in our biological origins. He fails, however, to show that nature is morally evil and that therefore we should vigilantly resist it. The products of evolution are morally neutral, but the human moral sense is arguably a positive good. Morality is functional. It does not require ultimate justification in the sense of correspondence with or attack upon reality "out there." It is an adaptation "intended" to make us social, and sociality—with its sense of right and wrong—makes us fitter than otherwise     

Subjectification

For Martin Heidegger the death that comes singularly for each of us summons us to exist on our own and speak in our own name. But Gilles Delueze and Félix Guattari argue that it is a specific social machinery that summons us to speak in our own name and answer for what we do and are. This summons is a death sentence. They enjoin us to flee this subjectification, this subjection. They do recognize that the release of becomings in all directions can become destructive and self-destructive. There are several weaknesses in their conception.

Born of Resentment: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Yuan</Emphasis> 怨 in Early Confucian Thought

This essay explores the positive aspects of resentment in early Confucian thought. Specifically, it argues that from an early Confucian perspective, resentment (yuan 怨) is a frustration or anger that occurs when those close to us withhold their care or when they otherwise injure us. Stated succinctly, resentment is a result of frustrated desire for affection. It is a sign that we require the care of significant others, and that we are vulnerable to their concern or neglect. When understood appropriately, resentment signals genuine recognition of meaningful relationships; it is a sign that we are affected by those that ought to matter to us. Importantly, resentment has a creative dimension in that it can lead to the production of literature aimed to channel frustrated desire toward realizing the Confucian dao 道. These texts work to connect the author’s resentment with the reader’s possibility of remaking the world in a way desired by the author.     

Reasons and Value – in Defence of the Buck-Passing Account

In this article, I will defend the so-called buck-passing theory of value. According to this theory, claims about the value of an object refer to the reason-providing properties of the object. The concept of value can thus be analyzed in terms of reasons and the properties of objects that provide them for us. Reasons in this context are considerations that count in favour of certain attitudes. There are four other possibilities of how the connection between reasons and value might be formulated. For example, we can claim that value is a property that provides us with reasons to choose an option that has this property. I argue that none of these four other options can ultimately be defended, and therefore the buck-passing account is the one we ought to accept as the correct one. The case for the buck-passing account becomes even stronger, when we examine the weak points of the most pressing criticism against this account thus far.     

The concept of the person and the value of life

The concept of the person has come to be intimately connected with questions about the value of life. It is applied to those sorts of beings who have some special value or moral importance and where we need to prioritize the needs or claims of different sorts of individuals. "Person" is a concept designating individuals like us in some important respects, but possibly including individuals who are very unlike us in other respects. What are these respects and why are they important? This paper sets out to answer these questions and to develop a coherent and useful concept of the person.     

NATURE, HISTORY, AND GOD: TOWARD AN INTEGRATED CONCEPTUALIZATION

Abstract. In this paper I attempt to bring the ancient symbol God into a meaningful and illuminating conceptual relationship with modern understandings of the development of the cosmos, the evolution of life, and the movements of human history. The term "God" is taken to designate that reality (whatever it may be) which grounds and undergirds all that exists, including us humans; that reality which provides us humans with such fulfillment or salvation as we may find; that reality toward which we must turn, therefore, if we would flourish. I suggest that the cosmos can quite properly be interpreted today in terms of two fundamental ideas: (1) a notion of "cosmic serendipitous creativity," (2) the expression of which is through "directional movements" or "trajectories" of various sorts that work themselves out in longer and shorter stretches of time. In a universe understood in these terms, the symbol "God" may be taken to designate the underlying creativity working in and through all things, and in particular working in and through the evolutionary-historical trajectory on which human existence has appeared and by which it is sustained. The symbol "God" can thus perform once again its important function of helping to focus human consciousness, devotion, and work in a way appropriate to the actual world and the enormous problems with which men and women today must come to terms; but the ancient dualistic pattern of religious piety and thinking in which God is regarded as a supernatural Creator and governor of the world—so hard to integrate with modern conceptions of nature and history—is thoroughly overcome.     

A Back-Turning Harmony: Conflict as a Source of Political Community

It is widely assumed that community presupposes consensus on the good. As a result, liberals who acknowledge the permanence of pluralism have struggled to explain how a liberal society could realise the good of community. Here it is argued that our initial assumption is wrong. Conflict can serve as a source of political community. Our devotion to the things we care about provides us with reason to embark on a quest aimed at the elimination of conflict. The quest will require us to engage in the cooperative activity of dialogue with our moral adversaries. It is in this activity of dialogue, and not at the quests end, that political community can be located.     

Knowledge and Evidence

Most of us, tacitly or explicitly, embrace a more or less Cartesian conception of our epistemic condition. According to such a conception, "what we have to go on"in learning about the world is, on the one hand, that which is a priori accessible to us, and, on the other, the inner experiences—visual imagery, tactile sensations, recollective episodes and so on—that pop into our Cartesian theaters. One of the central themes of Knowledge and its Limits is that this picture is fundamentally wrong. Williamson suggests that we should embrace the thesis that our body of evidence at a given time is all and only that which we know. Call this the "E=K thesis."If the E=K thesis is correct, then what we have to go on is both more and less than the Cartesian picture would suggest: more because its domain extends outwards in space, and forwards and backwards in time; less because that which is unknown about our experiential life is excluded. In what follows, I shall identify and briefly discuss a number of themes connected to the E=K thesis.     

What can we mean by “cognition,” and does it make any sense?

Practitioners of Rational-Emotive Therapy easily identify themselves with the broad camp of cognitive behavior therapy. However, the meaning of the term cognition is often unclear. Six possible meanings are outlined: (1) mental event, (2) symbolic overt behavior, (3) symbolic covert behavior, (4) pragmatic convention, (5) unreportable behavior and (6) hypothetical construct. This paper aims to: (1) clarify what we can mean when we talk about cognition, and (2) identify which meanings keep us in the tradition of empirical science and which take us to the realm of spooks and nonsense.Hank Robb works as a private practitioner. He is an Associate Fellow and approved Supervisor of the Institute of Rational-Emotive Therapy, New York, as well as a Diplomate in Counseling Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology.     

Rationality,Reasonableness, and Critical Rationalism: Problems with the Pragma-dialectical View

A major virtue of the Pragma-Dialectical theory of argumentation is its commitment to reasonableness and rationality as central criteria of argumentative quality. However, the account of these key notions offered by the originators of this theory, Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, seems to us problematic in several respects. In what follows we criticize that account and suggest an alternative, offered elsewhere, that seems to us to be both independently preferable and more in keeping with the epistemic approach to arguments and argumentation we favor.

Free Will in the Block Universe

Carl Hoefer has argued that determinism in block universes does not privilege any particular time slice as the fundamental determiner of other time slices. He concludes from this that our actions are free, insofar as they are pieces of time slices we may legitimately regard as fundamental determiners. However, I argue that Hoefer does not adequately deal with certain remaining problems. For one, there remain pervasive asymmetries in causation and the macroscopic efficacy of our actions. I suggest that what Hoefer may have shown us is that causation, not determinism, was the threat to free will all along. Additionally, Hoefer might avoid the problem of the asymmetry of macroscopic efficacy by noting we have a very small region of space-time completely determined by our choices. However, this move implies our freedom to act is freedom to do very little, given that the region is trivial. I suggest that Hoefer should instead claim that we do have pervasive macroscopic efficacy toward the past, though I am unsure of how well this thesis works. Regardless, there remains a problem that the inside-out perspective requires us to see our choices as brute facts or random occurrences. Attempts to resolve this problem seem to require either a theory of agent causation or a traditional compatibilist argument, making Hoefer’s thesis extraneous, unless he can show us that these require the inside-out perspective. However, Hoefer has not yet shown us this, so there is work to be done.

Discarding the Barthian Spectacles: Part I, Recent Scholarship on the History of Early 20th Century German Protestant Theology

Abstract :  This essay introduces "the veritable renaissance" of scholarly attention devoted to the theologies of the early twentieth century. This "renaissance" challenges us to discard the "Barthian spectacles" through which we have been reading the theological history of this time and to examine more closely the complex context—social, political, churchly, cultural—in which theology was done.     

Pastoral care in a time of global market capitalism

The author defines pastoral theology as "the study of the micro-world of intrapsychic and interpersonal interactions with the tools of theology and the social sciences for the purpose of support and healing. In a typical class or supervisory session, we analyze the words, voice inflection, pace, and gestures of an intimate conversation between two people, looking for clues to the deep structure of personality and intimate relationships. The hope of such study is that we will see the revelation of God is love and power in action to validate and challenge the theological traditions that give us eyes to see and invite us to see more clearly."