THE PREVENIENCE AND PHENOMENALITY OF GRACE, OR, THE ANTERIORITY OF THE POSTERIOR

This article argues the possibility of a phenomenology of Grace on the basis of response. Its key phenomenological interlocutor is Emmanuel Levinas.
The theology of grace might be said to be the fundamental theological doctrine, embracing as it does all other theologies, yet the theology of grace has been a focus of theological debate and dispute throughout history.
This article suggests that Levinas' ethical metaphysics, when applied to theology, gives theology a new phenomenological voice in which the theology of grace might be articulated.
It begins by arguing the significance of the ordinary and the everyday and the sincerity of intentional life in the world, and then proceeds to develop the notion of the prevenience of grace ( gratia praeveniens ) in terms of Levinas notion of the posteriority of the anterior/anteriority of the posterior. Grace is known in its effects.     

NIETZSCHE,THE CROSS,AND THE NATURE OF GOD

In this essay, I treat of a type of moral objection to Christian theism that is formulated by Friedrich Nietzsche. In an effort to provoke a negative moral‐aesthetic response to the conception of God underlying the Christian tradition, with the ultimate aim of recommending his own allegedly ‘healthier’ ideals, Nietzsche presents a number of distinct but related considerations. In particular, he claims that the traditional theological interpretation of the crucifixion of Jesus expresses the tasteless, vulgar, and morally objectionable character of God, thus rendering Him unworthy of belief. In response to Nietzsche's worries, I first of all argue that his account of the origins of the belief in God is both prima facie implausible and historically false. At the same time I recognize that Nietzsche is expressing, in his typically bombastic manner, a genuine and widely held worry about what the crucifixion, as an event in salvation history, says about the nature of God. In response to this worry, I draw on the work of Wilhelm Dilthey in order to support the contention that the concept of divine transcendence, which underlies Nietzsche's concern, has its proper place within the Greek metaphysical tradition, rather than in Christian faith. Building on the work of Franz Rosenzweig and Jürgen Moltmann, I outline a conception of God that more accurately reflects the claim that the cross is the definitive revelation of the divine nature while at the same time foreclosing on the possibility of the kind of response that Nietzsche articulates.     

THE INFLUENCE OF TELECONFERENCING MEDIUM AND STATUS ON PARTICIPANTS' PERCEPTION OF THE AESTHETICISM,EVALUATION, PRIVACY,POTENCY, AND ACTIVITY OF THE MEDIUM1

This study investigated the influence of teleconferencing medium and status on users' reaction to the medium. Subjects received either high or medium status inductions, and subgroups solved a problem in two node audio, video, and face-to-face conferencing configurations. These subgroups proceeded through the three media treatment conditions in counterbalanced order, and responded to scales measuring the aestheticism, evaluation, privacy, potency, and activity of the medium. Analysis indicated both face-to-face and video conferencing elicited more positive aestheticism and evaluation reactions than the audio conferencing medium. Face-to-face and audio conferencing media were perceived as being more private than the video teleconferencing medium while both video and audio media were perceived as being more potent than face-to-face conferencing. The analysis revealed neither an activity of the medium nor status main effect. The results were discussed in light of information theory.     

BRUTE FACTS,THE NECESSITY OF IDENTITY,AND THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

In ‘Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres, and the Identity of Indiscernibles,’ Della Rocca argues that any counterexample to the PII would involve ‘a brute fact of non‐identity [. . .] not grounded in any qualitative difference.’ I respond that Adams's so‐called Continuity Argument against the PII does not postulate qualitatively inexplicable brute facts of identity or non‐identity if understood in the context of Kripkean modality. One upshot is that if the PII is understood to quantify over modal as well as non‐modal properties, the qualitative explicability of numerical distinctness requires not the PII but a principle of the identity of necessary indiscernibles.     

DIONYSIUS,PAUL AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PSEUDONYM

This essay interprets the CD through the lens of the pseudonym, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the corresponding influence of Paul. First, this essay argues that the author of the CD writes under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite in order to suggest that, following Paul, he will effect a new rapprochement between the wisdom of pagan Athens and the revelation of God in Christ. Second, this essay demonstrates how crucial Paul is for Dionysius' own “apophatic anthropology,” that is, his view of how the human self that would solicit union with the “unknown God” must also become somehow “unknown.” Finally, this essay hazards a final hypothesis regarding the significance of the pseudonym: that the practice of pseudonymous writing is itself an ecstatic devotional practice in the service of “unknowing” both God and self.     

MOURNING,DREAMING, AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

The author argues that the structure of mourning and the structure of the Oedipus complex are triadic, the latter being obvious and easy to conceptualize, while the former is quite subtle. When it is the father who is mourned, the son must repeatedly invoke the dead object so that libidinal cathexis can be reinvested in living objects. Such was the situation in which Freud found himself in 1896 when his father died—the triadic nature of the Oedipus complex ironically not yet discovered by him. In the author's belief, Freud's mourning and his attendant rich dream life occurring between 1896 and 1897 gave him access to the unconscious raw material that would eventually help him conceptualize the triadic structure at the instinctual core of the Oedipus complex.     

FAITH,BELIEF, AND THE COMPATIBILITY OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Recent attacks on the compatibility of science and religion by the “militant modern atheists” (Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens) have posed serious challenges for anyone who supports the human importance of religious faith (particularly their identification of “faith” with “believing without evidence”). This article offers a critical analysis of their claims compared with those who do not equate faith with belief. I conclude that (i) the militant modern atheist interpretation of faith undervalues transformative religious experiences, (ii) that more people of faith hold it for this reason than their opponents acknowledge, and (iii) that meaningful dialogue between religion and science is both possible and desirable.     

ISOLATING THE INDIVIDUAL: THEOLOGY,THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION,AND THE PROBLEM OF ABSTRACT INDIVIDUALISM

Debates about the theological implications of recent research in the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion have tended to focus on the question of theism. The question of whether there is any disagreement about the conceptualization of the individual human being has been largely overlooked. In this article, I argue that evolutionary and cognitive accounts of religion typically depend upon a view of cognition that conceptually isolates the mind from its particular social and physical environmental contexts. By embracing this view of the mind, these accounts also unwittingly embrace an abstract individualist view of individual personhood that Christian theologians have explicitly battled against. Taken as a whole, the field leaves sufficient room for supplementary theories that are compatible with theological accounts of the relational individual, but in practice, no effort has been made to engage, or even to accommodate, any other view of individual personhood.     

THE ORIGINS AND ISSUES OF SCEPTICISM, EAST AND WEST

The scepticism of the academicians: the illusions of perception, the frailty of induction, the indecency of deduction, the conundrums of negation, is not the concern of this paper. It is thinkers for whom the human situation is a predicament demanding some kind of resolution who interest me. These are thinkers who see knowledge, philosophy if you will, within the horizon of predicament and resolution, who see knowledge exhausting itself well before any resolution of the human predicament is reached, who hold that knowing is not the model by which to understand how humans relate to the way things really are.     

ENDURANTISM, DIACHRONIC VAGUENESS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE MANY

Abstract: A plausible desideratum for an account of the nature of objects, at, and across time, is that it accommodate the phenomenon of vagueness without locating vagueness in the world. A series of arguments have attempted to show that while universalist perdurantism – which combines a perdurantist account of persistence with an unrestricted mereological account of composition – meets this desideratum, endurantist accounts do not. If endurantists reject unrestricted composition then they must hold that vagueness is ontological. But if they embrace unrestricted composition they are faced with the problem of the many, and cannot plausibly accommodate vagueness. This paper disambiguates two related sub-problems of the problem of the many, and argues that universalist perdurantism is not superior to universalist endurantism with respect to either of these.     

BUDDHISM,NATURALISM, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Owen Flanagan's important book The Bodhisattva's Brain presents a naturalized interpretation of Buddhist philosophy. Although the overall approach of the book is very promising, certain aspects of its presentation could benefit from further reflection. Traditional teachings about reincarnation do not contradict the doctrine of no self, as Flanagan seems to suggest; however, they are empirically rather implausible. Flanagan's proposed “tame” interpretation of karma is too thin; we can do better at fitting karma into a scientific worldview. The relationship between eudaimonist and utilitarian strands in Buddhist ethics is more complex than the book suggests. Flanagan is right to criticize incautious and imprecise claims that Buddhism will make practitioners happy. We can make progress by distinguishing between happiness in the sense of a Buddhist version of eudaimonia, and happiness in the sense of attitudinal pleasure. Doing so might result in an interpretation of Buddhist views about happiness that was simultaneously philosophically interesting, historically credible, and psychologically testable.     

PHILOSOPHY,THE RESTLESS HEART AND THE MEANING OF THEISM

There is a common philosophical challenge that asks how things would be different if some supposed reality did not exist. Conceived in one way this can amount to trial by sensory verification. Even if that challenge is dismissible, however, the question of the relation of the purported reality to experience remains. Writing here in connection with the central claims, and human significance, of theism; and drawing on ideas suggested by C. S. Pierce, C. S. Lewis, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, I aim to turn the tables and argue that the broad structure and basic features of human cognitive and affective experience indicate their fulfilment in God.