Beyond Theism and Atheism: Heidegger’s Significance for Religious Thinking

Beyond Theism and Atheism: Heidegger’s Significance for Religious Thinking PDF Author: R.S. Gall
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400936834
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
My first year in graduate school marked by initial expo sure to Heidegger and some of his important early essays. At tha~ time, disenchanted with the state in which "religious thought" lay, I was quickly struck by the potential Heidegger presented for breaking new ground in a field that had seeming ly exhausted itself by reworking the same old issues and answers. That insight, along with the conviction that Heideg ger had been misused and misunderstood by theologians and religious thinkers ever since he burst upon the intellectual scene with the publ ication of Sein und Zei t, grew throughout my graduate career and resulted in a dissertation on Heidegger and religious thinking, of which the present text is a revised and updated version. This text reflects my belief that Heid egger, when "properly" understood on such matters as truth, God (and gods), and "faith", presents us with a unique voice and vision that cannot be co-opted into any sort of theology -- be it negative, existential, dialectical or Thomistic - and indeed seriously challenges the viability of any "theol ogy".

Beyond Theism and Atheism: Heidegger’s Significance for Religious Thinking

Beyond Theism and Atheism: Heidegger’s Significance for Religious Thinking PDF Author: R.S. Gall
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400936834
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
My first year in graduate school marked by initial expo sure to Heidegger and some of his important early essays. At tha~ time, disenchanted with the state in which "religious thought" lay, I was quickly struck by the potential Heidegger presented for breaking new ground in a field that had seeming ly exhausted itself by reworking the same old issues and answers. That insight, along with the conviction that Heideg ger had been misused and misunderstood by theologians and religious thinkers ever since he burst upon the intellectual scene with the publ ication of Sein und Zei t, grew throughout my graduate career and resulted in a dissertation on Heidegger and religious thinking, of which the present text is a revised and updated version. This text reflects my belief that Heid egger, when "properly" understood on such matters as truth, God (and gods), and "faith", presents us with a unique voice and vision that cannot be co-opted into any sort of theology -- be it negative, existential, dialectical or Thomistic - and indeed seriously challenges the viability of any "theol ogy".

Giving Beyond the Gift

Giving Beyond the Gift PDF Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823255727
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 663

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Book Description
This book explores the co-dependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, to differing degrees they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Derrida and Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety. The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence in these Jewish thinkers is symptomatic of a larger question. Recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology, a religion without religion, are not radical enough. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other. The logic of apophasis, if permitted to run its course fully, would exceed the need to posit some form of transcendence that is not ultimately a facet of immanence. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis that surpasses the theolatrous impulse lying coiled at the crux of theism, an apophasis of apophasis, based on accepting an absolute nothingness—to be distinguished from the nothingness of an absolute—that does not signify the unknowable One but rather the manifold that is the pleromatic abyss at being’s core. Hence, the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift must give way to the more neutral and less theologically charged notion of an unconditional givenness in which the distinction between giver and given collapses. To think givenness in its most elemental, phenomenological sense is to allow the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.

Between Faith and Thought

Between Faith and Thought PDF Author: Jeffrey W. Robbins
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813921631
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
It engages various facets of contemporary society to show how this new style and understanding of philosophical theology might function as a critical and constructive tool of cultural analysis. Studies in Religion and Culture

Theology and Prayer

Theology and Prayer PDF Author: Gary Eaborn
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666753203
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
What does it mean for rigorous thought about God to be guided by prayer? What do Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises teach us about discernment? How can that discernment become a spiritual discipline which guides our choices throughout life? How can that discipline guide the theological choices we all make, including those of academic theologians? This book moves beyond the abstract notion that theology should be prayerful to bring theology together with a particular spiritual practice. It argues that the Spiritual Exercises are a system of prayerful discernment which already provide for reason to be used alongside an openness to all experience and all the ways that we can be guided by the Holy Spirit. This book provides a constructive interpretation of the Exercises as a path of prayerful discernment which can be used throughout life. It sees, in the Exercises, a way of active receptivity to all experience, treating all experience as worthy of attention but also approaching that experience with humility and caution. This book sees theology practiced in this way—as a discerning spiritual discipline—as more resistant to the challenges of modernity than theology which has been sundered from our spiritual life.

Panentheism--The Other God of the Philosophers

Panentheism--The Other God of the Philosophers PDF Author: John W. Cooper
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 1585584045
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Panentheism has gained popularity among contemporary thinkers. This belief system explains that "all is in God"; as a soul is related to a body, so God is related to the world. In Panentheism--The Other God of the Philosophers, philosopher and theologian John Cooper traces the growth and evolution of this intricate theology from Plotinus to Alfred North Whitehead to the present. This landmark book--the first complete history of panentheism written in English--explores the subject through the lens of various thinkers, such as Plato, Jürgen Moltmann, Paul Tillich, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Charles Hartshorne, and discusses how panentheism has influenced liberation, feminist, and ecological theologies. Cooper not only sketches the evolution of panentheism but also critiques it; ultimately, he offers a defense of classical theism. This book is for readers who care deeply about theology and think seriously about their faith.

Metaphysics and Mystery

Metaphysics and Mystery PDF Author: Thomas Dean
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1532076142
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
Metaphysics and Mystery: The Why Question East and West is a critical analysis, comparison, and evaluation of philosophical answers, Western and Asian, to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The question, first posed by the seventeenth-century philosopher Leibniz, was reintroduced in the twentieth century by Heidegger. Volume 1 begins with an introduction that lays out the issues raised by the why question. It then analyzes contemporary Western philosophers who provide either cosmological-metaphysical or existential-ontological answers to the question. It also considers transitional answers that bridge the two. Volume 2 examines Asian philosophers, classical and contemporary, who, though rejecting the assumptions behind the question, put forward nondualist answers that have a direct bearing on it. It concludes with an argument for a revised understanding of the why question that draws on the strengths and weaknesses of these Western and Asian philosophies and explores implications for ethics and religious thought.

Heideggerian Theologies

Heideggerian Theologies PDF Author: Hue Woodson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532647778
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
In light of Martin Heidegger's contextualized influence upon them, John Macquarrie, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and Karl Rahner engage in theologies that, in their respective tasks and scopes, venture into existential theology, following Heideggerian pathmarks toward the primordiality of being on the way to unconcealment, or "aletheia." By way of each pathmark, each existential theologian assumes a specific theological stance that utilizes a decidedly existential lens. While the former certainly grounds them fundamentally in a kind of theology, the latter, by way of Heideggerian influences, allows them to venture beyond any traditional theological framework with the use of philosophical suppositions and propositions. In an effort at explaining the relationship between humanity's "being" and God's "Being," each existential theologian examines what it means to be human, not strictly in terms of theology, but as it is tied inextricably to an understanding of the philosophy of existence: the concept of what being is.

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger PDF Author: Charles B. Guignon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139826972
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description
Martin Heidegger is now widely recognized as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He transformed mainstream philosophy by defining its central task as asking the 'question of being'. His thought has contributed to the turn to hermeneutics and to postmodernism and poststructuralism. Moreover, the disclosure of his deep involvement in Nazism has provoked much debate about the relation of philosophy to politics. This edition brings to the fore other works, as well as alternative approaches to scholarship. The essays cover topics such as Heidegger's conception of phenomenology, his relation to Kant and Husserl, his account of truth, and his stand on the realism/anti-realism debate. This edition includes a new preface by the editor, revised versions of several essays from the first edition, and an exhaustive bibliography, providing guidance for both newcomers to Heidegger's work and established scholars.

The God Beyond Belief

The God Beyond Belief PDF Author: Nick Trakakis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 140205145X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
This study of Professor William Rowe’s defense of atheism on the basis of evil assesses the literature that has developed in response to Rowe’s work, closely examining two strategies: mystery – the idea that God may have reasons beyond our comprehension for permitting evil; and theodicy - explanations as to why God allows evil to flourish. The book unearths difficulties in both, concluding that the God of theism must be "beyond belief."

A Theologian’s Guide to Heidegger

A Theologian’s Guide to Heidegger PDF Author: Hue Woodson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532662505
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
A Theologian's Guide to Heidegger provides a uniquely theological introduction to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, by focusing on not just the relationship between Heidegger and theology, or even the nature of the discourse that must occur between theological concerns and Heidegger's philosophical errands, but by precisely exploring how theology can use Heidegger's philosophy as a means of outlining the scope and task of postmodern theology. To do this, especially with the postmodern theologian in mind, this book considers the general relationship between Heidegger and theology, how Heidegger can be read theologically, while justifying why Heidegger must be read this way and defining the role that Heidegger must take in postmodern theology. This includes a careful consideration of Heidegger's early theological roots from Freiburg to Marburg by examining the content of Heidegger's lesser-known theologically-minded seminars, lectures, and talks.