Studies in Philosophical Theology – serie

There is hardly a category more prominent in modern and postmodern reflection on religion than that of religious experience. In «Divinising Experience», scholars gathered in the Research Group 'Theology in a Postmodern Context' (K.U.Leuven), have sought to investigate from quite different perspectives the theological approaches of twelve key authors in the history of religious experience. Organised chronologically, they present studies on Origen, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Ignatius of Loyola, Friedrich Schleiermacher, William James, Wolfhard Pannenberg, Paul Tillich, John Henry Newman, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Paul Ricoeur. Not surprisingly, each of the investigations in itself suggests a different approach to and an analysis of 'experience' as a category. This volume therefore presents almost a 'double movement' on the one hand as enquiries into specific thinkers, and on the other to discover who we are as readers, when we take up the category of religious experience as a reading key. In their own way, the twelve essays of «Divinising Experience» provide a kind of introductory reader in the question of religious experience.

As finite humans, we are dependent, limited, situated, and vulnerable, and our understanding of ourselves and the world is constantly facing boundaries and restrictions. This book explores how finitude's different dimensions, and its ambiguities, may be understood within the framework of Christian theological anthropology. This study inverstigates different understandings of finitude's role in human life, and argues why these may benefit theological anthropology. An analysis and discussion of recent contributions and the possible relations between them not only help us to gain a richer picture of finitude's impact on human life, but may also contribute to a deeper understanding of the anthropological dimensions of religion. A further outcome of the analysis is that we are then able to define more clearly on what terms there is, from a phenomenological point of view, a possible relation between common human experience of finitude and the understanding of the world present in religion.

Religious feeling lies at the heart of Schleiermacher's theology. In his earliest monograph, the Speeches, he famously writes that "religion's essence is neither thinking nor acting but intuition and feeling." He portrays religious feeling as an eternal and universal state of consciousness, which cannot be generated by individuals, the world or anything within it, but must have a transcendent "whence", namely God. Yet his critics have often missed this point, assuming that his emphasis on feeling makes religion transitory and individualistic. This misinterpretation is furthered by philosophical, psychological, anthropological and popular understandings of feeling, which characterise emotions as selfish and moods as inward looking.This book traces the development of Schleiermacher's concept of feeling, comparing the first edition of the Speeches with his later works, especially The Christian Faith. It points to a fundamental continuity in Schleiermacher's stance, despite the increasing orthodoxy of his language, and his growing interest in the collective feeling of the religious community. Taking account of recent developments in psychology and philosophy, this study sheds light on the elements of Schleiermacher's account that are tenable today, clearing the way for future reappraisals of his theological project.

Apparently, people who are aware of the relevant facts and experiences in a belief forming situation, sometimes reasonably disagree about whether to believe and why. This study argues that such disagreements are possible, and that some purportedly fully informed reasonable disagreements are genuine, including cases involving disagreement about which beliefs about God are reasonably taken to be properly basic, given the facts of religious diversity and cases in which phenomenologically similar religious experiences properly ground a variety of religious beliefs. Drawing on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, it also argues that Tradition-Based Perspectivalism – roughly, the view that foundational beliefs about what is reasonable to believe and why, are tradition-based and perspectival in nature, originating in and appropriately grounded only from the perspective of some tradition of inquiry or other – is true, and that its truth provides additional support for the claim that fully informed reasonable disagreement actually occurs.

Religious statements can be true or false, and are not merely arbitrary or personally meaningful. That is the core thesis of this work in pragmatist philosophy of religion. Other contemporary approaches are deficient, as they have problematic ways of understanding truth and experience. The argument in this study draws on Hilary Putnam's work in such fields as ethics, epistemology, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, Putnam doesn't fully acknowledge how religious statements, similar to other statements, depend on an interaction of our language and the world. This would make religious truth a matter of convention. Drawing on another source of inspiration for Putnam, William James, Niek Brunsveld shows how religious claims can have truth value.

Although Thomas Jackson (1579-1640) is recognized by scholars as the most important theologian of the Laudian church, hitherto there has been no comprehensive study of his philosophical theology. The reason for Jackson's neglect is that scholars have been puzzled by the sources, character and influence of his Christian Platonism. From a close and comprehensive reading of his magnum opus - a massive twelve book commentary on the Apostles' Creed - this book shows how Jackson regards the Platonic tradition as an essential and perennial resource for the Christian theologian, anticipating and informing central aspects of Christian theological speculation and belief, given by divine providence to help him interpret and defend his creed. Special attention is paid to the influence of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) on Jackson, an important moment in the history of thought since the German cardinal is generally thought to have been without intellectual successors in the early modern period.