A Concise Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion

Anthony C. Thiselton

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780744780
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Covering thinkers from Plato to Freud, offering detailed explanations of key themes such as evil, and outlining clear definitions of complex ideas like'the doctrine of analogy, ' this is a comprehensive reference tool for all those studying, or interested in, the philosophy of religion.

A

a fortiori

The term denotes an argument that applies ‘all the more’, or ‘with greater force’. In LOGIC, if a given consequence follows from a case that is actually weaker, a fortiori that consequence will follow ‘from a stronger’ (Latin, a fortiori) argument. This logical notion has been used since ancient times. Traditionally it features in Rabbi Hillel’s seven ‘rules of interpretation’ concerning what may be inferred from a biblical text.

a posteriori

Beliefs or truths that are established by a posteriori arguments or knowledge are derived from evidence, experience, or observation of the world. The term stands in contrast to A PRIORI, which denotes that which is prior to, and independent of, such experience or observation.

A posteriori arguments depend upon empirical evidence, which subsequently confirms or disconfirms what has been asserted as true, or as possibly true. In philosophy of religion the COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT for the existence of God characteristically begins with experience or observations about the world, in contrast to the ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, which turns on logical questions about the concept of God.

Clearly what is true merely by definition, or what is entailed entirely by logical reasoning, belongs to the realm of a priori argument; while inferences drawn from empirical observations of the everyday world (including the natural sciences) belong to the realm of a posteriori argument. (See also ANALYTIC STATEMENTS; GOD, ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF; KANT; EMPIRICISM.)

a priori

The term (Latin) denotes that which is prior to, or independent of, human experience or observation. It therefore stands in contrast to what is argued A POSTERIORI, i.e. from what is confirmed or disconfirmed from subsequent experience or observation. The clearest examples of a priori propositions are ANALYTIC STATEMENTS, i.e. those that are true (or those that are justified) on the basis of a priori conceptual definition: e.g. ‘all bachelors are unmarried’, ‘all circles are round’. These remain incontestable independently of observations about particular bachelors, or about a circle that I might try to draw.

Thus a priori (from first principle) may be applied to arguments or to propositions or statements. However, their logical currency is often either merely formal (true by definition) or negative (the argument or statement does not depend on what is subsequently experienced or observed). In philosophy of religion the ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT for the existence of God characteristically operates on the basis of a priori reasoning, in contrast to the COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, which utilizes a posteriori inferences from our experience of the world. (See also GOD, ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF; KANT.)

Abelard (Abailard), Peter (1079–1142)

As a major French philosopher and theologian of the twelfth century, Abelard made his chief contribution to LOGIC and ONTOLOGY. In particular he attempted a mediating position between NOMINALISM (the view that UNIVERSALS are merely linguistic signs or names (Latin, nomen) for classes or particular entities) and REALISM (universals are realities in themselves).

Each side, Abelard argued, was right in what it affirmed, but wrong in what it denied. Nominalists are right to insist that logic and SEMANTICS operate in the realm of signs and concepts; they do not trade directly in realities themselves. Realists are right, however, to insist that logic and semantics do not merely chase other signs and concepts that never engage with realities, even if they are wrong to confuse the two levels.

Abelard’s mediating position is often known as CONCEPTUALISM. He rejects a merely subjectivist account of meaning, as if meaning had no ‘controls’. Yet his attacks on naïve realism are even sharper. He insists that logic operates in its own domain. Logical validity is not identical with truth about a state of affairs.

This emerges most forcefully in Abelard’s attention to propositions. Propositions are true or false, i.e. the property of being true-or-false belongs to propositional content. In spite of having access to Latin translations of only some of ARISTOTLE’s words (especially to BOETHIUS’ translations of his Categories and On Interpretation), Abelard developed Aristotle’s propositional logic in creative ways.

In relation to Christian theology and religion, Abelard rejected any blind appeal to sheer authority as such. His contemporary, Bernard of Clairvaux (1091–1153), denounced him for so exalting reason and logic as to make faith and revelation, in effect, irrelevant. Parallel debates may be observed in ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY of this period.

It is difficult to argue that Abelard discounted biblical revelation. After all, he produced an Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. However, he rejected any exclusive claim for the authority of the Bible or the Church Fathers, arguing that ancient Greek philosophy was often closer to the New Testament than the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.

Abelard also emphasized the importance of thinking for oneself. He disagreed with both of his own very different teachers, Roscellinus (himself unorthodox) and William of Champeaux. Like SOCRATES, he saw doubt (rather than certainty) as the path to knowledge through exploration and discovery.

In theology Abelard’s accounts of the Trinity and of the atonement have both been severely criticized. He is credited with expounding a theology of the atonement through Jesus Christ which rests upon ‘moral influence’ or ‘example’, rather than on any notion of Godward sacrifice as held by ANSELM and Calvin. His attempt to expound Romans 3:19–26 entirely in terms of a demonstration of God’s love hardly does justice to this Pauline text.

However, it was for his logic and ontology, rather than for his theology, that Abelard attracted large numbers of students to Paris. From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, it has been said, logic occupied the position of privilege and esteem that the nineteenth century recorded to the sciences. Paris became an important centre of philosophy, and the conceptualism of Abelard influenced such figures as ALBERT the Great and Thomas AQUINAS. He constitutes a major influence on mediaeval Western SCHOLASTICISM.

Absolute

In its widest, most popular sense, the Absolute denotes that which is unconditional and complete in itself. It stands in contrast to all that is relative. In the broadest terms it denotes what is unqualified, independent of conditioning influences, and the ground of its own being (ASEITY).

In more technical terms, the word has different nuances within different philosophical traditions. In German IDEALISM, KANT (1724–1804) uses the term to denote what is unconditionally valid. SCHELLING (1775–1854) postulates an Absolute which is that prior ground before selfhood comes to perceive the world or reach self-awareness in terms of subject and object, or spirit and nature. TILLICH (1886–1965) is partially influenced by Schelling in his insistence that God is not an existent being, but is ‘Being-itself’.

It is with HEGEL (1770–1831) that the term is most often associated. Hegel rejected Schelling’s account, and identified the Absolute as Spirit. As Absolute, Spirit finds self-expression within the world through a DIALECTIC process of logical and historical NECESSITY.

This is because Hegel’s Absolute Idea embraces within itself a unity that is also self-differentiating. In his philosophical theology Hegel postulated a coherence with the Christian doctrine of God as Trinity: God is an unqualified unity who has nevertheless expressed self-differentiation in a historical dialectic as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in successive modes of self-disclosure.

In the English-speaking world BRADLEY (1846–1924) of Oxford argued that differentiation presupposes the reality of the Absolute as wholeness. Diversity is mere appearance; only the whole is real (Appearance and Reality, 1893). The Absolute is unconditioned by time or change, for supposedly even time is unreal.

Josiah Royce (1855–1916) represented American IDEALISM. He identified the Absolute both with God and with the spirit of the great, final, ‘community of persons’. An organic whole is presupposed by the differences of human experience (The Conception of God, 1897).

In identifying the Absolute with God (against Bradley) Royce was returning to the early tradition of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64). Nicholas argued that God is ‘absolutely infinite’. God so clearly transcends whatever is relative and CONTINGENT that God even holds together as the Absolute a ‘coincidence of opposites’, just as infinity moves similarly beyond characterization in any specific, limited or relative form.

In spite of these technical nuances in Schelling, Hegel, Bradley, Royce and Nicholas, the term Absolute is often used more broadly to stand in contrast with all that is relative or conditioned by other agents or forces. Especially in ETHICS the term is used to exclude cultural, historical or social relativism.

While the broader notion of unconditionedness, ultimacy, self-subsistence and aseity retains a place in the philosophy of religion (see GOD, CONCEPTS AND ‘ATTRIBUTES’ OF; ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY; TRANSCENDENCE) the more technical claims of German and Anglo-American idealism are less prominent today than they were during the nineteenth century. However, in Ascent to the Absolute (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970) J.N. Findlay has argued for the unconditional basis of all things.

accident

Used as a technical term in Aristotelian and in SCHOLASTIC philosophy, accident denotes a CONTINGENT quality that happens to inhere in some underlying substance. The ‘substance’ remains an enduring supportive substratum, while the apparent quality or accident ‘happens’ (from the Latin accidere, to happen).

Traditional Roman Catholic theology utilized the Aristotelian and Thomist distinction to defend the notion of transubstantiation. The underlying substance changed to become the body and blood of Christ, while the observable accidents remained perceptible to the eye as bread and wine.

AQUINAS writes: ‘It is through the accidents (per accidentia) that we judge the substance (de substantia) … The accidents of the bread … remain when the substance of the bread (substantia panis) is no longer there’ but the substance has become the body and blood of Christ under the outward appearance of the ‘accidents’ of bread and wine (Summa Theologiae, III, Qu. 75, art. 5).

Much recent Catholic doctrine, however, does not remain tied to the formulation of Aquinas in the thirteenth century. The Reformers vigorously opposed it. Both traditions today tend to seek a more dynamic understanding of how the death of Christ is ‘proclaimed’ or ‘called actively to mind with effects’ in the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist. (See also ARISTOTLE.)

actuality

The broadest, mainline meaning of this term is drawn from ARISTOTLE, in whose writings it stands in contrast to potentiality or ‘possibility’. Finite entities have potentialities which become actual when they are realized. Aristotle applied actuality to form; potentiality to matter. Thomas AQUINAS developed this further in his FIVE WAYS of argument concerning the existence of God. Potentiality is the basis of his Kinetological Way (argument from motion) in contrast to God’s ASEITY.

Existentialist writers, however, apply the contrast between actuality and possibility differently. HEIDEGGER, MARCEL and SARTRE tend to apply ‘actuality’ for ‘things’ or objects, and to reserve ‘possibility’ to denote an existential mode of being distinctive to persons and agents. Sartre contrasts being-in-itself (être-en-soi; cf. actuality) with being-for-itself (être-pour-soi; cf. possibility). Possibility denotes a mode of existence in which openness to the future may be realized by decision, whereas actuality denotes an ‘it’ which is ‘closed’ to such active decision (see BUBER; EXISTENTIALISM).

In TELEOLOGICAL contexts actuality denotes the fulfilment or realization of purpose. This brings us back to Aristotle’s contrast between the possibilities of matter which find expression in the ‘actuality’ of form.

agnosticism

At first sight agnosticism is often perceived as being less dogmatic and more open than either THEISM or ATHEISM when applied to the belief-syst...