Wagering On Transcendence

Download or read book Wagering on Transcendence written by Phyllis Carey and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1997 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wagering on Transcendence explores the question of ultimate meaning in literature. Through essays, Mount Mary College professors from various disciplines analyze several pieces of literature from a variety of genres and authors to show how each depicts the human struggle to find meaning. The essays analyze concrete examples of spiritual journeys, the ways in which nature can be an avenue of transcendence, the transforming effect that the search for meaning can have on the individual, how transcendence can be experienced through community, the roles of language and story in the quest for transcendence, and the wager itself: how our bets about the existence of the Divine determine how we live our lives.

Download or read book Encountering Transcendence written by Lieven Boeve and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of several contributions to a refined understanding of religious experience in view of contemporary theological epistemology. Diverse sample studies taken from the extensive field of religion, theology and religious studies reveal that 'religious experience' is today clearly a pivotal issue. More specifically, this is made evident in modern theological hermeneutics and in the anti-modern and/or post-modern reactions thereto, the theology of world religions and inter-religious dialogue, the contemporary resurgence of religiosity in Western society and culture, and the so-called turn to religion in contemporary continental philosophy. It would appear from such studies that the category of 'religious experience' is frequently called upon to clarify or explain the phenomenon of religion and religiosity on the one hand and to support and legitimise religious positions or the critique thereof on the other. Because of the loss of plausibility of tradition-bound religiosity and of foundational, so-called onto-theological schemes, 'religious experience' has come to constitute, for many, the last (or latest) point of departure and anchor for religion and religious thinking. This is certainly the case with respect to tendencies within contemporary Christian traditions and theological reflection. In a multitude of ways and from a variety of different perspectives, 'religious experience' and 'experience of transcendence' or 'of the divine' have gained a prominent place in philosophical and fundamental-theological conceptual schemes. In reaction to this, other authors have denied the very primacy given to religious experience in reflecting upon faith, pointing to the constitutive role of tradition and narrative without which there is no religious experience. From all this follows that the category of religious experience is in great need of reconceptualisation, not least from a theological point of view. On the one hand, religious experience is all too easily called upon to legitimise religious claims (often against 'tradition') and on the other hand, the category has become misleading in so far as it is tainted by the modern scientific understanding of experience - in reaction to which 'tradition' is then easily invoked to protect the core of religion. Both young scholars at the preceding junior conference and senior scholars during the conference's paper sessions presented from diverse perspectives new ways to conceive of religious experience in view of today's challenges of secularisation, religious plurality, the aestheticisation of religion, etc. The selected contributions have been arranged in four thematically oriented parts: 'Approaching Religious Experience in a Postmodern Age', 'Modern (re)Thinking of Religious Experience', 'Liberating Religious Experience', and 'Challenges for Spirituality'.

Download or read book Modernity's Wager written by Adam B. Seligman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Seligman, one of our most important social thinkers, continues the incisive critique of modernity he began in his previously acclaimed The Idea of Civil Society and The Problem of Trust. In this provocative new work of social philosophy, Seligman evaluates modernity's wager, namely, the gambit to liberate the modern individual from external social and religious norms by supplanting them with the rational self as its own moral authority. Yet far from ensuring the freedom of the individual, Seligman argues, "the fundamentalist doctrine of enlightened reason has called into being its own nemesis" in the forms of ethnic, racial, and identity politics. Seligman counters that the modern human must recover a notion of authority that is essentially transcendent, but which extends tolerance to those of other--or no--faiths. Through its denial of an authority rooted in an experience of transcendence, modernity fails to account for individual and collective moral action. First, deprived of a sacred source of the self, depictions of moral action are reduced to motives of self interest. Second, dismissing the sacred leaves the resurgence of religious movements unexplained. In this rigorous and imaginative study, Seligman seeks to discover a durable source of moral authority in a liberalized world. His study of shame, pride, collective guilt, and collective responsibility demonstrates the mutual relationship between individual responsibility and communal authority. Furthermore, Seligman restores the indispensable role of religious traditions--as well as the features of those traditions that enhance, rather than denigrate, tolerance. Sociologists, political theorists, moral philosophers, and intellectual historians will find Seligman's thesis enlightening, as will anyone concerned with the ethical and religious foundations of a tolerant society.

Download or read book Richard Kearney's Anatheistic Wager written by Chris Doude van Troostwijk and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology of fifteen essays provides a variety of critical perspectives on the influential ideas in Richard Kearney’s Anatheism. Blaise Pascal famously insisted that it was better to wager belief in God than to risk eternal damnation. More recently, the distinguished philosopher Richard Kearney has offered a wager of his own—the anatheistic wager, or return to God after the death of God. In this volume, an international group of contributors consider what Kearney’s spiritual wager means. This volume examines what is at stake with such a wager and what anatheism demands of the self and of others. The essays explore the dynamics of religious anatheistic performativity, its demarcations and limits, and its motives. A recent interview with Kearney focuses on crucial questions about philosophy, theology, and religious commitment. As a whole, this volume interprets and challenges Kearney’s philosophy of religion and its radical impact on contemporary views of God.

Download or read book Anxious Angels written by G. Pattison and published by Springer. This book was released on 1999-01-13 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existentialism was one of the most important influences on twentieth-century thought, especially in the period between the 1920s and early 1960s. Best known in its atheistic representatives such as Sartre, it also numbered many significant religious thinkers. Anxious Angels is a critical introduction to these religious existentialists, who are treated as a coherent group in their own right and not merely derivative of secular existentialism. The book argues that they constitute a distinctive religious voice that continues to merit attention in an era of postmodernity.

Download or read book Faith, Hope and Poetry written by Malcolm Guite and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith, Hope and Poetry explores the poetic imagination as a way of knowing; a way of seeing reality more clearly. Presenting a series of critical appreciations of English poetry from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day, Malcolm Guite applies the insights of poetry to contemporary issues and the contribution poetry can make to our religious knowing and the way we 'do theology'. This book is not solely concerned with overtly religious poetry, but attends to the paradoxical ways in which the poetry of doubt and despair also enriches theology. Developing an original analysis and application of the poetic vision of Coleridge, Larkin and Seamus Heaney in the final chapters, Guite builds towards a substantial theology of imagination and provides unique insights into truth that complement and enrich more strictly rational ways of knowing. Readers of this book will return to their reading of poetry equipped with new insights and enthusiasm and will be challenged to integrate imaginative ways of knowing into their other academic and intellectual pursuits.

Download or read book Christ Unabridged written by George Westhaver and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The title ‘the Son of Man’ evokes the different aspects of the whole Christ: the humanity and divinity of Christ, his earthly ministry, his sacramental presence, and the eschatological consummation of his work. It is also a term of relationship, suggestive of both the relations constitutive of the life of the Holy Trinity, and also of the way that our knowing and loving the Son of Man is always an invitation to communion - with the Triune God, as the Body of Christ, and for the life of the world. Contributors to this collection explore some of the many registers of the mystery of Christ, both historically and thematically. Contributors include some of today’s leading theological thinkers, including N.T. Wright, Rowan Williams, Lydia Schumacher, Kallistos Ware and Oliver O’Donovan. With poetic reflections from Malcolm Guite. Chapters include: "Son of Man and the New Creation" (N.T. Wright), "The Son of Man in the Gospel of John" (John Behr), "Sound and Silence in Augustine’s Christological Exegesis" (Carol Harrison), "According to the Flesh?: The Problem of Knowing Christ in Chalcedonian Perspective" (Ian Mcfarland), "Christ and the Moral Life" (Oliver O'Donovan), "Christ and the Poetic Imagination" (Malcolm Guite)