This article explores Heidegger's later philosophy with regard to the problem of a philosophical interpretation of religious language. In what follows, I will draw upon the work of Wittgenstein and refer to the cosmological argument to read Heidegger in terms of a post-theistic understanding of religious language that avoids the shortcomings of both theistic realism and non-cognitivism. At the same time, I am proposing a new interpretation of Heidegger's later philosophy against this background. I will show that, in spite of its hermeticism, Heidegger's later philosophy has a specific relevance to philosophy of religion that still needs to be explored.

Michael Almeida has recently tried to show that if S5 correctly represents metaphysical necessity, there can be no non-trivial evidence for or against the existence of the traditional God. Evidence would thus be irrelevant to the reasonability of traditional theistic belief. Almeida's argument has implications beyond its announced target: it amounts to a new argument for sweeping scepticism. Almeida's argument for the irrelevance of evidence to the existence of God would apply to any state of affairs that entails some metaphysical necessity. In S5, every state of affairs entails some metaphysical necessity, so Almeida should conclude that non-trivial evidence for or against any state of affairs is impossible. I argue that the problem is not with S5 but with inadequately motivated assumptions about evidential support. Avoiding those assumptions disables the argument for sweeping scepticism and without foreclosing the possibility of non-trivial evidence for or against the existence of the traditional God.

‘Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: and then stop.’ The King of Hearts' advice is not as easy to follow as might seem on first hearing. It is not simply that I want to speak about the interrelation between two major subjects and there is a certain arbitrariness in choosing with which of the two to start. The problem is far more fundamental than that. Where for the theologian is ‘the beginning’? At whatever point he does begin he is always uneasily aware that way back behind the point that he has chosen there probably lie a number of unquestioned assumptions which have largely prejudged the kind of answer he will give to the very question he is setting out to investigate. This difficulty is not, of course, peculiar to the theologian. None of us, whatever the subject of our investigation, can ever really ‘begin at the beginning’. But if this is a difficulty which the Christian theologian shares with other scholars it is none the less real for that. One obvious and important feature of the tradition in which the Christian theologian stands is that it gives some kind of special authority to the Bible, to the Church and above all—though it is sometimes a little bit elusive to know exactly what is meant by saying this—to Christ himself.

The word mysticism serves to draw attention to certain similarities in religious experience in both Western and Eastern religion, and it is difficult to find a really satisfactory substitute. What is important is that we should not suppose it to be a simple term, but should recognise that it has many variations. There are varieties of mysticism, recognisable by a certain family resemblance, and it is probably safer therefore to use the word with some qualifying adjective, e.g. Christian mysticism, Jewish mysticism, and so on.

Various attempts have been made in recent years to present Christianity in such a way that no use is made of the traditional dichotomy between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’. Braithwaite, Hare, and van Buren, for instance, appear to have no use for the dichotomy; and I think that, without too much distortion, one can say the same of Bultmann, Tillich, and Robinson. I am not, however, concerned in this paper with the work of any one thinker as such, but rather with a general climate of opinion. What I want to do is to examine the grounds on which it might be argued that belief in the supernatural is discredited. The issue seems to me of special importance at the present time, since, if these grounds are inadequate, programmes of reform under the general heading ‘Christianity without the supernatural’lose much of their point; if, on the other hand, the grounds are compelling, then reform of some kind is forced upon us whatever the accompanying difficulties.

This article aims to provide a new solution to the Logical Problem of the Incarnation by proposing a novel metaphysical reconstrual of the method of reduplicative predication. This reconstrual will be grounded upon the metaphysical thesis of ‘Ontological Pluralism, proposed by Kris McDaniel and Jason Turner, and the notion of an ‘aspect’ proposed by Donald L. M. Baxter. Utilising this thesis and notion will enable the method of reduplicative predication to be further clarified, and the central objection that is often raised against this approach can be successfully answered.

Let me begin with a true story. Years ago, early in my career as a professor of philosophy, I had a fascinating series of conversations with a student whom I will call Peter. He was a bright and incisive senior, with a double major in philosophy and psychology. Raised in a religious family, the son of a Christian minister, he was himself unable to believe. His doubts were too strong. But the odd fact was that he genuinely wanted to believe. His religious scepticism deeply troubled him; part of him envied the faith of his parents. How do you go about making yourself believe?, he asked me. How do you go about having the kinds of religious experiences that lead people to faith? These were long and intense conversations, and I was unable (though I tried) to move Peter away from his doubts. So far as I know he is still a sceptic.

The great increase of interest in the study of spirituality and mysticism is reflected in the large number of articles that the Encyclopedia of Religion devotes to various aspects of this topic. As one would expect, there are long entries for ‘Mysticism’ and ‘Christian Spirituality’ and ‘Religious Experience’. In addition to these broad categories, attention is given to more specific aspects of spirituality such as ‘Asceticism’, ‘Silence’, ‘Prayer’, ‘Meditation’, and so on. This is complemented by entries on many of the spiritual giants of the Christian tradition, both ancient and modern. I shall begin by discussing these articles on individuals, and go on to examine the more general articles later in the review. I shall suggest that, despite many merits, both sorts of entry display an editorial policy about which serious questions must be raised.

The Irish poet W. B. Yeats once wrote, with great sapience and perception:

Nor dread, nor hope attend

A dying animal;

A man awaits his end

Dreading and hoping all.

That death has ever been a problem to man is attested as far back as we can trace our species in the archaeological record—indeed, it seems to have been a problem even for that immediate precursor of homo sapiens, the so-called Neanderthal Man; for he buried his dead.

As the title suggests, the thesis of this essay is that any view which would affirm the orthodox concept of a theistic God and yet deny the existence of a devil is inherently untenable; or, alternatively put, that ‘fundamentalism’ (if it may be so called), which affirms the existence of both God and a devil, and atheism, which denies the existence of both, are the only viable options with respect to the question of the theistic God. The support for this conclusion comes from the problem of evil, together with considerations drawn from common sense.

An issue much discussed by Indian philosophers and Western philosophers alike is one that concerns the need to assume a continuing self (or subject of experience) in giving an account of the world and our experience of it. This paper concentrates on two arguments put forward by the eighth-century AD Indian philosopher Śankara, in a short passage of his commentary on Bādarāyana's Brahmasūtra. The innovative peculiarity of these arguments is that they rest on an appeal to the content of memory judgements. Śankara takes the line that an analysis of the content of memory judgements shows that a Buddhist attempt to reconstrue memory as mere similarity between successive experiences is fundamentally flawed. Our concern, therefore, is whether Śankara's account of the content of memory judgements is correct, and whether it establishes the required continuity.

I reply to William Hasker's ‘The Trinity as Social and Constitutional’, continuing our debate over the use of the metaphysical concept of constitution to explicate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

In his article ‘Infallibility’ (Religious Studies, March 1980) A. P. Martinich has argued that the logical character of infallible utterances has been generally misunderstood. Opponents and supporters of the doctrine of papal infallibility have both assumed, he claims, that infallible utterances are statements; but this is incorrect, for such utterances are not statements, but declarations. Consideration of this point, he believes, would enable us to see that the doctrine of papal infallibility is both coherent and correct.

Morality's relation to religion stands among the broad cultural issues that pull people towards philosophy and religious studies. We hope for insight, but what we find when we get there is another matter – a debate on ‘is’ and ‘ought’ with all the marks of a dead end. While the intellectual goals and strategies that led in this direction have elicited little scholarly attention to date, the time and the tools for an effective critique may now be at hand.

This article appreciatively reviews Joanna Leidenhag's work Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation while also responding critically to some aspects of Leidenhag's approach and content. The authors acknowledge several strengths of Leidenhag's work, then turn to how a panpsychic framework comports with Christa L. McKirland's recent work in theological anthropology. Finally, Eugene Fuimaono proposes areas of expansion for Leidenhag to consider – specifically as this relates to the value of engaging indigenous perspectives.

One of the issues in the current controversy concerning demythologising is whether or not our concept of God is itself mythological. Before this can be resolved, however, we have to sort out what we mean by ‘myth’ and compare this with other possible ways of describing divine activity. Likewise, if we are to decide whether or not all religious uses of language are ‘symbolical’ we have to clarify our conception of symbols. Such clarification is hampered by the almost indiscriminate mention of parables, models, myths, symbols, analogues and allegories which we find in philosophy today. In this paper, I shall list some distinctions of meaning amongst these terms which seem worth keeping in mind. My concern in doing so is not to provide an exhaustive list but to suggest how the distinctions affect our justification of linguistic usage in religion.

It is difficult to understand Gandhi's philosophy without some kind of idea of what he means by Truth. When I put the question of what he meant by Truth to some of his followers in India the replies I received showed quite clearly that his concept of Truth was linked to the concepts of dharma and rta. What this would seem to point to is that his understanding of Truth is something that is acquired within his own form of life and that his experiments with Truth are ultimately determined by his understanding of the Hindu religious tradition. This is not to say that insights from other religious traditions did not influence his apprehension of Truth: his acknowledgement of those influences is sufficient in itself to substantiate that claim. But it is clear that it would not be possible to understand his concept of Truth without some understanding of the tradition in which he was nurtured and which determined his way of life.

The difficulty of ascribing metaphysical predicates such as absoluteness, necessity and perfection to God while simultaneously ascribing personal predicates such as compassion, freedom and agency has often been noted. Most efforts to resolve this dilemma have tended to fall into one of three categories: (I) a merely verbal solution such as that God is ‘compassionate in terms of our experience but…not so in terms of [God's] own’; (2) the univocal and unqualified ascription of the metaphysical predicates to God coupled with equivocation with respect to the personal predicates which results in the final elimination of the latter; (3) the fideistic denial that intelligible language is applicable to God. Unfortunately, none of these is satisfactory. The first solution is seen to be but a version of the second, and it is arguable that the second is, as Feuerbach contends, tantamount to a ‘subtle, disguised atheism’, since ‘to deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the being himself’ or, alternatively, ‘an existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an insipidity, an absurdity’. The third ‘solution’ is no better and is hardly more than an evasive tactic.