PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION H52067/H73067

2nd Semester 2003, 39 contact hours, including input (2hrs/week/semester, 3 hrs in first week) and tutorials/seminars (1hr/week/semester, starting in 2nd week).
Time: Wednesday mornings 9 a.m. - 12 noon.

UNIT OUTLINE FOR INPUT (approx. 27 hours)

For purposes of input, material is divided into thirteen 'sessions' of approx. 2 hours each (3 hrs in first week). This input need not necessary be set-piece lectures. The input will cover the following:

Introduction: 'Philosophy', 'Philosophy of God', 'Philosophy of Religion', and the logic of our course. Session 1, first hour.

Part A: Exploration towards the Divine Mystery

Sessions 1 - 10

(I) Ways for going towards the Divine (Sessions 1-4)
(a) the Cosmological Approach
(b) Order and Design and Scientific Theism
(c) Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Love and Duty
(d) the Ontological Argument and its context in worship
(e) the cognitive value of religious experience and mysticism [detailed treatment postponed to Part B].
(f) Bonaventure's Journey of the Soul to God - as a way of organizing the various 'ways'.

(II) On talking about or towards the Divine Mystery (Sessions 5-6) (= third Saturday)
(a) the varied uses of religious language
(b) the affirmative and negative ways and the way of excess,
      and the medieval doctrine of analogy: how to speak well of the Divine..
(c) analytic philosophy and religious language, Ian Ramsey, James Ross:
      : how to speak meaningfully of the Divine.
(d) the hermeneutics of naming God; Deconstruction and Theology.
     (Seminar treatment: Tracy and Gleeson or Charlesworth articles)

(III)Difficulties - including the problem of suffering and evil, and faulty notions of the Divine - the misuse of the name of God. See also "God and Evil in Process-Relational Perspective" (Sessions 7-8) Also a Frames Version of article.

(IV) thinking about the Nature of the Divine, who or what God is like. Traditional or Classical Theism and its contemporary critique. Process philosophy and theology. The later Heidegger (and John Macquarrie). Feminist insights. The idols of death and the God of life. (Sessions 9-10)
See: The Divine Mystery and its Relation to the Cosmos and its FRAMES equivalent.
See also Traditional Theism and its Contemporary Critique and its Frames version.

Part B: Philosophy and religious experience

(Sessions 11- 13) Reading a few mystical texts (in the Christian tradition). Some philosophical analysis of religious experience and especially mysticism.
Bibliography
(a) what is religious experience (also in Frames Version)
(b) how many types of mystical experience (also in Frames Version)
(c) experience and interpretation as regards religious experience (also in a Frames Version)
(c) cognitive or evidential value of religious experience. Religions as traditions of experience and interpretation.(Frames Version!)

You can return now, if you want to, to the BCT PHILOSOPHY HOME PAGE
Or back to Greg Moses Home Page

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION UNIT:

SOME TEXTS:

Dupre, Louis. Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection. Excursions in the phenomenology and philosophy of religion. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1998. Emeritus professor from Yale. World class.

Taliaferro, Charles, “Philosophy of Religion”, Ch. 14 of The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, edited Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James. Blackwell, Oxford, 1996. Gives a good overview of contemporary scholarship in the analytic tradition.

Derrida, Jacques and Gianni Vattimo, editors. Religion. Polity Press, Blackwells, 1998. A recent work in the Continental tradition.

Griffin, David Ray. Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2001.

Forrest, Peter. God without the Supernatural. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1996. Peter Forrest is a prominent Australian philosopher, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England, Armidale.

Madges, William. God and the World. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y. 1999. A collection of texts with commentary, in the Christian tradition from the Greeks to the present day. Excellent source book.

Sanders, John. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1998.

Stiver, Danr. The Philosophy of Religious Experience. Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.

Davies, Brian. An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion. O.U.P., New Edition 1993. A Dominican, working in the tradition of analytical philosophy.

Vergote, A. Religion, Belief and Unbelief. Leuven University Press, 1996. World class psychology of religion, in the psychoanalytic tradition.

Charlesworth, Max. Religious Inventions.C.U.P., 1997. The work of another important Australian philosopher.

McFague, Sallie. Super, natural Christians. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1997.

Johnson, Elizabeth. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. Crossroad, N.Y., 1993.

Hick, John. An Interpretation of Religion. Human Responses to the Transcendent. Macmillan, London, 1989. A really key player, since he started writing.

Macquarrie, John. In Search of Deity. Crossroad, N.Y., 1985. Classical theism, its alternatives, and Macquarrie's 'dialectical theism'.

Kung, Hans. Does God Exist? Random House, New York, 1981.

Hartshorne, Charles, and Reese, William L. Philosophers Speak of God. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953. Selections throughout the ages, with introductions and running commentary by Hartshorne and Reese. Process oriented, and/but has the advantage of selecting from a broad variety of traditions. Excellent source book.

Tracy, David, and John B. Cobb, Jr., Talking About God. Doing Theology in the Context of Modern Pluralism. The Seabury Press, N.Y., 1983.

Jan Van der Veken, editor. God and Change: Process Thought and the Christian Doctrine of God. Centre for Metaphysics and Philosophy of God, K.U., Leuven, 1987.

Griffin, David Ray. God, Power and Evil: A Process Theodicy. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1976. See also his update, Evil Revisited, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1991.

Mesle, C. Robert. Process Theology: A Basic Introduction. Chalice Press, St Louis, Missouri, 1993.

Tanner, Kathryn. God and Creation in Christian Theology. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1988.

Hart, Kevin. The Trespass of the Sign. Deconstruction, theology and philosophy. C.U.P., 1989. Derrida as a generalized form of Negative Theology.

A bibliography on Religious Experience will be included separately, with lecture notes on same.