God as Reason, livre ebook

In God as Reason: Essays in Philosophical Theology, Vittorio Hösle presents a systematic exploration of the relation between theology and philosophy. In examining the problems and historical precursors of rational theology, he calls on philosophy, theology, history of science, and the history of ideas to find an interpretation of Christianity that is compatible with a genuine commitment to reason.

The essays in the first part of God as Reason deal with issues of philosophical theology. Hösle sketches the challenges that a rationalist theology must face and discusses some of the central ones, such as the possibility of a teleological interpretation of nature after Darwin, the theodicy issue, freedom versus determinism, the mindbody problem, and the relation in general between religion, theology, and philosophy. In the essays of the second part, Hösle studies the historical development of philosophical approaches to the Bible, the continuity between the New Testament concept of pneuma and the concept of Geist (spirit) in German idealism, and the rationalist theologies of Anselm, Abelard, Llull, and Nicholas of Cusa, whose innovative philosophy of mathematics is the topic of one of the chapters. The book concludes with a thorough evaluation of Charles Taylor’s theory of secularization.

This ambitious work will interest students and scholars of philosophical theology and philosophy of religion as well as historians of ideas and science.

One of the most amiable characteristics of Charles Darwin is doubtless his modesty. In his Autobiography, which was begun in 1876 and continued to receive additions until 1882, he sincerely avers that his work has been “over and over again greatly overpraised” and never claims to be particularly talented in metaphysical matters: “My power to follow along and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; I should, moreover, never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics” (140).

Needless to say, he understood that his revolution in biology had transformed the concept of species and lessened the gap between humans and other animals; for he showed in detail how the principle of natural selection could explain innumerable facts in the organic realm that had been previously regarded as irreducible, including the existence of species and human behavior in all its facets. Still, the enormous impact that On the Origin of Species of 1859 had immediately outside of the scientific community of biologists on the public at large and its quick spillover to religious and philosophical issues seem quite surprising.

Only one sentence at the end of the book hints about the origin of humankind, dealt with in his later works of 1871 and 1872, and there are no explicitly antireligious consequences drawn in this or in any of Darwin’s published books. Only at the end of Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication of 1868 did Darwin ask, fully aware of transgressing the limits of his own discipline, some critical questions regarding the compatibility of the mechanism of natural selection with traditional theism. Darwin’s intellectual self-restraint, which distinguishes him so strongly from some of the contemporary neo-Darwinists as, for example, Richard Dawkins, was not simply a cautionary move, due to concern for his wife or fear of social ostracism: he had thought seriously about religious issues in the years immediately after his return from his voyage around the world and had come to the conclusion that his theory did not entail atheism.

It is thus proper to start the following reflections with an analysis of his quite subtle religious ideas, which are certainly not inferior to those of most contemporary scientists addressing religious issues (I). I then put them into the context of a more general development of the concepts of God and nature and discuss the most important attempt of the nineteenth century to render Darwinism compatible with theism, namely, that by Asa Gray. The focus on Gray is due to the simple reason that progress in philosophy is, if it takes place at all, of a very different nature than in science; therefore, we can learn from philosophical reflections of past centuries far more than we can learn from scientific theories of the same time (II). Finally, I discuss in which sense even after the Darwinian revolution a teleological interpretation of nature remains not only a possibility, but a necessity (III).

(excerpted from Chapter 2)

Preface

Part I. Philosophical Theology

1. The Idea of a Rationalistic Philosophy of Religion and Its Challenges

2. Why Teleological Principles Are Inevitable for Reason: Natural Theology after Darwin

3. Theodicy Strategies in Leibniz, Hegel, Jonas

4. Rationalism, Determinism, Freedom

5. Encephalius: A Conversation about the Mind-Body Problem

6. Religion, Theology, Philosophy

Part II. A Rationalist’s Tradition: Interpretations of Classical Texts

7. Philosophy and the Interpretation of the Bible

8. To What Extent Is the Concept of Spirit (Geist) in German Idealism a Legitimate Heir to the Concept of Spirit (Pneuma) in the New Testament?

9. Reasons, Emotions, and God’s Presence in Anselm of Canterbury’s Dialogue Cur Deus homo (with Bernd Goebel)

10. Interreligious Dialogues during the Middle Ages and Early Modernity

11. Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Nicholas of Cusa’s Philosophy of Mathematics

12. Can Abraham Be Saved? And: Can Kierkegaard Be Saved? A Hegelian Discussion of Fear and Trembling

13. A Metaphysical History of Atheism

Notes

Source Credits

Index