Faith S Knowledge

An anthology of work from the last twelve years of Stein's life as she tried to integrate phenomenology and Christianity.

Can we know truth even though certain proof is unattainable? Can we be known by Truth? Is there a relationship between belief and truth, and if so, what is the nature of that relationship? Do we need to have faith in reason and in real meaning to be able to reason towards truth? These are the sorts of questions this book seeks to address. In Faith's Knowledge, Paul Tyson argues that all knowledge that aims at truth is always the knowledge of faith. If this is the case, then--against our modernist cultural assumptions about knowledge--truth cannot be had by proof. Yet, if this is true, then mere information and simply objective facts do not (for us as knowers) exist. Knowledge is always embedded in belief, and knowledge and belief is always expressed in relationships, histories, narratives, shared meanings, and power. Hence, a theological sociology of knowledge emerges out of these explorations in thinking about knowledge as a function of faith.

This is Volume VII of seven in the Philosophy of Religion and General Philosophy series. It presents an investigation of religious discourse, Christian and non-Christian, originally published in 1958. The aim is to describe the nature of religious doctrines and concepts, including Buddhism and Hinduism.

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

John Hick was one of the twentieth century's most influential and creative philosophers of religion. In this book, Sinkinson charts the development of Hick's thinking over his life and how this shaped his engagement with world religions. Attention is paid to Hick's epistemology and how this was key in his interpretation of both his own religion and the phenomena of religious pluralism. It can be shown that the development of Hick's thought is the legacy of the liberal theology of the Enlightenment. The project, begun by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher, is shown to find clear expression in the developed theology of religions proposed by Hick. The book includes a survey of his important books and a transcript of the last recorded radio dialogue that Hick had with an evangelical theologian.

How are people of faith to be faithful to their various traditions in today's diverse society? How may we live together as neighbors and yet remain true to our differing religious convictions? How is it possible for the contemporary Christian to confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths? These are some of the fundamental questions which this volume seeks to explore. It offers a critical account of two key twentieth-century missionary-theologians who attempted to address the issue of pluralism within a confessional framework: Bishop Kenneth Cragg and Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. This study argues for a reconsideration of the biblical themes of fullness and fulfillment which may offer a way of holding together the traditions of continuity, which Cragg shows can never be total, and of discontinuity, which Newbigin argues can never be absolute. In this way the book addresses some of the implications for the development of an appropriate missiological approach to inter-faith issues in the twenty-first century which requires us to take people of faith seriously but also allows faithfulness to the Christian gospel.

This book traces the historical lineages of Alvin Plantinga's religious epistemology from Plato through Augustine and Calvin. It focuses upon this epistemology as a philosophical interpretation of what is generally taken to be a narrow theological doctrine. The author provides a textually based and closely reasoned introduction to the epistemological ideas of Plato, Augustine, Calvin, Plantinga, and several other writers and shows the continuity of a certain approach to the knowledge of God; it may be called the Platonic—Augustinian—Reformed (or Calvinist) approach.