Notes

Preface

1. For this insight, as for so many others, I am in debt to Kevin Schilbrack.

Chapter 1

1. A version of this chapter was first read at a spring 2010 Humanities Center colloquium at Drake University, then at the fall 2010 annual conference of the American Academy of , and finally at the spring 2011 conference on the future of continental of religion at Syracuse University. I thank those whose critical comments have aided its development: Jennifer McCrickerd, Craig Owens, and Joseph Schneider (in the case of the first read- ing); Jerome Gellman, Michael Rea, and Kevin Schilbrack (in the case of the second reading); and Ron Mercer, Dan Miller, and Nick Trakakis (in the case of the third reading). 2. Trakakis, The End of , 1. Curiously, Trakakis takes analytic philosophy of religion in particular, if not analytic philosophy in general, to be moribund (1, 113)— an assessment that is plainly at odds with the continued resurgence of analytic philosophy of religion. 3. Ibid., 2, 6; see also 11, 24. 4. Ibid., 6, 29, 25. As these quotations illustrate, Trakakis’s objection to theod- icy is moral (11): fails to take suffering seriously (11) and therefore exhibits deep moral incoherence, inexcusable moral insensitivity, and equally culpable moral blindness (18). For Trakakis, “detached reflection” is not in itself something to be lamented. But “when our gaze turns to the evil and hor- rible suffering we inflict upon each other on a daily basis, dispassionate and abstract theorizing (at least of the kind recommended by theodicists) seems wholly inappropriate” (24). And since every theoretical discourse has a social and political praxis, Trakakis we must ask whether the praxis medi- ated by the theodicists serves to transform life and reality or to legitimize and mystify the status quo (25– 26). The answer to this question, for Trakakis, is as follows: “[T]heodicies mediate a praxis that sanctions evil” (28– 29). 5. It isn’t that Trakakis is unaware of this diversity (47, 49–50); it’s just that he continually reduces it. 6. This is one of two fronts in Trakakis’s critique of the “scientific ideal of objec- tivity” in analytic philosophy of religion, the second of which concerns the 140 Notes

realist nature of “-talk” in analytic philosophy of religion. Here, too, actual diversity is unnoted. 7. Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 59, 76. 8. Ibid., 59. 9. Caputo, in Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 59. Of course, Trakakis here cites Caputo approvingly. 10. Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 60, 75; see also 76. 11. These sections mostly pit Wittgensteinian philosophers of religion (such as D. Z. Phillips) against non- Wittgensteinian analytic philosophers of religion (such as ). But Wittgensteinian philosophers of religion are often located within the analytic fold. Moreover, the general claims that Traka- kis makes against analytic philosophy of religion are never directly attributed (by quotation) to any particular analytic philosopher of religion. Here are two such claims. First this, “Unlike analytic philosophers, who fear that such views are a threat to truth and rationality, for Caputo and other like-minded conti- nental philosophers the acceptance of perspectivism makes possible a new way of seeing and understanding, one in fact that opens the door to religion after it had been slammed shut by the modernist Enlightenment critique” (The End of Philosophy of Religion, 59). Then this, “The opposing view— accepted, inci- dentally, by the majority of contemporary analytical philosophers of religion— holds that religious beliefs purport to express ‘facts’ that are objective in much the same way that the facts accumulated by scientists are thought to be objec- tive” (75). 12. Rea, “Introduction,” 9. 13. Ibid., 12. 14. This is Trakakis’s reason for devoting an entire chapter to the differences in style between analytic philosophy of religion (Plantinga) and continental philosophy of religion (Caputo). In the context of this chapter (ch. 3), Trakakis accuses analytic philosophy of religion of of both commission and omission: on the one hand, the scientific-technical style and mood of detached-disinterested investigation in pursuit of objectivity (End of Philosophy of Religion, 43); on the other hand, a failure to be literary- artistic, avant- garde, and culture- critical (51). And in the subsequent chapter (ch. 4), Trakakis roots these sins in analytic philosophy of religion’s positive assessment of the role and value of scientific forms of discourse and reasoning (70). 15. Not that I object either to spiritual formation or to a certain philosophy of religion that serves the interests of some concrete religion; it’s just that a philosophy of religion that is a historically grounded and religiously diverse area of scholarly inquiry— a philosophy of religion that is informed by and invested in the academic study of religion—isn’t the former and doesn’t do the latter. 16. Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 115, 2. 17. Ibid., 47–48. 18. Ibid., 11. Notes 141

19. Such considerations are not absent from Trakakis’s coauthored essay with Mon- ima Chadha, “Karma and the .” See also Purushottama Bilimo- ria’s “Duhkha & Karma.” 20. Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 11. 21. Ibid. 22. Once again, this isn’t to say that there aren’t a good many contexts in which it is inappropriate, morally wrong even, to engage in the understanding, com- parison, and evaluation of reason-giving about “evil.” But, again, philosophy of religion isn’t one such context. If philosophy of religion is to investigate, among other things, the existence and nature of ultimate beings or principles or forces, then philosophy of religion must ask about the ramifications of “evil” for such beings or principles or forces. And although it’s quite possible that we might find all these reasons wanting, we’d want to refrain from rushing into such judg- ments before a thorough investigation. Moreover, we wouldn’t want to beg the question by assuming that exists and is of a certain mysterious nature— for this itself would also be under investigation. 23. “Shared standards” refers to the standards of accuracy, consistency, scope, sim- plicity, and fruitfulness that Thomas Kuhn believed were shared among the scientific community and therefore constituted characteristics of a successful scientific theory. See Chapter 6 for more on this. 24. Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 115–16. Trakakis seems to be refer- ring here to the Australian David Tacey, not the American David Tracy. 25. Ibid., 116–117. Trakakis attributes “reasoned trust” to Hans Kung; “mystical ” to David Tacey. 26. Ibid., 84. 27. Ibid., 88. 28. Ibid., 89. The quote in this extract is from Kazantzakis’s Poor Man of God. 29. Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 1, 113, 2. This is surprising given that Trakakis does quote approvingly Bruce Wilshire’s proposal that philoso- phers of religion join departments where “they may be less tempted to ignore the history and practices of the world’s great religious tradi- tions” (Wilshire, in Trakakis, The End of Philosophy of Religion, 122). 30. Ibid., 115. 31. This is to say that whatever else it means to do philosophy of religion in a manner that is informed by and contributes to the academic study of religion, it at least means to do philosophy of religion in a manner that is historically grounded and religiously diverse. As I indicate in my preface, I will therefore use these phrases interchangeably. 32. There is, to be sure, a diversity of kinds of , some of which just might be religiously impartial and diverse (and therefore look more like certain kinds of philosophy of religion). The border between philosophy of religion and phil- osophical theology is therefore porous. Still, I take to be the investigation of the ideational structure of some religious tradition, usually , as undertaken from the vantage point of an adherent of that reli- gion and for the ends of that religion. (Or course such theology might also be 142 Notes

comparative, but even when so it is undertaken from confessional standpoints and for confessional ends.) Such theology is what my historically grounded and religiously diverse philosophy of religion studies, not what it does. For a little more on this, particularly with respect to how philosophy of religion might rec- ognize “existential entanglements” while at the same time maintaining a “loy- alty criterion,” see my explication of Wesley Wildman’s as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry in Chapter 6. 33. Peterson and VanArragon say their textbook is “designed to feature some of the most important current controversies in the philosophy of religion,” and thus that its debates are between “recognized experts” on “key questions” (“Preface,” xi). 34. Nagasawa and Wielenberg say their volume “aims to gather together papers written by some of the best philosophers of religion of the new generation,” providing “an opportunity for young and up-and- coming philosophers of religion to review these developments [of earlier philosophers of religion] and introduce their own cutting- edge research” (“Introduction,” vii). 35. Kvanvig says his edited volume “continues the initial intention behind the series of attracting the best work from the premier philosophers of religion, as well as including the work of top philosophers outside this area when their work and interests intersects with issues in philosophy of religion”; he therefore believes that his edited volume contains “contributions by an impressive group of phi- losophers on topics of central importance to philosophy of religion” (“Editor’s Introduction,” vii). 36. Goodchild indicates that the work presented in his collection is by “the con- temporary inheritors of this tradition [of Enlightenment philosophy of reli- gion]”; he then goes on to summarize the contents of the collection as five different approaches to the field of continental philosophy of religion (“Con- tinental Philosophy of Religion,” 28, 29– 38). Note also that these papers were written in response to a call (for a July 2000 conference at St. Martin’s College) that asked, “What is a Continental philosophy of religion?” 37. Baker and Maxwell call their collection both “an exploration and a showcase”: the former, as “an endeavor to delineate some of the content and dimensions of contemporary scholarship in the area of philosophy of religion as it is addressed in relation to the European or ‘Continental’ philosophical tradition”; the latter, as “authored by philosophers whose names may not immediately leap to mind to a broad philosophical audience when they think of philosophy of religion [‘with some exceptions’], but who nonetheless are producing scholarship of the highest quality and thereby filling out the meaning of the term ‘Continental Philosophy of Religion’” (“Introduction,” 1). Maxwell and Baker also “believe that this book represents an important, and to some extent overdue, exploration” (6). 38. About this volume of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Long indicates, “The essays in this volume were invited with the hope that they might make more widely available and contribute to some of the discussions that are shaping recent continental philosophy of religion” (“Self and Other,” 1). These essays were later reprinted in the essay collection Self and Other. Notes 143

39. A few brief words about my selection of sources are in order. I looked, first, for essay collections (so as to encounter as many different voices and viewpoints as possible); second, for works that concerned the nature and practice of ana- lytic or continental philosophy of religion as such; third, for essay collections that were published relatively recently. (At the time of my research, the second volume of OSPR was the most recent volume available.) I should also say that although I do not quote from any other sources here, my estimations of analytic and continental philosophy of religion are also informed both by conferences I have attended on the futures of these subdisciplines (in 2011) and by additional essay collections, journal articles, seminal monographs, and comprehensive his- tories I have read from and about these subdisciplines. See Chapters 2 and 3 for more about these sources. 40. My understanding of inquiry is influenced by Wesley Wildman’s Religious Phi- losophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry; my understanding of religious reason-giving, by John Clayton’s , Reasons and ; and my response to the vexed issue of whether there are religions outside the modern West, by Kevin Schilbrack’s “Religions: Are There Any?” For more on the former, see Chapter 6; for more on the latter two, see Chapter 4. 41. Examples of neglect of the historical religions in general and religions other than Christianity in particular abound. For the analytic collections, this includes the following: in the case of the attributes and actions of God, the debates between William Hasker and Paul Helm (CDPR) and between Michael Murray and David Basinger (CDPR), as well as the essays of Daniel Hill (NWPR), Klaas Kraay (NWPR), Brian Leftow (OSPR), and Ted Warfield (OSPR); in the case of arguments for/against the , the debates between John Wor- rall and Del Ratzsch (CDPR) and between Bruce Reichenbach and Richard Gale (CDPR) and between and Evan Fales (CDPR), as well as the essays by T. J. Mawson (NWPR), (NWPR), Neil Manson (NWPR), Bradley Monton (OSPR), and Jordan Sobel (OSPR); in the case of theo- dicy, the debate between William Rowe and Daniel Howard-Snyder / Michael Bergmann (CDPR), as well as the essays by Michael Almeida (OSPR), Daniel Howard- Snyder (OSPR), and Hugh McCann (OSPR); and in the case of the beliefs and actions of theists, the debate between Dean Zimmerman and Lynne Baker (CDPR), as well as the essays of David Efrid (NWPR), Christian Miller (NWPR), Daniel Howard-Synder (NWPR), Christopher Eberle (NWPR), Thaddeus Metz (NWPR), and Christian Miller (OSPR). And when there is consideration of the historical religions, it is usually cursory and Christian: in the debate between J. L. Schellenberg and Paul Moser about divine hiddenness (CDPR), Moser considers evidence for divine hiddenness in the Bible; in the debate between Bruce Reichenbach and Richard Gale about the cosmological proof (CDPR), Reichenbach wonders whether a gap remains between the God it proves and the God of the theistic religions; the debate between Stephen Davis and Michael Martin (CDPR) about whether it is rational for Christians to believe in the resurrection considers relevant New Testament passages; the debate between Keith Yandell and Peter Byrne (CDPR) recognizes the diversity 144 Notes

of the world’s religions (and, in Byrne’s case, also the diversity within each religion); the debate between William Hasker and Paul Helm (CDPR) about whether God takes risks considers some tensions between the God of the Bible and the philosophical god of ; the debate between Janine Idziak and Craig Boyd / Raymond J. VanArragon on divine command (CDPR) focuses on biblical evidence of divine commands; in the debate between Jerry Walls and Thomas Talbott (CDPR), Talbott counters the God of theism with the God of the New Testament; the essay of Tim Bayne and Greg Restall (NWPR) looks to recent biblical commentary to support their participatory model of the atonement; the essay of Hud Hudson offers a new metaphysical understanding of the biblical-Christian myth of a “fall”; the essay of Tomis Kapitan (OSPR) develops a definition of religion that ranges over several dif- ferent types of historical religions; the essay of Graham Oppy (OSPR) con- siders some varieties of theism, nontheism, and ; and the essay of J. L. Schellenberg (OSPR) muses over future nontheistic configurations of rational religion. In my estimation it is only the essays of Oppy (OSPR) and Kapitan (OSPR) that engage historical religions beyond Christianity. This makes for 2 essays out of 47. Matters are perhaps worse in the continental collections. The majority of the essays considered only recent Continental philosophers. From RPR this includes Philip Goodchild (both essays), Matthew Halteman, Donna Jowett, Bettina Bergo, Gary Banham, Grace Jantzen, Graham Ward, Gregory Sadler, Clayton Crockett, and Wayne Hudson; from ECCPR, Jeffrey Robbins, Will Large, Jones Irwin, Eric Boynton, Jim Kanaris, Michael Purcell, Clayton Crockett, and Pamela Sue Anderson; and from IJPR, Michael Purcell, Rich- ard Cohen, Pamela Sue Anderson, Anselm Min, Merold Westphal, and Maeve Cooke. A couple of these essays devoted significant attention to recent analytic philosophers: Pamela Sue Anderson (RPR), and Hent de Vries (IJPR). And a few others were less expository and more constructive in nature: Mark Nelson (ECCPR), Deane- Peter Baker (ECCPR), Eugene Thomas Long (IJPR), and Cal- vin Schrag (IJPR). But only 9 (of 41) spent significant time with the historical “religions”: John Caputo (RPR: Christian gospels and Peter Damian), Jonathan Ellsworth (RPR: pagan and Abrahamic apophasis), Edith Wyschogrod (RPR: ; IJPR: medieval halakah), Karmen MacKendrick (ECCPR: Gos- pel of John), Catherine Pickstrock (ECCPR: Plato), Patrick Lenta (ECCPR: South African jurisprudence), William Franke (IJPR: Damascius), and Fred Dallmayr (IJPR: theodicy in several different religions). And none (of 41) spent much time with religions other than Christianity and . 42. Hudson, “Schelling, Bloch, and the Continental Philosophy of Religion,” 293. Goodchild’s introductory essay to RPR briefly mentions the invocation of “reli- gious strategies” for the purpose of “critical thought” (28; for more on this essay, see the fifth desideratum following as well as Section 5 of Chapter 3). And Long’s essay “Suffering and Transcendence” (IJPR) wonders whether “evil and suffering raise ontological questions within the context of particular historical religious traditions that seem to call for philosophers to deal with the doctrines Notes 145

and narratives of those traditions” (143). But there isn’t much more mention in these continental collections of a need to investigate the historical religions. 43. Schellenberg, “The Evolutionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason,” 260. 44. Kapitan, “Evaluating Religion.” See Chapter 2 for an explication of this essay. 45. Oppy, “Gods.” See notes 85 and 86 of Chapter 2 for a little bit more on this essay. 46. Nagasawa and Wielenberg, “Introduction,” x. 47. Peterson and VanArragon, “Preface,” xi. 48. The debate “Does Science Discredit Religion?” is between John Worrall and Del Ratzsch; the debate “Is God’s Existence the Best Explanation of the Uni- verse?” is between Bruce Reichenbach and Richard Gale. NWPR also contains a couple of essays that give short shrift to nontheistic religious positions in pitting the theistic and naturalistic against one another: T. J. Mawson’s “Why Is There Anything at All?” and Christopher Eberle’s “Basic Human Worth: Religious and Secular Perspectives.” 49. The debate “Is It Rational for Christians to Believe in the Resurrection?” is between Stephen Davis and Michael Martin; the debate “Should a Christian Be a Mind- Body Dualist?” is between Dean Zimmerman and Lynne Rudder Baker. Note that CDPR also contains the debate “Is Eternal Damnation Com- patible with the Christian Concept of God” between Jerry Walls and Thomas Talbott. And its debate “Is Morality Based on God’s Commands?” (between Janine Marie Idziak and Craig Boyd / Raymond J. VanArragon) is limited to the commands of the (Christian) Bible, while its debates “Does God Take Risks in Governing the World?” (between William Hasker and Paul Helm) and “Does God Respond to Petitionary ?” (between Michael Murray and David Bas- inger) draw on biblical evidence in support of their arguments. This means that half of the debates in CDPR (6 out of 12) are distinctly Christian debates. 50. See note 41. 51. Halteman, “Toward a ‘Continental’ Philosophy of Religion,” 59. See Chapter 3 for more on Halteman’s essay. 52. Halteman, “Toward a ‘Continental’ Philosophy of Religion,” 62– 63, 64– 70 53. As note 41 suggests, only Oppy’s and Kapitan’s contributions to OSPR devote significant attention to religions other than Christianity or Judaism. This makes for 2 contributions out of 88, far fewer than the 11 contributions by women. It is true that these collections appear to be just as homogenous with respect to race. But given that they are collections in the philosophy of religion, their lack of diversity with respect to religious-philosophical commitments is more con- spicuous. It is also true both in general that content is not necessarily indicative of commitment and in particular that the commitments of these contributors are not always discernible. But when they are, they are frequently of a Christian persuasion. (For evidence and exceptions, see note 54.) Add to this the rela- tive lack of explicit awareness of the religious- ideological homogeneity of the inquiring community, the relative lack of noticeable effort in the diversification of the religious- ideological commitments of the inquiring community, and the 146 Notes

relative lack of critical attention to the cross-cultural applicability of concepts such as religion and theism, and we have a fairly strong case for the relative nar- rowness of creed among these inquiring communities. 54. I do not mean to suggest that the mere articulation of Christian- theistic com- mitments is problematic. It is only so (in the context of the philosophy of religion) when unbalanced and unchecked by other religious-philosophical commitments. In the case of the three analytic collections, only 7 of 47 contributions are not preoccupied with theism (or matters of Christian ): Alston (CDPR), Fales (CDPR), Yandell (CDPR), Byrne (CDPR), Kapitan (OSPR), Oppy (OSPR), and Schellenberg (OSPR). Contrast this to the 8 contributions that are explicitly focused on topics pertaining only to Christianity: Davis (CDPR), Martin (CDPR), Walls (CDPR), Talbot (CDPR), Zimmerman (CDPR), Baker (CDPR), Bayne and Restall (NWPR), and Hudson (OSPR). And add to these 8 contributions another 11 that appear to voice Christian persuasions: Moser (CDPR), Hasker (CDPR), Helm (CDPR), Murray (CDPR), Idziak (CDPR), Boyd and VanArragon (CDPR), Howard-Snyder (NWPR), Leftow (OSPR), McCann (OSPR), Miller (OSPR), Monton (OSPR). Consider also that many of the contributions that claim to speak for God or religion in general in fact speak only for a certain theistic God or religion, if not a certain Christian God or reli- gion: for example, Moser (CDPR), Ratzsch (CDPR), Hasker (CDPR), Murray (CDPR), Basinger (CDPR), Idziak (CDPR), Boyd and VanArragon (CDPR), Howard- Snyder (NWPR), Bayne and Restall (NWPR), Hudson (OSPR), Leftow (OSPR), McCann (OSPR), Miller (OSPR), and Monton (OSPR). And note that OSPR, despite its claim of “providing a non- sectarian and non- partisan snapshot of the subdiscipline of philosophy of religion” (Kvanvig, “Editor’s Introduction,” vii), contains Hudson’s essay on a new metaphysical understanding of the doctrine of the “Fall” (which is understood in distinctly Christian terms). Observe also that NWPR contains Bayne and Restall’s essay on the atonement, in which the authors express incredulity that atonement has not been at the heart of twentieth-century philosophy of religion and, when it has, has not been treated through the lens of scripture and tradition (150). And finally see following and Chapter 2 for Moser’s CDPR claims about the neces- sity of a filial relationship with God the Father for the practice of philosophy of religion. Since fewer essays in the continental collections concern the historical reli- gions, fewer essays in the continental collections give voice to historical reli- gious persuasions or ends. By my count only these nine do: Caputo (RPR), Ward (RPR), Sadler (RPR), Boynton (ECCPR), MacKendrick (ECCPR), Nel- son (ECCPR), Baker (ECCPR), Min (IJPR), and Long (IJPR). And the last of these notwithstanding, they all voice a more traditional Christian persuasion or end. 55. The continental collections do contain a few bright spots in this regard: Ander- son (RPR), Kanaris (ECCPR), Baker (ECCPR), Anderson (ECCPR), and de Notes 147

Vries (IJPR) all attempt to bridge the analytic and continental in some way. None of the analytic collections contain such efforts. 56. The Caputo and Moser examples following are the most stark. Beyond these, see note 54 and Section 2 of Chapters 2 and 3. 57. Caputo, “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God,” 53. See Chapter 3 for more on Caputo’s essay. 58. A notable exception can be found among another of Philip Goodchild’s edited collections: Difference in Philosophy of Religion. But this collection is not identi- fied as a work in continental philosophy of religion. 59. Anderson, “Feminism in Philosophy of Religion,” 199. See Chapter 3 for more on Anderson’s essay. 60. There are nine contributions by women in these three collections, four of which advance feminist perspectives, three of which are written by Anderson: Anderson’s “Ineffable Knowledge and Gender” (RPR), Jantzen’s “Birth and the Powers of Horror” (RPR), Anderson’s “Feminism in Philosophy of Religion” (ECCPR), and Anderson’s “Life, Death and (Inter) Subjectivity” (IJPR). The other five contributions are Jowett’s “Ethical Experience” (RPR), Bergo’s “Anx- ious Responsibility and Responsible Anxiety” (RPR), Wyschogrod’s “From Neo- Platonism to in Silico” (RPR), Pickstock’s “The in Plato” (ECCPR), and Wyschogrod’s “Repentance and Forgiveness” (IJPR). These collections also contain one contribution that advances a postcolonial perspective (on South African law): Lenta’s “The Changing Face of the Law” (ECCPR). 61. Of the 47 contributions to these collections, only 2 were written by women: Idziak, “Divine Commands are the Foundation of Morality” (CDPR); and Baker, “Christians Should Reject Mind- Body Dualism” (CDPR). The closest these contributions come to advancing a feminist perspective is the contribu- tion by J. L. Schellenberg in CDPR that will be previewed later in this para- graph and exposited in Chapter 2. 62. Of the 47 contributions, 32 of which concern theism (see note 54), 26 defend the rationality of theism in some respect: Howard-Synder and Berg- mann (CDPR), Moser (CDPR), Ratzsch (CDPR), Reichenbach (CDPR), Gale (CDPR), Hasker (CDPR), Helm (CDPR), Murray (CDPR), Basinger (CDPR), Idziak (CDPR), Boyd and VanArragon (CDPR), Mawson (NWPR), Pruss (NWPR), Manson (NWPR), Efrid (NWPR), Miller (NWPR), Howard- Synder (NWPR), Bayne and Restall (NWPR), Eberle (NWPR), Metz (NWPR), Howard- Synder (OSPR), Leftow (OSPR), McCann (OSPR), Miller (OSPR), Monton (OSPR), and Warfield (OSPR). This leaves 6 that appear to attack the rationality of theism in some respect: Rowe (CDPR), Schellenberg (CDPR), Worrall (CDPR), Kraay (OSPR), Almeida (OSPR), and Sobel (OSPR). 63. As mentioned under my first desideratum, Schellenberg’s essay “The Evolu- tionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason” also contains an implicit call for the diversification of the inquiring community. 64. Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness Justifies ,” 41. See Chapter 2 for more on Schellenberg’s essay. 148 Notes

65. Moser, “Divine Hiddenness Does Not Justify Atheism,” 45. See Chapter 2 for more on Moser’s essay. 66. See again notes 54 and 62. 67. Thick description is obviously a reference to Clifford Geertz. See Chapter 4 for more on this in particular and religious reason- giving in general. 68. A few quick clarifications about how I understand hermeneutical description: first, it is not free of theoretical bias; second, it is not exclusive of critical expla- nation; third, it does not aim to recover singular meaning. See Chapter 4 for more on this. 69. For continental philosophy of religion’s neglect of the historical religions, see note 41. 70. See Chapter 3 for more on Franke’s essay. 71. Ellsworth, “Apophasis and Askêsis,” 214–15. See Chapter 3 for more on Ells- worth’s essay. 72. See note 41 for analytic philosophy of religion’s neglect of the historical reli- gions. See also notes 54 and 62. 73. Here, I am obviously influenced by Peter Berger, whose term anomie I prefer to evil insofar as it encompasses many more types of “world”-threatening disorder (The Sacred Canopy). Clearly, though, this is one instance of a category that cries out for critical scrutiny. See Chapter 5 for more on this. 74. Rowe, “Evil Is Evidence against Theistic Belief,” 4. Note that Rowe distin- guishes restricted theism from the “expanded theism” of Judaism, Christianity, and . See Chapter 2 for more on Rowe’s essay. 75. Smith, “In Comparison a Magic Dwells.” See Chapter 5 for more on Smith’s critique of comparison. 76. See Neville and Wildman’s essays “On Comparing Religious Ideas” in both The Human Condition and Ultimate Realities. See Chapter 5 for more on the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. 77. Paden, “Universals Revisited.” See Chapters 4 and 5 for my use of Paden’s categories. 78. Of course, there are no such interreligious comparisons in these collections since there is no substantive consideration of non- Christian religions in these collections. Where there are comparisons, they are usually of continental philosophers. Occasionally, a continental philosopher is compared to some Christian or Jewish religious phenomenon (e.g., Caputo [RPR], Wyschogrod [RPR]—see note 41). But only once is a comparison proffered over diverse cultural- historical religious phenomena: Dallmayr (RPR)— this, though, is more of an itemized list than a formal comparison (see Chapter 3). 79. Min, “Naming the Unnameable God,” 114. See Chapter 3 for more on Min’s essay. 80. See Chapter 3 for an explication of Dallmayr’s categories. 81. Dallmayr, “An End to Evil,” 184. 82. See notes 49, 54, and 62 as well as Sections 2 and 4 of Chapter 2. 83. The other two possible exceptions are Kapitan’s and Oppy’s essays in OSPR. I say possible exceptions because it is really only the Kapitan essay that engages Notes 149

in formal comparison. See Chapter 5 for more on what I mean by formal comparison. 84. Byrne, “It Is Not Reasonable to Believe that Only One Religion Is True”; Yan- dell, “How To Sink in Cognitive Quicksand.” 85. Byrne, “Reply to Yandell,” 216. 86. It is not for nothing that Bryne says the following of Yandell’s dismissal of Advaita Vedānta: “One person’s metaphysical profundities are notoriously another person’s examples of pretentious nonsense” (Byrne, “It Is Not Reason- able to Believe that Only One Religion Is True,” 209). 87. See Chapter 6 for some objections to evaluation from the perspective of the academic study of religion. 88. Of course, evaluation is present throughout inquiry— but I’m speaking here about formal acts of evaluation of interreligious content. 89. See Chapter 6 for arguments in support of the claims of this paragraph. 90. See notes 41, 48, 49, 54, and 62. 91. Alston, “ Justifies Religious Belief,” 135–37. See Chapter 2 for more on this essay. 92. Fales, “Do Mystics See God?” 146. See Chapter 2 for more on this essay. 93. Goodchild, “Continental Philosophy of Religion,” 28–29, 38. See Chapter 3 for more on this essay. 94. Goodchild, “Politics and Experience,” 322. See Chapter 3 for more on this essay. 95. Jantzen, “Birth and the Powers of Horror,” 141– 45. See Chapter 3 for more on this essay. 96. As the former, they could contribute invaluable, dense investigations of these respective subsets of religious reason-giving to a more global philosophy of reli- gion. But two caveats would here be in order. First, analytic philosophy of reli- gion would need to devote critical attention to the cross- cultural applicability of the category of theism and descriptive attention to the actual patterns and diversities of acts of theistic reason- giving. Second, both analytic and conti- nental philosophy of religion would need to check their apparent assumptions that their respective subsets of religious reason-giving constituted the totality or of religious reason-giving. See note 32 for my understanding of philo- sophical theology.

Chapter 2

1. See notes 33– 35 of Chapter 1. 2. This includes volumes 1 and 3 of the Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion series. 3. I list here only those that are not primarily anthologies: Brain Davies’s An Intro- duction to the Philosophy of Religion (3rd ed.), Michael Murray and Michael Rea’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, William Rowe’s Philosophy of Religion, Charles Taliaferro’s Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, William Wainwright’s Philosophy of Religion (2nd ed.), Keith Yandell’s Philosophy of 150 Notes

Religion, and Linda Zagzebski’s Philosophy of Religion. Note that two textbooks constitute refreshing, religiously diverse counterpoints to the typical focus on theism in philosophy of religion textbooks: Gary Kessler’s Philosophy of Reli- gion, and Gwen Griffith- Dickson’s The Philosophy of Religion. 4. This includes primarily the monographs of William Alston, , and Richard Swinburne. 5. This includes the last ten years of entries to Faith and Philosophy, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, and Religious Studies. 6. Eugene Thomas Long, Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion, 1900– 2000; James Harris, Analytic Philosophy of Religion; Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion. 7. “Twenty- First- Century Philosophy of Religion,” Krakow, June 27– 29. 8. As explained in Chapter 1 (note 31) and suggested in my preface, I take his- torical grounding and religious diversity as the minimum requirements of a philosophy of religion that is informed by and invested in the academic study of religion. 9. After having written this chapter, I was pleased to learn that some of my cri- tiques of analytic philosophy of religion were anticipated by ’s 1997 article “Does the Philosophy of Religion Rest on Two Mistakes?” See also Purushottama Billimoria’s searching postcolonial criticism of Smart’s pro- posed reforms in “What Is the ‘Subaltern’ of the Comparative Philosophy of Religion?” And note that although I do agree with Smart’s claim that analytic philosophy of religion is little “concerned with religions” (1), I do not endorse Smart’s focus on worldviews. See Chapters 4– 6 for more on this. 10. For examples of neglect of the historical religions, see note 41 of Chapter 1. 11. Again see note 41 of Chapter 1. But also see notes 54 and 62 of Chapter 1. And see note 32 of Chapter 1 for my understanding of philosophical theology (which recognizes that the distinction between philosophical theology and phi- losophy of religion is not discrete). 12. Nagasawa and Wielenberg, “Introduction,” vii. Chapter 1 consists of Daniel J. Hill’s essay “A New Definition of ‘Omnipotence’ in Terms of Sets.” 13. Nagasawa and Wielenberg, “Introduction,” vii. Chapter 2 consists of Klaas Kraay’s essay “Can God Choose a World at Random”; Chapter 3, of T. J. Maw- son’s essay “Why Is There Anything at All?”; Chapter 4, of Alexander Pruss’s essay “Programs, Bugs, DNA and a Design Argument”; Chapter 5, of Neil Manson’s essay “The ‘Why Design?’ Question.” 14. Nagasawa and Wielenberg, “Introduction,” ix. Chapter 6 consists of David Efrid’s essay “ and the Semantics of Quantified Modal Logic”; Chapter 7, of Christian Miller’s essay “Divine Desire Theory and Obligation”; Chapter 8, of Daniel Howard- Snyder’s essay “The Puzzle of of Thanksgiving and Praise”; Chapter 9, of Tim Bayne and Greg Restall’s essay “A Participatory Model of the Atonement”; Chapter 10, of Christopher Eberle’s essay “Basic Human Worth: Religious and Secular Per- spectives”; Chapter 11, of Thaddeus Metz’s essay “Imperfection as Sufficient for a Meaningful Life: How Much Is Enough.” Notes 151

15. Nagasawa and Wielenberg, “Introduction,” x. 16. Peterson and VanArragon, “Preface,” xi. 17. Chapter 1 consists of the debate “Is Evil Evidence against Belief in God?” between William Rowe and Daniel Howard- Snyder / Michael Bergmann; Chapter 2, of the debate “Does Divine Hiddenness Justify Atheism?” between J. L. Schellenberg and Paul Moser; Chapter 3, of the debate “Does Science Discredit Religion?” between John Worrall and Del Ratzsch. 18. Chapter 4 consists of the debate “Is God’s Explanation the Best Explanation of the Universe?” between Bruce Reichenbach and Richard Gale; Chapter 5, of the debate “Does Religious Experience Justify Religious Belief?” between William Alston and Evan Fales; Chapter 6, of the debate “Is It Rational for Christians to Believe in the Resurrection?” between Steven Davis and Michael Martin. 19. Chapter 7 consists of the debate “Can Only One Religion Be True?” between Keith Yandell and Peter Byrne; Chapter 8, of the debate “Does God Take Risks in Governing the World?” between William Hasker and Paul Helm; Chapter 9, of the debate “Does God Respond to Petitionary Prayer?” between Michael Murray and David Basinger; Chapter 10, of the debate “Is Eternal Damnation Compatible with the Christian Concept of God?” between Jerry Walls and Thomas Talbott; Chapter 11, of the debate “Is Morality Based on God’s Com- mands?” between Janine Marie Idziak and Craig Boyd / Raymond J. VanArra- gon; Chapter 12, of the debate “Should a Christian Be a Mind- Body Dualist?” between Dean Zimmerman and Lynne Rudder Baker. 20. Peterson and VanArragon, “Preface,” xi. 21. Ibid. 22. See note 48 of Chapter 1. And also consider that one of the authors in the debate about whether science discredits “religion” defines the core of religious belief as follows: 1. A person— God— created the cosmos. 2. God cares about humans. 3. God ultimately controls cosmic and human history. 4. God can intervene in earthly events. 5. There is objective meaning/significance to human life both now and after death. (Ratzsch, “The Demise of Religion,” 73) Although it is not surprising that a debate on whether science discredits reli- gion keys on those religious systems that make factual claims about natural phenomena, it is regrettable that this debate gets misnamed as one between science and religion in general and inexcusable that the core of religious belief gets portrayed in such a narrow way. 23. In fact, half of the debates in CDPR are limited to Christianity. See note 49 of Chapter 1. 24. Kvanvig, “Editor’s Introduction,” vii. 152 Notes

25. Hud Hudson’s “Fission, Freedom, and the Fall” offers a new metaphysical understanding of the distinctly Christian notions of original and original guilt. 26. This includes Michael Almeida’s “On Evil’s Vague Necessity” (ch. 1), Dan- iel Howard- Snyder’s “Epistemic Humility, Arguments from Evil, and Moral ” (ch. 2), Hud Hudson’s “Fission, Freedom, and the Fall” (ch. 3), and Hugh McCann’s “Pointless Suffering? How to Make the Problem of Evil Sufficiently Serious” (ch. 6). But again note that Hudson’s essay approaches a somewhat different subject matter (“The Fall”) from a significantly different perspective (mythological). 27. This includes Brian Leftow’s “Against Theories” (ch. 5), Christian Mill- er’s “Divine Will Theory: Intentions or Desires?” (ch. 7), and Ted Warfield’s “Ockhamism and Molinism— Foreknowledge and ” (ch. 12). 28. This includes only Bradley Monton’s “Design Inferences in an Infinite Uni- verse” (ch. 8). 29. This includes only Jordan Howard Sobel’s “Lotteries and ” (ch. 11). 30. Tomis Kapitan’s “Evaluating Religion” (ch. 4). 31. Graham Oppy’s “Gods” (ch. 9). 32. J. L. Schellenberg’s “The Evolutionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason” (ch. 10). 33. Graham Oppy’s “Gods” (OSPR) and Peter Byrne’s “It Is Not Reasonable to Believe that Only One Religion Is True” (CDPR) come close. The former dem- onstrates a nuanced understanding of religions such as and (), while the latter recognizes that there are no discrete religions that are united internally within themselves and separated externally from one other. 34. Kapitan, “Evaluating Religion,” 80. 35. Ibid., 82. Here is Kapitan’s response to the (W. C. Smith) critique that there is not religion outside of the modern West: “The question is not whether this is a misuse of a term, but rather, whether there is a broader domain of human activities, conceptions, beliefs, rules, institutions, etc. that can be fruitfully grouped under a single classification, whether we call it ‘religion’ or something else” (81). 36. Ibid., 83. Two comments are here necessary. First, Kapitan says he will “take the basic concept to be that of being religious, considered as a type of activity that individuals engage in, whether by themselves or jointly, and take ‘religion’ as a nominalization of this activity” (83). Second, without assuming the truth of philosophical , Kapitan goes as far as he can in describing religion “as a natural response to the world we encounter, rooted in our condition as acting, experiencing, emoting, and reflecting beings” (83). 37. Ibid., 84. Kapitan says that such “evil” is more akin to a sensory state than a doxastic state. It is typically accompanied by aversion, from which, eventu- ally, a more reflective attitude emerges. Insofar as the sentiment is retained, it occasions discomfort over the apparent fact that not everything is as it ought to be. And since humans naturally try to avoid discomfort, what next Notes 153

emerges is a desire to eliminate or reduce religious discomfort. To satisfy this desire is “the general religious problem” or, alternatively, “the general religious goal” (86). 38. More precisely, the theoretical component includes #1–3 following, while the practical component includes #4– 5: 1. A conceptualization of evil; that is, an account of its nature, basic forms, sources, effects, or chief exemplars. 2. A view about what is good or of positive value, in particular, about what is supremely good, what is divine or, minimally, what is relevant to reducing religious discomfort. 3. An account of a positive transformation(s) consisting in an indi- vidual’s being reoriented towards what is supremely good so that religious discomfort can be reduced or eliminated. 4. A specification of what attitudes an individual should have or cul- tivate, and which attitudes are to be avoided, in order to facilitate the transformation(s). 5. An agenda of actions (practices) to be performed and of actions to be avoided in order to facilitate the transformation(s). (Kapitan, “Evaluating Religion,” 87– 88) 39. Kapitan, “Evaluating Religion,” 91. 40. Ibid., 95. This is a good start at a multidimensional picture of evaluation. But as Chapter 6 of this book will explain, I prefer not only for our evaluative endeavors to be even more dimensional but also for them to be more tightly fitted to actual instances of religious reason-giving (i.e., not to be of generalized religious systems). 41. Ibid., 98. Both claims are prefaced and supported by this: “Since being Reality- centered is a matter of being in an appropriate relation to the Real, the evidence that an individual has been Reality- centered requires evidence that there exists a Real. Consequently, evidence that a given religious tradition facilitates special soteriological transformations [from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness] not only depends on evidence that instances of the special soteriological trans- formation actually exist, but also upon evidence that there is a Real” (98). 42. Ibid., 99. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Again I freely grant that, short of a census, I can’t know this for sure. One’s object of inquiry need not reveal one’s ideological commitments. Still, every disclosure or intimation of ideological commitment that I’ve encountered, whether in writing or in person, leads me to believe that the community of analytic philosophy of religion is composed predominantly of theists, and of these, predominantly of Christians. See notes 54 and 62 of Chapter 1 for the relevant textual evidence behind these claims. 46. As I will explain following, Schellenberg’s essay in CDPR does contain such an implicit concern and call. And as I mentioned in Chapter 1, so does 154 Notes

Schellenberg’s essay in OSPR. But I think that Schellenberg’s contributions are better considered here as efforts at scrutinizing the bias of the inquiring com- munity. See note 48. 47. See note 61 of Chapter 1. 48. I am referring here to J. L. Schellenberg. See my extract from his “The Evolu- tionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason” in Chapter 1. And see my explication of his “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism” both in Chapter 1 and following. 49. Yet again, see notes 54 and 62 of Chapter 1. 50. Consider the injustice that is done to all the other religions—particularly the nontheistic and polytheistic—when they are left out of discussions concerning the nature of “God,” arguments for and against the existence of “God,” reli- gious experience, religious diversity, religious anthropology and , etc. See especially note 48 of Chapter 1, but see also notes 54 and 62 of Chapter 1. 51. The same holds true for the debates between Christians and their opponents. Again see notes 54 and 62 of Chapter 1. And see also note 49 of Chapter 1. 52. I can’t substantiate this argument with textual evidence. I can only allude to conversations I (and others) have had about philosophy of religion with schol- ars of religion who are not themselves philosophers of religion. See the preface and afterword of Wesley Wildman’s Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry for more on the apprehension of philosophy of religion by outsiders. 53. Rowe, “Reply to Howard-Snyder and Bergmann,” 26. In reply Howard- Snyder and Bergmann retort that one doesn’t have to be a theist to find Rowe’s arguments objectionable: “This gives the misleading impression that you have to be a theist to reject it, or that only theists reject it, or that nonthe- ists can’t reject it, or mustn’t, or in fact don’t. None of this is true” (“Reply to Rowe,” 27). 54. Byrne, “It Is Not Reasonable,” 209. Yandell’s reply then accuses Byrne of being “delightfully free” of the “hypocritical criticism” of the of others while at the same time propounding metaphysical and ethical claims that are themselves exclusive of those of religious traditions (“Reply to Byrne,” 214). And Byrne then wraps up the slugfest first by calling Yandell’s ignorance of what actual pluralists say in favor of his own opinion about what they “must say” “a waste of time” and then by declaring that this ignorance “shows itself in his assertion that we find a version of the - has- no- properties view in only a few places in the religions” (“Reply to Yandell,” 215, 216). 55. The three other such debates are the debate between John Worrall and Del Ratzsch on whether science discredits religion (ch. 3), the debate between Wil- liam Alston and Evan Fales about whether religious experience justifies religious belief (ch. 5), and the debate between Stephen Davis and Michael Martin on whether it is rational for Christians to believe in the resurrection (ch. 6). In these cases such accusations are less stated than implied. 56. Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism,” 31. 57. Ibid., 34. Notes 155

58. Schellenberg refers to such individuals as “nonresistors,” a category that includes, in addition to active seekers, individuals in the West whose upbring- ing has been entirely secular and all those individuals in non-Western countries and premodern times who have never encountered the idea of a traditional theistic God (40). 59. Ibid., 40, 40, 39. 60. Ibid., 41. 61. Schellenberg’s other, previously mentioned essay, “The Evolutionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason,” comes close. See my extract from it in Chapter 1. 62. Schellenberg, “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism,” 35. 63. Moser’s reply to Schellenberg does finally address Schellenberg’s actual argu- ments. But Moser’s essay itself displays little to no awareness of these argu- ments. Thus Schellenberg’s “Reply to Moser” (which precedes Moser’s reply to Schellenberg) is simply that he can accept much of what Moser says, beginning where Moser’s essay ends by pointing out that many of those who do “seek God aright” do not find themselves with sufficient evidence for theistic belief. 64. Moser, “Divine Hiddenness Does Not Justify Atheism,” 43. 65. Ibid., 42. 66. Ibid., 44. Moser says that such hiding is sometimes in response to human dis- obedience of and indifference toward God (44); sometimes in a constructive effort to encourage deeper human focus, longing, and gratitude toward God (44); but typically due to “a deficiency of some sort on the human side of the divine- human relationship” (45). 67. Ibid., 45. 68. Ibid., 47. 69. Ibid., 49. 70. Ibid., 53. 71. Again, see note 32 of Chapter 1 for what I mean by philosophical theology. And note that I do not take the distinction between philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to be discrete. 72. Examples of neglect of description correlate fairly well with examples of neglect of the historical religions. So see again note 41 of Chapter 1. 73. In this case exceptions are not only few and cursory but also only ever of Chris- reason-giving. As indicated in Section 2, Paul Moser’s “Divine Hiddenness Does Not Justify Atheism” (CDPR) nudges the debate about divine hiddenness away from abstract theism and toward the Hebraic God, expositing relevant passages from the Bible. A second essay, Tim Bayne and Greg Restall’s “A Par- ticipatory Model of the Atonement” (NWPR), devotes attention to scripture and tradition with respect to the Christian doctrine of atonement. And a third essay, Thomas Talbott’s contribution to the debate on whether eternal damna- tion is compatible with the Christian concept of God (“No ”), counters the theistic God with the God of the New Testament (with respect to God’s moral character). See note 41 of Chapter 1 for more minor exceptions. 156 Notes

74. Another good example is that of proofs for the existence of God. Consider the disparity between, one the one hand, John Clayton’s contextual study of proofs for the existence of God in medieval theology and modern philosophy (in Religions, Reasons, and Gods), and on the other hand, Bruce Reichenbach and Richard Gale’s debate about whether God’s existence is the best explanation of the universe (in CDPR), which considers only some varieties of the modern- Western cosmological proof. (See Chapter 4 for more on Clayton’s work on proof giving.) Yet another interesting example comes from the debate between Dean Zimmerman and Lynne Rudder Baker (in CDPR) on whether Christians should be mind- body dualists, which is a debate purely about the plausibility of contemporary theories in the philosophy of mind and thus not at all about the variety of positions Christians have taken regarding the relationship of mind/ soul and body, not to mention the variety of ends these positions have served, the variety of contexts these positions have inhabited, and the variety of gene- alogies these positions have traced. 75. See my brief comments in note 73 of Chapter 1 about Peter Berger’s Sacred Canopy. 76. Rowe, “Evil Is Evidence against Theistic Belief”; Howard-Snyder and Berg- mann, “Evil Does Not Make Atheism More Reasonable than Theism.” 77. Almeida, “On Evil’s Vague Necessity.” 78. Howard-Snyder, “Epistemic Humility, Arguments from Evil, and Moral Skepticism.” 79. McCann, “Pointless Suffering? How to Make the Problem of Evil Sufficiently Serious.” 80. Rowe, “Evil Is Evidence against Theistic Belief,” 4. For Rowe, “[t]he impor- tance of not taking theism to include the claims held by only one particular religion among the three major theistic religions of the West is that the inclu- sion would make theism less likely; for if we identify theism with a particular one among the great theistic religions, then the truth of theism itself is made to depend on all the essential beliefs of that particular theistic religion” (4). On the flipside, says Rowe, philosophers of religion should “beware of confusing the assumption that theism is true with the altogether different, and less likely, assumption that Christian theism is true” (4). 81. Ibid., 9. 82. Toward the end of the essay they also consider “Rowe’s New Bayesian Argu- ment,” an argument that they say not only is incomplete but also tends to depend on questionable noseeum assumptions (Howard- Snyder and Berg- mann, “Evil Does Not Make Atheism More Reasonable than Theism,” 21–23). 83. Howard-Snyder and Bergmann, “Evil Does Not Make Atheism More Reason- able than Theism,” 16. 84. Consider especially, again, Ratzsch’s definition of the core religious beliefs (note 22). And see note 54 of Chapter 1 for examples of essays that claim to speak of God or religion in general but in fact speak only for a certain theistic God or religion, if not a certain Christian God or religion. Notes 157

85. Again see note 54 of Chapter 1. And note that the closest these collections come to a recognition and comparison of different gods is Graham Oppy’s essay “Gods” (OSPR), which argues that “there is a wide diversity in the reference- fixing descriptions that people associate with the name ‘God’” (245). 86. Yet again, see note 54 of Chapter 1. And yet again note that it is only Gra- ham Oppy’s essay “Gods” (OSPR) that shows awareness of multiple, conflicting theisms. 87. I’ve yet to discover an effort at demonstrating how exactly the scholarly con- struct of theism fits the many so- called theistic religions of the world. 88. The essays of Kapitan (OSPR) and Oppy (OSPR) do consider diverse religious phenomena with respect to comparative categories, and in this sense they con- stitute partial exceptions to my claims. But they do not formally compare in such a way that produces precise similarities and differences between diverse religious phenomena. 89. Yandell, “How To Sink in Cognitive Quicksand,” 193. 90. Ibid., 193– 200. Yandell’s reply to Byrne tacks on three more arguments: (1) Byrne’s argument that religions are products of cultural context and there- fore not true is self-defeating if not false; (2) Byrne’s appeal to a propertyless Absolute is also self-defeating since, by the rules of , there can be no criteria for preferring such a “God” to other gods; (3) Byrne’s reli- gious pluralism is “hypocritical” insofar as it makes exclusive religious-moral claims while criticizing the exclusivism of others (“Reply to Byrne,” 211–14). 91. Yandell, “How To Sink in Cognitive Quicksand,” 201. 92. Byrne refers to these “isms” as “semi-fictional,” as “useful fictions,” as “histori- cal complexes found in many different cultures and exhibiting variety in belief, institution, and practice,” and as “loosely structured families of belief, action, and institution” (“It Is Not Reasonable to Believe that Only One Religion Is True,” 201). 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid., 204. 95. Ibid., 204, 205. In addition to the “very fact of diversity,” Byrne believes that two other sets of facts speak against confessionalism in general and interreli- gious apologetics in particular: first, the history of interreligious apologetics is that of fruitless attempts “to establish conclusions about the cognitive superi- ority of one religion over others on the basis of publicly agreed criteria”; sec- ond, “the disagreements between different brands of religion are in some areas particularly resistant to anything like proof or disproof” since “[w]hat seems metaphysically plausible to us is liable to depend on our prior metaphysical commitments” (208). With respect to this second point, Byrne cites Yandell’s own argument (from Philosophy of Religion) that Advaita Vedānta’s position on the propertylessness of is a set of logically inconsistent theses, main- taining that “[t]he Advaitan system entails a contradiction only on the assump- tion that all that is must have qualities” (209). Thus charges Byrne, “One person’s metaphysical profundities are notoriously another person’s examples of pretentious nonsense” (209). 158 Notes

96. Byrne, “It Is Not Reasonable to Believe that Only One Religion Is True,” 206. Contra Yandell’s interpretation, Byrne believes that religious pluralism “is not committed to asserting that no judgments of superiority of any kind can be made about religions” (204; this is repeated again in Byrne’s “Reply to Yandell” on page 215). But Byrne believes that religious pluralism does maintain that although one brand of religion could conceivably be true, “it is not reasonable for the philosophy of religion to judge of any one particular brand that it is true” (204). 97. Byrne, “It Is Not Reasonable to Believe that Only One Religion Is True,” 210. Byrne lists another such commonality in his “Reply to Yandell”: “The great religions seem to have a shared vision of the final good: it will consist in eternal union with or contemplation of a superhuman, supersensual spiritual source” (216). 98. Compare this, once again, with the fact that 3 of these 12 essays are explicitly about some aspect of Christianity, and that three additional debates cite the New Testament as evidence for a putatively neutral theistic claim. See note 49 of Chapter 1. 99. Byrne, “Reply to Yandell,” 216. 100. This point seems entirely lost on Yandell, who seems to take religions not only as discrete entities but also as static entities. 101. Yandell is particularly jumpy at the idea that religious pluralism provides (reductionistic) explanations of the religions that the practitioners of these reli- gions wouldn’t themselves endorse, treating this as a major strike against reli- gious pluralism. But why exactly this is, is not clear. Byrne is right here both in referencing Proudfoot’s distinction between unwarranted descriptive reduction and warranted explanatory reduction, and in maintaining that religious plural- ism is a not a religion to be practiced but a philosophical theory about religions. See Yandell, “How To Sink in Cognitive Quicksand,” 192–94; and Byrne, “It Is Not Reasonable to Believe that Only One Religion Is True,” 205– 6. 102. Section I (“Attacks on Religious Belief”) features debates about whether evil is evidence against belief in God, whether divine hiddenness justifies atheism, and whether science discredits religion (by which the authors really mean theism); Section II (“Arguments for Religious Belief”), debates about whether God’s existence is the best explanation of the universe, whether religious experience justifies belief, and whether it is rational for Christians to believe in the resur- rection; Section III (“Issues within Religion”), debates on whether only one religion can be true, whether God takes risks in governing the world, whether God responds to petitionary prayer, whether eternal damnation is compatible with the Christian concept of God, whether morality is based on God’s com- mands, and whether Christians should be mind- body dualists. 103. Chapter 1 concerns the attributes of a theistic God; Chapters 2–5, proofs for the existence of a theistic God; Chapters 6–12, miscellaneous theistic disputes. These chapters take up positions in debates between theism and atheism: Kraay (ch. 2), Mawson (ch. 3), Pruss (ch. 4), Manson (ch. 5), Eberle (ch. 10), and Metz (ch. 11). And these chapters take up positions in debates within theism: Notes 159

Hill (ch. 1), Efrid (ch. 6), Miller (ch. 7), Howard- Snyder (ch. 8), and Bayne and Restall (ch. 9). (Note that these categories aren’t always mutually exclusive— essays that take up positions in debates between theism and atheism/naturalism sometimes also take up positions within debates within theism.) 104. Three stand out: Kapitan’s “Evaluating Religion,” Oppy’s “Gods,” and Schel- lenberg’s “The Evolutionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason.” 105. The majority of its essays fall into the narrow range of analytic-theistic fare: problem of evil, Almeida (ch. 1), Howard- Snyder (ch. 2), Hudson (ch. 3), and McCann (ch. 6); divine nature and attributes, Leftow (ch. 5), Miller (ch. 7), and Warfield (ch. 12); and arguments for the existence of God, Monton (ch. 8) and Sobel (ch. 11). Of these, the following essays take up positions in debates between theism and atheism: Howard- Snyder, McCann, Monton, and Sobel. And these essays take up positions in debates within theism: Almeida, Hudson, Leftow, Miller, and Warfield. (But see the qualification in note 103.) 106. Alston, “Religious Experience Justifies Religious Belief,” 135– 36, 136. 107. Ibid., 136. 108. Ibid., 138. Overriders include “rebutters” (sufficient reasons for taking it to be false) and “underminers” (sufficient reasons for taking the particular situation to be such that the experience does not have its usual force). 109. Ibid., 143. Here, Alston charges his critics with “epistemic imperialism”— “subjecting the outputs of one belief-forming practice to the requirements of another” (144). 110. Fales, “Do Mystics See God?” 147. 111. Ibid., 146. Cross- checking denotes all those procedures and strategies that we use to settle questions about the causes of something, using “causal reason- ing to the best explanation for the multitude of sensory inputs with which we are provided” (151). In many cases this reasoning is implicit, the “subliminal information processing” or “unconscious cognitive mechanisms” by which we “apply concepts in forming a percept as if on the basis of various inductions” (150, 151). Still, this implicit cross-checking is “absolutely pervasive” (151), and cross-checking in general therefore has an “essential and fundamental place as an epistemic method, even in the case of sense perception” (149). Thus Fales calls Alston’s claim that perceptual knowledge is direct “an illusion” (149), asserting that Alston’s charge of epistemic imperialism “misses the mark” (150). 112. Fales, “Do Mystics See God?” 154– 55. 113. Ibid., 153. 114. For socially marginalized mystics, these interests involve “the struggle to achieve social justice for themselves and their group”; for upwardly mobile mystics, “credentials to legitimate their claim on positions of social leadership” (Fales, “Do Mystics See God?” 154). 115. Ibid., 146. 116. Ibid., 147. 117. Alston, “Religious Experience Justifies Religious Belief,” 135– 36, 136. 118. Alston, Perceiving God, 266– 79. 119. Fales, “Do Mystics See God?” 146. 160 Notes

120. Why, for example, is it assumed that an experience of God is direct, while an experience of “a mysterious presence in nature” is not (Alston, “Religious Expe- rience Justifies Religious Belief,” 137)?

Chapter 3

1. Why is this similarity strange? Because analytic and continental philosophy of religion often represent themselves as polar-opposite approaches to the philoso- phy of religion. But they are nevertheless similarly out of step with the academic study of religion. 2. These include the following: John Caputo’s edited collection The Religious, Morny Joy’s edited collection Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion, and Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler’s edited collection After the Post- secular and the Postmodern. Three other collections also deserve note here, none of which are explicitly identified as continental philosophy of religion, but all of which are considerably more expansive than analytic philosophy of religion: Philip Goodchild’s edited collection Difference in Philosophy of Religion, D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin’s edited collection Philosophy of Religion in the 21st Century, and David Cheetham and Rolfe King’s edited collection Contemporary Practice and Method in the Philosophy of Religion. 3. This includes primarily the monographs of John Caputo. 4. This includes the last ten years of entries to Faith and Philosophy, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Religion, and Religious Studies. 5. Long, Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion, 1900–2000 ; Oppy and Trakakis, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion. 6. “The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion,” Syracuse University, April 7– 9. 7. See notes 36– 38 of Chapter 1. 8. Let me again remind the reader that my minimum criterion for a philosophy of religion that has something to offer to religious studies is historical grounding in the diverse religions of the world. I therefore use interchangeably the phrases philosophy of religion that is informed by and involved in religious studies and philosophy of religion that is historically grounded and religiously diverse. See my preface for more on this. 9. Telling here is the astonishment that one essay voices over the way in which Bernard Lonergan considered philosophy of religion to be “the foundational methodology of religious studies”; see Kanaris, “Lonergan and Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,” 67. 10. See note 41 of Chapter 1. Also consider this: nowhere among James K. A. Smith’s six prescriptions for a healthy subdiscipline of continental philosophy of religion is there mention of non-Western religion (“Continental Philosophy of Religion: Prescriptions for a Healthy Subdiscipline”). According to Smith, continental philosophers of religion need a better training in the history of phi- losophy, but apparently not the history of religions! And in the way of encour- aging authentic pluralism, Smith mentions Catholicism, but nothing else. Note Notes 161

that Bruce Benson’s critical response to Smith’s paper also fails to mention the need for continental philosophy of religion to consider non- (“A Response to Smith’s ‘Continental Philosophy of Religion: Prescriptions for a Healthy Subdiscipline’”). How can it be that two attempts at addressing the shortcomings of continental philosophy of religion both fail to mention its omission of non- Western (and for the most part, non- Christian) religion?! 11. Goodchild’s introductory essay in RPR is really the only essay that sets forth a robust agenda for continental philosophy of religion. I’ll examine both it and Goodchild’s concluding essay from RPR in Section 5. I’ll also examine some of the other essays from these collections that set forth less robust, more implicit programmatic agendas— those of Hudson (Section 1), Anderson (Section 2), and Jantzen (Section 5). I’ll also examine in Section 2 the one essay that appears particularly resistant to programmatic agendas in the philosophy of religion— that of John Caputo. 12. For examples of ethnocentric-aprioristic- essentialistic moves similar to Halte- man’s (i.e., ones that draw essentialist claims about religion from continental philosophical sources), see especially the essays of Caputo (RPR), Jowett (RPR), Bergo (RPR), Purcell (ECCPR), Purcell (IJPR), and Cohen (IJPR). (Why is it that explications of Lévinas and Derrida seem to lend themselves to such eth- nocentric essentialisms more than those of other continental philosophers?) 13. Halteman, “Toward a ‘Continental’ Philosophy of Religion,” 59. 14. Ibid., 60. 15. Ibid., 62–63. 16. Ibid., 63. 17. Ibid., 64, 65. 18. Note that Derrida himself does not make this claim in The Gift of Death; rather, he attributes it to Jan Patočka (as well as, in qualified senses, to Lévinas, Mar- ion, Ricoeur, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger; 49). 19. Again see note 41 of Chapter 1. 20. Large’s “Inverted Kantianism and Interiority” comes close. See note 52 follow- ing for more on it. 21. Hudson, “Schelling, Bloch, and the Continental Philosophy of Religion,” 293. Consider also Hudson’s fourth implication: “Fourth, the work of Schelling and Bloch suggests that contemporary continental philosophy of religion lacks an adequate theory of historical reason, let alone a historical sociology for which reason begins ‘outside itself’ and comes to play a role in the process as a result of dialectical developments” (294). 22. This is not to say that Hudson isn’t critical of much of Schelling’s and Bloch’s of religion—in particular Schelling’s claim that philosophical religion was Johannine Christianity, Schelling’s emphasis on dialectic and tele- ology, Schelling’s “high- handed” treatment of the actual religions, the “volun- tarism” and “over- optimism” of Bloch’s metareligion, and Bloch’s privileging of the relationship between traditional religion and the “binding back” (i.e., social- logical organization of religion). 162 Notes

23. Hudson, “Schelling, Bloch, and the Continental Philosophy of Religion,” 293– 94. 24. Ibid., 286. 25. See note 54 of Chapter 1. 26. Caputo, “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God,” 43. 27. Ibid., 43, 46, 48. Caputo draws on an argument of Peter Damian’s that “God’s power was so great and extended so far that, were it good to do so, God could actually alter the past and make it to be that what had happened in the past did not happen” (48). For Damian, as for Caputo, this argument is primarily one about forgiveness: “God’s power to forgive sin was such that God could, were it good to do so, make it to be that the sinner had not sinned, that the sinner was not only forgiven but rendered innocent” (48–49). Here Caputo expresses some reservations about Damian’s privileging of annulment of sin over for- giveness of sin (49). For Caputo “kingdom time” is therefore “forgiven time”: each moment is “a new creation in which the past lapses in order to let life begin anew, which means to make all things new, which is a basic idea in the Kingdom” (50). 28. Caputo, “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God,” 53, 54. 29. Ibid., 56. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 57. 32. Ibid., 55. 33. Ibid., 57. 34. Ibid., 53. 35. Ibid., 54. 36. Ibid., 54–55. 37. For a rough and ready differentiation of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, see note 32 in Chapter 1. As I recognize there, this distinction is by no means discrete. 38. These essays fall into the former category: Caputo (RPR), Ward (RPR), Sadler (RPR), Franke (IJPR), Min (IJPR), Westphal (IJPR), Long (IJPR), Dallmayr (IJPR), Boynton (ECCPR), MacKendrick (ECCPR), Nelson (ECCPR), and Baker (ECCPR). These essays fall into the latter category: Caputo (RPR), Halte- man (RPR), Jowett (RPR), Bergo (RPR), Crockett (RPR), Purcell (IJPR), Cohen (IJPR), and Purcell (ECCPR). 39. Anderson, “Feminism in Philosophy of Religion,” 200. 40. Ibid., 199. Anderson draws these ideas in particular from Miranda Fricker’s essay “Feminism in Epistemology: Pluralism without Postmodernism.” She applies them in particular to the work of Grace Jantzen, charging that Jantzen’s celebration of the postmodern “play of plurality and difference” risks losing “rational authority” for the scrutiny of beliefs and practices (199). 41. Anderson, “Feminism in Philosophy of Religion,” 203. 42. I will say (again) that there are a far higher proportion of female authors in these collections than in the analytic collections I examined. Even still, it’s really only the essays of Anderson and Jantzen that take up feminist themes and critiques Notes 163

(see note 60 of Chapter 1). I can also say that one essay considers postcolonial themes and critiques: Lenta, “The Changing Face of the Law.” 43. Much more will be said about “critical understanding” in Chapter 4. But for now let me mention that I don’t believe description is theory free, don’t take hermeneutics to be a way of reading texts only affirmatively and singularly, and don’t think that hermeneutical understanding excludes critical explanation. 44. Franke, “Apophasis and the Turn of Philosophy to Religion,” 64. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 65, 66. 49. This is just not true of Neoplatonism in general, as any scholar of Proclus will attest (see for example Lucas Siorvanes’s Proclus), and as I, a scholar of Dio- nysius the Areopagite, will also argue (see for example my forthcoming paper “Ranks Are Not Bypassed, Are Not Negated”). 50. See Chapter 4 for more on this. 51. Am I also guilty? Perhaps. We are all guilty. But I’d like to think that my read- ing of continental philosophy of religion is attentive to some of the exceptions to my interpretive hypothesis. And I’d like to believe that my reading of some of the texts of Neoplatonism— the Dionysian corpus in particular— is aware of their othernesses and differences. See, for example, my articles “Ranks Are Not Bypassed; Rituals Are Not Negated: The Dionysian Corpus on Return,” “Ineffability Now and Then: The Legacy of Neoplatonic Ineffability in Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Religion,” “Three Misuses of Dionysius for Comparative Theology,” and “Not Not: The Method and Logic of Dionysian Negation.” See also my forthcoming book Negating Negation: Against the Apo- phatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus. 52. A number of other works also deserve favorable mention in this respect: Rob- bins (ECCPR) makes the point that, for Derrida, religion is not a “private pas- sion” but instead “always already public, always already a matter of politics,” “a product of cultures and texts, of passions and wills, an economy of com- munities and currencies that bring people together and drive them apart” (19). Large (ECCPR) understands religions to be nothing but their histories, the way that they construct identity through identification with a tradition (31). Both MacKendrick (ECCPR) and Pickstock (ECCPR) perform exquisite textual exe- geses (of the Gospel of John and Plato’s Phaedo, respectively). And Wyschogrod (IJPR) reads Jewish halakah against Derrida. 53. Ellsworth, “Apophasis and Askêsis,” 215. 54. Ibid., 214, 215. 55. Ibid, 214. 56. Ibid., 218. Ellsworth is here influenced by Foucault, a continental luminary who otherwise shines much too dimly in continental philosophy of religion. 57. Ibid., 222. 58. Ibid., 223. 59. Ibid., 222. 164 Notes

60. Ellsworth’s essay contains textual evidence from some “negative theologians” (e.g., Plutarch, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius) and also provides numerous exam- ples of ascetic practices in middle to late Platonic and Christian mystical the- ologies. Despite this, he notes that for the sake of his essay he had to limit “the number of historical figures and texts that would serve as supporting evidence” (215). For this reason, he is careful both to caution that his claims are only “sug- gestive” rather than “conclusive” and to call for a “rigorous examination” of the relationship between apohpasis and askêsis (215). 61. Ellsworth is also careful to say that not all ancient-medieval forms of ascetic practice should be recovered and practiced as is—some are psychologically and physiologically damaging; some are founded on harmful views of what it means to be embodied and engendered; all therefore need to be selected with an eye toward our present conceptions of health and human flourishing (224– 25). 62. Ellsworth, “Apophasis and Askêsis,” 223– 24. 63. The best example here may be Caputo’s “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God” (RPR), which I treated in Section 2 and will treat again in this section. Edith Wyschogrod’s “Repentance and Forgiveness” is the only essay that gives considerable attention to a non- Christian tradition (Jewish halakah). 64. Halteman, “Toward a ‘Continental’ Philosophy of Religion,” 63, 59. 65. Dallmayr, “An End to Evil,” 171. 66. Ibid. Dallmayr precedes his typology with an explication and critique of the typologies of Amélie Oksenberg Rorty and Susan Neiman. On the one hand, Rorty provides a complex, sixfold typology of metaphysical- theological treatments of evil: evil is an illusion; evil is only a lesser degree of privation of goodness (Augustine); good and evil are permanently competing forces (); human reason postulates a perfectly rational universe but acknowledges evil as a dilemma (Kant); evil is real and the world is a mess (Schophenhauer); and God and evil are nothing in themselves but only social constructs (Hobbes, Nietzsche). On the other hand, Neiman offers a simple, twofold typology: arguments relying on “fire from ”; arguments bent on “condemning the architect.” Dallmayr finds Rorty’s typology “a bit cumber- some”; Neiman’s, “overly parsimonious” (171). 67. It’s Manichean since it pits the American War on Terror as an ongoing struggle between absolutely good and absolutely evil forces. It slides over into theodicy insofar as it speaks of a “permissible evil” done for the sake of the greater good (183). 68. Dallmayr, “An End to Evil,” 184. This proposal for how to win the War on Ter- ror and thereby defeat evil comes from David Frum and Richard Perle’s An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. 69. The equivocation is one between the existential-metaphysical evil that theodi- cies explain (e.g., pain, suffering, injustice, death) and the political-social “evil” that the American War on Terror attempts to eradicate (e.g., terrorist activity). 70. Compare Franke, who believes that an absolutely ineffable Absolute plays “a key regulatory role, given the pluralistic situation of philosophy today, Notes 165

by offering a theory as to why this pluralism of discourses is necessary in the first place” (“Apophasis and the Turn of Philosophy to Religion,” 65). This, I think, is to falsely assume that all religions possess such an ineffable core. 71. I am though a bit dubious of Min’s comparative conclusions about Lévinas, Derrida, and Marion: “All three thinkers under review agree that the God of ontotheology is an idol to be rejected, that there is no way of direct, predicative reference to God, and that we have to go beyond the language of predication to some mode of testimony and invocation . . . In all three, how we speak of God is inseparable from how we treat our fellow human beings. The question of naming the unnameable God is not only a theological but also a political question” (“Naming the Unnameable God,” 113). 72. Min, “Naming the Unnameable God,” 99. 73. Ibid., 114. Consider also the following: “We cannot claim that God is infinite and incomprehensible because we experience her that way. We only experience God that way because God is that way in her own right. The measure of God’s transcendence must be sought on her own terms, on who she is, not merely on what she does or does not do to human beings. The horizon of the transcendent God transcends the horizon of humanity and indeed all created things” (115; emphases Min’s). 74. Again see note 32 of Chapter 1. 75. See Section 2. 76. In addition to the Goodchild example following, see especially Caputo’s essay (RPR), which rules out all “worldly” explanations, as well as the earlier-treated Franke essay (IJPR), which maintains that the concept of ineffability is itself ineffable. 77. In addition to the Jantzen example following, and the Caputo and Franke examples noted before, see especially Trakakis’s The End of Philosophy of Religion (which was treated in Chapter 1). 78. Other examples include Hudson (RPR), who emphasizes naturalism and histor- ical reason; Anderson (ECCPR), who recognizes that evaluation itself shouldn’t be “feminist”; and Kanaris (ECCPR), who explicates Lonergan’s understanding of philosophy of religion as analysis and critique of the methods of religious studies. 79. Goodchild, “Continental Philosophy of Religion,” 28. 80. Ibid., 28–29. 81. Ibid., 38. 82. Goodchild, “Politics and Experience,” 322. 83. Jantzen draws on both Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of death and her own quasipsychoanalytic theory of natality to explain religion. What I find problematic here is not the use of such “reductionistic” theories but the treat- ment of them as if they’re prima facie true. Psychoanalysis is only one possible explanatory hypothesis and therefore needs to be taken as such. 84. Ibid., 141. For Jantzen, religion is about the formation of loving subjects, and therefore the philosophy of religion is about the exploration of new possibilities 166 Notes

concerning the formation of loving subjects: “I believe that if religion is to have a role in the formation of loving subjects, it will need to focus much more on birth, on natality as the source of and potential, not a birth that sets aside our bodily beginnings, but precisely our bodily birth from our mothers, always already sexuate, in community, connected to the web of life and to the earth. Natality, I believe, opens a gap that enables us to think oth- erwise, to explore new possibilities of thinking and living. It is up to those of us who are trying to find better ways of doing philosophy of religion to lead the way” (161). It’s not surprising, then, to find her entirely dismissive of ana- lytic philosophy of religion, which, she believes, not only fails to consider birth but also, in considering death, considers only evidence for truth- claims and therefore fails to appreciate the formation of loving and gendered subjects and offers only inauthentic “shallow consolations” (141, 150). At issue, though, is much more than just misplaced focus: analytic philosophy’s entire concep- tion of truth and rationality is not only mistaken, by virtue of its emphasis on objectivity and neglect of gender, but also “thoroughly secular,” by virtue of its subordination of passion to thought (141): “From a Kristevan perspective, however, such preoccupation with truth- claims is already thoroughly secular, part of the ‘subordination of passion to thought’ that, after Descartes, consti- tutes secular modernity. Although at one level analytic philosophers of religion may be attempting to defend religious claims, at a deeper level, what is happen- ing is a betrayal of religion itself, reducing it to a set of beliefs and values within the boundaries of the nameable, rather than exploring its cathartic power for the development of a mature, loving subject able to negotiate rupture and loss. Even worse, by their steadfast rejection of the passions in favor of objective and impartial reason, and by their refusal to acknowledge the gendered nature of their stance, analytic philosophers are actually (though of course not intention- ally) using religion to block the emergence of such subjects. An analytic phi- losopher might reply that a Continental approach simply abandons truth and rationality and is not properly philosophical at all. In response, a thinker from a Continental perspective could show that this reply already assumes the narrow model of rationality and philosophy that is at the heart of secular modernity, which is precisely what is in question” (141). Moreover, in drawing a bound- ary around its proper subject matter that serves to “abject” the loving subject, analytic philosophy of religion is fact “death dealing” (147). 85. Jantzen, “Birth and the Powers of Horror,” 142. 86. Ibid., 145. 87. See my Chapter 1 excerpts from Michael Rea’s introductory essay to Analytic Theology. 88. For exceptions, see note 55 of Chapter 1. 89. Goodchild, “Continental Philosophy of Religion,” 6. Goodchild finds these concerns of the founders of philosophy of religion “to diagnose self-deception, to unmask structures of power, to expose unwarranted and unauthorized faith, and to raise awareness of the unthought dimension within thought” still pres- ent in contemporary continental philosophy of religion (27). Notes 167

90. Ibid., 13–14. 91. Ibid., 38. Elsewhere Goodchild says that philosophy of religion meditates on the essence of the religion of philosophy “in order to purify it from the con- taminations of domination within existing religious traditions” and conform it “to true piety” (28). 92. Ibid., 39. 93. And elsewhere, Goodchild seems to think that the essence of religion can be easily abstracted from all existing religious traditions (27– 28). 94. Ibid., 39. 95. Note, though, that Goodchild says the same about “secular reason,” which needs to be subjected to criticism insofar as it takes the “dominant role” in modern society (16).

Chapter 4

1. My minimum criterion for a philosophy of religion that has something to offer to religious studies is historical grounding in the diverse religions of the world. I therefore use interchangeably the phrases philosophy of religion that is informed by and involved in religious studies and philosophy of religion that is historically grounded and religiously diverse. See my preface for more on the “names” of my philosophy of religion. 2. Regardless of what one thinks about the merits of Kuhn’s more radical ideas— paradigm shifts, theory-ladenness of observation, ambiguity of shared stan- dards, etc.— one can hardly object to his claim that the idealized story that early twentieth-century scientists and philosophers of science told about the practice and progress of science didn’t fit “the historical record of the research activity itself” (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1). 3. I can imagine a philosophy of religion for which it would matter that Daoism is a “religion” (e.g., one that privileges the comparative evaluation of religious “isms” or worldviews); mine, though, is not one. Instead, it is concerned about the forms of reason- giving voiced by Daoist texts and persons about ultimate problems and solutions, paths and ends, realities and truths. 4. Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, 4. Fitzgerald does recognize that in contexts “where a cultural and juridical distinction is drawn between religion and non- religion, between religion and the secular, between church and state,” religion may function as a genuine category of sociocultural phenomena (4). Even so, he believes that “in most cross-cultural contexts such a distinction, if it can be made at all, is at best unhelpful and at worst positively misleading since it imposes a superficial and distorting level of analysis on the data” (4). 5. Thus Fitzgerald sets up his “sketch” of some of the different ways in which reli- gion is used as follows: “If I can show that ‘religion’ is used—not only in com- mon usage but also in scholarly usage— to identify so many different aspects of human experience and existence that it becomes contradictory, devoid of focused content, and consequently virtually meaningless, then the reader may 168 Notes

see more clearly why the explanation for its continued widespread usage and popularity becomes of such pressing importance” (15). 6. Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, 9. 7. Ibid., 15. 8. Ibid., 19. Fitzgerald gives a nod to Jeppe Jensen’s argument that religion, much like other analytical concepts, is a construct that can be discussed, developed, and refined. But Fitzgerald believes that in the case of religion there are too many interests at stake (22). 9. Ibid., 5. Thus Fitzgerald believes that the category of religion “derives its plau- sibility and apologetics as a genuinely viable analytical category, in the face of a mass of contradictory evidence, from its mystifying function in western liberal capitalist ideology” (6). 10. Ibid., 3, 10, 4. This means that religious studies ought to be folded into cultural studies. 11. A related and even more compelling challenge charges that the very study of other cultures intellectually colonizes those cultures. Purushottama Billimoria registers this challenge thus: “[A]symmetrical translations and transcreations of non- Western texts displace the indigenous understanding by reframing and re-encoding the signs precisely within a Euro-centered imaging of the world whose cognitive claims are derived from the historical experiences or European (modernist) cultures” (“What Is the ‘Subaltern’ of the Comparative Philosophy of Religion?” 346). This is true. But, as I see things, it is also unavoidable in global humanistic inquiry, at least to some degree. Moreover, I believe that its detrimental effects can be mitigated if such study is carried out by a diverse community of inquiry employing a diverse set of methods and tools. 12. Who, for example, would take issue with Fitzgerald’s claim that “[t]he study of non- western societies is an exceedingly difficult and subtle problem of cultural hermeneutics that requires delicate and sensitive empathy with the institutions and values being studied” (The Ideology of Religious Studies, 9)? And who, to continue, would take issue with Fitzgerald’s subsequent claim that this “requires a fastidious awareness of the concealed semantic load of western concepts that can so easily project distorted meanings onto the data” (9)? 13. Schilbrack, “Religions: Are There Any?” 1116– 17. 14. Ibid., 1117– 21. Drawing on the work of John Searle, Schilbrack calls religion a “socially dependent fact”—ontologically subjective but epistemically objective (1118–19). Schilbrack therefore finds religion a social construction that is “in the first place performed rather than spoken” (1120). 15. Ibid., 1121– 26. These certain cases are those in which “the elements in the set are not arbitrary but are instead connected to each other by the practitioners themselves”— those in which “there is a structure to these elements that exists independent of the label” (1124). 16. Ibid., 1126– 31. Here Schilbrack considers, on the one hand, strategies that develop “bigger” concepts (such as Daniel Dubuisson’s notion of “cosmo- graphic formation,” which, in Schilbrack’s opinion, is just as ethnocentric as “religion”) and, on the other hand, strategies that develop “smaller” concepts Notes 169

(such as Fitzgerald’s notions of “,” “politics,” and “soteriology,” the joint presence of which, in Schilbrack’s opinion, requires a higher- order category such as “religion”; see 1128– 30). What Schilbrack does not consider here are strategies that develop alternative, non- Western concepts. 17. Ibid., 1131–35. Additionally, Schilbrack finds the critics of religion guilty of the genetic fallacy (1131). 18. I am influenced here by Jeppe Jensen, who considers religion qua object of inquiry as a cultural-social phenomenon, not a manifestation of the holy, not a module in the brain; and by Manuel Vásquez, who understands texts (and by extension the acts of religious reason- giving found therein) “in their contexts of production, circulation, and consumption” (i.e., in their material-bodily and temporal- spatial aspects). See Jensen, The Study of Religion in a New Key, 21; Vásquez, More Than Belief, 255. 19. More on this understanding of religion in note 20. For now, consider Andrew McKinnon’s argument that religion has in fact become a global category (for better and for worse). McKinnon points both to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which has been translated into 300 different languages) and to the “World Values survey” of Ronald Inglehart (which has been more or less successfully conducted in more than 50 countries across the world); see “Sociological Definitions, Language Games, and the ‘Essence’ of Religion,” 77– 78. Also consider Michael Pye’s argument that the history of the study of religions in Japan makes for “an important counter- example to a commonly held assumption . . . that the academic study of religion is a Western cultural project”; see “Modern Japan and the Science of Religions,” 1. 20. I am reluctant to proffer a definition of religion. But if I have to, as seems to be the case here, I would stress four things: first, that religions (usually) diagnosis ultimate problems and offer ultimate solutions; second, that the solutions to these problems (usually) require following ultimate paths to ultimate destina- tions; third, that these problems, solutions, paths, and destinations (usually) involve ultimate realities and truths; fourth, that the practices and beliefs of some community are (usually) systematically structured such as to orient that community toward its ultimate problems, solutions, paths, destinations, reali- ties, and truths. (Here I am indebted to Kevin Schilbrack’s critical comments on this manuscript, as well as to his forthcoming article “What Isn’t Religion,” for the insight that definitions of religion are most useful when they include both functional and substantive criteria.) Still, my preference is not to worry so much about definitions of religion and instead to look for instances of reason- giving the fall under the panhuman categories identified in Section 2 of this chapter, particularly when such instances of reason- giving concern ultimate problems and solutions, paths and destinations, realities and truths. And note that by “ultimate,” I have in mind that which serves as a foundational explana- tion for a community in its matters cosmological-ontological or soteriological- existential rather than that which is personally most important or moving for some individual. 170 Notes

21. Note that this is not a family- resemblance definition of religion; rather it is the use of an ultimacy- based “definition” of religion to show family resemblances among the kinds of reason- giving about matters of ultimacy in the religions of the world. To restate, I maintain that all (or at least most) religions offer “reasons” about ultimate problems, solutions, paths, destinations, realities, and truths, but that the kinds of ultimate problems, solutions, paths, destinations, realities, and truths about which they offer reasons can vary considerably. 22. Could informal and implicit acts of reason-giving include nondiscursive forms of reason-giving? I’m inclined to think that this is an avenue of inquiry worth exploring. And I am indebted to the work of Manuel Vásquez for this insight in the first place, then to the comments of Brad Herling for encouraging its reinclusion in this book. As Brad’s comments note, “[C]ertain ‘arguments’ or ‘claims’ are embodied or carried along by practice before (or after) they are rendered in recognizable ‘philosophical’ forms.” 23. This is to say that I am not endorsing them as actual universals; rather I am adopting them as heuristic devices for the detection of a broader, less theistic- centric swath of religious reason- giving. 24. Paden, “Universals Revisited: Human Behaviors and Cultural Variations,” 280–81. 25. Again a comparison to philosophy of science is not inappropriate, as these issues are not unlike those of theory change, “verification,” and “falsification” in the philosophy of science. 26. Geertz, “Thick Description,” 3–30. 27. Ibid., 24. 28. Ibid., 27. 29. In particular see Searle’s three contributions to speech act theory as well as his coauthored work with Daniel Vanderveken on illocutionary logic: Speech Acts, Expression and Meaning, Intentionality, and Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. 30. See especially Umberto Eco’s A Theory of Semiotics. But see also his Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. I am inclined to think that metaphor theory is a species of semiotics, though I am also cognizant of the fact that it brings some resources to the table that are neglected in semiotics (e.g., primary and secondary metaphors, internal gestalts of and external entailments between metaphors; see here George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh). 31. Here my influence is obviously Michel Foucault. See, for example, The Archae- ology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language. 32. John Clayton served as director of the department of religious studies, first at Lancaster University (until 1997), then at Boston University (until his untimely death in 2003). As the preface to Religions, Reasons and Gods indicates, the “point of departure” for this collection of essays is Clayton’s 1992 Stanton Lectures at the University of Cambridge; see Anne Blackburn and Thomas Carroll’s “Editorial Preface” to Religions, Reasons, and Gods. Originally, Clay- ton intended to publish these lectures almost entirely as delivered, but as time wore on, Clayton decided that they needed to be completely reworked. Unfor- tunately, Clayton died in 2003 before this reworking could happen. And so it Notes 171

was left to Clayton’s partner, Anne Blackburn, and one of his students, Thomas Carroll, to collect together a number of Clayton’s previously published essays as well as to edit and complete some of Clayton’s works in progress. 33. Clayton, Religions, Reasons, and Gods, 3. 34. Ibid., 2. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 3. 37. Ibid., 4. In this essay Clayton likened those results to window cleaning, specify- ing that the particular window that he sought to clean “looks out on the roles of rationality in religious contexts”— in other words, “the range of motives and ends served by ‘giving reasons’ within religious contexts” (3). Thus Clayton believed that philosophical analysis could help us see that which has been “in front of our eyes all along” (1). 38. Ibid., 41. This essay—“Thomas Jefferson and the Study of Religion”—was Clayton’s inaugural lecture at Lancaster University. 39. Ibid. 40. Earlier in the essay Clayton suggested that the diversity of religions was philoso- phy of religion’s proper object of study (32). 41. Ibid., 80. For Clayton, this is in contrast to the modern period, where these ends became extratraditional and justificatory, and the proofs were thereby “expected to bear greater weight than they had been designed to bear” (91–92). 42. Ibid., 7– 10, 85– 98, 152, 155– 60, 169– 72. 43. Ibid., 67– 74. Clayton expended no small amount of effort championing the vada tradition of India (particularly vis-à- vis the Jeffersonian-Enlightenment model of debate). He also devoted attention to the kalām tradition of the Near East. In addition to 67–74, see especially 35–42 and 43–57. Note also that Clayton believed that “one way to get at the operations of rationality [and therefore to displace the abstract ideal of context-free rationality by an exami- nation of giving reasons in specific religious contexts] is to look at what count as reasons when their claims are contested” (41). 44. Ibid., 4. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 134. Such momentary setting aside is for the sake of rediscovering the religious uses of the proofs: “Let us aim to determine the extent to which the- istic arguments were at one time embedded in religious traditions by enquiring into the pieties they expressed, the doctrinal schemes they supported, the spiri- tualities they engendered, the God/s they honoured” (134). 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 159. 49. Ibid., 159–60. 50. Ibid., 178– 80. Thus Clayton asks, “Would it not be the height of irony if in the end , who thought that he had discredited anything resembling Anselm’s proof, could be shown to have mapped out for himself a position located not that far from Anselm?” (179). 51. Ibid., 34, 35. 172 Notes

52. Toward the end of “Thomas Jefferson and the Study of Religion,” Clayton says that “[t]he direction in which this lecture has been leading points to the need for a reorientation of philosophy of religion, away from the pretension of reason’s providing a common foundation for religious claims; towards the more modest aim of philosophy’s providing a common discourse in which the nature of religious difference can be clarified” (41). Consider also in this respect Clayton’s comparative clarifications and contestations of Ramanuja and Hume in “Ramanuja, Hume and ‘Comparative Philosophy’” and of Udayana and al- Ghazālī in “Piety and the Proofs.” Also consider Clayton’s critique of John Hick’s “quantifier- shift fallacy” in “Thomas Jefferson and the Study of Religion” (32– 33). 53. Clayton, Religions, Reasons, and Gods, 102. 54. Ibid., 129. 55. Ibid., 132. 56. Gadamer defines history of effect as “the reality and efficacy of history within understanding itself” (Truth and Method, 299). History of effect accompanies all understanding and interpretation: “Understanding is, essentially, a Histori- cally effected event” (299). 57. Seeking to “rehabilitate” the notion of prejudice from the Enlightenment “prej- udice against prejudice,” Gadamer writes, “If we want to do justice to man’s finite, historical mode of being, it is necessary to fundamentally rehabilitate the concept of prejudice and acknowledge the fact that there are legitimate prejudices” (Truth and Method, 278). Thus Gadamer believes that a critique of the Enlightenment critique of prejudice opens the way to an appropriate under- standing of the finitude of historical consciousness: “Does being situated within traditions really mean being subject to prejudices and limited in one’s freedom? Is not, rather, all human existence, even the freest, limited and qualified in vari- ous ways? If this is true, the idea of an absolute reason is not a possibility for historical humanity. Reason exists for us only in concrete, historical terms—i.e., it is not its own master but remains constantly dependent on the given circum- stances in which it operates” (277). 58. Gadamer oftentimes privileged tradition above the individual: “The self- awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being” (Truth and Method, 278). And again, the historical pregiven underlies “all subjective intentions and actions, and hence both prescribes and limits every possibility for understanding any tradition whatsoever in its historical alterity” (301). But Gadamer was else- where careful to say that tradition not only determines but also is determined by subjectivities: “The anticipation of meaning that governs our understanding of a text is not an act of subjectivity, but proceeds from the commonality that binds us to the tradition. But this commonality is constantly being formed in our relation to tradition” (293). 59. For Gadamer, understanding “is never a subjective relation to a given ‘object’ but to the history of its effect” (Truth and Method, xxviii). Notes 173

60. Concerning the former, “When our historical consciousness transposes itself into historical horizons, this does not entail passing into alien worlds uncon- nected in any way with our own” (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 303). Con- cerning the latter, “An important part of this testing occurs in encountering the past and in understanding the tradition from which we come. Hence the horizon of the present cannot be formed without the past. There is no more an isolated horizon of the present in itself than there are historical horizons which have to be acquired. Rather, understanding is always the fusion of these hori- zons supposedly existing by themselves” (305). Concerning both, “Transposing ourselves consists neither in the empathy of one individual for another nor in subordinating another person to our own standards; rather, it always involves rising to a higher universality that overcomes not only our own particularity but also that of the other. The concept of ‘horizon’ suggests itself because it expresses the superior breadth of vision that the person who is trying to under- stand must have. To acquire a horizon means that one learns to look beyond what is close at hand— not in order to look away from it but to see it better, within a larger whole and in truer proportion” (304). 61. Gadamer himself recognized the ambiguity of historically effected conscious- ness, indicating that it is used to mean both the consciousness affected in the course of history and determined by history, and the very consciousness of being thus affected and determined. 62. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 301, 305–6. Gadamer also identified historically effected consciousness with the central problem of hermeneutics and with the problem of application. 63. For Gadamer, “leaving oneself behind” was not even a legitimate ideal for schol- arship (Truth and Method, 398). It was bad enough for him when historians did not admit this naiveté, but it was “truly abysmal” when they admitted it and yet still tried to leave their prejudices behind and think only in the concepts of the epoch they were trying to understand: “Historical consciousness fails to under- stand its own nature if, in order to understand, it seeks to exclude what alone makes understanding possible” (398). Thus “[t]o try to escape from one’s own concepts in interpretation is not only impossible but also manifestly absurd. To interpret means precisely to bring one’s own preconceptions into play so that the text’s meaning can really be made to speak to us” (398). 64. Ibid., 278. Gadamer also recognized that authority can become a source of (distorting) prejudices if it displaces one’s own judgment: “The Enlighten- ment’s distinction between faith in authority and using one’s own reason is, in itself, legitimate. If the prestige of authority displaces one’s own judgment, then authority is in fact a source of prejudices. But this does not preclude its being a source of truth, and that is what the Enlightenment failed to see when it denigrated all authority” (280). 65. About this Gadamer wrote, “The prejudices and fore-meanings that occupy the interpreter’s consciousness are not at his free disposal. He cannot sepa- rate in advance the productive prejudices that enable understanding from the 174 Notes

prejudices that hinder it and lead to misunderstandings. Rather, this separation must take place in the process of understanding itself” (Truth and Method, 295). 66. Ibid., 297. 67. Ibid., 298. Thus Gadamer said that the “first condition of hermeneutics” is that understanding begins when something addresses us. 68. Ibid., 270. This was Gadamer’s answer to questions such as how can we break the spell of our own fore- meanings and how does a text “pull us up short” (270). Two other ways in which he got at the same phenomenon was through the notions of negative experience and the question and answer. In the former case, Gadamer believed that all “new” or “genuine” experiences were “negative” experiences that challenged preexisting expectations: “If a new experience of an object occurs to us, this means that hitherto we have not seen the thing cor- rectly and now know it better” (347). In the latter case, Gadamer believed that when texts were made the object of interpretation they put questions to their interpreters: “That a historical text is made the object of interpretation means that it puts a question to the interpreter. Thus interpretation always involves a relation to the question that is asked of the interpreter. To understand a text means to understand this question” (363). 69. Ibid., 271–72. 70. Gadamer does, at times, recognize that horizons are not singular and static and closed: “The historical movement of human life consists in the fact that it is never absolutely bound to any one standpoint, and hence can never have a truly closed horizon. The horizon is, rather, something into which we move and that moves with us” (Truth and Method, 303). And again, “[I]t is important to avoid the error of thinking that the horizon of the present consists of a fixed set of opinions and valuations, and that the otherness of the past can be foregrounded from it as from a fixed ground. In fact the horizon of the present is continually in the process of being formed because we are continually having to test all our prejudices” (305). And yet again, “The anticipation of meaning that governs our understanding of a text is not an act of subjectivity, but proceeds from the commonality that binds us to the tradition. But this commonality is constantly being formed in our relation to tradition” (293). Nevertheless, this appears not to have had any significant ramifications for his theory of interpretation. 71. I will deal with Gadamer’s position on “affirmation” in the next paragraph. Here, I limit my comments to Gadamer’s position on the singularity of mean- ing. He is none too easy to interpret in this respect. The meaning of a text is not to be confused with authorial intention or original addressee (see, for example, Truth and Method, 365– 67, 396). Nor does any text have one single interpretation that is correct “in itself” (398). Still, Gadamer sees the “real” task of hermeneutics as that of bringing alienated (written) texts into a living (speak- ing) relationship with their interpreters (362, 393, 394–95). And, as Gadamer’s later essay “Text and Interpretation” suggests, the text says one and only one thing to its interpreter in this living-speaking relationship: “every return to the ‘text’— whether it concerns a printed text or merely the repetition of what is Notes 175

expressed in conversation—refers to that which was originally announced or pronounced and that should be maintained as constituting a meaningful iden- tity . . . The printed text should fix the original announcement in such a way that its sense is unequivocally understandable . . . To this extent, reading and understanding mean that what is announced is led back to its original authen- ticity. The task of interpretation always poses itself when the meaning content of the printed word is disputable and it is a matter of attaining the correct understanding of what is being announced. However, this ‘thing that is being conveyed’ is not what the speaker or writer originally said, but rather what he would have wanted to say to me if I had been his original interlocutor” (35). I suppose there are different ways of interpreting these passages. But I take them as indicating that in the moment of interpretation, the “strengthened” text has one and only one “authentic” meaning for its interpreter. 72. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 361. 73. First developed in his Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Later prominent in his mediation of the Gadamer/Habermas “debate” (see “Herme- neutics and the Critique of Ideology”). 74. Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” 63. Concerning the former, Ricoeur maintains that his aim is not to fuse them into a “super- system” that encompasses both but rather to ask them to recognize each other, not as positions that are foreign and purely hostile, but as ones that raise legitimate claims (87–88). Concerning the latter, note that this is just one of two lead- ing questions, the other of which asks whether the critique of ideology can be detached from hermeneutic presuppositions (64). Ricoeur’s answer to this question is, in short, that “[c]ritique is also a tradition” (99). Thus Ricoeur avers that “nothing is more deceptive than the alleged antinomy between an ontology of prior understanding and an of freedom” (100). 75. Ibid., 91. 76. Ibid., 90. Later Ricoeur writes, “[I]f distanciation from oneself is not a fault to be combated, but rather the condition of possibility of understanding one- self in front of the text, then appropriation is the dialectical counterpart of distanciation. Thus the critique of ideology can be assumed by a concept of self- understanding which organically implies a critique of the illusions of the subject. Distanciation from oneself demands that the appropriation of the pro- posed worlds offered by the text passes through the disappropriation of the self. The critique of false consciousness can thus become an integral part of herme- neutics, conferring upon the critique of ideology that meta- hermeneutical dimension which Habermas assigns to it” (94– 95).

Chapter 5

1. Smith, “Adde Parvum Parvo Magnus Acrevus Erit,” 240. See also chapter 5 of Wesley Wildman’s Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry. 2. Carter, “Description Is Not Explanation,” 135. A bit more robustly, Carter’s reasoning is as follows. Description, which “is perhaps the most fundamental 176 Notes

scholarly method” and “is certainly the leading mode of inquiry for most contemporary academic projects,” is “the means by which researchers specify details, disclose characteristics, and list various qualities” (134). And so descrip- tion in general “can be defined as the academic process that accentuates par- ticularity by marking and perceiving differences. It is the process that divides phenomena to specify how certain features of objects, ideas and events differ from others. An adequate description, in this way, succeeds in separating, con- textualizing, and narrating the individuality of phenomena; it provides enough detail to determine exactly how something can be discriminated or differenti- ated from its environment and from other things” (134). And so to restate, “For something to be different, it must be different from something else, and thus it must be compared to something else” (135). Thus all description involves comparison. 3. See, for example, Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions, 5– 6. 4. Robert Neville’s Comparative Religious Ideas Project, about which more will be said in Sections 3 and 4, addresses this concern by detailing five phenom- enological sites of importance for the description of religious phenomena, the first four of which they characterize as follows: “(1) the intrinsic, which involves expressing and analyzing ideas in their own terms; (2) the perspectival, which concerns the ways that religious ideas determine a larger perspective on life; (3) the theoretical, by which we mean the ways that the ideas lead to larger theoretical considerations; and (4) the practical, which has to do with the implications of the religious ideas for practice” (Wildman and Neville, “On the Nature of Religion,” 206). The last of these sites, the singularity of religious phenomena, is then given special mention as “the special qualities that cannot be analyzed or compared. The only way to get at religious ideas and practices in their singularity is to become competent in their use, which in the case of ideas superficially involves mastery of metaphor and other forms of indirection used in the special social- linguistic context within which the achievement of mastery is fostered. More profoundly it involves engaging putatively religious realities to see whether truth is quickened. It follows that not everything in religious phe- nomena can be brought to the discussion table and made the object of compar- ative generalizations. Our project has been keenly aware that our comparative efforts have been both limited by ideas considered as singular and complicated by the diversity of phenomenological sites that are relevant to expressing them” (207). (For a more detailed description of these sites, see Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas,” in The Human Condition, 202–6.) Perhaps I’m missing something here, but it seems to me that to become competent in the use of some religious idea such as to determine that it cannot be compared is in fact to compare it (i.e., to say that it is different from some other religious idea(s) in some respect). Regardless, let me say here that I do find most of these phenomenological sites useful to the ends of thick description of religious reason- giving (especially the intrinsic, perspectival, and theoretical). 5. Smith. “In Comparison a Magic Dwells,” 21. 6. Ibid. Notes 177

7. Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas,” in The Human Condi- tion, 12– 13. 8. Indeed, Smith himself seems to be in agreement with this, as his forward to the final volume of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, Religious Truth, makes just this point: “Comparison is fundamental to intellection. The com- pulsion to compare persists, whether we will or not. The task is to do it right. This requires a conceptualizing confidence that is grounded in an articulate theory of comparison. The latter is a hallmark of this volume along with its two companions” (xi; see also Smith’s “Epilogue” to A Magic Still Dwells). Note, though, that Smith does take issue with the Comparative Religious Ideas Proj- ect’s failure to address the issue of incommensurability with an adequate theory of translation: “While the scarcely concealed antagonist of Religious Truth is a sort of popular relativism, I wish the Project had taken aim at a more carefully formulated position that affects every aspect of its work: that of incommensu- rability. This would have required a major, additional theoretical undertaking, the development, for the purposes of the Project, of an adequate theory of translation. This latter remains one of the most urgent areas for thought within the human sciences in general, and in the study of religion in particular” (xii). 9. See my discussion of matters of ultimacy in Section 1 of Chapter 4. 10. The motivations, goals, methods, processes, and conclusions of the Compara- tive Religious Ideas Project are registered in its three-volume publication: The Human Condition, Ultimate Realities, and Religious Truth. As the preface to all three of the volumes states, two “intimately related” purposes motivated the Comparative Religious Ideas Project: “[T]o develop and test a theory con- cerning the comparison of religious ideas, and to make some important com- parisons about religious ideas of the human condition, ultimate realities, and religious truth” (xv). 11. Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas,” in The Human Condi- tion, 14– 16. 12. Neville and Wildman’s essay “On Comparing Religious Ideas” in Ultimate Realities references Peirce’s essays “Issues of Pragmaticism” and “Consequences of Common Critical- Sensism” (in note 6 on page 209). 13. Neville and Wildman propose five “phenomenological sites” to help in deter- mining whether a religious idea is being represented fairly; see note 4 for these sites. 14. Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas,” in The Human Con- dition, 15–16. This passage continues, “To say that the various religions fall under the same vague category is not comparison. To say that the specifications sit side by side is not comparison. Comparison is to say how the specifications are similar and different in terms of the category in respect to which they are compared” (16). 15. Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas,” in Ultimate Realities, 199– 200. 16. In fact, it first proposed the category of ultimate reality, but this was soon seen as too vague, in the sense that it masked two different subcategories: ontological 178 Notes

ultimate reality, those gods or absolutes that are metaphysically primary; and existential ultimate reality, those concerns or aims that are existentially most important (Neville and Wildman, “Introduction,” 1– 3). 17. This specification was obviously limited; only six traditions were examined, all of which were “literate,” and half of which were considered through the lens of some particular subtradition. Thus Neville and Wildman end up describing this process of specification as “almost like random spot- checks in a field so vast that it is hard to be sure that we have a fair sample” (“Introduction,” 6). 18. Neville and Wildman suggest that personal conceptions of ontological ultimate reality tend to predominate in devotional contexts, while philosophical con- ceptions of ontological ultimate reality tend to predominate in philosophical contexts (“Comparative Conclusions about Ultimate Realities,” 168, 178–85). 19. Neville and Wildman, “Comparative Conclusions about Ultimate Realities,” 171, 174. Thus Neville and Wildman believe that “[p]ushed to its conceptual purity, the notion of ontological creation required to account for the possible togetherness of related but different things includes three interrelated notions”: (1) the creative act is an asymmetrical move from nothing to the determina- tion of the world (creative act), (2) creation is out of nothing (indeterminate source of the act), (3) the creative act issues in the determinate world (deter- minate product) (173). If I’m not mistaken, they then go on to identify each of these notions with a region of religions: (1) the focus on the creative act (out of nothing) is reflected in West Asian theisms, (2) the focus on the source of the creative act is reflected in South Asian religions, and (3) the focus on the determinate product (“the novelty-making spontaneity in each and every occurrence”) is reflected in . 20. Pertinent here is Neville and Wildman’s recognition of the role of antecedent theory in comparison: “What we have learned from this is that religious ideas cannot be compared except with a heuristic theory of what religion is, what is important, and what ought to be looked at” (“Introduction,” 3). Note also that Neville and Wildman also recognize that they inevitably employed their own “biases and perspectives in constructing a concrete representation of ultimate realities and drawing comparative hypotheses” (6). 21. In addition to the Eckel and Thatamanil contribution following, see Kohn and Miller’s “Ultimate Reality: Chinese Religion.” 22. Were to enter the comparison, it too might pose difficulties, though not because it doesn’t possess ultimate ontological realities but because such realities don’t act as ultimate causes. 23. Eckel and Thatamanil, “Cooking the Last Fruit of Nihilism,” 125. 24. Ray, African Religions, 52. 25. Neville and Wildman state the former and imply the latter. On the former, see Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas,” in Ultimate Realities, 201–2. On the latter, see, for example, Neville and Wildman, “Comparative Conclusions about Ultimate Realities,” 166– 67. 26. To restate, the logic of contingency supposes “that human life, if not the cos- mos itself, is contingent and dependent on ultimate causes other than itself,” Notes 179

whereas the dialectic of transcendence maintains that “[a]part from actually creating, there is nothing, no God who is a being with inner intentions, no substance with potentialities, no secretly pregnant non- being” (Neville and Wildman, “Comparative Conclusions about Ultimate Realities,” 171, 174). Neville and Wildman recognize that constitutes a problem of sorts, which they respond to as follows: “Buddhism radicalizes the focus on imme- diacy of the dependent world. It emphasizes contingency in every sense just as much as any other tradition; but with its focus on the suchness of what is contingent, it finds nothing behind that. The Buddhist schools differ widely in their interpretation of temporal process and what if anything endures through that. But they agree that any specifiable thing, including the whole if they allow reference to that, is radically contingent on something other than itself. But by the logic of contingency, there is no thing on which they are dependent. Sub- ordinating concerns for the asymmetrical act of creation, Mahāyāna Buddhists search for ways to talk about process as if it had no enduring being of its own, the recognition of this being enlightenment about the true meaning and reality of the life of change and liberation from the sufferings that come from expect- ing some reality to depend on. Madhyāmikas and other Buddhists would not describe the logic of contingency as the contingent nature of the creator; that is theistic talk. They would rather say that this is ultimate truth, the moral of which is that the determinate world, such as it is, is the only thing that is deter- minate. Having attained that ultimate insight, we should forget the logic of contingency because it only points to nothing beyond the determinate world, and attend to freedom within change. Whereas the theistic religions employ the rhetoric of a transcendent being to describe the absolutely indeterminate source as it would be apart from creation, Buddhism employs the rhetoric of denial of transcendent reality to make the same point. No less than the other religions, Buddhism has multiple scales of personifications of its angle on the creative act or, rather, its emphasis on the dependent product of that act” (176). Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t find anything here that disputes the claim that, for Madhyamaka Buddhism, the cosmos is not contingent and dependent on ultimate causes other than itself. Neville and Wildman recognize that in spite of its emphasis on contingency, Buddhism “finds nothing behind” the suchness of what is contingent. And they suggest that for at least some Bud- dhist traditions everything is contingent qua mutually contingent (dependent co- origination), not contingent on ultimate causes. Perhaps what they are say- ing here is that for some Buddhist traditions (e.g., Madhyamaka) everything is contingent on an ultimate truth. But on the one hand, Madhyāmika Bud- dhists such as Nāgārjuna were careful to declare the emptiness of any claim to ultimate truth. And on the other hand, I fail to see here how ultimate truth functions as an ultimate cause or an indeterminate source. 27. See, for example, Neville and Wildman’s generalizations in “Comparative Con- clusions about Ultimate Realities.” 180 Notes

28. Of course, every comparison must be made with respect to some general cate- gory. My concern here is more with that which is the primary object of inquiry, the generalized ideas of some religion or specific acts of religious reason-giving. 29. For the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, this is the notion that, in addition to the cultural-historical contingency of religious phenomena, there is a “given- ness” to religion that “appears to involve culturally transcendent or invariant features” (Wildman and Neville, “On the Nature of Religion,” 208– 11). 30. Consider here the criticisms of one member of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, Paula Fredriksen: “Paula was especially intransigent on this issue [of characterizing traditions as a whole], however, urging the group to recognize that any large- scale characterization across historical periods and cultures masks more than it illumines and inevitably falls prey to the anachronistic tendency to interpret the far past and the culturally remote through the distorting and often irrelevant terms of our contemporary experience” (Wildman, “On the Process of the Project during the Second Year,” 263). Note that there is textual evidence to suggest against this interpretation (that Neville privileges the general), most notably Neville’s skepticism regarding the comparative usefulness of both reli- gion in general and specific religions in particular (Wildman and Neville, “On the Nature of Religion,” 214– 15). But Neville is nonetheless confident about an ability to identify the core texts and motifs of religious traditions (Neville, “Preface,” xxi). And Neville is also self- described as an “unrepentant realist” who believes that traditions speak through individuals (Neville and Wildman, “Introduction,” 7). For more on the latter point, see note 31. 31. Pertinent here is the “debate” between the author- and text-focused “nominal- ists” and tradition- and idea-focused “realists” among the Comparative Reli- gious Ideas Project participants: “How do traditions ‘say’ what they say? Eckel, citing the authority of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, insists that traditions as such do not say anything. Only individual authors within traditions, or particular texts, say things about ultimate realities. In deference to this nominalism, we tried, especially in The Human Condition, to avoid writing that ‘Buddhism says x about the human condition whereas Hinduism says y.’ Rather we would write ‘Nāgārjuna in the Madhyamaka Buddhist school says x whereas Śa৆kara, in the Advaita Vedāntin, says y.’ Neville, on the other hand, an unrepentant realist, insists that ideas are general and that it is the society or tradition that says things, through individuals as tokens. Of course particular texts have a singularity, an haecceity, that distinguishes them from one another within the tradition, and important texts modify the tradition. Yet the discourse is that of the community, the tradition; the individual authors are important to the degree that they express or modify the tradition. Perhaps no single author says fully what the tradition itself is saying with its complex and interpersonal, usu- ally intergenerational, play of assertive signs. For the realist, ‘Nāgārjuna says x’ is a metonymous abbreviation for ‘Madhyamaka Buddhism (as shaped by Nāgārjuna) says x.’ Of course there is truth on both sides, and also error. The balance lies somewhere between the view that there are a great number of reli- gious authors distributed by loyalties through six traditions and the view that Notes 181

the traditions with their assorted means of influence speak through their writ- ers. And the associated limitation is that we allow more messiness around what or who has ideas in this volume than we allowed in The Human Condition” (Neville and Wildman, “Introduction,” 7). I am in agreement with this much: if we want to understand the religious reason-giving of some particular author or text, then we need to understand the tradition that informs it. Nevertheless, as I’ve argued, I believe our focus should be on concrete acts of religious reason- giving (in texts) rather than abstract religious ideas and traditions. Also pertinent here is Robert Smid’s critique of the rhetoric of fallibilism in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. Smid believes “fallibilism becomes less and less relevant and applicable as one climbs the ladders of abstraction, insofar as it becomes increasingly difficult to subject such ideas to correction” (Methodologies of Comparative Philosophy, 164). Fallibilism therefore not only becomes “an empty gesture”; it also becomes “a deceptive, even self- deceptive, gesture”: “If this assessment of fallibilism is accurate, then a professed com- mitment to it at the highest levels of abstraction does not simply become an empty gesture; insofar as it promises a check on the results of inquiry— and thus a claim to its reliability—that it cannot deliver, it also becomes a decep- tive, even self- deceptive, gesture. A good fallibilistic theory, even at the highest level of abstraction, may seem to account for the empirical evidence (because this is precisely what it is designed to do) even when it cannot actually do so (because of the excessive distance between the idea and the relevant empirical data). Indeed, it can become a protective umbrella under which to pursue a philosophical project that is ultimately unsubstantiable, all the while untram- meled by the objections of those who would rain down their objections along the way. In this way, it can serve—however unwittingly—as a shield from the very vulnerability to correction that fallibilism was intended to provide” (165). These are just more reasons to compare concrete acts of religious reason-giving rather than abstract religious ideas. 32. Paden writes that it is “the archetypes of behavior, so to speak, rather than archetypes of meaning, that invite study, and that help students relate otherwise different and distant cultural expressions to ‘known,’ intelligible human reali- ties” (“Theaters of Worldmaking Behavior,” 74). 33. Paden, “Universals Revisited,” 280–81. Elsewhere (“Theaters of Worldmak- ing”) Paden offers the following nine categories of panhuman dispositions: kin loyalty behavior; making objects sacred; making pasts; maintaining order and punishing its violations; submitting to status and hierarchy; reciprocity behav- iors; display behaviors; making meaning and making explanations; modifying the self (65–72). Here Paden also defines the panhuman as that which recurs cross-culturally or evolved species-specific genetic dispositions for certain kinds of behavior (60). Note, again, that I myself do not endorse these categories as actual universals; rather I adopt them as heuristic devices for the detection and comparison of a broader, less theistic swath of religious reason- giving. 34. For Paden this includes threats of normal crises (e.g., suffering, pain, death) as well as threats from competing worlds (from within or without). 182 Notes

35. Neville and Wildman, “On Comparing Religious Ideas,” in Human Condition, 10. 36. Ibid., 13. 37. In the first case, Neville admits that these religions might be much more impor- tant to these topics than indicated; in the second case, he says that the omission of these methods might be problematic; and in the third case, he maintains that it’s necessary to formulate a stable hypothesis before criticizing it (“Preface,” xxiv– xxv). 38. It should be recognized that there was notable diversity among the participants of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. But to read the essays by the spe- cialists and then read the conclusions of the generalists is to see that this diver- sity (in particular the objections of the specialists) is often overridden in laying the road of Nevillean conclusions. This is also true, I think, for the commend- able strategy of treating the details of some particular text in conjunction with the core texts and motifs of that text’s tradition, a strategy that is said to “avoid the pitfalls of attempting to describe the ‘essence’ of a religious tradition” while still making “general characterizations based on the core text and motifs and the diverse ways they have been interpreted” (Neville and Wildman, “Preface,” xxi). These details just get lost in the comparative conclusions.

Chapter 6

1. I draw here on the Dictionary.com definitions of explanation and evaluation. This is not to say that they are therefore “correct,” but rather that I am using them in ways that are in agreement with everyday discourse. 2. Why just truth and value? Since the question of truth involves what some- thing is, and the question of value involves what something does, I take these two questions as mutually exhaustive of our evaluative endeavors. This is to say that questions about what something means are preliminary to questions of truth and value. It is also to say that questions about whether something is valuable includes questions of intrinsic significance and external usefulness. But note that although the question of truth is a question about what is, the criteria of truth are numerous, including not only accuracy but also consistency, coherence, simplicity, and use. And note that the contexts and criteria of value are also numerous: the former includes at least the psychological-biological, social- political, and cultural-religious; and the latter includes at least traditional ethical criteria such as consistency, utility, and flourishing. More about these matters in Section 2. 3. Note, though, that this claim could still have positive value. 4. Just as I am not of the opinion that theological explanations can rule out other explanations a priori, so I am not of the opinion that theological explanations can be ruled out a priori. But I do believe that theological explanations become less plausible, the more plausible naturalistic explanations become. 5. Kuhn, “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice.” Consistency for Kuhn includes both internal consistency and external coherence. Notes 183

6. Note that Wildman advocates the temporary displacement of the term phi- losophy of religion by that of religious philosophy, a terminological move that Wildman believes is necessitated by the current state of philosophy of religion, a state that is “haunted” by “two great problems”: first, philosophy of religion suffers from “unresolved contradictions about method and scope arising from internal diversity of its activities and fundamental disagreements about human reason”; second, philosophy of religion is “significantly out of step with the academic study of religion” (Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Compara- tive Inquiry, ix; see also 308–11). 7. More elaborately, for Wildman, a pragmatic theory of inquiry has six main emphases: • Biology: inquiry is an embodied activity made possible by senses and brain. • Evolution: inquiry serves survival through helping human beings solve problems. • Sociality: inquiry is a social process depending on cooperation and consensus. • Correction: inquiry is tentative formulation of hypotheses, con- tinually seeking correction. • Fallibilism: beliefs are always subject to correction. • Critical realism: the source of correction is a feedback potential or an experiential resistance to hypotheses; this is the proper empirical basis for speaking of sensible, structured reality external to human experience (Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry, 170). Wildman maintains that a pragmatic theory of inquiry “was the first tradition of world philosophy, and is still the principle philosophical tradition, that takes full and nonreductive account of the emerging evolutionary view of human minds, human sociality, and human experience of the world” (170). Interestingly, he also finds that “the biological and social rooting of the pragmatic theory of inquiry gives it a lot in common with critical theory,” especially with respect to the “detection and criticism of ideology” (198). 8. Wildman, Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry, 173. In the case of efficient inquiry this way of inquiring follows the threefold proce- dure of abduction, deduction, and correction: “Intuitive abduction and imagi- native induction allow us to formulate hypotheses; deduction produces testable consequences and predictions by which we might try to correct and improve our provision hypotheses; and finally a process of correction identifies errors and provokes adjustments to our hypotheses” (173). 9. Ibid., 177. Note, though, that fallibilism doesn’t rule out truth seeking: “The word inquiry suggests solving a problem through an organized, rational proce- dure that yields an answer to the problem, an answer that purports to be true, along with reasons for believing the answer that are thoroughly tested within 184 Notes

a community of experts. The ideal of truth- seeking is built into the idea of inquiry— even when inquiry is the fallibilist, hypothetical procedure I conceive it to be, and even when confidence about truth- finding is low” (4). 10. Ibid., 216. Put differently, “rationality is the joining of consensus,” which sta- bilizes group identity around norms and procedures for inquiry, “and correct- ability, which in turn crucially depends upon the impressive yet uneven power of reality to correct hypotheses” (181). 11. Ibid., 183. Thus Wildman calls the dependence of inquiry on feedback poten- tial “the central metaphysical hypothesis in any theory of rationality” for a pragmatic theory of inquiry and therefore “the fundamental explanation of dis- ciplinary demarcation” (79). And he calls the whence of correctability “the very meaning of reality” for a pragmatist (78). 12. Ibid., 183. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 216. Put differently, “[i]t is never easy to adjudicate the question about how much of the difficulty of a given inquiry is due to the feedback poten- tial and how much to the cognitive and social limitations of human beings as inquirers” (184). 15. Ibid., 189–90. 16. Ibid., 51. 17. Ibid., 52–54. I worry here, particularly with respect to numbers 2 and 5, that Wildman’s religious philosophy is a bit too conservative. Consider, for example, Chapter 8’s “strong reading together” of diverse religious phenom- ena under the Kantianesque categories of the ontotheological, cosmotheological, physicotheological, psychotheological, axiotheological, and mysticotheological. For me, these categories are too steeped in the modern-Western philosophical tra- dition. Thus Wildman’s treatment of these “ancient yet active” distinct tradi- tions of religious philosophy appears to shoehorn or appendix non- Western religious phenomena into these modern- Western categories and agendas. I worry, therefore, that “a degree of conservatism” regarding such “wisdom” would prevent the introduction of much needed non- Western categories and perspectives. Consider also, for example, Chapter 8’s treatment of the mystico- theological tradition in particular and religious experience/cognition in general. Here Wildman’s focus on altered states of consciousness and cognitive break- down not only arguably disregards the sorts of critical disciplinary perspectives and tools that religious studies has recently brought to the subject of religious experience but also tacitly assumes that ultimate realities are similarly ineffable across religious traditions in ways that an analysis of linguistic techniques of ineffability can reveal. Is this, too, part of the “conservatism in inquiry, which resists the hasty abandonment of a promising idea when it comes upon hard times”? If so, perhaps the degree of conservatism here is too great. 18. This is the first of five features of religious philosophy that Wildman finds dis- tinctive to religious philosophy: (1) “the existential entanglement of the expert inquirer in the subject matter of the inquiry is common within religious phi- losophy and rare elsewhere”; (2) “the distinction between first- level inquires Notes 185

pursued informally in communities of nonexperts and second-level inquires prosecuted by experts is also common in religious philosophy and less pro- nounced outside religious philosophy”; (3) “religious philosophy sometimes involves formal inquiry into ultimate concerns and ultimate realities, which is relatively uncommon in most other human intellectual endeavors and strictly out of bounds for the natural and social sciences”; (4) “religious philosophy is inherently crosscultural and comparative in character”; and (5) “religious philosophy is implicated in making sense of multiple disciplines to an unusual degree” (Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry, 233– 34). 19. Ibid., 211– 12. For Wildman, there are seven styles of religious philosophy: the phenomenological, comparative, historical, analytic, literary, theoretical, and evaluative (38–39). It is the task of the first three styles—the phenomenologi- cal, comparative, and historical—to stabilize “a concept of a religious subject matter for inquiry” (43). Once this has happened, the latter four styles— the analytic, literary, theoretical, and evaluative— make their distinctive contribu- tions, which range from the “passive” and “less intellectually aggressive” style of analysis to the “audacious” and “more intellectually aggressive” style of evalua- tion (43– 45). 20. Ibid., 212. 21. Ibid., 214. Elsewhere, he writes, “If objectivity and neutrality have to mean lack of involvement—keeping phenomena at an existentially safe distance, or moral impotence—then they certainly do seem unworthy of being called ‘virtues.’ Rather, in this case, objectivity and neutrality would be forms of self-destruction in that they deny the primal moral responsibility of human beings. By contrast, in the of Lévinas, objectivity can only mean seeing things as they really are— value-laden and interested from beginning to end— and adjusting one’s life appropriately to this reality, which necessarily means giving oneself over to an uncomfortable but ultimately rewarding encounter with the Other” (24). 22. Ibid., 214. 23. Ibid., 24. Wildman calls this the “Loyalty Criterion.” 24. Ibid., 25, 26. This defense of objectivity is part of a general strategy: with respect to those aspects of religious philosophy that are most controversial, Wildman rules out principled, a priori objections, taking what might instead be called a “look and see” attitude (16–18, 22–26, 29–31, 74, 210–14, 216–17, 248, 304– 5). For more on this, see my “What’s in the Names.” 25. On this, see Hugh Urban’s “Making a Place to Take a Stand.” I appreciate what Urban has to say here about fronting our theoretical and methodological biases about religion. But I wonder whether everyone who engages in the study of religion is as clear about and fixed in these biases as Urban makes it seem. 26. As I’ve articulated elsewhere (“What’s in the Names”), although I am in agreement with Wildman’s points about existential entanglement, I am more wary about his comments regarding the role of theology in the philosophy of religion. To me, theology is the investigation of the ideational structure of some religious tradition, usually Christianity, as undertaken from the vantage point of an adherent of that religion and for the ends of that religion. For 186 Notes

me, theological activity is therefore ruled out by Wildman’s “Loyalty Crite- rion.” (Theology is what philosophy of religion studies, not what it does.) But Wildman wants to carve out space within religious philosophy for a certain mode of theology qua “inquiry into topics of ultimate importance to religious people and traditions” or “multidisciplinary comparative inquiry into ultimate matters,” not “an intellectual activity legitimating the practices and beliefs of a particular religious institution” (Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry, 27, 28, 26–27). Thus he employs a distinction between philosophical theology and confessional theology, the former of which refers to “the theologically more aggressive aspirations of religious philosophy”; the lat- ter, to that which “self-consciously serves the interests of religious institutions” (29). And he also rejects Tillich’s distinction between theology and philosophy of religion, opting for a distinction in terms of social contexts, purposes, and resources: “When theology stresses the social location of religious institutions, the purpose of maintaining or reforming religious identity on behalf of such institutions, and the authoritative resources of sacred texts and traditions—it tends toward the confessional. When theology’s social location is chiefly the intellectual and literary history of religions, when its purpose is inquiry into ultimacy, and when its resources are description, comparison, analysis, and multidisciplinary theory building—and when it refuses to treat the sacred texts and traditions of any particular religion as decisively authoritative— it tends toward the philosophical (in the sense defended here)” (32; see also 236– 37). This—the inclusion of a certain mode of the theological within the philosophy of religion—is a curious move to me, particularly given Wildman’s rejection of the name philosophy of religion for that of religious philosophy (see note 6). As I indicated in “What’s in the Names,” I just can’t see “why philosophy of religion but not theology should be so confessionally tainted as to be academi- cally unfeasible. For it is arguably the case that the reason why philosophy of religion is so confessionally tainted is that it is, or at least appears to outsiders to be, too theologically- motivated— undertaken by (Christian) theists for the sake of showing (Christian) theism rational, or by (Christian) postmodernists for the sake of showing (Christian) postmodernity insightful” (302). This, of course, is not the kind of theology that Wildman endorses (for inclusion within religious philosophy). But, as I continue, “why bother parsing these distinctions? And why does ‘religious philosophy’ require theology in order to inquire into matters of ultimate concern? Why can’t ‘religious philosophy’ do this all by itself? For me, the problem is not that philosophy of religion can’t inquire into matters of ultimate concern, but that it too often does so from confessionally theological committed grounds and for confessionally theo- logical driven ends” (302). Nevertheless, as I’ve also indicated in “What’s in the Names,” I believe our disagreement is more semantic than substantive: it is one about how to best to speak of philosophy of religion in order to practice philosophy of religion. 27. Wildman, Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry, 200– 201. Notes 187

28. Ibid., 78–79. 29. Wildman is clear that his understanding of religious philosophy as multidis- ciplinary comparative inquiry does not depend on the details of his theory of inquiry. Still, he believes that “many of the key arguments, while sound regardless of the enclosing epistemological framework, only achieve their full strength in the presence of a pragmatic theory of inquiry” (Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry, 167). 30. I was first introduced to this idea in Wayne Proudfoot’s Religious Experience. And most recently I have encountered it in Kevin Schilbrack’s “Religions: Are There Any?” More extensively, surveys of back issues of Method & Theory in the Study of Religion and The Journal of the American Academy of Religion don’t turn up any recent critiques of descriptive reductionism. 31. I thank Tom Carroll for pointing out (in private correspondence) that “if an explanation contains an internal contradiction, then it could be ruled out a priori,” and “if one explanation contradicts another, then they could not both be true although they may possess other epistemic virtues that count in their favor.” 32. Flood, Beyond Phenomenology, 170. 33. Ibid., 171. 34. See, for example, Donald Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” And see also Steve Pinker’s accessible and entertaining critique of Whorfianism in Chapter 3 of The Language Instinct. Anna Wierzbicka has also offered effective arguments against extreme Whorfianism from a quasi- Whorfian position; see especially her introduction to Semantics, Culture, and Cognition. 35. We’re sometimes led to believe that ends of description and evaluation neces- sarily preclude one another— that if we take seriously the understanding of religious forms of life, then we cannot evaluate them, or that if we want to evaluate religious concepts and arguments, then we cannot privilege the under- standing of them. But this is a false dichotomy, resting on exaggerated views of both understanding and evaluation. The understanding of religious forms of life always already involves their evaluation, which should therefore be under- taken in a more explicit and public manner, while the evaluation of religious concepts and arguments is more probably accurate the more informed it is by a contextual and comparative understanding of those concepts and arguments. I treated Gavin Flood’s Beyond Phenomenology as an example of the claim that description precludes evaluation. Here, let me note that Roger Trigg’s Rational- ity and Religion makes for an interesting example of the converse. It’s not that Trigg is outright opposed to the study of religious “forms of life.” He does, though, spend a fair bit of time worrying about the “danger” and “tempta- tion” of allowing their study to take precedence over that of religious truth, of allowing philosophy to become “mere descriptive sociology” (134–39). Why? For Trigg, there are two concerns: one practical, the other theoretical. The practical concern is that the more one spends time describing religious forms of life, the less one is able to transcend religious forms of life and talk about 188 Notes

what is really the case (Ibid.). The theoretical concern is that privileging the study of religious forms of life leads to relativism and antirealism rather than a “context- less rationality, detached and impartial” (148). But these concerns are themselves concerning, again for both practical and theoretical reasons. With respect to the practical, given that contextual-comparative understanding has gotten short shrift in history of the philosophy of religion—which, arguably, currently possesses a rather pitiful understanding of the range of forms of reli- gious reason-giving in the religions of the world—it seems perfectly reasonable for the understanding of religious forms of life to take precedence in the phi- losophy of religion for the foreseeable future. With respect to the theoretical, given that objectivity is a product of, among other things, the expansion rather than the transcendence of context, philosophy of religion ought to spend more time, not less, seeking to understand a wide range of religious forms of life. Bibliography

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African religions, 110– 11 Cao Ðài, 85 Alston, William, 20– 21, 45– 48 Caputo, John, 13– 14, 15, 55– 58, 66, 68 analytic philosophy of religion, 3– 23, Carroll, Thomas, 171n32, 187n31 25– 48, 68– 70 Carter, Jeffrey, 100 critical evaluation, 20– 21, 44– 48 CDPR. See Contemporary Debates in formal comparison, 19, 40– 44 Philosophy of Religion objects of inquiry, 10– 12, 26– 32 Christianity, 10, 13– 15, 26– 29, 32– subject who inquire, 13– 15, 32– 36 36, 37, 55– 58, 63, 65– 66, 135, thick description, 17, 36– 40 146n54 Anderson, Pamela, 14, 58 “Claims, Contexts, and Contestability” anomie, 17, 37, 39, 148n73 (Clayton), 88– 90 “Apophasis and Askêsis” (Ellsworth), 16, Clayton, John, 88– 92, 170– 71n32 53, 59– 62 “Claims, Contexts, and “Apophasis and the Turn of Philosophy Contestability,” 88– 90 to Religion” (Franke), 16, 59– 61 “Otherness of Anselm, The,” 91 “Piety and the Proofs,” 90– 91 Bahá’í, 85 “Ramanuja, Hume, and Baker, Deane- Peter, 9, 49, 142n37. See ‘Comparative Philosophy,’” 92 also Explorations in Contemporary “Thomas Jefferson and the Study of Continental Philosophy of Religion Religion,” 91 Benson, Bruce, 160– 61n10 Comparative Religious Ideas Project, Bergmann, Michael, 17, 33, 38– 39 17, 103– 4, 109– 13, 115– 16 Beyond Phenomenology (Flood), 131– 32, criteria of comparison, lack of, 134, 187n35 114– 15 Billimoria, Purushottama, 168n11 criticisms of, 110– 11, 180n30, “Birth and the Powers of Horror: Julia 180– 81n31 Kristeva on Gender, Religion, and dialectic of transcendence, 110, 111, Death” (Jantzen), 21, 68– 70 178– 79n26 Blackburn, Anne, 171n32 five phenomenological sites of Buddhism, 30, 54, 63, 81, 83, 110– 11, importance, 176n4 122, 132, 134– 35, 178– 79n26, logic of contingency, 110– 11, 180– 81n31 178– 79n26 Byrne, Peter, 19, 33, 41– 44 three “modes,” “moments,” or “levels,” 109– 10 “Can Only One Religion Be True?” ultimate realities, 109– 10, (Yandell and Byrne), 19, 41– 44 177– 78n16 202 Index

Comparison Project, ix– x, 137 End of Philosophy of Religion, The , 30, 85 (Trakakis), 3– 9 Contemporary Debates in Philosophy “End to Evil, An” (Dallmayr), 18, 64– 65 of Religion (Peterson and “Evaluating Religion” (Kapitan), 11, VanArragon), 9, 12, 25, 28– 29, 29– 32 33, 43, 45 evaluation “Can Only One Religion Be True?” analytic philosophy of religion, 20– (Yandell and Byrne), 19, 33, 21, 44– 48 41– 44 continental philosophy of religion, “Does Divine Hiddenness Justify 21– 22, 66– 72 Atheism?” (Schellenberg and defined, 119, 182n1 Moser), 14– 15, 33– 36 multidimensional, 19– 22, 119– 36 “Does Religious Experience Justify “Evolutionary Answer to the Problem Religious Belief?” (Alston and of Faith and Reason, The” Fales), 20– 21, 45– 48 (Schellenberg), 11 “Is Evil Evidence against Belief in explanation God?” (Rowe and Howard- Snyder/ continental philosophy of religion, Bergmann), 17, 33, 38– 39 66– 72 continental philosophy of religion, defined, 119, 182n1 3– 23, 49– 72, 144n41, multidimensional, 119– 36 146– 47nn54– 55, 166n84 Explorations in Contemporary evaluation, 21– 22, 66– 72 Continental Philosophy of Religion explanation, 66– 72 (Baker and Maxwell), 9, 49 formal comparison, 18, 62– 66 “Feminism in Philosophy of objects of inquiry, 10– 11, 50– 54 Religion” (Anderson), 14, 58 subjects who inquire, 13– 14, 54– 58 thick description, 16– 17, 59– 62 Fales, Evan, 20– 21, 45– 48 “Continental Philosophy of Religion: feminism, 14, 34– 35, 58 An Introduction” (Goodchild), 21, “Feminism in Philosophy of Religion” 67– 68, 70– 72 (Anderson), 14, 58 Fitzgerald, Timothy, 77– 78 Dallmayr, Fred, 18, 64– 65 Flood, Gavin, 131– 32, 134, 187n35 Daoism, 30, 85 formal comparison, 17– 19, 40– 44, 62– Derrida, Jacques, 18, 51– 52, 55, 65 66, 99– 117 “Does Divine Hiddenness Justify analytic philosophy of religion and, Atheism?” (Schellenberg and 19, 40– 44 Moser), 14– 15, 33– 36 categories of comparison, 100, 108– 13 “Does Religious Experience Justify continental philosophy of religion Religious Belief?” (Alston and and, 18, 62– 66 Fales), 20– 21, 45– 48 criticisms of, 101– 4 definition of formal, 101, 113– 14 ECCPR. See Explorations in how to compare, 100, 113– 17 Contemporary Continental panhuman behaviors as categories, Philosophy of Religion 18, 111– 13 Ellsworth, Jonathan, 16, 53, 61– 62 what to compare, 100, 104– 8 Index 203

why to compare, 100– 104 inquiry See also Comparative Religious Ideas community of (see subjects who Project; religious reason- giving inquire) Franke, William, 16, 53, 59– 62 objects of (see objects of inquiry) subjects who (see subjects who Gadamer, Hans Georg, 61, 93– 96, 132 inquire) Geertz, Clifford, 85– 86 Wesley Wildman on, 126– 29 God International Journal for Philosophy of categories of comparison and, 40– 41 Religion (Long), 9, 49, 142n38 filial relationship with, 15, 35 “Apophasis and the Turn of formal comparison and, 106, 108, 115 Philosophy to Religion” (Franke), perceptions of, 20– 21, 45–48 16, 53, 59– 62 proofs of existence of, 156n74 “End to Evil, An” (Dallmayr), 18, Pseudo- Dionysius on ineffability of, 64– 65 114, 115 “Naming the Unnameable God” Goodchild, Philip, 9, 21– 22, 49– 50, (Min), 18, 65– 66 67– 68, 70– 72. See also Rethinking “Is Evil Evidence against Belief in God?” Philosophy of Religion (Rowe and Howard- Synder/ “Continental Philosophy of Religion: Bergmann), 17, 33, 38– 39 An Introduction,” 21, 67– 68, Islam, 27, 40, 85 70– 72 “Politics and Experience: Bergsonism Jainism, 30, 85 Beyond Transcendence and Jantzen, Grace, 21, 67– 70 Immanence,” 21, 68 Jefferson, Thomas, 91 Jensen, Jeppe, 169n18 Halbfass, Wilhelm, 92 Judaism, 85 Halteman, Matthew, 12– 13, 18, 51– 53, 63 Kant, Immanuel, 51– 52, 89 Herling, Brad, 170n22 Kapitan, Tomis, 11, 29– 32 hermeneutics, 16, 54– 55, 59, 87, 89, Kazantzakis, Nikos 92– 97 Poor Man of God, The, 7– 8 Hick, John, 31 Kierkegaard, Soren, 12, 52– 53 Hinduism, 54, 77, 85 Kristeva, Julia Vedānta (see Vedānta) “Birth and the Powers of Horror: Howard- Snyder, Daniel, 17, 33, 38– 39 Julia Kristeva on Gender, Religion, Hudson, Wayne, 10– 11, 53– 54 and Death” (Jantzen), 21, 68– 70 Husserl, Edmund, 52, 56, 89 Kuhn, Thomas, 76, 125, 141n23, 167n2 Kvanvig, Jonathan, 9, 25, 45, 142n35 IJPR. See International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Leibniz, Gottfreid Wilhelm, 64 “In Comparison a Magic Dwells” Lévinas, Emmanuel, 12, 18, 52, 62, 65 (Smith), 103– 4 Lewis, I. M., 46 ineffability, 59– 61, 65– 66, 105, 114, Long, Eugene, 9, 49, 142n38. See also 123, 125– 26, 137 International Journal for Philosophy Pseudo- Dionysius on, 114, 115 of Religion 204 Index

Marion, Jean- Luc, 18, 65 objects of inquiry, 10– 13, 26– 32, Maxwell, Patrick, 9, 49, 142n37. See 50– 54 also Explorations in Contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, 10– Continental Philosophy of Religion 13, 26– 32 Min, Anselm, 18, 65– 66 continental philosophy of religion, , 85 10– 13, 50– 54 Moser, Paul, 14– 15, 17, 33– 36 O’Gorman, Edmundo, 103 multidimensional explanation and Oppy, Graham, 152n33, 157nn85– 86 evaluation, 19– 22, 119– 36 OSPR. See Oxford Studies in Philosophy analytic philosophy of religion and, of Religion 20– 21, 44– 48 “Otherness of Anselm, The,” (Clayton), 91 continental philosophy of religion Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion and, 21– 22, 66– 72 (Kvanvig), 9, 25, 45, 142n35 criticisms of evaluation, 131– 32 “Evaluating Religion” (Kapitan), 11, how to explain and evaluate, 120, 29– 32 126– 29 “Evolutionary Answer to the interrelatedness with explanation, Problem of Faith and Reason, The” 119, 123 (Schellenberg), 11 what to explain and evaluate, 120– 24 Paden, William, 18, 81, 111– 13 with what to explain and evaluate, panhuman behaviors, 18, 81– 82, 111– 13 120, 124– 26 Peterson, Michael, 9, 12, 25, 28– 29, 33, why explain and evaluate, 120, 130– 35 43, 45 why explain and evaluate last, 120, “Piety and the Proofs” (Clayton), 90– 91 135– 36 “Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God, The” (Caputo), Nāgārjuna, 83, 135 13– 14, 15, 55– 58, 66, 68 Nagasawa, Yujin, 9, 11– 12, 25, 27– 28, “Politics and Experience: Bergsonism 45, 142n34 Beyond Transcendence and “Naming the Unnameable God” (Min), Immanence” (Goodchild), 21, 68 18, 65– 66 Poor Man of God, The (Kazantzakis), 7– 8 negative theology, 16– 17, 59– 62, 65– 66 Proudfoot, Wayne, 158n101, 187n30 Neopaganism, 85 Pseudo- Dionysius, 114, 115, 163n51 Neoplatonism, 16– 17, 59– 62, 163n49, 163n51 “Ramanuja, Hume, and ‘Comparative Neville, Robert, 17, 103– 4, 109– 13, Philosophy’” (Clayton), 92 115– 16. See also Comparative Rationality and Religion (Trigg), 187n35 Religious Ideas Project Ray, Benjamin, 110– 11 religions, 116 religion, concept of, 77– 80, 169n20, New Waves in Philosophy of Religion 170n21 (Nagasawa and Wielenberg), 9, “Religions: Are There Any?” 11– 12, 25, 27– 28, 45, 142n34 (Schilbrack), 78– 79 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 5, 63 religious reason- giving, 10, 15– 16, 17– NWPR. See New Waves in Philosophy of 18, 80– 85 Religion enactments of, 86 Index 205

formal comparison of (see formal “Schelling, Bloch, and the Continental comparison) Philosophy of Religion” (Hudson), implicit, described, 80 10– 11, 53– 54 informal, described, 80 Schilbrack, Kevin, 78– 79, 169n20 multidimensional explanation and “shared standards,” 7, 125, 141n23 evaluation of (see multidimensional , 85 explanation and evaluation) , 85 panhuman behaviors and, 81– 82 Smart, Ninian, 150n9 scientific reason- giving and, 76 Smid, Robert, 181n31 thick description of (see thick Smith, J. Z., 68, 100, 114– 15 description) “In Comparison a Magic Dwells,” religious studies, x– xi, 9, 15, 22– 23, 28, 103– 4 80, 85, 104, 131, 141n31 Smith, James K. A., 160– 61n10 Rethinking Philosophy of Religion subjects who inquire, 13– 15, 32– 36, (Goodchild), 9, 21– 22, 49– 50, 54– 58, 128– 29 67– 68, 70– 72 analytic philosophy of religion, 14– “Apophasis and Askêsis” (Ellsworth), 15, 32– 36 continental philosophy of religion, 16, 53, 59– 62 13– 14, 54– 58 “Birth and the Powers of Horror: Julia Kristeva on Gender, Religion, Tacey, David, 8 and Death” (Jantzen), 21, 68– 70 theism, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, 20, 26– 29, “Continental Philosophy of Religion: 32– 33, 36– 41, 44– 45, 146n54, An Introduction” (Goodchild), 21, 147n62, 149n96 67– 68, 70– 72 theodicy, 4, 6– 7, 17, 33– 40, 64– 65 “Poetics of the Impossible and the theology, 27, 36, 57, 66, 78, 110, 124– Kingdom of God, The” (Caputo), 25, 141n32, 185– 86n26 13– 14, 15, 55– 58, 66, 68 thick description, 15– 17, 36– 40, 59– “Politics and Experience: Bergsonism 62, 75– 98 Beyond Transcendence and of all religions, 75– 80 Immanence” (Goodchild), 21, 68 analytic philosophy of religion and, “Schelling, Bloch, and the 17, 36– 40 Continental Philosophy of continental philosophy of religion Religion” (Hudson), 10– 11, 53– 54 and, 16– 17, 59– 62 “Toward a ‘Continental’ Philosophy critical understanding and, 92– 97 of Religion” (Halteman), 12– 13, description as being thick, 85– 92 18, 51– 53, 63 description comes first, 97– 98 Ricoeur, Paul, 96– 97 John Clayton on, 88– 92 Rowe, William, 17, 33, 38– 39 of religious reason- giving, 75, 80– 85 RPR. See Rethinking Philosophy of role of panhuman behaviors in, 81– 83 Religion “Thomas Jefferson and the Study of Religion” (Clayton), 91 Śa৆kara, 81, 114, 115 “Toward a ‘Continental’ Philosophy of Schellenberg, John L., 11, 14– 15, Religion” (Halteman), 12– 13, 18, 33– 36 51– 53, 63 206 Index

Trakakis, Nick, 3– 9, 21, 23, 69– 70, Vásquez, Manuel, 169n18, 170n22 129 Vedānta, 11, 33, 44, 64, 80– 81, 122 Trigg, Roger, 187n35 Whorf- Sapir hypothesis, 134 ultimacy Wielenberg, Erik, 9, 11– 12, 25, 27– 28, concept of religion and, 79 45, 142n34 logic of, 125 Wildman, Wesley, 110, 116, 126– 29, 132 religious reason- giving and, 80– 85 Wilshire, Bruce, 8 See also ultimate realities women, contributions by, 14, 32, 34– ultimate realities, 109– 11, 177– 78n16, 35, 58, 147nn60– 61 178– 79n26 Upani̓ads, 81 Yandell, Keith, 19, 33, 41– 44 Yorùbá, 77, 132 VanArragon, Raymond, 9, 12, 25, 28– 29, 33, 43, 45 Zoroastrianism, 11, 85