By Charles Hartshorne
Transcripts of 4 Morse lectures givenat Union Theological seminary in 1964.
Read or Download Natural Theology for Our Time PDF
Similar theology books
How can the physique and Blood of Christ, with no ever leaving heaven, grow to be relatively current on eucharistic altars the place the bread and wine nonetheless appear to be? 13th and fourteenth century Christian Aristotelians notion the reply needed to be "transubstantiation. "
Acclaimed thinker, Marilyn McCord Adams, investigates those later medieval theories of the Eucharist, targeting the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham, with a few connection with Peter Lombard, Hugh of St. Victor, and Bonaventure. She examines how their efforts to formulate and combine this theological datum provoked them to make major revisions in Aristotelian philosophical theories concerning the metaphysical constitution and site of our bodies, alterations among substance and injuries, causality and causal powers, and basic sorts of swap. atmosphere those advancements within the theological context that gave upward thrust to the query attracts realization to their understandings of the sacraments and their function, in addition to to their understandings of the character and future of human beings.
Adams concludes that their philosophical adjustments have been often no longer advert hoc, yet systematic revisions that made room for transubstantiation whereas permitting Aristotle nonetheless to explain what in most cases and of course occurs.
Born in Saxony in 1096, Hugh grew to become an Augustinian monk and in 1115 moved to the monastery of Saint Victor, Paris, the place he spent the rest of his lifestyles, finally turning into the top of the college there. His writings hide the full diversity of arts and sacred technology taught in his day. Paul Rorem bargains a simple creation to Hugh's theology, via a complete survey of his works.
The Turnings of Darkness and Light: Essays in Philosophical and Systematic Theology
This choice of essays, written among 1975 and 1987, covers issues together with the doctrine of analogy, the Trinity, theological realism, the problims of evil and anguish, ecclesiology, and the so-called theistic proofs. the sooner writings relect the author's education as a thinker within the Anglo-Aamerican analytic culture.
- Kierkegaard: Concluding Unscientific Postscript
- The Legend of Sergius Bahira: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam
- Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering
- Creation and the God of Abraham
- The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World
- Methods of Dogmatic Theology
Extra resources for Natural Theology for Our Time
Sample text
Not that we help God to be virtuous-this would indeed be absurd. But we may contribute to the richness of his 'happiness', the beauty of the contents of his always perfectly righteous experience. Our ancestors were afflicted with a subtle egoism. They wanted to serve God everlastingly, but with the understanding that he also would serve them everlastingly. A fair bargain, as it were! However, since their logic was confused enough to permit them at the same time to deny divine receptivity, they were really saying that while God would everlastingly serve them, they could do nothing for him, since he is immune to gifts, or to being enhanced or influenced in any way, an absolute marvel of selfsufficiency and indifference.
But only deity provides a clear meaning for immortality. And only an allloving deity whom all may love can provide nondivine individuals, even though vicariously, with permanent achievement for their effort. This is so, not because of contingent features of our world, but because in any world God alone could and would be universally loving, universally lovable, and everlasting. The Theistic Proofs 57 Nontheistic substitutes for a divine orderer and a divine immortalizer of achievements seem but makeshifts.
This is the question of natural theology, and one not clearly envisaged in the classical discussions. Not having been envisaged it can hardly have been answered. If the idea of God is to have a rational place among our ideas, four conditions must be satisfied. (1) There must be rules or principles valid for all individuals, not excluding God, rules definitive of individuality purely in general, or as a 'transcendental'. (2) There must be rules valid for all individuals except God, rules definitive of 'non-Divine individual', or of individuality as a secular or nontranscendental category.