Ultimates: Philosophical Theology, Volume One

Part I. Summary Implications

95 Part I Summary Implications The purpose of Part I of Philosophical Theology One has been to introduce some of the major conceptual tools necessary for an analysis of ultimacy or ultimate reality. These tools have been introduced but not developed much in use. A brief summary allows for some conclusions to be drawn about the shape of the inquiry to come. The Introduction to this volume includes a stipulative definition of religion in terms of relations to dimensions of ultimacy or ultimate reality in human life.That the definition is stipulative means that its worth in the long run depends on how helpful it turns out to be in the analysis to come. The definition uses ultimacy and its cognates as a kind of token without much analysis of what it means, although with the hope that it carries enough commonsense recognition to move the definition forward. Part I has attempted to gain ground in the definition of ultimacy. Traditional Christian systematic theological expositions often have begun directly (or after an introductory discussion of revelation) with a discussion of God as the Ultimate, and moved to discussions of religion only later, often in connection with the theological topic of the Holy Spirit. Philosophical Theology begins, however, by interpreting them together in terms of one another. The principle behind the mutual interpretation is the conviction that theology never really begins but is always in the middle.To attempt to characterize the ultimate without a self-conscious background of the religious and intellectual context for thinking about ultimacy is to fall into an unnecessary bias-pit. On the other hand, to begin with a discussion of religion without an intrinsic connection with ultimacy is to treat religion as a non-religious phenomenon, in the sense discussed in chapter 2.The strategy of discussing several things at once in terms of one another does not allow for a building-block progression in theology, as has been the ideal for many theologians. But it does allow for increased clarification, correction, and nuance, step by step, that promises a new way of understanding a great many things together. 96 v Ultimates The Preliminary Remarks to Part I introduced the problem of “beginning ” a discussion of ultimacy by putting it in the context of how ultimacy has been handled in the multiplicity of world religions.This established early on that the public for Philosophical Theology recognizes the pluralism of the present religious situation (and the situations of many other eras) and expects discussions of theological issues to be in a global context.1 The character of this pluralistic public thus includes a background in comparative theology. Comparative theology still is a nascent discipline, and so the actual preparation of the public, including its genres of speech and writing, remains spotty. The crucial conceptual tool for comparative theology is the notion of a vague comparative category. Such a category constitutes the respect in which two or more positions might be compared, and is unbiased to the extent it can accommodate the expressions of the various positions without reducing one to another or any position to its own theoretical elements.The category is vague in the logical sense that it can accommodate positions that contradict one another. If positions that contradict one another cannot be compared, then the language of theology cannot fairly acknowledge diverse claimants for truth and genuine guidance. Setting the terms of the discussion of religion and ultimacy in a comparative context has involved the use of many comparative categories in Part I. At this stage of the discussion, the references specifying the categories in different traditions or positions have been fairly nominal. At some point, those references will have to become much more specific, or the comparisons themselves will be vague and useless. It might be thought that “real” religion or theology uses only completely specific categories, and in contrast to vague generalizations this is true. But even so-called specific categories themselves are often vague with respect to further specification. So, for instance, the vague category of Christian conceptions of God can be specified by determinate -God conceptions as well as ground-of-being conceptions (Tillich). Determinate-God as a category is vague with respect to conceptions of God as finite versus those of God as infinite. The category of finite conceptions is vague with respect to metaphysical finiteness as in Whitehead or narrative finiteness as in Dispensationalist theology. And so on.The discussions of issues of ultimacy in the chapters of...