Ultimates: Philosophical Theology, Volume One

Preface

xv Preface This preface introduces a three-volume systematic project in philosophical theology, a scale of reflection uncommon today and in need of some prefatory explanation.The overall topic of the project is “theology” in the sense of dealing with first-order issues in religion, to use the increasingly common word for intellectual construction and analysis in all religious traditions. Such first-order issues include but are not limited to the nature of ultimate reality, the defining predicaments of human life, the ecstatic fulfillments embraced within religion, the elusive beauty of existence itself, and authenticity of personal and communal religious living. The overall genre of reflection is philosophy, with the caveat that philosophy includes or makes use of any discipline that might bear helpfully upon the topic; more will be said here about philosophy (III, preface). The overall perspective of the reflection embraces first-order experiences and religious revelations as much as possible but denies to any the authority to trump alternatives without themselves being subject to critical examination. This project does not give trumping authority to any special committed religious location. Hence this project creates an intellectual roadway between confessional theology that does assume some kind of trumping authority for a revelation, tradition, or community and so-called objective religious studies that avoids the questions of truth about first-order theological issues. Those questions of truth are among the ultimately most important to be asked and the business of philosophical theology is to ask them. For an inquiry to presuppose a committed religious location inevitably turns those who occupy different committed locations, or none, into outsiders. The outsiders’ response to a theology argued from within such a committed location at best is curiosity about how “others” do it and more likely is plain neglect.The result is failure to summon a public within which everyone who might be interested in the outcome of first-order religious inquiry is invited to participate. Surely a theology of first-order religious issues needs to xvi v Preface render itself vulnerable to anyone who might have something to contribute or a critical word of correction. Therefore, thinking from the location of a confessional commitment makes outsiders precisely of those who might be the most important conversation partners. Equally problematic for first-order religious inquiry is thinking from the location of the particular commitment that no religious commitments can be true, as happens with many scholars identifying themselves with the scientific study of religion. Almost inevitably this means that the first-order religious issues are never addressed in detail if at all. So the stakes are very high for developing a sophisticated, systematic, and thoroughly vulnerable theology of first-order religious issues that is not hampered by these prior commitments. The aim of these volumes is to do precisely this. The strategy of Philosophical Theology is to employ philosophy to set an ongoing critical construction of categories, vulnerable to correction by philosophical argument as well as by empirical evidence from religion and other domains, which provide for a deep, integrated, and relatively comprehensive understanding of first-order religious issues.1 Through the philosophical categories and arguments, inquiries will be conducted into the nature of ultimacy, the human predicaments as well as ecstatic fulfillments that define the ultimate meanings of the human condition, and what is worthy or deleterious in religious life. The aim is to produce an understanding of these first-order theological issues in rich empirical detail with good cases for what is true about the main topics and for how these truths can guide life in its religious dimensions. Hence, this is a philosophical theology. These volumes extend into theological areas a philosophical system that has been worked out in its core tenets and developed in many directions besides religion.2 The philosophical system supports itself in the spectrum of contemporary and classical philosophical positions and is vulnerable to correction by them, including postmodern philosophies that are hostile to system.The public for the philosophy as developed here for theological issues includes thinkers who come from any religious or secular tradition with ideas to contribute to the first-order theological issues or to the second and higher order issues of analysis and methodology. The public also includes thinkers from any of the philosophical, literary, scientific, and practical disciplines who might be interested in the arguments necessary to make cases for claims about the first-order issues.3 Although philosophy is out of favor with contemporary confessional theologians in many religious traditions, this...