Editor’s Note

The articles in this issue of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy cover a great deal of territory—conceptually and geographically. Our five authors hail from four different countries, the United States, Canada, Holland, and Germany. The conceptual terrain they cover is as diverse as their geographic settings. Nonetheless, each of their articles develops new ways of thinking about some of the “old ideas” in American philosophical and religious thought. Catherine Keller’s article, based on her 2014 annual AJTP lecture, develops the potential for a planetary politics by drawing from select classical and contemporary American thinkers, giving particular attention to the work of Alfred North Whitehead, John Cobb, and William E. Connolly. Brandon Daniels-McHughes’s article presents a carefully argued analysis and constructive critique of Charles Sanders Peirce’s classic essay “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God.” Angela Roothaan’s article, meanwhile, looks to William James for a cross-cultural comparative study of the shamanistic practices of Jesus and Muhammad. The articles by Christian Polke and David Rohr engage different aspects of Robert C. Neville’s recently published magnum opus, Philosophical Theology. Polke’s article traces the long arc of Neville’s concerns with the “broken symbol” of God-as-Person and introduces readers to his own thinking about the person symbol under the theme of “expressive theism.” Rohr’s article rounds out this issue with a close analysis of two different ways of interpreting Neville’s thoughts on the “ontological creative act.”