Ultimates: Philosophical Theology, Volume One

Part IV. Summary Implications

319 Part IV Summary Implications Part I of Philosophical Theology One raised the problem of how to understand ultimacy and suggested the hypothesis of the ontological act of creation, although not exactly in these theoretical terms. Part II set this problem in the larger context of how various dimensions of reality exert pressures on understandings of ultimacy, defined as symbols of ultimacy; in important respects, these pressures are countervailing and thus give rise to tensions among symbols and their interpretations that are felt in all the long-standing literary religious traditions. Part II further contextualized these problems with copious illustrations from religions. Part III developed a metaphysical theory of ultimacy in terms of the ontological act of creating the world.This theory is abstractly formulated and defended on its own terms, although also illustrated by traditional religious ideas. Part IV analyzed how the metaphysical theory can function to allow for the symbolic engagement of ultimacy, restating the problems with knowing the ultimate in the terms of analysis developed since the beginning. The first chapter of Part I raised the question of how to understand ultimacy in terms of Peter Berger’s idea of the sacred canopy as the medium in which people think about ultimate matters, although it developed that idea fairly radically in directions Berger has not taken. It defined ultimacy in terms of a larger theory of finite/infinite contrasts and offered an hypothesis about how world-defining problems are more or less universal and thus exert pressures on all sacred canopies. It concluded by raising various problems with how sacred canopies can be right or wrong, genuine or spurious, about what they represent as true about various aspects of ultimacy. Part I, Chapter 2, set the whole discussion of how to understand the truth or falsity of symbols of ultimacy in the larger context of how approaches to religion do or do not allow those symbols to refer to the ultimate realities to which they seem to refer, as religious people employ them. Particularly at 320 v Ultimates issue were the limitations imposed on understanding the truth of symbols of ultimacy by reductionisms of various types, particularly scientific reductionisms .The chapter argued that controlling for those limitations is an important office of philosophy, and that it performs that office through the development of metaphysics, a once-despised philosophical discipline. Metaphysics of the sort employed here was described and defended. Part I, Chapter 3, presented a theory of the symbolic engagement of ultimacy, based on a more general pragmatic philosophical epistemology of interpretive engagement. Within that theory are three related kinds of reference—iconic, indexical, and conventional—that are relevant for reference to ultimacy.This theory was spelled out in terms of the three kinds of reference to finite/infinite contrasts. The result of this is to shift the understanding of ultimacy that theology might provide from the elaboration of doctrine to the study of how symbols of ultimacy do or do not facilitate genuine symbolic engagement with ultimate realities. Part I, Chapter 4, integrated the previous discussion with a theory of worldviews of which sacred canopies are the parts in which ultimate realities are more or less directly engaged. Those parts of worldviews that are not themselves referring to the ultimate as symbolized in their sacred canopies can still be related to the sacred canopies through the integrating structure of the worldview. Depending on the worldviews in different ways, wherever some mundane part of the worldview is connected with the ultimacy in the sacred canopy, a religious dimension of that mundane matter is made part of the worldview. Symbols of ultimacy all along the worldview, from its most sacred to its most mundane elements, lie along a continuum from the transcendent to the intimate, especially the anthropomorphic, for good reasons. Similarly, a continuum of symbols ranging from the most sophisticated to popular culture ranges along the sacred/mundane axis. Moreover, the ways by which people engage their worldviews lie along continua of sharing or not sharing the worldview with others, of allowing the worldview to define life comprehensively or only in small parts, and with different degrees of intensity of commitment.The theory of worldviews sums up the other analytical tools presented in Part I for the analysis of ultimacy. Part II examined certain aspects of the reality of engaging ultimate matter and showed how that accounts for the continua of positions in worldviews. Part II, Chapter 5, provided an analysis of concern for ultimate reality, and...