Ultimates: Philosophical Theology, Volume One

Acknowledgments

xxv Acknowledgments I wish to thank members of the doctoral seminar in Advanced Systematic Theology at Boston University in fall 2010 for their careful reading and commentary on a draft of this volume.They include Joshua Hasler,Anne Hillman, Sungrae Kim, Divine Mungre, Lancelot Watson, and Lawrence Whitney. In fall 2012 students in another doctoral seminar also commented helpfully on the manuscript in a later draft. They include Kenneth Armentrout, Seth Waltemyer, Adnan Rehman, Chanhong Kim, Toar Hutagalong, and Jaehu Jang; Xinjun Liu, visiting from China, and my faculty colleague M. Thomas Thangaraj participated in the seminar and contributed to the revisions, especially the latter. Because this work as a whole is the culmination of nearly six decades of my education, I am indebted to all the people who have formed and corrected me from high school onward; many of these people are thanked explicitly in the prefaces to my other books and the preface to Volume Three discusses people particularly helpful in my learning about the history of religions. I have learned from and been shaped enormously by colleagues in the faculties of institutions where I have worked and taught, including Yale University, Fordham University, The Hastings Center, the State University of New York College at Purchase, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Boston University. I have been nurtured deeply by four ongoing discussion and research groups with which I have been involved for decades: The New Haven Theological Discussion Group, The American Theological Society, The Boston Theological Society, and The Highlands Institute for American Religious and Theological Thought (now calling itself the Institute for American Religious and Theological Thought). Seven friends and colleagues have tracked the argument here and read some or all of the manuscript with helpful comments: John H. Berthrong (to whom my Ritual and Deference is dedicated), Richard Peters, Christian Polke, Robert S. Corrington,Wesley J.Wildman, Nikolas Zanetti, and Jay Schulkin. Because xxvi v Acknowledgments of all these people, but especially these last seven and my wife, Elizabeth E. Neville, Philosophical Theology is the product of a long and splendid collaboration for whose virtues all may take credit and for whose faults I alone am is responsible even after all these years. All quotations from the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version, copyrighted in 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Credits for all other citations are in the bibliography. Philosophical Theology One is dedicated to Wesley J. Wildman who has brought the author incomparable intellectual companionship and collaboration for many years at Boston University. He is a friend on many levels: religious interests and affiliations, philosophical enthusiasms, institutional commitments , the sharing of students and courses, family involvements, personal and emotional support, and tender care for the soul. But most relevant for Philosophical Theology is the fact that his creative and critical mind and his endless patience have tuned this work at every point, for which my gratitude knows no bounds. Even our disagreements are in tune. I am deeply grateful to my friends at SUNY Press, especially Nancy Ellegate, my long-time editor, Laurie Searl, production editor, and Kate McDonnell, marketing manager. They and others at the Press have made it a rare treasure in the field of academic publishing. After many years, I feel part of the SUNY Press family and am very proud of this. ...