On the Absence and Unknowability of God PDF Download

Author: Christos Yannaras
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780567088062
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This book, one of the earliest by Christos Yannaras, was first published in 1967 and has become a contemporary classic. Yannaras begins by outlining Heidegger's analysis of the fate of western metaphysics, which ends, he argues, in a nihilistic atheism. Yannaras's response is largely to accept Heidegger's analysis, but to argue that, although it applies to the western tradition of what Heidegger calls "onto theology" (which regards God as a 'being', even if the highest), it does not take account of the Orthodox tradition of apophatic theology, of which Dionysius the Areopagite is a pre-eminent example. A God 'beyond being' escapes the criticism of Heidegger, and provides an alternative to Heidegger's nihilistic conclusion.

Author: Andreas Andreopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429809964
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Christos Yannaras is one of the most significant Orthodox theologians of recent times. The work of Yannaras is virtually synonymous with a turn or renaissance of Orthodox philosophy and theology, initially within Greece, but as the present volume confirms, well beyond it. His work engages not only with issues of philosophy and theology, but also takes in wider questions of culture and politics. With contributions from established and new scholars, the book is divided into three sections, which correspond to the main directions that Christos Yannaras has followed – philosophy, theology, and culture – and reflects on the ways in which Yannaras has engaged and influenced thought across these fields, in addition to themes including ecclesiology, tradition, identity, and ethics. This volume facilitates the dialogue between the thought of Yannaras, which is expressed locally yet is relevant globally, and Western Christian thinkers. It will be of great interest to scholars of Orthodox and Eastern Christian theology and philosophy, as well as theology more widely.

Author: Alexander S. Jensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131714886X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Divine Providence and Human Agency develops an understanding of God and God's relation to creation that perceives God as sovereign over creation while, at the same time, allowing for a meaningful notion of human freedom. This book provides a bridge between contemporary approaches that emphasise human freedom, such as process theology and those influenced by it, and traditional theologies that stress divine omnipotence.This book argues that it is essential for Christian theology to maintain that God is ultimately in charge of history: otherwise there would be no solid grounds for Christian hope. Yet, the modern human self-understanding as free agent within certain limitations must be taken seriously. Jensen approaches this apparent contradiction from within a consistently trinitarian framework. Jensen argues that a Christian understanding of God must be based on the experience of the saving presence of Christ in the Church, leading to an apophatic and consistently trinitarian theology. This serves as the framework for the discussion of divine omnipotence and human freedom. On the basis of the theological foundation established in this book, it is possible to frame the problem in a way that makes it possible to live within this tension. Building on this foundation, Jensen develops an understanding of history as the unfolding of the divine purpose and as an expression of God's very being, which is self-giving love and desire for communion. This book offers an important contribution to the debate of the doctrine of God in the context of an evolutionary universe.

Author: Thomas A. Carlson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226092935
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
How can one think and name an inconceivable and ineffable God? Christian mystics have approached the problem by speaking of God using "negative" language—devices such as grammatical negation and the rhetoric of "darkness" or "unknowing"—and their efforts have fascinated contemporary scholars. In this strikingly original work, Thomas A. Carlson reinterprets premodern approaches to God's ineffability and postmodern approaches to the mystery of the human subject in light of one another. The recent interest in mystical theological traditions, Carlson argues, is best understood in relation to contemporary philosophy's emphasis on the idea of human finitude and mortality. Combining both historical research in theology (from Pseudo-Dionysius to Aquinas to Eckhart) and contemporary philosophical analysis (from Hegel and Nietzsche to Heidegger, Derrida, and Marion), Indiscretion will interest philosophers, theologians, and other scholars concerned with the possibilities and limits of language surrounding both God and human subjectivity.

Author: Francesca Calabi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004162704
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The topic tackled in this book is Philo's account of the complex, double-sided nature of God's acting - the two-sided coin of God as transcendent yet immanent, unknowable yet revealed, immobile yet creating - and also the two sides of acting in humans - who, in an attempt to imitate God, both contemplate and produce. In both contexts, divine and human, Philo considers that it would not be proper to give precedence to either side - the result would be barren. God's acting and man's acting are at the same time both speculative and practical, and it is precisely out of this co-presence that the order of the world unfolds. Philo considers this two-sided condition as a source of complexity and fertility. Francesca Calabi argues that, far from being an irresolvable contradiction, Philo's two-fold vision is the key to understanding his works. It constitutes a richness that rejects reduction to apparently incompatible forms and aspects.

Author: Basilio Petra
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
ISBN: 0227907035
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Basilio Petra sees Christos Yannaras (b. 1935) as a philosopher and theologian whose refiguring, on the one hand, of Heidegger's refusal to define being in ontic terms and, on the other, of Wittgenstein's willingness to admit the inexpressible character of the mystical has led him to articulate a powerful vision of true human existence. This bold interpretation outlines the passage from an ontic 'mode of nature' governed by necessity to a 'mode of self-transcendence and self-offering' beyond the limitations of decay and death. In his native Greece, Yannaras revolutionised the way theology had been done for much of the twentieth century. This book examines the trajectory of Yannaras' thought from his initial encounter with Heidegger's philosophy to his formulation (via the tradition of the Greek Fathers) of a modern critical ontology. It is for both advanced students of philosophy and the growing scholarly audience interested in Yannaras' work. Written in accessible language that does not compromise intellectual rigour, it is the only survey of the development of Yannaras' philosophical thought as a whole.

Author: Clint Jones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317027582
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Central to the idea of a perfect society is the idea that communities must be strong and bound together with shared ideologies. However, while this may be true, rarely are the individuals that comprise a community given primacy of place as central to a strong communal theory. This volume moves away from the dominant, current macro-level theorising on the subject of identity and its relationship to and with globalising trends, focusing instead on the individual’s relationship with utopia so as to offer new interpretive approaches for engaging with and examining utopian individuality. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing together work from around the world, The Individual and Utopia enquires after the nature of the utopian as citizen, demonstrating the inherent value of making the individual central to utopian theorizing and highlighting the methodologies necessary for examining the utopian individual. The various approaches employed reveal what it is to be an individual yoked by the idea of citizenship and challenge the ways that we have traditionally been taught to think of the individual as citizen. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social theory, philosophy, literature, cultural studies, architecture, and feminist thought, whose work intersects with political thought, utopian theorizing, or the study of humanity or human nature.

Author: Sotiris Mitralexis
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 0227176847
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Sotiris Mitralexis offers a contemporary look at Maximus the Confessor’s (580–662 CE) understanding of temporality, logoi, and deification, through the perspective of contemporary philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras, as well as John Zizioulas and Nicholas Loudovikos. Mitralexis argues that Maximus possesses both a unique theological ontology and a unique threefold theory of temporality: time, the Aeon, and the radical transformation of temporality and motion in an ever-moving repose. With these three distinct modes of temporality, a Maximian theory of time can be reconstructed, which can be approached via his teaching on the logoi and deification. In this theory, time is not merely measuring ontological motion, but is more particularly measuring a relationship, the consummation of which effects the transformation of time into a dimensionless present devoid of temporal, spatial, and generally ontological distance — thereby manifesting a perfect communion-in-otherness. In examining Maximian temporality, the book is not focussing on only one aspect of Maximus’ comprehensive Weltanschauung, but looks at the Maximian vision as a whole through the lens of temporality and motion.

Author: Guy Bennett-Hunter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317318099
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Ineffability – that which cannot be explained in words – lies at the heart of the Christian mystical tradition. This is the first book to engage with the concept of ineffability within contemporary philosophy of religion and provides a starting point for further scholarly debate.

Author: W. J. Mander
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192537377
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
W. J. Mander presents a history of metaphysics in nineteenth-century Britain. The story focuses on the elaboration of, and differing reactions to, the concept of the unknowable or unconditioned, first developed by Sir William Hamilton in the 1829. The idea of an ultimate but unknowable way that things really are in themselves may be seen as supplying a narrative arc that runs right through the metaphysical systems of the period in question. These thought schemes may be divided into three broad groups which were roughly consecutive in their emergence but also overlapping as they continued to develop. In the first instance there were the doctrines of the agnostics who developed further Hamilton's basic idea that fundamental reality lies for the great part beyond our cognitive reach. These philosophies were followed immediately by those of the empiricists and, in the last third of the century, the idealists: both of these schools of thought--albeit in profoundly different ways--reacted against the epistemic pessimism of the agnostics. Mander offers close textual readings of the main contributions to First Philosophy made by the key philosophers of the period (such as Hamilton, Mansel, Spencer, Mill, and Bradley) as well as some less well known figures (such as Bain, Clifford, Shadworth Hodgson, Ferrier, and John Grote). By presenting, interpreting, criticising, and connecting together their various contrasting ideas, this book explains how the three traditions developed and interacted with one another to comprise the history of metaphysics in Victorian Britain.