scholarly journals On theological-philosophical teachings of the Mu'tazilite school

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
Hasan Džilo
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Question ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility ◽  
Rational Arguments

The paper discusses several issues that were in the centre of interest of the most important representatives of the Mu'tazilite school. It is a concept of God's absolute transcendence presented through rational arguments. The transcendence of God also becomes a central theological-philosophical question in Abu Hudayl, Vasil Ibn Ata, Jubai, Nazzam, Abu Hashim and others. The whole theory of Mu'tazilites about divine properties, modes, or states functions as proof of divine transcendence and the idea of creation clothed in philosophical form. These theories cannot be validly formed unless the notion of the oneness of God (tawhid) is abstracted. Mu'tazilites add another category to this notion, which has a metaphysical meaning, and that is divine justice, which they relate to ethical concepts, that is, to man's freedom and responsibility.

Atonement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Gunton
Keyword(s):  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Death Of Jesus ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
Human Need ◽  
Historical Life ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

As a theological concept, atonement articulates the acts by which relations between God and creatures, disrupted by human offence, can be restored. Although other cultures show an awareness of the need for atonement, the Christian tradition understands it as provided by God’s particular historical action in Jesus Christ. At its centre is the notion of reconciliation between God and his alienated creatures, which is achieved particularly by the death of Jesus. The distinctive philosophical and other problems of atonement theology derive from two features in particular: its claiming of universal significance for the historical life and death of Jesus of Nazareth (the problem of universality); and the moral difficulties, especially in the realm of human freedom and responsibility, which arise from the claim that he is the vehicle of atonement with God (the problem of human autonomy). Although there were many theologies of atonement before Anselm of Canterbury’s, his systematic treatment is the fountainhead of much modern discussion, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Centring on the concept of satisfaction, it understands Christ as the God-man, satisfying both divine justice and human need by a free gift of his life. Criticisms of the formulation have centred on its understanding of sin and its tendency to understand atonement in external, transactional terms. Subsequent discussion of the concept has also raised questions about Christ’s substitutionary and representative roles and about the relation between the justice and the love of God. A significant proportion of modern thinkers have rejected the need for any concept of atonement at all. They have preferred instead to understand Jesus as an example to be followed (‘exemplarism’) or to concentrate upon the effect his behaviour and example have on the believer (‘subjectivism’) – or to adopt a combination of both.

The Problem of Alternative Monotheisms: Another Serious Challenge to Theism

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-51
Author(s):  
Raphael Lataster
Keyword(s):  
Infinite Number ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
God Concept ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
Hiddenness Of God

Theistic and analytic philosophers of religion typically privilege classical theism by ignoring or underestimating the great threat of alternative monotheisms.[1] In this article we discuss numerous god-models, such as those involving weak, stupid, evil, morally indifferent, and non-revelatory gods. We find that theistic philosophers have not successfully eliminated these and other possibilities, or argued for their relative improbability. In fact, based on current evidence – especially concerning the hiddenness of God and the gratuitous evils in the world – many of these hypotheses appear to be more probable than theism. Also considering the – arguably infinite – number of alternative monotheisms, the inescapable conclusion is that theism is a very improbable god-concept, even when it is assumed that one and only one transcendent god exists.[1] I take ‘theism’ to mean ‘classical theism’, which is but one of many possible monotheisms. Avoiding much of the discussion around classical theism, I wish to focus on the challenges in arguing for theism over monotheistic alternatives. I consider theism and alternative monotheisms as entailing the notion of divine transcendence.

Justificación, educación y libertad

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Mónica Gómez Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Epistemological Pluralism ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

This paper argues the thesis that education should be understood as a guide that directs the young people towards reflexive and imaginative social practices that allow them to formulate new and varied hypotheses as well as alternative justifications. Based on Dewey, we will expose that a goal such as this is only applicable to members of a democratic society. Next, we present some features of onto-epistemological pluralism in relation to freedom and responsibility. It is concluded that there is no justification that is closer to truth or reality. The relevance of a justified belief with good reasons lies in its practical consequences for specific conditions of existence.

The Problem of Enhanced Control

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

dAccording to the problem of enhanced control, while indeterminism may not diminish control, it does not enhance control, and thus indeterminism is superfluous to freedom and responsibility. It is often thought that the problem of enhanced control is a problem only, or at least especially, for event-causal libertarians. The idea is that whereas agent-causal libertarianism differs from compatibilism in requiring that free agents possess the agent-causal power, the only essential difference between event-causal libertarianism and compatibilism is that the former requires the presence of indeterminism. It is first argued that the problem of enhanced control, if a problem for event-causal libertarians, is just as much a problem for agent-causal libertarians. It is then argued that minimal event-causal libertarianism secures enhanced control vis-à-vis compatibilism because it accords agents the opportunity to exercise their abilities of reflective self-control in more than one way.

Job the True Sage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Legaspi
Keyword(s):  
Book Of Job ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
The Will ◽  
Do So

In the book of Job, wisdom is contested. In the speeches of the friends, wisdom is a program based on a pious alignment with divine justice as manifest in the sacred, social, and cosmic orders. In the figure of Job, the reader is invited to reconsider the nature of piety on which this understanding of wisdom is based. Job raises the possibility that piety is a form of integrity that yields a different relation to order. Accordingly, piety does not consist in a knowledge of order that leads to a prosperous life but rather in the determination to hold one’s place within the order, to remain true to the inner dictates of one’s pious life. To do so is to inhabit an order in which the strange inexplicability of this determination is coordinated to the strangeness of the cosmos itself and to the will of an inscrutable God.

Troeltsch's Eschatological Absolute

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan F. Kuehn
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
The Core ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
The Absolute

This study argues that the core of Ernst Troeltsch’s theological project is an eschatological conception of the Absolute. Troeltsch developed his idea of the Absolute from post-Kantian religious and philosophical thought and applied it to the Christian doctrine of eschatology. Troeltsch’s eschatological Absolute must be understood in the context of questions being raised at the turn of the twentieth century by research on New Testament apocalypticism, as well as by modern critical methodologies in the historical sciences. The study is a revisionist response to common approaches to Troeltsch that read him as introducing problematic historicist and immanentist assumptions into Christian theology. Instead it argues that Troeltsch’s theological modernism presents a compelling account of the meaningfulness of history while retaining a commitment to divine transcendence that is unconditioned by history. As such, his theology remains relevant to theological research today, well beyond theological circles that normally take Troeltsch’s legacy to contribute in a constructive way to their work.

Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Coope
Keyword(s):  
First Principle ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The One ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

The Neoplatonists have a perfectionist view of freedom: an entity is free to the extent that it succeeds in making itself good. Free entities are wholly in control of themselves: they are self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing. Neoplatonist philosophers argue that such freedom is only possible for nonbodily things. The human soul is free insofar as it rises above bodily things and engages in intellection, but when it turns its desires to bodily things, it is drawn under the sway of fate and becomes enslaved. This book discusses this notion of freedom, and its relation to questions about responsibility. It explains the important role of notions of self-reflexivity in Neoplatonist accounts of both freedom and responsibility. Part I sets out the puzzles Neoplatonist philosophers face about freedom and responsibility and explains how these puzzles arise from earlier discussions. Part II looks at the metaphysical underpinnings of the Neoplatonist notion of freedom (concentrating especially on the views of Plotinus and Proclus). In what sense (if any) is the ultimate first principle of everything (the One) free? If everything else is under this ultimate first principle, how can anything other than the One be free? What is the connection between freedom and nonbodiliness? Part III looks at questions about responsibility, arising from this perfectionist view of freedom. Why are human beings responsible for their behaviour, in a way that other animals are not? If we are enslaved when we act viciously, how can we be to blame for our vicious actions and choices?

KNOWLEDGE, SUFFERING AND THE PERFORMANCE OF WISDOM IN SOLON'SELEGY TO THE MUSESAND THE BABYLONIANPOEM OF THE RIGHTEOUS SUFFERER

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
Alexandre Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Literature And Theology ◽  
The Human Condition

This article offers a comparative reading of Solon'sElegy to the Muses(fragment 13 West) and the BabylonianPoem of the Righteous Sufferer, focusing on the interplay of literary form and theological content. It argues that in both poems, shifts in the identity and perspective of the poetic voice enable the speaker to act out, or perform, a particular vision of humanity and its relationship with the divine. The comparative analysis improves our understanding of both texts, showing for instance that Solon's elegy is a highly sophisticated attempt to articulate a coherent vision of divine justice and the human condition. It also sheds light on the particular modes in which ancient literature and theology interact in different contexts, and how this interaction could affect audiences.

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