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14 pages, 242 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“God Himself Is Dead”: Returning to Hegel’s Doctrine of Incarnation

by Mitch Thiessen

Religions 2024, 15(3), 312; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030312 - 29 Feb 2024

Viewed by 962

This essay presents a certain defense of Hegel’s doctrine of Incarnation. For Hegel, the logic of the Incarnation constitutes not only the highest insight of religion and theology but, arguably, the key to philosophy itself, as the perfected self-knowledge of the absolute. Such [...] Read more.

This essay presents a certain defense of Hegel’s doctrine of Incarnation. For Hegel, the logic of the Incarnation constitutes not only the highest insight of religion and theology but, arguably, the key to philosophy itself, as the perfected self-knowledge of the absolute. Such knowledge is what Hegel calls “absolute knowing”, and marks the absolute reconciliation of the knowing subject and its object, substance, or in other words: of the domains of, as it were, historical knowledge and eternal truth. Hegel discovers in the Christian doctrine of Incarnation the logic of this very reconciliation of history and eternity: truth, or the absolute, coincides with the subject’s knowledge of it, which not only includes but privileges the historical “dismemberment” involved in such knowing. Only in Christianity does God dismember himself, or become historical—sacrifice himself, die—in order to know and become himself. But this “death of God” is for Hegel the very meaning of modern subjectivity. For this reason, or if Hegel is right, the Hegelian subject constitutes the sole way in which the desire of philosophy—namely, for the other that truth is—can keep itself from becoming incoherent after the death of God. It is not merely that Hegel’s doctrine of the subject remains valid despite the death of God; rather, the Hegelian subject, whose logic is incarnational and for this reason founds itself on the “death of God”, stands as the sole coherent articulation of this event, even and especially in its Nietzschean guise. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

12 pages, 265 KiB

Open AccessArticle

From Circle to Cycloid: The Philosophical Value of Religious Cult in Maurice Blondel’s L’Action

by Jonathan Martin Ciraulo

Religions 2024, 15(3), 283; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030283 - 26 Feb 2024

Viewed by 675

Abstract

This article explores Maurice Blondel’s (1861–1949) later notion of the “cycloid” of thought, particularly as this helps us to understand his earlier work L’Action (1893). The aim is to demonstrate how Blondel incorporates aspects of the Christian faith, particularly the Eucharist, into his [...] Read more.

This article explores Maurice Blondel’s (1861–1949) later notion of the “cycloid” of thought, particularly as this helps us to understand his earlier work L’Action (1893). The aim is to demonstrate how Blondel incorporates aspects of the Christian faith, particularly the Eucharist, into his philosophy without abrogating his “method of immanence”. In particular, the article shows how Blondel saw attention to the Christian spirit as essential to the development of a metaphysics that attends both to finite actions and to the action of God, actus purus. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

16 pages, 245 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Schelling’s Critique of Modern Philosophy’s “Impulse toward Spiritualization” in Clara

by Andrew Jussaume

Religions 2024, 15(2), 195; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020195 - 5 Feb 2024

Viewed by 634

Abstract

The following essay explores Schelling’s critique of what he refers to in Clara as modern philosophy’s “impulse toward spiritualization”, as represented by the character of the clergyman. Schelling’s metaphysics embraces an organicism in which nature is the ground for the revelation of spirit, [...] Read more.

The following essay explores Schelling’s critique of what he refers to in Clara as modern philosophy’s “impulse toward spiritualization”, as represented by the character of the clergyman. Schelling’s metaphysics embraces an organicism in which nature is the ground for the revelation of spirit, an organicism which implies that spirit becomes real as truth only insofar as it explains nature while testifying to the divine freedom from which all existence emerges. The following essay shows how Schelling himself understands the uniqueness of his metaphysics vis à vis his criticism of modern philosophy and its impulse to regard spirit as self-grounding. This essay proves that Schelling’s organicism underscores the fact that spirit, without nature as its ground, lacks objectivity, and therefore, is reduced to the mere feelings of the subject. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

13 pages, 270 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Is There a Homos in Eros: Sexual Incarnation in Emmanuel Falque

by Justin Leavitt Pearl

Religions 2023, 14(10), 1328; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101328 - 23 Oct 2023

Viewed by 847

Abstract

Since the fifth of Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, the encounter with the Other has been a central locus of phenomenological research. This centrality is nowhere as clear as in the phenomenological study of gender and sexuality. Just as the erasure of alterity [...] Read more.

Since the fifth of Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, the encounter with the Other has been a central locus of phenomenological research. This centrality is nowhere as clear as in the phenomenological study of gender and sexuality. Just as the erasure of alterity is understood to render ethics impossible, so too is the erasure of sexual difference taken to render genuine erotic love impossible. Employing the recent work of Emmanuel Falque, this investigation aims to interrogate the way in which this rhetoric of sexual alterity has often served to maintain and reinforce a logic of homophobia and queer erasure. If every major phenomenologist of the past century has agreed with Emmanuel Falque, that there is a “heteros in eros, or an other in difference”, I will here ask the question: might there not also be a homos in eros? Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

14 pages, 310 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Wilfrid Ward on the Revelatory Nature of the Saints

by Elizabeth A. Huddleston

Religions 2023, 14(10), 1306; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101306 - 18 Oct 2023

Viewed by 906

Abstract

This article examines how Wilfrid Philip Ward (1856–1916) explains his understanding of the saints as a categorical means of explicating divine revelation within the structures of a religion, particularly Catholicism. A description of the late nineteenth-century Zeitgeist, as perceived by Ward, is provided, [...] Read more.

This article examines how Wilfrid Philip Ward (1856–1916) explains his understanding of the saints as a categorical means of explicating divine revelation within the structures of a religion, particularly Catholicism. A description of the late nineteenth-century Zeitgeist, as perceived by Ward, is provided, followed by an explanation of how Ward responds philosophically to his perceived Zeitgeist with a description of the saints as revelatory of the incarnation in the particularity of historical and social contexts of those outside of the historical Jesus’s own context. This article concludes that Ward’s epistemology of the saints is the foundation for his incarnational ecclesiology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

14 pages, 318 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sexuality as Unity in Life: An Approach from Michel Henry’s Phenomenology of Incarnation

by Juan Pablo Martínez

Religions 2023, 14(10), 1301; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101301 - 17 Oct 2023

Viewed by 1250

Abstract

This article aims to promote the integration of knowledge and life based on a phenomenological description of sexuality and erotic relations. To carry out this task, I will follow the approaches of the French philosopher Michel Henry in order to extract the anthropological [...] Read more.

This article aims to promote the integration of knowledge and life based on a phenomenological description of sexuality and erotic relations. To carry out this task, I will follow the approaches of the French philosopher Michel Henry in order to extract the anthropological consequences of a phenomenology of incarnation pertaining to sexuality. Both the peculiar union produced by the sexual act and its perpetually threatened condition through the “event” of nihilation of the flesh will be the object of reflection throughout this work. In my search for the reintegration of the human being through the sexual act, I will show the importance of woman and her spiritual superiority in deepening the intimate meaning of sexuality. Further, I will argue that the intersubjective experience lived in sexual practice demands a consideration of human beings from their ultimate condition of relational possibility (Life), emphasizing their engendered, not merely created, condition. Thus, the salvation of human beings and their involvement in the coming of Life to them is intrinsically related to that carnal disposition which aids to unify them, beyond their diversity, in their self-revelation in Life. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

24 pages, 411 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Toward a Natural Theology of Abundance: Reorientation to a Sacramental Reality

by Annalea Rose Thiessen

Religions 2023, 14(9), 1125; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091125 - 1 Sep 2023

Viewed by 1336

Abstract

This paper presents the Christian incorporation and transformation of the philosophical understanding of the relation between the material and immaterial. This transformation centers on the Incarnation of Christ, which changes both the relation or contact between the material and immaterial realms, and human [...] Read more.

This paper presents the Christian incorporation and transformation of the philosophical understanding of the relation between the material and immaterial. This transformation centers on the Incarnation of Christ, which changes both the relation or contact between the material and immaterial realms, and human knowledge concerning the immaterial divine presence in material reality. More than a descriptive, historical account, the paper is primarily a conceptual presentation that retrieves the historically early thought of Irenaeus of Lyons and Athanasius of Alexandria to argue for a theological account of sacramental reality. Drawing on the metaphysical function of sacraments—themselves “visible signs of invisible grace”—which convey that there is more to material reality than meets the eye, I argue that this “more” implies what I call “a theology of abundance” that pertains to the whole of created reality, in the abundant nature of creation and of the human being in particular, and especially apparent in human knowing. The implication of such a theology of abundance is a comprehensive reorientation of human being, knowing, and expression in response to the invisible presence of the divine in visible, sacramental reality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

12 pages, 256 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Flesh, Body, World: Michel Henry on Incarnation

by Jonathan Scruggs

Religions 2023, 14(9), 1109; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091109 - 28 Aug 2023

Viewed by 758

Abstract

Henry tirelessly insists that all flesh is an invisible, radically immanent, impressional material in which life arrives in itself. But this raises a theological problem: is the material, visible body of Christ to be excluded from what we understand by incarnation? To answer [...] Read more.

Henry tirelessly insists that all flesh is an invisible, radically immanent, impressional material in which life arrives in itself. But this raises a theological problem: is the material, visible body of Christ to be excluded from what we understand by incarnation? To answer this and related questions, the problematic of the duplicity of appearing—the appearing of life and the appearing of the world—must be clarified. It is precisely through an analysis of flesh that Henry seeks to establish a rapport between the two modes of appearing, so a study of the flesh should allow us to articulate in one stroke an account of our access to the world and the thingly body. Against a simplistic reading that claims that, for Henry, an unbridgeable gorge separates life and the world, the flesh and the body, I argue that the objective, visible body is real, but that its reality is founded on the more immediate reality of the flesh. I use the results of this inquiry to argue further for two distinct but related senses of the concept “world”, one which names a phenomenological reality and another that picks out an ideological aberration endemic to modernity. While the flesh opens up the reality of the former, the latter is an imaginary and impossible world. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

45 pages, 3310 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Necessity of an Incarnate Prophet

by Joshua R. Sijuwade

Religions 2023, 14(8), 961; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14080961 - 25 Jul 2023

Viewed by 1224

Abstract

This article aims to provide an a priori argument—termed the Flourishment Argument, for the veracity of the Christian conception of the Abrahamic religion that centres on God’s action of sending a divine and atoning prophet into the world. This specific informal argument will [...] Read more.

This article aims to provide an a priori argument—termed the Flourishment Argument, for the veracity of the Christian conception of the Abrahamic religion that centres on God’s action of sending a divine and atoning prophet into the world. This specific informal argument will be presented through the formulation of a set of a priori reasons for why God would seek to interact with the world—developed in light of the work of Richard Swinburne, John Finnis, Linda Zagzebski and Alexander Pruss—which, in combination, will provide individuals with grounds for believing in the veracity of these important Christian teachings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

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11 pages, 252 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Pascal and Blondel on Real and Notional Knowledge

by Robert C. Koerpel

Religions 2023, 14(5), 627; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050627 - 6 May 2023

Viewed by 995

Abstract

This article examines real and notional knowledge in the work of Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) and French Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861–1949). It explores the relationship between real and notional knowledge through the themes of disproportion, diversion, contingency, and faith in each thinker and [...] Read more.

This article examines real and notional knowledge in the work of Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) and French Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861–1949). It explores the relationship between real and notional knowledge through the themes of disproportion, diversion, contingency, and faith in each thinker and argues that the right relationship between real and notional knowledge is the organizing principle of their thoughts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Incarnation)

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