Volume 67, Issue 2 - Themed Issue: Munich Lecture in Philosophy of Religion

This paper explores the theme of religious naturalism, attempting to clarify different salient meanings for both component terms. We consider what forms of religious naturalism may recommend themselves as serious options for contemporary religious commitment. We argue that a viable robustly religious naturalist option may be built on the idea that the natural Universe has an overall purpose.

This paper discusses the question of how hope can be conceptualized in the context of an euteleological interpretation of reality. In doing so, it draws in particular on the concept of hope developed by Gabriel Marcel and the concept of radical hope proposed by Jonathan Lear.

Here I offer a brief response to John Bishop and Ken Perszyk’s Munich Lecture in Philosophy of Religion, published in this issue of the Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie .

I reply here to Bishop and Persyzk’s “Varieties of Religious Naturalism.” I am sympathetic to their euteleology but I do not think their approach to religious naturalism serves their own position very well. Instead I propose a Pagan religious naturalism which fits better with both religious naturalism and their euteleology.

In this article we reply to three commentaries published in this journal on our “Varieties of Religious Naturalism: A Conceptual Investigation,” by Georg Gasser, J. L. Schellenberg and Eric Steinhart.

The Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco (1932–2016) offered an insightful interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ thought on beauty. Eco’s book, translated into English in 1988, is considered an authoritative source of reflection on the subject and has been widely cited by those who have focused on Aquinas’ aesthetics in recent decades. In this article, I first assess the depth and richness of Eco’s interpretation, including his critique of Aquinas’ view. I then reject this critique by arguing that Aquinas’ reflection on beauty is grounded in his theological interests, the connections between which and his aesthetic views are overlooked by Eco.

Zusammenfassung Im Nachfolgenden wird sich mit Hegels Definition des Guten und Gewissens in seiner Rechtsphilosophie auseinandergesetzt, um von dieser aus Parallelen zum christlichen Gottes- und Glaubensbegriff aufzuzeigen. Dabei steht nicht die Theologie bzw. theologische Philosophie Hegels im Mittelpunkt, sondern sein Postulat einer Wahrheit, woraus sich Ansätze der Argumentation für das des christlichen Glaubens als der einen Wahrheit ableiten lassen. Obwohl Hegels Rechtsphilosophie breit untersucht worden ist, wurden seine Überlegungen zum Guten, Gewissen und Wahren für die theologische Diskussion noch nicht verwendet. Dieser Artikel soll diese Forschungslücke schließen.