Brendan Sweetman

This paper considers two related claims in the work of D. Z. Phillips: that commitment to God precludes a distinction between the commitment and the grounds for the commitment, and that belief and understanding are the same in religion. Both these claims motivate Phillips’s rejection of natural theology. I examine these claims by analyzing the notion of commitment, discussing what is involved in making a commitment to a worldview, why commitment is necessary at all in religion, levels of commitment, and commitment and justification. I show that Phillips fails to distinguish between adopting a hypothesis, where justification would be germane, and committing to the hypothesis after one has adopted it, where justification is not so pressing. This failure fatally undermines his rejection of natural theology.

French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. The central themes of his philosophy, which are developed with a blend of realism, concreteness, and common sense, continue to be relevant for the plight of humanity in the twentieth-first century. Marcel's thought emphasizes: the attempt to safeguard the dignity and integrity of the human person by emphasizing the inadequacy of the materialistic life and the unavoidable human need for transcendence; the inability of philosophy to capture the profundity and depth of key human experiences, and so the need to find a deeper kind of reflection; the importance of the experience of inter-subjectivity, which Marcel believes is at the root of human fulfillment, and which also finds expression in the transcendent dimension of human experience, a dimension that cannot be denied without loss, and that often gives meaning to our most profound experiences. Marcel is also one of the few contemporary thinkers who manages to do justice to the subjectivity and individuality of the human person, while avoiding the relativism and skepticism that has tended to accompany these notions, and that has plagued contemporary philosophy after Heidegger. He makes an unwavering effort to challenge the moral relativism and spiritual nihilism of his French rival, Jean-Paul Sartre, and of other representative existentialist philosophers. All of Marcel's important ideas are introduced here, ranging from his unique conception of philosophy; to his original approach to epistemology and the nature of knowledge; to his view on the nature of the human person, including the idea of being-in-a-situation and the importance of the "context" that the subject lives in for the subject's ideas and experiences; to his approach to religious themes, including the issues of the rationality of religious belief, the question of God's existence, and our longing for the transcendent; and his "concrete approaches" of fidelity, hope, love and faith. There are also selections in which he discusses some of his misgivings about the direction of contemporary culture, especially the effects of technology. Brendan Sweetman is Professor of Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO. He has published over seventy articles and reviews. He is president of the Gabriel Marcel Society.

This article examines Gabriel Marcel’s unique approach to the existence of God, and its implications for traditional philosophy of religion. After some preliminary remarks about the realm of “problems” (which would include the “rational”), and about the question of whether Marcel thinks God’s existence admits of a rational argument, Part I explains his account of how the individual subject can arrive at an affirmation of God through experiences of fidelity and promise-making. Part II proposes a way in which Marcel’s own philosophical and phenomenological approach could be regarded as a type of argument for the existence of God. The last section suggests that Marcel’s approach offers an advance upon the views of William Alston and John Hick concerning the analysis of religious experience.

James A.K. Smith has argued that postmodernism and religious belief can have a positive relationship. I argue against his views in this paper. I begin with a brief overview of what I take postmodernists to be saying, before examining Jean-Francois Lyotard's views on language-games, legitimation, and universal reason, concepts to which he appeals to support his claim that we should have incredulity toward metanarratives. I next look at how Smith appeals to Lyotard's ideas to argue that the biblical metanarrative escapes the postmodernist critique. I argue that Smith fails to show how religion would escape the postmodernist critique, because he fails to provide an analysis of what "religious faith" means. I illustrate that on any of the standard meanings of this phrase, his argument faces serious objections. I show that the epistemological and moral relativism of postmodernism means that not only is the postmodernist critique itself problematic, but it is not possible for religious belief to welcome this critique and retain its integrity, especially in the political realm.

"Max Picard was a Swiss-German writer, who converted to Catholicism from Judaism. A doctor and psychologist, Picard worked in Berlin but retired in the 1920s to Switzerland. He is often regarded as a "wisdom thinker," and his rich and penetrating writings continue to speak to us in the twenty-first century. The Flight from God is an incisive, profound description of many of the problems facing modern culture, and its analysis resonates with us more today than when first published in 1934. Picard illustrates that modern culture is essentially in Flight, and so the individual is under pressure to make a choice; in earlier generations only an individual could be in flight because the culture itself was not in flight but in Faith. The flight does not require courage or gui.

This work, translated from the German, is divided into nine chapters with a preface plus a very helpful introduction by the translator. There is also a postscript by Habermas, as well as a reprinting of two earlier papers on related topics. The book is intended as a contribution to contemporary political philosophy, and, as such, Habermas accepts certain assumptions in advance and does not attempt to argue for them at any length. The first is the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, the antirealist view that all knowledge is in some sense constructed by human culture and language. The second is the failure of natural law theory. Hence, his task is to engage in political philosophy in a “post-metaphysical age,” an age which requires a “procedural reason... that puts itself on trial”. Against this background, the political philosopher must avoid the twin pitfalls of subordinating law to a transcendentally grounded morality and of identifying law with a particular tradition’s view of the good life.

The discussion between Ernan McMullin and Alvin Plantinga concerning evolution and religion, which first appeared in Christian Scholar’s Review in September 1991, is an enlightening airing of many of the issues that arise with regard to this complex, controversial topic. Overall, Plantinga favors a confrontational view of the relationship between religion and evolution, while McMullin favors a dialogue model. The two thinkers disagree about the evidence for evolution, about what Plantinga calls “theistic science,” about methodological naturalism, and about biblical interpretation. McMullin accepts a mainstream view in several important respects, holding that: (i) evolution is true; (ii) Genesis is not to be read literally; (iii) science should be separated from theology; (iv) we should accept “methodological naturalism”; and (v) we should reject “creation science.” Plantinga disagrees with all of these claims. This article explores the differences between the two thinkers by means of an exposition of the main points, and offers a few important critical observations on key questions.