David Griffin

The fact that many who are currently interested in spirituality tum to non-Christian sources is related to Augustine’s view of divine omnipotence. which was expressed supremely in his anit-Donatist and anti-Pelagian writings. Distinguishing cosmological, theological, and axiological freedom helps us see Pelgius as right on the second even though Augustine was right on the third. Process theology, by defending cosmological freedom against modem thought, theological freedom against pre-modem thought, and an element of truth in Donatism, provides the basis for a post-modem spirituality.

The notion that "the holy reality wills it" can provide both the rational justification (the move from "is" to "ought") and the psychological motivation for acting morally. But can the will of God be the criterion for the morally right? Although what is right cannot be reduced to what God wills (due to the perceptual aspect of the meaning of "right"), it can be deduced from it, given an understanding of perception that implies that an omniscient perceiver would necessarily be an impartial sympathizer. This, however, presupposes the ideal observer criterion of rightness, which is based upon an appeal to holiness. Recognizing that the criteriological and religious meanings of moral terms are finally identical overcomes the problems of justification and motivation inevitable in apparently non-religious moral theories.

This book shows the interconnections between postmodernism, religion, politics, economics, and art. It shows that the awareness of interconnectedness is at the center of the postmodern sensibility. Sacred Interconnections illustrates the rejection of the modern idea that these subjects can be discussed as separate disciplines. While the term "postmodern" has been widely used for deconstructive, cynical, even nihilistic attitude, especially in the world of art and literature, the book represents the emergence of a reconstructive, reenchanting postmodernism, even within the artistic and literary circles.

Willem Drees endorses not only minimal naturalism, understood as the rejection of supernatural interruptions of the world's normal causal processes, but also maximal naturalism, with its reductionistic materialism. Besides arguing that this reductionistic naturalism provides the best framework for interpreting science, he believes that it is compatible with religion (albeit of a minimalist sort). The “richer” naturalism advocated by Whiteheadians is, accordingly, unnecessary. Drees's position, however, cannot do justice to a number of “hard‐core commonsense notions,” which we inevitably presuppose in practice and thereby in science as well as religion. His naturalism is too poor, in particular, to account for subjectivity, freedom, and mathematical, religious, and moral experience.

Process thought refers to the mode of thinking rooted in the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Drawing heavily on Whitehead and Hartshorne, this chapter presents an account of process natural theology. The discussions cover the decline of natural theology's reputation in modern times; process theology in the broad sense; panexperientialism's avoidance of materialism's mind–body problems; sensationism's knowledge problems; how prehensive perception solves sensationism's knowledge problems; and process theology in the narrow sense.

The intractable mind-body problem, which involves accounting for freedom as well as conscious experience, is created by the assumption that the brain is comprised of insentient things. Chalmers is right, accordingly, to suggest that we take experience as fundamental. Given this starting-point, the hard problem is twofold: to see sufficient reason to adopt this long-despised approach, and to develop a plausible theory based on it. We have several reasons, I suggest, to reject the notion of ‘vacuous actuality’ and to adopt, instead, the view that all true individuals have experience and spontaneity. After suggesting criteria for an acceptable theory, chief among which are ‘hard-core common-sense notions’, I point out why dualism and materialism have been unable to fulfil these criteria. The strength of dualism has been its organizational duality, the strength of materialism its rejection of ontological dualism. I suggest that panexperientialist physicalism, by allowing for ‘compound individuals’ and thereby a ‘nondualistic interactionism’ that combines these strengths, can provide a theory that overcomes the problems of materialist physicalism

Although attempts to explain religious experience in terms of brain processes usually presuppose the identification of scientific naturalism with the sensationist, atheistic, materialist version of naturalism (naturalismsam), this version is inadequate for science, and human experience more generally, for numerous reasons. An alternative version, based on panexperientialism, panentheism, and a prehensive doctrine of perception (naturalismppp), not only avoids those problems but also allows for religious experience understood as the soul's direct experience of a Holy Reality.