Philosophical Theology in Transition

Philosophical Theology is the scientific reflexion of the unfathomable mystery that religions call the Holy, the Divine or God. Nowadays, this discipline has been almost completely removed from the canon of philosophical disciplines, giving way to methodological atheism. It has often deservingly criticised for its abstractness and speculative eccentricity. As a result, we now face the alternative of either abandoning it completely or transforming it fundamentally. In an attempt to address this pressing problem, the first volume of Philosophical Theology in Transition reconstructed the chequered history of Philosophical Theology in order to discover its original place within our relation to the whole of being. Several chapters therein dealt with fundamental ontological themes. This volume also contains important ontological sections, but the focus lies on the historical drama of a battle on two fronts in which Philosophical Theology is attacked from fideistic theologies on one side and atheistic philosophies on the other. Both forms of criticism share the same concern: to liberate mankind from an ungodly God. Fideism posits that human reason is to limited or too corrupted to realize ontological or religious truths and therefore relies on faith alone. In order to deconstruct this position different kinds of faith are differentiated in a phenomenological manner. Following Parmenides, faith is proven to be an unavoidable principle of human openess towards the world, a principle that culminates in the dialogical trust in the source of Being. Building upon this insight influencial fideisms (Blaise Pascal, Karl Barth) are rebutted. The second main part develops a comprehensive view of atheistic attitudes and theories and analyses the resulting loss of religion. Sociographically, contemporary atheism is a global movement comparable in strength to Buddhism or Hinduism. An examination of the genesis of modern atheism shows that it can be understood as a critical reaction to bad religious practice and theories that distort the Divine. This prepares the ground for a detailed analysis of important atheistic philosophers that will be undertaken in the next volume.