Michael Roland F.

Hernandez Ateneo De Naga University PHIS003 INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Taken from John Hick 1. What is the Philosophy of Religion? The term Philosophy of Religion could mean different things: 1. Generally understood, it could mean religious philosophizing in the sense of the philosophical defense of religious convictions. It was seen as continuing the work of natural as distinguished from the revealed theology. Its program was to demonstrate rationally the existence of God, thus paving the way for the truths of divine revelation. 2. The term, properly understood means philosophical thinking about religion. a. It is not an organ of religious teaching. The atheist, the agnostic, the believer can all philosophize about religion. b. It is not a branch of theology, but of philosophy. It studies the concepts and belief systems of the religions as well as the prior phenomena of religious experience and the activities of worship and meditation on which these belief systems rest and out of which they have arisen. c. It is not part of the religious experience itself but constitutes a reflection on it. d. It seeks top analyze the different concepts we have about God, dharma, salvation, worship, creation, sacrifice, nirvana, etc., and the determine the very nature of religious utterances compared to those of everyday life. 2. What is religion? There are many definitions proposed. 1. Phenomenological - It is a superhuman recognition of a superhuman controlling power and especially of a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. (Oxford Dict.) 2. Psychological the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in whatever they may consider the divine. (William James) 3. Sociological a set of beliefs, practices and institutions which men have evolved in various societies. (Talcott Parsons) 4. Naturalistic a body of scruples which impede the free exercise of our faculties. (Salomon Reinach) 5. Sympathetically ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling. (Matthew Arnold) 6. Religious Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge. (Herbert Spencer) The problem with the above definition is that they are all stipulative i.e., they decide how the term is to used and impose this in the form of a definition. FAMILY RESEMBLANCES The word religion does not have a single correct definition/meaning but the different phenomena can be subsumed into what we call family resemblances

Within this set of family resemblances there is a feature which is extremely widespread (though not universal). This is the concern for salvation or liberation. All the great developed world faiths have a soteriological structure (Savior, Messiah; GK. Soteria salvation). These religions offer a transition from a radically unsatisfactory state of affairs to a limitlessly better one. Fallen state reunited happy state. The soteriological structure is underlined by the Ultimate Divine Reality seen as good or gracious. Religions offer a way to the Absolute/Ultimate o through faith-response to divine grace o or through total self-giving to God o through spiritual self-discipline and maturing which leads to enlightenment and liberation. Salvation or Liberation consists in a new and limitlessly better quality of existence which comes about in the transition from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. THE JUDAIC-CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD

MONOTHEISM the belief in one, loving and personal God who seeks a total and unqualified response from creatures. God = Supreme, Absolute Being, the Ultimate, Infinite, Perfect Being Terms used in main ways of thinking about God. (Gk. Theos = God; Lt. Deus) Negative ATHEISM (not-God-ism) is the belief that there is no God of any klind. AGNOSTICISM (not-know-ism) is the belief that we do not have any sufficient reason either to affirm or to deny Gods existence. SKEPTICISM simple means doubting NATURALISM the theory that every aspect of human experience (including moral and religious life) can be adequately described and accounted for in terms of our existence as gregarious and intelligent animals whose life is organic to our natural environment. Affirmative DEISM refers to the idea of an absentee god who set the universe in motion long ago and left it alone. For 18th century deists, they believed that natural theology is religiously sufficient. THEISM (often used as a synonym for monotheism) is belief in a personal deity. POLYTHEISM (many-gods-ism) is common to many ancient peoples and reached classic expressions in ancient Greece and Rome. There are a multitude of personal gods, each governing a department of life. HENOTHEISM is the belief that there are many gods but restricts allegiance to only one of them, generally the god of ones own tribe or people. PANTHEISM (God-is-all-ism) is the belief that God is identical with nature or with the world as a whole. PANENTHISM (everything-in-God-ism) is the view that all things exist ultimately in God. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JUDAIC-CHRISTIAN GOD

b. The created realm is absolutely dependent on the Creator. 4. PERSONAL God is the divine Thou who created us as persons in Gods own image and who always deals with us that respect our personal freedom and responsibility. To speak of God as a person must be qualified however, since we might be caught up in the anthropomorphic (anthropos, man and morphe, shape) way of thinking about God. 5. LOVING, GOOD Gods love is to understood in terms of agape, the unconditional and universal. The nature of agape is to value a person in such ways as to actively seek his/her deepest welfare and fulfillment. 6. HOLY the divine reality is infinitely other and greater. God is so immense. This holy evokes the sense of awe or dread, of majesty or power, and of urgency or energy. This is what Rudolf Otto means by mysterium tremendum et fascinans. RUDOLF OTTOSS DESCRIPTION OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 1. Religious experience in all its varying ideas and feelings is characteristically underlined by the holy as its typical element. The distinctively religious experience is the numinous experience. 2. Ottos analysis is a very good example of a phenomenological description of religion; noema, noesis and the self. 3. THE NUMINOUS is the object of religious experience. It is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. This object does not only fill us with awe and dread but also attracts and charms. This fascination is expressed in fervor, transport which arouses stupor and amazement or wonder. In the religious sense, the mystery is the wholly other, which is entirely beyond the ordinary, the familiar, the profane, something whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb. The holy is experienced as both dreadful and attractive. 4. The divine, and not the human mind, is the ground of religion. This numinous is both rational and non-rational. The psychological conditions do enter religious experience and the numinous, which is non-rational, is expressed in rational ideas. The numinous is the characteristic note of all religious experience. The numinous is the sacred in the sense of a non-moral holiness as a category of value, and a state of mind and of spiritual experience special to religious experience. 5. The RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE is a category sui generis and cannot be reduced to any ordinary knowing, intellectual or rational: a unique, original feelingresponse, which can be in itself ethically neutral and claims consideration in its own right. This special feeling which characterizes the religious experience cannot be the psychological outcome of a thrill or enthusiasm. The religious feelings are not psychological modes but are modes of apprehending the divine. 6. The numinous is a mystery that cannot be grasped in its entirety using rational concepts/elements alone. This is something that is emphasized unmistakably in every type of religion. The divine cannot be fully comprehended by the human mind (human words/modes). 7. The divine is called The Mystery, the inexpressible, the totally Other, the Beyond. However since experience of the divine is a human experience, it finds expressions in symbols which are of a profane sphere, by means of which the divine is attained.