God, the Mind's Desire
God, the Mind's Desire
Looking for an inspection copy?
This title is not currently available for inspection.
This 2004 book reconfigures the basic problem of Christian thinking - 'How can human discourse refer meaningfully to a transcendent God?' - as a twofold demand for integrity: integrity of reason and integrity of transcendence. Centring around a provocative yet penetratingly faithful re-reading of Kant's empirical realism, and drawing on an impelling confluence of contemporary thinkers (including MacKinnon, Bonhoeffer, Marion, Putnam, Nagel) Paul D. Janz argues that theology's 'referent' must be located within present empirical reality. Rigorously reasoned yet refreshingly accessible throughout, this book provides an important, attentively informed alternative to the growing trends toward obscurantism, radicalization and anti-reason in many recent assessments of theological cognition, while remaining equally alert to the hazards of traditional metaphysics. In the book's culmination, epistemology and Christology converge around problems of noetic authority and orthodoxy with a kind of innovation, depth and straightforwardness that readers of theology at all levels of philosophical acquaintance will find illuminating.
- A fresh, provocative yet faithful re-reading of Kant's empirical realism for philosophers and theologians
- Anti-realism and realism illuminated through Bonhoeffer's Act and Being and MacKinnon's critical metaphysics
- Theological reference reconfigured as empirical reference
Reviews & endorsements
Review of the hardback: 'This intense and profound book performs the very approach it recommends, by demonstrating throughout intellectual virtues of patience, attention, rigour and commitment. Janz writes well and in a style refreshingly free from self-indulgent obscurity.' The Times Literary Supplement
Review of the hardback: '… a magnificent achievement … anyone professionally involved in the realist/antirealist debate should read this book and take it seriously. They should also encourage their graduate students to read it.' Reviews in Religion and Theology
Review of the hardback: '… rewarding study that is carefully argued, challenging and thought provoking for all who are interested in the fate of theological discourse in our so-called postmodern age …' Conversations in Religions and Theology
Review of the hardback: '… most lucidly argued throughout, frequently persuasive in its analysis of other writers, and profound and innovative in its conclusions … and which speaks of the author as well-read in both theology and philosophy and writes with the confidence of someone who has mastered the relevant literature'. Expository Times
Product details
June 2006Adobe eBook Reader
9780511192296
0 pages
228 × 152 mm
0kg
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- 1. A reconnaissance of theology and epistemology
- 2. Theology and the lure of obscurity
- 3. Philosophy's perpetual polarizations: Anti-realism and Realism
- 4. Philosophy's perpetual polarizations: making and finding
- 5. Philosophy's perpetual polarizations: act and being
- 6. The Kantian inversion of 'all previous philosophy'
- 7. Tragedy, empirical history and finality
- 8. Penultimacy and Christology.
