de Waal considers both Christian fundamentalism and pragmatism as competing responses to what Nietzsche called “the death of God”: the demise of the concept of God that was central to both science and philosophy in the modern era. de Waal provides an account of the relation among religion, science, and philosophy from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century that culminates in the demise of the idea of God as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator and in science inheriting the social prestige that was once religion’s. The fundamentalists responded by maintaining that the only good science is that which is consistent with Scripture – unlike, e.g., the theory of evolution. Pragmatists responded by embracing the new science and responded to it with a passel of new philosophical ideas, e.g., Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, conceived as a test of meaningfulness for our concepts; his critical common-sensism, which allows us to take a critical position with regard to our common-sense beliefs; James’s denial of a ready-made world and his doctrine that it is sometimes permissible to believe in the absence of evidence; and fallibilism, which denies the possibility of certainty.

This chapter examines a wide range of rabbinic sources and demonstrates that the rabbis gave considerable attention to God’s independent existence and strongly affirmed our capacity to refer to and speak truthfully about God.

Both of the two main Hellenistic philosophical schools, the Epicureans and the Stoics, can be said to have an explicit theory of concepts that is broadly speaking empiricist. For both of them assume that all concepts originate in experience and that none are innate. But while their respective accounts appear similar, they arise from contrasting worldviews: atomist materialism for the Epicureans, and corporealism and a belief in providence and the all-pervading logos of God for the Stoics. Our chapter aims to piece together these two accounts of concepts and interpret them afresh. We will explore their commonalities and differences, show how they are impacted by the respective philosophical frameworks to which each of them belongs, and highlight their philosophical value.

The significance of the Old Testament for human history and culture is undeniable. Whatever our personal convictions regarding its content, the Old Testament contains the origins of nearly everything we think about God. Variously labeled as the Hebrew Bible, the Tanak, the First Testament, and the Old Testament, among others, this library of texts from ancient Israel has been preserved for more than two thousand years.

Emerging from the polytheistic context of the ancient world, the enduring significance of the Old Testament is to be found in the concept of monotheism. Indeed, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share in this unique religious legacy. We will discover in this chapter what lies behind the terminology we use when we speak of monotheism, and how the Old Testament perceives and develops the understanding of a singular God. Known to ancient Israel as Yahweh, Israel’s God came to be understood as Creator, source of all, and sovereign over all. Only in time would Israel come to believe that Yahweh was not only its God, and the God Israelites were called to worship, but the one and only God.

Because the consensus view is that rabbinic theology is not theoretical, it is necessary to show that the rabbis prized knowledge of God. Using a range of literary, rhetorical, and epistemological approaches, the chapter firmly establishes the place of theology in rabbinic Judaism.

Positing the question concerning the meaning of life in terms of "how should one live so that the value of life be accessible to one," my claim is that Kierkegaard’s answer to this question is "by loving." To explain this answer, I focus on the idea of "God as a middle term" that Kierkegaard presents in Works of Love. Further to interpreting this as saying that one’s relationship with God provides a deeper basis for loving, I claim that one’s relationship with God provides a deeper basis also for living. Having God as "the middle" in love, I suggest, is in fact to experience goodness, and by this to affirm one’s existence as valuable. Experiencing this goodness, however, depends on becoming oneself, which, for its part, depends on loving another. Thus, in the context of loving, one in fact sustains three sets of relationships: with God, with the beloved, and with oneself. In the chapter I demonstrate the interdependency of these relationships, and how they constitute a meaningful life.

Ch. 4 Jewish theology today requires a soft and practical metaphysics upon which a positive theology can be built. Principles of God and Torah are taken from medieval Jewish philosophy and notions of creation, revelation, redemption, and Israel from the Bible.

Metaphysics, Suárez teaches in Metaphysical Disputation I, is the science of being insofar as it is real being. Later he clarifies that this ‘being’ encompasses real natures, whether they actually exist or not. It seems therefore that for Suárez metaphysics engages not only with the most general features of actual things, but also with those of possible things. But to what extent are there possible things for Suárez in the first place? What does it mean for a thing or nature to be possible? And how do possible things relate to actual things? By answering these questions, the chapter reconstructs Suárez’s metaphysics of modality in general and illuminates his widely debated theory of necessary and eternal truths in particular.

This chapter presents summary of the conclusions reached in the book.