The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology by Paul K. Moser

Author:Paul K. Moser [Moser, Paul K.]
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: REVELATION
Published: 2010-05-03T06:40:46.486000+00:00

DYING TO KNOW

In connection with human knowing of divine reality, a perfectly loving God would seek noncoercively to move our wills to have us learn to love as God loves, in fellowship with God. How exactly would God’s Spirit “intervene”

to lead us toward God’s character in this way? More specifically, what would be involved in “acquaintance” with the “power” of God’s intervening Spirit?

In addition, how, if at all, would the intervention of God’s personal Spirit be related to the death and resurrection of Jesus as God’s authoritative Son?

We need to face such questions head on, but, as is usual in philosophy and theology, a bit of methodological stage-setting must come first. 3. jerusalem and athens

We have been going back and forth between philosophy and theology for our explanatory purposes as if the two areas are actually importantly related, especially regarding human knowledge of divine reality. Contemporary philosophers seldom follow suit, perhaps owing to fear of things theological, but that fear may be a reason to proceed as we have, after all. In any case, we won’t, and shouldn’t, hesitate to cross disciplinary boundaries when explanation, knowledge, and truth are served. It’s time to comment briefly on the two areas for the sake of setting a methodological context. Chapter 4 will extend this treatment in ways foreign but challenging to contemporary philosophy and theology. It will thus move us beyond business as usual in philosophy, in light of the dire human predicament of destructive selfishness and impending death.

What, if anything, does Jerusalem, the center of the earliest (Jewish-) Christian movement of Jesus’s disciples, have to do with Athens, the center of western philosophy in its inception? Do they share intellectual purposes? Do they share means to achieving their intellectual purposes? Do they share any- thing significant at all? The latter three questions demand yes answers, if only because Jerusalem and Athens both aim to achieve truth (at least of a certain kind), and they aim to achieve truth (at least of the kind in question) via knowledge of truth. These two factors are significant in terms of what defines Jerusalem and Athens. So, Jerusalem and Athens do share something significant, however much they differ and fear each other. The fact that Jerusalem and Athens aim for truth via knowledge of truth doesn’t set them apart from many other movements. The later natural and social sciences, properly understood, aim for truth via knowledge, but they aren’t native citizens of either Jerusalem or Athens. The earliest western philosophy definitive of Athens aims for a kind of truth whose discovery didn’t wait upon the later investigations of the natural and social sciences. 3. JERUSALEM AND ATHENS

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Accordingly, Socrates and Plato proceeded with their philosophical work even though the natural and social sciences were at best immature, if they existed at all, strictly speaking. Likewise, the theology characteristic of the earliest Christian movement in Jerusalem didn’t wait for the empirical work of the later natural and social sciences. Its theology of the Good News of God’s

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