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This is the second of three essays in fundamental theology--along with Questioning Back (1985) and Conventional and Absolute Truth (2015)--which attempt to reassess the status of Christian doctrinal language within the contemporary "regime of truth." Reflecting on the reality of religious pluralism as the governing horizon of theology today, it proposes that the very notion of religious truth needs to be rethought. In a dialogue with Derrida it argues that the effects of dissemination and differance have indeed unsettled any project of pinning down truth in a definitive, substantial way, while at the same time it defends the objectivity of concretely situated truth-judgments as more than merely an effect of the play of language. The Buddhist conceptions of emptiness, conventional truth, and skillful means--further explored in Philosophie occidentale et concepts bouddhistes (2011)--allow a positive religious significance to be found in this mutation in the status of Christian truth.
This is the first of three essays in fundamental theology--along with Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (1996) and Conventional and Absolute Truth (2015)--which attempt to reassess the status of Christian doctrinal language within the contemporary "regime of truth." In light of Heidegger's "overcoming of metaphysics," it revisits the age-old tension between Athens and Jerusalem--between the metaphysical structures of the Greek mind and the texture of the biblical events of revelation and salvation. A deconstructive reading that traces this tension in classical Christian texts--continued in later studies, including Christianisme et philosophie chez Origene, Editions du Cerf, 2011--clears the ground for a step back to biblical realities as they are apprehended in contemporary consciousness.
The final book of O'Leary's trilogy, Conventional and Ultimate Truth deals with the nature of theological rationality today, drawing on Buddhist ideology.
Reality Itself is a set of fifteen essays exploring interactions between Buddhist and Western philosophy. The first section presents the two traditions as sharing a quest for reality itself and illustrates this in discussions of everyday life, forgiveness, and religion. The second section engages with central concepts of Mahāyāna Buddhism: emptiness in the Heart Sutra, nonduality in the Vimalakirti Sutra, and skillful means in the Lotus Sutra. The third section focuses on Nāgārjuna's Root Verses of the Middle Way, showing how their dialectical logic and their dyad of ultimate and conventional can be applied in discussing divine personality, time, and truth. The final section studies interactions between Buddhism and Western thinkers (Hume, Hegel, Husserl, and Sartre), chiefly on the topic of self and non-self. The book should be of interest to graduate students in philosophy and theology.
This book focuses on the relationships between phenomenology and theology, which have been varied and complex but seem currently in an inconclusive and loosely defined state. Methodological rigor is not much in evidence, and the two disciplines continue to defy any authoritative synthesis. While both disciplines grapple with questions concerning the fundamental structures of human experience, their relationship is troubled by the elusive roles of Revelation and faith, which threaten the scientific autonomy of philosophy on one side and disable theologians for consistent philosophical discourse on the other. This volume revisits that conundrum from various perspectives, as it at once repristi...
This Handbook provides an introduction to all the major aspects of Catholic theology. As well as covering basic topics of doctrine and moral theology, the book considers some of Catholic theology's most important sources between 200 and 1870, and all the main movements and developments in Catholic theology since 1870.
A broad presentation of the key Buddhist teaching, practices and beliefs for the Western reader. It discusses ancient and modern contacts between Buddhism and Western thought, and introduces core Buddhist ideas - suffering, impermanence and non-self; knowledge and faith; wisdom and compassion; meditation; transcendance and the absolute; and the person of the Buddha.