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Defining Religion
Provides a new orientation to philosophy of religion and a new theory of how religion ought to be defined. In this collection of essays, written over the past decade, Robert Cummings Neville addresses contemporary debates about the concept of religion and the importance of the comparative method in theology, while advancing and defending his own original definition of religion. Nevilles hypothesis is that religion is a cognitive, existential, and practical engagement of ultimate realitiesfive ultimate conditions of existence that need to be engaged by human beings. The essays, which range from formal articles to invited lectures, develop this hypothesis and explore its ramifications in religious experience, philosophical theology, religious studies, and the works of important thinkers in philosophy of religion. Defining Religion is an excellent introduction to Nevilles work, especially to the systematic philosophical theology presented in his magisterial three-volume set Philosophical Theology.
Ultimates
A new theology of ultimate realities and a new theory of religion to back it up addressed to believers, unbelievers, and scholars of all traditions.
Existence
Religion, writes Robert Cummings Neville, articulates existential predicaments and provides venues for ecstatic fulfillment. Like its companion volumes treating ultimacy and religion, Existence advances a systematic philosophical theology to address first-order questions found in the array of Axial Age religions. Issues arising in the major religious traditions are explored through a complex array of philosophical approaches. This second volume shows religion to be the engagement of ultimate realities common to all human beings. Neville finds five problematics relative to ultimate boundary conditions of the human world: the contingency of existence, living under obligation, the quest for wholeness, engagement with others, and the meaning or value in life. Common to all human beings and hence "religion," the engagement with realities is also historically and culturally bound, becoming simultaneously socially constructed "religions." Readers will find Neville's philosophical theology both bold and enlightening, running counter to dominant intellectual trends while richly informed by a long and fruitful engagement with theology, philosophy, and religion, East and West.
Eternity and Time's Flow
Neville returns eternity to the center of consideration by analyzing the obsessive culture that attempts to get along denying it; and he analyzes the nature of time's flow itself, the nature of divine eternity, and the subtle problems of personal immortality. He argues that time and eternity constitute one topic and that, therefore, time itself is beyond understanding, beyond personal grasp, and beyond civilized orientation without a proper comprehension of eternity.
Religion
Religion is the third and final volume in Robert Cummings Neville's systematic development of a new philosophical theology. Unfolding through his earlier volumes, Ultimates and Existence, and now in Religion, philosophical theology considers first-order questions generally treated by religious traditions through philosophical methods while reflecting Neville's long engagement with philosophy, theology, and Eastern and Western religious traditions. In this capstone to the trilogy, Neville provides a theory of religion and presents a sacred worldview to guide religious participation. His philosophical theory of value enlightens religions' approaches to ethics, spirituality, and religious insti...
Metaphysics of Goodness
In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead's project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville's focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou Dunyi. Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines.
The Cosmology of Freedom
Neville's The Cosmology of Freedom corrects the tendency to believe that freedom consists in one thing alone, for instance not being constrained, or being able to choose between live options, or participating in a democratic political process. He lays out in systematic fashion the connections between personal dimensions of freedom, such as external liberty (Hobbes), the ability to act on the basis of one's intentions (Spinoza), choice between live options (James), and creativity (Whitehead), and social dimensions of freedom, such as opportunity (Du Bois), social pluralism (Dewey), integral life-style (Tillich), and participatory politics (Dahl). Discerning the nuances of these dimensions of ...
Theology in Global Context
Robert Cummings Neville has been a consistent advocate for the necessity of global theology. Early in his career, he realized that the philosophical framework of the West alone was inadequate for a truly global theology. Since then, he has sought to develop theology creatively and responsibly within the world context. The original essays in this volume, written in his honour by fellow theologians, participate in and model the kind of dialogical, global theology embodied in Neville's work.
Normative Cultures
The great civilizations of the world are very different from one another, indeed more strangely different the closer they come in economic, social, and cultural interaction. Yet each claims to be a normative way of being human. At the very minimum human achievement requires competence in the conventions of one's own civilization. To be human is to participate in a conventional culture, and the normatively human conventional cultures are different. Here is the "clash of civilizations": Without commitment to some conventions of civilized humanity, no one can be human; yet the conventions are different, perhaps even opposed. Two problems bring philosophy to the refiner's fire. How can we concei...
The Truth of Broken Symbols
This book provides a cross-cultural analysis of how religious symbols function from a theological and philosophical perspective. Showing how religious symbols can be true in various qualified senses, Neville presents a theory of religious symbolism in the American pragmatic tradition extending and elaborating Tillich's claim that religious symbols participate in the divine realities to which they refer and yet must be broken in order not to be idolatrous or demonic. The Truth of Broken Symbols offers a theory of religious symbolism treating reference, meaning, and interpretation, and discussing different functions of religious symbols in theological, practical, and devotional contexts. It shows that religious symbols are to be properly understood as true or false and that symbol-systems such as myths, theologies, or liturgical symbols are to be used to engage divine realities while internally exhibiting semiotic structures of reference, meaning, and interpretation.
