Saving God

Paperback

Johnston, Mark 저자(글)

Princeton University Press · 2011년 07월 31일

책 소개

Mark Johnston is the Walter Cerf Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and the author of Surviving Death (Princeton).
"This book is a brilliantly conceived contribution to natural theology. Taken together with Johnston's forthcoming Surviving Death, it constitutes the most interesting and provocative elaboration of religious naturalism since Santayana."--Jeffrey Stout, author of Democracy and Traditionand Ethics after Babel "This is a remarkable, fascinating, and important book, one that exhibits rich philosophical erudition--which it wears lightly--and startling philosophical insight. It is, at its core, a work of natural theology, a distinctly philosophical endeavor, but the book neatly sidesteps all the dead ends that such a project has created for itself in the last couple of centuries."--James C. Edwards, author of The Plain Sense of Things: The Fate of Religion in an Age of Normal Nihilism "This is one of those rare works in philosophical theology that presents a complex, novel view in a manner accessible to the general reader. This is an exciting book."--Andrew Chignell, Cornell University
Rejecting supernaturalism as idolatrous, Mark Johnston seeks to rehabilitate the ideas of the Fall & of salvation within a naturalistic framework & presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry & is wholly consistent with the natural sciences.
Mark Johnston is the Walter Cerf Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and the author of "Surviving Death" (Princeton).
In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalismis idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences. Princeton University Press is publishing Saving Godin conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book Surviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death.
In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating.A central claim of the book is thatsupernaturalismis idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences.Princeton University Press is publishingSaving Godin conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming bookSurviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death.
[A]n astonishing book. . . . [A] daring blend of human depth and philosophical originality. -- Tony Coady, Australian Book Review
Outstanding. -- Alan Wolfe, National Interest
Saving Godis a rich and provocative book. . . . I found Saving Godto be original, complex and insightful. However one reacts to Johnston's naturalistic reinterpretation of Christianity and the other monotheisms, one may still applaud his rejection of idolatrous uses of religion to serve human ends. -- Lynne Rudder Baker, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Saving Godis a rich and provocative book. . . . I foundSaving Godto be original, complex and insightful. However one reacts to Johnston's naturalistic reinterpretation of Christianity and the other monotheisms, one may still applaud his rejection of idolatrous uses of religion to serve human ends. -- Lynne Rudder Baker, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Surviving Deathand Saving Godboth provided me with intellectual pleasure of a high order, even though I found many of the author's conclusions false and some morally repugnant. Johnston is the kind of atheist it's good for Christians to read, because he is intelligent, intellectually energetic, and serious about what he engages, and because he shows very clearly just where fastidiousness leads. -- Paul J. Griffiths, Commonweal
Surviving DeathandSaving Godboth provided me with intellectual pleasure of a high order, even though I found many of the author's conclusions false and some morally repugnant. Johnston is the kind of atheist it's good for Christians to read, because he is intelligent, intellectually energetic, and serious about what he engages, and because he shows very clearly just where fastidiousness leads. -- Paul J. Griffiths, Commonweal
The non-fiction book I most enjoyed this year might be a stocking-stuffer for both atheists and believers (it is slightly more likely to appeal to the former, but would certainly intrigue believers willing to think about their belief). It is Saving God: Religion After Idolatry(Princeton University Press), by the Princeton philosopher Mark Johnston. This book demolishes, with far greater precision and elegance than anything by Richard Dawkins. -- James Wood, New Yorker
The non-fiction book I most enjoyed this year might be a stocking-stuffer for both atheists and believers (it is slightly more likely to appeal to the former, but would certainly intrigue believers willing to think about their belief). It isSaving God: Religion After Idolatry(Princeton University Press), by the Princeton philosopher Mark Johnston. This book demolishes, with far greater precision and elegance than anything by Richard Dawkins. -- James Wood, New Yorker
This accessible, sophisticated, and thoughtful work will be an important addition to collections of both philosophy and theology. -- Choice
This witty and philosophically subtle book is . . . very Maimonidean in its thoroughgoing rejection of superstition and idolatry as an offense to true religion. -- Menachem Kellner, Jewish Review of Books

작가정보

저자(글) Johnston, Mark

목차

• Preface	p. xi
  Is Your God Really God?	p. 1
  Believing in God
  On the ?ames?of God
  The Meaning of ?od?and the Common Conception of God
  What is Salvation?
  Salvation Versus Spiritual Materialism
  The Idolatrous Religions	p. 18
  The Ban on Idolatry
  Idolatry as Perverse Worship
  Graven Images and the Highest One
  Idolatry as Servility
  The Rhetoric of Idolatrousness
  The Same God?
  The Pharisees'
  Problem with Jesus
  Could we be Idolaters?
  Supernaturalism and Scientism	p. 37
  Scientism and Superstition
  Supernaturalism
  Legitimate Naturalism
  Scientism Versus Science
  The Argument for Naturalism from True Religion
  The Phenomenological Approach	p. 53
  The Method and the Question
  Yahweh's use of the Method
  A Criterion, or an Enclosed Circle?
  Yahweh's Criterion Applied to Himself
  Forgiving the God
  A Reply to Yahweh's Answer to Job
  Is There and Internal Criterion of Religious Falsehood?	p. 70
  The Pope's Criterion of Religious Falsehood
  A Consequence of the Pope's Criterion
  Religious and Scientific Fallibilism
  Why God?	p. 80
  Doesn't Substantive Reasonableness Suffice?
  The Fall
  Homo Incurvatus in se
  The Redeemer?
  After Monotheism	p. 95
  The Highest One
  The Tetragrammation
  The Paradox of the Highest One
  Speaking of the Highest One
  Existents as Dependent Aspects of Existence Itself
  An Alternative to the Thomistic
  Interpretation of the Highest One
  Process Panentheism	p. 115
  The Goodness of the Highest One
  The Analogy of Logos
  Process Panentheism
  The Self-Disclosure of Existence Itself
  The Problem is with the Pantheon
  Panentheism, Not Pantheism	p. 126
  Distinguishing Panentheism and Pantheism
  Presence
  Presence as Disclosure
  Is being almost Entirely Wasted?
  Ubiquitous Presence
  Against Natural Representation
  Representation and ?arrying Information?/td>
  Can Causation Account for Aboutness?
  What Could Replace the Representationalist Tradition?
  A Diagnosis of the Representationalist's Mistake
  A Diagnosis of the Representationalist's Mistake
  A Transformed Picture of ?onsciousness?and Reality
  Confirming the Surprising Hypothesis
  The Mind of God	p. 152
  The Objectivity of the Realm of Sense
  How the Structure of I Resence Might Impose Evolutionary Constraints
  Objective Mind and the Mind of the Highest One
  The Doubly Donatory Character of Reality
  Does God Exist?
  The Highest One
  Christianity without Spiritual Materialism	p. 160
  Religion and Violence
  The Gospel According to Girard
  Where is Original Sinfulness?
  Original Sinfulness as self-will and False Righteousness
  Christ Destroys the Kingdom of self-will and False Righteousness
  The Afterlife as an Idolatrous Conceit
  Against ?an's Quest for Meaning?/td>
  The Afterlife as Resistance to Christ
  Naturalism's Gift: Resurrection without the Afterlife
  Postscript	p. 187
  Index	p. 189
  Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

기본정보

ISBN	9780691152615 ( 0691152616 )
발행(출시)일자	2011년 07월 31일
쪽수	216쪽
크기	152 * 231 * 18 mm / 340 g
총권수	1권
언어	영어