Contrary to popular belief, God not only survived the Enlightenment, but thrived within it. By exposing the Enlightenment's close ties to the traditions of the Renaissance, the passions of the Reformation, and the stirrings of globalization, God in the Enlightenment offers a spectral view of the age of lights.

This book has reached into the heart of Divine Intelligence to give an exposition on the nature of reality and aEURoewho and what we are.aEUR Briefly; GOD, or aEURoeIsness,aEUR is an attempt to explain an Unseen Real with the inherent power to manifest thought. In our world of form, there is not only no Truth, objectively speaking, but no Real. One's life is composed of beliefs, a present moment, and memory. It is changing, impermanent, and not self-created, thus relative, even illusory. We, humanity as a whole in form, are but One body comprised of aEURoethe many,aEUR who are all created living beings that emerged from the One GOD. In the wholeness of the One GOD there are no opposites to bridge; the duality in such is a construct of mind, and can be transcended by the truth. Hence form and formlessness together are a aEUR~Consciousness' of The One GOD that is aEUR~All There Is.'

One of the urgent tasks of modern philosophy is to find a path between the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the relativism of postmodernism. Rationalism alone cannot suffice to solve today's problems, but neither can we dispense with reasonable critique. The task is to find ways to broaden the scope of rational thought without losing its critical power. The first part of this volume explores the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers and shows nuances often absent from the common view of the Enlightenment. The second part deals with some of the modern heirs of Enlightenment, such as Durkheim, Habermas, and Derrida. In the third part this volume looks at alternatives to Enlightenment thought in West European, Russian and Buddhist philosophy. Part four provides, over against the Enlightenment, a new starting point for the philosophy of religion in thinking about human beings, God, and the description of phenomena.

This volume offers an overview of the Enlightenment's revolution of Western theology. It explains the era's ideas within the framework of religion, politics, and society--and shows how they impacted that society.

Clark provides a penetrating critique of the Enlightenment assumption of evidentialism--that belief in God requires the support of evidence or arguments to be rational. His assertion is that this demand for evidence is itself both irrelevant and irrational. His work bridges the gap between technical philosopher and educated layperson.

The Clarity of God's Existence examines the need for theistic proofs within historic Christianity, and the challenges to these since the Enlightenment. Historically (and scripturally), Christianity has maintained that unbelief is inexcusable. If failing to know God is a sin, the implication is that humans can and should know God. Humans should know God because his eternal power and divine nature are clearly revealed in the things that are made. And yet, Anderson argues, more time is spent on avoiding the need for clarity to establish inexcusability than on actually providing an argument or proof. Proofs that rely on Aristotle or Plato and that establish a Prime Mover or designer are thought to be sufficient. But the adequacy of these, not only to prove the God of theism, but also to prove anything at all, has been called into question by Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume. After considering the traditional proofs, and tracing the history of challenges to theistic proofs (from Hume to Kant and down to the twentieth century), Anderson argues that the standard methods of apologetics have failed to sufficiently respond. Classical Apologetics, Evidentialism, Presuppositionalism, Reformed Epistemology, and others fail to adequately answer the challenges of the Enlightenment. If this is the case, what is the outcome for Christianity? Anderson offers an explanation as to why traditional proofs have failed, and for what is necessary to offer a proof that not only responds to Hume and Kant but also establishes the clarity of God's existence. The traditional proofs failed precisely in not aiming at the clarity of God's existence, and they failed in this because of a faulty view of the goal of Christian life. If the blessed life is to be attained in a direct vision of God in heaven, then there is little to no reason to ask for more than the bare minimum required to get into heaven (justification). Furthermore, if the highest blessing is this direct vision, then the glory of God revealed in his work is considered as less important and even set aside. By way of contrast, if God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly revealed in his works, and the blessing comes in knowing God, then it is of the utmost importance for Christianity to demonstrate the clarity of God's existence.

This Work Demystifies The Entire Subject Of Spirituality And The Phenomena Of Enlightenment And Liberation By Demonstrating How They Have A Scientific Basis And Are Definable In Scientific/Psychological Terms.

This book explores the religious concerns of Enlightenment thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Thomas Jefferson. Using an innovative method, the study illuminates the intellectual history of the age through interpretations of Jesus between c.1650 and c.1826. The book demonstrates the persistence of theology in modern philosophy and the projects of social reform and amelioration associated with the Enlightenment. At the core of many of these projects was a robust moral-theological realism, sometimes manifest in a natural law ethic, but always associated with Jesus and a commitment to the sovereign goodness of God. This ethical orientation in Enlightenment discourse is found in a range of different metaphysical and political identities (dualist and monist; progressive and radical) which intersect with earlier ‘heretical’ tendencies in Christian thought (Arianism, Pelagianism, and Marcionism). This intellectual matrix helped to produce the discourses of irenic toleration which are a legacy of the Enlightenment at its best.

Avihu Zakai analyzes Jonathan Edwards's redemptive mode of historical thought in the context of the Enlightenment. As theologian and philosopher, Edwards has long been a towering figure in American intellectual history. Nevertheless, and despite Edwards's intense engagement with the nature of time and the meaning of history, there has been no serious attempt to explore his philosophy of history. Offering the first such exploration, Zakai considers Edwards's historical thought as a reaction, in part, to the varieties of Enlightenment historical narratives and their growing disregard for theistic considerations. Zakai analyzes the ideological origins of Edwards's insistence that the process of history depends solely on God's redemptive activity in time as manifested in a series of revivals throughout history, reading this doctrine as an answer to the threat posed to the Christian theological teleology of history by the early modern emergence of a secular conception of history and the modern legitimation of historical time. In response to the Enlightenment refashioning of secular, historical time and its growing emphasis on human agency, Edwards strove to re-establish God's preeminence within the order of time. Against the de-Christianization of history and removal of divine power from the historical process, he sought to re-enthrone God as the author and lord of history--and thus to re-enchant the historical world. Placing Edwards's historical thought in its broadest context, this book will be welcomed by those who study early modern history, American history, or religious culture and experience in America.