European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
January 30, 2026
Yujin Nagasawa
The problem of evil and the problem of consciousness occupy central positions in the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of mind, respectively. On the face of it, these problems seem to be fundamentally distinct. The problem of evil is concerned with whether the existence of evil in the world undermines belief in the existence of God while the problem of consciousness concerns the nature...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
December 20, 2024
Ingrid Malm Lindberg
This volume offers a philosophical examination of various forms of religious experiences rather than merely concentrating on beliefs or apologetics. The author, Christina M. Gschwandtner, argues that rather than being isolated acts or one-time occurrences ( Erlebnis ), these experiences are best understood as ways of life ( Erfahrung ). According to her, the philosophical approach most...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
December 16, 2022
Petr Dvořák
The paper explores two avenues to the union of the believer with God in Thomas Aquinas inspired by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; namely, the intellectual union in faith through the gift of understanding and the union in charity as the basis for the knowledge associated with the gift of wisdom. The former amounts to an intellectual grasp of revealed truths without full understanding of the...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
October 16, 2022
Teresa Gargiulo
Abstract. In psycho-clinical research, the notion of spirituality acquires a semantic plurality. This equivocal and ambiguous connotation that characterizes this term represents an obstacle to research designs’ epistemic and methodological validity, recognized as the threat to construct validity. To overcome this difficulty, we introduce the notions of intentionality and transcendence from...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
October 1, 2021
Mikael Leidenhag
3 citations
The metaphysical vision of Advaita Vedānta has been making its way into some corners of Western analytic philosophy, and has especially garnered attention among those philosophers who are seeking to develop metaphysical systems in opposition to both reductionist materialism and dualism. Given Vedānta’s monistic view of consciousness, it might seem natural to put Vedānta in dialogue with the...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
February 17, 2021
Thomas G. Park
Various scholars have suggested that the main function of Korean shamanic rituals is the change of the participants’ feelings. I elaborate what these scholars potentially mean by “function”, challenge what I take to be their core claim, and argue that at least in the case of Korean shamanic healing rituals their sponsorship has rather to be explained based on the clients’ ostensible...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
March 25, 2020
Kirk Lougheed
Conciliationism is the view that says when an agent who believes P becomes aware of an epistemic peer who believes not-P, that she encounters a (partial) defeater for her belief that P. Strong versions of conciliationism pose a sceptical threat to many, if not most, religious beliefs since religion is rife with peer disagreement. Elsewhere (Removed) I argue that one way for a religious believer...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
March 11, 2018
Miłosz Hołda
In this article I propose a new concept: The Embodied Mind of God. I also point out the benefits that can flow from using it. This concept is combination of two concepts broadly discussed in contemporary philosophy: „The Mind of God” and „The Embodied Mind”. In my opinion this new concept can be very useful in the area of Philosophical Christology, because one of the most important questions...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
June 21, 2015
Tatiana Malevich
3 citations
The paper highlights the key perspectives on mysticism typical for Soviet and Post-Soviet religious studies. Recognizing the vagueness of the ‘mystical’, Soviet scholars interpreted it as a belief in ‘communication’ with ‘supernatural powers’. Furthermore, ‘mysticism’ was thought of as a multicomponent entity composed of (1) mystical experiences, (2) mystical beliefs, and (3) ‘mysticism’ as a...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
June 21, 2015
Ryan G. Hornbeck, Robert Eugene Sears
2 citations
This article derives from a paper presented at the Philosophy of Religion and Mysticism Conference hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, May 22-24, 2014. That paper introduced theories and methods drawn from the ‘cognitive science of religion’ (CSR) and suggested future avenues of research connecting CSR and scholarship on mysticism. Towards these same ends, the present article...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
June 21, 2015
William J. Wainwright
Recent students of mysticism have sharply distinguished monistic from theistic mysticism. The former is more or less identified with the empty consciousness experience and the latter with the love mysticism of such figures as Bernard of Clairvaux. I argue that a sharp distinction between the two is unwarranted. Western medieval mystics, for example, combined the apophatic theology of Dionysius...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
June 21, 2015
David Bradshaw
Most characterizations of mystical experience emphasize its private, esoteric, and non-sensory nature. Such an understanding is far removed from the original meaning of the term mystikos. For the ancient Greeks, the ‘mystical’ was that which led participants into the awareness of a higher reality, as in the initiatory rites of the ancient mystery cults. This usage was taken over by the early...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
March 21, 2015
Branden Thornhill-Miller, Peter Millican
11 citations
This paper is the product of an interdisciplinary, interreligious dialogue aiming to outline some of the possibilities and rational limits of supernatural religious belief, in the light of a critique of David Hume’s familiar sceptical arguments – including a rejection of his famous Maxim on miracles – combined with a range of striking recent empirical research. The Humean nexus leads us to the...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
2015
Michael Stoeber
This paper explores Christian contemplative meditation, focusing on the prayer of Recollection as it is developed especially by Evelyn Underhill and St. Teresa of Avila. It outlines the practice and explores possible theoretical and therapeutic dynamics, including some comparative reflections of this form of Christian meditation with Buddhist Samatha Vipassanā meditation and Mindfulness Based...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
June 21, 2013
Kate Kirkpatrick
Jean-Paul sartre is rarely discussed in the philosophy of religion. In 2009, however, Jerome Gellman broke the silence, publishing an article in this journal in which he argued that the source of sartre’s atheism was neither philosophical nor existential, but mystical. Drawing from several of sartre’s works – including Being and Nothingness, Words, and a 1943 review entitled ‘A New mystic’ – I...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
March 21, 2013
Thomas Schärtl
2 citations
The paper aims for an improvement of the so-called argument from consciousness while focusing on the first-person-perspective as a unique feature of consciousness that opens the floor for a theistic explanation. As a side effect of knowledge arguments, which are necessary to keep a posterior materialism off bounds, the paper proposes an interpretation of divine knowledge as knowledge of things...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
September 23, 2011
Nehama Verbin
4 citations
The purpose of this paper is to bring together two thinkers that are concerned with the limits of what can be said, Wittgenstein and Maimonides, and to explore the sense of the good life and of the mystical to which their therapeutic linguistic work gives rise. I argue that despite the similarities, two different senses of the “mystical” are brought to light and two different “forms of life”...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
September 23, 2011
Daniel Lim
2 citations
In his so-called Argument from Consciousness (AC), J.P. moreland argues that the phenomenon of consciousness furnishes us with evidence for the existence of God. In defending AC, however, Moreland makes claims that generate an undesirable tension. This tension can be posed as a dilemma based on the contingency of the correlation between mental and physical states. The correlation of mental and...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
March 21, 2011
Jerome I. Gellman
I urge philosophers of religion to investigate far more vigorously than they have until now the acceptability of varied components of the world religions and their epistemological underpinnings. By evaluating “acceptability” I mean evaluation of: truth, morality, spiritual efficacy and human flourishing, in fact any value religious devotees might think significant to their religious lives....
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
March 21, 2011
J. P. Moreland
Graham Oppy is not persuaded by my argument for God from consciousness (hereaft er, AC) Moreland 2009a cf. Moreland , 2009b
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
September 23, 2010
Janusz Salamon
The question to what extent the putative mystical experiences reported in the variety of religious traditions contribute to the conflict of religious truth claims, appears to be one of the hardest problems of the epistemology of religion, identified in the course of the ongoing debate about the philosophical consequences of religious diversity. A number of leading participants in this debate,...