Abstract:
The monotheistic religions that valorize love typically believe that their love for God should be extended to God's creatures and, in particular, to one's fellow human beings. Yet, in practice, the love of the Christian or Muslim or Hindu monotheist doesn't always extend to the love of the religious other. Precisely how, then, should the adherents of the major monotheistic religions respond to the obvious diversity of these religions? The arguments of philosophical theology largely depend on what John Henry Newman called our "illative sense" or faculty of informal reasoning. Even the most fully developed illative sense can vary from one person to another, however. As a consequence, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu monotheists are unlikely to fully agree on matters of philosophical theology. I argue that this precludes neither mutual respect, though, nor a rational adherence to the philosophical and theological views of one's own tradition.
Machine summary:
Wainwright Received: 2020/04/04 | Accepted: 2020/05/03 Abstract The monotheistic religions that valorize love typically believe that their love for God should be extended to God's creatures and, in particular, to one's fellow human beings.
The arguments of philosophical theology largely depend on what John Henry Newman called our "illative sense" or faculty of informal reasoning.
0 The Monotheistic religions that valorize love typically believe that their love for God should be extended to God’s creatures and, in particular, to one’s fellow human beings.
Mann, Ed. Malden MA & Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing] in which I argue that (a) there are real and significant theological differences between the major religions and that (b) the views of “Pluralists” like John Hick and Peter Byrne are not only fraught with internal difficulties but could also be reasonably rejected by an educated, informed, and, and intelligent traditional monotheist.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press; and the latter’s Prolegomenon to Religious Pluralism: Reference and Reason in Religion, 1995.
John Henry Newman called the faculty of informal reasoning that is deployed in these arguments “the illative sense.
In conducting an argument, for example, one’s illative sense must be used to “scrutinize, sort, and combine” the facts, principles, experiences, and the like bearing on the truth or falsity of the proposition under dispute.
As Newman says, it is natural (and reasonable) to trust the senses even though we know they sometimes deceive us.