Beyond Realism: Seeking the
Divine Other
A Study in Applied Metaphysics
by Simon Smith
The meaning of “God-talk” remains
the fundamental issue facing religious thinkers today. This study concerns the
analogies needed to make sense of that talk. Embracing those analogies signals
the application of Austin Farrer’s cutting-edge theology. Almost fifty years
after his death, Farrer remains one of the twentieth century’s last great
metaphysical minds, his grasp of faith and philosophy unequalled. Having
defended religious thought against both Positivist and Process reduction, he
pursued his own revision of scholastic tradition, ultimately developing the
vital corrective to an overweening impersonalism, one which depersonalises the
divine so severs the cosmological connection.
Following this
course returns us to an earlier tradition, to a metaphysic of persons
exemplified in the expressions of lived faith. This draws upon the logic of
personal identity: what it means to be, or rather, to become, a person. Hence,
journey’s end lies in a Feuerbachian anthropology of theology or
‘anthropotheism’. Like Farrer, Feuerbach used the believer’s language to
relocate theology and philosophy within a framework that makes fertile use of
anthropomorphic personifications to ‘think’ God.
Revisiting the
personalist presuppositions of metaphysics in this way throws light on the most
vital questions of personal identity. To answer them is to ‘draw’ reality on a
grander scale than either realism or consequentialism is capable of. Most
importantly, it is to locate our place within that image.
Beyond Realism: Seeking the
Divine Other
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