God and meaning : new essays
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
God and meaning : new essays
Bloomsbury, 2016
- : pbk
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Note
Bibliography: p. [251]-262
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest among analytic philosophers in the topic of life's meaning. What is striking about this surge of work is that nearly all of it is by naturalists theorizing from non-theistic starting points.
This book answers the need for a theistic philosophical perspective on the meaning of life. Bringing together some of the leading thinkers in analytic philosophy of religion and theology, God and Meaning touches on important issues in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, and biblical theology that intersect with life's meaning. In particular: What does the question "What is the meaning of life?" mean? How can we know if life has meaning and what that meaning is? Might God enhance life's meaningfulness in some ways but detract from it in others? Is the most meaningful life one of perfect happiness? What is the relationship between eternity and life's meaning? How does the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes illumine the topic? Should we hope that a kind of transcendent meaning exists?
Presenting a state-of-the-art assessment of current philosophical positions on these and many other questions, God and Meaning is an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of the philosophy of religion.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Stewart Goetz and Joshua W. Seachris
Section I: Clarifying the Question: Conceptual and Theistic Tools
1. The Meaning of Life and Narratives: A Framework for Understanding and Answering the Question of Life's Meaning
Joshua W. Seachris, University of Notre Dame, USA
Section II: Meaningfulness and God
2. What God Could (and Couldn't) Do to Make Life Meaningful
Tim Mawson, University of Oxford, UK
3. Hedonistic Happiness Life's Meaning
Stewart Goetz, Ursinus College, USA
4. Belief that Life has Meaning Confirms that Life has Meaning: A Bayesian Approach
Trent Dougherty, Baylor University, USA
5. Can the Demands of the Perfection Thesis Be Trivialized?
Nicholas Waghorn, St. Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, UK
Section III: Meaningfulness, Time, and Eternity
6. Meaningfulness, Eternity, and Theism
John Cottingham, University of Reading, UK, Heythrop College, University of London, UK, and St. John's College, University of Oxford, UK
7. The Expansion and Contraction of the Meaning of Life
Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College, USA
8. How God Makes Life a Lot More Meaningful
Richard Swinburne, Oriel College, University of Oxford, UK
Section IV: The Purpose(s) of Life
9. Affective Gethsemane Meaning for Life
Paul Moser, Loyola University in Chicago, USA
10. St. Isaac's Dictum
Terence Cuneo, University of Vermont, USA
Section V: Meaning in Ecclesiastes
11. Wisdom and Meaning: Philosophy and the Theology of the Meaning of Life in Ecclesiastes
Craig Bartholomew, Redeemer University College, Canada
12. "Meaningless, Meaningless, Says Qohelet": Finding the Meaning of Life in the Book of Ecclesiastes
Tremper Longman III, Westmont College, USA
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"