Ultimates , livre ebook

ROBERT CUMMINGS NEVILLE
ultimates

P HILOSOPHICAL T HEOLOGY
VOLUME ONE
State University of New York Press

Cover art: Ultimates by Beth Neville Graphite pencil and colored pens on Bristol board paper, 10″×10″, January, 2013
Published by S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
2013 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Neville, Robert C.
Ultimates : philosophical theology / Robert Cummings Neville.
pages cm
“Volume one.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4883-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Philosophical theology. 2. Philosophy and religion. I. Title.
BL51.N446 2013
210—dc23
2013003405
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

for Wesley J. Wildman

The art on the cover of this volume is by Beth Neville, my wife, who has provided art for many of my SUNY Press books. She has my great thanks. Its symbolic meaning gives visual expression to the thesis that there are five ultimates. The central yellow square represents the ultimate ontological act of creation from which all determinate things come, as all lines go out from it. Any determinate thing has four ultimate cosmological traits: form, components formed, location in an existential field, and value-identity, represented by the sides of the central square. All things are mixtures of these four cosmological ultimates, represented by the many lines and angles that intersect in the colored pencil drawing. The formal composition suggests ontological stability, which is part of the argument of the volume. But the visibility of the individually drawn lines in the colored patches and the fact that the formal composition is not quite exact suggest the singularity and exceptionalism of each thing, another part of the argument. Understanding the book helps to see the cover art in its depth.
Cross References
As a systematic work, the three volumes of Philosophical Theology involve much cross-referencing among its parts. Although each of the volumes has a primary title— Ultimates , Existence , Religion , the cross-references are to the volumes by number. Cross-references are in footnotes on the occasion where commentary is required; otherwise they are in the lines of the text. The general rubric for cross-referencing is this. Cross-references will always be in italics and this means that they refer to volumes of Philosophical Theology ; the first Roman numeral refers to the volume. If the reference is to a chapter, the volume number will be given first, followed by a comma, then the chapter number in Arabic, and perhaps if needed a comma followed by a section number in lower-case Roman numerals. So, “Volume two, Chapter three, Section IV” would be II, 3, iv . If the reference is to a part of a volume, the Roman volume number is first, followed by a comma and “pt” for part and an Arabic numeral for the number of the part. So, “Volume two, Part III ” would be II, pt 3 . Often a part is referred to as a whole; but if the reference is to the “preliminary remarks” or the “summary implications,” which are always keyed to parts, not chapters, then the referent to the part would be followed by a comma and “pr” and/or “si.” So, “volume three, part 4, preliminary remarks and summary implications” would be III, pt 4, pr, si . If reference is made to a part or chapter without an indication of volume number, the assumption is that the volume is the one in which the reference is made. The text spells out units of the three volumes when it discusses them directly.
Preface
This preface introduces a three-volume systematic project in philosophical theology, a scale of reflection uncommon today and in need of some prefatory explanation. The overall topic of the project is “theology” in the sense of dealing with first-order issues in religion, to use the increasingly common word for intellectual construction and analysis in all religious traditions. Such first-order issues include but are not limited to the nature of ultimate reality, the defining predicaments of human life, the ecstatic fulfillments embraced within religion, the elusive beauty of existence itself, and authenticity of personal and communal religious living. The overall genre of reflection is philosophy, with the caveat that philosophy includes or makes use of any discipline that might bear helpfully upon the topic; more will be said here about philosophy ( III, preface ). The overall perspective of the reflection embraces first-order experiences and religious revelations as much as possible but denies to any the authority to trump alternatives without themselves being subject to critical examination. This project does not give trumping authority to any special committed religious location. Hence this project creates an intellectual roadway between confessional theology that does assume some kind of trumping authority for a revelation, tradition, or community and so-called objective religious studies that avoids the questions of truth about first-order theological issues. Those questions of truth are among the ultimately most important to be asked and the business of philosophical theology is to ask them.
For an inquiry to presuppose a committed religious location inevitably turns those who occupy different committed locations, or none, into outsiders. The outsiders' response to a theology argued from within such a committed location at best is curiosity about how “others” do it and more likely is plain neglect. The result is failure to summon a public within which everyone who might be interested in the outcome of first-order religious inquiry is invited to participate. Surely a theology of first-order religious issues needs to render itself vulnerable to anyone who might have something to contribute or a critical word of correction. Therefore, thinking from the location of a confessional commitment makes outsiders precisely of those who might be the most important conversation partners.
Equally problematic for first-order religious inquiry is thinking from the location of the particular commitment that no religious commitments can be true, as happens with many scholars identifying themselves with the scientific study of religion. Almost inevitably this means that the first-order religious issues are never addressed in detail if at all. So the stakes are very high for developing a sophisticated, systematic, and thoroughly vulnerable theology of first-order religious issues that is not hampered by these prior commitments. The aim of these volumes is to do precisely this.
The strategy of Philosophical Theology is to employ philosophy to set an ongoing critical construction of categories, vulnerable to correction by philosophical argument as well as by empirical evidence from religion and other domains, which provide for a deep, integrated, and relatively comprehensive understanding of first-order religious issues. 1 Through the philosophical categories and arguments, inquiries will be conducted into the nature of ultimacy, the human predicaments as well as ecstatic fulfillments that define the ultimate meanings of the human condition, and what is worthy or deleterious in religious life. The aim is to produce an understanding of these first-order theological issues in rich empirical detail with good cases for what is true about the main topics and for how these truths can guide life in its religious dimensions. Hence, this is a philosophical theology.
These volumes extend into theological areas a philosophical system that has been worked out in its core tenets and developed in many directions besides religion. 2 The philosophical system supports itself in the spectrum of contemporary and classical philosophical positions and is vulnerable to correction by them, including postmodern philosophies that are hostile to system. The public for the philosophy as developed here for theological issues includes thinkers who come from any religious or secular tradition with ideas to contribute to the first-order theological issues or to the second and higher order issues of analysis and methodology. The public also includes thinkers from any of the philosophical, literary, scientific, and practical disciplines who might be interested in the arguments necessary to make cases for claims about the first-order issues. 3 Although philosophy is out of favor with contemporary confessional theologians in many religious traditions, this has not always been so. In fact, in most traditions philosophy has not been distinguished from theology of the systematic sort and many of the greatest thinkers about first-order religious issues have been known also as philosophers ( I, 2, iv ).
That this theology is so philosophical might well be alienating to some theologians who identify themselves with a confessional commitment to a particular religious location, especially those who view that commitment as providing premises from which theological claims should follow and without which argument is impossible. Many academicians, theologians, and journalists in America today assume that “theology” is restricted to those with such confessional commitments, despite the fact that the term also has a much broader denotation. Ironically, confessional theologians would make outsiders of those who will not operate within their premises, turning their own theology into an insider enterprise. From the perspective of