The Tenacity of the God-Problem: The Notion of God in Implicit Religion
Issue: Vol 16 No. 1 (2013)
Journal: Implicit Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies
DOI: 10.1558/imre.v16i1.1
Abstract:
Whereas the concept of implicit religion relates to the emergence of new religious attitudes within, and apart from, explicitly religious traditions, the god-problem presents itself as an issue of particular concern, especially when it seems to be irrelevant. To shed light on this problem the paper concentrates on the formation of god-symbols and the relations between them by taking into consideration that the dynamics of cultural reality generates its own god-symbols. Since this process necessarily leads to the one symbol of cultural reality, it compels us to think of this symbol as the ultimately one god-symbol which collects all other god-symbols as its elements, to the effect that it precedes them in terms of measure and principle. The paper discusses some of the ramifications of this symbol by focusing on its meaning in religious traditions, as well as in connection with doctrinal considerations which accompany and mark the emergence of implicit religion.
Author: Wilhelm Dupré
References :
Anselm of Canterbury. 1077/78 (1946). Proslogion. In S. Anselmi opera omnia,
edited byFranciscus Salesius Schmitt, 89–139. Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
Bailey, Edward. 1997. Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society. Kampen: Kok Pharos.
Bailey, Edward. 1998. “Implicit Religion : What Might That Be?” Implicit Religion: Journal of the Centre for the Study of Implicit Religion and Contemporary Spirituality 1: 9–22.
Bowker, John. 1991. The Meaning of Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cusanus, Nicolaus. 1456 (2005). Operea Omnia XIX, Sermones IV. Hamburg: Meiner.
Cupitt, Don. 1998. The Religion of Being. London: SCM Press.
Cupitt, Don. 1998. The Revelation of Being. London: SCM Press.
Diel, Paul. 1986. The God Symbol: Its History and Its Significance. Translated by Nelly Marans. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Donovan, James M. 2002. “Implicit Religion and the Curvilinear Relationship between Religion and Death Anxiety: A Review Study.” Implicit Religion, 5(1): 17–28.
Hedley, Douglas. 2008. Living Forms of the Imagination. London: T & T Clark International.
Higgs, Robert J. and Michael C. Braswell. 2004. An Unholy Alliance: The Sacred and Modern Sports. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
James, William.1907. Pragmatism. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
Kaufman, Gordon. 1996. God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a Pluralistic World. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress.
Munson, Thomas N. 1985. The Challenge of Religion. A Philosophical Appraisal. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Price, Joseph L., ed. 2001. From Season to Season. Sports as American Religion.
Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
Rahner, Karl. 1976. Theological Investigations, vol. 14. Translated by David Bourke. London: Darton, Longman & Todd.
Tillich, Paul. 1959. Theology of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tillich, Paul. 1961. “The Religious Symbol.” In Religious Experience and Truth, edited by Sidney Hook, 301–321. New York: University of New York Press.
Ustorf, Werner. 2000. “Championing the Dead: a Reflection on Funeral Theologies and ‘Primal’ Religion.” Implicit Religion 3(1): 51–61.
Walton, Christopher L. 1998 (2007). “The Reality of the Symbol of God.” In Philocrites,