God-Concepts and Spiritual Wellbeing Project

The collection is available open-access: Special Issue on God Concepts and Spiritual Well-Being.

Contributions:

Liberating God: Classical Theism and Political Spirituality

Simon Hewitt, University of Leeds

Abstract: Accounts of spirituality are incomplete unless they take into account what I term political spirituality, the working out of religiously motivated political commitment. Working within the Christian tradition, I examine the interaction between political spirituality and God-concepts. My argument is that apophatic classical theism is better suited to underwriting political spirituality than are more recent non-classical doctrines of God. I lay out critiques of classical theism on the part of recent theologians and argue that, far from these critiques being decisive, there are positive reasons to favour apophatic classical theism for political reasons. I conclude by examining how the apophatic classical theist can engage with Marx’s critique of religion.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.69574/aejpr.v1i3.29797

Relational Agency and Spiritual Well-Being: An Argument for a Denisian Passibilism

Tasia Scrutton, University of Leeds

Abstract: According to one conception of God, God is completely self-sufficient: nothing can affect or influence God outside of God. According to a second conception of God, God is emotionally responsive to others. These two conceptions of God reflect different ideals about agency. For the first conception of God, it is important that God is autonomous; that is, completely self-governing and able to act, unconstrained by any external agents or influences. For the second conception of God, it is important that God has relational agency; that is, that God can be affected by God’s creatures such that God’s creatures can cause God to feel joy or sorrow. Theists face an apparent dilemma in choosing between these differing conceptions of God: either they must forfeit God’s absolute autonomy, or else they must forfeit God’ relational agency. In either case, it seems, they must deny that God has perfect agency. This paper proposes a way out of this dilemma, in the form of what I call ‘Denisian passibilism’, according to which God transcends not only positive but also negative language about God.  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.69574/aejpr.v1i3.29803

Falling In Love Outward: Pantheism and Spiritual Well-Being

Khai Wager, University of Oxford

Abstract: This paper presents a pantheistic account of spiritual well-being drawn from the life and works of poet Robinson Jeffers. The account is based on a general conceptualisation of the spiritual life according to which it has three components: a conception of ultimate reality, a conception of the human condition (including a view of the actual position human beings find themselves in and a vision of their ideal position congruent with the view of ultimate reality), and a guide to the practical structuring of a human life aimed at its transformation from its actual to its ideal position. Spiritual well-being, then, is conceived as the spiritual life that is going well for a person. A pantheistic account that includes each of the three components of the spiritual life is presented. Therefore, we arrive at a pantheistic account of spiritual well-being, and this undercuts common objections to pantheism.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.69574/aejpr.v1i3.29806

Temporal and Eternal Goods and the Idea of a Theistic Spirituality

Mark Wynn, University of Oxford

Abstract: In this paper, I consider two objections to the idea of a theistic spirituality, each grounded in a certain conception of eternity: the first maintains that on the relevant notion of eternity, theism issues in a degraded account of the significance of our lives in time, while the second proposes that on a further, related notion of eternity, theism fails to carry any action-guiding import. These objections have some claim to be rooted in Christian traditions of thought, and I relate the first to Augustine’s understanding of eternity and the other to a position that C. S. Lewis appears to endorse. To anchor the discussion, I take as my focus the question of whether there is a properly Christian pattern of grieving following the death of a loved one. In reply to these objections, I sketch a further view of how an idea of eternity may inform an ideal of the spiritual life, one that presents a rather different understanding of the relationship between temporal and eternal goods.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.69574/aejpr.v1i3.29812

Connectedness: A Transformative Feeling and Spiritual Virtue

T. Ryan Byerly (University of Sheffield)

Abstract: This paper develops an account of one trait involved in living the spiritual life well and argues that this trait can be recognized by both the religious and non-religious as a virtue. The virtue, which I call “spiritual excellence,” involves making skilled use of a worldview for which one has ambiguous evidence or better in order to cultivate transformative experiences of connectedness. I begin by describing the experience of connectedness and considering its value. Taking my cue from recent psychological research on awe and related phenomena, I explain how connectedness relates to other experiences, including mystical experiences of ego dissolution and I consider its potential instrumental and non-instrumental values. I then consider the relationship between religion and spirituality and experiences of connectedness. I explain how religious worldviews provide fertile resources for cultivating experiences of connectedness, although non-religious worldviews can also serve this role. I develop my account of spiritual excellence in detail, showing how the account attractively integrates various features included in other leading accounts of what is involved in living the spiritual life well, and responding to objections to thinking that what the account identifies is a virtue.