Journal articles on the topic 'Summa theologica (Thomas, Aquinas, Saint)'

Este artigo investiga o modo como Santo Tomás de Aquino, na questão 48 da tertia pars da Summa theologiae, estuda o ato salvador de Jesus: sintetizando as expressões bíblicas em cinco categorias teológicas centrais, ele as relativiza (no sentido de que cada uma delas só faz sentido em relação com as outras) e dá certa preferência a uma delas, aquela que considera o agir salvador de Jesus ao modo de uma causa eficiente. Mas o que isso significa? Busca-se investigar também se, embora com sua linguagem típica do século XIII, esse texto tomasiano guarda ou não alguma atualidade para a soteriologia cristã.ABSTRACT: This article investigates the way Saint Thomas Aquinas studies the saving act of Jesus (at question 48 of his Summa theologiae, Tertia Pars). By sinthetizing the Biblical expressions in five central theological categories, he renders them relative because each only makes sense when related to the others, and he prefers that which considers the saving act of Jesus as an efficient cause. But, what does that mean? Finally, this article aims at finding out whether despite its typical 13th century language, this text of the Summa can be considered updated and important to Christian Soteriology.

This article argues that Thomas Aquinas is to be interpreted as holding that the beatific vision of the saints is causally dependent on the glorified humanity of Christ. It opposes the view that, for Aquinas, Christ’s humanity has causal significance only for those who are being brought to the beatific vision by grace, and not for those who have attained this vision, such that there is a Christological deficit in Aquinas’s eschatology. The argument proceeds somewhat in the manner of an article of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. Having briefly outlined the recent debate, especially the contribution of Hans Boersma, two objections are put against my position. A sed contra is formulated on the basis of quotations from the Summa. The responsio is based on Aquinas’s extensive use of a philosophical ‘principle of the maximum’ and its particular application by Aquinas to grace. After replies to the objections, based on the method and structure of the Summa, I locate Aquinas’s position in the debate on Christ’s heavenly mediation between that of John Calvin and that of John Owen and Jonathan Edwards.

AbstractRecent discussion regarding the beatific vision has concerned the object of the vision. Thomas Aquinas represents a robust account of the beatific vision according to which God will be seen in his essence by saints and angels in heaven. Others, however, have worried that such a view risks imperilling divine transcendence and incomprehensibility and favour instead an understanding of the beatific vision that is christologically oriented. This article offers a defence of the claim that we will see God's essence in heaven. First, it draws attention to various distinctions in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae concerning how we see the divine essence in heaven. Then, it demonstrates points of continuity between Thomas’ account and that of later Protestants, particularly Calvin and Turretin. Third, following Simon Gaine, it argues that Thomas’ account of the beatific vision is not christologically deficient. Finally, it argues that Thomas’ account has biblical support.

Fokus tulisan ini adalah menggali pandangan Thomas Aquinas tentang esensi dan eksistensi Tuhan, dengan fokus pada konsep "Esse sebagai Ipsum Esse Subsistens." Aquinas mengatakan bahwa Tuhan adalah eksistensi murni yang ada pada diri-Nya sendiri, tidak tergantung pada faktor eksternal. Dalam Summa Theologica, Aquinas merinci bahwa Tuhan adalah sumber keberadaan, kebenaran, kebaikan, dan keindahan. Analisis kritis terhadap karya-karya Aquinas membantu memahami landasan filosofis dalam tradisi teologi Kristen. Konsep Ipsum Esse Subsistens menyoroti aspek keberlanjutan dan kekekalan Tuhan sebagai inti segala eksistensi. Dengan membahas pandangan Aquinas, penelitian ini merinci hubungan esensi dan eksistensi Tuhan, menyajikan pandangan yang dalam dan kontekstual terhadap teologi Kristen.Tulisan ini menemukan kontribusi Aquinas dalam memahami Tuhan sebagai Ipsum Esse Subsistens memberikan wawasan penting dalam pemikiran teologis dan filosofis yang terus relevan hingga saat ini.

AbstractJohn Milbank is one of the most recent and arguably most radical proponents of an understanding of nature as graced. This article critically examines Milbank's understanding of nature and grace, specifically as elaborated within his reading of Thomas Aquinas. In the first part I will outline Aquinas's most direct discussions of nature and grace in the Summa Theologica, drawing attention to several central, albeit subtle, distinctions that these contain. In the second and third parts, I will examine Milbank's reading of Aquinas in Truth in Aquinas, and examine whether it adequately reflects and negotiates Aquinas's distinctions. On this basis I will argue Milbank's reading, while drawing attention to some important and often neglected areas of Aquinas's thought, ultimately remains limited.

<p>明清來華的耶穌會士利類思（Lodovico Buglio, 1606-1682），將聖多瑪斯‧阿奎那（St. Thomas Aquinas，1225－1274）神學鉅著《神學大全》（Summa Theologica）之部分內容，譯述以成《超性學要》一書。近代學者以拉丁文為主、多國語言（德、法、西、義、英）為輔，遵照原有編排體例，完成《神學大全》套書。觀察此部中文版《神學大全》，既對《超性學要》文句有所遵循，又對原典經義進行更多的內容譯述。因此針對兩書相同單元對比參看，既能呈現不同時代的阿奎那學理思想之譯述樣貌，又屬阿奎那神哲學思想之雙重解讀。本文藉由《超性學要》《神學大全》兩書論魔鬼與人罪與惡內容，比較用語文句及概念表現之異同，詮釋不同時代的教義傳達，呈顯阿奎那的哲理精神，作為魔鬼系列研究之延續。再者，藉由中西惡之比較，分析中西文化衝突交融下的傳教策略與文本譯述現象。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>dynasties, Jesuit Lodovico Buglio brought St. Thomas Aquinas’ monumental work, Summa Theologica, to China, translating parts into Chaoxingxueyao. Modern scholars predominantly rely on Latin texts and utilize multiple languages (German, French, Spanish, Italian, English) to complete the Summa Theologica according to the original orchestration. Examining the Chinese version of Summa Theologica, one can find abundant references to the Chaoxingxueyao translation. Comparing corresponding chapters in both books reveals the evolution of Aquinas’ theories through different eras and offers a dual foundation for interpreting his theological thoughts. This paper compares the written texts of the devil and human sin in Chaoxingxueyao and Summa Theologica. The author aims to unveil Aquinas’ philosophical reflections on the devil and human evil by analyzing language usage, sentence structures, and topics, thereby contributing to the comprehensive study of devil-related themes. Additionally, by conducting a comparative analysis of the depictions of devils in Chinese and Western cultures, it is hoped to shed light on the missionary strategies and the phenomenon of text translation in the context of Chinese and Western cultural integration.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

AbstractThis article examines two medieval sermons that examine philosophic and halakhic issues: the Passover sermon of Hasdai Crescas, which discusses the laws of Passover, and a sermon of Zerahia Halevi Saladin, a disciple of Crescas, which probes an aspect of the laws of vows (nedarim). In the analysis of Zerahia’s sermon, a comparison is made between his discussion and Thomas Aquinas’s examination of vows in his Summa Theologica. The comparison establishes the dependency of Zerahia on Aquinas regarding this issue. Likewise, Zerahia’s sermon is compared with Crescas’s, and the relationship between the legal theories of Crescas and Zerahia is investigated. The articles concludes with a brief examination of the significance of the analysis these sermons for understanding of the impact of scholastic sources on Spanish-Jewish philosophy and the relationship between law and philosophy in the writings of Hasdai Crescas and his students.

This article attempts to clarify the thesis by St. Thomas Aquinas, according to which it is possible to prove that the existence of God can be demonstrated. On the basis of the analyses in Summa Theologica I, q.2 and Summa contra gentiles I (I-XV), there is an attempt to understand the meaning and relevance of this thesis, its implications and its philosophical and theological significance. Thomas Aquinas’ analyses underline the importance of distinguishing between a knowledge about the existence of God and one regarding his essence, while highlighting in each case a set of difficulties and lack of knowledge factors. In a context where the idea of confusion plays a central role, Thomas Aquinas tries to show that: a) no matter how confused knowledge about God is and no matter how large the disproportion between the human and divine perspectives, there is an ineradicable notitia Dei, and b) this notice is linked at the same time to the inability to know God’s essenceand the ability to demonstrate His existenceby means of certain effects and traces of His. This all leads to the peculiar demonstration of the existence of a Deus absconditus. It is precisely the discovery of this God who manifests himself and at the same time hides himself that makes it possible to document the pos-sibility of demonstrating that God exists and that constitutes the foundations on which every and any demonstration of the existence of God rests.

In Nicomachean Ethics IV Aristotle exposes the characteristics of the moral virtue of the μεγαλοψυχία and offers a detailed description of the conditions of the magnanimous. St. Thomas in his commentary on Ethics follows the Aristotelian text apparently without disagreeing with the Greek author, and completes this exposition with other texts found in the Summa Theologica. The aim of this paper is to highlight the differences, if there are any, between the Aristotelian conception of the μεγαλοψυχία and that of Saint Thomas, considering also whether the virtue of humility that appears in the Thomist texts can be equated to the vice of the pusillanimity of which Aristotle speaks.

This article presents a summary of The Ordinance Concerning Higher Education (Ordinatio pro studiis superioribus) in the Society of Jesus. It was issued by the general of the Society, Francesco Piccolomini, in 1651. It contains a set of guidelines for study (mainly of a theological kind), and is closely linked to St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. There is no differentiation between different types of topic: theological, philosophical, logical, metaphysical, physical—they are all present and mutually intertwined. There were two lists of issues: positive and negative. The latter contained topics which were banned for study and was divided into two parts: philosophical and theological. The main authority for teaching philosophy remained Aristotle.

AbstractIn 2019 alone, the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James), one of Europe’s three most significant medieval pilgrimage routes, was followed by 347,511 pilgrims from around the world. This pilgrimage route has been the subject of numerous research projects conducted by international groups of specialists in various scientific disciplines. This study presents correlations between St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine on the virtue of fortitude and the experience of Polish pilgrims on the Camino based on 50 in-depth interviews conducted in the summer of 2019 on Monte do Gozo in Santiago de Compostela. This objective was achieved using the methodology of qualitative research following Steinar Kvale’s recommendations. The transcriptions of the interviews were coded based on the classifications in the Summa Theologica by Aquinas, classified into categories, and subsequently analyzed using MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020. The virtue of fortitude is indispensable in the decision-making process and the ability to put one’s decisions into practice (Morales-Sánchez & Cabello-Medina, 2013. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(4), 717–734). One manifestation of the Camino pilgrims’ virtue of fortitude allowed them to believe that they would be more employable after they returned to their communities.

This article offers an alternative solution to the perennial philosophical problem of human nature. The view proposed is “Neo-Thomistic Organicism”, a form of dualism, of the hylomorphist type, that does not subscribe both to the extreme characteristics of Cartesian dualism, and to complementarian non-reductionist physicalist views. Our optic integrates the scientific elements of a form of biological vitalism and both shares Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics, and alienates from Thomas Aquinas in crucial points. In this sense, our perspective is constituted as a scientific-metaphysical understanding regarding human nature, in general, and regarding the soul-body relationship, in particular. The novelty brought by our article does not lie in a completely new perspective, but in some of the morelandian modifications made to classical Thomism and in the holistic approach to the subject that integrates the relevant scientific discoveries in the field of biology and neuroscience. In opposition to Moreland, on the question of individuation, this article is proposing a hybrid approach to how substances and bare particulars possess properties. To achieve its purpose, our analytical approach will begin by offering an exposition of Thomas Aquinas treatise on human nature as it is registered in Summa Theologica, Ia, qq. 75-89, especially to outline, on this basis, some of the fundamental points in which we differ from classical Thomism. This will be followed by a presentation of our perspective, of the morelandian type, and its compatibility with scientific research in biology and neurology. Next, in order to further clarify our position, we will turn to a comparison between the morelandian perspective and complementarian naturalist-physicalist conceptions of human nature, especially of substance. At the end of this comparison we will outline the objections to the morelandian view that distinguish us from it. Finally, we will offer a response to the causal pairing physicalist objection.

The article deals with the contradictions that arise when solving the problem of the subject’s freewill. A thesis is put forward that these contradictions are caused by the discrepancy between the views on free will and the ontological foundations from which they are derived. This thesis is consistently proved on the basis of both the historical and philosophical material and the modern discussion that unfolded after the discoveries of B. Libet and his followers. An analysis of the ideas of Thomas Aquinas reveals a num-ber of insurmountable contradictions indicating the impossibility of combining the free will of a subject and the theological principle of providentialism. The approaches of the philosophers of the Renaissance and the New Age to the indicated problem are considered, these being associated with an attempt to over-come this contradiction and again turn philosophical thought to natural philosophy. The dialectical ap-proach of Immanuel Kant is presented as taking a certain step toward resolving the contradictions through linking free will with the concept of morality and duty. The philosophical interpretation of B.Libet’s ex-periments is analyzed and the idea of conscious decisions of a person as determined by the activity of his neurons is refuted. Such an erroneous thesis is derived from the «flat ontology»paradigm. The popularity of this approach is due to the difficulty in resolving the psychophysiological problem and the lack of un-derstanding of the mechanisms for the transition of biologically determined processes of the material sub-strate to the field of the ideal. The groundlessness of sucha conclusion is explained by biological reduc-tion and the vulgar materialistic approach of modern authors, similar to the ideas of Democritus or Epicu-rus, who derived free will from the movement of atoms. All the examples considered in the article clearly demonstrate the fallacy of attempts to derive free will or its absence from something external to a person. The thesis that free will must be immanently inherent in man is substantiated. To solve the problem of free will, it is necessary not only to rely on the data of scientific discoveries but also to approach their interpretation dialectically.

Between the Rainbow and the Crystal Glass: Echo in Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski as a Species of Refraction in the Light of His Commentary on Summa theologica by Thomas Aquinas The aim of this essay is to highlight an important gap in the research into the works of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595–1640), Jesuit neo-Latin poet and philosopher, namely the fact that his still unpublished lectures on one God in three persons and on angels, held in Vilnius Academy in the years 1631–1633, have remained largely unexplored by researchers so far. The main thesis is that these thomistic commentaries can considerably deepen our understanding of the dialectical and theological context of Sarbiewski’s poetry. For example, they shed new light on his Marian imagery (inter alia, the usage of the invocation ‘purum sine fraude vitrum’), or on his way of avoiding the danger of the infinite regress of concepts as being similar to mirror reflections. The argument concentrates on the figure of echo in two poems: the praise of Jan Karol Chodkiewicz and the ode Secunda leuca seu Vaca as influenced by a new version of the Litany of Loreto (Litaniae Deiparae Virginis Mariae). It makes use of the definition of echo as taught in the Coimbra Jesuit Aristotelian courses. The phenomenon of echo is taken together with other species of refraction: the rainbow and reflection (Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 98a.24–29), and set against the background of new technologies, such as the production of crystal mirrors.

ABSTRACT As a reverse effect of constraining interpretation and limiting itself to the moral ordering of commerce defended by Aquinas, the Summa Theologica both motivated the enrichment of the Christian imaginary in narratives like Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, The Canterbury Tales. In the case of the Divine Comedy, it expanded the reflection on the categories of sinners related to money, and as regards The Canterbury Tales, it provided support for the construction of anti-models in some of the framed narrative types of misers, simoniacs, and fraudsters. This article aims to present Aquinas’ instructions regarding the uses of money, juxtaposing, at times, with literary texts. For this purpose, biblical passages, commentators of the Catholic tradition Bible, and texts from economists are brought in as the Summa Theologica is analyzed. Theoretical thinkers of Christian thought, such as Augustine and Boethius, and economic thought, such as Molina and Robbins, have been used.

Following Thomas Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria's analysis of justice in exchanges takes place by commenting on the corresponding questions of the Summa Theologica. The identification of the just price with that of common estimation occurs under a sufficient concurrence of sellers and buyers. A high level of concurrence limits the ability to take advantage of the need on the other side of the market. This fact guaranties a full consent of the parties involved in trading. Under conditions of market power or when some authority fixes a legal price, just price should also be taken as a normative ideal.

In his exegesis of Romans 8:15-16, Thomas Aquinas asks how it is that the Holy Spirit bears testimony in us that we are the children of God. He responds that the Spirit bears testimony “through the effect of filial love he produces in us. ” At least in some circumstances, Aquinas suggests, we can come to know God through our experience of loving him. But Aquinas, following a long tradition, teaches that we love things insofar as we know them as good (cf: I-II, q.9, a.1, corpus and ad.3). How then can love give rise to knowledge?Aquinas’s teaching in the Summa Theologica on the Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom provides a key to this question. The gift of wisdom makes use of the love of charity to know God (II-II, q.45). Charity, by making us “connatural” with God, can give rise to knowledge of God. I will then consider how the Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom relates to the science of theology. The gift of wisdom, however, does not offer an independent or parallel path to knowledge of God, but rather, depends on faith and is the perfection to which the science of sacred is oriented.

Abstract The objective of the article is to analyze how Thomas Aquinas understands the procedures of the intellect to understand things inferior to the human soul, as well as the importance of knowing this process for the education of the master in Western medieval times. Our source is Question 85 of First Part of Summa Theologica, entitled ‘Of the mode and order of understanding’. This Question shows one of the main fundamentals of the Thomasian Philosophy of Education and can, in our opinion, teach important lessons for 21st century teachers. The method of research is Social History, whose theoretical principles can be found in the works by Bloch, Febvre, Braudel, and other historians, ‘heirs’ of Annales school.

Holiness is studied from the lens of Biblical Spirituality. Situated in the Divine-Huma relational process, the movement from being un-holy to holy; from being unclean to Divine Purity is given close attention. God as the רק קדוש, draws his people into Himself through purification and in intimacy with Him. The human reality responds with respect and reverence not only to God but to his people as well. However, God has a special preference for the poor and helpless for the clothes them with Himself like a soldier wears his armor. Through a spiritual reading of Exodus 3 and other related Scriptural narratives, these understanding of holiness is surfaced specifically, in the lived experience of Holiness, its nearness in day-to-day life. References Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, Prima Pars. __________. Summa Contra Gentiles. Carmody, Denise and John Carmody. Mysticism, Holiness East and West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Ciorra, Anthony. Everyday Mysticism. Cherishing the Holy. Spring Valley: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995. Christian Spirituality. Five Views of Sanctification. ed. Donald Alexander. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988. Sheldrake, Philip. Images of Holiness, Exploration in Contemporary Spirituality. US: Ave Maria Press, 1988. Sproul, R. C. The Holiness of God. Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1998. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version. UK: Bible Society Resources Ltd., 2011. Waaijman, Kees. Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods. Leuven: Peeters, 2002. __________. Holiness in Spirituality, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 72:4 (2016), a3463. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v7214.3463 Welzen Huub. Contours of Biblical Spirituality as a Discipline, Acta Theologica, 15 (2011), 37-60.

Abstract It has been a teaching of the Catholic Church for many centuries that the fact that an act is immoral is not itself a sufficient reason for acts of that kind to be punishable under the law. Therefore, before American Catholics or their bishops actively support laws making abortion illegal and punishable, they must carefully examine such laws to determine whether they are consistent with the common good and thus morally justifiable. This article first turns to the three conditions that Thomas Aquinas offers in the Treatise on Law (Summa Theologica, I-II, QQ. 90-105) that a law must fulfill in order for it to be consistent with the common good. Serious reasons are identified for doubting that laws prohibiting and punishing abortion can fulfill Aquinas’s three conditions. There are also serious reasons based on Catholic teaching, i.e., that we are always obliged to follow our conscience, for concluding that, contrary to the common good, many conscientious persons would be mistakenly punished by such laws. For these reasons, the article proposes that American Catholics and their bishops should reexamine their support for laws punishing abortion and should consider instead actively opposing such laws.

Recent studies have shown that philosophy and theology, two disciplines separated and distinguished from each other for more than five hundred years, are closer in reality than how philosophers and theologians of today understand them. This is even more evident in those who reflect on the socalled “death of metaphysics” and the “end of philosophy” that Martin Heidegger proclaims. This, however, cannot escape the question of dealing with St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical and theological enterprise, whose intellectual spirit is characterized by delving both into philosophical and theological questions. This work tries to place St. Thomas Aquinas within this framework, ultimately showing that he exemplifies a lively interaction and interpenetration between these two disciplines. To show this, the paper goes through a brief survey of the historical distinction which finds its roots in St. Thomas himself. Afterwards, it provides a new understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology primarily found in Jean-Luc Marion. Through this, one sees that in fact, St. Thomas does philosophy and theology ruly, that while speaking of a distinction between these two disciplines, his whole intellectual project can be seen as both hilosophical and theological, in which one cannot be spoken of without the other. References Abulad, Romualdo E. “Atheism as a Prophetic Voice in the Era of Paradigm Shift.”Diwa 38, no. 2, 2013: 77–90. Caputo, John D. Philosophy and Theology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006. de Lubac S.J., Henri. “On Christian Philosophy.” Translated by Sharon Mollerusand Susan Clements. Communio 19, 1992: 478–506. ______________. The Mystery of the Supernatural. Translated by Rosemary Sheed.London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967. de Torre, Joseph M. “Thomism and Postmodernism.” In Postmodernism and ChristianPhilosophy, edited by Roman T. Ciapalo, 248–57. Washington, D.C.:Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Eco, Umberto. “In Praise of Thomas Aquinas.” The Wilson Quarterly 10, no. 4, 1986: 78–87. Elders, Leo L. “Faith and Reason: Synthesis in St. Thomas Aquinas.” Nova et Vetera8, no. 3, 2010: 527–52. Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., Reginald. The One God: A Commentary on the First Partof St. Thomas’ Theological Summ. Translated by Bede Rose. London: B.Herder Book Co., 1944. Jones, Brian. “‘That There Were True Things To Say:’ The Scandal of Philosophyand Demonstrating God’s Existence in Thomistic Natural Theology.” TheNew Blackfriars 95, no. 1038, 2013: 412–29. Kant, Immanuel. The Conflict of the Faculties. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. NewYork: Abaris Books, Inc., 1979. Kerr O.P, Fergus. “The Varieties of Interpreting Aquinas.” In Contemplating Aquinas,edited by Fergus Kerr O.P., 27–40. London: SCM Press, 2003. Marion, Jean-Luc. “‘Christian Philosophy’: Hermeneutic or Heuristic?” In The Visibleand the Revealed, edited by John D. Caputo, translated by ChristinaGschwandtner, 66–79. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. ___________________. “Evidence and Bedazzlement.” In Prolegomena to Charity, translatedby Stephen E. Lewis, 53–70. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002. ___________________. On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism : The Constitution and the Limitsof Onto-Theo-Logy in Cartesian Thought. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ___________________. “On the Foundation of the Distinction between Theology andPhilosophy.” Edited by Philippe Capelle-Dumont. Translated by JohnCarlo P. Uy and Eduardo Jose C. Calasanz. Budhi: A Journal of Ideas andCulture XIII, no. 1–3, 2009: 15–46. ___________________. “The ‘End of Metaphysics’ as a Possibility.” In Religion After Metaphysics,edited by Mark A. Wrathall, translated by Daryl Lee, 166–89.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ___________________. “The Event, The Phenomenon, and The Revealed.” In Transcendencein Philosophy and Religion, edited by James E. Faulconer, translatedby Beata Starwaska, 87–105. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,2003. ___________________. “Thomas Aquinas and Onto-Theology.” In The Essential Writings,edited by Kevin Hart, 288–311. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Marshall, Bruce D. “Quod Scit Una Uetula: Aquinas on the Nature of Theology.” InThe Theology of Thomas Aquinas, edited by Rik Van Nieuwenhove andJoseph Wawrykow, 1–35. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. McCool, Gerald A. Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism: The Search for a UnitaryMethod. New York: Fordham University Press, 1989. Neuner S.J., Josef, and Jacques Dupuis S.J., eds. The Christian Faith in the DoctrinalDocuments of the Catholic Church. 6th ed. Bangalore: Theological Publicationsin India, 1996. Pope John Paul II. “Fides et Ratio.” The Holy See, 1998. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html. Pope Leo XIII. “Aeterni Patris.” Logos 12, no. 1, 2009: 169–92. St. Thomas Aquinas. Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Translated byJohn P. Rowan. Vol. 1. Chicago: Regnery, 1961. _______________________. On Being and Essence. Translated by Armand Maurer. Toronto:The Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1949. _______________________. Summa Theologica. Vol. 1. New York: Benziger Brothers Inc.,1948. Suarez, Francisco. “Metaphysical Disputations.” In Descartes’ Mediations: BackgroundSource Materials, edited by Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, andTom Sorell, 29–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. te Velde, Rudi A. “Understanding the Scientia of Faith: Reason and Faith in Aquinas’sSumma Theologiae.” In Contemplating Aquinas, edited by FergusKerr O.P, 55–74. London: SCM Press, 2005. Turner, Denys. Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2004. White, Thomas Joseph. “Engaging the Thomistic Tradition and ContemporaryCulture Simultaneously: A Response to Burrell, Healy, and Schindler.”Nova et Vetera 10, no. 2, 2012: 605–23.

Resumo O objetivo do artigo é analisar o modo como o teólogo dominicano Tomás de Aquino entende os procedimentos pelos quais o intelecto humano conhece as coisas inferiores a si mesmo, bem como a importância de se conhecer esse processo para a formação do mestre no Ocidente medieval. A fonte para o desenvolvimento deste estudo é a Questão 85 da Primeira Parte da Suma Teológica, intitulada “O modo e a ordem de conhecer”. A Questão supracitada apresenta um dos fundamentos da Filosofia da Educação tomasiana e pode, a nosso ver, ensinar lições importantes para os professores do século XXI. O método empregado para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa é o da História Social, cujos pressupostos teóricos remontam às obras de Bloch, Febvre, Braudel e outros historiadores ‘herdeiros’ da escola dos Annales.

Classical ethics tells us is that we know through our reason acting as an intellect whether what we do is good or bad. By our nature, then, we can know what's ethically correct. That we do evil is not so much because we do not know it to be wrong; rather, we do wrong despite our knowledge. Thus, if MacIntyre is correct that the Enlightenment philosophers share merely "in the project of constructing valid arguments which will move from premises concerning human nature as they understand it to be to conclusions about the authority of moral rules and precepts," if the project is merely to translate one knowledge to another knowledge, that is, from the knowledge of human nature to the knowledge of moral rules and precepts, then we can very well agree that "any project of this form was bound to fail." Any such project is bound to fail, not only for the reason stated by MacIntyre, that these philosophers are inevitably going to come up with ineradicable discrepancies and divergences, but also because, even should such discrepancies and divergences not occur, the defect lies not so much in its being a matter of knowledge as in its being a matter of desire, that is, not in the intellect but in the will. References Ardrey, Robert. After Genesis. London: Collins Fontana, 1968. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. J.A.K. Thompson. London: Penguin Books, 1965. Arkush, Allan. Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment. New York: State University of New York Press, 1994. Augustine, St. The Confessions. Trans. Rex Warner. New York: Signet Classics, 2001. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Trans. Arthur Mitchell. New York: The Modern Library,1944. Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. New York: New American Library Mentor Books, 1958. Descartes, René. Key Philosophical Writings. Trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 1997. _____________. Principles of Philosophy. Trans. Elizabeth Haldane and G.R.T. Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Donceel, Joseph, trans. A Marechal Reader. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970. Fletcher, Joseph. Situation Ethics: The New Morality. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966. Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. Trans. Paulette Moller. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2007. Gadamer, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1988. Gaskin, J.C.A., ed. Varieties of Unbelief: From Epicurus to Sartre. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989. Hadas, Moses, ed. Essential Works of Stoicism. New York: Bantam Books, 1966. Hegel, G.W.F. Philosophy of Right. Trans. T.M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008. _______________. Preview to Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. _______________. Parmenides. Trans. Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. London: Penguin Books, 1980. Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditation: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973.______________. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. W.R. Gibson. New York: Collier Books, 1962. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Library of Liberal Arts, 1977. _____________. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that will be Able to come Forward As a Science. Trans. Paul Cairns. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1977. Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise Than Being. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981. McKeon, Richard, ed. Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House, 1941. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random Vintage Books, 1966. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue 2, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. Lau, D.C., trans. Mencius. London: Penguin Books, 1976. Lyotard, John Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. McCool, Gerald, ed. A Karl Rahner Reader. New York: Seabury Press, 1975. Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Ed. Mary Warnock. London: Fontana Library Collins, 1965. Plato. The Republic. Trans. Allan Bloom. U.S.A.: Basic Books, 1968. Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli and Charles A. Moore, eds. Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973. Rawls, John. Theory of Justice. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile, trans. Barbara Foxley. London: Everyman’s Library, 1976. ___________________. Social Contract and Discourses on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind. Ed. Lester G. Crocker. New York: Washington Square Press, 1967. Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non Formal Ethics of Values. Trans. Manfred Frings and Roger Funk. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Sen, Amartya. Development of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethics. Trans. Amelia Hutchinson. New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1949. Thomas Aquinas, St. Summa Theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981. Ware, James, ed. Sayings of Confucius. New York: New American Library Mentor Books, 1955.

Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)“I must plunge again and again in the water of doubt” (Wittgenstein 1e). The Holy Grail in the phenomenology of religion (and, to a lesser extent, the sociology of religion) is a definition of religion that actually works, but, so far, this seems to have been elusive. Classical definitions of religion—substantive (e.g. Tylor) and functionalist (e.g. Durkheim)—fail, in part because they attempt to be in three places at once, as it were: they attempt to distinguish religion from non-religion; they attempt to capture what religions have in common; and they attempt to grasp the “heart”, or “core”, of religion. Consequently, family resemblance definitions of religion replace certainty and precision for its own sake with a more pragmatic and heuristic approach, embracing doubt and putting forward definitions that give us a better understanding (Verstehen) of religion. In this paper, I summarise some “new” definitions of religion that take this approach, before proposing and defending another one, defining religion as non-propositional and “apophatic”, thus accepting that doubt is central to religion itself, as well as to the analysis of religion.The question of how to define religion has had real significance in a number of court cases round the world, and therefore it does have an impact on people’s lives. In Germany, for example, the courts ruled that Scientology was not a religion, but a business, much to the displeasure of the Church of Scientology (Aldridge 15). In the United States, some advocates of Transcendental Meditation (TM) argued that TM was not a religion and could therefore be taught in public schools without violating the establishment clause in the constitution—the separation of church and state. The courts in New Jersey, and federal courts, ruled against them. They ruled that TM was a religion (Barker 146). There are other cases that I could cite, but the point of this is simply to establish that the question has a practical importance, so we should move on.In the classical sociology of religion, there are a number of definitions of religion that are quite well known. Edward Tylor (424) defined religion as a belief in spiritual beings. This definition does not meet with widespread acceptance, the notable exception being Melford Spiro, who proposed in 1966 that religion was “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated super-human beings” (Spiro 96, see also 91ff), and who has bravely stuck to that definition ever since. The major problem is that this definition excludes Buddhism, which most people do regard as a religion, although some people try to get round the problem by claiming that Buddhism is not really a religion, but more of a philosophy. But this is cheating, really, because a definition of religion must be descriptive as well as prescriptive; that is, it must apply to entities that are commonly recognised as religions. Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, proposed that religion had two key characteristics, a separation of the sacred from the profane, and a gathering together of people in some sort of institution or community, such as a church (Durkheim 38, 44). However, religions often reject a separation of the sacred from the profane. Most Muslims and many Calvinist Christians, for example, would insist strongly that everything—including the ostensibly profane—is equally subject to the sovereignty of God. Also, some religions are more oriented to a guru-pupil kind of relationship, rather than a church community.Weber tried to argue that religion should only be defined at the end of a long process of historical and empirical study. He is often criticised for this, although there probably is some wisdom in his argument. However, there seems to be an implicit definition of religion as theodicy, accounting for the existence of evil and the existence of suffering. But is this really the central concern of all religions?Clarke and Byrne, in their book Religion Defined and Explained, construct a typology of definitions, which I think is quite helpful. Broadly speaking, there are two types of classical definition. Firstly, there are substantive definitions (6), such as Tylor’s and Spiro’s, which posit some sort of common “property” that religions “have”—“inside” them, as it were. Secondly, functionalist definitions (Clarke and Byrne 7), such as Durkheim’s, define religion primarily in terms of its social function. What matters, as far as a definition of religion is concerned, is not what you believe, but why you believe it.However, these classical definitions do not really work. I think this is because they try to do too many things. For a strict definition of religion to work, it needs to tell us (i) what religions have in common, (ii) what distinguishes religion on the one hand from non-religion, or everything that is not religion, on the other, and (iii) it needs to tell us something important about religion, what is at the core of religion. This means that a definition of religion has to be in three places at once, so to speak. Furthermore, a definition of religion has to be based on extant religions, but it also needs to have some sort of quasi-predictive capacity, the sort of thing that can be used in a court case regarding, for example, Scientology or Transcendental Meditation.It may be possible to resolve the latter problem by a gradual process of adjustment, a sort of hermeneutic circle of basing a definition on extant religions and applying it to new ones. But what about the other problem, the one of being in three places at once?Another type identified by Clarke and Byrne, in their typology of definitions, is the “family resemblance” definition (11-16). This derives from the later Wittgenstein. The “family resemblance” definition of religion is based on the idea that religions commonly share a number of features, but that no one religion has all of them. For example, there are religious beliefs, doctrines and mythos—or stories and parables. There are rituals and moral codes, institutions and clergy, prayers, spiritual emotions and experiences, etc. This approach is of course less precise than older substantive and functional definitions, but it also avoids some of the problems associated with them.It does so by rethinking the point of defining religion. Instead of being precise and rigorous for the sake of it, it tries to tell us something, to be “productive”, to help us understand religion better. It eschews certainty and embraces doubt. Its insights could be applied to some schools of philosophy (e.g. Heideggerian) and practical spirituality, because it does not focus on what is distinctive about religion. Rather, it focuses on the core of religion, and, secondarily, on what religions have in common. The family resemblance approach has led to a number of “new” definitions (post-Durkheim definitions) being proposed, all of which define religion in a less rigorous, but, I hope, more imaginative and heuristic way.Let me provide a few examples, starting with two contrasting ones. Peter Berger in the late 1960s defined religion as “the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as humanly significant”(37), which implies a consciousness of an anthropocentric sacred cosmos. Later, Alain Touraine said that religion is “the apprehension of human destiny, existence, and death”(213–4), that is, an awareness of human limitations, including doubt. Berger emphasises the high place for human beings in religion, and even a sort of affected certainty, while Touraine emphasises our place as doubters on the periphery, but it seems that religion exists within a tension between these two opposites, and, in a sense, encompasses them both.Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church and arch-nemesis of the conservative Anglicans, such as those from Sydney, defines religion as like good poetry, not bad science. It is easy to understand that he is criticising those who see religion, particularly Christianity, as centrally opposed to Darwin and evolution. Holloway is clearly saying that those people have missed the point of their own faith. By “good poetry”, he is pointing to the significance of storytelling rather than dogma, and an open-ended discussion of ultimate questions that resists the temptation to end with “the moral of the story”. In science (at least before quantum physics), there is no room for doubt, but that is not the case with poetry.John Caputo, in a very energetic book called On Religion, proposes what is probably the boldest of the “new” definitions. He defines religion as “the love of God” (1). Note the contrast with Tylor and Spiro. Caputo does not say “belief in God”; he says “the love of God”. You might ask how you can love someone you don’t believe in, but, in a sense, this paradox is the whole point. When Caputo says “God”, he is not necessarily talking in the usual theistic or even theological terms. By “God”, he means the impossible made possible (10). So a religious person, for Caputo, is an “unhinged lover” (13) who loves the impossible made possible, and the opposite is a “loveless lout” who is only concerned with the latest stock market figures (2–3). In this sense of religious, a committed atheist can be religious and a devout Catholic or Muslim or Hindu can be utterly irreligious (2–3). Doubt can encompass faith and faith can encompass doubt. This is the impossible made possible. Caputo’s approach here has something in common with Nietzsche and especially Kierkegaard, to whom I shall return later.I would like to propose another definition of religion, within the spirit of these “new” definitions of religion that I have been discussing. Religion, at its core, I suggest, is non-propositional and apophatic. When I say that religion is non-propositional, I mean that religion will often enact certain rituals, or tell certain stories, or posit faith in someone, and that propositional statements of doctrine are merely reflections or approximations of this non-propositional core. Faith in God is not a proposition. The Eucharist is not a proposition. Prayer is not, at its core, a proposition. Pilgrimage is not a proposition. And it is these sorts of things that, I suggest, form the core of religion. Propositions are what happen when theologians and academics get their hands on religion, they try to intellectualise it so that it can be made to fit within their area of expertise—our area of expertise. But, that is not where it belongs. Propositions about rituals impose a certainty on them, whereas the ritual itself allows for courage in the face of doubt. The Maundy Thursday service in Western Christianity includes the stripping of the altar to the accompaniment of Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me”), ending the service without a dismissal (Latin missa, the origin of the English “mass”) and with the church in darkness. Doubt, confusion, and bewilderment are the heart and soul of this ritual, not orthodox faith as defined propositionally.That said, religion does often involve believing, of some kind (though it is not usually as central as in Christianity). So I say that religion is non-propositional and apophatic. The word “apophatic”, though not the concept, has its roots in Greek Orthodox theology, where St Gregory Palamas argues that any statement about God—and particularly about God’s essence as opposed to God’s energies—must be paradoxical, emphasising God’s otherness, and apophatic, emphasising God’s essential incomprehensibility (Armstrong 393). To make an apophatic statement is to make a negative statement—instead of saying God is king, lord, father, or whatever, we say God is not. Even the most devout believer will recognise a sense in which God is not a king, or a lord, or a father. They will say that God is much greater than any of these things. The Muslim will say “Allahu Akhbar”, which means God is greater, greater than any human description. Even the statement “God exists” is seen to be well short of the mark. Even that is human language, which is why the Cappadocian fathers (Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Naziansus) said that they believed in God, while refusing to say that God exists.So to say that religion is at its core non-propositional is to say that religious beliefs are at their core apophatic. The idea of apophasis is that by a process of constant negation you are led into silence, into a recognition that there is nothing more that can be said. St Thomas Aquinas says that the more things we negate about God, the more we say “God is not…”, the closer we get to what God is (139). Doubt therefore brings us closer to the object of religion than any putative certainties.Apophasis does not only apply to Christianity. I have already indicated that it applies also to Islam, and the statement that God is greater. In Islam, God is said to have 99 names—or at least 99 that have been revealed to human beings. Many of these names are apophatic. Names like The Hidden carry an obviously negative meaning in English, while, etymologically, “the Holy” (al-quddu-s) means “beyond imperfection”, which is a negation of a negation. As-salaam, the All-Peaceful, means beyond disharmony, or disequilibrium, or strife, and, according to Murata and Chittick (65–6), “The Glorified” (as-subbuh) means beyond understanding.In non-theistic religions too, an apophatic way of believing can be found. Key Buddhist concepts include sunyata, emptiness, or the Void, and anatta, meaning no self, the belief or realisation that the Self is illusory. Ask what they believe in instead of the Self and you are likely to be told that you are missing the point, like the Zen pupil who confused the pointing finger with the moon. In the Zen koans, apophasis plays a major part. One well-known koan is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Any logical answers will be dismissed, like Thomas Aquinas’s statements about God, until the pupil gets beyond logic and achieves satori, or enlightenment. Probably the most used koan is Mu—Master Joshu is asked if a dog has Buddha-nature and replies Mu, meaning “no” or “nothing”. This is within the context of the principle that everything has Buddha-nature, so it is not logical. But this apophatic process can lead to enlightenment, something better than logic. By plunging again and again in the water of doubt, to use Wittgenstein’s words, we gain something better than certainty.So not only is apophasis present in a range of different religions—and I have given just a few examples—but it is also central to the development of religion in the Axial Age, Karl Jaspers’s term for the period from about 800-200 BCE when the main religious traditions of the world began—monotheism in Israel (which also developed into Christianity and Islam), Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. In the early Hindu traditions, there seems to have been a sort of ritualised debate called the Brahmodya, which would proceed through negation and end in silence. Not the silence of someone admitting defeat at the hands of the other, but the silence of recognising that the truth lay beyond them (Armstrong 24).In later Hinduism, apophatic thought is developed quite extensively. This culminates in the idea of Brahman, the One God who is Formless, beyond all form and all description. As such, all representations of Brahman are equally false and therefore all representations are equally true—hence the preponderance of gods and idols on the surface of Hinduism. There is also the development of the idea of Atman, the universal Self, and the Buddhist concept anatta, which I mentioned, is rendered anatman in Sanskrit, literally no Atman, no Self. But in advaita Hinduism there is the idea that Brahman and Atman are the same, or, more accurately, they are not two—hence advaita, meaning “not two”. This is negation, or apophasis. In some forms of present-day Hinduism, such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (commonly known as the Hare Krishnas), advaita is rejected. Sometimes this is characterised as dualism with respect to Brahman and Atman, but it is really the negation of non-dualism, or an apophatic negation of the negation.Even in early Hinduism, there is a sort of Brahmodya recounted in the Rig Veda (Armstrong 24–5), the oldest extant religious scripture in the world that is still in use as a religious scripture. So here we are at the beginning of Axial Age religion, and we read this account of creation:Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal.Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.All that existed then was void and form less.Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.(Rig Veda Book 10, Hymn 129, abridged)And it would seem that this is the sort of thought that spread throughout the world as a result of the Axial Age and the later spread of Axial and post-Axial religions.I could provide examples from other religious traditions. Taoism probably has the best examples, though they are harder to relate to the traditions that are more familiar in the West. “The way that is spoken is not the Way” is the most anglicised translation of the opening of the Tao Te Ching. In Sikhism, God’s formlessness and essential unknowability mean that God can only be known “by the Guru’s grace”, to quote the opening hymn of the Guru Granth Sahib.Before I conclude, however, I would like to anticipate two criticisms. First, this may only be applicable to the religions of the Axial Age and their successors, beginning with Hinduism and Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, and early Jewish monotheism, followed by Jainism, Christianity, Islam and so on. I would like to find examples of apophasis at the core of other traditions, including Indigenous Australian and Native American ones, for example, but that is work still to be done. Focusing on the Axial Age does historicise the argument, however, at least in contrast with a more universal concept of religion that runs the risk of falling into the ahistorical homo religiosus idea that humans are universally and even naturally religious. Second, this apophatic definition looks a bit elitist, defining religion in terms that are relevant to theologians and “religious virtuosi” (to use Weber’s term), but what about the ordinary believers, pew-fillers, temple-goers? In response to such criticism, one may reply that there is an apophatic strand in what Niebuhr called the religions of the disinherited. In Asia, devotion to the Buddha Amida is particularly popular among the poor, and this involves a transformation of the idea of anatta—no Self—into an external agency, a Buddha who is “without measure”, in terms of in-finite light and in-finite life. These are apophatic concepts. In the Christian New Testament, we are told that God “has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong…, the things that are not to shame the things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The things that are not are the apophatic, and these are allied with the foolish and the weak, not the educated and the powerful.One major reason for emphasising the role of apophasis in religious thought is to break away from the idea that the core of religion is an ethical one. This is argued by a number of “liberal religious” thinkers in different religious traditions. I appreciate their reasons, and I am reluctant to ally myself with their opponents, who include the more fundamentalist types as well as some vocal critics of religion like Dawkins and Hitchens. However, I said that I would return to Kierkegaard, and the reason is this. Kierkegaard distinguishes between the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. Of course, religion has an aesthetic and an ethical dimension, and in some religions these dimensions are particularly important, but that does not make them central to religion as such. Kierkegaard regarded the religious sphere as radically different from the aesthetic or even the ethical, hence his treatment of the story of Abraham going to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son, in obedience to God’s command. His son was not killed in the end, but Abraham was ready to do the deed. This is not ethical. This is fundamentally and scandalously unethical. Yet it is religious, not because it is unethical and scandalous, but because it pushes us to the limits of our understanding, through the waters of doubt, and then beyond.Were I attempting to criticise religion, I would say it should not go there, that, to misquote Wittgenstein, the limits of my understanding are the limits of my world, whereof we cannot understand thereof we must remain silent. Were I attempting to defend religion, I would say that this is its genius, that it can push back the limits of understanding. I do not believe in value-neutral sociology, but, in this case, I am attempting neither. ReferencesAldridge, Alan. Religion in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Polity, 2000.Aquinas, Thomas. “Summa of Christian Teaching”. An Aquinas Reader. ed. Mary Clarke. New York: Doubleday, 1972.Armstrong, Karen. The Great Transformation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.Barker, Eileen. New Religious Movements: a Practical Introduction. London: HMSO, 1989.Berger, Peter. The Social Reality of Religion. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.Caputo, John. On Religion. London: Routledge, 2001.Clarke, Peter, and Peter Byrne, eds. Religion Defined and Explained. New York: St Martin’s Press. 1993.Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press, 1995.Holloway, Richard. Doubts and Loves. Edinburgh: Caqnongate, 2002.Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1977.Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. London: Penguin, 1992.———. Fear and Trembling. London: Penguin, 1986.Murata, Sachiko, and William Chittick. The Vision of Islam. St Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, 1994.Niebuhr, H. Richard. The Social Sources of Denominationalism. New York: Holt, 1929.Spiro, Melford. “Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation.” Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Ed. Michael Banton. London: Tavistock, 1966. 85–126.Touraine, Alain. The Post-Industrial Society. London: Wilwood House, 1974.Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. London: Murray, 1903.Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991.Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. Nottingham: Brynmill Press, 1979.