Abstract
In this chapter the book’s primary theme—the structural similarity between the experience of coming into the presence of God and the experience of coming into the presence of persons—is introduced, as is the secondary theme of the structural similarity between the “death of God,” a felt loss of the reality of God and his presence, and the “death of persons,” a loss of the sense of the inherent worth of persons and their presence. A main focus of this book is on persons, and this suggests an alignment with the philosophical school of personalism. However, as this chapter makes clear, the approach of this book is significantly different from personalism in its various forms. This introductory chapter concludes with a description of the subjects and concerns of the thirteen chapters that follow.
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Notes
- 1.
In an earlier book Relationship Morality I discussed coming into the presence of person but not coming into the presence of God and a fortiori not the structural analogy between the two.
- 2.
Cheikh Mbacke Gueye, “Introduction,” in Ethical Personalism, ed. Cheikh Mbacke Gueye (Frankfurt, Paris, Lancaster, UK, and New Brunswick, NJ: Ontos Verlag, 2011), p. 8 [electronic resource].
- 3.
Thomas D. Williams and Jan Olof Bengtsson, “Personalism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available 2018 at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/; Thomas O. Buford, “Personalism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available 2018 at https://www.iep.utm.edu/personal/; Kenneth Schmitz, “Personalism,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2010, ed. Robert L. Fastiggi, vol. 2 (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2010), pp. 893–897 [electronic resource]; Edgar S. Brightman, “An Empirical Approach to God,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 46, 1937, pp. 167–168 [electronic resource]; G. H. Howison, “The Right Relation of Reason to Religion,” in The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1904), p. 275 [electronic resource].
- 4.
In this book’s discussion we use “inherent worth,” “inherent value,” “intrinsic worth,” and “intrinsic value” interchangeably.
- 5.
Gueye, “Introduction,” in Ethical Personalism, p. 8.
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Kellenberger, J. (2019). Introduction. In: The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_1
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