Overview
- Examines how religious knowledge is to be considered religiously
- Asks what is the significance of religious knowledge for faith
- Maintains that personification in religion allows relationships that are not reducible to knowing truths
Part of the book series: Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion (PFPR)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
About this book
This book addresses the place of religious knowledge in religion, particularly within Christianity. The book begins by examining the difference between the general concepts of knowledge and belief, the relation between faith and knowledge, and reasons why belief as faith, and not knowledge, is central to the Abrahamic religions.
The book explores the ambivalence about religious knowledge within Christianity. Some religious thinkers explicitly accepted and sought religious knowledge, as did St. Thomas Aquinas, while others, notably Søren Kierkegaard, cast knowledge and seeking it as incompatible with faith. The book also examines two antithetical religious intuitions about knowledge, both at home in the Christian tradition. For one, faith requires a struggle with doubt. For the other, faith requires a certainty that excludes doubt. For the first, religious knowledge would destroy faith. For the second, religious knowledge is compatible with faith and completes it.
The book explores the ambivalence about religious knowledge within Christianity. Some religious thinkers explicitly accepted and sought religious knowledge, as did St. Thomas Aquinas, while others, notably Søren Kierkegaard, cast knowledge and seeking it as incompatible with faith. The book also examines two antithetical religious intuitions about knowledge, both at home in the Christian tradition. For one, faith requires a struggle with doubt. For the other, faith requires a certainty that excludes doubt. For the first, religious knowledge would destroy faith. For the second, religious knowledge is compatible with faith and completes it.
Though the book focuses on the Christian tradition, it also considers other traditions, including a chapter on the place of religious knowledge in nontheistic religious traditions. The final chapter examines how coming to Wisdom as personified in the Jewish and Christian traditions may be distinct from attaining religious knowledge.
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
Table of contents (10 chapters)
-
Front Matter
-
Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
The late James Kellenberger was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Northridge, USA. Professor Kellenberger's other books include Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (1997), Dying to Self and Detachment (2012), and most recently Religious Revelation (2021).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Religious Knowledge
Authors: James Kellenberger
Series Title: Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18787-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-18786-5Published: 02 December 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-18787-2Published: 30 November 2022
Series ISSN: 2634-6176
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6184
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VI, 118
Topics: Philosophy of Religion