In 1944–45 a survey was carried out on the topic of religion in a London borough, and in 1960 the survey was repeated in the same borough. In both 1945 and 1960 over forty per cent of those attending Anglican services said that they did not believe in a life after death. When due allowance has been made for the relative unreliability of public opinion sampling, it is nevertheless obvious that incredulity on this issue is widespread and probably increasing, even within the Church. There are at least two main reasons for this—that personal immortality is commonly held to be incompatible with the scientific view of man, and the apparent irrelevance of the belief for life in the here and now. The question in people's minds today is no longer what the Bible says about immortality, nor what the churches teach on the subject [if indeed they teach anything at all]. These questions can be answered by reading the Bible and by consulting manuals of doctrine. The problem is this: How is it possible in any meaningful sense to believe in a life after death in the 'sixties of the twentieth century?

One of James's earliest philosophical essays sounds a note which will echo through his writings. Criticizing Spencer's definition of truth as (‘mere’) correspondence, James asserts that a ‘correspondence’ between the mind and reality is a ‘right mental action’, and rightness is determined by ‘pure subjective interests …brought… upon the scene and corresponding to no relation already there’ (EP 11).

The doctrine of hell, stated with a little care, entails that some persons never achieve their greatest good, fail to really flourish and never reach the end for which they were created. If that doctrine is true, and it is tragic that persons never achieve their greatest good, then there are tragic states of affairs whose tragedy is never overcome.

In a recent article in Religious Studies, Professor P. W. Gooch attempts to wean the orthodox Christian from anthropological materialism by consideration of the question of the nature of the post-mortem person in the resurrection. He argues that the view that the resurrected person is a psychophysical organism who is in some physical sense the same as the ante-mortem person is inconsistent with the Pauline view of the resurrected body; rather, according to him, Paul's view is most consistent with that which affirms the disembodied survival of the person. ‘I want to argue’, he writes, ‘for the thesis that a Pauline resurrection body may well be ontologically the same as a disembodied person (204).’ I intend to show that Professor Gooch has failed to provide any support for this view and indeed that his own view falls prey to the criticisms which he has raised against other views.

The topic of divine omniscience is well-trodden ground, with philosophers and theologians having asked virtually every question there is to ask about it. The questions regarding God's omniscience to be addressed here are as follows. First, is omniscience best understood as maximal propositional knowledge along with maximal experiential knowledge (both to be defined shortly)? I argue that it is. Second, is it possible for God to be essentially omniscient? I argue that it is not.

This essay expands upon the suggestion that Lessing's infamous ‘ditch’ is actually three ditches: temporal, metaphysical, and existential gaps. It examines the complex problems these ditches raise, and then proposes that Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript exhibit a similar triadic organizational structure, which may signal a deliberate attempt to engage and respond to Lessing's three gaps. Viewing the Climacean project in this way offers an enhanced understanding of the intricacies of Lessing's rationalist approach to both religion and historical truth, and illuminates Climacus's subjective response to Lessing.

During June, 1836 Soren Kierkegaard attended a soiree in Copenhagen where the wine flowed, witty conversation bubbled from every corner, and he himself was at the centre of merriment – sparkling, acerbic, enormously witty. After the party he returned home and penned the following lines in his journal:

I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away – yes, the dash would be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit…and wanted to shoot myself.

In his recent work Professor Morris writes: ‘I am suggesting that, armed with a couple of fairly simple metaphysical distinctions we can begin to see how the doctrine of the Incarnation can possibly be true.’

What are these ‘metaphysical distinctions’ and do they stand up to critical examination? My answer to the latter part of this question in regard to the first distinction is a reserved ‘Yes’; in regard to the second distinction a definite ‘No’. If my criticism of the second distinction holds good, then Morris's defence of the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation fails, for his defence crucially relies on the validity of that distinction.

While reflecting one day on the enormous difficulties that men have in knowing that there is a God, a completely unexpected and unfamiliar question drifted into my purview – perhaps as a kind of ultimate expression of my philosophical frustration. ‘Indeed’, the question asked, ‘can even God know that he is God?’ At first I thought this query merely amusing. ‘Wouldn't it be funny if God cannot know that he is God! But of course he can.’ So my mind wandered on to other things. The question did not leave me alone, though. It insisted that I take it seriously, and the more I did, the more legitimate, complex, and significant it came to seem - and still does.

Religion has in the past, it may be truefully admitted, done more than its share of fostering the spirit of ‘we’ over against ‘they’. Economic and political factors have unfortunately, throughout history, clogged the channels of communication between men of one faith and those of another. The most unhappy aspect of the relation between religion and society has been the way in which the former has fostered the distinction between the insider and the outsider. Typical of this is the fact that most religious communities have a word which describes the religious outsider and the word is never a flattering one. That there should be religious diversity in the first place should occasion no surprise. Diversification is the order of things in the biological realm and we would not expect to find a sudden departure from this, that is, a move towards convergence, in the sphere of religion. But unless diversification is matched with understanding and with communication we face the future at our peril. It is for this reason that the question of inter-religious communication, the ground of its possibility, can be regarded not only as the most pressing of problems for the student of comparative religion (for unless there is prior understanding and communication where indeed are the data to be compared?) but as a matter of pressing urgency for all.

In a recent paper Anthony Flew gives an argument which can be outlined as follows:

1. Any attempt to give a ‘free will defence’ (to rebut the argument from evil against God's existence) must be based either on a compatibilist notion of free will or a libertarian, incompatibilist, notion of free will.

2. A free will defence based on a compatibilist notion of free will must fail, for on a compatibilist view of free will, God could make creatures who were free but never chose evil.

3. A free will defence based on a libertarian notion of free will might have other difficulties, but on a libertarian view of free will God could not both leave men free and bring it about that they never chose evil.

4. But a free will defence based on an incompatibilist, libertarian notion of free will can be rejected, since:

(a) It is not clear that the ordinary use of such key terms as ‘action’ and ‘choice’ carry any implications of libertarian free will.

(b) If such terms did carry the implication of libertarian free will it becomes hard to see how anyone could be in a position to know that a choice had been made or an action performed.

(c) The possession of libertarian free will by created beings seems to be incompatible with the essential theistic doctrine that all created beings are always utterly dependent on God as their sustaining cause.

5. Therefore the free will defence fails.

Of fundamental importance for any epistemology is what philosophers today call ‘semiotics’ which entails a consideration of the issues of semantics, logical syntax, and pragmatics. Semantics has to do with the significations or meanings of the terms or expressions in any particular language. It concentrates on the expressions and their designata. Syntactical analysis is concerned with the rules governing the formal relations among the signs of the language such as in inference or the relation of derivability. And pragmatics is concerned with the meanings the speaker intends to convey by his use of language.Obviously, linguistic and logical nonsense and/or failure to take into account the context of the concrete world, especially that of human interests and intentions, and the issue of applicability would produce a death blow for any attempt at an epistemology.

The idea or indeed the possibility of self–change is rarely discussed in general terms, though many religious aims relate to it. I wish to introduce aset of concepts relevant to the understanding of the idea; and to exhibit the Buddhist path, as described in the Pali texts, as an example of radical self–change. The general concepts and the particular example will have muchto do with the senses in which, when a person acts or intends, the action or intention is truly his; and so will involve an examination of the notion of self–control.

Why does the paradox (i.e. the incarnation) play such a crucial role in Kierkegaard's notion of truth as subjectivity? Richard Schacht explains it as follows:

Eternal happiness is possible for a man only if it is possible for him to relate himself to God. A man, however, is a being who exists in time; and it would not be possible for such a being to enter into a ‘God-relationship’ if God had not also at some point existed in time. Through the ‘leap of faith’ in which one affirms the proposition that God did exist in time, one is able to enter a ‘God-relationship’ and thereby attains ‘an eternal happiness’.

Theism, according to David O'Connor, has in recent centuries been on trial for its life, the charge being that the existence of so much evil in the world is incompatible with belief in a benevolent creator. But this trial, he claims is incapable of producing a reasoned verdict.

Among Western scholars there has been a growing interest in Buddhist philosophy, especially in the philosophical teachings of the Mādhyamika. Mādhyamika philosophy is considered to be ‘the most important outcome of Buddha's teaching’ and to represent ‘philosophical Buddhism par excellence’. The main message of Mādhyamika Buddhism is the doctrine of emptiness. Yet scholars, as well as students of Buddhism, have often been puzzled about this teaching and have misinterpreted it. The chief purpose of this paper is to expound the Mādhyamika philosophy of emptiness as presented in Chinese San–lun sources and to clarify misconceptions about this important philosophy of Buddhism.