Role Models in the Creation/Evolution Controversy

The Creation/Evolution controversy, as it is presented in popular literature, often reinforces the idea of a warfare between science and religion. The purposes of this paper are, first, to unravel some of the strands of argument that lend support to the warfare motif and, second to demonstrate that the intellectual landscape since Darwin does not support a view that would make evolution and creation irreconcilable hypotheses

A Slice of Immortality: Remembering Charles Hartshorne

A Slice of Immortality: Remembering Charles Hartshorne is an illustrated record of the author\u27s encounters with Hartshorne during the last two decades of Hartshorne\u27s life and of the denouement of these encounters as the author saw to the publication of some of Hartshorne\u27s works, including the last of his books, Creative Experiencing. The document includes an addendum with a list of Hartshorne\u27s unpublished articles

God as the Most and Best Moved Mover: Charles Hartshorne\u27s Importance for Philosophical Theology

The work of Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) may be the single most important factor in dissolving the consensus among philosophers that an entirely absolute deity should be considered normative for theology. What Hartshorne calls classical theism holds that God creates the universe ex nihilo, that God alone has the power to create, thereby entailing that the creatures are wholly uncreative. Classical theism is an anomaly in the sense that the Bible portrays God and the creatures in dynamic interaction with each other. Classical theism also presents various antinomies of how a God with no contingent properties could know a contingent and changing world, how a being that is unaffected by the creatures could truly love them, how the creatures could have any value since God possess it all, and how the creatures can be free if they can do no more than reenact what God has decided for them eternally. Hartshorne attempts to overcome these antinomies by arguing that God is dipolar, which means that God has an absolute and unchanging character and existence but is also related to the creatures in such a way as to be affected by their weal and woe, but always responsive in ideally appropriate ways. Hartshorne\u27s distinction between existence/essence (absolute, unchanging) and actuality (relative, responsive, growing) is modeled on the distinction in a person of a relatively stable character and a changing response to various situations. In this way, Hartshorne can, without contradiction, speak of God as the most and best moved mover

The Humor of Jesus of Nazareth

As Rudolf Bultmann advocated demythologization to separate the message of Jesus from outdated cultural forms in which it was expressed, so I advocate what I call desobrietization to discover the humor that Jesus used that has been lost because of translation, prosy interpreters, and preconceived ideas about what it is to be divine. Without pretending to recover the actual words of Jesus, one may nevertheless hear the authentic voice of Jesus and therein detect his wit. One discovers the humor of Jesus in his use of exaggeration, satire, sarcasm, plays on words, and irony. Irony is especially important for it shows that Jesus could say the opposite of what he meant so that a merely literal reading of the text misses its message. There is also a theological importance to desobrietization. For Christians, Jesus is the Word of God, and if that word displays humor one has thereby understood something about the divine

The Making of a Feminist: A Philosophical Autobiography

This article--written at the request of Megan Duffy--summarizes my journey to feminism from the female role models in my life, to my discovery of the power of language to shape attitudes and behaviors, to my introduction to Feminist Theology, reading the work of Rosemary Ruether and meeting her when she visited campus

On the Trail of a French Philosopher of Genius, Jules Lequyer

This is a brief account of my travels in the summer of 1994 to Bretagne to trace the steps of the little-known French philosopher, Jules Lequyer (1814-1862). My wife and I were hosted by Dr. Paul Houillon and his family in Plouguernével. Our meetings with the mayors of Quintin (Lequyer\u27s town of birth) and Plérin (where Lequyer is buried) were covered by two national French newspapers

The Varieties of Theism and the Openness of God

Charles Hartshorne was an advocate of the openness of God. Contrary to some critiques, he was aware of and responded to criticisms of his views and developed ways of thinking about the varieties of theistic metaphysics

Philosophy in a Different Key: My Philosophy in Song

I composed my first song in the early 1970s, but all but one of the songs listed here were written after my fifty-fifth birthday in 2008—indeed, the vast majority of what I have composed was written since then. What follows are the lyrics to some of my songs. For each song, I’ve made comments that provide context, an explanation of the sources that I’ve used for inspiration, and what I was thinking in composing the piece. All of the recordings of the songs were made at Phil Ward’s Woodland Studios in Pittsburg, Kansas