Ilaria L.E. Ramelli is Full Professor of Theology and K.Britt endowed Chair (Graduate School of Theology, SHMS, “Angelicum” University) and elected Senior Research Fellow at Durham University, at the University of Oxford (Fowler Hamilton fellowship) and at Erfurt University, Max Weber Center, within a Research Award / “Forschungspreis” from the Humboldt Foundation. We invited her to answer the question “What norms or values define excellent philosophy of religion? as part of our “Philosophers of Religion on Philosophy of Religion” series.

Excellent Philosophy of Religion [PoR] could be defined by values that are interrelated with the virtues of Philosophy and virtues of Religion together. These virtues are ἀρεταί in their Greek etymological sense: virtues as excellences, and therefore as norms and models. Overall, values that define excellent Philosophy are truth (or better the quest thereof) and logical/rational rigour. Values that define excellent Religion are the pursuit of the Good and the moral and spiritual elevation of humanity.

Ancient philosophy, which included theology as its highest peak and offers the first examples of PoR, often described its own goal as the “assimilation to God,” God being the core of Religion but also the highest object of Philosophy (see below). The exercise of philosophy in antiquity aimed neither at academic career nor at political power nor at acquisition of money or similar goals, but at the philosopher’s assimilation to God-God being the supreme Good, and theology being the pinnacle of philosophy. The life of the philosopher had to conform to this noble telos or aim. Therefore, the ideal was no corruption, no injustice, no iniquity, no envy, no calumny, no meanness, nor any other pathos (passion or bad emotion) or evil deed for every day of the philosopher’s life-nothing unworthy of God, who is the model for humans-but rather all virtues, which are exemplified primarily in God.

Excellent PoR is rational investigation applied to things divine and the relation between the Divine and the world, especially the relation between the divine and humanity-as already Origen thought of it, PoR is essentially Philosophical Theology. I agree, and Origen would agree, that philosophy matters a great deal in the study of religion, and religion-theology in philosophy.¹ Ancient epoptics, i.e. theology, was the highest part of philosophy for all Platonists (and other philosophers), ‘pagan’ and Christian alike.² Vis-à-vis a criticism of PoR as offering little to religious studies and as being too close to Philosophical Theology and a kind of crypto-theology,³ I would share the general drift of Bradley Onishi, who argues that PoR, and philosophy in general, offers much to religious studies-although he concentrates on Continental PoR, while the discourse could be broadened to all of PoR, from the disciplinary viewpoint.⁴

Reflecting on the values and norms of PoR must take into account that PoR can investigate into protology, metaphysics, cataphatic and apophatic theology and what I call “the dialectics of apophatic theology,” mystical theology, Christology and its philosophical interpretations (including philosophical interpretations of dogmas and Logos Christology), theories of creation, theories of time and eternity, ethics and its metaphysical foundations, the problem of evil and innocent suffering, free will, responsibility, ethical intellectualism, hamartiology, philosophical anthropology, the mind-body relation, philosophical asceticism, soteriology, death and the afterlife, inter-religious relations (e.g. Jewish-Christian and others), Trinitarian theology in Christianity, Binitarian theologies in Judaism and Christianity, monotheisms, henotheisms, polytheisms, and pantheisms (including forms of Christian pantheism), faith and knowledge, religion and science, universalism, the philosophical analysis of religious doctrines, and religions and their philosophical interpretations.

In this connection, among the most important values for PoR are Truth, Justice, Good, the akolouthia or consequentiality of all virtues; and, methodologically, logical rigour, fruitfulness for further inquiry, and a “zetetic” or heuristic attitude in research concerning the Divinity, with the awareness of the limits of this investigation-which historically gave rise to what I call “the dialectics of apophaticism”.⁵ These values are all related to “assimilation to God” as the main telos: God is Truth, Justice, the supreme Good, the paradigm of all virtues, and has given reason, the logos, to all rational creatures in order to choose virtues and reject evil consciously and voluntarily (this, within a broad framework of ethical intellectualism).

Origen of Alexandria, one of the best ancient philosophers of religion and a model of “zetetic” inquiry, exemplifies the thirst for Truth and Justice.⁶ These are among the main epinoiai or conceptualizations of Christ, God’s Son, along with Logos and Wisdom. According to Origen, the norm of PoR is God’s Logos, who is all virtues, Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, Righteousness, etc. (essentially, Plato’s Value Forms). Christ-Logos collects all values and norms. Hence the ideal of assimilation to Christ, who is God. For Origen, PoR and Philosophical Theology, i.e. the rational investigation of things divine, helps people to attain the highest goal of human life (which was also Plato’s definition of the telos of human life): assimilation to God. Assimilation, or likeness, to God, ὁμοίωσις Θεῷ, was both a Biblical (Gen 1:26) and a Platonic ideal (Theaet. 176AC), received by Aristotle, Antiochus of Ascalon, Philo, and “Middle Platonists” such as Eudorus, Albinus, Alcinous, and the anonymous Commentary on the Theaetetus (7.18).⁷

For Origen this convergence was-along with many others-a further proof that Plato was inspired either by Scripture or by the same Logos who inspired, and is “incarnate” in, Scripture. Indeed, in Princ. 3.6.1 Origen states that the ideal of assimilation to God expressed by Plato in Theaet. 176B is the same as that mentioned in Gen 1:26. Tübingen Theosophy 1.40, too, recognised that not only “pagans” (i.e. Plato and his followers) but also Moses embraced this ideal. The basis for “assimilation to God,” in Origen’s view, is the “affinity” between human nous and God-nous (Princ. 1.1.7. This is one of Origen’s uses of the theory of Oikeiosis, later taken over by Gregory of Nyssa as well.⁸ Clement of Alexandria, well known to Origen, praised Plato’s ideal of ὁμοίωσις θεῷ as eudaemonistic: “Plato, the philosopher who posited happiness as the highest goal, claims this is assimilation to God as much as possible” (Strom. 2.100.1-101.1).

For Origen, assimilation to God is also assimilation to Christ, who is God (Comm.Io. 1.23), one of the three Hypostaseis who are the Principles (ἀρχαί) of all.⁹ In Princ. 3.6.1, Origen delineates the passage from “image of God,” an initial datum for humans, to “likeness/assimilation to God” (which in Plato implied becoming “just, holy, and wise”), and from likeness to unity in the end: εἰκών from the beginning > ὁμοίωσις through moral improvement in this or the future life > ἕν / ἕνωσις, unity/unification (another Platonic ideal) in the eventual apokatastasis and “deification” (θέωσις), when God will eschatologically be “all in all” (based on 1Cor 15:28). “God’s image” is an initial datum, but the “likeness/assimilation to God” has still to come (Hom.Ez. 13.2). It is the ideal of PoR and of every human and rational life for these ancient philosophers of religion. I think it maintains its validity for us today.

John Schellenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University in Canada. We invited him to answer the question “What norms or values define excellent philosophy of religion? as part of our “Philosophers of Religion on Philosophy of Religion” series.

Given religion’s questionable maturity, one norm or value I would propose for philosophy of religion is that work in the field, to attain excellence, must be fitted to this fact.

What do I mean by ‘questionable maturity’? Not that beneficial and profound strands of religiousness have yet to appear, or that we should look solely to the future for illuminating religious insights, ignoring the past. What I have in mind is that numerous facets of human culture are opposed to the behaviours that, sufficiently long pursued, might reasonably make us confident that we have gone as far as we can toward the following goal: bringing to light and thoroughly entering into the deepest and most profound transcendently-focused ideas and practices our species is capable of generating. Call this the goal of fully tapping human transcendent aspirations. We could hardly live up to our evolutionary designation without making this a goal for religion as a dimension of human culture. But for the reason given, it is not a goal that we would properly think of ourselves as having come close to achieving.

Let me fill out the reason. Human culture currently includes ideologies of the most resilient and unbending kind, fervent beliefs that make related inquiries seem unnecessary, cultural prejudices and in-group biases galore. Such factors have long been operating so as to favour particular contentious religious views. We are commonly influenced by them prior to the deep and wide, openminded and openhearted religious investigation that could properly acquaint us with many orientations other than those with which we are familiar, as well as in utter innocence of the thought that there may be more religious ideas in intellectual space than we have conceived during the past few thousand years – an eyeblink in evolutionary time. With women long consigned to being seen but not heard, we are still partially in innocence even of what half of our own race might contribute to religious discussion. And then there is religious violence, which bleeds freely into the present from the past. It is surely reasonable to wonder: Would the elimination of such factors allow transcendent aspirations to speak to us in new and more profound tones?

It is striking that very few religious inquirers have even tried to bridge religious intellectual divides, or to get a clear view of all the religious ideas we have conceived. One token of this is how recently religious studies departments have begun appearing in our universities. Another is that even the currently best-known critics of religious belief – the New Atheists – exhibit such faults as are listed in the previous paragraph. Witness how often they proceed as though the only religions in the world are the religions of the West, and how immune they appear to be from instruction as to the possibility of human religious immaturity by their own evolutionary worldview.

Philosophy of any kind, and certainly philosophy of religion, finding itself in such circumstances, should feel compelled to push very hard in the opposite direction instead of remaining in the shadow of ignorance. Since the aims of philosophy of religion prominently include fundamental understanding (which includes fundamental evaluation) of things religious, this field of inquiry naturally must endorse the goal of fully tapping human transcendent aspirations. Indeed, on the intellectual side, it must share it. How else can we avoid the danger of premature assessment? Thus a proper sensitivity to the facets of human culture described above is paramount; in relation to them, philosophy of religion must seek to be, as they say, part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Given its nature, we could hardly call work in the field excellent if it did not fit its circumstances in this way.

Sadly, much contemporary philosophy of religion is still part of the problem, providing additional examples of influence by deleterious cultural factors to set alongside the sins of the New Atheists. Like them, most philosophers of religion have been preoccupied with personal conceptions of the divine popular in the West. And lately, with ‘Christian philosophy of religion’ in the ascendancy, we have become rather complacent about allowing parochial points of reference to define the terrain in which a philosopher of religion operates. Such behaviour evinces a presupposition of religious maturity rather than sensitivity to the distinct possibility that maturity is still a long way off. If I am right, we should not call philosophical work entangled with this presupposition excellent.

How can we do better? What, more specifically, will this mean? It will certainly mean choosing the pro-maturity option whenever both a maturity-conducive way of proceeding and an alternative making concessions to the status quo present themselves.

So suppose you can either ignore new religious options and new attempts to cross boundaries of race and gender and style when they are introduced, or seek to give them careful attention, willing to adjust previous allegiances according to what you discover. Given the maturity-oriented criterion, to attain excellence you must pretty clearly do the latter. Or suppose you can either import your pre-existing religious or anti-religious belief into philosophical inquiry and defend it at all costs, or turn your belief into a position to be brought into friendly conversation with the positions of disagreeing others in as many ways as you can, willing to exchange it for a new position as, through such conversation, the body of available information is enlarged. To attain excellence, you must again choose the latter course.

You must choose it because we are all influenced by the factors contributing to religion’s questionable maturity. In these circumstances, we should agree to make disagreements work for us and for maturity: their purpose, we might learn to think, is to expand our imaginations and to enlarge and improve, for everyone, the body of available information about religious matters. Likewise, it is imperative to assume that much in the religious realm may not yet have been encountered by human beings and that many ways of coming to grips with religious matters may well have gone undetected. Only in these ways can we minimize the likelihood of remaining ignorant of vital facts with a bearing on our work should they currently be hidden from us – as, given our track record, may well be the case – and so do justice to our status as philosophers.