Author: llwilmoth

Alva Noe on Art

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Alva Noë thinks the arts can actually teach us about ourselves, our lot in life, and our experience of the world around us. While this might seem like an unremarkable claim, among philosophers of art, this is no trivial thesis. As one kind of aesthetic cognitivist, Noë is thereby denying that the arts are primarily about, say, expressions of private taste or articulations of emotion.

The reason I’m drawing attention to this conversation at all is because I wouldn’t want to see others neglect aesthetics as I did in my undergrad philosophy days. This branch of philosophy stands to make an appreciable contribution to one’s general philosophical sensibilities if students would attend to its concerns and discursive practices — particularly if one’s previous exposure to philosophy has exaggerated its proximity to the sciences.

If you’d care to follow up, Noë further elaborates his take on art in an article here.

And for those specially intrigued, Noë also airs his thoughts in book-length form here.

Readings in the Doctrine of God

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Works like the following, I’d submit, would make for a fascinating course on the doctrine of God in contemporary theology.

Required Reading

I. Classical Theism: David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God (Yale UnivPr, 2014)

II. Questioning Divine Realism: Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God (1980)

III. Questioning Divine Simplicity: Paul Hinlicky, Divine Simplicity (Baker, 2016)

IV. Questioning Divine Eternity: Ed. Dempsey, Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Eerdmans, 2011)

V. Questioning Divine Impassibility: Eds. Keating and White, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering (Eerdmans, 2009)

VI. Questioning Divine Hiddenness: Joshua Miller, Hanging by a Promise: The Hidden God in the Theology of Oswald Bayer (Pickwick, 2015)

VII. Questioning Divine Action & Providence: Maurice Wiles, God’s Action in the World (1986)

Suggested Further Reading

  • Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (Cambridge UnivPr, 2013)
  • James Dolezal, God without Parts (Pickwick, 2011)
  • Robert Jenson, The Triune Identity: God according to the Gospel (1982)
  • Eberhard Jungel, God as the Mystery of the World (Eerdmans, 1983)
  • Frank Kirkpatrick, The Mystery and Agency of God: Divine Being and Action in the World (Fortress, 2014)
  • Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology: The Doctrine of God, Volume 1 (Fortress, 2015)
  • T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons, 2nd Ed (T&T Clark, 2016)
  • William Placher, The Triune God: An Essay in Postliberal Theology (WJKP, 2007)