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D. Z. Phillips, Self-Renunciation and the Finality of Death

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Emyr Vaughan Thomas
Emyr Vaughan Thomas
Affiliation:
92 Ffriddoedd Road, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2TT.
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Extract

D. Z. Phillips thinks that the religious concept of immortality should necessarily be construed as not involving any idea of the self existing after death. In this paper it will be argued that his attempt to support this view on the basis of a descriptive analysis of the self-renouncing character of faith is inadequate. The notion of the finality of death is not essential to, nor inseparable from, a religious conception in which the nothingness of the self is stressed. That this is so is suggested by the existence of religious notions of the nothingness of the self which are religious, in a sense comparable to that implied by Phillips, only in combination with a view of death as not being a termination of the self.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 487 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Phillips, D. Z., The Concept of Prayer (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 2.Google Scholar

2 Phillips, D. Z., Death and Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Ibid. p. 54.

4 The Concept of Prayer, p. 70; Thomas, R. S.: Poet of the Hidden God (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 102.Google Scholar

5 Death and Immortality, p. 53.

6 The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius (London: Burns & Oates, 1881), p. 23.Google Scholar

7 Ibid. p. 25.

8 Ibid. p. 26.

9 Ibid. p. 26.

10 Ibid. p. 24.

11 Ibid. p. 27.

12 Rahner, K., ‘Ignatian Mysticism of Joy in the World’, in his Theological Investigations (vol. 3) (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1967), p. 291.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. p. 291.

14 Spiritual Exercises, p. 3.

15 The Concept of Prayer, p. 67.

16 Spiritual Exercises, p. 236.

17 Phillips, D. Z., Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 235.Google Scholar

18 The Concept of Prayer, p. 69; Religion Without Explanation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), p. 54Google Scholar; R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God, p. 87.

19 Spiritual Exercises, p. 22.

20 Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 78ff.

21 Spiritual Exercises, p. 21.

22 Ibid. p. 20.

23 Ibid. p. 29.

24 Ibid. p. 19.

25 The Concept of Prayer, p. 70.

26 Spiritual Exercises, p. 25.