Whenever the discussion of the relation between religion and science or science and faith arises in circles imbued with various trends of modern thought, immediately the history of the confrontation of the Church with Galileo or of Protestant theology with Darwinianism comes to mind and the problem is viewed from the particular vantage point of the West. Those who have kept pace with the most current speculations of certain scientists in quest of a new world view may point to the fact that there are more recent works which compare the movement of electrons with the Dance of Shiva or speak of the search for the Tao of modern science. But even in such works which are becoming popular, although reference is made to Oriental doctrines, these teachings are usually viewed in separation from the traditional universe to which they belong and the philosophical and scientific framework remain Western. In the modern world the usual background for the understanding of the relation between religion and science continues to be the Western experience from the revolt of modern science against its scholastic theological background during the Renaissance and the seventeenth century to the final abdication by religion from the domain of nature and its surrender to the scientific enterprise and the latter's particular methodology and philosophy for the study of the natural world. Even when certain works step outside the Western world view in search of a rapprochement with certain Oriental doctrines, science remains Western science and the suppositions made upon the nature of Reality do not change in an ultimate way.

Not only during his lifetime but for some years after his death Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling remained a figure of controversy. Few academic philosophers have been more execrated by their opponents, since with him intellectual differences quickly turned into personal animosities. That this was so was not simply his ill–luck; Schelling was always an ‘awkward customer’ to deal with. His vanity, which was inordinate, was no doubt basically temperamental, but it had been stimulated by the remarkable literary success of his early years, in which he appeared before the world as a prodigy. Increasingly touchy and irritable as he grew older, the least criticism struck him as a personal affront and disagreement as intended injury. The bitterness of his response, to intellectual equals and inferiors alike, was almost invariably such as to end in severed relationships. Thus he quarrelled in turn with Jacobi, with Fichte and with Friedrich Schlegel, as well as with lesser lights such as Baader and Eschenmayer, and even with his own pupils –J. J. Wagner, Krause, Stahl, Kohn and others. Those who managed to stay on good terms with him – men like Windischmann, Victor Cousin and his own publisher Cotta – had to learn to put up with his rancour. But of all with whom he fell foul the most eminent was Hegel, whom he regarded as his arch–enemy. The reason, little creditable to Schelling, is not far to seek. Originally fellow–students at Tübingen, they later became colleagues at Jena, where Schelling, the younger of the two, had already acquired national fame. By contrast the future author of the Phenomenology of Spirit was evidently as yet no more than a worthy but hardly scintillating collaborator with his academic senior in running a philosophical journal.

The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory about the possibility of symbolism in general; to give an account of a primary role that symbolism can play in a religion; and to argue, from the theory, that if a religion makes use of symbolism in this role, there may be a sense in which such use needs to be metaphysically validated.

What must I do to be saved? And is what I must do the same as what you must do? The Philippian jailor in the book of Acts received a most peculiar answer to the question: ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ’, said St Paul, ‘and you will be saved.’ In the context, this hardly seems appropriate. The jailor was not asking how he could be assured of a place in the next world, or how he could be reconciled to God or have his sins forgiven. His was a cry of quite unreligious desperation: was there any alternative to suicide, now that his prison was no longer secure and he had failed in his duty? The curious thing about the story is that it is recorded, not as an example of over–zealous bad manners, but as ultimately the right answer for even the jailor's situation. When Paul instructed him further, he and his household were baptized: the writer clearly intended the story to show that Paul's initial response was exactly right, and that belief in Christ brought salvation to the jailor and his family.

Logical positivism and its derivatives cast a sustained philosophical shadow over religious faith and theological reflection. Any number of issues continue to surface in explicit and subdued forms, all of them relating to the status of religious beliefs. In fairly recent years, much fruitful discussion is dependent on the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's last notes, collected in On Certainty, are still largely unmined by those wishing to gain clarity about religious belief. It turns out, however, that these pages promise to be among the most helpful. In what follows, therefore, there is first offered a summary of the dominant themes of On Certainty – Wittgenstein's critique of G. E. Moore and his treatment of Moore's truisms of common sense. By a painstaking analysis, Wittgenstein shows that the truths defended by Moore are among any number of other fundamental propositions which have an extraordinary logical role in our language and judgements about the world. Next, partly by reference to Wittgenstein's lectures on religious belief and other collected notes, it is argued that many beliefs in Christianity share significant logical features with those fundamental propositions. Not least is the fact that, like the latter but unlike scientific hypotheses, Christian beliefs are removed from the ordinary traffic of verification and falsification. Despite the likenesses, notice is also taken of various dissimilarities which further set the peculiarity of Christian articles of faith into bold relief. The disparities, however, do not impugn the logically fundamental role which those beliefs have in the language and lives of those who embrace the faith.

Ramana Maharsi is one of the lesser lights of modern Indian thought but a major figure in the context of modern Advaitic thought in Hinduism. Modern Indian thought in general is distinguished by a robust confidence in the efficacy of effort as an expression of free will, a confidence it shares with the temper of the West in general and which it may have imbibed by coming in contact with it. Modern Advaitic thought, as represented by its popular modern exponents such as S. Radhakrishnan and T. M. P. Mahadevan, shares this confidence. Ramana Maharsi, however, strikes, at least at first glance, a somewhat discordant note. The purpose of this paper is to present his view on the time–honoured debate between predeterminism and free will and to analyze its philosophical implications.

Agnostics often hold that, since there is not a clear preponderance of evidence either in favour of theistic belief or against it, their position of suspended belief is more rational than either theism or atheism. I would like to examine an objection raised recently by Clement Dore against the agnostic's reasoning on this matter.

It is a widely held view in the study of religion that the description of a religion must be acceptable to a believer. Belief in a thing, personal commitment to it, confers a kind of understanding of it which cannot be had by other means. Only the religious person knows truly what religion is. Similarly, only the Hindu knows what Hinduism is, only the Buddhist knows the true reality of Buddhism, only the Muslim has genuine insight into the nature of Islam, and only the Christian understands Christianity. Personal commitment or agreement gives a special access to the truth.

Recently, Anthony Kenny wrote the challenging words: ‘I know of no successful treatment of the philosophical problems involved in conceiving a non-embodied mind active throughout the universe: it is indeed rare to find among theistic philosophers even an attempt to solve the problems’.

It is commonplace to observe that the history of thought reveals certain recurring patterns whose mode of expression changes according to context. It is equally apparent that to chart the salient characteristics of an influential way of thinking – to give concrete, clearly defined shape to the usually tangled fundamental impulses informing a cast of mind – is a complex, difficult task which calls for attention from (at least) the historian, the psychologist, the philosopher and, in the case of religious figures and movements, the theologian alike. With regard to the manner of thinking embodied in the theological doctrines of Martin Luther such a task is fraught with more than the usual number of pitfalls. In the first place, following recent Luther scholarship, we must be wary of assuming that the great Reformer held fast to a single set of theological opinions throughout his long career. We shall not, therefore, attempt to reach conclusions applicable to Luther's thought as a whole, but rather shall focus exclusively on a number of key early expositions of the Theologia Crucis. Here, between about 1514 and 1520, we find, according to our argument, enough thematic unity to warrant the search for underlying principles. A second, less easily disposed of difficulty is the lack of a working consensus as to how and with what aims in mind one should even begin an historical analysis of Luther's texts. For example, to the believer who regards Luther's basic tenets as in a straightforward sense divinely inspired, the attempt to extract from his writings the ingredients of a certain thoroughly human way of thinking will seem doomed to inadequacy from the start. Likewise, for different reasons, many of today's.

Some historians of modern Indian religious thought claim that, in respect of a pure monotheism free from pagan or polytheistic myth and a morality free from taboos and superstition, Rammohun was indebted to the Christian missionaries of his time and more particularly to the Baptists of Serampore. Thus, E. Daniel Potts, in his British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793–1837, observes:

The Brahmo Samaj or Sabha (or Theistic Society) founded by him [Rammohun] in 1828 after he disassociated himself from Adam's Unitarian Association used a congregational form of worship utterly unknown to the ancient form of Hinduism he believed he was restoring; any many of its teachings, particularly ethical, were drawn from those of the Precepts of Jesus. Related organizations to reform Hinduism sprang up in the 1830–s and after, and in the process propagated, though their leaders would not always admit this, the idea of Christian morality – both enterprises begun by Roy's direct response to missionary and particularly Baptist endeavours.’