Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute

W. Royce Clark argues that religions' absolutized metaphysics, theocratic foundations, and ancient premises make them incompatible with a religiously pluralistic culture and our modern scientific world. The Western Enlightenment challenged religions' singularity, exclusivity, heteronomy, and anti-scientific assumptions, leading to doubt about their primary claims. Innovative Christian theologians such as Schleiermacher, Hegel, Tillich, and Scharlemann attempted to corroborate the basic Christological claim, but their primary interests were more in Christology than ethics. Clark questions whether these figures have provided a base for a universal ethic or if principles "freestanding" from any religion are the only answer.

Format: Hardback
Length: 476 pages
Publication date: 03 February 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

W. Royce Clark observes that humanity appears to be jeopardizing our own future in a chaos of mutual antagonism and hypocrisy. Religions have traditionally provided ethical guidance, but because their absolutized metaphysics are incompatible with each other, we cannot rely on any one of them in a religiously pluralistic culture. The ethics of various religions are also built on theocratic or authoritarian foundations which are incompatible with any democratic society. Finally, many of their premises are very ancient, so not relevant or appropriate in our modern scientific world.

The Western Enlightenment brought challenges against religions singularity, exclusivity, heteronomy, and anti-scientific assumptions, all of which disrupted their ethics and the Absolute metaphysical grounds upon which those ethics rested, raising the question of whether a "freestanding" ethic was possible. Inasmuch as the primary claim of most religions was regarded as beyond challenge, but was a conflation of history and myth, modern historical method created more doubt than certainty about such allegedly certain doctrines as "Jesus is the Son of God." By the end of the 20th century, the impossibility of validating such primary Christological claims from a historical approach became evident, despite the articulate attempts at credibility in the brilliant works of John Dominic Crossan and Wolfhart Pannenberg, which remained unconvincing in important ways.

Between 1832 and 2014, innovative Christian theologians such as Schleiermacher, Hegel, Tillich, and Scharlemann took a detour from the futility of historical verification. This study examines their remarkable attempts at a form of "corroboration" of the basic Christological claim, even if their primary interests were more in Christology than ethics.

Weight: 821g
Dimension: 237 x 160 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781978708648