State University of New York Press Effing the Ineffable: Existential Mumblings at the Limits of Language

In Effing the Ineffable, Wesley J. Wildman confronts the human obsession with ultimate reality and our desire to conceive and speak of this reality through religious language, despite the seeming impossibility of doing so. Each chapter is a meditative essay on an aspect of life that, for most people, is fraught with special spiritual significance: dreaming, suffering, creating, slipping, balancing, eclipsing, loneliness, intensity, and bliss. These moments can inspire religious questioning and commitment, and, in extreme situations, drive us in search of ways to express what matters most to us. Drawing upon American pragmatist, Anglo-American analytic, and Continental traditions of philosophical theology, Wildman shows how, through direct description, religious symbolism, and phenomenological experience, the language games of religion become a means to attempt, and, in some sense, to accomplish this task. Review ... Effing the Ineffable will be valuable for those working in the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and theological method, all of whom will benefit from engaging with and learning from Wildman's distinct brand of religious philosophy. -- Reading Religion This is a fine example of Wildman's way of doing philosophy of religion. It demonstrates the importance, if not necessity, of religious philosophers working comparatively and also the benefits of multidisciplinary inquiry. -- Stephen Dawson, Lynchburg College About the Author Wesley J. Wildman is Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics at Boston University. His many books include Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion and Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century, both also published by SUNY Press.