Cambridge Scholars Publishing Absolute Idealism as a Necessary Condition for Sacramental or Other Theology

This book bridges the gap between the sacramental praxis of Christian religion, seemingly dependent upon naïve acceptance of phenomena in their immediacy, and the mediation of spiritual reality via philosophy of mind, and self-consciousness generally. Thus, it is a philosophy of incarnation as, inter alia, discrete essence of the Hegelian dialectic as the absorbing and thereby cancelling of finitude in the Absolute as its own Idea and, consequently, the total converse of pantheism. The Aristotelico-Hegelian concept of substance as mediated by visible “accidents”, the phenomena, is essential here. Thus Nature, but not the substance, which is Nature’s idea, is a self-conflicting phenomenon only, generating natural misconceptions in us, its offspring. Hence self-consciousness, the “I”, is to be perfected in its self-confident development towards the Absolute Idea, with which each finite idea is identical in absorption and difference, while religion becomes absolutised in, or as, sophia, chief intellectual virtue according to Aquinas. Here, a new theology, product of faith, resumes the old. It is time to put it to work. About the Author After obtaining a BA from Leeds University, UK, in 1960 and studying further in philosophy with the English Dominicans (Blackfriars, 1962-5), Stephen Theron took an MA in Philosophy at Pittsburgh University, USA, 1968, before teaching for the Open University, London, 1971-2 and beginning doctoral research in Philosophy, first at Stockholm University and from 1976 back in Leeds with the late Peter Geach, obtaining his PhD in 1979. He has served as a Lecturer in Philosophy at Khartoum University, Sudan, in 1979-81, and at Witwatersrand, South Africa, in 1982-84, before conducting philosophical research at Münster University, Germany, with Fernando Inciarte and Joseph Pieper (1984-86). From 1989 to 1993, he headed the Philosophy Department at the National University of Lesotho, while in 1994 he enjoyed a further six month research grant (Heinrich Hertz Foundation) at Münster, resulting in his book on Africa and philosophy. He has published around 100 articles and reviews and some 20 philosophical books, twelve on Hegel chiefly in the last 10 years.