Encountering Jesus Christ: Rethinking Christological Faith and Commitment

"In this book I argue, in agreement with the great American philosopher of religion Josiah Royce, that Christianity exemplifies a religion in search of a metaphysics, i.e., of an integrated, rational way of talking about God, self, other people, and the world—in other words, about any reality whatever. I also argue that in the past theologians have tried to interpret Christian religious experience with seriously flawed philosophical categories which lead to theological dead ends. In my judgment, dualistic patterns of philosophical thinking have in the past caused the greatest theological havoc and have brought Christian faith into needless disrepute.

Dualistic patterns of thinking conceive two interrelated realities in such a way as to make their relationship to one another subsequently unintelligible. Dualism roots itself in another philosophical fallacy: namely, essentialism. Essentialism fallaciously transforms human cognitive modes of perception into realities which exist apart from thought."