It would then read as follows: «The difficulties of all schools of modern philosophy lie in the fact that having accepted the [subjectivist bias], they continue to use
philosophical categories derived from another point of view» (PR 253).
So he presented his vision in a series of evocative pictures whose meaning was inexhaustible precisely because they could not be translated
into philosophical categories.
This comes with the strong conviction that the process of undoing the bondage of biblical witness to
unhelpful philosophical categories will necessarily include this reversal as a key component of challenge and reconstruction.
The early Christians furthermore found that
philosophical categories helped them understand Christian revelation even more deeply than had been possible with biblical images.
Although the thesis that God's actuality is relative to the world is commendable for
providing philosophical categories with which to picture both God's compassion for suffering individuals and God's immanence within the world, there is considerable reason to question the consistency of a being that simultaneously feels fragmentation and infinity.
This requires, on the one hand, the use of
philosophical categories such as those I developed in A Christian Natural Theology and, on the other hand, reflection on the relation of the way God was present in Jesus to the way he is present elsewhere.
Staffner includes Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya (1861 - 1907), a close friend of Swami Vivekananda, who tried to interpret Christianity in
Indian philosophical categories, Narayan Vaman Tilak (1861 - 1919), who is loved throughout Maharashtra as «the poet of children and flowers», and Pandita Ramabai (1858 - 1922), who saw in Jesus Christ the hope and salvation of Indian womanhood.
To proceed in purely
philosophical categories about ethics and politics would be Utopian; one must deal with real, existing creatures locked in the actual historical drama of sin and grace.
For centuries Jewish thought has attempted to adapt itself to
foreign philosophical categories, and Wyschogrod's bold return to biblical sources provides a platform upon which to critique even such a revered figure as Maimonides.
The inspiration for historical Jesus scholarship is that the Gospels overdid it, and that the church more or less absorbed the Galilean prophet into
Greek philosophical categories.
Having stated his thesis that one must begin with Whitehead's diagnosis, Rorty quotes him as follows: «The difficulties of all schools of modern philosophy lie in the fact that having accepted the subjectivist principle, they continue to use
philosophical categories derived from another point of view» (PR 253; WEP 134; italics mine).
Most of our historic creeds are expressed in
the philosophical categories of Greek essentialism, which are static.
In this he is applying
the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him.»
Unfortunately,
the philosophical categories, existential, personalistic, linguistic and other empirical ones, are inadequate for the task of showing the relevance of religion and theology to evolution.
In this passage Whitehead clearly intends one to understand «
philosophical categories derived from another point of view» as referring to such categories as substance, property, universal, particular, etc. (Rorty also so understands Whitehead's intent.)
A discussion of the proper use of
the philosophical category of ontology would take us too far afield here, but for now let us consider humans at the three basic levels of being.
But this criticism is less impressive if we look at the theological use of
these philosophical categories in the interpretation of the experiences which the paradigm community considers most significant.
In this way some scholars would wish to define the Logos of John in terms of Greek
philosophical categories.
The biblical reaction against theology tends today in fact to devaluate as distortions the formulations and systematizations of the revelation in terms of Greek
philosophical categories.
Medieval Latin / Western theology, formulated in the static
philosophical categories of Plato and Aristotle (Greek Essentialism), rather than the dynamic philosophical categories of Heraclitus, often failed to adequately express the complexity of God's relationship with his people and the transformational affects of an immanent, usually mediated, Divine Presence had on them.
Philosophical theology, as theology that makes extensive and explicit use of
philosophical categories, merges by imperceptible degrees into a philosophy that denies dependence upon any community of faith as the source of its insights.
The latter almost amounts to
a philosophical category error.