NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 56, Issue 3, 2002

The justification of religious belief has been traditionally characterised by strong or weak foundationalism and evidentialism. An alternative is provided in this article: the justification of religious belief characterised by the rationality as a category of life. First, the author comments on Alston’s Perceiving God, where he maintains that an immediate perception of God has a non-conceptual character of presentation. Second, this article proposes viewing rationality as a category of life. Third, an initial impulse is given to the justification of religious belief on the basis of rationality as a category of life. Epistemology needs to be fused with hermeneutics. There is an alternative to the dilemma posed by strong foundationalism and contextualism. On the one hand, the Christian faith claims that it provides a disclosure of reality. On the other, rationality is person- and context-relative. There are standards of rationality that are applicable across all practices. Because the rationality of Christian faith is not exclusively internal to its own practice, there is the possibility of the discussion between theology and the scienccs and other worldviews.

In his contribution to the present issue of this journal Wessel Stoker argues that William P. Alston’s epistemology of religious experience is inadequate, and subsequently presents an alternative way of justifying religious belief. I try to show, however, that Stoker’s four main objections against Alston’s Perceiving God are misguided, and that his own approach should therefore be conceived of as complementary to Alston’s rather than substitutionary. In accounting for religious belief we should not be over-restrictive, but allow for more than only one approach.

Recently the view has been defended that amongst the inhabitants on the island of Elephantine in Southern Egypt a ‘heavily syncretistic’ form of Yahwism is found. This article surveys the existing evidence and arrives at the following conclusions: (1) The Yahwists of Elephantine cannot yet be depicted as Jews; (2) Yhwh/Yahȏ was the main deity of the group who had been recruitcd by the Persians from the province of Yehud; (3) Three other deities have been venerated by this group in connection with Yhwh/Yahȏ: Anath-Yahȏ/Bethel; Eshem-Bethel and Herem-Bethel. They should, however, not be classified as independent deities, but as aspects of the Israelite divine.

The teamwork of the triumvirate Calvin, Farel and Viret did not last until Calvin’s death. They worked together in a wonderful way for more than twenty years. The impetuous Farel found his master in the younger Calvin. Viret was very talented in popularising the message of Calvin. In Calvin’s new strategy to promote the Reformation in a less aggressive and more diplomatic way, Calvin discovered in Beza the right man in the right place.