Pragmatic Theology argues for a vision of religious life that is derived from the tradition of American pragmatism (James, Dewey, Royce); empirical theology (Chicago School, D.C. Macintosh, H. Richard Niebuhr); and American philosophy of religion (Stone, Frankenberry, Corrington). The author argues that there is a divine reality in human experience that when encountered gives meaning and value to a person's need for cultural fulfillment and to his or her religious need for self-transcendence. The book commends the openness of nature, the world, and human experience to creative transformation and growth. It supports the increase of human capacities to create morally livable and fulfilling communities, the enhancement of the free play of interpretation, and a social order where democratic utopian expectations are envisioned and actualized.

Argues that while contemporary American philosophies and philosophers of religion are proclaiming the end of theology, a neopragmatism has arrived to fill the void in meaning and moral fulfillment to which theology once supplied answers.

Michael R. Slater argues for the contemporary relevance of pragmatist views in the philosophy of religion.

Shows how an understanding of the intentionality underlining the pragmatism of Peirce and James can herald new interpretations of the interplay between philosophy and religion.

A collection of the writings by one of the most influential African American theologians.

The Pragmatic Century critically assesses the significance of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein's intellectual contributions. Written by scholars who share with Bernstein a combined interest in the American pragmatic tradition and contemporary religious thought, the essays explore such diverse topics as Bernstein's place as an interpreter of both American and continental thought, the possibility of system building and analysis in an antimetaphysical age, the potential for theological and ethical reinterpretation in contemporary society, and much more. Included are not only responses by Bernstein to each essay, but also two new essays by Bernstein himself that orient readers to the central role pragmatism has played throughout the last century and also provide an encomium to the continuing value of democratic ideals at a time when those ideals are threatened on many different fronts.

This book develops the thesis that Evangelical theology not only cannot afford to avoid engaging with the philosophy of neo-pragmatism, but it can also benefit from the proposals of some of its leading exponents, especially Donald Davidson. Three different themes run throughout the book: meaning epistemic justification, and ontology. How can theologians be confident of the meanings ascribed to religious beliefs in the wake of the dissolution of the very concept of meaning and of the analytic-synthetic distinction? Is there any rational fraction between our beliefs, religious or mundane, and some extra-linguistic reality? Is God something more than simply a symbolic construct associated with a certain manner of speaking? The surprising thought of Donald Davidson offers resources for Evangelical theology seeking hopeful answers to these troubling questions. Davidson's rejection of the so-called 'third dogma' of empiricism, namely the dualism of scheme of content, should be welcomed by those defending theological 'rationality' and refuting relativism and incommensurability. Furthermore, his truth-conditional semantics can serve as a check against revisionist accounts of religious beliefs that flaunt the first-person point of view of the religious believer herself. These Davidsonian contributions to an Evangelical theology are, however, balanced by inherent inadequacies which require a theological supplement, which is also a creative proposal calling for: the continued significance of experience in theology beyond the myth of the Given; an understanding of the role of Scripture as both epistemic as well as dispositional; and finally an understanding of the nature of truth as located in the mind of God. Theology After Neo-Pragmatism is both an introduction to an influential philosophical trend, and a critical and constructive theological proposal which is at once scriptural and historicist, pragmatic and realist.