WPS Schedule
March 1, 2012
Trevecca Nazarene University
Nashville, Tennessee

 

7:00 A.M.-8:00 A.M. Registration On-Site
8:00 A.M. Welcome                                                        
8:30 A.M.- 10:00 A.M. Morning Plenary Session

“Faith as Passion”

Dr. Merold Westphal,  

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus

(Fordham University)

10:00 A.M.-10:30 Morning Coffee Break

10:30 A.M.-12:00 P.M. SESSION I:  Historical Reflections on Religious Experience

1A  Ancient Reflections (Thomas Jay Oord, moderator)

·         Joel Potter “‘The Soul Is a Sort of Seer’: Philosophical Inquiry and Affectivity in Plato’s Phaedrus”

·         Michael McFall “Can We Have a Friend in Jesus?  An Aristotelian Analysis”

·         William Franke “The Apophatic Experiential Grounds of Philosophy of Religion”

1B  Medieval and early Modern Reflections (John McAteer, moderator)

·         Ozgur Koca “Experiential Reasoning of Revelation:  Al-Ghazali’s Qur’anic Contextualization of  Mystical Experience in al-Munqidh min al-dalal (Rescuer From Error)

·         John Dryden, Jr. “The Feeling of Faith:  Aquinas’ ‘Treatise on the Passions’ and Religious Emotions”

·         Janelle Klapauszak “The Night of Fire:  Religious Experience and Epistemic Certainty in the Life and Philosophy of Pascal”

1C Kierkegaardian Reflections (Kent Dunnington, moderator)

·         Noel S. Adams “Conjoining Pietism and Pyrrhonism: Some Kierkegaardian (and Wesleyan?) Reflections on the Significance of Religious Experience and the Religious Life

·         David Diener “Søren Kierkegaard on the Rational Defense of Divine Revelation”

1D Postmodern and Post-Heidgerrian Reflections (Joseph Bankard, moderator)

·         Christina Smerick “Relationship as Experience: The Post-Modern Encounter with God”

·         Peter Capretto  “The Wonder and Spirit of ‘Phenomenology and Theology’:  Rubenstein and Derrida on Heidegger’s Formal Distinction of Philosophy from Theology”

·         Ian Rottenberg “Talking Bibles: Scripture and the Experience of Divine Address”

12:00 P.M.-1:30 P.M. Lunch/Business Meeting

1:30 P.M. – 3:00 P.M. SESSION II:  Microscopic Reflections on Religious Experience and Enthusiasm

2A  Wesleyan Praxis and Religious Enthusiasm (Brint Montgomery, moderator)

·         Tim Crutcher’s Presidential Address

·         Naomi Annandale “Humility and Practice: A Pastoral Response to the Wicked Problem of Religious Enthusiasm”

·         Hank Spaulding “Unenthusiastic Sanctified Experience: The Implications of Rudolph Otto for the Religious Experience of Sanctification and Action”

2B  Feminism, Postcolonialism and Religious Experience (Christina Smerick, moderator)

·         Heather K. Ross “Xanthippe’s Lament: Mourning and Plato’s View of Philosophy”

·         John Bechtold “Subaltern Experience: Walter Mignolo and the Hegemony of ‘Reason’”

·         Deidre N. Green “Risk and Trembling: Kierkegaard’s Abraham as Feminist Religious Ethicist”

2C  The Passions and Religious Experience (John McAteer, moderator)

·         Eric Severson “Many-Headed Monster: Religious Enthusiasm in John Wesley and Jan Patočka”

·         Jeremy Killian “‘I Should be Glad of Another Death”: Navigating the Paradox of Negative Emotion in Religious Narrative and Art”

·         Kent Dunnington “Romance as Religious Experience: On the Marriage of Eros and Agape”

2D  Justification and the Plurality of Religious Experience (Steve Huizenga, moderator)

·         Wm. Andrew Schwartz “Religious Experience, Truth, and Difference: S. Mark Heim’s Experiential Theory of Epistemic Justification”

·         Wm. Curtis Holtzen “‘Was it Good for You?’: Religious Experience and the Virtuosity Test

·         Timothy Linehan “Religious Experience, Diverse Traditions, and the Epistemology of Disagreement”

3:00 P.M.-3:30 P.M. Afternoon Coffee

3:30 P.M.-5:00 P.M. Session III:  Macroscopic Reflections on Religious Experience and Enthusiasm

3A  Phenomenology (Christina Smerick, moderator)

·         John Thomas Brittingham “The Intricacies of the Flesh: An Attempted Phenomenology of Incarnate Experience”

·         Benjamin Luján “Phenomenology and Psychology of Religious Experience: Bernard Lonergan’s Contribution”

·         Mark Hayse “Pluriform Religious Experience and Digital Ludic Mediation”

3B  Epistemology (Wm. Andrew Schwartz,  moderator)

·         Eric Manchester “On the Epistemic and Personalistic Implications of Rejecting or Accepting the Possibility of Revelation”

·         Thomas Jay Oord “Experiencing God: Prevenient Grace and Creaturely Minds Capable of Nonsensory Perception of God”

·         Daryl L. Hale “Is Locke’s Proposal Modest? Must Religion be Guided by Reason rather than Enthusiasmos?”

3C  Philosophy of Language [or lack thereof] (Tim Crutcher, moderator)

·         Scott F. Aikin and Michael P. Hodges “Miracle Avowal as Expressive”

·         Daryl Ellis “Julia Kristeva and the Word(s) of ‘God’”

3D  Aesthetics, Ethics and Shaftesbury (Steve Huizenga, moderator)

·         Brian Ribeiro “The Theistic Argument from Beauty: A Philonian Critique”

·         John McAteer “Silencing Theodicy with Enthusiasm: A Shaftesburian Reading of Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’”

·         Jason Broyles “Demonic Experience Moderated: Interpreting Evil and Responding Ethically”

6:00 P.M.-7:00 P.M.  Banquet Dinner

7:00 P.M.-9:00 P.M.  Evening Plenary Session

“Reason as Dispassion”

Dr. Merold Westphal,  

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus

(Fordham University)