[SydPhil] [REMINDER] 3 DAYS TO GO - APRA KEYNOTE: PROFESSOR JOHN BISHOP 'WHAT THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATION COULD AND COULD NOT BE'

[Nathan Everson]

KEYNOTE: PROFESSOR JOHN BISHOP 'WHAT THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATION COULD AND 
COULD NOT BE'
WHERE: University of Sydney,
WHEN: Saturday June 22, 9:30am-10:50am
COST: Full Conference Fee (includes symposium): Waged $260.00 / 
full-time student or unwaged $150.00
            Day Fee (does not include symposium): Waged $150.00 / 
full-time student or unwaged $90.00

Abstract:
'Theological explanation' purports to give an ultimate and global 
explanation of existence
itself. What could such an explanation possibly amount to? I shall 
consider what is
unsatisfactory about the standard answer - namely that existence is to 
be explained as
produced (and sustained) by a supernatural Person of exceedingly great 
power and
goodness - and suggest that the only way existence could be open to a 
genuinely ultimate
explanation is in terms of its being directed upon a supremely good end 
and existing just
because that end is actually realised. Theological explanation, then, 
explains existence in
terms more of its meaning or purpose than its productive source, and 
thus operates
along a different explanatory dimension from natural scientific 
explanations. I shall argue
that it does not, however, follow that theological explanation needs to 
be given some
non-realist construal.

ABOUT JOHN BISHOP:
John Bishop is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland. 
His PhD is from
Cambridge University (1978), and he is the author of Natural Agency 
(Cambridge
University Press, 1989), Believing by Faith (Oxford University Press, 
2007), and journal
articles in the areas of the philosophy of religion and the philosophy 
of action.