Marius Timmann Mjaaland (born 1971 [1] ) is a Norwegian philosopher. He is known for his work on environmental philosophy, ethics, phenomenology, philosophy of religion, and systematic theology. He is professor at the University of Oslo. [2]
Mjaaland grew up in Oslo, Norway and studied philosophy, religious studies, and theology in University of Oslo, University of Göttingen, and University of Copenhagen. He received an MA in philosophy in 1999 and a PhD from the University of Oslo in 2005 for a dissertation on the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard and Jacques Derrida. [3] Since then, he has been a visiting scholar at University of Chicago, Heidelberg University, University of Tübingen, University of Rostock, and University of Oxford. Mjaaland was Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow at the University of Hamburg 2012–13. [4] Since 2014, he has been professor at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo; since 2018 as chair for Philosophy of Religion.
In 2006, Mjaaland was elected president of The European Society for Philosophy of Religion (2006–08). A founding member of the Nordic Society for Philosophy of Religion (NSPR) he has been the society's president since 2006. [5] He is also president of the Norwegian Søren Kierkegaard Society since 2005 and gives lectures at conferences and universities worldwide. [6] He is director of the research project Ecodisturb (2020-) at the University of Oslo, doing research on interdisciplinary ecology in the Anthropocene. [7] [8]
Within Ethics, he has done research on organ donation and the life sciences. His article Does Controlled Donation after Circulatory Death Violate the Dead Donor Rule] (w. E.J. Busch) was selected target article in American Journal of Bioethics (Feb 2023) and raised international debate. [9] [10]
Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of theology that seeks to provide arguments for theological topics based on reason and the discoveries of science, the project of arguing for the existence of God on the basis of observed natural facts, and through natural phenomena viewed as divine, or complexities of nature seen as evidence of a divine plan or Will of God, which includes nature itself.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, and thought that Swedenborg, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, and Hans Christian Andersen were all "understood" far too quickly by "scholars."
Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology, is a form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God. It forms a pair together with cataphatic theology, which approaches God or the Divine by affirmations or positive statements about what God is.
Henrik Steffens, was a Norwegian philosopher, scientist, and poet.
John David Caputo is an American philosopher who is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University. Caputo is a major figure associated with postmodern Christianity and continental philosophy of religion, as well as the founder of the theological movement known as weak theology. Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, and theology.
Peter Christian Vardy is a British theologian. The author or co-author of 18 books about religion and ethics, Vardy was vice-principal of Heythrop College, a Jesuit college in London, from 1999 to 2011. He is known for the religious-studies conferences he runs in the UK for schools.
Christian existentialism is a theo-philosophical movement which takes an existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) who is widely regarded as the father of existentialism.
Postmodern theology, also known as the continental philosophy of religion, is a philosophical and theological movement that interprets Christian theology in light of post-Heideggerian continental philosophy, including phenomenology, post-structuralism, and deconstruction.
MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, formerly the Free Faculty of Theology and MF Norwegian School of Theology, is an accredited Norwegian specialized university focused on theology, religion, education and social studies, located in Oslo, Norway. It is one of three private specialized universities in Norway, alongside VID and BI.
Diogenes Allen was an American philosopher and theologian who served as the Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, which he served from 1958. He died in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Mark C. Taylor is a postmodern religious and cultural critic. He has published more than twenty books on theology, metaphysics, art and architecture, media, technology, economics, and postmodernity. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1968, he received his doctorate in the study of religion from Harvard University and began teaching at Williams College in 1973. In 2007, Taylor moved from Williams College to Columbia University, where he chaired the Department of Religion until 2015.
George Linsley Pattison is a retired English theologian and Anglican priest. His last post prior to retirement was as Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. He was previously Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. From 2017–2019 he was a Senior Co-Fund Fellow at the Max Weber Center at the University of Erfurt. He has also been an Affiliate Professor in Systematic Theology at the University of Copenhagen (2011–) and an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Theology at the University of St Andrews (2021–).
Atheistic existentialism is a kind of existentialism which strongly diverged from the Christian existential works of Søren Kierkegaard and developed within the context of an atheistic world view. The philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche provided existentialism's theoretical foundation in the 19th century, although their differing views on religion proved essential to the development of alternate types of existentialism. Atheistic existentialism was formally recognized after the 1943 publication of Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre and Sartre later explicitly alluded to it in Existentialism is a Humanism in 1946.
"Is God Dead?" was an April 8, 1966, cover story for the news magazine Time. A previous article, from October 1965, had investigated a trend among 1960s theologians to write God out of the field of theology. The 1966 article looked in greater depth at the problems facing modern theologians, in making God relevant to an increasingly secular society. Modern science seemed to have had eliminated the need for religion to explain the natural world, and God took up less and less space in people's daily lives. The ideas of various scholars were brought in, including the application of contemporary philosophy to the field of theology, and a more personal, individual approach to religion.
Ingolf Ulrich Dalferth is a philosopher of religion and theologian. His work is regarded as being on the methodological borderlines between analytic philosophy, hermeneutics and phenomenology, and he is a recognized expert in issues of contemporary philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of orientation.
The following is a bibliography of John D. Caputo's works. Caputo is an American philosopher closely associated with postmodern Christianity.
Hallvard Gunnarssøn was a Norwegian educator and author.
John Llewelyn was a Welsh-born British philosopher whose extensive body of work, published over a period of more than forty years, spans the divide between Analytical and Continental schools of contemporary thought. He has conjoined the rigorous approach to matters of meaning and logic typical of the former and the depth and range of reference typical of the latter in a constructive and critical engagement with the work of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas.
Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher, writer and newspaper columnist. A specialist in continental philosophy, theology and the philosophy of religion, he is the author of several books, including The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility (2001), Roger Scruton: The Philosopher of Dover Beach (2009), and Why Be a Catholic? (2011).