In Our Own Image Anthropomorphism, Apophaticism, and Ultimacy

In Our Own Image is a work of comparative philosophical theology. It is a study of the roles anthropomorphism and apophaticism play in the construction of conceptual models of ultimate reality. Leading scholar Wesley J. Wildman considers whether we create our ideas of God. He offers a comparative analysis of three major classes of ultimacy models, paying particular attention to the way those classes are impacted by anthropomorphism while tracing their relative strengths and weaknesses. Wildman provides a constructive theological argument on behalf of an apophatic understanding of ultimate reality, showing how this understanding subsumes, challenges, and relates ultimacy models from the three classes being compared. He describes and compares competing ultimacy models, fairly and sympathetically. The conclusion is that all models cognitively break on the shoals of ultimate reality, but that the ground-of-being class of models carries us further than the others in regard to the comparative criteria that matter most.

1 - Ultimacy
2 - Anthropomorphism and Apophaticism
3 - Agential-Being Models of Ultimate Reality
4 - Subordinate-Deity Models of Ultimate Reality
5 - Ground-of-Being Models of Ultimate Reality
6 - Conclusion

Wesley J. Wildman is Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics at Boston University. His research and publications pursue a multidisciplinary, comparative approach to topics within philosophy of religion and the academic study of religion. The programmatic statement of a theory of rationality underlying this type of integrative intellectual work is Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion (State University of New York Press, 2010). Science and Religious Anthropology (Ashgate, 2009) presents his multidisciplinary interpretation of the human condition. Religious and Spiritual Experiences (Cambridge University Press, 2011) applies these perspectives to religious experience.