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La pensée chrétienne est le plus souvent mal perçue, mal considérée, caricaturée et même défigurée, parce que mal comprise. Il appartenait à René Girard de remettre les pendules à l'heure en montrant qu'elle a porté au plus haut point la religion comme mode de gestion de la violence ou « science de la violence », comme dénonciation de la violence – programmation d'autant plus salutaire dans un monde de plus en plus violent. Cette grille de lecture permit à René Girard d'éclairer d'un jour nouveau l'esprit du christianisme, du judaïsme et même du paganisme. Elle nous invite à reconsidérer la pensée chrétienne par l'appel, à titre d'exemples, à quelques séquences significatives, celles de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Joseph de Maistre et Louis de Bonald, celles de Hegel, Claude Tresmontant et Dostoïevski.

Published in 1943 amidst the distractions of World War II, Religion of Tomorrow never received the proper recognition it deserved. Now some eighty years later, poet-philosopher John Elof Boodin's manifesto for a popular Christian renaissance is more necessary than ever. With an informative historical/biographical introduction and more than one hundred textual notes, editor Michael A. Flannery presents Boodin's spiritual roadmap for a new audience to listen and follow the divine lure towards greater creativity and fulfillment--to'learn by living.'Boodin invites readers to embark upon their own Christian journeys with the poets and sages of the ages at their side. Here Boodin becomes the informed travel guide--well-equipped with the knowledge of history, the tools of science, the sensibilities of a poet, and the empathy of a fellow traveler to be encouraged as was Joshua to'be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.'

In our world, there's a lack of clear middle ground. It's a divided place, with political affiliations drawing lines between the left and the right. Being in the middle is challenging; our allegiances are pulled in different directions, making it isolating and overwhelming to navigate life's complexities. But we live from the middle--between birth and death, between events, important dates, and between stability and change. In this uncertain space, we face existential questions about identity, the meaning of life, our purpose, and our place in the world. This is the domain of theology. Traditionally, theology attempts to answer these questions from the top down, declaring dogmas as absolute truths to remove the uncertainties. However, unexamined answers can become oppressive, stifling vitality, and can even become tyrannical--answers of the left or the right. This book suggests a different approach: doing theology from the inside out and from the bottom up, starting with sacred questions instead of rehearsed answers. We don't expect that the answers we come to will be final. However, we expect to find God in the middle. Theology is the practice of the presence of God, where we integrate our love and knowledge of God to live wisely in a divided world.

Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854--1921) found himself between two eras. The end of the'long nineteenth century'and the experience of World War I marked how much the world around him had changed. This book examines Bavinck's theological methodology with a particular focus on its influence by the German historicist movement. Author Cameron D. Clausing uses Bavinck's doctrine of the Trinity to test the argument that while not embracing all of the relativizing implications of the movement, the role of history as a force that both shapes the present and allows for development into the future has a demonstrable influence on Bavinck's theological methodology. To make this argument Clausing considers Bavinck's larger nineteenth-century context. He traces the development of both history and theology being understood as sciences in the university and how this required a reimagining of both disciplines. It could be said that theology was thoroughly historicized in the nineteenth century. The book considers the three principia of Bavinck's theological methodology: Revelation; Confession; and Christian Consciousness. When considering revelation, Clausing focuses on Bavinck's argument that revelation takes its shape from the Triune God. He demonstrates how Bavinck understood the incarnation and Pentecost to be the pinnacles of divine self-revelation. When looking at confession, the author argues that Bavinck retrieved theological insights from early modern Reformed orthodoxy, particularly in the way Bavinck engaged with the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae. Finally, the book examines how Bavinck did not think that a particular time in the past was a'golden age'of theology, but that theology had to continue to develop. Therefore, as Clausing investigates Bavinck's understanding of the Christian consciousness, he demonstrates how Bavinck saw the need for theology to continue to develop and change. He demonstrates this in all parts by an examination of Trinitarian theology showing that Bavinck engaged with and developed his Trinitarian theology in light of nineteenth-century philosophical categories, particularly the language of'absolute divine personality'.

In Strange, Surprising, Sure, Robert Cummings Neville presents a theory of being, change, and value, and engages other philosophers who deal with these concepts. The book's central thesis is that the entire created world includes everything determinate, and thus the creator does not exist within creation. Strangely, this reverses nearly everything in the Western tradition. Surprisingly, this thesis is approached from a great many angles, all of which are within the Western, South Asian, or East Asian traditions. Surely put, this thesis will win out in the long run. Although Neville writes for an English-reading audience, he engages with thinkers from all these traditions.'

This book explores and expounds upon questions of paradox and contradiction in theology with an emphasis on recent contributions from analytic philosophical theology. It addresses questions such as: What is the place of paradox in theology? Where might different systems of logic (e.g., paraconsistent ones) find a place in theological discourse (e.g., Christology)? What are proper responses to the presence of contradiction(s) in one's theological theories? Are appeals to analogical language enough to make sense of paradox? Bringing together an impressive line-up of theologians and philosophers, the volume offers a range of fresh perspectives on a central topic. It is valuable reading for scholars of theology and philosophy of religion.

The relationship between faith and reason is multifaceted. Faith transcends reason in that it is more than reason alone can contain or fully guarantee, yet it is neither unreasonable nor something to which reason is irrelevant--and reason says some pretty fine things about it! This volume updates nine previously published articles on faith and reason by a Christian philosopher who has been studying these matters for two decades, alongside one new essay and a philosophical dialogue. These articles explain and integrate key ideas on faith and reason, including Alvin Plantinga's account of how Christian belief can be knowledge even without evidence; defenses of faith from Augustine and William James; accounts of empirical evidence for faith from different world religions; the distinction between faith and sight in the New Testament; the structure of the evidence for the authority of the Bible; the idea that faith transcends reason because some articles of faith are beyond human comprehension, even if we have evidence that they are true; and the nature of faith as a total commitment beyond what the evidence alone can guarantee.

Christianity is not the only true faith. The Bible is not inerrant. Jesus is not God walking on the earth. Hell is not eternal. What's left? Everything important. The ultimate reality is cosmic mind, which generates the physical universe. Its goal is to liberate all beings from evil and suffering and to unite all beings to itself. God sets the goal, Jesus shows and attains the goal, and the Spirit guides the way to the goal. This is a spiritual path to God, to which the Bible testifies, from a specific cultural background, the Abrahamic way.

This book addresses the place of religious knowledge in religion, particularly within Christianity. The book begins by examining the difference between the general concepts of knowledge and belief, the relation between faith and knowledge, and reasons why belief as faith, and not knowledge, is central to the Abrahamic religions.The book explores the ambivalence about religious knowledge within Christianity. Some religious thinkers explicitly accepted and sought religious knowledge, as did St. Thomas Aquinas, while others, notably Søren Kierkegaard, cast knowledge and seeking it as incompatible with faith. The book also examines two antithetical religious intuitions about knowledge, both at home in the Christian tradition. For one, faith requires a struggle with doubt. For the other, faith requires a certainty that excludes doubt. For the first, religious knowledge would destroy faith. For the second, religious knowledge is compatible with faith and completes it.Though the book focuses on the Christian tradition, it also considers other traditions, including a chapter on the place of religious knowledge in nontheistic religious traditions. The final chapter examines how coming to Wisdom as personified in the Jewish and Christian traditions may be distinct from attaining religious knowledge.

Roger Ascham is often classified as'a great mid-Tudor humanist'and he is perhaps best known for his role as tutor to Elizabeth I. His most famous works, The Scholemaster and Toxophilus, have been extensively quarried and anthologised in studies on prose style and English humanism. By contrast, his Neo-Latin works that engaged with theology and key Reformation concerns have languished in the shadows of modern scholarship. Ascham's Themata Theologica ('Theological Topics') is one of these, and its content has the potential to open up many an investigative avenue into the intellectual and religious culture of the sixteenth century. This is the first volume to offer a corresponding English translation. The Themata can be dated to the early to mid- 1540s, and was composed by Ascham while still at Cambridge University and serving as a senior fellow at St John's College. The work mainly comprises a compendium of relatively short commentaries on Scriptural verses (both Old and New Testament), many of which developed into expositions on difficult philosophical concepts, such as the notion of felix culpa (literally,'happy fault') and some of the most intractable theological questions of the day, including the nature of sin, adiaphora ('matters of indifference'), justification and free will. This little-known text offers a rare opportunity to trace the course of Ascham's own religious maturation, but also offers fresh insights into the confessional climate at Cambridge University during one of the most turbulent periods of the Reformation in England.

A medievalist and defender of the notion of Christian philosophy, Etienne Gilson had a lifelong interest in the philosophy of art. He questioned whether what is reproduced as art in contemporary society is art at all. This is not a simple issue. A cheap version of a novel is still a novel. A picture of a statue is not a statue, nor indeed is a photograph of a painting a painting. Recorded music has particular complications. The organizer of an industrial assembly line is neither an artist nor an artisan. Yet, thanks to such mass production, a much broader population has knowledge of artworks than would otherwise be possible. Religions must minister to mass societies and provide appropriate liturgies. But in the process, there is a danger of misrepresenting complex religious teachings. At the end of his own life, Henri Gouhier, Gilson's first doctoral student, prepared three essays on Gilson. The first, on Bergson, gives a sense of Gilson's formation in early twentieth-century French philosophy. The second reconstructs the development of the notion of Christian philosophy and the heated controversy it provoked. Finally, Gouhier presents Gilson's general philosophy of art and gives a helpful framework to Gilson's comments on art in a mass society.

This book offers a brief but comprehensive introduction to Christian worldview from a Pentecostal perspective, helping students understand why Christianity is beautiful, true, and relevant to all aspects of life.

A Christian theological book. It uses the experience Sayers had of literary creativity to illuminate Christian doctrine about the nature of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious author interested in human psychology. He is regarded as a leading pioneer of existentialism and one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th Century. Andrii Ponomarenko © Ukraine — Kyiv 2023

Circles and the Cross is an invitation to explore two mysteries. One is the miracle of the cosmos: why is there something and not nothing? The other is the miracle of consciousness: why should this collection of stardust be an I and not just an it? Our basic response to those mysteries is wonder, and from wonder have grown the three great trees of human culture: religion, art, and science. This exploration is undertaken in the light of a third mystery: the cross of Christ is the clearest picture we have of the triune Creator of both cosmos and consciousness. That self-emptying of the Creator out of love for the creation helps us understand the pleasures, paradoxes, and pains of science; it helps us understand how'evolution'can be another name for creation; it casts light on the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In particular, it illuminates the environmental movement: an ethic in search of a religion. Loren Wilkinson, drawing on fifty years of teaching and writing about our relationship to creation, invites you to join this journey into understanding how the cross of Christ sheds light on the mysteries that surround us--and gives us hope in a difficult age.

There are many books which set out the case for Islam or for Christianity and point out what they regard as defects in the other religion. This book does that, but it seeks to do so in the form of a workbook which groups of Christians or Muslims might use, and it is conducted in a spirit where truth is paramount but so too is kindness and civility. The two authors have become friends and hope that this can be detected in the exchanges. As the major doctrines of each religion are dealt with, we are conscious that these doctrines are important and need to be examined rigorously and charitably. We hope we have succeeded to some degree at least.

'A Christian theological engagement with evolutionary theory, quantum theory, and relational holism through the works of Teilhard de Chardin and Carl Jung'--

Based on the categories of mainstream philosophy of religion, we must ask the question if said categories are adequate to describe the conceptual frameworks of traditions not philosophically dependent on Western theistic understandings, such as religious traditions and philosophies of life emerging from the continent of Africa and appearing in the United States, the Caribbean, North, Central, and South America, and Europe. This book host students from Pomona College and Pitzer College (Claremont Colleges, Claremont, California) who have analyzed the field of philosophy of religion as it stands to determine which of its insights can be applied to Afro-diasporic and Afrofuturist notions of'religion'and which ones cannot. Their reflections in these chapters will ask: how do we define Afro-diasporic religion, what would a robust philosophy of religion of Afro-diasporic and Afrofuturist religions draw from, what categories would/should it contain, how would we construct such a non-Western methodology of philosophy of religion, and what sources would we use to construct such a philosophy of religion? In an attempt to aesthetically experience what Afro-diasporic and Afrofuturist philosophies of religion are/could be, the text will rely heavily on fiction novels, poetry, music, movies, and texts written by Afro-diasporic people from various social locations and perspectives on some African notions of religion, among other centers of reflection.

Die kleine Einführung in das Matthäusevangelium schickt die Leserinnen und Leser in die Schule des Evangelisten, um sich in ihr reichlich belehren zu lassen. Denn wie Jesus, der Christus, im Evangelium in ausgedehnten Reden seine Hörerinnen und Hörer belehrt, so sieht sich nun der Evangelist in dieser Rolle, sollen doch die Jünger Lehrer der Völker werden (Mt 28,19-20). Die Einführung greift die zentralen Themen des Evangeliums auf: Jesus, der Immanuel, die Seligpreisungen der Armen, die Forderungen der Bergpredigt, Jesu Kritik an falscher Frömmigkeit, Vergebung und Versöhnung, die Gestalt des Petrus, menschliche und göttliche Gerechtigkeit, die Gleichnisse, Geschichte und Endgericht.

In The Eastern Christian Tradition in Modern Russian Thought and Beyond, Teresa Obolevitch reflects on the ontology and anthropology of neo-patristic synthesis and its connection to Western philosophy, with a focus on the work of Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky. The book also examines the concept of apophaticism in Russian philosophy: in neo-patristic synthesis and the thought of Semyon Frank and Lev Karsavin, as well as in epistemological and cosmological comparison with process theology. Additionally, Obolevitch's work undertakes a comparative analysis of the reception of Russian sophiology in the West, especially in the work of Thomas Merton, and also considers similarities between neo-patristic synthesis and Zen Buddhism in the thought of Merton and Sergey Horujy.

A philosophical analysis of the rationality of the Christian faith and the rationality of science aims at establishing the kind of relationship that should exist between religion and science owing to the human rational capacity as the uniting factor. If the human being is one and that same human being is rational and capable of science and religion, there should be a possibility of a reconciliation of these two domains within his rational capacity. The study takes into consideration the various models of the relationship between science and religion and arrives at the fact that conflicts that seem to arise are always due to lack of intellectual honesty and the failure to accept the limits of one's competence. This is a product of a scientific doctoral research.

In this book, Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) provides a historical sketch on the nature of Christianity and the unifying power of Christ. He proceeds from unity to diversity—on where the Christian church agrees to the areas where it differs. It is apologetic and evangelistic, ecumenical and Reformed, and historical and theological in scope. In this succinct book, Bavinck traces the history of Christian doctrine and life, distinguishing the East from the West, and then focusing on the West through the Reformation to the twentieth century. Both at the beginning and the end of the book, he places before the reader what he deemed the most important religious and theological question of the day: Who is Jesus?“It is no small task which Dr. Bavinck has undertaken, to tell in sixty-two small pages all that Christianity is, and that, in a series in which it is brought into comparison with other ‘great religions'. He has fulfilled this task, however, in a most admirable manner. His method is, first, to point out what all Christians are agreed upon; and then to give an historical account of Christianity in its origins and it its progressive manifestations in the great forms of the Orthodox Eastern, the Romish, the Lutheran, Reformed Churches, with further descriptions of the forms it has taken since, in Anabaptism and Socinianism, and the New Protestantism rooted in the Enlightenment. His plan thus resolves itself into an informal sketch of the historical development of Christianity. This sketch is written with remarkable grasp of details and an equally remarkable power of synthesis. We cannot imagine how the work could be done better.” —B.B. Warfield

We live in an era in which relations are considered to be of the utmost importance in almost every field of science and society. For theology, however, this is nothing new. Having a personal relationship with God is a common Christian expression, and while this notion of relationship with God usually lacks a clear definition and its explication is often deeply flawed, this book argues nevertheless for the centrality of a theology of relationship. By reintroducing Emil Brunner as a relational theologian, based on his seminal work Truth as Encounter, it is boldly proposed that relationship must be the prime leitmotif for the whole of theology. Furthermore, the relationship analogy is investigated in light of contemporary relationship science: is it accurate to speak of a relationship with God? Berra argues that God-human interaction is indeed categorically a relationship and existentially intended to be intimate. Consequently, this relationship needs to be the theological leitmotif leading to a theology of relationship.

The Tribulations of Sophia was the last of Étienne Gilson's books to appear during his lifetime (1967). French readers would have recognized the title's echo of a nineteenth century children's book by the Countess of Ségur, the Misfortunes of Sophia. Its disobedient protagonist, young Sophia (of whom the American Dennis the Menace was to be a very pale imitation) is the cause of a sequence of minor domestic catastrophes. One wonders if Gilson is proposing that the Catholic intellectual world of his day is fraught with her descendants. The heart of the book is entitled, “Three Lectures on Thomism and its Current Situation.” During the Second Vatican Council and its immediate aftermath, the status of Thomism in Catholic intellectual circles and institutions was vigorously challenged. Once again, the problem of Thomism emerges: What is Thomism and where does it belong? Gilson's devotion to elaborating the nature of Christian philosophy compels him to confront this question head-on. Indeed, because Gilson approaches Thomism as the veritable model for Christian philosophy he cannot ignore the attempts to suppress or supplant it. And yet this section also contains a fourth lecture on Teilhard de Chardin, whom Gilson knew and held in high esteem. Was Teilhard's thought to become the new Christian philosophy and theology? Was it even appropriate to label his thought as proper philosophy and theology? The second, somewhat shorter, portion of the book wrestles with the theme of dialogue that was very much in vogue in the 1960s. The central figure here is the French Marxist Roger Garaudy, internationally known for his call to dialogue with Christians. Gilson denies any possibility of such a dialogue, and certainly any usefulness in it. “I regret to say—not having myself any of the virtues of a skilled dialoguer, which are not to listen to what is being said and to take it in a sense that makes it easy to refute. It is a chimerical hope that there should be two people who proceed otherwise.” But specifically on the point of Christian and Marxist dialogue, from the massive ideological, bestial corpus of Marxism Gilson carves out its fundamental need for the world and serves it back to Garaudy, but without garnish, for among Marxists each has his own particular manner of impoverishing the concept of man. What might be called the postscript of the book, “Wandering Amid the Ruins,” shares some of Gilson's own experiences and unease in the unsettled situation of the Catholic Church at that time. “The Council was the work of truly supernatural courage. For more than three centuries the Church was harshly blamed for not having taken the initiative to make necessary reforms in the sixteenth century.” Yet Gilson laments that perhaps the manner of enacting reform is confused and not in all cases simply intent on reversing the trends of empty churches and the vocations drought. Perhaps we have not understood the Council at all. Gilson's kind but clear description of the turmoil in Catholic teaching and thought is for the reader essential to any understanding of the tension and transitions of this period of history.

This is a creative scholarly argument revisiting the substance, understanding, and implications of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo for contemporary theology and philosophy. Paul J. DeHart examines the special mode of divine transcendence (God's infinity) and investigates areas where accepting an infinite God presents challenging questions to Christian theology. He discusses what'saving knowledge'or'faith'would have to look like when confronted by such an unlimited conception of deity, and ponders how the doctrine of God's trinity can be brought into harmony with radical notions of transcendence, as well as ways the doctrine of creation itself is threatened when the radical otherness of the creator's mind is not maintained. DeHart engages with a diverse range of figures: Jean-Luc Marion, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Kathryn Tanner, John Milbank and Rowan Williams, to illustrate his conviction. This volume deals with deep conceptual issues, indicating that creation ex nihilo remains a lively topic in contemporary theology.

Dr. David K. Naugle is widely regarded as a leading thinker in the area of Christian worldview formation. As Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Dallas Baptist University, he has drawn accolades and admiration. This collection in his honor demonstrates that intellectual pursuits are inherently spiritual, that no area of life is separate from the lordship of Christ, and that true Christian faith is in fact the deep fulfillment of the human experience. On topics ranging from linguistics to gardening and everything in between, these essays represent the depth and breadth of the idea that all goodness is God's goodness, all truth is God's truth, and all beauty is God's beauty.

Chris Boesel invites readers into a Kierkegaardian style literary conceit, creating two pseudonymous voices—one philosophical and deconstructive, one theological and confessional—in order to stage an encounter between two commentaries on Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. On one level, the contest between the two commentaries demonstrates the extent to which an encounter between deconstruction and Kierkegaard has not taken place in the one place everyone thinks it has, in Derrida's reading of Fear and Trembling in The Gift of Death. On a deeper level, Boesel argues that Derrida's misreading of Fear and Trembling is both source and symptom of a wider problem: an apophatic blind spot in deconstructive engagements with Christian theology in philosophy of religion and postmodern theology. This blind spot erases the theological and ethical possibilities of what Boesel calls a Kierkegaardian confessional faith, possibilities rooted in a “deconstructive deconstructibility” that produces its own deconstructive-like effects. As a corrective to this blind spot, the encounter between deconstruction and Kierkegaard staged here shows how these effects do the very things heralded by self-proclaimed apophatic remedies of “confessional faith”: disrupt human mastery over God and neighbor while calling for concrete commitments to justice for the widow, orphan and stranger.

This volume examines the relationship between Christian legal theory and the fields of private law.Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in private law theory, and this book contributes to that discussion by drawing on the historical, theological, and philosophical resources of the Christian tradition. The book begins with an introduction from the editors that lays out the understanding of'private law'and what distinguishes private law topics from other fields of law. This section includes two survey chapters on natural law and biblical sources. The remaining sections of the book move sequentially through the fields of property, contracts, and torts. Several chapters focus on historical sources and show the ways in which the evolution of legal doctrine in areas of private law has been heavily influenced by Christian thinkers. Other chapters draw out more contemporary and public policy-related implications for private law.While this book is focused on the relationship of Christianity to private law, it will be of broad interest to those who might not share that faith perspective. In particular, legal historians and philosophers of law will find much of interest in the original scholarship in this volume. The book will be attractive to teachers of law, political science, and theology. It will be of special interest to the many law faculty in property, contracts, and torts, as it provides a set of often overlooked historical and theoretical perspectives on these fields.

My Theology: The world's leading Christian thinkers explain some of the principal tenets of their theological beliefs. ‘In one's encounters with the spectres of God one can become at peace with limitation, precariousness, lack of certainty, and one's fragility and fractures,'writes Rachel Mann. ‘Equally, one can find in divine fragility the hope of the world.'In three chapters – on the body, on love, and on time – Mann explores how God invites us to live in a rich three-dimensional mystery which subverts the mundane experiences of modern life and reveals a world rich with purpose at every point. To be human, she explains, holds together the truths that we are made in blessing, live in complexity, and called into promise.

Christianity is bound up with the very idea of the West: we cannot evade it even if we would like to. While many people no longer believe in Christianity, we cannot deny that it has left a deep imprint on Western thought. But how might we develop a philosophy of Christianity that is not a Christian philosophy? How can we take a view that is external to the traditions of apologetics and criticism? For there is a question that concerns us all here: are the coherences of Christianity still useful for thought, and especially for thought about existence? To address this question, François Jullien considers Christianity as constituting a set of resources. Resources are available to all and can be used by those who discover and exploit them; they belong to no one. Christianity offers us resources inasmuch as we can draw some benefit from it, inasmuch as it can be the source of an effect, without our having to believe it or determine its truth in advance. Jullien reads the Gospels, and especially the Gospel of John, as he would read any other text, seeking to account for the text's coherence (rather than its ‘meaning'), seeking to account for its pertinence (rather than its ‘truth'), but without any need to adhere – the exploitation of resources demands no conversion. And in reading the Gospel of John in this way, we discover the fertile veins of a theory of existence. This fresh and erudite reflection on Christianity will be of great value to anyone interested in religion and its relevance today.

By the time of early modernity, a widely deployed tenet of Christian thought had begun to vanish. The divine ideas tradition, the teaching that all beings have an eternal existence as aspects of God's mind, had functioned across a wide range of central Christian doctrines, providing Christian thinkers and mystical teachers with a powerful theological capacity: to illuminate the Trinitarian ground of all creatures, and to renew the divine truth of all creatures through human contemplation. Already by the time of the Middle Platonists, Plato's forms had been reinterpreted as ideas in the mind of God. Yet that was only the beginning of the transformation of the divine ideas, for Christian belief in God as Trinity and in the incarnation of the Word imbued the divine ideas tradition with a remarkable conceptual agility. The divine ideas teaching allowed mystical theologians to conceive the hidden presence of God in all creatures, and the power of every creature's truth in God to consummate the full dynamic of every creature's calling. The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian Mystical Theology brings to life the striking role of the divine ideas tradition in the teaching of its central exponents, and also suggests how the divine ideas might constructively inform Christian theology and spirituality today. Especially in an age of global crises, when the truth of the natural environment, of racial injustice, and of public health is denied and disputed for political ends, the divine ideas tradition affords contemporary thinkers a creative and contemplative vision that reveres the deep truth of all beings and seeks their mending and fulfilment.

Augustins Werk De Genesi ad litteram ist das wichtigste Zeugnis christlicher Kosmologie in Antike und Mittelalter. Es wird hier erstmals umfassend interpretiert. Augustinus gibt eine detaillierte Interpretation des biblischen Schöpfungsberichtes (Genesis 1-3). Seine Auslegung in zwölf Büchern ist nicht allegorisch, sondern sie folgt dem Wortsinn. In Auseinandersetzung mit der platonischen Philosophie und mit älteren jüdischen und christlichen Autoren erklärt Augustinus den Ursprung und den Aufbau des Kosmos, die Beschaffenheit von Leib und Seele des Menschen sowie die Entstehung des Bösen. Am Ende steht ein Ausblick auf das ewige Glück des Menschen in der Schau Gottes. Eine internationale Gruppe von Fachleuten aus verschiedenen Disziplinen analysiert und kommentiert Augustins Werk Buch für Buch. Die Aufsätze sind teils in deutscher Sprache, teils in englischer Sprache verfasst.

Saint John Henry Newman is widely acknowledged to be an important theologian. Despite this, Newman commentators believe that his work has received little recognition by philosophers. This book explores whether or not Newman's supposed philosophical isolation constitutes a misconception in Newman historiography. First of all, it does this by examining Newman's general philosophical reception over the last two centuries; surveying a wide range of philosophical positions and philosophers from the many different branches of this discipline. The book then focuses upon whether or not Newman has made a contribution to one specific philosophical position, seldom given attention within Newman scholarship: the particularist approach to epistemology. In its investigations into this and the other more general dimension of Newman's philosophical reception, the book offers an historical re-evaluation of Newman's philosophical legacy.

Every group within Christianity has its own opinions on what Christianity really is. But who's right (if anyone)? With the letter to the Colossians, we have an opportunity to find an answer. Paul compares Christianity to another worldview and argues that Christianity is better. This book uses that comparison in order to understand Paul's Christian worldview. In this book, you will also find answers to some very difficult questions. 1.What is God's ultimate purpose for humanity? 2.Do we just do things because God told us to? 3.Why does Paul tell wives to obey their husbands? 4.Why does Paul tell slaves to obey their masters? 5.Why does God care what we do at all? 6.Why does God command these particular actions? 7.Why would we want to follow God's commands anyway? 8.How does following God's commands actually make us better people? Christianity is the point at which God acted through Christ to fix what was wrong with creation and bring the whole story to a different conclusion. In this book, you will see the big picture of Christianity and how all the dots connect--from start to finish.

In The Phenomenology of Religious Belief, the renowned philosopher Michael J. Shapiro investigates how art – and in particular literature and film – can impact upon both traditional interpretations and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences. In doing so, he examines the work of prolific and award-winning writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip K. Dick and Robert Coover. By placing their work in conjunction with critical analyses of media by the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini and combining it with the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as George Canguilhem, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Shapiro takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the question of how life should be lived. His assessment of phenomenological subjectivity also leads him to question the nature of political theology and extend the criticism of Pauline theology.

A defense of the New Testament view that all things are to be united in Christ, which entails that the ultimate destiny of the universe, and of all that is in it, is to be united in God. Keith Ward argues that this conflicts with classical ideas of God as simple, impassible, and changeless--ideas that many modern theologians espouse, and which Ward subjects to careful and critical scrutiny. He defends the claim that the cosmos contributes something substantial to--and in that way changes--the divine nature, and the cosmos is destined to manifest and express the essential creativity and relationality of a God of beatific, agapic, redemptive, and unitive love.

What should Christian discourse look like after philosophical modernity? In one manner or another the essays in this volume seek to confront and intellectually exorcise the prevailing elements of philosophical modernity, which are inherently transgressive disfigurations and refigurations of the Christian story of creation, sin, and redemption. To enact these various forms and styles of Christian intellectual exorcism the essays in this volume make appeal to, and converse with, the magisterial corpus of Cyril O'Regan. The themes of the essays center around the gnostic return in modernity, apocalyptic theology, and the question of the bounds and borders of Christian orthodoxy. Along the way diverse figures are treated such as: Hegel, Shakespeare, von Balthasar, Przywara, Ricouer, Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, and Kristeva. Exorcising Philosophical Modernity: Cyril O'Regan and Christian Discourse after Modernity is a veritable feast of post-modern Christian thought.

The classic exposition of the Christian philosophy of History.“TODAY many persons are sobered by the threat of disaster to our civilization. How to avert impending calamity is a question of serious moment. The situation is especially disturbing for the religious man. His customary trust in God and his confidence in the ultimate triumph of goodness are hard to maintain in the face of adverse circumstances. For the moment evils prevail and righteousness is forced off the highway of life. It is difficult to preserve that imperturbable demeanor which Robert Louis Stevenson ascribes to quiet minds going on “in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.” In days when the thunderclouds of war darken all skies and stretch from pole to pole, quietude of mind is a luxury that few people who take life seriously are able to enjoy.There is one source of knowledge upon which we might draw to help us steady our perspective and define our task in times of perplexity. In the excitement of the moment we may forget the heritage of wisdom and experience bequeathed to us by the past. If we turn to history, it may brace our minds and strengthen our determination to maintain a bold front against threatening evils.”

The guidebook companion to Inklings on Philosophy and WorldviewTeens live in a complicated world. They are constantly bombarded by messages from their friends, parents, teachers, the internet, and their churches, and not all of these messages agree or line up with each other. How do they figure out who to listen to? How do they figure out what is true?Inklings on Philosophy and Worldview Guidebook will show teens practical ways to help understand how to filter out the wrong messages and focus on what is real. Using teachings from highly respected, loved, and well-known writers, teacher Matt Dominguez will teach teens about the power of story as he guides them through a study of world religions, philosophies, and worldviews, and gives them a firm foundation to stand on as they prepare to face the world.

An accessible introduction to Christian philosophical theologyPhilosophical or analytic theology seeks to employ philosophical tools while studying topics in Christian theology and examining the logical consistency or intelligibility of some of the key doctrines of the Christian faith. In this accessible primer, An Introduction to Christian Philosophical Theology, authors Stephen T. Davis and Eric T. Yang first explain the scope, relevance, and value of philosophical theology and then applies its conceptual tools to examine each of the core Christian doctrines:Revelation and ScriptureThe TrinityThe IncarnationRedemption and the atonement,Resurrection and life after deathThe final chapter briefly addresses some additional theological issues including petitionary prayer, eschatology, and original sin.Designed for beginning students and non-specialists this guide provides the ideal entry point for not only understanding what philosophical theology is but also for how it can provide valuable insights for how we think about the core doctrines of the Christian faith.