The Holy Web offers entree to the world revealed by contemporary science and the difference the new models of our life on earth make to understanding Christianity. The author shows how the church's mission is to become and to nurture a dynamic "web of relationships" in which all humanity can find itself part of a wondrous whole. Wessels offers a profound reading of biblical categories. He shows convincingly that the new universe story made popular by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme is not only open to religious interpretation but that the biblical symbols of creation, redemption, sin, grace, life and death, God-Christ-Spirit, faith, hope and love reveal the meaning of the universe to those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Reading Augustine is a new line of books offering personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars. The aim of the series is to make clear Augustine's importance to contemporary thought and to present Augustine not only or primarily as a pre-eminent Christian thinker but as a philosophical, spiritual, literary and intellectual icon of the West. Why did the ancients come to adopt monotheism and Christianity? On God, The Soul, Evil and the Rise of Christianity introduces possible answers to that question by looking closely at the development of the thought of Augustine of Hippo, whose complex spiritual trajectory included Gnosticism, academic skepticism, pagan Platonism, and orthodox Christianity. What was so compelling about Christianity and how did Augustine become convinced that his soul could enter into communion with a transcendent God? The apparently sudden shift of ancient culture to monotheism and Christianity was momentous, defining the subsequent nature of Western religion and thought. John Peter Kenney shows us that Augustine offers an unusually clear vantage point to understand the essential ideas that drove that transition.

Heaven or hell?Over a period of forty days, God gave Mary K. Baxter visions of hell and commissioned her to tell all to choose life. Here is an account of the place and beings of hell contrasted with the glories of heaven. It is a reminder of the need each of us has for the miracle of salvation.