Written in response to John Locke's "The Reasonables of Christianity" (1695) "Christianity Not Mysterious" asserts that there is nothing in religion that was above reason and that no Christian doctrine could properly be called mysterious. The book attracted a large number of replies and responses, one of which is included in this volume. Browne's "Letter" reveals the state of Irish Protestant attitudes toward deism or dissent at the end of the 17th-century.

Spanish America has produced numerous "folk saints" -- venerated figures regarded as miraculous but not officially recognized by the Catholic Church. Some of these have huge national cults with hundreds -- perhaps millions -- of devotees. In this book Frank Graziano provides the first overview in any language of these saints, offering in-depth studies of the beliefs, rituals, and devotions surrounding seven representative figures. These case studies are illuminated by comparisons to some hundred additional saints from contemporary Spanish America. Among the six primary cases are Difunta Correa, at whose shrines devotees offer bottles of water and used auto parts in commemoration of her tragic death in the Argentinean desert. Gaucho Gil is only one of many gaucho saints, whose characteristic narrative involves political injustice and Robin-Hood crimes on behalf of the exploited people. The widespread cult of the Mexican saint Nino Fidencio is based on faith healing performed by devotees who channel his powers. Nino Compadrito is an elegantly dressed skeleton of a child, whose miraculous powers are derived in part from an Andean belief in the power of the skull of one who has suffered a tragic death. Graziano draws upon site visits and extensive interviews with devotees, archival material, media reports, and documentaries to produce vivid portraits of these fascinating popular movements. In the process he sheds new light on the often fraught relationship between orthodox Catholicism and folk beliefs and on an important and little-studied facet of the dynamic culture of contemporary Spanish America.

Naturalistic ethics is the reigning paradigm among contemporary ethicists; in God and Cosmos, Baggett and Walls argue that this approach is seriously flawed. This book canvasses a broad array of secular and naturalistic ethical theories in an effort to test their adequacy in accounting for moral duties, intrinsic human value, prospects for radical moral transformation, and the rationality of morality. In each case, the authors argue, although various secular accounts provide real insights and indeed share common ground with theistic ethics, the resources of classical theism and orthodox Christianity provide the better explanation of the moral realities under consideration. Among such realities is the fundamental insight behind the problem of evil, namely, that the world is not as it should be. Baggett and Walls argue that God and the world, taken together, exhibit superior explanatory scope and power for morality classically construed, without the need to water down the categories of morality, the import of human value, the prescriptive strength of moral obligations, or the deliverances of the logic, language, and phenomenology of moral experience. This book thus provides a cogent moral argument for God's existence, one that is abductive, teleological, and cumulative.

Willie Esterhuyse is 'n produk en kind van Suid-Afrika; wereldbekend as denker, spreker en raadgewer vir staatsleiers. Sy passie vir reis bring hom uit by oerbeskawings waar hy godsdiens se geboorte sien. Tydens besoeke aan Malta raak hy vertroud met die eilandjie se onstuimige voorgeskiedenis en erfenisterreine. Hy ontdek veral die arena vir die konflik tussen Christene en Moslems, 'n kwessie wat vandag die wereld aan die praat en vrees het. In opvolg van, God en die gode van Egipte, en Die God van Genesis, sluit hy die trilogie af met Geagte Jahwe. Meesterlik besluit hy om direk 11 briewe te rig aan God op sy Bybelse noemnaam, Jahwe. Hierin kan Willie vlymskerp die kernsake van ons tyd oopsny en basiese lewensvrae oopboor, soos die stryd tussen gelowe, ineenstorting van samelewings. Hy bied ook rigting vir soekende denkers oor 'n ander kyk op God vir ons tyd. Willie daag ons uit om verder te dink: met die "gees van omgee" wat verby die stukkkend en seer kyk - na 'n wereld wat menslik en leefbaar vir almal is.

The academic study of death rose to prominence during the 1960s. Courses on some aspect of death and dying can now be found at most institutions of higher learning. These courses tend to stress the psycho-social aspects of grief and bereavement, however, ignoring the religious elements inherent to the subject. This collection is the first to address the teaching of courses on death and dying from a religious-studies perspective.
The book is divided into seven sections. The hope is that this volume will not only assist teachers in religious studies departments to prepare to teach unfamiliar and emotionally charged material, but also help to unify a field that is now widely scattered across several disciplines.

Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), also known as St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, is popularly named the Little Flower. A Carmelite nun, doctor of the church, and patron of a score of causes, she was famously acclaimed by Pope Pius X as the greatest saint of modern times. Therese is not only one of the most beloved saints of the Catholic Church but perhaps the most revered woman of the modern age. Pope John Paul II described her as a living icon of God. Her autobiography Story of a Soul has been translated into sixty languages. Having long transcended national and linguistic boundaries, she has crossed even religious ones. As daughter of Allah, she is venerated widely in Islamic cultures. Therese has been the subject of innumerable biographies and treatises, ranging from hagiographies to attacks on her intelligence and mental health. Thomas R. Nevin has gained access to many untapped archival materials and previously unpublished photographs. As a consequence he is able to offer a much fuller and more accurate portrait of the saint's life and thought than his predecessors. He explores the dynamics of her family life and the early development of her spirituality. He draws extensively on the correspondence of her mother and documents her influence on Thereses autobiography and spirituality. He charts the development of Thereses career as a writer. He gives close attention to her poetry and plays usually dismissed as undistinguished and argues that they have great value as texts by which she addressed and informed her Carmelite community. He delves into the French medical literature of the time, in an effort to understand how the tuberculosis of which she died at the age of 24 was treated and lamentably mistreated. Finally, he offers a new understanding of Therese as a theologian for whom love, rather than doctrines and creeds, was the paramount value. Adding substantially to our knowledge and appreciation of this immensely popular and attractive figure, this book should appeal to many general readers as well as to scholars and students of modern Catholic history.

With warmth and encouragement Pastor John Mark Comer, author of ECPA Bestseller The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, offers guidance and advice to help you recognise the lies and resist the forces that seek to steal your happiness, wholeness and holiness. As Christians, we're all at war with three fierce adversaries of the soul that feed us deceptive ideas to harm our spiritual well-being: the world, the flesh and the devil. Live No Lies parses out the tactics, strengths and weaknesses of these enemies, giving you a clear battle plan and spiritual practices to outwit and overcome these evils. Skilfully weaving together uplifting wisdom and reassuring, practical guidance, this is a book for anyone looking for everyday disciplines to help them care for their soul. Live No Lies will equip you with all you need to make practices for resisting evil an active part of your spiritual formation, and leave you motivated to find happiness and peace in Jesus. That tug-of-war in your chest for wholeness? Those lies that sabotage your peace? It's time to identify them, and defeat them.

This work presents a sustained reflection on the New Testament vision of God's revelation of his glory in Christ. This divine "appearing" is grounded in the self-emptying of the eternal Logos in the incarnation, cross and descent into hell, yet this is the means whereby his glory is manifested and enriches all who are seized by its beauty.

It is now generally accepted that the nature of human thought has much to do with the structure and function of the human body. In Spirituality in the Flesh, Robert C. Fuller investigates how our sensory organs, emotional programs, sexual sensibilities, and neural structures shape religious phenomena. Why is it that some religious traditions assign spiritual currency to pain? How do neurochemically-driven emotions such as fear shape our religious actions? What is the relationship between chemically altered states of consciousness and religious innovation? The body has recently become a subject of investigation among scholars of religion. Many such studies focus on the concept of the body as a cultural construct. Whereas these treatments helpfully demonstrate how cultures construct ideas about the body, Fuller asks how the body itself influences religious concepts. Seeking to establish a middle ground between purely materialistic or humanistic arguments, he skillfully pairs scientific findings with religious truths. Both perspectives could learn from the other: Fuller takes scientific interpreters to task for failing to understand the inherently cultural aspects of embodied experience even as he chides most religion scholars for ignoring new knowledge about the biological substrates of human behavior. Comfortable with the language of scientific analysis and sympathetic to the inherently subjective aspects of religious events, Fuller introduces the biological study of religion by joining our unprecedented understanding of bodily states with an experts knowledge of religious phenomena. Culling insights from scientific observations, historical allusions, and literary references, Spirituality in the Flesh provides fresh understandings that promise to enrich our appreciation of the embodied religious experience.

In this volume von Balthasar turns to the works of the lay theologians, the poets and the philosopher theologians who have kept alive the Grand Tradition of Christian theology in writings formally very different from the works of the Fathers and the great Scholastics. This volume contains studies of Dante, John of the Cross, Pascal, Hamann, Soloviev, Hopkins and Peguy.

"Marriage in the Western Church" examines how marriage acquired a specifically Christian identity in the Western Church from the patristic through Carolingian periods. It shows how theologians came to regard marriage as an ecclesiastical institution and how they developed a Christian theology of marriage. The first part of the book deals with marriage and divorce in Roman and Germanic law. Other parts deal with marriage and divorce in ecclesiastical law, with the Latin Fathers' distinction between the divine and human laws of marriage, and with the customary stages by which persons became married. Several chapters are devoted to Augustine's views on marriage and sexuality. The author shows how the doctrine of indissolubility became the West's chief means of christianizing marriage, and how theologians found here their preferred arguments for affirming the holiness and the 'sacramentality' of marriage. The author argues that the Western regime of indissolubility was the product of a fourth century reform movement. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

offers a series of earlier Christian theology when the aesthetic view was still held and appreciated. Drawing insights from some of the leading figures of the early Church such as Anselm, Augustine, Bonaventura, Denys and Irenaeus, von Balthasar presents his views with a freshness and vigour rarely excelled in contemporary theological writing about the Grand Tradition.