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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Philosophy of religion > General
In hierdie versamelbundel is daar ‘n groep uiteenlopende mense gevra om elk ‘n onafhanklike essay te skryf na aanleiding van ‘n Bybelteks.
Daar is skrywers, ekonome, musikante, akademici en joernaliste. Die enigste voorwaardes was dat dit persone moet wees wat nie meer kerklik betrokke en/ of ‘n dominee of teoloog is nie. Baie essays is bloot verhale, vertellings, reise of verduidelikings wat met ‘n teks verbind kan word.
Ons almal is medereisigers in hierdie verbygaande wêreldse bestel. Kom ons luister met ‘n oop gemoed na mekaar. Dán staan ons ‘n kans om te verstaan, te begryp, eerder as om te oordeel.
Van die bekende en bekroonde skrywers wat deelneem aan hierdie projek is onder andere Jurie van den Heever, Annelie Botes, Dana Snyman, Pik Botha, Heinz Modler, Lizette Rabe, Dawie Roodt, Rachelle Greeff, Piet Croukamp, Joan Hambidge, Koos Kombuis, Karin Brynard, Jean Oosthuizen, Christine Barkhuizen Le Roux, Lina Spies, Valda Jansen, Valiant Swart, Nathan Trantraal, Churchil Naude, Riku Lätti en Luke Alfred.
Kelly Besecke offers an examination of reflexive spirituality, a
spirituality that draws equally on religions traditions and
traditions of reason in the pursuit of transcendent meaning. People
who practice reflexive spirituality prefer metaphor to literalism,
spiritual experience to doctrinal belief, religious pluralism to
religious exclusivism or inclusivism, and ongoing inquiry to
''final answers.'' Reflexive spirituality is aligned with liberal
theologies in a variety of religious traditions and among the
spiritual-but-not-religious. You Can't Put God in a Box draws on
original qualitative data to describe how people practiced
reflexive spirituality in an urban United Methodist church, an
interfaith adult education center, and a variety of secular
settings. The theoretical argument focuses on two kinds of
rationality that are both part of the Enlightenment legacy.
Technological rationality focuses our attention on finding the most
efficient means to a particular end. Reflexive spiritualists reject
forms of religiosity and secularity that rely on the biases of
technological rationality-they see these as just so many versions
of ''fundamentalism'' that are standing in the way of compelling
spiritual meaning. Intellectual rationality, on the other hand,
offers tools for analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of
religious ideas. Reflexive spiritualists embrace intellectual
rationality as a way of making religious traditions more meaningful
for modern ears. Besecke provides a window into the progressive
theological thinking of educated spiritual seekers and religious
liberals. Grounded in participant observation, her book uses
concrete examples of reflexive spirituality in practice to speak to
the classical sociological problem of modern meaninglessness.
Indian thought is well known for diverse philosophical and
contemplative excursions into the nature of selfhood. Led by
Buddhists and the yoga traditions of Hinduism and Jainism, Indian
thinkers have engaged in a rigorous analysis and
reconceptualization of our common notion of self. Less understood
is the way in which such theories of self intersect with issues
involving agency and free will; yet such intersections are
profoundly important, as all major schools of Indian thought
recognize that moral goodness and religious fulfillment depend on
the proper understanding of personal agency. Moreover, their
individual conceptions of agency and freedom are typically nodes by
which an entire school's epistemological, ethical, and metaphysical
perspectives come together as a systematic whole. Free Will,
Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy explores the contours of
this issue, from the perspectives of the major schools of Indian
thought. With new essays by leading specialists in each field, this
volume provides rigorous analysis of the network of issues
surrounding agency and freedom as developed within Indian thought.
The diversity of Nietzsche's books, and the sheer range of his
philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his
interpreters. This Oxford Handbook addresses this multiplicity by
devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by
the book's systematic plan. The aim is to treat each topic at the
best current level of philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. The
first group of papers treat selected biographical issues: his
family relations, his relations to women, and his ill health and
eventual insanity. In Part 2 the papers treat Nietzsche in
historical context: his relations back to other philosophers-the
Greeks, Kant, and Schopenhauer-and to the cultural movement of
Romanticism, as well as his own later influence in an unlikely
place, on analytic philosophy. The papers in Part 3 treat a variety
of Nietzsche's works, from early to late and in styles ranging from
the 'aphoristic' The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil through
the poetic-mythic Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the florid
autobiography Ecce Homo. This focus on individual works, their
internal unity, and the way issues are handled within them, is an
important complement to the final three groups of papers, which
divide up Nietzsche's philosophical thought topically. The papers
in Part 4 treat issues in Nietzsche's value theory, ranging from
his metaethical views as to what values are, to his own values of
freedom and the overman, to his insistence on 'order of rank', and
his social-political views. The fifth group of papers treat
Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics, including such well-known
ideas as his perspectivism, his INSERT: Included in Starkmann 40%
promotion, September-October 2014 being, and his thought of eternal
recurrence. Finally, Part 6 treats another famous idea-the will to
power-as well as two linked ideas that he uses will to power to
explain, the drives, and life. This Handbook will be a key resource
for all scholars and advanced students who work on Nietzsche.
This exciting collection of papers is an international, ecumenical,
and interdisciplinary study of Jesus' resurrection that emerged
from the "Resurrection Summit" meeting held in New York at Easter
of 1996. The contributions represent mainstream scholarship on
biblical studies, fundamental theology, systematic theology,
philosophy, moral theology, and homiletics. Contributors represent
a wide range of viewpoints and denominations and include Richard
Swinburne, Janet Martin Soskice, Peter F. Carnley, Sarah Coakley,
Willian Lane Craig, William P. Alston, M. Shawn Copeland, Paul
Rhodes Eddy, Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Brian V. Johnstone, Carey
C. Newman, Alan G. Padgett, Pheme Perkins, Alan F. Segal,
Marguerite Shuster, and John Wilkins. Combined, they offer a
timely, wide ranging, and well balanced work on the central truth
of Christianity."
Karl Barth (1886-1968) was a prolific theologian of the 20th
century. Dr Gorringe places the theology in its social and
political context, from World War I through to the Cold War by
following Barth's intellectual development through the years that
saw the rise of national socialism and the development of
communism. Barth initiated a theological revolution in his two
"Commentaries on Romans", begun during World War I. His attempt to
deepen this during the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic made
him a focus of theological resistance to Hitler after the rise to
power of the Nazi party. Expelled from Germany, he continued to
defy fashionable opinion by refusing to condemn communism after
World War II. Drawing on a German debate largely ignored by
Anglo-Saxon theology, Dr Gorringe shows that Barth responds to the
events of his time not just in his occasional writings, but in his
magnum opus, the "Church Dogmatics". In conclusion Dr Gorringe asks
what this admittedly patriarchal author still has to contribute to
contemporary theology, and in particular human liberation. This
book is intended for undergraduate courses in theology and history
of doctrine.
What do you imagine when you think of Shaolin? Ferociously strong warriors flying through the air? Shaolin is more than just the physical expression of martial arts. Rooted in Zen and Tao philosophy, it also offers a way of reconnecting our minds with our bodies through meditative movement to cultivate the core virtues of discipline and perseverance. In this book, Shi Heng Yi, founder of Shaolin Temple Europe and lay disciple of the Songshan Shaolin Temple, introduces us to the contemplative practice that underpins Shaolin – a way of life that has existed for over 1,500 years – and shows how it can help us today. Having experienced the challenges of modern life as a young man, Shi Heng Yi understands the pressures only too well. Here, he highlights twelve key practices to help improve sleep, relationships and decision-making, as much as balance, flexibility and strength, offering a powerful pathway to self-mastery and understanding.
Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential
20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an
international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas to the cognitive science of religion.
Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that
psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to
challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion
in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these
remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks and
practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing
philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies,
contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments,
anthropological observations and neurophysiological research
relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive
scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to
Wittgenstein’s objections. By developing and responding to his
criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion
offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to
religion, human nature, and the mind.
This is an accessible response to the contemporary anti-God
arguments of the 'new atheists' (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris,
Hitchens, Grayling, etc). Atheism has become militant in the past
few years, with its own popular mass media evangelists such as
Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. In this readable book,
Christian philosopher Peter S. Williams considers the arguments of
the 'new atheists' and finds them wanting. Williams explains the
history of atheism and responds to the claims that: 'belief in God
causes more harm than good'; 'religion is about blind faith and
science is the only way to know things'; 'science can explain
religion away'; 'there is not enough evidence for God'; 'the
arguments for God's existence do not work'. Williams argues that
belief in God is more intellectually plausible than atheism.
A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking is a search for authenticity
that combines critical thinking with a yearning for heartfelt
poetics. A physiognomy of thinking addresses the figure of a life
lived where theory and praxis are unified. This study explores how
the critical essays on music of German-Jewish thinker, Theodor
Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-1969) necessarily accompany the downfall
of metaphysics. By scrutinizing a critical juncture in modern
intellectual history, marked in 1931 by Adorno's founding of the
Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, neglected applications of
Critical Theory to Jewish Thought become possible. This study
proffers a constructive justification of a critical standpoint,
reconstructively shown how such ideals are seen under the
genealogical proviso of re/cognizing their original meaning.
Re/cognition of A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking redresses
neglected applications of Negative Dialectics, the poetics of God,
the metaphysics of musical thinking, reification in Zionism, the
transpoetics of Physics and Metaphysics, as well as correlating
Aesthetic Theory to Jewish Law (halakhah). >
Spinoza is among the most controversial and asymmetrical thinkers
in the tradition and history of modern European philosophy. Since
the 17th century, his work has aroused some of the fiercest and
most intense polemics in the discipline. From his expulsion from
the synagogue and onwards, Spinoza has never ceased to embody the
secular, heretical and self-loathing Jew. Ivan Segre, a philosopher
and celebrated scholar of the Talmud, discloses the conservative
underpinnings that have animated Spinoza's numerable critics and
antagonists. Through a close reading of Leo Strauss and several
contemporary Jewish thinkers, such as Jean-Claude Milner and Benny
Levy (Sartre's last secretary), Spinoza: the Ethics of an Outlaw
aptly delineates the common cause of Spinoza's contemporary
censors: an explicit hatred of reason and its emancipatory
potential. Spinoza's radical heresy lies in his rejection of any
and all blind adherence to Biblical Law, and in his plea for the
freedom and autonomy of thought. Segre reclaims Spinoza as a
faithful interpreter of the revolutionary potential contained
within the Old Testament.
"The Thoughtful Guide to God" presents a rational approach to
notions of God and soul for those who are disenchanted with
organized religion. Reviving concepts of the divine that go back to
the earliest human civilizations of both East and West, it shows
how ideas have evolved from early scriptural revelations, through
the rationalization of the Greek philosophers, to the developments
of modern physics. Few works bring together ideas from so many
disciplines-from religion, philosophy and science, with all the
supporting detail. Packed with references for further reading, it
provides a bridge between science and religion, and between many of
the different religions of the world. All the terms and concepts
are explained so that they are accessible to the general reader.
The discoveries of Newton and Galileo, through to Einstein and
contemporary scientists, and the ideas of God from a number of
Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Hindu thinkers, are presented with
brief biographical background to put these personalities in
context. Their thoughts are fused with those of Greek and later
philosophers that have shaped society in Western Europe to provide
a unifying concept of the divine as Communal Soul- a one-world view
which it is essential should convince more of the population in the
materialist West if Earth and humankind are to survive into the
22nd century.
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