Hinduism comprises perhaps the major cluster of religio-cultural traditions of India, and it can play a valuable role in helping us understand the nature of religion and human responses to life. Hindu image-worship lies at the core of what counts for Hinduism - up-front and subject to much curiosity and misunderstanding, yet it is a defining feature of this phenomenon. This book focuses on Hindu images and their worship with special reference to Vaisnavism, a major strand of Hinduism. Concentrating largely, but not exclusively, on Sanskritic source material, the author shows in the course of the book that Hindu image-worship may be understood via three levels of interpretation: the metaphysical/theological, the narratival or mythic, and the performative or ritual. Analysing the chief philosophical paradigm underlying Hindu image-worship and its implications, the book exemplifies its widespread application and tackles, among other topics such as the origins of image-worship in Hinduism, the transition from Vedic to image worship, a distinguishing feature of Hindu images: their multiple heads and limbs. Finally, with a view to laying the grounds for a more positive dialogic relationship between Hinduism and the "Abrahamic" faiths, which tend to condemn Hindu image-worship as "idolatry", the author examines the theological explanation and justification for embodiment of the Deity in Hinduism and discusses how Hinduism might justify itself against such a charge. Rich in Indological detail, and with an impressive grasp of the philosophical and theological issues underlying Hindu material culture, and image-worship, this book will be of interest to academics and others studying theology, Indian philosophy and Hinduism.

This volume is based upon the seventh series of lectures delivered at Yale University on the Foundation established by the late Dwight H. Terry of Plymouth, Connecticut, through his gift of an endowment fund for the delivery and subsequent publication of "Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy." The deed of gift declares that "the object of this Foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion. The beliefs of men in the past, the author makes clear, were inevitably inspired by their fears of an incomprehensible universe and were derived from their ideas of the supernatural. Science has gradually created a new set of sanctions; and the religion of today, freed from the dread of the unknown, must be formed on this new foundation. Professor Montague proceeds to outline the basis of a philosophy of life reconceived from this point of view, applying to it the term Promethean Religion. It is a volume which will stimulate new thought and discussion, a distinguished addition to the important volumes already published on the Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation.

In this broad philosophical examination of the relationship between religion and the family, Jay Newman delves into issues concerning Biblical religion, culture, sociology, and family values. He maintains that recent media debates about the Bible and family values have obscured the complex relationship between the family and religion.

Focusing on how the family values that the Biblical literature imparts might be relevant--or irrelevant--to family problems and other cultural problems in a modern Western democracy, this study contributes to the understanding of basic cultural relations between religion and the family. After reflecting on the effects of much Biblical teaching on the family, the book proceeds to explore the cultural and existential significance of competition and cooperation between Biblical religion and the family.

This work covers ancient beliefs about life after death from Homer's Hades to ancient Jewish beliefs, from the Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls and beyond. It examines early Christian beliefs about resurrection in general and that of Jesus in particular, beginning with Paul and working through to the start of the third century. It explores the Easter stories of the Gospels and seeks the best historical conclusions about the empty tomb and the belief that Jesus did rise bodily from the dead.

Few contemporary philosophers have made as wide-ranging and insightful a contribution to philosophical debate as John Cottingham. This collection brings together friends, colleagues and former students of Cottingham, to discuss major themes of his work on moral philosophy. Presented in three parts the collection focuses on the debate on partiality, impartiality and character; the role of emotions and reason in the good life; the meaning of a worthwhile life and the place of theistic considerations in it. The original contributions to this volume celebrate Cottingham's work by embracing and furthering his arguments and, at times, in the best spirit of philosophical engagement, challenging and confronting them. The volume concludes with Cottingham's specially commissioned responses to the contributions.

Exemptions from legal requirements, especially religious exemptions, have been a major topic of political debate in recent years. For example, bakers in various states have sought the right to refuse to make wedding cakes for gay and lesbian couples, despite the Supreme Court's validation of same-sex marriage. Many parents are granted exemptions from vaccinating their children, despite public health laws requiring otherwise. Various religious organizations as well as some corporations have sought an exemption from the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage in employee healthcare plans, as required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Religious exemptions have a long history in the United States, but they remain controversial. Exemptions release some people from following laws that everyone else must follow, raising questions of fairness, and exemptions often privilege religious belief, raising concerns about equal treatment. At the same time there are good reasons to support exemptions, such as respect for the right of religious freedom and preventing religious organizations from becoming too closely intertwined with government. The essays in this volume represent valuable contributions to the complex debate about exemptions from legal requirements. In particular, they contribute to the moral dimensions of religious exemptions. These essays go beyond legal analysis about which exemptions are constitutionally appropriate, and ask instead when religious exemptions are morally required or morally prohibited.

The Reading Augustine series presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars. Ian Clausen's On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self describes Augustine's central ideas on morality and how he arrived at them. Describing an intellectual journey that will resonate especially with readers at the beginning of their own journey, Clausen shows that Augustine's early writing career was an outworking of his own inner turmoil and discovery, and that both were to summit, triumphantly, on his monumental book Confessions (AD 386-401). On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self offers a way of looking at Augustine's early writing career as an on-going, developing process: a process whose chief result was to shape a conception of the moral self that has lasted and prospered to the present day.

What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absence of adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. Other prominent theistic pragmatic arguments include William James's celebrated essay, 'The Will to Believe'; a posthumously published and largely ignored pragmatic argument authored by J.S. Mill, supporting the propriety of hoping that quasi-theism is true; the eighteenth-century Scottish essayist James Beattie's argument that the consoling benefit of theistic belief is so great that theistic belief is permissible even when one thinks that the existence of God is less likely than not; and an argument championed by the nineteenth-century French philosopher Jules Lachelier, which based its case for theistic belief on the empirical benefits of believing as a theist, even if theism was very probably false. In Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, Jeff Jordan explores various theistic pragmatic arguments, and the objections employed against them. Jordan presents a new version of the Wager, what he calls the 'Jamesian Wager', and argues that the Jamesian Wager survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. In addition to arguing for a sound version of the Wager, Jordan also argues that there is a version of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments, and that the Argument from Divine Silence fails. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers. The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope based acceptance are also examined.

Best known today as one of the earliest critics of John Locke, John Norris (1657-1711) incorporated ideas of Augustine, Malebranche, Plato, the Cambridge Platonists, and the scholastics into an original synthesis that was highly influential on the philosophy and theology of his day. W. J. Mander presents a much-needed study of this unjustly neglected thinker, and the different perspectives he offers on this seminal period in philosophical history.

Written originally as the 15th and 16th chapters of his great work, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788)", "On Christianity" joined the growing number of revisionist histories whose authors rejected the view that popular support of Christianity was miraculously preordained. Gibbon interprets the ascendancy of Christianity in terms of natural social causes, laying bare the paucity of evidence for the supernatural guidance of church actions.

In this radical reinterpretation of Rousseau, Jeremiah Alberg reveals the neglected theological dimension of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophy. Alberg shows how only Christianity can bring the coherence of Rousseau's system to light, arguing that the philosopher's system of thought is founded on theological scandal and on his inability to accept forgiveness through Christianity. This book explores Rousseau's major works in a novel way, advancing his system of thought as an alternative to Christianity.

Since the Buddha did not fully explain the theory of persons that underlies his teaching, in later centuries a number of different interpretations were developed. This book presents the interpretation by the celebrated Indian Buddhist philosopher, Candrakirti (ca. 570-650 C.E.). Candrakirti's fullest statement of the theory is included in his Autocommentary on the Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatarabhasya), which is, along with his Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatara ), among the central treatises that present the Prasavgika account of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy. In this book, Candrakirti's most complete statement of his theory of persons is translated and provided with an introduction and commentary that present a careful philosophical analysis of Candrakirti's account of the selflessness of persons. This analysis is both philologically precise and analytically sophisticated. The book is of interest to scholars of Buddhism generally and especially to scholars of Indian Buddhist philosophy.

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The 32 innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, disciplinary perspectives on a range of methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.

The philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) is largely unknown to English readers, though translations of his works do exist. This book presents his central teachings and analyses his treatment of the non-Christian religions, Buddhism and Taosim in particular. This now makes it more possible to reassess his religious philosophy as a whole. The book will be of interest to students of comparative religion, theology, philosophy and Russian intellectual history.

If the secular university by definition is non-sectarian or non-denominational, then how can it accommodate a discipline like Christian theology? Doesn't the traditional goal of theological study, which is to attain knowledge of the divine, fundamentally conflict with the main goal of secular academic study, which is to attain knowledge about ourselves and the world in which we live? So why should theology be admitted, or even care about being admitted, into secular academic life? And even if theology were admitted, what contribution to secular academic life could it make? Working from a Christian philosophical and theological perspective but also engaging a wide range of theologians, philosophers, and religious studies scholars, Christian Theology and the Secular University takes on these questions, arguing that Christian theology does belong in the secular university because it provides distinct resources that the secular university needs if it is going to fulfill what should be its main epistemic and educative ends. This book offers a fresh and unique perspective to scholars working in the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and religious studies, and to those in other academic disciplines who are interested in thinking critically and creatively about the place and nature of theological study within the secular university.

In this, one of the most influential works of the post-Hegelian era, Feuerbach captures the synthesis that emerges from the dialectical process of a transcending Godhead and the rational and material world.
In understanding the true nature of what it means to be fully human, Feuerbach contends that we come face to face with the essenceof Christian theology: human beings investing ordinary concepts with divine meaning and significance. The true danger to humanity occurs when theology is given the force of dogma and doctrine. Losing sight of its anthropological underpinnings and dependence upon or emergence from human nature, it then acquires an existence separate from that of humankind.
Feuerbach leaves nothing untouched: miracles, the Trinity, Creation, prayer, resurrection, immortality, faith and much more.

This pioneering study is the first full-length exploration of the relationship between Judaism and the world's religions. Beginning with an examination of the biblical view of pagan worship, the book traces the history of Jewish attitudes towards other religious traditions in the rabbinic period, the Middle Ages, the early modern age and contemporary times. In the final part of this volume, the author formulates a radically new Jewish theology of religious pluralism. In his view, what is now required is for Jews to free themselves from the absolutes of the past. No longer should they regard Judaism as embodying God's full and final revelation; instead, the Divine should be placed at the centre of the universe of faiths. Given such a shift in perspective, the way would then be open for interfaith dialogue of the most profound kind. From its ancient origins Judaism adopted a generally tolerant attitude to other traditions - what is possible today is for this spirit of tolerance to deepen and serve as a foundation for a common quest with like-minded adherents of other faiths for spiritual insight and religious truth. This study is a vital source for all those who seek to understand Judaism in relation to the world's major religions.

Augustine's christianization of Plato and Thomas Aquinas's of Aristotle provided the two main foundations of medieval Judeo- Christian philosophy. In The Christianization of Pyrrhonism, JosA(c) R. Maia Neto shows that Greek scepticism played a similar role in the development of a major strand of modern religious thought. From the Jansenist reaction of Molinism in the early 17th century to Shestov's resistance to the arrival of Kantian enlightenment in Russia in the late 19th century, Greek scepticism was reconstructed in terms of Christian doctrines and used against major secular philosophers who posed threats to religion. At the same time, the ancient sceptics' practical stance was attacked in order that it does not constitute a viable alternative to the modern secular philosophies. The resulting Christianized Pyrrhonism would be the basis for a genuine Christian or Biblical thought, for the first time emancipated from the rationalist assumptions and methods of Greek philosophy. The Christianization of Pyrrhonism is extremely valuable for those interested in the modern developments of ancient scepticism, in the relations between religious and philosophical ideas in modernity, and for scholars and the general public interested in Pascal, Kierkegaard and Shestov.