In Nicodemites: Faith and Concealment Between Italy and Tudor England, Anne Overell examines a rarely glimpsed aspect of sixteenth-century religious strife: the thinkers, clerics, and rulers, who concealed their faith. This work goes beyond recent scholarly interest in conformity to probe inward dilemmas and the spiritual and cultural meanings of pretence. Among the dissimulators who appear here are Cardinal Reginald Pole and his circle in Italy and in England, and also John Cheke and William Cecil. Although Protestant and Catholic polemicists condemned all Nicodemites, most of them survived reformation violence, while their habits of silence and secrecy became influential. This study concludes that widespread evasion about religious belief contributed to the erratic development of toleration. "Anne Overell is an accomplished practitioner of history as a sideways glance, revealing subtleties and contours that others have missed. In doing so, she enriches the story of the Reformation and helps us see its humanity and nuance more vividly and completely." - Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford

In Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy: On the Middle Writings Keith Ansell-Pearson makes a novel and thought-provoking contribution to our appreciation of Nietzsche's neglected middle writings. These are the texts Human, All Too Human (1878-80), Dawn (1881), and The Gay Science (1882). There is a truth in the observation of Havelock Ellis that the works Nietzsche produced between 1878 and 1882 represent the maturity of his genius. In this study he explores key aspects of Nietzsche's philosophical activity in his middle writings, including his conceptions of philosophy, his commitment to various enlightenments, his critique of fanaticism, his search for the heroic-idyllic, his philosophy of modesty and his conception of ethics, and his search for joy and happiness. The book will appeal to readers across philosophy and the humanities, especially to those with an interest in Nietzsche and anyone who has a concern with the fate of philosophy in the modern world.

Peter C. Hodgson explores Hegel's bold vision of history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Following an introductory chapter on the textual sources, the key categories, and the modes of writing history that Hegel distinguishes, Hodgson presents a new interpretation of Hegel's conception of freedom. Freedom is not simply a human production, but takes shape through the interweaving of the divine idea and human passions, and such freedom defines the purpose of historical events in the midst of apparent chaos. Freedom is also a process that unfolds through stages of historical/cultural development and is oriented to an end that occurs within history (the 'kingdom of freedom'). The purpose and the process of history are tragic, however, because history is also a 'slaughterhouse' that shatters even the finest human creations and requires a constant rebuilding. Hegel's God is not a supreme being or 'large entity' but the 'true infinite' that encompasses the finite. History manifests the rule of God ('providence'), and it functions as the justification of God ('theodicy'). But the God who rules in and is justified by history is a crucified God who takes the suffering, anguish, and evil of the world into and upon godself, accomplishing reconciliation in the midst of ongoing estrangement and inescapable death. Shapes of Freedom addresses these themes in the context of present-day questions about what they mean and whether they still have validity.

In this groundbreaking study, Stephen H. Webb offers a new theological understanding of the material and spiritual: that, far from being contradictory, they unite in the very stuff of the eternal Jesus Christ.
Accepting matter as a perfection (or predicate) of the divine requires a rethinking of the immateriality of God, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, the Chalcedonian formula of the person of Christ, and the analogical nature of religious language. It also requires a careful reconsideration of Augustine's appropriation of the Neo-Platonic understanding of divine incorporeality as well as Origen's rejection of anthropomorphism. Webb locates his position in contrast to evolutionary theories of emergent materialism and the popular idea that the world is God's body. He draws on a little known theological position known as the ''heavenly flesh'' Christology, investigates the many misunderstandings of its origins and relation to the Monophysite movement, and supplements it with retrievals of Duns Scotus, Caspar Scwenckfeld and Eastern Orthodox reflections on the transfiguration. Also included in Webb's study are discussions of classical figures like Barth and Aquinas as well as more recent theological proposals from Bruce McCormack, David Hart, and Colin Gunton. Perhaps most provocatively, the book argues that Mormonism provides the most challenging, urgent, and potentially rewarding source for metaphysical renewal today.
Webb's concept of Christian materialism challenges traditional Christian common sense, and aims to show the way to a more metaphysically sound orthodoxy.

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). >

The question of God and cosmology is far from abstract. In fact, the subject raises the deepest questions of human existence: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Or, to put it more personally, "Why am I here?", Structured as a debate, the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum focused on the issue of God and cosmology and its impact on life and self-understanding. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig and atheist cosmologist Sean Carroll presented their views before a packed crowd of more than nine hundred people. Spirited, civil, and often humorous, the debate highlighted not only their positions, but the full range of possibilities. In this volume, the content of that debate is reprinted and supplemented by a range of reflections by other conference presenters. The purpose of the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum is to provide a venue for fair-minded dialogue on subjects of importance in religion and culture. The goal is a respectful exchange of ideas, without compromise.