Bringing together Leibniz's writings on God and religion for the very first time, Leibniz on God and Religion: A Reader reflects the growing importance now placed on Leibniz's philosophical theology. This reader features a wealth of material, from journal articles and book reviews published in Leibniz's lifetime to private notes and essays, as well as items from his correspondence. Organised thematically into the following sections, this reader captures the changes in Leibniz's thinking over the course of his career: The Catholic Demonstrations The existence and nature of God Reason and faith Ethics and the love of God The Bible Miracles and mysteries The churches and their doctrines Grace and predestination Sin, evil, and theodicy The afterlife Non-Christian religions In preparing this reader, Strickland has returned to Leibniz's original manuscripts to ensure accurate translations of key texts, the majority of which have not been available in English before. The reader also contains a number of texts previously unpublished in any form. Alongside the translations, this reader contains an introductory essay, explanatory notes on all of the texts, and suggestions for further reading. This valuable sourcebook enables students of all levels to achieve a well-rounded understanding of Leibniz's philosophical theology.

This book is the second of two volumes collecting together Michael C. Rea's most substantial work in analytic theology. The first volume focuses on the nature of God and our ability to talk and discover truths about God, whereas this volume contains essays focused more on questions about humanity, the human condition, and how human beings relate to God. Part one of Volume II considers on the doctrines of the incarnation, original sin, and atonement. Part two examines the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness, and a theological problem that arises in connection with the idea God not only tolerates but validates a response of angry protest in the face of these problems.

According to Augustine's doctrine of original sin, Adam's progeny share a collective guilt which, like an infection, spreads through wayward sexual desires, passing from parent to child. But is it fair to blame sinners if they inherit evil like a disease? Stricken by Sin clarifies the logic and illogic of the controversial views about human agency Augustine defended in his later years. The first half of the book examines why Augustine believed we are trapped by evil, and why only Christ can save us. Couenhoven focuses on Augustine's debates with the Pelagians about whether we control our personal identities, what we should be held culpable for, and whether freedom is compatible with necessity. The second half of the book offers a philosophically and scientifically astute retrieval of some of Augustine's most divisive claims. Couenhoven makes a case for the surprising thesis that a carefully formulated doctrine of original sin is profoundly humane. The claim that sin is original takes seriously our dependence on one another for essential aspects of character and personality, our ownership of cognitive and volitional states that are not simply products of voluntary choices, and our status as personal agents of evil. Attending to these aspects of our lives challenges the idea that each individual's moral and spiritual standing is up to her or him, and drives us to ponder not only the shape of the freedom we seek and the nature of our responsibility, but also the need for grace we all share.

Blaise Pascal's famous Pens es (Thoughts) is, in reality, a collection of notes he made for a book he never wrote. Many of the thoughts are fragmentary in nature, and the sectionalising and numbering was devised by a later editor. Yet they contain the key ideas of his religious philosophy, including his famous wager, as well as many other insights and ideas such as his celebrated comment on Cleopatra's nose. This is a new edition (not a scan) of the W. F. Trotter translation of 1908, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot.

This collection builds on the growing recognition and critical acclaim of Volumes 1 and 2 of "Violence, Desire, and the Sacred "with a distinct focus on media, film and television. It showcases the work of outstanding scholars in mimetic theory and how they are applying and developing Rene Girard's insights. Consistent with the previous volumes, "Mimesis, Movies, and Media" presents the most up-to-date interdisciplinary work being developed with the ground-breaking insights of Girard. This volume has a more popular focus with the contributors analyzing well-known films and television series. It brings together major Australian and international scholars working in this area.

The work of the later Schelling (in and after 1809) seems antithetical to that of Nietzsche: one a Romantic, idealist and Christian, the other Dionysian, anti-idealist and anti-Christian. Still, there is a very meaningful and educative dialogue to be found between Schelling and Nietzsche on the topics of reason, freedom and religion. Both of them start their philosophy with a similar critique of the Western tradition, which to them is overly dualist, rationalist and anti-organic (metaphysically, ethically, religiously, politically). In response, they hope to inculcate a more lively view of reality in which a new understanding of freedom takes center stage. This freedom can be revealed and strengthened through a proper approach to religion, one that neither disconnects from nor subordinates religion to reason. Religion is the dialogical other to reason, one that refreshes and animates our attempts to navigate the world autonomously. In doing so, Schelling and Nietzsche open up new avenues of thinking about (the relationship between) freedom, reason and religion.

Philosophers who wish to argue for the rationality of belief in God frequently employ a 'god-of-the-gaps' strategy. This strategy consists in trying to find a phenomenon that cannot be explained by natural science, and insisting that it can be explained only by reference to the activity of God. Philosophical discussion of miracles usually revolves around the attempt to link a miracle to God in just this way. One of the problems with this approach is that it is very difficult to identify anything as being forever beyond the power of science to explain. Science continues to advance upon the territory occupied by the god of the gaps. Thus it is desirable to develop an account of divine agency that will not be subject to revision in the face of scientific progress. This book is just such an account. Drawing on recent work in the theory of action, it shows that we can attribute God's agency to an event in nature without eliminating the possibility that it might be explained scientifically. In bringing God's actions out of the gaps, we avoid the possibility that future discoveries in science will make our talk of divine agency obsolete.

The phenomenological method in the study of religions has provided the linchpin supporting the argument that Religious Studies constitutes an academic discipline in its own right and thus that it is irreducible either to theology or to the social sciences. This book examines the figures whom the author regards as having been most influential in creating a phenomenology of religion. Background factors drawn from philosophy, theology and the social sciences are traced before examining the thinking of scholars within the Dutch, British and North American "schools" of religious phenomenology. Many of the severe criticisms, which have been leveled against the phenomenology of religion during the past twenty-five years by advocates of reductionism, are then presented and analyzed. The author concludes by reviewing alternatives to the polarized positions so characteristic of current debates in Religious Studies before making a case for what he deems a "reflexive phenomenology."

St Augustine of Hippo was the earliest thinker to develop a distinctively Christian political and social philosophy. He does so mainly from the perspective of Platonism and Stoicism; but by introducing the biblical and Pauline conceptions of sin, grace and predestination he radically transforms the 'classical' understanding of the political. Humanity is not perfectible through participation in the life of a moral community; indeed, there are no moral communities on earth. Humankind is fallen; we are slaves of self-love and the destructive impulses generated by it. The State is no longer the matrix within which human beings can achieve ethical goods through co-operation with other rational and moral beings. Augustine's response to classical political assumptions and claims therefore transcends 'normal' radicalism. His project is not that of drawing attention to weaknesses and inadequacies in our political arrangements with a view to recommending their abolition or improvement. Nor does he adopt the classical practice of delineating an ideal State. To his mind, all States are imperfect: they are the mechanisms whereby an imperfect world is regulated. They can provide justice and peace of a kind, but even the best earthly versions of justice and peace are not true justice and peace. It is precisely the impossibility of true justice on earth that makes the State necessary. Robert Dyson's new book describes and analyses this 'transformation' in detail and shows Augustine's enormous influence upon the development of political thought down to the thirteenth century.

The book is about my experiences in life and how those experiences introduced me to the wisdom of my very soul. It is a story about where I truly began as a child of God, who I thought I was because of where I was born, and how I became enlightened to the most profound kept secrets that were ever devised in the history of mankind. It is a story that unravels the mystery behind your suffering. Without realizing it, your soul has been hiding from you for many lifetimes, and by choosing to open up your heart and put aside your dogmatic beliefs for a while, your soul will reveal to you all the whys of you choosing the route of sin, physicality, earth, brainwashing, forgetfulness, and suffering as the means to remember who you are. If you are looking for clarity in life and how to overcome distress, grief, anger, and the pain you are feeling right now, then it becomes very important to understand who you truly are, where you truly come from, how miracles are created, and why you do the things you do. It is a story that touches on the human struggles of life and how to overcome them just by learning to connect to the wisdom of your soul. The story takes you all the way back to the first creation, known as the Garden of Eden, and how it relates to your evolution through time and space. When you live and make decisions from the mind of reason, from others long established interpretations of God's written words, and from what the experts assert what is best for you, your soul cannot bring forth the wisdom that you hold deep within your consciousness. Thus, you become more and more susceptible to turbulent experiences.

Afterlife argues that proper conduct was believed essential for determining one's post-mortem judgment from the earliest periods in ancient Egypt and Greece. affects one's afterlife fate. Dramatists and demonstrates that post-mortem reward and retribution, based on one's conduct, is already found in Homer. Pythagoreanism and Orphism further develop the afterlife beliefs that will have such enormous impact on Plato and later Christianity. for their understanding of virtues and vices that have afterlife consequences. both societies are compared. the elite: the king in Egypt's Pyramid Texts and the heroes in Homeric Greece. Nevertheless, we show that, from the earliest times, both societies believed that the gods, primarily Maat in Egypt and Dike in Greece, were responsible for the proper ordering of the cosmos and anyone's violations of that order would reap the direst consequence--the loss of a beneficent afterlife.

From Empedocles to Wittgenstein is a collection of fifteen historical essays in philosophy, written by Sir Anthony Kenny in the early years of the 21st century. In the main they are concerned with four of the great philosophers whom he most esteems, namely Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Wittgenstein. The author is not only one of the most respected historians of philosophy, and possibly the widest-ranging, but also one of the most successful at writing on the subject for a broad readership. In this volume he presents scholarly explorations of some themes which caught his interest as he worked on his acclaimed four-volume New History of Western Philosophy.

Designed to help readers deepen their understanding of Hinduism, and reflecting themes central to the study of religion and culture, Jessica Frazier explores classical Hindu theories of self, the body, the cosmos, and human action. Case studies from Hindu texts provide readers with direct access to primary sources in translation, ranging from ancient cosmology to philosophical teachings and modern ritual practices. Hinduism is often depicted as being so diverse that it is the most difficult of all of the world religions to understand or explain. Hindu Worldviews explains core ideas about the human mind and body, showing how they fit into concepts of the Self, and practices of embodiment in Hinduism. It draws on western theoretical concepts as a point of entry, connecting contemporary Hindu culture directly with both western and classical Hindu theories. Through the theme of the Self in classical Hindu sources, the chapters provide an interpretative framework for understanding classical approaches to ethics, liberation, and views of the body and the mind. These provide a key to the rationale behind many forms of modern practice such as divinisation rituals, worship of deities, and theological reflection. Reflecting central themes in courses on Hinduism and Indian Philosophy, Hindu Worldviews provides an accessible new perspective on both Hinduism and modern theory in the study of religion.

In "Freedom, Teleology, and Evil" Stewart Goetz defends the existence of libertarian freedom of the will. He argues that choices are essentially uncaused events with teleological explanations in the form of reasons or purposes. Because choices are uncaused events with teleological explanations, whenever agents choose they are free to choose otherwise. Given this freedom to choose otherwise, agents are morally responsible for how they choose. Thus, Goetz advocates and defends the principle of alternative possibilities which states that agents are morally responsible for a choice only if they are free to choose otherwise. Finally, given that agents have libertarian freedom, Goetz contends that this freedom is integral to the construction of a theodicy which explains why God allows evil."Continuum Studies in the Philosophy of Religion" presents scholarly monographs offering cutting-edge research and debate to students and scholars in philosophy of religion. The series engages with the central questions and issues within the field, including the problem of evil, the cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological arguments for the existence of God, divine foreknowledge, and the coherence of theism. It also incorporates volumes on the following metaphysical issues as and when they directly impact on the philosophy of religion: the existence and nature of the soul, the existence and nature of free will, natural law, the meaning of life, and science and religion.