Jonathan Kvanvig presents a compelling new work in philosophical theology on the universe, creation, and the afterlife. Organised thematically by the endpoints of time, the volume begins by addressing eschatological matters--the doctrines of heaven and hell--and ends with an account of divine deliberation and creation. Kvanvig develops a coherent theistic outlook which reconciles a traditional, high conception of deity, with full providential control over all aspects of creation, with full providential control over all aspects of creation, with a conception of human beings as free and morally responsible. The resulting position and defense is labeled "Philosophical Arminianism," and deserves attention in a broad range of religious traditions.

Tracing a dialectical path, The Maturing of Monotheism emphasises the plausibility of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and kindred forms of monotheism and responds to anti-theistic challenges of our day. These include materialism, determinism, the denial of objective value, the pervasiveness of evil, and predictions of human individual and collective extinction. The book reviews traditional metaphysical ways of arguing for monotheism but employs a cumulative, more experiential approach. While agnosticism affects humanity's most basic beliefs, Garth Hallett demonstrates that there remains ample room for rational, theistic faith. Of keen interest to students and researchers alike, The Maturing of Monotheism offers new insights and approaches in this steadily advancing field.

Most contemporary versions of moral realism are beset with difficulties. Many of these difficulties arise because of a faulty conception of the nature of goodness. Goodness, God, and Evil lays out and defends a new version of moral realism that re-conceives the nature of goodness.

Alexander argues that the adjective 'good' is best thought of as an attributive adjective and not as a predicative one. In other words, the adjective 'good' logically cannot be detached from the noun (or noun phrase) that it modifies. It is further argued that this conception of the function of the adjective implies that recent attempts to provide necessary a posteriori identities between goodness and something else must fail.

The convertibility of being and goodness, the privation theory of evil, a denial of the fact-value distinction, human nature as the ground of human morality and even a novel argument for the existence of God are some of the implications of the account of goodness that Alexander offers.

Rationality and Religious Commitment shows how religious commitment can be rational and describes the place of faith in the postmodern world. It portrays religious commitment as far more than accepting doctrines--it is viewed as a kind of life, not just as an embrace of tenets. Faith is conceived as a unique attitude. It is irreducible to belief but closely connected with both belief and conduct, and intimately related to life's moral, political, and aesthetic dimensions.
Part One presents an account of rationality as a status attainable by mature religious people--even those with a strongly scientific habit of mind. Part Two describes what it means to have faith, how faith is connected with attitudes, emotions, and conduct, and how religious experience may support it.
Part Three turns to religious commitment and moral obligation and to the relation between religion and politics. It shows how ethics and religion can be mutually supportive even though ethics provides standards of conduct independently of theology. It also depicts the integrated life possible for the religiously committed--a life with rewarding interactions between faith and reason, religion and science, and the aesthetic and the spiritual.
The book concludes with two major accounts. One explains how moral wrongs and natural disasters are possible under God conceived as having the knowledge, power, and goodness that make such evils so difficult to understand. The other account explores the nature of persons, human and divine, and yields a conception that can sustain a rational theistic worldview even in the contemporary scientific age.

Offering an original perspective on the central project of Descartes' Meditations, this book argues that Descartes' free will theodicy is crucial to his refutation of skepticism. A common thread runs through Descartes' radical First Meditation doubts, his Fourth Meditation discussion of error, and his pious reconciliation of providence and freedom: each involves a clash of perspectives-thinking of God seems to force conclusions diametrically opposed to those we reach when thinking only of ourselves. Descartes fears that a skeptic could exploit this clash of perspectives to argue that Reason is not trustworthy because self-contradictory. To refute the skeptic and vindicate the consistency of Reason, it is not enough for Descartes to demonstrate (in the Third Meditation) that our Creator is perfect; he must also show (in the Fourth) that our errors cannot prove God's imperfection. To do this, Descartes invokes the idea that we err freely. However, prospects initially seem dim for this free will theodicy, because Descartes appears to lack any consistent or coherent understanding of human freedom. In an extremely in-depth analysis spanning four chapters, Ragland argues that despite initial appearances, Descartes consistently offered a coherent understanding of human freedom: for Descartes, freedom is most fundamentally the ability to do the right thing. Since we often do wrong, actual humans must therefore be able to do otherwise-our actions cannot be causally determined by God or our psychology. But freedom is in principle compatible with determinism: while leaving us free, God could have determined us to always do the good (or believe the true). Though this conception of freedom is both consistent and suitable to Descartes' purposes, when he attempts to reconcile it with divine providence, Descartes's strategy fails, running afoul of his infamous doctrine that God created the eternal truths.

Over the last two decades the distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher has started to make a serious case for pragmatism as the source of a new life in contemporary philosophy. There are some, like Kitcher, who view today's analytic philosophy as mired in narrowly focused, technical disputes of little interest to the wider world. What is the future of philosophy, and what would it look like? While Classical Pragmatism - the American philosophy developed by John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and William James in the 19th century- has a mixed reputation today, Kitcher admires the way its core ideas provide a way to prioritize avenues of inquiry. As he points out, both James and Dewey shared a wish to eliminate 'insignificant questions' from philosophy, and both harbored suspicion of 'timeless' philosophical problems handed down generation after generation. Rather, they saw philosophy as inherently embedded in its time, grappling with pressing issues in religion, social life, art, politics, and education. Kitcher has become increasingly moved by this reformist approach to philosophy, and the published essays included here, alongside a detailed introduction setting out Kitcher's views, provide motivation for his view of the "reconstruction of philosophy." These essays try to install the pragmatic spirit into contemporary philosophy, renewing James and Dewey for our own times.

This book offers a philosophical analysis of what it is to be a human being in all her aspects. It analyses what is meant by the self and the I and how this feeling of a self or an I is connected to the brain. It studies specific cases of brain disorders, based on the idea that in order to understand the common, one has to study the specific. The book shows how the self is thought of as a three-fold emergent self, comprising a relationship between an objective neural segment, a subjective neural segment and a subjective transcendent segment. It explains that the self in the world tackles philosophical problems such as the problem of free will, the problem of evil, the problem of human uniqueness and empathy. It demonstrates how the problem of time also has its place here. For many people, the world includes ultimate reality; hence the book provides an analysis and evaluation of different relationships between human beings and Ultimate Reality (God). The book presents an answer to the philosophical problem of how one could understand divine action in the world.

A concise and accessible introduction, this Reader's Guide takes students through Kierkegaard's most important work and a key nineteenth century philosophical text. Soren Kierkegaard was without question one of the most important and influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. "Fear and Trembling" is a classic text in the history of both philosophical and religious thought that still challenges readers with its original philosophical perspective and idiosyncratic literary style. Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling: A Reader's Guide" offers a concise and accessible introduction to this hugely important and notoriously demanding work. Written specifically to meet the needs of students coming to Kierkegaard for the first time, the book offers guidance on: philosophical and historical context; key themes; reading the text; reception and influence; and, further reading. "Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

This very important work offers penetrating dialogues between the great spiritual leader and the renowned physicist that shed light on the fundamental nature of existence. Krishnamurti and David Bohm probe such questions as 'why has humanity made thought so important in every aspect of life? How does one cleanse the mind of the 'accumulation of time' and break the 'pattern of ego -centered activity'?The Ending of Time concludes by referring to the wrong turn humanity has taken, but does not see this as something from which there is no escape. There is an insistence that mankind can change fundamentally; but this requires going from one's narrow and particular interests toward the general, and ultimately moving still deeper into that purity of compassion, love and intelligence that originates beyond thought, time, or even emptiness.

"The Emerging Religion of Science" is a broad and erudite examination of the individual's place in the modern world. What can we believe today that will not betray us tomorrow? the author asks. Religion is losing influence. But the scientist, who explores the laws of nature, may be the modern guide to meaning. The mathematical equations of science have become unifying elements of the world as we know it. The author explores ways to face today's problems within the context of good and evil, freedom and restraint, probability and certainty, the real and the illusory, and the concept of self. He offers the view that, thought the paths we take may be different, we are all searching for the same thing: a thread on which the beads of experience and education can be strung.

Offers essays and dialogues by well-known Buddhist and Christian scholars on topics that were of primary interest to Frederick J. Streng, in whose honour the volume was created. Topics include interreligious dialogue, ultimate reality, nature and ecology, social and political issues of liberation, and ultimate transformation or liberation.

The Muslim thinker al-Ghazali (d. 1111) was one of the most influential theologians and philosophers of Islam and has been considered an authority in both Western and Islamic philosophical traditions. Born in northeastern Iran, he held the most prestigious academic post in Islamic theology in Baghdad, only to renounce the position and teach at small schools in the provinces for no money. His contributions to Islamic scholarship range from responding to the challenges of Aristotelian philosophy to creating a new type of Islamic mysticism and integrating both these traditions-falsafa and Sufism-into the Sunni mainstream.
This book offers a comprehensive study of al-Ghazali's life and his understanding of cosmology-how God creates things and events in the world, how human acts relate to God's power, and how the universe is structured. Frank Griffel presents a serious revision of traditional views on al-Ghazali, showing that his most important achievement was the creation of a new rationalist theology in which he transformed the Aristotelian views of thinkers such as Avicenna to accord with intellectual currents that were well-established within Muslim theological discourse. Using the most authoritative sources, including reports from al-Ghazali's students, his contemporaries, and his own letters, Griffel reconstructs every stage in a turbulent career. The al-Ghazali that emerges offers many surprises, particularly on his motives for leaving Baghdad and the nature of his "seclusion" afterwards. Griffel demonstrates that al-Ghazali intended to create a new cosmology that moved away from concerns held earlier by Muslim theologians and Arab philosophers. This new theology aimed to provide a framework for the pursuit of the natural sciences and a basis for Islamic science and philosophy to flourish beyond the 12th century.
Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology is the most thorough examination to date of this important thinker.