This volume asks how religious convictions inform citizens' engagement in American democratic life, particularly across deep political divides. Strong religious convictions motivate citizens across the political spectrum to engage in public life, yet are also viewed as a driver of political polarization by encouraging too much arrogance and not enough humility. Featuring contributions from leading experts on religion and democratic life in the United States, this volume combines theoretical reflections on this tension with empirical investigations into how a range of religious actors balance conviction with humility in their public interactions with social and political others. Taken together, these contributions reveal that strong religious conviction can encourage political arrogance, but also humility; can lead to deepening political polarization that threatens democracy, but also commitment to movements for equality and justice that advance democracy; can encourage the building of walls, but also of bridges. Contributors also identify the factors and conditions driving each outcome, pointing to the roles of power, context, culture, institutions, and history in how different religious groups engage in political life. The lessons this volume offers will be relevant to anyone interested in the complex relationship between religion and American democratic life; yet they also matter beyond religious groups. After all, religion is only one possible source of strong convictions that drive public engagement. As such, the volume also offers more general insight into how conviction shapes citizens' capacity and willingness to engage with others across deep divides.

A new edition of the study of Syriac Christianity up to the early fifth century CE: its beliefs and worship; its life and art.
In this classic work, Robert Murray offers the fullest and most vivid picture yet available of the development and character of the culture, illustrating both its original close relationship to Judaism and its remoter background in Mesopotamian civilization. He is interested in the subsequent influence of Syriac Christian culture, particularly on European literature.
The largely revised Introduction (now assisted by a sketch map) locates Syriac as an Aramaic dialect, then traces the origins of Syriac Christianity, its relationship to Jewish Christianity and the Syriac Bible version, the character of Syriac asceticism (including Marcionism and Manichaeism), and of the Christian schools. Key Syriac terms are explained, and all citation of Syriac texts throughout the work are given in translation either by other scholars or by the author.
The second part of the introduction reviews the literature studied in the following chapters, concentrating on Aphrahat and Ephrem. In both parts, a number of positions adopted in the first edition are revised in the light of recent studies, the bibliographical details of which are given in the greatly increased number of footnotes.
This book deals with a topic of interdisciplinary importance, at the cultural crossroads of the ancient and medieval worlds of east and west, and of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students.

The concept of religious freedom is the favoured modern human rights concept, with which the modern world hopes to tackle the phenomenon of religious pluralism, as our modern existence in an electronically shrinking globe comes to be increasingly characterised by this phenomenon. To begin with, the concept of religious freedom, as embodied in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, seems self-evident in nature. It is the claim of this book, however, that although emblematic on the one hand, the concept is also problematic on the other, and the implications of the concept of religious freedom are far from self-evident, despite the ready acceptance the term receives as embodying a worthwhile goal. This book therefore problematizes the concept along legal, constitutional, ethical and theological lines, and especially from the perspective of religious studies, so that religious freedom in the world could be enlarged in a way which promotes human flourishing.

In this new translation, Laruelle offers a serious and rigorous challenge to contemporary theological thought, calling into question the dominant understanding of the relation between Christ, theology, and philosophy, not only from a theoretical, but also political perspective. He achieves this through an inversion of St Paul's reading of Christ, through which the ground for Christianity shifts. It is no longer the 'event' of the resurrection, as philosophical and theological operation (Badiou's St Paul), so much as the Risen Himself that forms the starting point for a non-philosophical confession. Between the Greek and the Jew, Laruelle places the Gnostic-Christ in order to disrupt and overturn such theologico-philosophical interpretations of the resurrection and set the Risen within the radical immanence of Man-in-Person. Forming the basis for a non-Christianity, Clandestine Theology offers a more radical deconstruction of Christianity, resting upon the last identity of Man and the humanity of Christ as opposed to endless deferral or difference (Nancy) or the universalising economy of Ideas and Events (Badiou).

A practical companion to the much-acclaimed Transforming Conflict through Insight, Practising Insight Mediation is a book about how insight mediators do their work and why they do it that way. In the book, Cheryl A. Picard, co-founder of insight mediation, explains how the theory of cognition presented in Bernard Lonergan's Insight can be used as the basis for a learning-centred approach to conflict resolution in which the parties involved improve their self-understandings and discover new and less threating patterns of interaction with each other through efforts to better their conflict relations. Practising Insight Mediation features a wide range of valuable resources for any conflict practitioner, including in-depth descriptions of insight communication skills and strategies, a transcribed example mediation, sample documents, and a mediator's self-assessment tool. The essential handbook for those interested in learning about and applying this fast-growing conflict resolution and mediation approach, the book also includes discussions of the latest research into the application of the insight approach to areas including policing, spirituality, and genocide prevention.

The presentation of the life and work of any great thinker is a formidable task, even for a renowned scholar. This is all the more the case when such a historical figure is a saint and mystic, such as Friar Thomas Aquinas. In this volume, Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, masterfully takes up the strenuous task of presenting such a biography, providing readers with a detailed, scholarly, and profound account of the thirteenth-century theologian whose works have not ceased to draw the attention of both friend and foe! In this volume, Fr. Torrell, an internationally renowned expert on St. Thomas, speaks to neophytes and experts alike: for those new to Thomas's works, he paints an engaging human portrait of Friar Thomas in his historical context; for specialists, he provides a rigorous scholarly account of contemporary research concerning Thomas's life and work. This new edition of Fr. Torrell's widely-lauded text involved significant revision, expansion, and bibliographical updates in light of the latest scholarship. The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to present such an eminent specialist's mature synthesis concerning Friar Thomas Aquinas.

For over twenty years, Beverley Clack and Brian R. Clack's distinctive and thought-provoking introduction to the philosophy of religion has been of enormous value to students and scholars, providing an approach to the subject that is bold and refreshingly alternative. This revised and updated edition retains the accessibility which makes the book popular, while furthering its distinctive argument regarding the human dimension of religion. The central emphasis of the philosophy of religion - the concept of God, and the arguments for and against God's existence - is reflected in thorough analyses, while alternative approaches to traditional philosophical theism are explored. The treatments of both the miraculous and immortality have been revised and expanded, and the concluding chapter updates the investigation of how philosophy of religion might be conducted in an age defined by religious terrorism. Clear, systematic and highly critical, the third edition of The Philosophy of Religion will continue to be essential reading for students and scholars of this fascinating and important subject.

What is the nature of Hell? What role(s) may Hell play in religious, political, or ethical thought? Can Hell be justified? This edited volume addresses these questions and others; drawing philosophers from many approaches and traditions to analyze and examine Hell.

The life and ideas of F.W.J. Schelling are often overlooked in favor of the more familiar Kant, Fichte, or Hegel. What these three lack, however, is Schelling s evolving view of philosophy. Where others saw the possibility for a single, unflinching system of thought, Schelling was unafraid to question the foundations of his own ideas. In this book, Bruce Matthews argues that the organic view of philosophy is the fundamental idea behind Schelling s thought. Focusing in particular on Schelling s early writings, especially on Plato and Kant, Matthews explores Schelling s idea that any philosophical system must be perspectival and formed by each individual student of philosophy, providing a unique new understanding to an important and often overlooked figure in the history of philosophy."

Morals and politics depend on a metaphysical backing. All reality is marked by certain necessary features and a divine purpose inherent in all reality defines the good to which all human life should be directed.
These are bold assertions in a climate where the credibility of metaphysics is widely denied. Indeed, for the past two centuries, Western philosophy has been marked by a consensus that questions about moral and political life should be considered separately from questions about ultimate reality. In this challenging work, Franklin I. Gamwell defends metaphysical necessity against both modern and postmodern critiques. The metaphysics vindicated is not the traditional form both critiques typically have in view, however. Instead, Gamwell outlines a neoclassical project for which Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne are the main philosophical resources. As it maintains the significance of theistic metaphysics, the book makes no appeal to religious authority but solely to common human experience, and on this basis articulates principles of human purpose and democratic justice.

This is the first booklength account of how Maurice Merleau-Ponty used certain texts by Alfred North Whitehead to develop an ontology based on nature, and how he could have used other Whitehead texts that he did not know in order to complete his last ontology. This account is enriched by several of Merleau-Ponty's unpublished writings not previously available in English, by the first detailed treatment of certain works by F.W.J. Schelling in the course of showing how they exerted a substantial influence on both Merleau-Ponty and Whitehead, and by the first extensive discussion of Merleau-Ponty's interest in the Stoics's notion of the twofold logos-the logos endiathetos and the logos proforikos. This book provides a thorough exploration of the consonance between these two philosophers in their mutual desire to overcome various bifurcations of nature, and of nature from spirit, that continued to haunt philosophy and science since the 17th-century.

In the Name of Friendship: Deguy, Derrida and "Salut" centres on the relationship between poet Michel Deguy and philosopher Jacques Derrida. Translations of two essays, "Of Contemporaneity" by Deguy and "How to Name" by Derrida, allow Christopher Elson and Garry Sherbert to develop the implications of this singular intellectual friendship. In these thinkers' efforts to reinvent secular forms of the sacred, such as the singularity of the name, and especially poetic naming, Deguy, by adopting a Derridean programme of the impossible, and Derrida, by developing Deguy's ethics of naming through the word "salut," situate themselves at the forefront of contemporary debates over politics and religion alongside figures like Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Marion, John Caputo and Martin Hagglund.

This book offers the first in-depth treatment in English language of Habermas's long-awaited work on religion, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, published in 2019. Charting the contingent origins and turning points of occidental thinking through to the current "postmetaphysical" stage, the two volumes provide striking insights into the intellectual streams and conflicts in which core components of modern self-understanding have been forged. The encounter of Greek metaphysics with biblical monotheism has led to a theology of history as salvation, expanding in bold arcs from Adam's Fall to Christ and the Last Judgement. The reconstruction of key turns in the relationship between faith and knowledge ends, however, with locating the uniqueness of religion in "ritual" and defining reason as inherently secular. The book exposes the sources and trajectories, analysed by Habermas with great erudition, to different assessments in biblical studies, theology, and philosophy of subjectivity. Apart from Paul and Augustine, key lines of continuity are identified in the Gospels, early patristic theology, Duns Scotus and Schleiermacher that retain the internal connection of faith to autonomous freedom.

The issue of whether or not there is a God is one of the oldest and most widely disputed philosophical questions. It is a debate that spreads far across the range of philosophical questions about the status of science, the nature of mind, the character of good and evil, the epistemology of experience and testimony, and so on. In this book two philosophers, each committed to unambiguous versions of belief and disbelief, debate the central issues of atheism and theism. Smart opens the debate by arguing that theism is philosophically untenable and seeks to explain metaphysical truth in the light of total science. Haldane continues the discussion by affirming that the existence of the world, and the possibility of our coming to have knowledge of it, depend upon the existence of a creating, sustaining, personal God. This is followed by replies, where each philosopher has the chance to respond and to defend his position. This second edition contains new essays by each philosopher, responding to criticisms and building on their previous work.

The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World brings St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger into dialogue and argues for the necessity of Christian philosophy. Through the confrontation of Heideggerian and Thomist thought, it offers an original and comprehensive rethinking of the nature of temporality and the origins of metaphysical inquiry. The book is a careful treatment of the inception and deterioration of the four-fold presuppositions of Thomistic metaphysics: intentionality, causality, finitude, ananke stenai. The analysis of the four-fold has never before been done and it is a central and original contribution of Gilson's book. The four-fold penetrates the issues between the phenomenological approach and the metaphysical vision to arrive at their core and irreconcilable difference. Heidegger's attempt to utilize the fourfold to extrude theology from ontology provides the necessary interpretive impetus to revisit the radical and often misunderstood metaphysics of St. Thomas, through such problems as aeviternity, non-being and tragedy.

While a number of books and anthologies on Ricoeur's thought have been published over the past decade, Ricoeur Across the Disciplines isunique in its multidisciplinary scope. The books currently available are typically one of either two kinds: either they provide a general overview of Ricoeur's thought or they focus on a narrow set of themes within a specific discipline. While other books may allude to the multidisciplinary potential for Ricoeur's thought, this book is the first to carry out a truly multidisciplinary investigation of his work. The aim of this approach is not only to draw out the nuances of Ricoeur's thought but also to facilitate a new conversation between Ricoeur scholars and those working in a variety of domains.

We are used to thinking of words as signs of inner thoughts. In Outward Signs, Philip Cary argues that Augustine invented this expressionist semiotics, where words are outward signs expressing an inward will to communicate, in an epochal departure from ancient philosopical semiotics, where signs are means of inference, as smoke is a sign of fire. Augustine uses his new theory of signs to give an account of Biblical authority, explaining why an authoritative external teaching is needed in addition to the inward teaching of Christ as divine Wisdom, which is conceived in terms drawn from Platonist epistemology. In fact for Augustine we literally learn nothing from words or any other outward sign, because the truest form of knowledge is a kind of Platonist vision, seeing what is inwardly present to the mind. Nevertheless, because our mind's eye is diseased by sin we need the help of external signs as admonitions or reminders pointing us in the right direction, so that we may look and see for ourselves. Even our knowledge of other persons is ultimately a matter not of trusting their words but of seeing their minds with our minds. Thus Cary argues here that, for Augustine, outward signs are useful but ultimately powerless because no bodily thing has power to convey something inward to the soul. This means that there can be no such thing as an efficacious external means of grace. The sacraments, which Augustine was the first to describe as outward signs of inner grace, signify what is necessary for salvation but do not confer it. Baptism, for example, is necessary for salvation, but its power is found not in water or word but in the inner unity, charity and peace of the church. Even the flesh of Christ is necessary but not efficacious, an external sign to use without clinging to it.