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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Theology > General
In the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, it seemed there was
no place for German in Israel and no trace of Hebrew in Germany -
the two languages and their cultures appeared as divergent as the
directions of their scripts. Yet when placed side by side on
opposing pages, German and Hebrew converge in the middle. Comprised
of essays on literature, history, philosophy, and the visual and
performing arts, this volume explores the mutual influence of two
linguistic cultures long held as separate or even as diametrically
opposed. From Moses Mendelssohn's arrival in Berlin in 1748 to the
recent wave of Israeli migration to Berlin, the essays gathered
here shed new light on the painful yet productive relationship
between modern German and Hebrew cultures.
Help Your Teen Catch the Lifelong Reading Bug. Honey for a Teen's
Heart spells out how good books can help you and your teenager
communicate heart-to-heart about ideas, values, and the various
issues of a Christian worldview. Sharing the adventure of a book
lets both of you know the same people, see the same sights, face
the same choices, and feel the same emotions. Life spills out of
books--giving you plenty to talk about! But Honey for a Teen's
Heart will do more than strengthen the bonds between you and your
son or daughter. You'll also learn how to help your teen catch the
reading habit and become a lover of good books. Gladys Hunt's
insights on how to read a book, what to look for in a book, and how
to question what you read will challenge you and your teenager
alike. It's training for life! And it's fabulous preparation for
teens entering college. Including an annotated list of over four
hundred books, Honey for a Teen's Heart gives you expert guidance
on the very best books for teens.
This book is a journey into the heart of an Islamic worldview. It
asks challenging questions of far-reaching consequence, addressing
matters such as the Qur'an and revelation; rituals and symbols
embraced; nature of God, of humans, and of our knowing; dignity of
the human, sacredness of life, and more. It precludes easy,
prescribed answers, preferring instead thoughtful reflection on two
basic questions: What does it mean to love God? What does it mean
to be a good person? Carefully crafted responses are presented by a
group of scholars from Qur'an Studies, Worldview Studies, Women's
Studies, Cultural Studies and Religious Education. It uncovers a
dynamic understanding of Islam; one that meets challenges of the
present, counters harsh criticisms, and breathes new life into a
rich and longstanding tradition that continues to impact the lives
of billions of people around the world.
Combining evidence and theory, this book questions whether plant
life and creatures could all evolve from a few cells, all with
their own individual DNA, each with the intelligence of a thousand
computers built in. It discusses the Big Bang theory, where our
world began, the beauty of creation and all the world's elements.
What happened 6,000 years ago that dramatically changed our world?
In 1,500 years, humankind developed the ability not only to record
history, but went from living in caves to building palaces.
Something must have caused this change! Could it be that God
created a new Adam and Eve? Are Judaism, Christianity and Islam
based on myth or reality? Are we a unique combination of mind, body
and spirit? And finally, what is history, and how does it shape our
interpretation of the world around us?
A groundbreaking account of how the Book of Exodus shaped
fundamental aspects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam The Book of
Exodus may be the most consequential story ever told. But its
spectacular moments of heaven-sent plagues and parting seas
overshadow its true significance, says Jan Assmann, a leading
historian of ancient religion. The story of Moses guiding the
enslaved children of Israel out of captivity to become God's chosen
people is the foundation of an entirely new idea of religion, one
that lives on today in many of the world's faiths. First introduced
in Exodus, new ideas of faith, revelation, and above all covenant
transformed basic assumptions about humankind's relationship to the
divine and became the bedrock of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The 38th chapter of the Revival of the Religious Sciences, this
treatise follows on from "Al-Ghazali on Intention, Sincerity &
Truthfulness." Here, Ghazali focuses on the different stations of
steadfastness in religion (murabaha), vigilance and
self-examination being its cornerstones. As in all his writings,
Ghazali bases his arguments on the Qur an, the example of the
Prophet, and the sayings of numerous scholars and Sufis. As
relevant today as it was in the 11th century, this discourse will
be of interest to anyone concerned with ethics and moral
philosophy."
This book offers the first comprehensive introduction to one of the
most significant Arab thinkers of the late 20th century and the
early 21st century: the Moroccan philosopher and social theorist
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri. With his intellectual and political
engagement, al-Jabri has influenced the development of a modern
reading of the Islamic tradition in the broad Arab-Islamic world
and has been, in recent years, subject to an increasing interest
among Muslims and non-Muslim scholars, social activists and lay
men. The contributors to this volume read al-Jabri with reference
to prominent past Arab-Muslim scholars, such as Ibn Rushd,
al-Ghazali, al-Shatibi, and Ibn Khaldun, as well as contemporary
Arab philosophers, like Hassan Hanafi, Abdellah Laroui, George
Tarabishi, Taha Abderrahmane; they engage with various aspects of
his intellectual project, and trace his influence in
non-Arab-Islamic lands, like Indonesia, as well. His analysis of
Arab thought since the 1970s as a harbinger analysis of the ongoing
"Arab Spring uprising" remains relevant for today's political
challenges in the region.
This book is a study of religious principles of good governance in
our contemporary societies. Historically, religion has provided
guidance for organizing societies. In modern times, however,
religious ideas have been marginalized in social science
literature. Contributors to this work explore what values and
practices the Qur'an can contribute to governing our economic,
political, and social life today.
The first part of the book explains the antecedent probability both
of revelation and of God’s institution of a church. It is
ecclesiology in the mode of fundamental theology. The second part
rounds up what Scripture and Tradition teach about the Church under
the heads of the People of God, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the
Bride of Christ, and the Body of Christ. The chapters present this
thematic material under each head as a unified whole, across the
Testaments, with each chapter keyed to one of the “marks” of
the Church: the catholicity of the people of God, the apostolicity
of the ministers of the messianic temple, the holiness of the Bride
of Christ, and the unity of the Body of Christ. This already
organizes things in a proto-systematic frame. The third part of the
book gives systematic exploration, in reverse order, to the unity
of the Church, with attention to non-Catholic ecclesial communities
and churches, to the holiness of the Church, objective and
subjective, to the apostolicity of the Church and her mediation of
revealed truth and grace, and to the catholicity of the Church,
with attention to non-Christian religions. The center of the book,
on the definition of the Church as the sacrament of communion,
renders recent French Dominican ecclesiology in a form more
accessible to undergraduates and seminarians, rooting it in the New
Testament teachings on communion and mysterion. The book concludes
with a strenuous argument for the necessity of the Church and her
mission of evangelization. Thus, the trajectory of the book is from
the naturally knowable antecedent probability of the Church to its
revealed necessity.
Why is the cross the crux of Christianity? What are the meaning and
significance of the atomement? The Bible uses a host of terms to
illuminate the answers to these questions: covenant, sacrifice, the
Day of Atonement, Passover, redemption, reconciliation,
propitiation, justification. In plain English Leon Morris explains
each of these words, thus opening up for students, pastors and
teachers the fuller biblical dimension of God's great salvation.
Although a number of conferences have been organised in recent
years emphasising the social, civic and educational activities of
the Gulen Movement, as well as Gulen's contribution to
inter-religious dialogue, very little attention has been paid to
his formal and informal education, his scholarly works and his
interpretation of basic Islamic sources and disciplines in the
modern period. In fact, his expertise goes beyond the limitations
of modern academic compartmentalisation of Islamic studies. Gulen's
analyses have social, psychological, cultural and philosophical
dimensions that differentiate his Qur'anic exegesis from that of
his many classical counterparts. This edited book aims to explore
Gulen's personal and theological profile in relation to Qur'anic
exegesis (tafsir), Prophetic tradition (hadith), Islamic law
(fiqh), Islamic systematic theology (kalam), Sufism (tasawwuf), and
Muslim heresiography (al-milal wa al-nihal or firaq literatures).
The Book of Job has held a central role in defining the project of
modernity from the age of Enlightenment until today. The Book of
Job: Aesthetics, Ethics and Hermeneutics offers new perspectives on
the ways in which Job's response to disaster has become an
aesthetic and ethical touchstone for modern reflections on
catastrophic events. This volume begins with an exploration of
questions such as the tragic and ironic bent of the Book of Job,
Job as mourner, and theJoban body in pain, and ends with a
consideration of Joban works by notable writers - from Melville and
Kafka, through Joseph Roth, Zach, Levin, and Philip Roth.
A deeply personal look at death, mourning, and the afterlife in
Jewish tradition After One-Hundred-and-Twenty provides a richly
nuanced and deeply personal look at Jewish attitudes and practices
regarding death, mourning, and the afterlife as they have existed
and evolved from biblical times to today. Taking its title from the
Hebrew and Yiddish blessing to live to a ripe old age-Moses is said
to have been 120 years old when he died-the book explores how the
Bible's original reticence about an afterlife gave way to views
about personal judgment and reward after death, the resurrection of
the body, and even reincarnation. It examines Talmudic perspectives
on grief, burial, and the afterlife, shows how Jewish approaches to
death changed in the Middle Ages with thinkers like Maimonides and
in the mystical writings of the Zohar, and delves into such things
as the origins of the custom of reciting Kaddish for the deceased
and beliefs about encountering the dead in visions and dreams.
After One-Hundred-and-Twenty is also Hillel Halkin's eloquent and
disarmingly candid reflection on his own mortality, the deaths of
those he has known and loved, and the comfort he has and has not
derived from Jewish tradition.
This book opens with an examination of the meaning of the innocent
sounding category of "Integral Ecology" in contemporary thought and
its significance for theology today. According to well known Irish
theologian Dermot Lane, Integral Ecology changes everything. In
this book he focuses on the neglected implications of Integral
Ecology for systematic theology. Ecology challenges theology to
reimagine who we are, who the Spirit of God is, who Christ is,
where creation is going, and what is the role of liturgy in
society-- all in the glare of the ecological crisis. This book also
mines the theology within and behind the ground-breaking encyclical
Laudato Si': On Care for our Common Home. In listening to ecology,
Lane seeks to open a conversation between religion and science in
the context of climate change, to develop a theology of the natural
world, and to recover the lost link between creation and liturgy. A
new theology of the Spirit permeates most chapters as the key to
addressing the current ecological crisis as well as engaging with
the increasing number of people who describe themselves as
"spiritual but not religious". Until fairly recently, climate
change was left to the scientists, politicians, and activists. More
is needed. Now is the time to hear voice of religion in that debate
in the public forum with a view to initiating new, transformative
practices in society, in politics, and in religions. This new book
will be of interest to activists, politicians, priests, christian
educators, and theologians. The book is born out of the conviction
that climate change is not just one more problem to be addressed by
politicians; rather it is the challenge facing humanity in the 21st
century and as such is the challenge underlying all other
challenges at this moment in history.
This book provides a genealogical mapping of the
universalisation/secularisation thesis that is both widely saluted
and mistrusted as master narrative of modern political and
normative history. While accepting that foundational issues of
religions weigh heavier than political philosophy's aspirations,
the authors question the outdated suggestions of Carl Schmitt's
political theology, building instead upon a refined version of
Giorgio Agamben's close-reading of Christian government as
management. The book identifies Western-Christian tensions within
jurisprudence and concludes that the West's secular universality is
passing off as politics or law what is really the management of its
own dwindling primacy.
Focused on the work of the renegade missionary 'Ali Quli Jadid
al-Islam (d. 1734), this book contributes to ongoing debates on the
nature of confessionalism, interreligious encounters and cultural
translation in early modern Muslim empires. By disentangling the
connections between polemics and other forms of Islamic learning
and by emphasising the Shi'i character of the case in question,
Alberto Tiburcio accounts for the dynamism of polemics as an
ever-evolving genre capable of adapting to different historical
contexts.
This book discusses various dynamic facets of the life of Rashid
al-Ghannushi , a distinguished Islamic thinker and activist not
only in Tunisia and North Africa, but in the entire Muslim world.
It especially focuses on those aspects related to his intellectual
understanding and response to a number of critical contemporary
issues. In the 21st Century, Rashid al-Ghannushi is considered as
the most moderate among the Muslim thinkers and intellectuals,
particularly when it comes to the question of Islam-democracy
compatibility and power sharing theory. This book also offers an
account of a previously little known, yet much talked about Muslim
voice in the post-Arab Spring era. It further shows how the
intellectual Muslim thinkers' own perspectives and expectations
from Islamic movement(s) and their interaction with the 'western
oriented local leadership', as well as their (secular) policies
color their understanding of Islam and various other major issues.
This book considers the theory and application of ethics for a
multifaith society. Much ethics taught in the UK has been dominated
by Christian ethics, their relation to secularism and by the
Enlightenment's reaction against theology as a basis for ethical
thought. In contrast to these perspectives this book brings secular
and theological ethics into dialogue, considering the degree to
which secular ethics has common roots with theological perspectives
from various traditions. The book assesses the application of
ethical and theological principles in today's multifaith society.
Aiming to enhance ethical understanding and awareness across
divergent worldviews, identifying at what points divergence does
occur, the author examines topics such as reason and ethics in
theology, natural law, utilitarianism and deontology and
differences of approach to interpreting religious scriptures. The
focus on ethical methods is illustrated through topical concerns in
religion and ethics, for example sexuality, marriage and education
and religion in relation to global ethics and human rights.
For Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Torah is at once the oldest and the most
contemporary document directing human lives. In this highly
acclaimed, five-volume parashat hashavua series, Rabbi Riskin helps
each reader extract deeply personal, contemporary lessons from the
traditional biblical biblical accounts. As Rabbi Riskin writes in
the introduction to Torah Lights, the struggle with Torah reflects
the struggle with life itself. The ability of the Torah to speak to
every generation and every individual at the same time is the
greatest testimony to its divinity.
"This is a book about what it would mean to be a bit moody in the
midst of being theological and political. Its framing assumption is
that neoliberal economics relies on narratives in which not being
in the right mood means a cursed existence." So begins Grave
Attending: A Political Theology for the Unredeemed, which mounts a
challenge to neoliberal narratives of redemption. Mapping the
contemporary state of political theology, Karen Bray brings it to
bear upon secularism, Marxist thought, affect theory, queer
temporality, and other critical modes as a way to refuse separating
one's personal mood from the political or philosophical.
Introducing the concept of bipolar time, she offers a critique of
neoliberal temporality by countering capitalist priorities of
efficiency through the experiences of mania and depression. And it
is here Bray makes her crucial critical turn, one that values the
power of those who are unredeemed in the eyes of liberal
democracy-those too slow, too mad, too depressed to be of
productive worth-suggesting forms of utopia in the poetics of crip
theory and ordinary habit. Through performances of what she calls
grave attending-being brought down by the gravity of what is and
listening to the ghosts of what might have been-Bray asks readers
to choose collective care over individual overcoming. Grave
Attending brings critical questions of embodiment, history, and
power to the fields of political theology, radical theology,
secular theology, and the continental philosophy of religion.
Scholars interested in addressing the lack of intersectional
engagement within these fields will find this work invaluable. As
the forces of neoliberalism demand we be productive, efficient,
happy, and flexible in order to be deemed worthy subjects, Grave
Attending offers another model for living politically, emotionally,
and theologically. Instead of submitting to such a market-driven
concept of salvation, this book insists that we remain mad, moody,
and unredeemed. Drawing on theories of affect, temporality,
disability, queerness, work, and race, Bray persuades us that
embodying more just forms of sociality comes not in spite of
irredeemable moods, but through them.
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