This book brings together international scholars of Islamic philosophy, theology and politics to examine these current major questions: What is the place of pluralism in the Islamic founding texts? How have sacred and prophetic texts been interpreted throughout major Islamic intellectual history by the Sunnis and Shi'a? How does contemporary Islamic thought treat religious and political diversity in modern nation states and in societies in transition? How is pluralism dealt with in modern major and minor Islamic contexts? How does modern political Islam deal with pluralism in the public sphere? And what are the major internal and external challenges to pluralism in Islamic contexts? These questions that have become of paramount relevance in religious studies especially during the last three-four decades are answered as critically highlighted in Islamic founding sources, the formative classical sources and how it has been lived and practiced in past and present Islamic majority societies and communities around the world. Case studies cover Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and Thailand, besides various internal references to other contexts.

Piloted by Reform congregations throughout the country, this book is the first step in a program of Hebrew learning for adults. By carefully introducing the letters and vowels of the Hebrew alphabet, the goal is to develop the reader's ability to decode written Hebrew words as well as to ground the learning of Hebrew in the broader sense of its use in Jewish life, ritual, study, and tradition. Each chapter introduces two or three Hebrew letters; through instructional drills and exercises, the reader progressively becomes familiar with key Hebrew vocabulary and its role in Jewish tradition, text, and prayer.

This book looks at the options for the future development of Church establishment in the UK. The future of church establishment in our ever more pluralized society becomes increasingly urgent; topical because of the heightened appreciation of the issues raised by the presence of non-Christian religious minorities.There is a need for an authoritative understanding of the relevant constitutional law and the options for changing it. With Church establishment largely locked in the geopolitics of the late 17th century, this study examines the case for change. How should the constitution respond to an ever more pluralized society; what are the implications for the religious character of the monarchy? This book helps readers consider such questions and reach their own judgments.

Grace: The Glorious Theme is an abiding classic by Lewis Sperry Chafer, who assures the reader about the ineffable beauty of God's grace in the Christian life. Published in 1922 to a favorable reception, Grace: The Glorious Theme has long been a favorite among Christians for its sincerity and simplicity. Then as now, the world was full of people raised as good Christians who had forgotten what it means to be a believer in God and Jesus Christ. Noticing such individuals, Chafer authored this manual to state the simple love, beauty and devotion which lays at the heart of a Christian life properly led. The superb and inspiring text frequently quotes the Biblical scriptures, reminding us of the many instances in which God's grace to Man is evident. Taking examples from both the Old and New Testaments, it is with lucid flowing truth that Lewis Sperry Chafer both convinces the reader and evinces the subject.

The Platonic tradition affords extraordinary resources for thinking about the meaning and value of work. In this historical survey of the tradition, Jeffrey Hanson draws on the work of its major thinkers to explain why our contemporary vocabulary for appraising labor and its rewards is too narrow and cramped. By tracing out the Platonic lineage of work Hanson is able to argue why we should be explaining its value for appraising it as an element of a happy and flourishing human life, quite apart from its financial rewards. Beginning with Plato’s extensive thinking about work’s relationship to wisdom, Hanson covers the singularly powerful arguments of Augustine, who wrote the ancient world’s only treatise dedicated to the topic of manual labor. He discusses Bernard of Clairvaux, introduces the priest-craftsman Theophilus Presbyter, and provides a study of work and leisure in the writings of Petrarch. Alongside Martin Luther, Hanson discusses John Ruskin and Simone Weil: two thinkers profoundly disturbed by the conditions of the working class in the rapidly industrializing economies of Europe. This original study of Plato and his inheritors’ ideas provides practical suggestions for how to approach work in a socially responsible manner in the 21st century and reveals the benefits of linking work and morality.

Using Christian communities in the former Yugoslavia as a case study, Branko Sekulic introduces the concept of ethnoreligiosity to the theological discussion in order to resolve the confusion that occurs when scholars talk about the concepts of ethno-religion or ethnoreligion. Ethno-religion/ethnoreligion came to describe the phenomenon of ethnic religion as a certain cultural specificity and which by itself has no negative connotation, but due to the lack of a better expression , it has been used as a term for the phenomenon of ethnic and religious conflict and discrimination. In that sense, ethnoreligiosity can be defined as a phenomenon resulting from the usurpation of the religious aspect of human life by the ethnic one, or more precisely, it emerges as a consequence of an ethnic (ethnonational) ideological overtaking of the structures of the religious organization. It takes place through the attempt to give sacral connotation to a particular ethnonational myth as an integral part of ethnonational ideology, with the result that religious feeling is no longer generated on a religious but primarily on an ethnonational base. By understanding the proper definition and manifestation of ethnoreligiosity, one will have the opportunity to discern the basic components of this phenomenon not only within the countries of the former Yugoslavia, but in other countries as well.

Similarities between esoteric and mystical currents in different religious traditions have long interested scholars. This book takes a new look at the relationship between such currents. It advances a discussion that started with the search for religious essences, archetypes, and universals, from William James to Eranos. The universal categories that resulted from that search were later criticized as essentialist constructions, and questioned by deconstructionists. An alternative explanation was advanced by diffusionists: that there were transfers between different traditions. This book presents empirical case studies of such constructions, and of transfers between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the premodern period, and Judaism, Christianity, and Western esotericism in the modern period. It shows that there were indeed transfers that can be clearly documented, and that there were also indeed constructions, often very imaginative. It also shows that there were many cases that were neither transfers nor constructions, but a mixture of the two.

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of "negative revelation" in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate, becoming meaningless. Yandell argues that the disintegration of meaning in war is itself a meaningful experience; "revealing" comes to signify the presence of goodness and justice through the profound experience of their absence. The heart of this work adds a layer of complexity or depth to the term "moral injury" as a negative revelation. Yandell emphasizes the context and logic of war itself beyond the actions of individuals, paying specific attention to the U.S. led Global War on Terror. Moral injury as a negative revelation is a disintegration of false normative claims of goodness and justice, as well as a disintegration of one's sense of self oriented toward those normative claims. This disintegration is prompted by the recognition of life in the midst of war's diminishment of life.

This is an exploration of the religious aspects of Habermas' philosophy and the response from theology. With his theory of communicative rationality, Jurgen Habermas has been one of the most influential social philosophers of the 20th century and a major dialogue partner for theology in the different stages of his work. Systematic Theology and ecclesiology, Practical and Moral Theology as well as Religious Education have offered creative receptions and astute critiques. The book explores the origins of Habermas' thinking from the Critical Theory of the first generation of the Frankfurt School to his turn from the philosophy of consciousness to language, and to the development of his theories of the public sphere, of law, and democracy. The philosophical critiques of his work that are relevant for theology are explained before the successive phases of his view of religion are traced: supercessionism, coexistence, and finally co-operation in offering specific resources and shared criteria for public debate on the future directions of a technologically shaped pluralist culture. "The Philosophy and Theology Series" looks at major philosophers and explores their relevance to theological thought as well as the response of theology.

This study contributes to the debate over the function of Davidic sonship in the Gospel of Mark. In contrast to William Wrede's paradigm, Max Botner argues that Mark's position on Jesus's ancestry cannot be assessed properly though isolated study of the name David (or the patronym son of David). Rather, the totality of Markan messiah language is relevant to the question at hand. Justification for this paradigm shift is rooted in observations about the ways in which ancient authors spoke of their messiahs. Botner shows that Mark was participant to a linguistic community whose members shared multiple conventions for stylizing their messiahs, Davidic or otherwise. He then traces how the evangelist narratively constructed his portrait of Christ via creative use of the Jewish scriptures. When the Davidssohnfrage is approached from within this sociolinguistic framework, it becomes clear that Mark's Christ is indeed David's son.

Loriliai Biernacki and Philip Clayton offer a collection of groundbreaking new essays on panentheism. Not to be confused with pantheism-the ancient Greek notion that God is everywhere, an animistic force in rocks and trees-panentheism suggests that God is both in the world, immanent, and also beyond the confines of mere matter, transcendent. One of the fundamental premises in this book is that panentheism, despite being unlabeled until the nineteenth century, is not merely a modern Western invention. The contributors examine a number of the world's established and ancient religious traditions-Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, among others-to draw out the panentheistic dimensions of these traditions and the possibilities they suggest. Panentheism is not simply an esoteric, potentially heretical, and habitually mystical vision of the world's great religious pasts; it persists today with a proper name and a lineage. As this volume demonstrates, a new paradigm is emerging in modern panentheism, one eminently suited to a world view that can no longer shake off the realities of our evolving species and our evolving technological world. Panentheism's enticingly heretical vision of the relationship between the divine and matter has historically been denied a serious place in scholarship. As Panentheism across the World's Traditions shows, the dynamism between matter and spirit that panentheism offers has had a profound influence in the modern world.

Over the past several decades, scholars working in biblical, theological, and religious studies have increasingly attended to the substantive ways that our experiences and understanding of God and God's relation to the world are structured by our experiences and concepts of race, gender, disability, and sexuality. These personal and social identities and their intersections serve as a hermeneutical lens for our interpretations of God, self, the other, and our religious texts and traditions. However, they have not received nearly the same level of attention from analytic theologians and philosophers of religion, and so a wide range of important issues remain ripe for analytic treatment. The papers in this volume address the various ways in which the aforementioned social identities intersect with, shape, and might be shaped by the questions with which analytic theology and philosophy of religion have typically been concerned, as well as what new questions they suggest to the discipline. We focus on three central areas of analytic theology: methodological principles, the intersection of social identities with religious epistemology, and the connections among eschatology, ante-mortem suffering, and ante-mortem social perceptions of bodies.

This is the first book-length study of the thought of Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007), who became well known during his lifetime as the exponent of a dynamic spirituality of integral transformation, which he set forth in an extensive body of writings in both prose and poetry, mostly in English but also in his native Bengali. He held that all fields of human endeavor can be venues of spiritual transformation when founded in aspiration and contemplative practice. He is noted not only as a spiritual teacher but also as an advocate of peace, a composer and musician, an artist and a sportsman who created innovative programs promoting self-transcendence and understanding between people of all cultures and walks of life. This study of Sri Chinmoy's philosophy refers to these diverse activities, especially in the biographical first chapter, but is mainly based on his written works. The book's aim is to give to the reader a straightforward and unembroidered account of Sri Chinmoy's philosophy. It makes every attempt to allow Sri Chinmoy to speak for himself in his own words, and thus provides ample quotation and draws on his poetic works as much as on his other writings.

Jean-Jacques von Allmen's work was animated by three key insights: the Church both learns and becomes what it truly is when it gathers to worship; worship tells the story of God's salvation history and invites God's people into it; and by doing so, the church offers the world both a stern warning and a hopeful promise. The Swiss Reformed pastor and professor is among the most admired liturgical theologians of the twentieth century, but his work is largely and lamentably unknown to most worship leaders. In Church at Church, Ron Rienstra provides an introduction to this important thinker. He offers methodological and biographical context and then explores von Allmen's most generative insights concerning the church as it engages in its most foundational activity: worship. Viewed through the lens of the Nicene marks, Rienstra's exploration yields the outlines of a 'liturgical ecclesiology', a way to help the church think more deeply about its identity and to help its leaders shape the worship they prepare and lead today.

This book looks to the rich and varied Islamic tradition for insights into what it means to be human and, by implication, what this can tell us about the future human. The transhumanist movement, in its more radical expression, sees Homo sapiens as the cousin, perhaps the poorer cousin, of a new Humanity 2.0: 'Man' is replaced by 'Superman'. The contribution that Islam can make to this movement concerns the central question of what this 'Superman' - or 'Supermuslim' - would actually entail. To look at what Islam can contribute we need not restrict ourselves to the Qur'an and the legal tradition, but also reach out to its philosophical and literary corpus. Roy Jackson focuses on such contributions from Muslim philosophy, science, and literature to see how Islam can confront and respond to the challenges raised by the growing movement of transhumanism.