Most modern literature on the rationality of religious belief is primarily written from Christian and Secular perspectives, the introduction of a reflective Muslim perspective provides a fresh and alternative perspective. This work aims to pioneer an engagement with contemporary philosophical scholarship from the perspective of a reflective Muslim

Bringing together essays on topics related to Islamic law, this book is composed of articles by prominent legal scholars and historians of Islam. They exemplify a critical development in the field of Islamic Studies: the proliferation of methodological approaches that employ a broad variety of sources to analyze social and political developments.

While many readers of Paul's letters recognize how important his experience was to his life and thought, Biblical scholars have not generally addressed this topic head-on. Colleen Shantz argues that they have been held back both by a bias against religious ecstasy and by the limits of the Biblical texts: how do you responsibly access someone else's experience, particularly experience as unusual and debated as religious ecstasy? And how do you account responsibly for the role of experience in that person's thought? Paul in Ecstasy pursues these questions through a variety of disciplines - most notably neuroscience. This study provides cogent explanations for bewildering passages in Paul's letters, outlines a much greater influence of such experience in Paul's life and letters, and points to its importance in Christian origins.

Kantik Ghosh argues that one of the main reasons for Lollardy's sensational resonance for its times, and for its immediate posterity, was its exposure of fundamental problems in late medieval academic engagement with the Bible, its authority and its polemical uses. Examining Latin and English sources, Ghosh shows how the same debates over biblical hermeneutics and associated methodologies were from the 1380s onwards conducted both within and outside the traditional university framework, and how by eliding boundaries between Latinate biblical speculation and vernacular religiosity Lollardy changed the cultural and political positioning of both. Covering a wide range of texts - scholastic and extramural, in Latin and in English, written over half a century from Wyclif to Thomas Netter - Ghosh concludes that by the first decades of the fifteenth century Lollardy had partly won the day. Whatever its fate as a religious movement, it had successfully changed the intellectual landscape of England.

The Summa Theologiae is Thomas Aquinas' undisputed masterwork, and it includes his thoughts on the elemental forces in human life. Feelings such as love, hatred, pleasure, pain, hope and despair were described by Aquinas as 'passions', representing the different ways in which happiness could be affected. But what causes the passions? What impact do they have on the person who suffers them? Can they be shaped and reshaped in order to better promote human flourishing? The aim of this book is to provide a better understanding of Aquinas' account of the passions. It identifies the Aristotelian influences that lie at the heart of the Summa Theologiae, and it enters into a dialogue with contemporary thinking about the nature of emotion. The study argues that Aquinas' work is still important today, and shows why for Aquinas both the understanding and attainment of happiness requires prolonged reflection on the passions.

Muhammad founded a World-State as well as a faith; as Islam spread from its first centres, Muslim political thinkers had to apply the divinely revealed law of the Prophet to new circumstances. They had to relate new realities of power and authority to the ideal constitution which he had laid down and which his immediate successors had elaborated. Against this background Dr Rosenthal discusses the later Muslim philosophers who were influenced by the political thought of Plato and Aristotle. He shows how Greek thought modified the Islamic and yet was always subordinated to Muslim categories of thought and political needs. Dr Rosenthal thus surveys the chief traditions of Islamic political thought from the eighth to the end of the fifteenth centuries. He emphasises the basic unity given by the shared faith of the writers, without diminishing the individuality of each. Orientalists will welcome the book; so will historians of the medieval West, for it shows them the religious, political and intellectual positions underlying the expansion of Islam.

Today's shifting discourses regarding life and death are about theology, medicine, economics, and politics as much as they are about life and death. At the heart of one of these discourses is HIV & AIDS, a pandemic that allows for a slippery discussion about its origins and nature. Those who live in the borderland this pandemic creates are often blamed for the affliction; they are seen as 'dirty.' Yet, those who live or work with persons with HIV & AIDS know another story of marginalizing macrostructures that indicate that the issue is as much structural injustice as individual responsibility. Theology in the Age of Global AIDS and HIV is a courageous and challenging call to look at how dominant theologies have participated in the creation of 'risk environments' for susceptibility to this virus and to act so that our weeping and raging with the suffering helps us learn how to care for one another and be responsible theo-ethicists and global citizens in this age of global AIDS and HIV.

Today's shifting discourses regarding life and death are about theology, medicine, economics, and politics as much as they are about life and death. At the heart of one of these discourses is HIV & AIDS, a pandemic that allows for a slippery discussion about its origins and nature. Those who live in the borderland this pandemic creates are often blamed for the affliction; they are seen as 'dirty.' Yet, those who live or work with persons with HIV & AIDS know another story of marginalizing macrostructures that indicate that the issue is as much structural injustice as individual responsibility. Theology in the Age of Global AIDS and HIV is a courageous and challenging call to look at how dominant theologies have participated in the creation of 'risk environments' for susceptibility to this virus and to act so that our weeping and raging with the suffering helps us learn how to care for one another and be responsible theo-ethicists and global citizens in this age of global AIDS and HIV.

Many of us, even on our happiest days, struggle to quiet the constant buzz of anxiety in the background of our minds. All kinds of worries-worries about losing people and things, worries about how we seem to others-keep us from peace of mind. Distracted or misled by our preoccupations, misconceptions, and, most of all, our obsession with ourselves, we don't see the world clearly-we don't see the world as it really is. In our search for happiness and the good life, this is the main problem. But luckily there is a solution, and on the path to understanding it, we can make use of the rich and varied teachings that have developed over centuries of Buddhist thought. With clarity and compassion, Nicolas Bommarito explores the central elements of centuries of Buddhist philosophy and practice, explaining how they can improve your life and teach you to live without fear. Mining important texts and lessons for practical guidance, he provides a friendly guide to the very practical goals that underpin Buddhist philosophy. After laying out the basic ideas, Bommarito walks readers through a wide range of techniques and practices we can adopt to mend ingrained habits. Rare for its exploration of both the philosophy that motivates Buddhism and its practical applications, this is a compassionate guide to leading a good life that anyone can follow.

Judah Halevi s Book of the Kuzari is a defense of Judaism that has enjoyed an almost continuous transmission since its composition in the twelfth century. By surveying the activities of readers, commentators, copyists, and printers for more than 700 years, Adam Shear examines the ways that the Kuzari became a classic of Jewish thought. Today, the Kuzari is usually understood as the major statement of an anti-rationalist and ethnocentric approach to Judaism and is often contrasted with the rationalism and universalism of Maimonides s Guide of the Perplexed. But this conception must be seen as a modern construction, and the reception history of the Kuzari demonstrates that many earlier readers of the work understood it as offering a way toward reconciling reason and faith and of negotiating between particularism and universalism.

In his now classic Two Powers in Heaven, Alan Segal examines rabbinic evidence about early manifestations of the "two powers" heresy within Judaism. Segal sheds light upon the development of and relationships among early Christianity, Gnosticism, and Merkabah mysticism and demonstrates that belief in the "two powers in heaven" was widespread by the first century, and may have been a catalyst for the Jewish rejection of early Christianity. An important addition to New Testament and Gnostic scholarship by this much revered scholar, Segal's Two Powers in Heaven is made available once again for a new generation.

The theology of the Eucharist has long been the subject of heated debate, particularly since the Reformation. George Hunsinger's book explores ways in which Christians might resolve their differences in this area. With the aim of fostering ecumenical convergence, he tackles three key issues dividing the churches about the Eucharist: real presence, Eucharistic sacrifice, and ordained ministry. Hunsinger, a Protestant theologian in the Reformed tradition, brings Eastern Orthodox views more systematically into the discussion than has been common in the West. He also discusses the social significance of the Eucharist. His detailed conclusion summarizes and clarifies the argument as a whole with an eye to explaining how the views proposed in the book could lead the churches, beginning with the Reformed church, closer to the day when obstacles to Eucharistic sharing are overcome. George Hunsinger has been chosen as the recipient of the 2010 Karl Barth Prize by the jury of the Union of Evangelical Churches in the Evangelical Church in Germany.

The theology of the Eucharist has long been the subject of heated debate, particularly since the Reformation. George Hunsinger's book explores ways in which Christians might resolve their differences in this area. With the aim of fostering ecumenical convergence, he tackles three key issues dividing the churches about the Eucharist: real presence, Eucharistic sacrifice, and ordained ministry. Hunsinger, a Protestant theologian in the Reformed tradition, brings Eastern Orthodox views more systematically into the discussion than has been common in the West. He also discusses the social significance of the Eucharist. His detailed conclusion summarizes and clarifies the argument as a whole with an eye to explaining how the views proposed in the book could lead the churches, beginning with the Reformed church, closer to the day when obstacles to Eucharistic sharing are overcome. George Hunsinger has been chosen as the recipient of the 2010 Karl Barth Prize by the jury of the Union of Evangelical Churches in the Evangelical Church in Germany.

This volume presents the theory of culture of the Russian-born German Jewish social philosopher David Koigen (1879-1933). Heir to Hermann Cohen's neo-Kantian interpretation of Judaism, he transforms the religion of reason into an ethical Intimitatsreligion. He draws upon a great variety of intellectual currents, among them, Max Scheler's philosophy of values, the historical sociology of Max Weber, the sociology of religion of Emile Durkheim, Ernst Troeltsch and Georg Simmel and American pragmatism. Influenced by his personal experience of marginality in German academia yet the same time unconstrained by the dictates of the German Jewish discourse, Koigen shapes these theoretical strands into an original argument which unfolds along two trajectories: theodicy of culture and ethos. Distinguished from ethics, ethos identifies the non-formal factors that foster a group's sense of collective identity as it adapts to continuous change. From a Jewish perspective, ethos is grounded in the biblical covenant as the paradigm of a social contract and corporate liability. Although the normative content of the covenantal ethos is subject to gradual secularization, its metaphysical and existential assumptions, Koigen argues, continue to inform Jewish self-understanding. The concept of ethos identifies the dialectic of tradition as it shapes Jewish religious consciousness, and, in turn, is shaped by the evolving cultural and axiological sensibilities. In consonance, Jewish identity cannot be reduced to ethnicity or a purely secular culture. Urban develops these fragmentary and inchoate theories into a sociology of religious knowledge and suggests to read Koigen not just as a Jewish sociologist but as the first sociologist of Judaism who proposes to overcome the dogmatic anti-metaphysical stance of European sociology.

In early modern England, religious sorrow was seen as a form of spiritual dialogue between the soul and God, expressing how divine grace operates at the level of human emotion. Through close readings of both Protestant and Catholic poetry, Kuchar explains how the discourses of 'devout melancholy' helped generate some of the most engaging religious verse of the period. From Robert Southwell to John Milton, from Aemilia Lanyer to John Donne, the language of 'holy mourning' informed how poets represented the most intimate and enigmatic aspects of faith as lived experience. In turn, 'holy mourning' served as a way of registering some of the most pressing theological issues of the day. By tracing poetic representations of religious sorrow from Crashaw's devotional verse to Shakespeare's weeping kings, Kuchar expands our understanding of the interconnections between poetry, theology, and emotion in post-Reformation England.

Lion DuFour's Dictionary of Biblical Theology is written for Catholics who want to better understand the Bible. Seventy distinguished scholars and eighteen specialized translators have collaborated to produce this classic in Catholic biblical studies. The Dictionary presents the key theological concepts of the Bible in a way helpful to both the scholar and average reader. This Updated Second Edition includes: More than 350 topics and biblical terms such as faith, the Eucharist, and prayer Solid Catholic biblical perspective Dozens of Scripture references for each topic

Taking its cue from the renewed interest in theology among Marxist and politically radical philosophers or thinkers, this study inquires into the reasons for this interest in theology focusing on the British literary theorist Terry Eagleton and the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek, as two contemporary prominent Marxist thinkers.

"The Fatigue of the Shari'a" places on a continuum two kinds of debates: debates in the Islamic tradition about the end of access to divine guidance and debates in modern scholarship in Islamic legal studies about the end of the Shari'a. The resulting continuum covers what access to divine guidance means and how it relates to Shari'a, whether the end of this access is possible, and what should be done in this case. The study is based on textual analysis of medieval legal and theological texts as well as analysis of recent arguments about the death of the Shari'a.

The Fatigue of the Shari'a places on a continuum two kinds of debates: debates in the Islamic tradition about the end of access to divine guidance and debates in modern scholarship in Islamic legal studies about the end of the Shari'a. The resulting continuum covers what access to divine guidance means and how it relates to Shari'a.

This book presents the teaching and practices of Islam as a spiritual training system. It is a corrective to certain misconceptions and distortions of Islam that abound, and it can serve equally well to introduce non-Muslims to Islam, as well as to enhance Muslims' understanding of their own faith. (World Religions)

This companion volume to "Judaism and Other Religions" provides the first extensive collection of traditional and academic Jewish approaches to the religions of the world, focusing on those Jewish thinkers that actually encounter the other world religions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism--that is, it moves beyond the theory of inclusive/exclusive/pluralistic categories and looks at Judaism's interactions with other faiths "in practice."

Graham Ward argues that the study of theology and religion, as a single academic discipline, plays a vital role in helping us to understand politics, world affairs, and the nature of humanity itself. Religion can be used to justify inhumane actions, but it also feeds dreams, inspires hopes, and shapes aspirations. By invoking a sense of wonder about the natural world, religion can promote scientific discoveries, and by focusing on shared experiences, religion helps to bind societies together. Some scientists now believe that religious feeling might be hard-wired into our DNA, a fundamental aspect of what makes us human. Because religion is rooted in the imagination itself, its study involves staring into the profundities of who we are. Religion will not go away, so it needs to be understood.

Ben Sira lived in an era when Hellenistic influences continued to spread in Palestine. The supreme political power was in the hands of foreign rulers. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that Ben Sira discusses the position of foreign nations in several passages. The tone varies due to the given context. This study demonstrates that Ben Sira's relationship to foreign nations is best defined as "balanced", as his attitude is neither thoroughly hostile nor that of uncritically embracing Gentiles. On the basis of certain passages, one can get the impression that even the foreigners could be recipients of the Torah. On the other hand, some nations were regarded by earlier biblical authors as archenemies of Israel, and these anti-elect people caused also Ben Sira's anger to be provoked. Ben Sira was deeply rooted in Judaism but this did not prevent him from being open toward foreign influences as far as they were compatible with his religious and cultural heritage.

The Body Divine explores the ways in which two spiritual teachers, one Christian (Teilhard de Chardin) and one Hindu (RD=amD=anuja) have seen the world as inherently divine, and have presented this insight theologically through the use of a symbol, that of the "body of the divine" (the body of Christ/Brahman). In a careful study of their beliefs, Dr. Hunt Overzee shows how both thinkers came to understand reality in terms of consciousness, believing that salvation/release is realized through attaining the Lord. This goal is approximated through a changed view of things, in which everything is seen to belong to the Lord and to manifest His presence. The author compares those spiritual practices taught by each thinker in order to help people attain the Lord, and places these practices in a broader context of practices for transforming consciousness. In so doing, Dr. Hunt Overzee makes an important contribution to comparative theology, and uses her subjects as the starting point for an exploration of the wide-ranging implications of a religious symbol whose potency is perennial, cross-cultural, and of continuing contemporary importance.