For the first time classic readings on Jesus from outside of Christianity have been brought together in one volume. Jesus Beyond Christianity: The Classic Texts features significant passages on Jesus from Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. The fifty-six selections span two millennia of thought, including translated extracts from the Talmud and the Qur'an, and writings by Mahatma Gandhi and the 14th Dalai Lama.
The volume features fresh translations of important texts, 'Key-Issues' introductions, questions for discussion and guides for further reading. Importantly, each set of readings ends with an entirely fresh reflection from a leading scholar in the field. Every care has been taken to present these often controversial passages in a manner consistent with the aims of their authors; accompanying notes directly address challenging issues.
This unique collection of readings promises to become an essential resource in the study of the world's religions, providing rich guidance for anyone seeking to understand the central convergences and debates between religious traditions.

What if modern reason empowers us only at the cost of impoverishing thought? What if an ancient practice of philosophy could be rediscovered as a way of living? In a rural retreat in northern England, nine philosophers held regular meetings to discuss the nature of philosophy as a way of life. Posing a formidable challenge to the dominance of objective reasoning, they sought to build together a conception and practice of reasoning that is deeply engaged with the meaning of life, with dialogue, and with self-transformation. Here, as spokesman for this group, Philip Goodchild offers his readers insight into these symposium. Eschewing convention, these essays offer profound meditations on the meaning of life, reason, inwardness, virtue, love, and God. Echoing Plato, Kierkegaard, and Weil, this bold yet imperfect struggle for authenticity performs philosophy as a spiritual exercise, effects a new critique of pure reason, and changes what it means to think today. Like Socrates himself, this book offers a challenge to all.

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters. This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world, then She was emanated and constitutes the tenth, lower divine power, and even in this lower state She is sometime conceived of governing this world and as equal to the divine Male. Finally, She is conceived of as returning to Her original place in special moments, the days of Sabbath, the Jewish Holidays or in the eschatological era. Her special dignity is sometime related to Her being the telos of creation, and as the first entity that emerged in the divine thought, which has been later on generated. In some cases, an uroboric theosophy links the Female Malkhut, directly to the first divine power, Keter. The author points to the possible impact of some of the Kabbalistic discussions on conceptualizations of the feminine in the Renaissance period.

The first part of the book is grounded in biblical issues and in historical and philosophical theology. It seeks to establish several schemes of death theology related, for example, to early Christianity's Jewish cultural milieu, to belief in Christ's resurrection and to Christology, to issues of millennial belief and to an emergent liturgical practice. The rise of notions of the soul in relation to medieval thought and practice and the place of death in Reformation theology are both covered, as is the role of the nineteenth century and twentieth century. Finally the rise of biblical theology is considered, especially in the twentieth century. The second part of the book takes up several contemporary models of the theology of death. The first pursues a traditional acceptance of an other-worldly afterlife, the second explores worldly analysis of eternal life as a quality of contemporary existence devoid of any future state. The third develops the worldly model and considers a wider sense of self as a part of an ecological view of the world as a divine creation and explores the meaning of birth, life and death amidst a divine environment. "The Theology of Death" aims to offer some sharply defined schemes to focus thought in a Christian environment in which death, hell and heaven have almost lost their place. The topic of hope is a key element and the book explores the birth and fostering of hope within Christian traditions.

A number of passages in the Qur'an contain doctrinal and cultural criticism of Jews and Christians, from exclusive salvation and charges of Jewish and Christian falsification of revelation to cautions against the taking of Jews and Christians as patrons, allies, or intimates. Mun'im Sirry offers a novel exploration of these polemical passages, which have long been regarded as obstacles to peaceable interreligious relations, through the lens of twentieth-century tafsir (exegesis). He considers such essential questions as: How have modern contexts shaped Muslim reformers' understanding of the Qur'an, and how have the reformers' interpretations recontextualized these passages? Can the Qur'an's polemical texts be interpreted fruitfully for interactions among religious communities in the modern world? Sirry also reflects on the various definitions of apologetic or polemic as relevant sacred texts and analyzes reformist tafsirs with careful attention to argument, literary context, and rhetoric in order to illuminate the methods, positions, and horizons of the exegeses. Scriptural Polemics provides both a critical engagement with the tafsirs and a lucid and original sounding of Qur'anic language, logic, and dilemmas, showing how the dynamic and varied reformist intepretations of these passages open the way for a less polemical approach to other religions.

This volume presents Theodore Abu Qurrah's apologetic Christian theology in dialogue with Islam. It explores the question of whether, in his attempt to convey orthodoxy in Arabic to the Muslim reader, Abu Qurrah diverged from creedal, doctrinal Christian theology and compromised its core content. A comprehensive study of the theology of Abu Qurrah and its relation to Islamic and pre-Islamic orthodox Melkite thought has not yet been pursued in modern scholarship. Awad addresses this gap in scholarship by offering a thorough analytic hermeneutics of Abu Qurrah's apologetic thought, with specific attention to his theological thought on the Trinity and Christology. This study takes scholarship beyond attempts at editing and translating Abu Qurrah's texts and offers scholars, students, and lay readers in the fields of Arabic Christianity, Byzantine theology, Christian-Muslim dialogues, and historical theology an unprecedented scientific study of Abu Qurrah's theological mind.

Since the early 1980s there has been a philosophical turn to the analysis of Christian doctrines. This has been stimulated by the renewal of the Philosophy of Religion in the 1960s and 1970s by figures like Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, William Alston, Anthony Flew, Alistair MacIntyre, Marilyn Adams, Robert Adams and others. This new literature is usually dubbed 'philosophical theology', and has a wide range of application to particular doctrines, theological method, and the work of particular theologians in the past, such as Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Louis de Molina, Jonathan Edwards and Karl Barth. Yet there are very few (if any) textbooks devoted to this new work.The renewal of philosophical theology is of interest to theologians as well as philosophers. This textbook on the subject fosters this cross-disciplinary interest and make a literature that has developed in the professional journals and a number of monographs accessible to a much wider readership - particularly a student readership.It fills an important gap in the market, and should have a wide appeal for teachers at University and Seminary level education, as well as to postgraduate courses.

This volume provides an ethnographic description of Muslim merit-making rhetoric, rituals and rationales in Thailand's Malay far-south. This study is situated in Cabetigo, one of Pattani's oldest and most important Malay communities that has been subjected to a range of Thai and Islamic influences over the last hundred years. The volume describes religious rhetoric related to merit-making being conducted in both Thai and Malay, that the spiritual currency of merit is generated through the performance of locally occurring Malay "adat," and globally normative "amal 'ibadat. "Concerning the rationale for merit-making, merit-makers are motivated by both a desire to ensure their own comfort in the grave and personal vindication at judgment, as well as to transfer merit for those already in the grave, who are known to the merit-maker. While the rhetoric elements of Muslim merit-making reveal Thai influence, its ritual elements confirm the local impact of reformist activism."

This is a major contribution to the link between theology and philosophy, introducing the core ideas of Michel Foucault to students of theology. Near the end of his life, Michel Foucault turned his attention to the early church Fathers. He did so not for anything like a return to God but rather because he found in those sources alternatives for re-imaging the self. And though Foucault never seriously entertained Christianity beyond theorizing its aesthetic style one might argue that Christian practices like confession or Eucharist share family resemblances to Foucaultian sensibilities. This book will explain how to do theology in light of Foucault, or more precisely, to read Foucault as if God mattered. Therefore, it will seek to articulate practices like confession, prayer, and so on as techniques for the self, situate 'the church as politics' within present constellations of power, disclose theological knowledges as modes of critical intervention, or what Foucault called archaeology, and conceptualize Christian existence in time through mnemonic practices of genealogy. "The Philosophy and Theology" series looks at major philosophers and explores their relevance to theological thought as well as the response of theology.

Combining human interest stories with thought provoking analyses, Dr Evert Van de Poll paints the socio-cultural and religious picture of this exceptional continent: its population and cultural variety; past and present idea of 'we Europeans'; immigration, multiculturalism and the issue of (Muslim) integration; the construction of the EU and the concerns it raises; and the quest for the 'soul' of Europe. Special attention is paid to Christian and other roots of Europe; the mixed historical record of Christianity; vestiges of its past dominance; its place and influence in today's societies that are rapidly de-Christianising; and secularization as a European phenomenon. The author indicates specific challenges for Church development, mission and social service. In so doing, he outlines the contours of a contextualised communication of the Gospel.

The Christian Humanist ideas of six Catholic scholars who were based in Munich during the first half of the 20th century are profiled in this volume. They were all interested in presenting and defending a Christian humanism in the aftermath of German Idealism and the anti-Christian humanism of Friedrich Nietzsche. They were seeking to offer hope to Christians during the darkest years of the Nazi regime and the post-Second World War era of shame, guilt and reconstruction.