How should we look after the world we inhabit? Martin and Margot Hodson bring together scientific and theological wisdom to offer 62 reflections inspired by passages from the Bible in a thoughtful exploration that encourages both reflection and response. Themes include The Wisdom of Trees, Landscapes of Promise and Sharing Resources.

This book is designed to introduce readers to the world of Christian scholarship by way of primary literary sources. It contains the most notable and instructive primary sources from the entire sweep of Christian history, along with accessible introductions, line-by-line annotations, study questions, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading.

Six Minor Prophets Through the Centuries is the work of highly respected biblical scholars, Richard Coggins and Jin H. Han. The volume explores the rich and complex reception history of the last six Minor Prophets in Jewish and Christian exegesis, theology, worship, and arts. This text is the work of two highly respected biblical scholars It explores the rich and complex reception history of the last six Minor Prophets in Jewish and Christian theology and exegesis

The second edition of David Bentley Hart’s critically acclaimed New Testament translation   David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament, first published in 2017, was hailed as a “remarkable feat� and as a “strange, disconcerting, radical version of a strange, disconcerting manifesto of profoundly radical values.� In this second edition, which includes a powerful new preface and more than a thousand changes to the text, Hart’s purpose remains the same: to render the original Greek texts faithfully, free of doctrine and theology, awakening readers to the uncanniness that often lies hidden beneath doctrinal layers.   Through his startling translation, with its raw, unfinished quality, Hart reveals a world conceptually quite unlike our own. “It was a world,� he writes, “in which the heavens above were occupied by celestial spiritual potentates of questionable character, in which angels ruled the nations of the earth as local gods, in which demons prowled the empty places, . . . and in which the entire cosmos was for many an eternal divine order and for many others a darkened prison house.� He challenges readers to imagine it anew: a God who reigned on high, appearing in the form of a slave and dying as a criminal, only then to be raised up and revealed as the Lord of all things.

• Muslim expansion into the western Mediterranean in the Early Middle Ages had a great influence on Italy. Without minimizing the extent of the destruction that occurred in those centuries, this book presents the annotated sources translated into English for postgraduate and upper level undergraduate students about the way Muslims and Christians perceived each other. • Providing students with primary sources about the circulation of news about them, and their knowledge of their opponents, this book clarifies the relationship between Muslims and Christians in early medieval Italy. • This book allows students provides students with a fuller picture, not currently offered on the market. It enables them to see the dynamic between Muslims and Christians in early medieval Italy in a time of invasion and peace to better understand the relationship between the two religions.

Provides an overview of the fundamental history, diverse approaches, and ideas associated with this exciting and relatively new field of study. Each chapter features engaging case studies and ends with summaries and recommendations for further study with suggested readings. Written by leading academics in the field, this will be the go-to introduction to digital religion.

A fascinating analysis of the evolution of religion from the internationally renowned evolutionary psychologist When did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religion's evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured? Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the 'mystical stance' - the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world, and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible. As he explores world religions and their many derivatives, as well as religions of experience practised by hunter-gatherer societies since time immemorial, Dunbar argues that this instinct is not a peculiar human quirk, an aberration on our otherwise efficient evolutionary journey. Rather, religion confers an advantage: it can benefit our individual health and wellbeing, but, more importantly, it fosters social bonding at large scale, helping hold fractious societies together. Dunbar suggests these dimensions might provide the basis for an overarching theory for why and how humans are religious, and so help unify the myriad strands that currently populate this field. Drawing on path-breaking research, clinical case studies and fieldwork from around the globe, as well as stories of charismatic cult leaders, mysterious sects and lost faiths, How Religion Evolved offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of this quintessentially human impulse - to believe.

The Parish Church was the primary site of religious practice throughout the early modern period. This was particularly so for the silent majority of the English population, who conformed outwardly to the successive religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What such public conformity might have meant has attracted less attention - and, ironically, is sometimes less well documented - than the non-conformity or semi-conformity of recusants, church-papists, Puritan conventiclers or separatists. In this volume, ten leading scholars of early modern religion explore the experience of parish worship in England during the Reformation and the century that followed it. As the contributors argue, parish worship in this period was of critical theological, cultural and even political importance. The volume's key themes are the interlocking importance of liturgy, music, the sermon and the parishioners' own bodies; the ways in which religious change was received, initiated, negotiated, embraced or subverted in local contexts; and the dialectic between practice and belief which helped to make both so contentious. The contributors - historians, historical theologians and literary scholars - through their commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, provide fruitful and revealing insights into this intersection of private and public worship. This collection is a sister volume to Martin and Ryrie (eds), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Together these two volumes focus and drive forward scholarship on the lived experience of early modern religion, as it was practised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The first full, philosophical introduction to Descartes for many years – competitors are either out of date or considerably higher in level Descartes is the most important Western philosopher after Plato and studied by virtually all philosophy students at some point Explains and assesses Descartes’ most important ideas, arguments and texts, particularly his Meditations Concerning First Philosophy Ideal for anyone coming to Descartes for the first time Additional features include a chronology, a glossary and annotated further reading

How and why did the early church grow in the first four hundred years despite disincentives, harassment, and occasional persecution? In this unique historical study, veteran scholar Alan Kreider delivers the fruit of a lifetime of study as he tells the amazing story of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Challenging traditional understandings, Kreider contends the church grew because the virtue of patience was of central importance in the life and witness of the early Christians. They wrote about patience, not evangelism, and reflected on prayer, catechesis, and worship, yet the church grew--not by specific strategies but by patient ferment.