Richard Dawkins claimed that 'no theologian has ever produced a satisfactory response to his arguments'. Well-known broadcaster and author Keith Ward is one of Britain's foremost philosopher-theologians. This is his response. Ward welcomes all comers into philosophy's world of clear definitions, sharp arguments, and diverse conclusions. But when Dawkins enters this world, his passion tends to get the better of him, and he descends into stereotyping, pastiche, and mockery. In this stimulating and thought-provoking philosophical challenge, Ward demonstrates not only how Dawkins' arguments are flawed, but that a perfectly rational case can be made that there, almost certainly, is a God.

Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations.
The characteristic methodology of theistic ethics is to proceed by asking whether there are features of moral norms that can be adequately explained only if we hold that such norms have some sort of theistic foundation. But this methodology, fruitful as it has been, is one-sided. God and Moral Law proceeds not from the side of the moral norms, so to speak, but from the God side of things: what sort of explanatory relationship should we expect between God and moral norms given the existence of the God of orthodox theism? Mark C. Murphy asks whether the conception of God in orthodox theism as an absolutely perfect being militates in favor of a particular view of the explanation of morality by appeal to theistic facts. He puts this methodology to work and shows that, surprisingly, natural law theory and divine command theory fail to offer the sort of explanation of morality that we would expect given the existence of the God of orthodox theism. Drawing on the discussion of a structurally similar problem--that of the relationship between God and the laws of nature--Murphy articulates his new account of the relationship between God and morality, one in which facts about God and facts about nature cooperate in the explanation of moral law.

The Great Goddess, in her various puranic and tantric forms, is often figured as sitting on a corpse which is identified as Shiva-as-shava (God Shiva, the consort of the Devi and an iconic representation of the Absolute without attributes, the Nirguna Brahman). Hence, most of the existing critical works and ethnographic studies on Shaktism and the tantras have focused on the theological and symbolic paraphernalia of the corpses which operate as the asanas (seats) of the Devi in her various iconographies. This book explores the figurations of the Goddess as corpse in several Hindu puranic and Shakta-tantric texts, popular practices, folk belief systems, legends and various other cultural phenomena based on this motif. It deals with a more intricate and fundamental issue than existing works on the subject: how and why is the Devi - herself - figured as a corpse in the Shakta texts, belief systems and folk practices associated with the tantras? The issues which have been raised in this book include: how does death become a complement to life within this religious epistemology? How does one learn to live with death, thereby lending new definitions and new epistemic and existential dimensions to life and death? And what is the relation between death and gender within this kind of figuration of the Goddess as death and dead body? Analysing multiple mythic narratives, hymns and scriptural texts where the Devi herself is said to take the form of the Shava (the corpse) as well as the Shakti who animates dead matter, this book focuses not only on the concept of the theological equivalence of the Shava (Shiva as corpse) and the Shakti (Energy) in tantras but also on the status of the Divine Mother as the Great Bridge between the apparently irreconcilable opposites, the mediatrix between Spirit and Matter, death and life, existence-in-stasis and existence-in-kinesis. This book makes an important contribution to the fields of Hindu Studies, Goddess Spirituality, South Asian Religions, Women and Religion, India, Studies in Shaktism and Tantra, Cross-cultural Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Postcolonial Spirituality and Ecofeminism.

The Insistence of God presents the provocative idea that God does not exist, God insists, while God s existence is a human responsibility, which may or may not happen. For John D. Caputo, God s existence is haunted by "perhaps," which does not signify indecisiveness but an openness to risk, to the unforeseeable. Perhaps constitutes a theology of what is to come and what we cannot see coming. Responding to current critics of continental philosophy, Caputo explores the materiality of perhaps and the promise of the world. He shows how perhaps can become a new theology of the gaps God opens."

This interdisciplinary study is the result of an international and ecumenical meeting of nineteen scholars held in New York at Easter 1998: the Trinity Summit. Biblical experts examine the scriptural roots of trinitarian doctrine, patristic scholars correct those who continue to misinterpret the trinitarian teaching of the Cappadocians and Augustine, and five scholars examine systematic and foundational issues like the viability of social models for the Trinity. The volume ends with a study of the Trinity in art and the challenge of preaching the Trinity today. Each of the papers presented here have been circulated to all of the contributors not only improving the chapters, but also establishing firmer links between the four sections of the book. The international reputation of the participants reflects and guarantees the high quality of this joint work.

Leaning into the Future seeks to explore what it may mean to believe in the "Kingship" of God and wait for his "Kingdom" by considering the fundamental role the Kingdom of God plays in the theology of Jurgen Moltmann and in the book of Revelation. Part one is devoted to how Moltmann understands "The Kingdom of God" as the fundamental symbol of hope for humanity, and how he sees the presence of God's reign and kingdom in history as hidden and paradoxical. Part two turns to the way the Book of Revelation uses royal and other political language in its portrait of the future and God's presence in history. In this second part, the book also seeks to explore how Moltmann and the Apocalypse may mutually inform each other, how Moltmann may help us read this biblical book today, and how it in turn may overcome some of the weaknesses in Moltmann's proposal.

Centuries before anyone could make sense of these fantastic warnings, the prophets declared that the mysteries of Revelation would not be understood until the Last Days. Verse by verse and chapter by chapter, Jack Van Impe, reviews John's portrait of history's final claims.

The underlying idea of the book is that most ordinary religious believers -- not philosophers or theologians -- do not realise how weak the case for Gods existence is. The Case Against examines the reasons why the belief has such a strong hold on so large a section of humanity, and attempts to show that the reasons are inadequate. The concepts involved in religious belief are examined in detail. It is shown that great difficulties -- of which believers are usually unaware -- are involved in forming concepts of entities from a higher -- perhaps spiritual -- realm. In particular, God and the idea of a life after death are examined and it is proposed that viable, coherent concepts are probably impossible in both cases. For many believers the God theory is seen as (a) explaining the origin of the universe, and (b) enabling the apparent injustices of this world to be righted in a life after death. The theory actually fails to do either. It is also shown, however, that the main alternative to theism, which is materialism, itself presents difficulties. No final answer is given, and it is accepted that (informed) puzzlement may ultimately be the only rational position. The God theory could perhaps be seen as an attempt to answer genuine problems. While it fails, it can nevertheless be understood and treated with sympathy. God: The Case Against is not intended for philosophers or theologians! Rather, the aim is to make the arguments accessible to intelligent, intellectually curious, open-minded people. The book attempts throughout to give clear, simple explanations of the issues, benefiting here from the authors own experience in teaching philosophy to young people.

Marx, Nietzche, and Freud are among the most influential of modern atheists. The distinctive feature of their challenge to theistic and specifically Christian belief is expressed by Paul Ricoeur when he calls them the "masters of suspicion." While skepticism directs its critique to the truth or evidential basis of belief, suspicion asks two different, intimately intertwined questions: what are the motives that lead to this belief? and what function does it play, what work does it do for the individuals and communities that adopt it. What suspicion suspects is that the survival value of religious beliefs depends on satisfying desires and interests that the believing soul and the believing community are not eager to acknowledge because they violate the values they profess, as when, for example, talk about justice is a mask for deep-seated resentment and the desire for revenge. For this reason, the hermeneutics of suspicion is a theory, or group of theories, of self-deception: ideology critique in Marx, genealogy in Nietzsche, and psychoanalysis in Freud. Suspicion and Faith argues that the appropriate religious response ("the religious uses of modern atheism") to these critiques is not to try to refute or deflect them, but rather to acknowledge their force in a process of self-examination.

In this book, B. Jill Carroll uses the nature writing of Annie Dillard and the philosophical categories of Emmanual Levinas to critique the models of God that drive contemporary political theologies, especially feminist and liberation theologies. These political theologies ignore the amoral and often harsh aspects of our existence in the natural world, even though they often align God with the cosmos. Political theologies excise from their models of God all notions of violence, indifference to social justice or general amorality in favor of models that support and advance specific social, political and economic ideologies. Such 'domestication' of God does not do justice to the hard facts of our existence in the natural world, nor does it fully plumb the depths of using nature to metaphorize God. Furthermore, Carroll argues that current political models of God do not survive the most important critiques of religion in the modern era, namely those leveled by Feuerbach, Freud and Nietzsche. Instead, the 'God of the oppressed' stands tall among any number of gods that exist primarily as projections of our best selves, illusions rooted in wish fulfillment, and attempts to further our own personal goals by claiming the universe is on our side. The Savage Side offers us a glimpse of a natural theology uninterested in apologetics, but thoroughly obsessed with using the natural world as a springboard for describing God. The God that emerges is wildly beautiful, terrifyingly indifferent to political or moral ideology, the consummate Other, and the ultimate ground of our being. This book demands to be read by anyone interested in the relationship between religion and politics, especially those who have given themselves to the cause of social justice in the name of God. Readers will be challenged to let go of comfortable, but outdated notions of deity despite their convenience for the advancement of certain social and political goals, like gay and lesbian rights, women's rights, or third world liberation. Indeed, the claim that 'God is on our side' emerges as the most problematic claim of contemporary constructive theology.

In Back to Revelation-Inspiration, Fernando L. Canale, analyzes the two main ways in which Christianity has understood the origin of biblical knowledge. Canale proposes a way to overcome them by suggesting a new model of understanding that maximizes their strengths and avoids their weaknesses. By allowing us to see and use biblical knowledge in a new light, the new model uncovers a new foundation for theological knowledge.

Winner of The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2022 Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2022 A The Times Books of the Year 2022 A fascinating, surprising and often controversial examination of the real God of the Bible, in all his bodily, uncensored, scandalous forms. Three thousand years ago, in the Southwest Asian lands we now call Israel and Palestine, a group of people worshipped a complex pantheon of deities, led by a father god called El. El had seventy children, who were gods in their own right. One of them was a minor storm deity, known as Yahweh. Yahweh had a body, a wife, offspring and colleagues. He fought monsters and mortals. He gorged on food and wine, wrote books, and took walks and naps. But he would become something far larger and far more abstract: the God of the great monotheistic religions. But as Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou reveals, God's cultural DNA stretches back centuries before the Bible was written, and persists in the tics and twitches of our own society, whether we are believers or not. The Bible has shaped our ideas about God and religion, but also our cultural preferences about human existence and experience; our concept of life and death; our attitude to sex and gender; our habits of eating and drinking; our understanding of history. Examining God's body, from his head to his hands, feet and genitals, she shows how the Western idea of God developed. She explores the places and artefacts that shaped our view of this singular God and the ancient religions and societies of the biblical world. And in doing so she analyses not only the origins of our oldest monotheistic religions, but also the origins of Western culture. Beautifully written, passionately argued and frequently controversial, God: An Anatomy is cultural history on a grand scale. 'Rivetingly fresh and stunning' - Sunday Times 'One of the most remarkable historians and communicators working today' - Dan Snow

Provides the requisite knowledge and practical guidelines for some of the most common counseling situations.

Today's rabbis, in addition to being spiritual leaders of their congregations, are also expected to be competent counselors to members of their community. Yet rabbis often feel inadequately prepared for the difficult challenges of their counseling role.

To many, rabbinic counseling appears deceptively simple, requiring no more than good intuition, fair judgment and sincere empathy. Good counseling, in reality, is a complex process requiring a combination of knowledge, skill, self-awareness and an understanding of human dynamics.

This groundbreaking book written specifically for community rabbis and religious counselors reflects the wisdom of seasoned professionals, who provide clear guidelines and sensible strategies for effective rabbinic counseling."

This book relates the value present in the natural world and in human creativity to an underlying purpose which it traces in creation. It opens by invoking the wonder aroused by nature's value and celebrated by poets, and moves to a cosmic purpose as the best explanation of this value. Natural evils are considered and set in their evolutionary context. Human creativity is later related to inspiration, and to traditional theistic teaching about the purpose of human life. Criticisms of "the value approach" are considered, together with the quest for meaning, and fears that Darwinism undermines it, which are found to be illusory. New ground is broken through this response to the spectre of bleakness. The author's previous studies of meaningful work are applied to the question of the nature of a worthwhile life and life's meaning. While the world's value is argued to point to creation by a transcendent lover of value, human beings are shown to be capable of augmenting that value through their creativity (not least through activities such as craftsmanship and gardening). In integrating the themes of value, creativity and purpose, the book contributes a new synthesis to the literature of philosophy, environmental studies and theology.

In the ancient conversation between Western philosophy and Christian theology, powerful contemporary voices are arguing for monologue rather than dialogue. Instead of these two disciplines learning from and mutually informing each other, both philosophers and theologians are increasingly disconnected from, and thus unable to hear, what the other is saying, especially in Anglo-American scholarship. Some Christian philosophers are now found claiming methodological authority over doctrine, while some Christian theologians even deny that philosophy has its own integrity as a separate discipline. Against these trends, David Brown has argued over the past thirty years that philosophy and theology are both necessary in order to grapple with the reality of divine mystery and Christian faith. Neither discipline can be reduced to the other, and each has its own contribution to make for a full understanding of what Brown describes as 'a single vision' of God. In this volume, Brown addresses some key topics in philosophical theology, including the created order, experience and revelation, incarnation and redemption, and heaven and our communal destiny. Combining analytic clarity, doctrinal substance, and historical depth, this volume exemplifies Brown's project of truly integrating philosophy and theology. It thus provides an ideal introduction to this vital conversation for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as a connected argument of interest to specialists in both disciplines.

The doctrine of the Trinity has been central to Christian faith since the fourth century, but it is often the cause of more confusion than understanding. The author here overcomes this by looking at it from the point of view of one who vehemently rejected it. Eunomius of Cyzicus was condemned as a heretic during his lifetime in the fourth century and after. Richard Paul Vaggione uses Eunomius' life to examine how the whole Christian community, including ordinary men and women, helped determine how this often abused doctrine was - and is - understood.

Seventy years after it took place, the Holocaust committed against the Jews of Europe during World War II continues to cast a giant shadow over humankind. Man's inhumanity to man is not a thing of the past. Genocidal action is still commonplace around the globe. Has humankind learned the lessons of the past? Is the human race doomed to live in a perpetual state of war and self-destruction? Explaining the Holocaust shows how, given the right circumstances, human beings can lose their humanity. Does that mean that the ethical teachings of the major religions are wishful thinking? This book tackles two questions that continue to be asked by people everywhere: Why did a highly civilized nation like Germany, in the middle of the twentieth century, commit the most heinous crime in all of human history? And if indeed there is a loving God who made a covenant with the people of Israel, why were millions of innocent, peaceful Jews dehumanized, starved, tortured, and systematically murdered? Explaining the Holocaust spares no one in discussing the enormity of the evil. But it also shows how the divine spark in human beings did not die during those years of darkness, and why we still have a glimmer of hope.

In this challenging and engaging discussion, F. Gerald Downing draws on evidence from Ancient Jewish and New Testament scriptures to analyse the changing history of the concept of 'revelation' within Christianity. Through the discussion of central concepts in the philosophy of language, such as reference and identity, Downing provides a comprehensive analysis of our notion of the concept of knowledge through revelation and self-revelation. Formation for Knowing God contains an overview of the history of the debate regarding the methods and extent of God's revelation, specifically his self-revelation. Downing argues that the conviction that God is selfrevealed stems from eighteenth-century Enlightenment debates, and has no roots in the early Christian tradition, from which we learn that God is incomprehensible. Downing rejects the view that it was the primary purpose of Christ's death to show God's love, claiming that this is unsupported by the scriptural evidence. The positive thesis argued by Downing is that what has been revealed to us is not a matter of knowledge but a matter of faith. Downing's Formation for Knowing God will challenge the assumptions of its readers, providing an alternative and thought provoking approach to the nature of knowledge and certainty within Christianity.

Is theology responsible to tradition or new insight? Institutional church or humanity at large? Spiritual or everyday existence? Revelation or scientific findings? In his new bookScience of God:Truth in the Age of Science, Kevin Sharpe proposes a method for doing theology which does not divorce it from the practical applications of science. Not only does this work establish that theology ought to be empirical in what it says about the world and God's relationship to it, but it also outlines a clear method for doing this. Science and theology can each share the same empirical method: when each attempts a description of any part of reality, it is relying on its own essential assumptions, or lens. When applied to theology, the method assumes the existence of God and then seeks the nature of God using falsifiable and verifiable techniques. Starting with the sciences that examine happiness-particularly biology, genetics, psychology, and social psychology-Science of God seeks to understand the spiritual nature of humans and, through it, the nature of God.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century the recovery by western Christendom from the Arabs, Jews and Greeks of the metaphysical treatises of Aristotle, and their translation into Latin, caused a ferment in the intellectual world comparable to that produced by Darwin in the nineteenth century. To vindicate traditional methodoxy Albertus Magnus undertook to harmonize the doctrines of the Church with the Peripatetic philosophy, and this work was carried to its conclusion by his pupil, St Thomas Aquinas, with such success that the latter has become the official philosopher of Roman Catholicism. The system of Aquinas centres in his conception of God, to the exposition and criticism of which this book is devoted.

A Theology for a Mediated God introduces a new way to examine the shaping effects of media on our notions of God and divinity. In contrast to more conventional social-scientific methodologies and conversations about the relationship between religion and media, Dennis Ford argues that the characteristics we ascribe to a medium can be extended and applied metaphorically to the characteristics we ascribe to God-just as earlier generations attempted to comprehend God through the metaphors of father, shepherd, or mother. As a result, his work both challenges and bridges the gap between students of religion and media, and theology.

William O'Malley provides persuasive answers to questions raised by the "new atheists," authors like Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) whose certitude that there is no God has sparked a national conversation between religious and scientific worldviews. Fr. O'Malley addresses the core issues with philosophical conviction and goes beyond the debate with heartfelt understanding for individuals, like himself, who sometimes doubt but always seek grace, understanding and truth. Help My Unbelief helps believers (and belief includes occasional doubt) to understand the issues, tolerate ambiguity in their lives, and continue their quest to see the invisible and know the unknowable. Knowing trumps believing. And O'Malley shows that there is a way of knowing that transcends argument and offers the possibility of moral certitude and certain assurance.

God and Necessity: A Defense of Classical Theism argues that the God of classical theism exists and could not fail to exist. The book begins with the definition of key terms and analysis of the concepts of God and necessity. Extended examinations of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments are given. The last chapters give an extended exposition and defense of the transcendental argument for God's existence. It is shown that rival accounts of the existence of universe, the Brute Fact and the Necessary Universe theories completely fail, while Necessary Deity, the concept of God existing in all possible worlds, succeeds. Only the latter can account for reality as it is, and can account for knowledge and justification.

This study is a new look at the question of how God can act upon the world, and whether the world can affect God, examining contemporary work on the metaphysics of causation and laws of nature, and current work in the theory of knowledge and mysticism. It has been traditional to address such questions by appealing to God's omnipotence and omniscience, but this book claims that this is useless unless it can be shown how these two powers "work." Instead of treating the familiar problems associated with omnipotence and omniscience, this book asks directly whether, and how, causal interactions between God and His world could occur: both between God and the physical world (miracles) and between God and other minds (mystical experience), as well as between the world and God (divine perception). Fales examines current thinking (which is diverse) about the very nature of causation, laws of nature, and agency.

In recent decades, scientific theories have postulated the existence of many universes beyond our own. The details and implications of these theories are hotly contested. Some philosophers argue that these scientific models count against the existence of God. Others, however, argue that if God exists, a multiverse is precisely what we should expect to find. Moreover, these philosophers claim that the idea of a divinely created multiverse can help believers in God respond to certain arguments for atheism. These proposals are, of course, also extremely controversial. This volume collects together twelve newly published essays two by physicists, and ten by philosophers that discuss various aspects of this issue. Some of the essays support the idea of a divinely created multiverse; others oppose it. Scientific, philosophical, and theological issues are considered."