Monotheism is usually considered Judaism's greatest contribution to world culture, but it is far from clear what monotheism is. This work examines the notion that monotheism is not so much a claim about the number of God as a claim about the nature of God. Seeskin argues that the idea of a God who is separate from his creation and unique is not just an abstraction but a suitable basis for worship. He examines this conclusion in the contexts of prayer, creation, sabbath observance, repentance, religious freedom, and love of God. Maimonides plays a central role in the argument both because of his importance to Jewish self-understanding and because he deals with the question of how philosophic ideas are embodied in religious ritual.

The Triune God, together with the forthcoming second volume, The Works of God, develops a compendious statement of Christian theology in the tradition of a medieval summa, or of such modern works as those of Schleiermacher and Barth. Theology, as it is understood here, is the Christian church's continuing discourse concerning her specific communal purpose; it is the hermeneutic and critical reflection internal to the church's task of speaking the gospel, to the world as message and to God in petition and praise. This volume and its successor are thus dedicated to the service of the one church of the creeds; it is for no particular denomination or confession. The interlocutors of this work's analyses and proposals are drawn from wherever in the ecumenical tradition a question may lead: to theologians and traditions ancient, medieval, or modern; Eastern or Western; Catholic or Protestant.

This book explores a variety of biblical texts in order to clarify and better understand the relationship between the individual and the community in ancient Israel. Although much of the argument is focused upon Deuteronomy and the deuteronomistic history, other pentateuchal and prophetic texts are also probed. In particular, certain instances of divine retribution that are corporate in nature are explored, and it is argued that such punishments are quite common and completely understandable of the basic theological ideas that are operative in such cases. The examination turns to other biblical texts that appear to reject the notion of corporate divine retribution (e.g., Ezekiel 18). Here the focus is on whether these texts do in fact reject all forms of corporate divine retribution and how large a shift these texts signal in the biblical understanding of the relationship between the individual and the community. Finally, Kaminsky asserts that certain theological features explored in this study can be used by those scholars who argue that the enlightenment idea of individualism needs to be balanced by a renewed philosophical and theological emphasis on the individual's responsibility to the larger society.>

Spirituality without God is the first global survey of "godless" spirituality. Long before "spiritual but not religious" became the catchphrase of the day, there were religious and spiritual traditions in India, China, and the West that denied the existence of God. Peter Heehs begins by looking at godless traditions in the ancient world. Indian religions such as Jainism and Buddhism showed the way to liberation through individual effort. In China, Confucians and Daoists taught how to live in harmony with nature and society. Philosophies of the Greco-Roman world, such as Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism, focused on enhancing the quality of life rather than buying the favor of the gods through sacrifice or worship. Heehs shows how these traditions, rediscovered during the Renaissance, helped jump-start the European Enlightenment and opened the way to the atheism and agnosticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The personal, inner, approach to religion became known as "spirituality." Spirituality without God is a counterbalance to theistic narratives that have dominated the field, as well as an introduction to modes of spiritual thought and practice that may appeal to people who have no interest in God.

As the only collection of essays to present, in a comprehensive way, the case against belief in God, this classic volume rejects the niew that moral values and human purpose require divine sanction. The arguments for God's existence, the validity of mystical experience, and the importance of the God concept for the development of morality and meaning in life are critically evaluated by sixteen well-known philosophers and psychologists. Included are works by Kurt Baier, John Dewey, Paul Edwards, Antony Flew, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Sidney Hook, Walter Kaufmann, Corliss Lamont, Wallace I. Matson, H.J. McCloskey, Ernest Nagel, Kai Nielsen, Richard Robinson, Bertrand Russell, and Michael Scriven. Included are discussions of the meaning of the existence of God, the relationships between faith and mysticism, reason and science, fate, the problem of evil, ethics without God, and immortality.

Questions regarding the role of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts in the life of the believer and the church today continue to be asked. Professor Max Turner suggests that the place to begin answering such questions is the New Testament. What do the writers of the New Testament say about the work of the Holy Spirit, and how can we understand spiritual gifts for today? Turner looks carefully at the gospels of Luke and John and the writings of Paul and explores how they took over and developed Old Testament and Intertestamental notions of the Spirit. Then he asks how looking at ancient witnesses informs our contemporary understanding. A comprehensive 400 page study that looks at issues such as prophecy, healing, tongues, and a Trinitarian Pneumatology in which Turner moves from the horizon of the original text with balance to the contemporary context. "The author intends to provide a middle way between Pentecostal theology and more traditional forms of Christianity. Readers from both sides will have to decide how much of this ideal Turner has actually achieved. From the perspective of more conservative theology, the book offers little interaction with sources outside of the Pentecostal/ charismatic and Evangelical traditions. From the Pentecostal perspective, the book hardly interacts with the experiential approach of a Pentecostal theology to spiritual gifts. To both sides, the book should therefore be perceived as an invitation to combine the wisdom and insights of the different traditions for a more inclusive and ecumenical perspective in the future. In this sense, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts has opened the doors to further dialogue and interactions not only on the formal academic level but also among pastors, church leaders, and others who seek to maintain the unity of the Spirit." -Pneuma Review

From young children, with their guileless, searching questions, to the recently bereaved, trying to make sense of tragic loss, humans wrestle with our relationship to God--and with God's essence, motivations, and power--throughout our lives: Why does God permit catastrophe and senseless tragedy, again and again? Is God's power limited in any way? Can He change the past? Does He know the future? Why does God require prayer? Why does He not provide stronger evidence of His presence? Whom does God consign to hell, and why? Does God change? Suffer? What can we make of the conflicting diversity within world religions, of the many gods of different religious traditions? Such questions engage, confront, and perplex us on a daily basis. In this rich, concise volume, leading philosophers who have long pondered God's nature and ways take on these core problems.

Is there a God? What is the evidence for belief in such a being? What is God like? Or, is God a figment of human inspiration? How do we know that such a being might not exist? Should belief or disbelief in God's existence make a difference in our opinions and moral choices, in the way we see ourselves and relate to those around us? These are fundamental questions, and their answers have shaped individual lives, races, and nations throughout history. On March 24, 1988, at the University of Mississippi, J.P. Moreland, a leading Christian philosopher and ethicist, and Kai Nielsen, one of today's best-known atheist philosophers, went head-to-head over these questions. Does God Exist? records their entire lively debate and includes questions from the audience, the debaters' answers, and the responses of four recognized scholars - William Lane Craig, Antony Flew, Dallas Willard, and Keith Parsons. Noted author and philosopher Peter Kreeft has written an introduction, concluding chapter, and appendix - all designed to help readers decide for themselves whether God is fact or fantasy.

In "Reclaiming Theodicy," Michael Stoeber explores various themes of theodicy - theology that defends God in the face of evil - by creatively developing a distinction between transformative and destructive suffering. Emphasising the importance of human compassion and illustrating various spiritual experiences of God that are healing, the book proposes a narrative of life within which one might understand suffering in relation to a personal God of ultimate power and love, and suggests basic principles toward developing a politics of compassion.

Does it make sense - can it make sense - for someone who appreciates the explanatory power of modern science to continue believing in a traditional religious account of the ultimate nature and purpose of our universe? This book is intended for those who care about that question and are dissatisfied with the rigid dichotomies that dominate the contemporary debate. The extremists won't be interested - those who assume that science answers all the questions that matter, and those so certain of their religious faith that dialogue with science, philosophy, or other faith traditions seems unnecessary. But far more people today recognize that matters of faith are complex, that doubt is endemic to belief, and that dialogue is indispensable in our day.
In eight probing chapters, the authors of The Predicament of Belief consider the most urgent reasons for doubting that religious claims - in particular, those embedded in the Christian tradition - are likely to be true. They develop a version of Christian faith that preserves the tradition's core insights but also gauges the varying degrees of certainty with which those insights can still be affirmed. Along the way, they address such questions as the ultimate origin of the universe, the existence of innocent suffering, the challenge of religious plurality, and how to understand the extraordinary claim that an ancient teacher rose from the dead. They end with a discussion of what their conclusions imply about the present state and future structure of churches and other communities in which Christian affirmations are made.

Explores the structure of human participation in the triune life. Focuses on the question of describing the 'members' of the Trinity as 'persons'; how language functions in describing God in such terms; and the underlying models which shape our theological perspective.>

Hofmann (1810-1877) was one of the most significant theologians of the 19th century and perhaps the century's most influential Lutheran theologian. Matthew L. Becker introduces us to Hofmann's trinitarian view of God. According to Hofmann, God freely chose to give himself out of divine love. Becker's book centers on Hofmann's understanding of history. In Hofmann's trinitarian kenosis, the eternal God has become historical by self-emptying God's self into Jesus. For Hofmann, world history can only be understood within the historical self-giving of the triune God who is love. Thus, for Hofmann all of history is salvation-history, a kind of history that embraces and fulfills God's purposes in the world.Matthew L. Becker is a Professor of Theology at Concordia University, Portland, Oregon. An ordained Lutheran minister, Dr. Becker has served congregations in Chicago and Orgegon. He is a co-editor of God Opens Doors, a history of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in the Pacific Northwest.

A fascinating exploration of the many faces of God and what they reveal about our own humanity He was a whole pantheon in Himself . He constantly appeared in many and ever-changing roles lest He be frozen and converted into the dumb idols He Himself despised. God was a polyvalent personality who, by mirroring to man His many faces, provided the models that man so needed to survive and flourish. This is the true humanity of God. from the Introduction In scholarly but accessible terms, with many startling and controversial insights, renowned Bible scholar Dr. Yochanan Muffs examines the anthropomorphic evolution of the Divine Image from creator of the cosmos to God the father, God the husband, God the king, God the "chess-player," God the ultimate master and how these different images of God have shaped our faith and world view. Muffs also examines how expressions of divine power, divine will and divine love throughout the Bible have helped develop the contemporary human condition and our enriching dialectic between faith and doubt."

If we are to believe many modern commentators, science has squeezed God into a corner, killed and then buried him with its all-embracing explanations. Atheism, we are told, is the only intellectually tenable position, and any attempt to reintroduce God is likely to impede the progress of science. In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, John Lennox invites us to consider such claims very carefully. Is it really true, he asks, that everything in science points towards atheism? Could it be possible that theism sits more comfortably with science than atheism? Has science buried God or not? Now updated and expanded, God's Undertaker is an invaluable contribution to the debate about science's relationship to religion.

While the problem of evil remains a perennial challenge to theistic belief, little attention has been paid to the special problem of animal pain and suffering. This absence is especially conspicuous in our Darwinian era when theists are forced to confront the fact that animal pain and suffering has gone on for at least tens of millions of years, through billions of animal generations. Evil of this sort might not be especially problematic if the standard of explanations for evil employed by theists could be applied in this instance as well. But there is the central problem: all or most of the explanations for evil cited by theists seem impotent to explain the reality of animal pain and suffering through evolutionary history. Nature Red in Tooth and Claw addresses the evil of animal pain and suffering directly, scrutinizing explanations that have been offered for such evil.

Can theology still operate in the void of post-theism? In attempting to answer this question Agnosis examines the concept of the void itself, tracing a history of nothingness from Augustine through Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Bataille and Derrida, and dialoguing with Japan's Kyoto School philosophers. It is argued that neither Augustinian nor post-Hegelian metaphysics have given a satisfactory understanding of nothingness and that we must look to an experience of nothingness as the best ground for future religious life and thought.

The claim that God is timeless has been the majority view throughout church history. However, it is not obvious that divine timelessness is compatible with fundamental Christian doctrines such as creation and incarnation. Theologians have long been aware of the conflict between divine timelessness and Christian doctrine, and various solutions to these conflicts have been developed. In contemporary thought, it is widely agreed that new theories on the nature of time can further help solve these conflicts. Do these solutions actually solve the conflict? Can the Christian God be timeless? The End of the Timeless God sets forth a thorough investigation into the Christian understanding of God and the God-world relationship. It argues that the Christian God cannot be timeless.

The main aims of this text are to establish that it is rational to believe that God exists; to show how God relates to morality; and to show how God is casually connected to his creation. The author defends a version of the ontological argument and refutes the atheistic argument from suffering. He argues that only God can account for the overridingness of morality. He also treats ethical supernaturalism as a type of ethical attitude theory, showing how it is related to secular theories which base valid judgements of moral goodness and evil on pro and con attitudes. He illustrates how, given scientific explanation, theistic explanation of the empirical universe can get a foothold. His method is to adopt and defend a version of theistic (Berkeley-like) phenomenalism and, in that connection, a pragmatic-instrumentalist interpretation of scientific theories.

Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur: Between Text and Phenomenon calls attention to the dynamic interaction that takes place between hermeneutics and phenomenology in Ricoeur's thought. It could be said that Ricoeur's thought is placed under a twofold demand: between the rigor of the text and the requirements of the phenomenon. The rigor of the text calls for fidelity to what the text actually says, while the requirement of the phenomenon is established by the Husserlian call to return "to the things themselves." These two demands are interwoven insofar as there is a hermeneutic component of the phenomenological attempt to go beyond the surface of things to their deeper meaning, just as there is a phenomenological component of the hermeneutic attempt to establish a critical distance toward the world to which we belong. For this reason, Ricoeur's thought involves a back and forth movement between the text and the phenomenon. Although this double movement was a theme of many of Ricoeur's essays in the middle of his career, the essays in this book suggest that hermeneutic phenomenology remains implicit throughout his work. The chapters aim to highlight, in much greater detail, how this back and forth movement between phenomenology and hermeneutics takes place with respect to many important philosophical themes, including the experience of the body, history, language, memory, personal identity, and intersubjectivity.

Goddesses often are labelled as one-dimensional forces of nature or fertility. In examining a number of goddesses whose primary role is sovereignty, this volume reveals the rich dversity of goddess traditions. Drawn from a variety of cultural and historical settings, the goddesses described here include Inanna of ancient Sumer, Oshun of Nigeria, and Cihuacoatl of pre-historical America.

The book '... should be assured of the attention of the many on both sides of the Atlantic who are fascinated by this subject.' John Hick