In recent philosophical discourse, there has been a proliferation of work in the field of philosophy of religion, and in particular at the intersection between epistemology and philosophy of religion. Much of that interest has centred on the emergence of what has come to be known as 'Reformed Epistemology'. The central claim of Reformed epistemologists is that belief in God is properly basic. The purpose of the arguments offered by Reformed epistemologists is to oppose what Plantinga calls the 'de jure' objection to theistic belief - the idea that it is somehow irrational, a dereliction of epistemic duty, or in some other sense epistemically unacceptable, to believe in God. This objection is distinct from what Plantinga labels the 'de facto' objection - the objection that, whatever the rational status of belief in God, it is, in fact, a false belief. The primary goal of Reformed epistemology, then, is to defend Christian belief against the de jure objection, thereby showing that everything really depends on the truth of Christian belief. This book demonstrates the feasibility of combining the Reformed epistemologist's position with an argument for theism that the author draws from Charles Taylor's work. In it, he shows the value that would be added to the Reformed epistemologist's position by such a combination.

In his influential book, The God Delusion, currently Amazons 8th bestselling title, the atheist Richard Dawkins argues forcefully that the world would be a far happier place without religion, all versions of which are a massive delusion, founded on lies and hypocrisy. His writings do challenge Christians (and people of other faiths) to think more deeply about their beliefs and shake them out of any complacency. Christians need to hear some of the uncomfortable things he says and to know how to answer his alluring claims. Here is a robust and informed challenge to Dawkins gospel of atheism.

This book serves as an essential primer to Creation versus evolution. Few issues besides evolution have so strained Americans' professed tradition of tolerance. Few historians besides Pulitzer Prize winner Edward J. Larson have so perceptively chronicled evolution's divisive presence on the American scene. This slim volume reviews the key aspects, current and historical, of the creation-evolution debate in the United States.Larson discusses the transatlantic response to Darwinism, the American controversy over teaching evolution in public schools, and the religious views of American scientists. He recalls the theological qualms about evolution held by some leading scientists of Darwin's time. He looks at the 2006 Dover, Pennsylvania, court decision on teaching Intelligent Design and other cases leading back to the landmark 1925 Scopes trial. Drawing on surveys that Larson conducted, he discusses attitudes of American scientists toward the existence of God and the afterlife.By looking at the changing motivations and backgrounds of the stakeholders in the creation-evolution debate - clergy, scientists, lawmakers, educators, and others - Larson promotes a more nuanced view of the question than most of us have. This is no incidental benefit for Larson's readers; it is one of the book's driving purposes. If we cede the debate to those who would frame it simplistically rather than embrace its complexity, warns Larson, we will not advance beyond the naive regard of organized religion as the enemy of intellectual freedom or the equally myopic myth of the scientist as courageous loner willing to die for the truth.

In "God and the New Atheism," a world expert on science and theology gives clear, concise, and compelling answers to the charges against religion laid out in recent best-selling books by Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion"), Sam Harris ("The End of Faith"), and Christopher Hitchens ("God Is Not Great"). For some, these "new atheists" appear to say extremely well what they believe to be wrong with religion. But, as John Haught shows, the treatment of religion in these books is riddled with logical inconsistencies, shallow misconceptions, and crude generalizations. Can God really be dismissed as a mere delusion? Is faith really the enemy of reason? And does religion really poison everything? "God and the New Atheism" offers a much-needed antidote to the extremist claims of scientific fundamentalism. This provocative and accessible little book will enable readers to see through the rhetorical fog of this recent phenomenon and come to a clearer understanding of the issues at stake in this crucial debate.

This is not just another 'God' book. This is the definitive slap-down, slam-dunk, no-holds-barred prize title fight between the Divine and Richard Dawkins. Take a ringside seat as investigative journalist Ian Wishart presents the explosive scientific and historical evidence of a divinity code - an "inconvenient truth" that Dawkins and others have no credible explanation for, evidence that is turning both science and religion on their heads. Is there a rational explanation for the existence of the Universe, given the latest data? How did life arise? What about the evolution/intelligent design controversy? Aren't all religions equal? Did Jesus Christ even exist? Written in Wishart's acclaimed page-turner style, The Divinity Code is punchy, informative and easy to read... Watch as one of the country's hardest-hitting journalists turns his guns on a Zoologist (Dawkins), a Bishop (John Spong), a fellow journalist (Christopher Hitchens) and a former nun (Karen Armstrong), this is the ultimate shoot-out of the 'God' books...

Although Christians have professed the God of Israel, they have often assumed a naturalistic theism that harks back to the Greeks. Doing so, says Christopher Knight, has masked the explanatory potential of a basic Christian affirmation: the incarnation. Knight here forges a third way of thinking about divine engagement with the world, beyond deism and theism. He sees God's intimate involvement with creation and history as implied in the reality of the incarnation and essentially confirming divine purpose in a kind of sacramental character to all events as they unfold in the world. On this basis, he brings fresh insight to the questions of providence, miracles, personal prayer, the virgin birth, and the ascension of Jesus. Knight's work promises not to displace science, nor to plead for special exceptions on special occasions, but to see God as always active in the very warp and woof of the universe and its laws.

This book addresses an important topic and fills a major gap in developments in modern theology and Christian ethics. Significant treatments include Wolfhart Pannenberg's historical overview of the relationship between modernism and Christian faith, John Webster's meticulous analysis of Christian theology's contribution to modern conceptions of conscience, J. L. O'Donovan's critique of liberal contractarian theory, and Alasdair MacIntyre's examination of the critical issues which Christianity raises for secular philosophy. Specially commissioned by the Editors, this study incorporates unpublished work by many international scholars of the highest standing, including Alasdair MacIntyre, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Stanley Hauerwas, John Webster, Miroslav Volf, Fergus Kerr and Oliver O'Donovan, as well as chapters by the Editors Michael Banner and Alan Torrance.

Find out how God protected "His Word" from private interpretation and translation errors!

Foreword by Willard Swartley

???We considered him stricken by God, but . . .???

Did God really pour out his wrath against sin on his Son to satisfy his own need for justice? Or did God-in-Christ forgive the world even as it unleashed its wrath against him? Was Christ??'s sacrifice the ultimate fulfillment of God??'s demand for redemptive bloodshed? Or was the cross God??'s great ???No??? to that whole system? This distinctively panoramic volume offers fresh perspectives on these and other difficult questions reemerging throughout the church today.

Contributors: James Alison
Kharalambos Anstall
Mark D. Baker
Sharon Baker
Anthony Bartlett
Marcus Borg
Ronald S. Dart
E. Robert Ekblad
Michael Hardin
Brad Jersak
Andrew P. Klager
Brita Miko
C. F. D. Moule
Wayne Northey
Nathan Rieger
Richard Rohr
Miroslav Volf
J. Denny Weaver
Rowan Williams
N. T. Wright

While philosophy believes it is impossible to have an experience of God without the senses, theology claims that such an experience is possible, though potentially idolatrous. In this engagingly creative book, John Panteleimon Manoussakis ends the impasse by proposing an aesthetic allowing for a sensuous experience of God that is not subordinated to imposed categories or concepts. Manoussakis draws upon the theological traditions of the Eastern Church, including patristic and liturgical resources, to build a theological aesthetic founded on the inverted gaze of icons, the augmented language of hymns, and the reciprocity of touch. Manoussakis explores how a relational interpretation of being develops a fuller and more meaningful view of the phenomenology of religious experience beyond metaphysics and onto-theology.

The Wisdom to Doubt is a major contribution to the contemporary literature on the epistemology of religious belief. Continuing the inquiry begun in his previous book, Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, J. L. Schellenberg here argues that given our limitations and especially our immaturity as a species, there is no reasonable choice but to withhold judgment about the existence of an ultimate salvific reality. Schellenberg defends this conclusion against arguments from religious experience and naturalistic arguments that might seem to make either religious belief or religious disbelief preferable to his skeptical stance. In so doing, he canvasses virtually all of the important recent work on the epistemology of religion. Of particular interest is his call for at least skepticism about theism, the most common religious claim among philosophers.

The Wisdom to Doubt expands the author's well-known hiddenness argument against theism and situates it within a larger atheistic argument, itself made to serve the purposes of his broader skeptical case. That case need not, on Schellenberg's view, lead to a dead end but rather functions as a gateway to important new insights about intellectual tasks and religious possibilities.

While traditional Christian thought and spirituality have always affirmed the divine presence in human life, Thatamanil argues we have much to learn from non-dualistic Hindu thought, especially that of the eighth-century thinker Sankara, and from the Christian panentheism of Paul Tillich. Thatamanil compares their diagnoses and prognoses of the human predicament in light of their doctrine of God or Ultimate Reality. What emerges is a new theology of God and human beings, with a richer and more radical conception of divine immanence, a reconceived divine transcendence, and a keener sense of how the dynamic and active Spirit at work in us anchors real hope and deep joy. Using key insights from Christian and Hindu thought Thatamanil vindicates comparative theology, expands the vocabulary about the ineffable God, and arrives at a new construal of the problems and prospects of the human condition.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the doctrine of the Trinity was still a central theme in Christian Theology. By the end of the century it was fast becoming peripheral. As theologians today increasingly recognize the Trinity to be at the very heart of the Christian theology, the question of 'what went wrong' three hundred years ago is a matte of growing interest. Whereas most studies of the history of tinritarian doctrine neglect the seventeenth century almost entirely, Philip Dixon argues that this is a key period in the history and development of the doctrine and, indeed, essential for contemporary understanding. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Dixon examines the Socinian and anti-Socinian writings of the 1640s and 1650s, including Biddle and Cheynell, and their legacy for the disputes of the 1690s; the trinitarian theology of Hobbes and the violent reaction of his critics; the debates from the Restoration to the 1690s, including Milton, Nye, and Bury; the writings of Locke and Stillingfleet; and the continuation and development of these disputes into the early eighteenth century. A final chapter offers some significant conclusions for students of systematic and historical theology alike. In the breadth of its scope and in the importance of the material uncovered, this book makes an unique contribution to the understanding of trinitarian theology and practice.

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of contemporary China, Larry Lewis's autobiographical The Misfit tells a moving story of how God breaks through the aridity of human hearts, and how healing occurs in the midst of the everyday. Father Lewis, a Maryknoll missioner, was estranged from himself, his church, and his Maryknoll colleagues when he accepted an assignment to teach English to Chinese students in the interior Chinese city of Wuhan. It was a year before the now-infamous massacre in Tiananmen Square. The Misfit tells how the young Chinese Lewis taught saved him from his alienation and revealed that an important dimension in the growth of all human beings lies in accepting their "misfitness" for the unidimensional life that contemporary culture seeks to impose. With the political turmoil of 1980s China always in the background, Lewis and his Chinese students discover eternal truths through the American literature they study and the growing bonds of friendship they share. Reading John Gardner's "Redemption", Emily Dickinson's poetry, and Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find", Lewis and his students discover that they live in "a world without a roof", and the missioner finds himself rescued from estrangement by the humanity all around him.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

"You are taken to task more for your lack of wisdom than you are praised for your harmful mildness" -- King Lear
Kim Paffenroth's book examines several major aspects and developments of the Biblical concept of Wisdom. He focuses on Wisdom as it evolves through the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Melville, and Dostoevsky.
The getting of Wisdom--the ultimate expression of joining of head and heart in search of God -- is a key theme not only in biblical Wisdom literature but one of the major themes in Western literature. Lear, Ahab, Ishmael, Ivan Karamzov -- all are in search of that meaningful combination of head and heart that brings a real knowledge of the world and of God tothem. Wisdom is therefore the basis of a relationship with God, and the foundation of human happiness, freedom, and fulfillment.
Paffenroth examines wisdom under four broad categories: the destructiveness of folly; the feminine side of Wisdom; the folly of Christ as Wisdom; and the problem of suffering, especially as it highlights the inadequacy of reason.
"This is a major contribution to the study of literature and theology." --David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow.

Where Angels Fear to Tread delves in depth into the universal questions about the nature of reality, the meaning of God, and the truth of human existence from the viewpoint of physics and science. What is God? Why do we perceive objects as solid, when in truth, they are not? Where does religion fit in? Is this life only a dream-like existence? What is the Dark Energy that fills the universe? Are we influenced by the values and beliefs of the masses? Can we influence our own life events, and if so, how? With a degree in physics and mathematics, author Alex Morrey provides answers to these questions in a provocative and powerfully written manner that will broaden every truth seeker's knowledge and leave readers captivated and greatly enriched.

This study develops a method for analyzing the semantic and narrative rhetoric of repetition and the narrative rhetoric and function of characterization and applies this method in studies of the characterization of God, Jesus, and Jesus' disciples in the Gospel of Mark.
The studies of characterization distinguish beliefs that are assumed for the audience from beliefs that the narration cultivates for the audience, identifies the rhetorical relationships and organization of cultivated beliefs, and clarifies the contribution of each character's portrayal to the overall narrative development of Mark. The study then considers the contribution of the characterization of the women at the tomb to the portrayal of Jesus' disciples and narrative developments. A concluding inquiry investigates the possible applications of the studies of characterization for determining the rhetorical exigency of the narration and for formulating statements of Mark's proposed theology.

Hauerwas explores why we so fervently seek explanations for suffering and evil, and he shows how modern medicine has become a god to which we look-in vain-for deliverance from the evils of disease and mortality.

The central thesis of The Christ-like God is that Jesus is the reflection in human life of the being of God. John Taylor begins by pointing out how few religious people-or non-religious people- ever stop and think about God, but tend to live with an unconscious stereotype. He discusses throughout the text how we acquire our idea of God, the nature of revelation experience, and the range of reflection on God both within and out-with the Christian tradition. Bishop John Taylor was one of the twentieth century's leading Anglican missionary statesmen. An ecumenist, Africanist and theologian of international repute, he served as a General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society at a crucial stage in its development and later became Bishop of Windsor.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

In this book, Stanley Grenz examines the long-standing trajectory of thought that has equated the concept of "being" with the God of the Bible--and thus claimed that the ontological category of being is the guiding concept by which God should be understood. Grenz extends the engagement between Christian theology and the Western philosophical tradition and focuses the discussion on the importance of naming, particularly given that the Christian God is both named and triune. In doing so, he organizes the book into three parts, forming an overarching story of the interplay between the named character of God and the question of being. First he analyzes the history of the philosophical concept of Being, then he shifts the focus to an exegesis of the "I Am" texts, and finally he moves to a renewed conversation between theology and ontological philosophy by means of the divine name.

Many believe truth is relative and there is no absolute truth. My question is "Are you absolutely sure?" Read the book. Know the truth and it will make you free.

"To think about the Spirit it will not do to think 'spiritually': to think about the Spirit you have to think materially," claims Eugene F. Rogers. The Holy Spirit, who in classical Christian discourse "pours out on all flesh," has tended in modern theology and worship to float free of bodies. The result of such disembodiment, contends Rogers, is that our talk about the Spirit has become flat and uninspiring. In "After the Spirit Rogers diagnoses a related gap in the revival of trinitarian theology, a mentality that "there's nothing the Spirit can do that the Son can't do better."

The Eastern Christian tradition, by contrast, has usually linked the Holy Spirit with holy places, holy people, and holy things. Weaving together a rich tapestry of sources from this tradition, Rogers locates the Spirit in the Gospel stories of the annunciation, Jesus' baptism, the transfiguration, and the resurrection. These stories offer illuminating glimpses into both the Spirit's connection with the tangible world and the Spirit's distinctive place in relation to the other persons of the Trinity.

Eight gorgeous color plates complement Rogers's witty and passionate prose.

An international journal of theology; a catholic journal in the widest sense: rooted in Roman Catholicism yet open to other Christian traditions and the worlds faiths. Promotes discussion in the spirit of Vatican II. Annual subscriptions available.