After an introduction describing the current situation, this book attempts to sketch out the contours of questions currently asked about God, to open up windows on the infinite, to get to the heart of the Christian confession about God and in the midst of pluralism of religions and agnostic culture to try and work out a way of thinking about God. The author writes: "I have learned that it is good to speak about God with some caution; not, however at the periphery of thought but from within, from the heart of our economic, legal, psychological and philosophical ideals. The book is an account of my own personal theological question. What have I found? That the questions about God open our eyes to God the Eternal One, the Most High, as a question to us." The question of God is the basis of all theology, although this does not coincide with faith or piety. The title of this book may therefore be seen as a personal plea; it is impossible to talk about God without defining one's own position.

Mark Stibbe points the reader to a story Jesus told over 2,000 years ago which demonstrates the qualities of a perfect dad. More than that the story paints the clearest picture of what Jesus thought God is really like. It provides a wonderfully accessible introduction to the Father youve been waiting for and contains many new insights into a story loved by millions and known as the parable of parables.

"This is a must-read for anyone who wants a direct, honest explanation of how remarkable God who created the universe and more, loves and is interested in an exclusive, intimate, life-transforming relationship with you." - Diane Louise Jordan

While atheists such as Richard Dawkins have now become public figures, there is another and perhaps darker strain of religious rebellion that has remained out of sight--people who hate God.
In this revealing book, Bernard Schweizer looks at men and women who do not question God's existence, but deny that He is merciful, competent, or good. Sifting through a wide range of literary and historical works, Schweizer finds that people hate God for a variety of reasons. Some are motivated by social injustice, human suffering, or natural catastrophes that God does not prevent. Some blame God for their personal tragedies. Schweizer concludes that, despite their blasphemous thoughts, these people tend to be creative and moral individuals, and include such literary lights as Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Rebecca West, Elie Wiesel, and Philip Pullman. Schweizer shows that literature is a fertile ground for God haters. Many authors, who dare not voice their negative attitude to God openly, turn to fiction to give vent to it. Indeed, Schweizer provides many new and startling readings of literary masterpieces, highlighting the undercurrent of hatred for God. Moreover, by probing the deeper mainsprings that cause sensible, rational, and moral beings to turn against God, Schweizer offers answers to some of the most vexing questions that beset human relationships with the divine.

The issue of whether or not there is a God is one of the oldest and most widely disputed philosophical questions. It is a debate that spreads far across the range of philosophical questions about the status of science, the nature of mind, the character of good and evil, the epistemology of experience and testimony, and so on. In this book two philosophers, each committed to unambiguous versions of belief and disbelief, debate the central issues of atheism and theism. Smart opens the debate by arguing that theism is philosophically untenable and seeks to explain metaphysical truth in the light of total science. Haldane continues the discussion by affirming that the existence of the world, and the possibility of our coming to have knowledge of it, depend upon the existence of a creating, sustaining, personal God. This is followed by replies, where each philosopher has the chance to respond and to defend his position. This second edition contains new essays by each philosopher, responding to criticisms and building on their previous work.

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book

In "Transcendence," thinkers from John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Kevin Hart, to Thomas Carlson, Slavoj Zizek, and Jean-Luc Marion have come together to create the definitive analysis of this key concept in modern theological and philosophical thought.

Discussing problems of narrative, communication, and intelligibility within diverse contexts such as Walt Whitman's poetry, Blanchot's primal imagery, and biblical narrative, Transcendence brings together a list of thinkers to create the definitive analysis of the subjec

How do we learn about God? In an age of competing world-views, what is the basis of the Christian claim to offer the truth about God, the world and ourselves? David Heywood charts a path through the study of human knowledge, showing how the insights of theology, philosophy and psychology complement and amplify one another, and bringing the experience of revelation within the scope of the study of human learning. He shows the relationship between human psychology and the work of the Holy Spirit and demonstrates the credibility of the Christian claim to a transforming knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. Offering a new model for the relationship of theology to the natural and social sciences, David Heywood shows how the claim of Christian theology to deal in issues of universal truth can be upheld. For Christian education, this book provides a theological rationale for the use of methods of teaching and learning of educationally proven effectiveness.

Contents:
1. Reasoning about God 2. Reason and reformed epistemology 3. Ontological arguments 4. Cosmological arguments 5. Arguments to and from design 6. Arguments to and from miracles 7. Arguments from morality 8. Arguments to and from religious experience 9. Naturalism, evolution and rationality 10. Prudential arguments 11. Arguments from scale 12. Problems about evil 13. Omnipotence 14. Eternity and omnipresence 15. Omniscience 16. Conclusion

Is a thoroughly Christian and biblically informed doctrine of creation compatible with widely held conclusions of modern science, especially biology? For Darrel R. Falk, this is not just an abstract question but one with which he has personally wrestled. A professor of biology, Falk brings together his biblically based understanding of creation and the most current research in biology. The result of his efforts to acknowledge the validity of science and the authority of Scripture is a new paradigm for relating the claims of science to the truths of Christianity. Written with the undergraduate student in mind, this book nonetheless will help anyone who is looking for a place to stand in the creation-evolution debate, fearful that they'll have to choose between intellectual integrity and the faith of the church. Calling for charitable discussions within the church, Falk shows how an original and ongoing interaction of God with creation is fully reconcilable with the kinds of development identified by current biological science.

Peter Byrne's study of God and realism offers a critical survey of issues surrounding the realist interpretation of theism and theology. Byrne presents a general argument for interpreting the intent of talk about God in a realist fashion and argues that judging the intent of theistic discourse should be the primary object of concern in the philosophy of religion. He considers a number of important ideas and thinkers supporting global anti-realism, and finds them all wanting. After the refutation of global anti-realism, Byrne considers a number of important arguments in favour of the notion that there is something specific to talk about God which invites an anti-realist interpretation of it. Here he looks at verificationism, the writings of Don Cupitt, forms of radical feminist theory and the ideas of D.Z. Phillips. The book concludes with a discussion of whether theology as a discursive, academic discipline can be interpreted realistically. Offering a comprehensive survey of the topic and of the leading literature in the field, this book presents key arguments for exploring issues brought to bear upon the realism debate. Students and scholars of philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, metaphysics, theory of knowledge and theology, will find this an invaluable new contribution to the field.

Most people, believers and nonbelievers alike, are unfamiliar with the variety and force of arguments for the impossibility of God. Yet over recent years a growing number of scholars have been formulating and developing a series of increasingly powerful arguments that the concept of God, as variously understood by the world's major religions and leading theologians, is contradictory in many ways, and therefore God does not and cannot exist. This unique anthology brings together for the first time most of the important arguments for the impossibility of God that have been published. The collection includes papers and book selections by J. L. Mackie, Quentin Smith, Theodore Drange, Michael Martin, and many other distinguished scholars. The editors provide a general introduction and brief summaries of the arguments to help the reader grasp the crucial issues involved. Both students and teachers of philosophy and the philosophy of religion will find this anthology to be an indispensable resource.

Systematic Theology is the capstone of Robert Jenson's long and distinguished career as a theologian, being a full-scale systematic/dogmatic theology in the classic format. This is the second and concluding volume of the work, and considers the works of God, examining such topics as the nature and role of the Church, and God's works of creation.

"

The Divine Attributes" is an engaging analysis of the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the perspective of rational theology.

This ambitious study rationally explores the nature of God, differentiates the idea of God from other historical ideas of the divine, and identifies the core qualities of a maximally great, or perfect, being. It includes detailed discussions of the fundamental divine attributes, such as divine power, knowledge, and goodness. It also addresses whether God is to be understood as eternal, within or outside of time, existing necessarily or contingently, and whether God is to be understood as a physical or a spiritual substance.

The authors conclude that, properly understood, the concept of God is coherent, although certain attributes that some traditional theologians ascribe to God should be rejected.

Nothing within the world has the power to make the world continue; yet it is intrinsic to the temporal world that it does continue, and does not exist merely instantaneously. On this basis, the author renews St. Thomas's way of conceiving God as the immediate principle of existence, but does this de novo, never drawing upon any authority, but working within the exigencies of contemporary general philosophy. The philosophy of religion is for him never a separate discipline but the fruit of a proper working through of the inter-related problems of the philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, and logical theory with the correlative restructuring of metaphysics.

Recent discoveries in physics, cosmology and biochemistry have captured the public imagination and made the Design Argument - the theory that God created the world according to a specific plan - the object of renewed scientific and philosophical interest. This accessible but serious introduction to the design problem brings together new perspectives from prominent scientists and philosophers including Paul Davies, Richard Swinburne, Sir Martin Rees, Michael Behe, Elliot Sober and Peter van Inwagen.
It probes the relationship between modern science and religious belief, considering their points of conflict and their many points of similarity. Is the real God of creationism the 'master clockmaker', who sets the world's mechanism on a perfectly enduring course, or a miraculous presence who continually intervenes in and alters the world we know? Are science and faith, or evolution and creation, really in conflict at all? Expanding the parameters of a lively and urgent debate, God and Design considers how perennial questions of origin continue to fascinate and disturb us.

In a scientific age we are becoming historically conscious and realising how many of our contemporary problems cannot be solved without an understanding of their historical perspective. The author explains here how the conception of world-history is routed in Christianity and how biblical examination can help to explain our history.

This book presents the first accessible analysis of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-politicus, situating the work in the context of Spinoza's general philosophy and its 17th-century historical background. According to Spinoza it is impossible for a being to be infinitely perfect and to have a legislative will. This idea, demonstrated in the Ethics, is presupposed and further elaborated in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus. It implies not only that on the level of truth all revealed religion is false, but also that all authority is of human origin and that all obedience is rooted in a political structure. The consequences for authority as it is used in a religious context are explored: the authority of Scripture, the authority of particular interpretations of Scripture, and the authority of the Church. Verbeek also explores the work of two other philosophers of the period - Hobbes and Descartes - to highlight certain peculiarities of Spinoza's position, and to show the contrasts between their theories.

The Rationality of Theism is a controversial collection of brand new papers by thirteen outstanding philosophers and scholars. Its aim is to offer comprehensive theistic replies to the traditional arguments against the existence of God, offering a positive case for theism as well as rebuttals of recent influential criticisms of theism.

Throughout the Bible, divine interaction with humanity is portrayed in almost embarrassingly human terms. God sees, hears, thinks, feels, runs, rides chariots, laughs, wields weapons, gives birth, and even repents. Many of these descriptions, taken at face value, seem to run afoul of classical thought about God's qualities of divine simplicity, transcendence, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and, especially, immutability. Traditionally, such representations have been seen as "accommodations" to human intellectual and moral limitations. They allowed God to be more comprehensible but did not actually describe any "real" part of His character, being, or interaction with humanity. References to God seeing or hearing, for example, are not deemed to represent real acts, as God is all-knowing. This view is largely based on the Aristotelian conception of metaphors: they are rhetorical devices and should not be taken literally. Since the 1970s, our understanding of the ways in which metaphors convey meaning has become much more sophisticated. We are better able to unlock the function of "human" acts of God within the Bible. This book aims to explore the biblical metaphor of divine sight in Genesis and how current conceptions of metaphorical function can enrich our reading of the text and its theology. Brian C. Howell is a lecturer for the West of England Ministerial Training Course, and a freelance writer, lecturer, speaker, saxophonist, and music teacher. "Learned and lucid, this fine work explores the nature of anthropomorphic language in Scripture and Christian theology. What it means to describe God in human terms has long been controversial, but this book tackles the issues in an irenic and scholarly way. Using modern insights into metaphors, Howell examines the places in Genesis where God is said to see to produce a most illuminating discussion that biblical scholars and systematic theologians should not overlook." Gordon Wenham, Trinity College, Bristol.

Which is more reasonable: believing in God or not believing in God? Can any of the usual arguments actually show that God does or does not exist?

The Rationality of Theism is a controversial collection of brand new papers by thirteen outstanding philosophers and scholars. Its aim is to offer comprehensive theistic replies to the traditional arguments against the existence of God, offering a positive case for theism as well as rebuttals of recent influential criticisms of theism.

Part One addresses foundational issues about religious language and epistemology. Part Two focuses on the traditional arguments for God's existence, including the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and miracles. In Part Three, the contributors turn their attention to the two main arguments against theism: the divine attributes and the argument from evil.

Overall, the book contends that theism rather than atheism offers the more rationally plausible and defensible explanatory viewpoint. It will be of serious interest to anyone studying or working in philosophy of religion.

This is a groundbreaking, highly original work of postmodern feminist theology from one of the most important authors in the field. The Face of the Deep deconstructs the Christian doctrine of creation which claims that a transcendent Lord unilaterally created the universe out of nothing. Catherine Keller's impassioned, graceful meditation develops an alternative representation of the cosmic creative process, drawing upon Hebrew myths of creation from chaos, and engaging with the political and the mystical, the literary and the scientific, the sexual and the racial.
As a landmark work of immense significance for Jewish and Christian theology, gender studies, literature, philosophy and ecology, The Face of the Deep takes our originary story to a new horizon, rewriting the starting point for western spiritual discourse.

Recent discoveries in physics, cosmology and biochemistry have captured the public imagination and made the Design Argument - the theory that God created the world according to a specific plan - the object of renewed scientific and philosophical interest. This accessible but serious introduction to the design problem brings together new perspectives from prominent scientists and philosophers including Paul Davies, Richard Swinburne, Sir Martin Rees, Michael Behe, Elliot Sober and Peter van Inwagen.
It probes the relationship between modern science and religious belief, considering their points of conflict and their many points of similarity. Is the real God of creationism the 'master clockmaker', who sets the world's mechanism on a perfectly enduring course, or a miraculous presence who continually intervenes in and alters the world we know? Are science and faith, or evolution and creation, really in conflict at all? Expanding the parameters of a lively and urgent debate, God and Design considers how perennial questions of origin continue to fascinate and disturb us.

This title was first published in 2000. Hope in Barth's Eschatology presents a critical investigation and survey of Karl Barth's writings, particularly his Church Dogmatics IV.3, in order to locate the character and nature of 'hope' within Barth's eschatology. Arguing that Barth, with his form of hope that refuses to shy away from the dark themes of the 'tragic vision', could be seen to undermine certain tragic sensibilities necessary for a healthy account of hope, John McDowell locates Barth within the context of larger traditions of theological thinking, and influential accounts of Christian hope, examining the work of Steiner, MacKinnon, Pannenberg, Rahner, Moltmanm and others. Addressing the relative neglect that Barth commentators have paid to eschatological themes, McDowell maintains that to miss what Barth is doing in his eschatology, is to seriously misunderstand Barth's broader theological sense. This book offers a significant contribution to the ongoing task of understanding Barth's theology whilst developing a way of reading hope and eschatology that, ultimately, places some critical questions at Barth's door.

This criticism of theism, especially monotheism, questions the assumption that rejecting God means rejecting religion. Drawing on Western philosophical critiques of religion and non-theistic Eastern religions, Ray Billington shows how a religion without God could work.
The concept of religion without God has informed not only the theories of Nietzsche, Kant and Spinoza, but also expressions of belief in Indian and Chinese religions-Hinduism, Theravada Buddhism Zen and Taoism. Concluding with a look at the "the future of faith," this is a wide ranging and lucidly-written look at what it means to "have faith" and how this is distinct from religious belief.
Ray Billington is an experienced and respected author on Eastern religion and philosophy. His books include Understanding Eastern Philospophy, Living Philosophy and East of Existentialism, all published by Routledge. He also writes occasional journalism most notably as a contributor to The Guardian's 'Face to Faith' column. An ex-Methodist minister and onetime chaplain with the SAS, he has now retired from his post as Principal Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England.