This book explores how Paul Tillich's systematic theology, focusing on the concepts of being and reason can benefit nonhuman animals, while also analysing how taking proper account of nonhuman animals can prove immensely beneficial. The author first explains the body of Tillich's system, examining reason and revelation, life and the spirit, and history and the kingdom of God. The second section undertakes a critical analysis of Tillichian concepts and their adequacy in relation to nonhuman animals, addressing topics such as Tillich's concept of 'technical reason' and the multidimensional unity of life. The author concludes by discussing the positive concepts in Tillich's systematic theology with respect to nonhuman animals and creation, including the concept of universal salvation and Tillich's interpretation of nonhuman animals and the Fall in Genesis.

What does it mean to be called to the profession of philosophy? What does it mean for the Christian in particular? And how should those called to the profession engage their tasks? Noting that philosophy literally is "the love of wisdom," Garrett J. DeWeese begins with a discussion of wisdom from the Old and New Testaments before addressing the often misunderstood relation between faith and reason. DeWeese then elucidates the fundamental questions of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, finally making a case for the integration of philosophy and Christian spiritual formation.

Edith Stein is widely known as a historical figure, a victim of the Holocaust and a saint, but still unrecognised as a philosopher. It was philosophy, however, that constituted the core of her life. Today her complete writings are available to scholars and therefore her thinking can be properly investigated and evaluated. Who is a human person? And what is his or her dignity according to Edith Stein? Those are the two leading questions investigated in this volume. The answer is presented based on the complete writings of the 20th-c. phenomenologist and, moreover, compared to the traditional Christian understanding of human dignity present in the writings of the Church Fathers and the Doctors of the Church as well as Magisterial Documents of the Catholic Church. In the final parts of the book, the author shows how Stein's ideas are relevant today, in particular to the ongoing doctrinal and legal debates over the concept of human dignity.

The concept of religious freedom is the favoured modern human rights concept, with which the modern world hopes to tackle the phenomenon of religious pluralism, as our modern existence in an electronically shrinking globe comes to be increasingly characterised by this phenomenon. To begin with, the concept of religious freedom, as embodied in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, seems self-evident in nature. It is the claim of this book, however, that although emblematic on the one hand, the concept is also problematic on the other, and the implications of the concept of religious freedom are far from self-evident, despite the ready acceptance the term receives as embodying a worthwhile goal. This book therefore problematizes the concept along legal, constitutional, ethical and theological lines, and especially from the perspective of religious studies, so that religious freedom in the world could be enlarged in a way which promotes human flourishing.

Frederick G. Lawrence is the authoritative interpreter of the work of Bernard Lonergan and an incisive reader of twentieth-century continental philosophy and hermeneutics. The Fragility of Consciousness is the first published collection of his essays and contains several of his best known writings as well as unpublished work. The essays in this volume exhibit a long interdisciplinary engagement with the relationship between faith and reason in the context of the crisis of culture that has marked twentieth- and twenty-first century thought and practice. Frederick G. Lawrence, with his profound and generous commitment to the intellectual life of the church, has produced a body of work that engages with Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, Strauss, Voegelin, and Benedict XVI among others. These essays also explore various themes such as the role of religion in a secular age, political theology, economics, neo-Thomism, Christology, and much more. In an age marked by social, cultural, political, and ecclesial fragmentation, Lawrence models a more generous way - one that prioritizes friendship, conversation, and understanding above all else.

Perpetua, a 19 year old girl from South London, says that she is God. She gathers a motley collection of followers and begins her travels, performing miracles and spreading her gospel of unconditional love along the way.

Her message provokes a strong and ultimately lethal reaction from Christianity's warring factions, politicians and journalists bent on profit instead of the truth. Her story is told by four people: Jack, a tabloid journalist; Claire, a social worker; Beth, a media student; and Damian, a theology graduate and Church House intern.

Perpetua is the first of three novels in The Third Testament for the Third Millennium, a bold re-telling of the New Testament in a 21st Century context, asking Christians to question what they believe and why.

Incorporating a dazzling array of artistic styles, convention-breaking use of language and sharply drawn characters, the series draws on its author's experience of journalism, broadcasting and politics, and on his work as a lay minister in the Church of England. It is profound and funny, moving and edgy, setting out how we might better live together with more self-restraint and less regulation.

This work presents and philosophically analyzes the early modern and modern history of the theory concerning the soul of the world, anima mundi. The initial question of the investigation is why there was a revival of this theory in the time of the early German Romanticism, whereas the concept of the anima mundi had been rejected in the earlier, classical period of European philosophy (early and mature Enlightenment). The presentation and analysis starts from the Leibnizian-Wolffian school, generally hostile to the theory, and covers classical eighteenth-century physico-theology, also reluctant to accept an anima mundi. Next, it discusses early modern and modern Christian philosophical Cabbala (Bohme and Otinger), an intellectual tradition which to some extent tolerated the idea of a soul of the world. The philosophical relationship between Spinoza and Spinozism on the one hand, and the anima mundi theory on the other is also examined. An analysis of Giordano Bruno s utilization of the concept anima del mondo is the last step before we give an account of how and why German Romanticism, especially Baader and Schelling asserted and applied the theory of the Weltseele. The purpose of the work is to prove that the philosophical insufficiency of a concept of God as an ens extramundanum instigated the Romantics to think an anima mundi that can act as a divine and quasi-infinite intermediary between God and Nature, as a locum tenens of God in physical reality."

While a number of books and anthologies on Ricoeur's thought have been published over the past decade, Ricoeur Across the Disciplines isunique in its multidisciplinary scope. The books currently available are typically one of either two kinds: either they provide a general overview of Ricoeur's thought or they focus on a narrow set of themes within a specific discipline. While other books may allude to the multidisciplinary potential for Ricoeur's thought, this book is the first to carry out a truly multidisciplinary investigation of his work. The aim of this approach is not only to draw out the nuances of Ricoeur's thought but also to facilitate a new conversation between Ricoeur scholars and those working in a variety of domains.

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.

We are used to thinking of words as signs of inner thoughts. In Outward Signs, Philip Cary argues that Augustine invented this expressionist semiotics, where words are outward signs expressing an inward will to communicate, in an epochal departure from ancient philosopical semiotics, where signs are means of inference, as smoke is a sign of fire. Augustine uses his new theory of signs to give an account of Biblical authority, explaining why an authoritative external teaching is needed in addition to the inward teaching of Christ as divine Wisdom, which is conceived in terms drawn from Platonist epistemology. In fact for Augustine we literally learn nothing from words or any other outward sign, because the truest form of knowledge is a kind of Platonist vision, seeing what is inwardly present to the mind. Nevertheless, because our mind's eye is diseased by sin we need the help of external signs as admonitions or reminders pointing us in the right direction, so that we may look and see for ourselves. Even our knowledge of other persons is ultimately a matter not of trusting their words but of seeing their minds with our minds. Thus Cary argues here that, for Augustine, outward signs are useful but ultimately powerless because no bodily thing has power to convey something inward to the soul. This means that there can be no such thing as an efficacious external means of grace. The sacraments, which Augustine was the first to describe as outward signs of inner grace, signify what is necessary for salvation but do not confer it. Baptism, for example, is necessary for salvation, but its power is found not in water or word but in the inner unity, charity and peace of the church. Even the flesh of Christ is necessary but not efficacious, an external sign to use without clinging to it.

Discusses crucial moments in the historical development of natural theology in England from the time of Francis Bacon to that of Charles Darwin. While the argument from design remains the rhetorical method of choice for natural theologians throughout the three centuries in question, the locus and object of design undergo a change.

Religious belief combines thought, feeling and experience in a way that optimally leverages the natural tendency of the mind to latch on to socially and personally useful concepts. This effect delivers tangible benefits because religious concepts and practice feed the mind's natural drive to cling to strong beliefs. At the same time, beliefs are reinforced by favourable emotional responses. This text explains how these elements work together to make religious belief such a powerful placebo effect.

What if modern reason empowers us only at the cost of impoverishing thought? What if an ancient practice of philosophy could be rediscovered as a way of living? In a rural retreat in northern England, nine philosophers held regular meetings to discuss the nature of philosophy as a way of life. Posing a formidable challenge to the dominance of objective reasoning, they sought to build together a conception and practice of reasoning that is deeply engaged with the meaning of life, with dialogue, and with self-transformation. Here, as spokesman for this group, Philip Goodchild offers his readers insight into these symposium. Eschewing convention, these essays offer profound meditations on the meaning of life, reason, inwardness, virtue, love, and God. Echoing Plato, Kierkegaard, and Weil, this bold yet imperfect struggle for authenticity performs philosophy as a spiritual exercise, effects a new critique of pure reason, and changes what it means to think today. Like Socrates himself, this book offers a challenge to all.

This is a classic work by the German philologist, poet, composer, author and philosopher, Nietzsche (1844-1900). He critiqued religion, morality, contemporary culture and philosophy, basing his thoughts on whether the idea is life-affirming or life-denying. He was plagued by ill health, a workaholic and phenomenal thinker, and hence his life was both short and very productive, ending in mental collapse. At the age of 24 he remains the youngest ever Chair of Classical Philosophy at the University of Basel. But he rarely gained the respect he deserved within his lifetime. That has since been amended and in the 20th century he was recognised as one of the most significant figures in modern philosophy, most notably in the areas of nihilism, postmodernism and existentialism.

Die Schwarze Spinne is a religious allegory about morals and religious living in the mid-nineteenth century, written by Jeremias Gotthelf. This work is an interlinear translation of Gotthelf's Die Schwarze Spinne with introductions to both the author and the work itself. In a small Swiss community, a baptism is the backdrop for a village elder to tell the story of his family and their life and death struggle with the devil himself. The elder relates the story of a knight and his ill treatment of the farmers of the area. The knight's inhuman demands upon the peasants bring about unforeseen consequences, which lead to the decimation of the village and, ultimately, the knight's own death. The plague released through a pact with the devil, the black spider, haunts the village for hundreds of years and must be fought with religious piety, courage, and devotion to traditional values. It is when one forgets God and his commandments that the black spider is at its most deadly. A true tale of morality written by a pastor in 1842, The Black Spider serves as a warning to those who, according to Gotthelf, go against the will of God.

The Birth of Tragedy was Nietzche's first book in 1072 and is still one of the most relevant statements on tragedy. It sounded themes developed by existialist and psychoanslysts of the times.The Anti-hrist is Nietzche's writings about the ant-Christ, the evil leader who arises in the last days in opposition to God and His church.