There is good reason why some people don't want to talk about religion in polite company. Like conversations about politics, discussions about religion all too often set people at odds with each other in ways that are hard to predict and difficult to control. For all the controversy involved with such debate, this book invites the reader to engage with an ethical appraisal of religion(s) as they are practised today. It is written in the belief that this is an important dialogue for our time. It claims, despite the emotive character of the subject, that the free exchange of ideas and experience between people of differing views and commitments can with practice generate more light than heat. Particular effort is made to answer the question: how can we fairly evaluate the ethical character of religion(s)? It focuses especially but not at all exclusively on the religions of Christianity and Islam, being critical of them in many respects; but it also offers sharp rebuke to some of the perspectives of Richard Dawkins and others among the new atheists.

Designed as a textbook for use in courses on natural theology and used by Immanuel Kant as the basis for his Lectures on The Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, Johan August Eberhard's Preparation for Natural Theology (1781) is now available in English for the first time. With a strong focus on the various intellectual debates and historically significant texts in late renaissance and early modern theology, Preparation for Natural Theology influenced the way Kant thought about practical cognition as well as moral and religious concepts. Access to Eberhard's complete text makes it possible to distinguish where in the lectures Kant is making changes to what Eberhard has written and where he is articulating his own ideas. Identifying new unexplored lines of research, this translation provides a deeper understanding of Kant's explicitly religious doctrines and his central moral writings, such as the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. Accompanied by Kant's previously untranslated handwritten notes on Eberhard's text as well as the Danzig transcripts of Kant's course on rational theology, Preparation for Natural Theology features a dual English-German / German-English glossary, a concordance and an introduction situating the book in relation to 18th-century theology and philosophy. This is a significant contribution to twenty-first century Kantian studies.

Colby Dickinson proposes a new political theology rooted in the intersections between continental philosophy, heterodox theology, and orthodox theology. Moving beyond the idea that there is an irresolvable tension at the heart of theological discourse, the conflict between the two poles of theology is made intelligible. Dickinson discusses the opposing poles simply as manifestations of reform and revolution, characteristics intrinsic to the nature of theological discourse itself. Outlining the illuminating space of theology, Theological Poverty in Continental Philosophy breaks new ground for critical theology and continental philosophy. Within the theology of poverty, the believer renounces the worldly for the divine. Through this focus on the poverty intrinsic to religious calling, the potential for cross-pollination between the theological and the secular is highlighted. Ultimately situating the virtue of theological poverty within a poststructuralist, postmodern world, Dickinson is not content to position Christian philosophy as the superior theological position, moving away from the absolute values of one tradition over another. This universalising of theological poverty through core and uniting concepts like grace, negation, violence and paradox reveal the theory’s transmutable strength. By joining up critical theology and the philosophy of religion in this way, the book broadens the possibility of a critical dialogue both between and within disciplines.

This is a bilingual edition of the selected peer-reviewed papers that were submitted for the International Symposium on Jesuit Studies on the thought of the Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617). The symposium was co-organized in Seville in 2018 by the Departamento de Humanidades y Filosofia at Universidad Loyola Andalucia and the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College.

Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus is the first full-length book devoted to an overview of the Christology of this fourth-century Father of the Church. Andrew Hofer examines the breadth of Gregory's corpus--orations, letters, and poems (often neglected in doctrinal studies)--to argue that Gregory's writing on Christ can be best understood in tandem with his autobiography.
This study begins with an articulation of Gregory's theology of the Word in which words come from the Word who became incarnate. Hofer then offers a close reading of how Gregory writes to or about Christ in the poetry known as "on himself." Within a three-part study of "autobiographical Christology," Hofer explores the philosophical background of Gregory's rhetoric for what he calls the "mixtures" of Christ and himself. He then elucidates this autobiographical concern in Gregory's famous Ep. 101, a landmark text in the Christological controversies. Thirdly, Hofer considers how Gregory celebrates the mysteries of Christ in the festal orations. Before the book's epilogue, a chapter describes how Gregory wrote of Christ for his pastoral ministry. Throughout the work, Hofer demonstrates the importance in Gregory's writings of the language of blending (such as in the Greek word krasis, rejected by the Council of Chalcedon to describe the Incarnation). This book thus offers a unique perspective on the one known as "the Theologian" in Chalcedon's acts and in subsequent Christian tradition.

Ma?berot Immanuel is a collection of twenty-eight chapters in Hebrew of rhymed prose and poetry written by the poet and amateur philosopher Immanuel of Rome during an era of rapid political change in late medieval Italy. The final chapter, Mah?beret Ha-Tofet Ve-ha-'Eden (A Tale of Heaven and Hell), like Dante's Commedia, depicts Immanuel's visits to hell and heaven. Bridging Worlds focuses on the interrelation of Immanuel's belletristic work and biblical exegesis to advance a comprehensive and original reading of this final chapter. By reading Immanuel's philosophical commentaries and literary works together, Dana Fishkin demonstrates that Immanuel's narrative made complex philosophical ideas about the soul's quest for immortality accessible to an educated populace. Throughout this work, she explains the many ways Mah?beret Ha-Tofet Ve-ha-'Eden serves as a site of cultural negotiation and translation. Bridging Worlds broadens our understanding of the tensions inherent in the world of late medieval Jewish people who were deeply enmeshed in Italian culture and literature, negotiating two cultures whose values may have overlapped but also sometimes clashed. Fishkin puts forth a valuable and refreshing perspective alongside previously unknown sources to breathe new life into this extremely rich and culturally valuable medieval work.

For centuries, philosophers have addressed the ontological question of whether God exists. Most recently, philosophers have begun to explore the axiological question of what value impact, if any, God's existence has (or would have) on our world. This book brings together four prestigious philosophers, Michael Almeida, Travis Dumsday, Perry Hendricks and Graham Oppy, to present different views on the axiological question about God. Each contributor expresses a position on axiology, which is then met with responses from the remaining contributors. This structure makes for genuine discussion and developed exploration of the key issues at stake, and shows that the axiological question is more complicated than it first appears. Chapters explore a range of relevant issues, including the relationship between Judeo-Christian theism and non-naturalist alternatives such as pantheism, polytheism, and animism/panpsychism. Further chapters consider the attitudes and emotions of atheists within the theism conversation, and develop and evaluate the best arguments for doxastic pro-theism and doxastic anti-theism. Of interest to those working on philosophy of religion, theism and ethics, this book presents lively accounts of an important topic in an exciting and collaborative way, offered by renowned experts in this area.

In Nicodemites: Faith and Concealment Between Italy and Tudor England, Anne Overell examines a rarely glimpsed aspect of sixteenth-century religious strife: the thinkers, clerics, and rulers, who concealed their faith. This work goes beyond recent scholarly interest in conformity to probe inward dilemmas and the spiritual and cultural meanings of pretence. Among the dissimulators who appear here are Cardinal Reginald Pole and his circle in Italy and in England, and also John Cheke and William Cecil. Although Protestant and Catholic polemicists condemned all Nicodemites, most of them survived reformation violence, while their habits of silence and secrecy became influential. This study concludes that widespread evasion about religious belief contributed to the erratic development of toleration. "Anne Overell is an accomplished practitioner of history as a sideways glance, revealing subtleties and contours that others have missed. In doing so, she enriches the story of the Reformation and helps us see its humanity and nuance more vividly and completely." - Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford

Reading Heikki Raisanen's hermeneutics in context, Timo Eskola explores the development of Western New Testament interpretation. Reclaiming a Wredean approach to the Scriptures, Raisanen focuses on tradition and interpretation. He builds on Weberian sociology, adopted through Peter Berger's theories, and substitutes sacralized culturalism for biblical theology. After examining fourteenth century Quran-criticism and its impact on Reimarus, Eskola discusses the genesis of the revised history-of-religion theory that Raisanen developed when investigating the Quran's relationship to the Bible. Sociology then becomes a link between standard historicism and poststructuralism as Raisanen reinterprets Berger's sociology of knowledge. Raisanen's sacralized culturalism finally becomes the theory from which his magnum opus The Rise of Christian Beliefs has been written.