This is a collection of articles on William James's (1842-1910) philosophy of religion and its current relevance authored by a team of international experts. Famous for his work in psychology, James was the founder of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism as well as an early classic in religious studies. A new look at his philosophy of religion is crucially important for the development of this field of inquiry today. The book offers novel investigations of James's philosophy of religion and its contemporary importance as well as his controversial 'will to believe' argument in particular. Thus, for instance, both the account of religious experience in James's Varieties and the debate on the ethics of belief are illuminated.

This is a major contribution to the link between theology and philosophy, introducing the core ideas of Michel Foucault to students of theology. Near the end of his life, Michel Foucault turned his attention to the early church Fathers. He did so not for anything like a return to God but rather because he found in those sources alternatives for re-imaging the self. And though Foucault never seriously entertained Christianity beyond theorizing its aesthetic style one might argue that Christian practices like confession or Eucharist share family resemblances to Foucaultian sensibilities. This book will explain how to do theology in light of Foucault, or more precisely, to read Foucault as if God mattered. Therefore, it will seek to articulate practices like confession, prayer, and so on as techniques for the self, situate 'the church as politics' within present constellations of power, disclose theological knowledges as modes of critical intervention, or what Foucault called archaeology, and conceptualize Christian existence in time through mnemonic practices of genealogy. "The Philosophy and Theology" series looks at major philosophers and explores their relevance to theological thought as well as the response of theology.

This compact, forcefully argued work calls Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and the rest of the so-called 'New Atheists' to account for failing to take seriously the historical record to which they so freely appeal when attacking religion. The popularity of such books as Harris's The End of Faith, Dawkins's The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great set off a spate of reviews, articles, and books for and against, yet in all the controversy little attention has focused on the historical evidence and arguments they present to buttress their case. This book is the first to challenge in depth the distortions of this New Atheist history. It presents the evidence that the three authors and their allies ignore. It points out the lack of historical credibility in their work when judged by the conventional criteria used by mainstream historians. It does not deal with the debate over theism and atheism nor does it aim to defend the historical record of Christianity or religion more generally. It does aim to defend the integrity of history as a discipline in the face of its distortion by those who violate it.

One of the most profound, deeply affecting questions we face as human beings is the matter of our mortality--and its connection to immortality. Ancient animist ghost cultures, Egyptian mummification, late Jewish hopes of resurrection, Christian eternal salvation, Muslim belief in hell and paradise all spring from a remarkably consistent impulse to tether a triumph over death to our conduct in life.
In After Lives, British scholar John Casey provides a rich historical and philosophical exploration of the world beyond, from the ancient Egyptians to St. Thomas Aquinas, from Martin Luther to modern Mormons. In a lively, wide-ranging discussion, he examines such topics as predestination, purgatory, Spiritualism, the Rapture, Armageddon and current Muslim apocalyptics, as well as the impact of such influences as the New Testament, St. Augustine, Dante, and the Second Vatican Council. Ideas of heaven and hell, Casey argues, illuminate how we understand the ultimate nature of sin, justice, punishment, and our moral sense itself. The concepts of eternal bliss and eternal punishment express--and test--our ideas of good and evil. For example, the ancient Egyptians saw the afterlife as flowing from ma'at, a sense of being in harmony with life, a concept that includes truth, order, justice, and the fundamental law of the universe. "It is an optimistic view of life," he writes. "It is an ethic that connects wisdom with moral goodness." Perhaps just as revealing, Casey finds, are modern secular interpretations of heaven and hell, as he probes the place of goodness, virtue, and happiness in the age of psychology and scientific investigation.
With elegant writing, a magisterial grasp of a vast literary and religious history, and moments of humor and irony, After Lives sheds new light on the question of life, death, and morality in human culture.

Brian Davies offers the first in-depth study of Saint Thomas Aquinas's thoughts on God and evil, revealing that Aquinas's thinking about God and evil can be traced through his metaphysical philosophy, his thoughts on God and creation, and his writings about Christian revelation and the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
Davies first gives an introduction to Aquinas's philosophical theology, as well as a nuanced analysis of the ways in which Aquinas's writings have been considered over time. For hundreds of years scholars have argued that Aquinas's views on God and evil were original and different from those of his contemporaries. Davies shows that Aquinas's views were by modern standards very original, but that in their historical context they were more traditional than many scholars since have realized.
Davies also provides insight into what we can learn from Aquinas's philosophy. Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil is a clear and engaging guide for anyone who struggles with the relation of God and theology to the problem of evil.

A 2002 Christianity Today Book of the Year Postmodernism. The term slowly filtered into our vocabularies about three decades ago and now permeates most discussions of the humanities. Those who tout the promises and perils of this twentieth-century intellectual movement have filled many a bookshelf. And in a previous book, Postmodernizing the Faith: Evangelical Responses to the Challenge of Postmodernism, Millard J. Erickson provided his own summary of several evangelical responses--both positive and negative--to the movement. Now in this book Erickson offers his own promised in-depth analysis and constructive response. What are the intellectual roots of postmodernism? Who are its most prominent exponents? What can we learn from their critique of modernism? Where do their assumptions and analyses fail us? Where do we go from here? What might a post-postmodernism look like? Erickson addresses these issues with characteristic discernment, clarity and evenhandedness, neither dismissing the insights of postmodern thought nor succumbing uncritically to its allure. An important book for all who are concerned with commending Christian truth to the culture within which we live.

This project engages with scholarship on Paul by philosophers, psychoanalysts, and historians to reveal the assumptions and prejudices that determine the messiah in secularism and its association with the exception.

Why believe? What kinds of things do people believe in? How have they come to believe them? And how does what they believe - or disbelieve - shape their lives and the meaning the world has for them? For Graham Ward, who is one of the mostinnovative writers on contemporary religion, these questions are more than just academic. They go to the heart not only of who but of what we are as human beings. Over the last thirty years, our understandings of mind and consciousness have changed in important ways through exciting new developments in neuroscience. The author addresses this quantum shift by exploring the biology of believing. He offers sustained reflection on perception, cognition, time, emotional intelligence, knowledge and sensation. Though the 'truth' of belief remains under increasing attack, in a thoroughly secularised context, Ward boldly argues that secularity is itself a form of believing. Pointing to the places where prayer and dreams intersect, this book offers a remarkable journey through philosophy, theology and culture, thereby revealing the true nature of the human condition.

This book is a concept-by-concept analysis of the thought of Mircea Eliade and a re-evaluation of his analysis of religion. It illustrates how a thorough familiarity with Eliade's work can produce an interpretation of his thought as systematic, coherent, and fully rational.

This book presents a thorough and innovative study of Hume's philosophy of religion, a topic central to his whole philosophical project. David Hume, one of the most influential philosophers to have written in the English language, is widely known as a skeptic and an empiricist. He is famous for raising questions about the existence of things for which there is insufficient empirical evidence, such as souls, the self, miracles, and, perhaps most importantly, God.Despite this reputation, however, Hume's works contain frequent references to a deity, and one searches in vain to find a positive assertion of atheism. This book proposes a different reading of Hume on God, in which Hume is seen as proposing a 'genuine theism'. Yoder investigates Hume's use of irony and his relationship with the Deists of his era and offers a thorough re-examination of Hume's writings on religion. Yoder concludes that, despite Hume's criticisms of the church, religiously-based ethics and the belief in miracles, he stops well short of a rejection of the existence of God. Always a creative thinker, Hume carves out a unique conception of the divine being.

This book identifies that "Xiang thinking" is the eidetic connotation and a fundamental trait of traditional Chinese thinking, offering insights of considerable methodological significance. "Xiang thinking" is a mode of thinking different from conceptual thinking or idealized rational thinking and, in a certain sense, it is more primal. In the past century, particularly since 1949, the primary works on Chinese philosophical history have, as a rule, addressed the ancient Chinese tradition of philosophical ideas by virtue of the philosophies of Plato, Descartes and Hegel: methods that inherently challenge Chinese philosophical insights. This has naturally led to the fact that the insights as such remained obscured. This book starts to reverse this trend, intending to help Chinese people understand and appraise themselves in a more down-to-earth fashion. In addition, it is particularly helpful to people of other cultures if they want to understand ancient Chinese philosophy and culture in a context of fresh and inspiring philosophical ideas. (By Zhang Xianglong)

The phrase "Without Authority" is Soren Kierkegaard's way of designating his lack of clerical ordination and to raise the complex and central human issue of authority in human culture. Authors of the essays in IKC-18 demonstrate how Kierkegaard's literary genius, religious passion, and intellectual penetration handle with equal ease and acuity the lily of the field, the bird of the air, the sacrament of holy communion, and the concepts of martyr, witness, genius, prototype, and apostle to create a singular and 'authoritative' contribution to both theology and philosophy of religion.

The first critical guide to the essential literature reflecting and expressing psychoanalytic approaches to religion, this volume's concentrates on critical assessments that steer the user toward works of lasting value. The book's first priority is to include publications clearly aimed at continuing the Freudian tradition and contributing to the psychoanalytic study of religion. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of psychology and religion as well as the general reader who is seeking works on those topics. Most of the psychoanalytic literature in English since 1920 is included and is organized in 21 topical sections. Cross-references and indexes increase the usefulness of the work. The author has tried to include every coherent effort, guided by psychoanalytic theory, to offer an explanation, understanding, or interpretation of religion or religious behavior. The work will be of interest in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, literature, folklore, and religion. Public libraries will find this a valuable reference tool to offer the general reader who is interested in a broad spectrum of ideas.

The editor, Thomas V. Morris presents a collection of discussions on the philosophy of religion, especially with regard to Christianity. The essays cover such subjects as salvation, the resurgence of philosophy of religion, the Acts of the Apostles, the Trinity, original sin and the Holy Spirit. The work aims to reveal the ease with which Christians discuss religion and philosophy compared with their past discomfort when confronted with the subject.

This book rewrites the history of Christian peace ethics. Christian reflection on reducing violence or overcoming war has roots in ancient Roman philosophy and eventually grew to influence modern international law. This historical overview begins with Cicero, the source of Christian authors like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. It is highly debatable whether Augustine had a systematic interest in just war or whether his writings were used to develop a systematic just war teaching only by the later tradition. May Christians justifiably use force to overcome disorder and achieve peace? The book traces the classical debate from Thomas Aquinas to early modern-age thinkers like Vitoria, Suarez, Martin Luther, Hugo Grotius and Immanuel Kant. It highlights the diversity of the approaches of theologians, philosophers and lawyers. Modern cosmopolitianism and international law-thinking, it shows, are rooted in the Spanish Scholastics, where Grotius and Kant each found the inspiration to inaugurate a modern peace ethic. In the 20th century the tradition has taken aim not only at reducing violence and overcoming war but at developing a constructive ethic of peace building, as is reflected in Pope John Paul II's teaching.