In the vast collection of his writings, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur only sporadically raised the issue of interreligious dialogue. In this book, comparative theologian Marianne Moyaert argues that Ricoeur's hermeneutical philosophy offers valuable signposts for a better understanding of the complexities related to interreligious dialogue. By revisiting the key insights of Ricoeur's wider oeuvre from the perspective of interfaith dialogue, Moyaert elaborates a Ricoeurian interreligious hermeneutic. In Response to the Religious Other provides a coherent interreligious reading of Ricoeur's philosophy of religion, his hermeneutical anthropology, his ethical hermeneutics. Moyaert shows that Ricoeur makes an exceptionally rewarding conversation partner for anyone wishing to explore the complex issues associated with interreligious dialogue. This book is essential for studies of hermeneutics, ethics, religious philosophy, global cooperation and hospitality, comparative theology, and religious identity.

This classic of Christian autobiography John Bunyan is timeless in its wisdom, wherein the author wrestles with his convictions of belief in the divine. For centuries a leading source on the Puritanical movement and its adherents, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners remains a regularly consulted text by theologians, religious historians and the general reader. The title itself is a composite reference to two famous Biblical passages: Romans 5:20 and Timothy 1:15. As well as discussing the process through which he found his Christian faith, Bunyan is forthright about the personal struggles he had with belief. Hardship was a reality for Bunyan, who drafted this book while incarcerated for preaching without a proper license. For Bunyan the possibility of salvation by the Lord was a constant preoccupation, and a motivation for authoring multiple works on faith and leading the life he led.

For generations, early Franciscan thought has been widely regarded as unoriginal: a mere attempt to systematize the longstanding intellectual tradition of Augustine in the face of the rising popularity of Aristotle. This volume brings together leading scholars in the field to undertake a major study of the sources and context of the so-called Summa Halensis (1236-45), which was collaboratively authored by the founding members of the Franciscan school at Paris, above all, Alexander of Hales, and John of La Rochelle, in an effort to lay down the Franciscan intellectual tradition or the first time. The contributions will highlight that this tradition, far from unoriginal, laid the groundwork for later Franciscan thought, which is often regarded as formative for modern thought. Furthermore, the volume shows the role this Summa played in the development of the burgeoning field of systematic theology, which has its origins in the young university of Paris. This is a crucial and groundbreaking study for those with interests in the history of western thought and theology specifically.

The late Bishop John A T Robinson wrote this book early on in his life but it was never published. This book is considered to be of such scholarly importance and so key to an understanding of Robinson's theology that it is now published in full. In 1960, Eric Mascall the Oxford Theologian published a book called "He Who Is", a neo-Thomist approach to the existence of God. This ran against all that Robinson believed most deeply about belief in God - influenced as he was by the new wave of German theologians. Bultmann, Buber but above all Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This book was his response to Mascall and hence the title. This book is about the notion of personality and it's relation to Christian theology, with particular reference to the contemporary "I-Thou Philosophy" of Martin Buber and it's relation to the doctrine of "The Trinity" and "The Person of Christ." This book was unquestionably the foundation of John A T Robinson theological work. Barth, Brunner, Berdayev, Kierkegaard, Heim and Mc Murray all had an influence on this book (as the reader will quickly observe). But at the heart of Robinson's thinking was Buber's small but seminal volume "I and Thou". More than anyone else, Robinson integrated the insights of Buber philosophy with the biblical doctrines of God and man. It was in this way that Robinson in this book explored both the history and implications of this tradition of thought of how one could speak of personality in God rather than God as a person. In this book Robinson began to work as a theologian as he meant to go on: questioning accepted doctrine, stripping away, getting to the heart, re-interpreting. He was in Karl Barth's great phrase taking rational trouble over the mystery.

Sren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is simultaneously one of the most obscure philosophers of the Western world and one of the most influential. His writings have influenced atheists and faithful alike. Yet despite his now pervasive influence, there is still widespread disagreement on many of the most important aspects of his thought. Kierkegaard was deliberately obscure in his philosophical writings, forcing his reader to interpret and reflect. But at the same time that Kierkegaard produced his esoteric, pseudonymous philosophical writings, he was also producing simpler, direct religious writings. Since his death the connections between these two sets of writings have been debated, ignored or denied by commentators. Here W. Glenn Kirkconnell undertakes a thorough examination of the two halves of Kierkegaard's authorship, demonstrating their ethical and religious relationship and the unifying themes of the signed and pseudonymous works. In particular the book examines Kierkegaard's understanding of the fall of the self and its recovery and the implications of his entire corpus for the life of the individual.

This original and provocative engagement with Erasmus' work argues that the Dutch humanist discovered in classical Stoicism several principles which he developed into a paradigm-shifting application of Stoicism to Christianity. Ross Dealy offers novel readings of some lesser and well-known Erasmian texts and presents a detailed discussion of the reception of Stoicism in the Renaissance. In a considered interpretation of Erasmus' De taedio Iesu, Dealy clearly shows the two-dimensional Stoic elements in Erasmus' thought from an early time onward. Erasmus' genuinely philosophical disposition is evidenced in an analysis of his edition of Cicero's De officiis. Building on stoicism Erasmus shows that Christ's suffering in Gethsemane was not about the triumph of spirit over flesh but about the simultaneous workings of two opposite but equally essential types of value: on the one side spirit and on the other involuntary and intractable natural instincts.

A classic work of religious philosophy, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is Scottish philosopher David Hume's famous examination of the nature of God. Hume asks the question as to whether or not man's belief in God can be supported by experience. The subject is discussed between three philosophers named Demea, Philo and Cleanthes. While all three agree that a god exists, they differ sharply in opinion on God's nature and how, or if, humankind can come to knowledge of a deity.

Have you ever pondered the problem of being as "we know it"? Our knowledge is extremely limited, and what is unknown at one moment in history may become known in the next, causing the body of knowledge to be constantly changing along the path of human development.

While we are all on a brief journey that begins at birth and ends in death, this current state of being does not preclude the possibility of another state of being presently unknown. "The Pathway Beyond" addresses the issues surrounding this question, bringing together the scientific and the spiritual.

The study of philosophy and religion has been part of human activity for thousands of years. Even so, our society seems not to have reaped the full benefit of the positive values set forth by our philosophers and spiritual leaders. Instead, the growth of science in solving immediate practical problems has consumed our interest. Now, however, scientists are developing an interest in topics that have traditionally been solely within the boundaries of philosophy and religion, such as human consciousness. The subject of ontology, or the science of being, seems to be expanding its influence within human thought.

Aimed at laypeople as well as academics, "The Pathway Beyond" explores ideas from Eastern and Western spiritual leaders to illustrate the connections between science and religion.

A philosophical inquiry into the strengths and weaknesses of theism and naturalism in accounting for the emergence of consciousness, the visual imagination and aesthetic values. The authors begin by offering an account of modern scientific practice which gives a central place to the visual imagination and aesthetic values. They then move to test the explanatory power of naturalism and theism in accounting for consciousness and the very visual imagination and aesthetic values that lie behind and define modern science. Taliaferro and Evans argue that evolutionary biology alone is insufficient to account for consciousness, the visual imagination and aesthetic values. Insofar as naturalism is compelled to go beyond evolutionary biology, it does not fare as well as theism in terms of explanatory power.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's dramatic biography, a son of privilege who suffered imprisonment and execution after involving himself in a conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich, has helped make him one of the most influential Christian figures of the twentieth century. But before he was known as a martyr or a hero, he was a student and teacher of theology. This book examines the academic formation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology, arguing that the young Bonhoeffer reinterpreted for a modern intellectual context the Lutheran understanding of the 'person' of Jesus Christ. In the process, Bonhoeffer not only distinguished himself from both Karl Barth and Karl Holl, whose dialectical theology and Luther interpretation respectively were two of the most important post-World War I theological movements, but also established the basic character of his own 'person-theology.' Barth convinces Bonhoeffer that theology must understand revelation as originating outside the human self in God's freedom. But whereas Barth understands revelation as the act of an eternal divine subject, Bonhoeffer treats revelation as the act and being of the historical person of Jesus Christ. On the basis of this person-concept of revelation, Bonhoeffer rejects Barth's dialectical thought, designed to respect the distinction between God and world, for a hermeneutical way of thinking that begins with the reconciliation of God and world in the person of Christ. Here Bonhoeffer mines a Lutheran understanding of the incarnation as God's unreserved entry into history, and the person of Christ as the resulting historical reconciliation of opposites. This also distinguishes Bonhoeffer's Lutheranism from that of Karl Holl, one of Bonhoeffer's teachers in Berlin, whose location of justification in the conscience renders the presence of Christ superfluous. Against this, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the present person of Christ as the precondition of justification. Through these critical conversations, Bonhoeffer develops the features of his person-theology -- a person-concept of revelation and a hermeneutical way of thinking -- which remain constant despite the sometimes radical changes in his thought.

George Berkeley (1685-1753), Bishop of Cloyne, was an Irish philosopher and divine who pursued a number of grand causes, contributing to the fields of economics, mathematics, political theory and theology. He pioneered the theory of 'immaterialism', and his work ranges over many philosophical issues that remain of interest today. This volume offers a complete and accurate edition of Berkeley's extant correspondence, including letters written both by him and to him, supplemented by extensive explanatory and critical notes. Alexander Pope famously said 'To Berkeley every virtue under heaven', and a careful reading of the letters reveals a figure worthy of admiration, sheds new light on his personal and intellectual life, and provides insight into the broad historical and philosophical currents of his time. The volume will be an invaluable resource for philosophers, modern historians and those interested in Anglo-Irish culture.

The separation of science and religion in modern secular culture can easily obscure the fact that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe ideas about nature were intimately related to ideas about God. Readers of this book will find fresh and exciting accounts of a phenomenon common to both science and religion: deviation from orthodox belief. How is heterodoxy to be measured? How might the scientific heterodoxy of particular thinkers impinge on their religious views? Would heterodoxy in religion create a predisposition towards heterodoxy in science? Might there be a homology between heterodox views in both domains? Such major protagonists as Galileo and Newton are re-examined together with less familiar figures in order to bring out the extraordinary richness of scientific and religious thought in the pre-modern world.