Why do our lives sometime go in unexpected and even unpleasant directions? The apostle Paul in Romans 5:1-5 provides a major insight into dealing with this life question when he reflects upon the life sequence of suffering, endurance, character, hope, hope not disappointing us, and joy. This book discusses all this and is also a wonderful testimony to the role of the Christian faith in helping anyone to recover from tough life events.

Kevin Giles traces the historic understanding of subordination in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity and investigates the closely related question of whether women are created to be permanently subordinated to men. The concept has been vigorously debated in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity since the fourth century. Certain New Testament texts have made it part of discussions of right relations between men and women. In recent years these two matters have been dramatically brought together. Today the doctrine of the Trinity is being used to support opposing views of the right relationship between men and women in the church. At the center of the debate is the question of whether or not the orthodox view of the trinitarian relations teach the eternal subordination of the Son of God. The author masterfully traces the historic understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity from the patristic age to our own times to help resolve this important question. Giles goes on to provide an illuminating investigation of a closely related question--whether or not women, even in terms of function or role, were created to be permanently subordinated to men. By surveying the church's traditional interpretation of texts relating to the status of women and inquiring into the proper use of the doctrine of the Trinity, Giles lays out his position in this current debate.

Paul D. Molnar discusses issues related to the concepts of freedom and necessity in trinitarian doctrine. He considers the implications of "non-conceptual knowledge of God" by comparing the approaches of Karl Rahner and T. F. Torrance. He also reconsiders T. F. Torrance's "new" natural theology and illustrates why Christology must be central when discussing liberation theology. Further, he explores Catholic and Protestant relations by comparing the views of Elizabeth Johnson, Walter Kasper and Karl Barth, as well as relations among Christians, Jews and Muslims by considering whether it is appropriate to claim that all three religions should be understood to be united under the concept of monotheism. Finally, he probes the controversial issues of how to name God in a way that underscores the full equality of women and men and how to understand "universalism" by placing Torrance and David Bentley Hart into conversation on that subject.

The "New Atheist" movement of recent years has put the science-versus-religion controversy back on the popular cultural agenda. Anti-religious polemicists are convinced that the application of the new sciences of the mind to religious belief gives them the final weapons in their battle against irrationality and superstition. What used to be a trickle of research papers scattered in specialized scientific journals has now become a torrent of books, articles, and commentary in the popular media pressing the case that the cognitive science of religion can finally fulfill the enlightenment dream of shrinking religion into insignificance, if not eliminating it altogether. James Jones argues that these claims are demonstrably false. He notes that cognitive science research is religiously neutral; it can be deployed in many different ways in relation to the actual belief in and practice of religion: to undermine it, to simply study it, and to support it. These differences are differences in interpretation of the data and, Jones suggests, a reflection of the background assumptions and viewpoints brought to the data. The goal of this book is not to defend either a general religious outlook or a particular religious tradition but to make the case that while there is much to learn from the cognitive scientific study of religion, attempts to use it to "explain" religion are exaggerated and misguided. Drawing on scientific research and logical argument Can Science Explain Religion? directly confronts the claims of these debunkers of religion, providing an accessibly written, persuasive account of why they are not convincing.

This book pursues the implications for linking Lenin with theology, which is not a project that has been undertaken thus far. What does this inveterate atheist known for describing religion as 'spiritual booze' (a gloss on Marx's 'opium of the people') have to do with theology? This book reveals far more than might initially be expected, so much so that Lenin and the Russian Revolution cannot be understood without this complex engagement with theology.
It also seeks to bring Lenin into recent debates over the intersections between theology and the Left, between the Bible and political thought. The key names involved in this debate are reasonably well-known, including Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zižek, Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Terry Eagleton, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Boer has written concerning these critics, among others, in Boer's earlier five-volume Criticism of Heaven and Earth (Brill and Haymarket, 2007-13). Lenin and Theology builds upon this earlier project but it also stands alone as a substantial study in its own right. But it will be recognised as a contribution that follows a series that has, as critics have pointed out, played a major role in reviving and taking to a new level the debate over Marxism and religion.
The book is based upon a careful, detailed and critical reading of the whole 45 volumes of his Collected Works in English translation - 55 volumes in the Russian original. From that close attention to the texts, a number of key themes have emerged: the ambivalence over freedom of choice in matters of religion; his love of the sayings and parables of Jesus in the Gospels; his own love of constructing new parables; the extended and complex engagements with Christian socialists and 'God-builders' among the Bolsheviks; the importance of Hegel for his reassessments of religion; the arresting suggestion that a revolution is a miracle, which redefines the meaning of miracle; and the veneration of Lenin after his death.

Jesus is a central figure in the Qur'an, the Hadith, and other Islamic literature and plays an important role in Islamic eschatology. In this tradition, at the end days Jesus will descend from heaven to bring peace and justice to the earth. Islam's Jesus takes a bold yet candid look at the highly charged topic of Jesus's place in Islam, exploring some of the religion's least understood aspects. Originally from Turkey, Zeki Saritoprak is a scholar of Islamic theology who teaches at an American Catholic university and is heavily engaged in interfaith dialogue. In this book, he examines diverse traditions and makes clear the reality of pluralism in the history of Islamic religious scholarship. Saritoprak thoughtfully argues that Jesus is essential to both Muslims and Christians, forging an excellent opportunity for communication between the adherents of two religions who together constitute more than half of the earth's population.

This book is an extended, critical reflection on the state of interrelgious dialogue in its modern version. While there has been some important writing in the field of comparative theology, there has been no extended, critical reflection on the state of the discipline in its modern version, its strengths and problematic areas as it grows as a serious theological and scholarly discipline. This work of young scholars in conversation with one another, remedies this lack by, as it were, taking the discipline apart and putting it back together again. The volume seeks to understand how to learn from multiple religions in a way that is truly open to those religions on their own terms, while yet being rooted in the tradition/s that we bring to our interreligious study.

New religious movements both read the Bible in creative ways and produce their own texts that aspire to scriptural status. From the creation stories in Genesis and the Ten Commandments to the life of Jesus and the apocalypse, they develop their self-understandings through reading and writing scripture.

This book contains selected papers which were presented at the 3rd International Halal Conference (INHAC 2016), organized by the Academy of Contemporary Islamic Studies (ACIS), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam, Malaysia. It addresses halal-related issues that are applicable to various industries and explores a variety of contemporary and emerging issues. Highlighting findings from both scientific and social research studies, it enhances the discussion on the halal industry (both in Malaysia and at the international level), and serves as an invitation to engage in more advanced research on the global halal industry.

This title presents a look at how Nietzsche's most generative and provocative ideas are also deeply theological and continue to have relevance in teaching Christians how to be Christians in the world today.Over a century ago, Nietzsche famously declared the death of God, but this has hardly kept Christian theologians from making positive use of this 'master of suspicion'."Nietzsche and Theology" displays how his most generative and provocative ideas are also deeply theological and continue to teach Christians how to be Christians in the world in which they find themselves. Hovey highlights the constructive contributions that can emerge from receptively meeting Nietzsche as modernity's philosophical other. Unchained from resenting Nietzsche's 'philosophical hammer', such encounters will surely reward those who journey into the far country of Nietzsche's Christianity."Nietzsche and Theology" is ideally suited to students in theology and professional theologians who have a working knowledge of philosophy and philosophical theology, but who have not faced Nietzsche in theological debate or grappled with him as a specific resource.

Islamic theology had to wait a long time before being granted a place in the European universities. That happened above all in German-speaking areas, and this led to the development of new theological and religious pedagogical approaches. This volume presents one such approach and discusses it from various perspectives. It takes up different theological and religious pedagogical themes and reflects on them anew from the perspective of the contemporary context. The primary focus is on contemporary challenges and possible answers from the perspective of Islamic theology and religious pedagogy. It discusses general themes like the location of Islamic theology and religious pedagogy at secular European universities. The volume also explores concrete challenges, such as the extent to which Islamic religious pedagogy can be conceptualised anew, how it should deal with its own theological tradition in the contemporary context, and how a positive attitude towards worldview and religious plurality can be cultivated. At issue here are foundations of a new interpretation of Islam that takes into account both a reflective approach to the Islamic tradition and the contemporary context. In doing so, it gives Muslims the opportunity to take their own thinking further.

Today's shifting discourses regarding life and death are about theology, medicine, economics, and politics as much as they are about life and death. At the heart of one of these discourses is HIV & AIDS, a pandemic that allows for a slippery discussion about its origins and nature. Those who live in the borderland this pandemic creates are often blamed for the affliction; they are seen as 'dirty.' Yet, those who live or work with persons with HIV & AIDS know another story of marginalizing macrostructures that indicate that the issue is as much structural injustice as individual responsibility. Theology in the Age of Global AIDS and HIV is a courageous and challenging call to look at how dominant theologies have participated in the creation of 'risk environments' for susceptibility to this virus and to act so that our weeping and raging with the suffering helps us learn how to care for one another and be responsible theo-ethicists and global citizens in this age of global AIDS and HIV.

The Death of God theologians represented one of the most influential religious movements that emerged of the 1960s, a decade in which the discipline of theology underwent revolutionary change. Although they were from different traditions, utilized varied methods of analysis, and focused on culture in distinctive ways, the four religious thinkers who sparked radical theology--Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton, Richard Rubenstein, and Paul Van Buren--all considered the Holocaust as one of the main challenges to the Christian faith. Thirty years later, a symposium organized by the American Academy of Religion revisited the Death of God movement by asking these four radical theologians to reflect on how awareness of the Holocaust affected their thinking, not only in the 1960s but also in the 1990s. This edited volume brings together their essays, along with responses by other noted scholars who offer critical commentary on the movement's impact, legacy, and relationship to the Holocaust.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

The human heart is a wonderful mystery of rhythmic life and beauty, like music and poetry. Listening to the beat of another's heart requires being up close, personal and intimate. Trust is essential. In Heaven's Heartbeat, author Micah Smith presents a ninety-day devotional dedicated to helping you hear God's heartbeat. Using anecdotes from his personal life, Micah offers messages to encourage you to hang in there and not give up when times are tough and uncertain. He presents an invitation to hear God's voice with renewed hope, growing trust, and calm confidence during the foggy seasons of chaos and confusion. Heaven's Heartbeat is not a book of devotional theories. In the next ninety-days you will discover the reality of God's presence in your life, the help of his Word to guide you, and the healing power of a Father's heart.