The essays in Paul Ricoeur and the Hope of Higher Education: The Just University discuss diverse ways that Paul Ricoeur's work provides hopeful insight and necessary provocation that should inform the task and mission of the modern university in the changing landscape of Higher Education. This volume gathers interdisciplinary scholars seeking to reestablish the place of justice as the central function of higher education in the 21st century. The contributors represent diverse backgrounds, including teachers, scholars, and administrators from R1 institutions, seminary and divinity schools as well as undergraduate teaching colleges. This collection, edited by Daniel Boscaljon and Jeffrey F. Keuss, offers critical and practical visions for the renewal of higher education. The first part of the book provides an internal examination of the university system and details how Ricoeur's thinking assists on pragmatics from syllabus design to final exams to daily teaching. The second portion of the book examines the Just University's role as a social institution within the broader cultural world and looks at how Ricoeur's description of values informs how the university works relative to religious belief, prisons, and rural poverty.

Hermeneutics continues to be an area of interest to many, yet recent discussions in hermeneutic theory have turned toward fringe areas - whether found in realms of post-structuralism or radical orthodoxy - that have resulted in a 'forgetfulness' of one of hermeneutics' key thinkers, Immanuel Kant. This book seeks to reaffirm Kant's place as a central thinker for hermeneutics and to challenge and support prevailing criticisms. It has been argued that Kant merely offers a theory of the subjective universality of a rational aesthetic judgement where only reason connects us to the transcendent and sensation is only a subjective and confusing factor that distracts and distorts reason. This position is challenged as well as supported by the contributors to this book, scholars who bring key issues in hermeneutics to light from American, British, and continental perspectives, grounded in questions and concerns germane to today's culture. The discussion of hermeneutics is framed as being deliberately an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural affair. The Sacred and the Profane provides a welcome addition to contemporary discussions on hermeneutic theory through its assertion that there is still a need to support a critical approach to hermeneutics after Kant.

Hermeneutics continues to be an area of interest to many, yet recent discussions in hermeneutic theory have turned toward fringe areas - whether found in realms of post-structuralism or radical orthodoxy - that have resulted in a 'forgetfulness' of one of hermeneutics' key thinkers, Immanuel Kant. This book seeks to reaffirm Kant's place as a central thinker for hermeneutics and to challenge and support prevailing criticisms. It has been argued that Kant merely offers a theory of the subjective universality of a rational aesthetic judgement where only reason connects us to the transcendent and sensation is only a subjective and confusing factor that distracts and distorts reason. This position is challenged as well as supported by the contributors to this book, scholars who bring key issues in hermeneutics to light from American, British, and continental perspectives, grounded in questions and concerns germane to today's culture. The discussion of hermeneutics is framed as being deliberately an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural affair. The Sacred and the Profane provides a welcome addition to contemporary discussions on hermeneutic theory through its assertion that there is still a need to support a critical approach to hermeneutics after Kant.

"Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." -Rainer Maria Rilke Life is full of questions: questions about our identity, our relationships, our faith. Sometimes it seems like there are no easy answers. But our questioning can lead us on a journey into greater understanding and purpose. Jeffrey Keuss says that asking good questions helps us to lead good lives. He takes us on a tour of Scripture to find insights from people who asked questions of God and others. From God asking Adam and Eve, "Where are you?" to the Samaritan woman asking Jesus for water, Live the Questions explores critical questions in Scripture and what they can teach us about doubt, faith, and uncertainty in our everyday lives. Grappling with hard questions is necessary for us to form deeper faith commitments and discern who we are called to become. So don't be afraid of the questions-live them.

Synopsis: Your Neighbor's Hymnal provides a winsome and thoughtful exploration of popular music, from rock to hip-hop to metal to soul, as a vital source contemporary culture continues to go to learn about faith, hope, and love. Where some Christians have kept their focus only on a hymnal found in their church or formed by the genre of Contemporary Christian Music, Keuss argues that your neighbor's hymnal is filled with great music that God is using and deserves a deeper listen. Offering forty songs spanning time and genres, each section includes a number of representative reflections on the history and artist that created the song, reflections on its lyrical content, and theological and biblical connections that will hopefully show some ways in which the song illustrates how your neighbor is hearing, seeking, and finding faith, hope, and love through popular music. This book can be approached in a number of ways. As an introduction to this stream of popular culture, the overviews and short introductions to each song provide a glossary useful in courses needing texts in theology and popular culture. For use with church groups, whether adult bible studies or youth groups, Your Neighbor's Hymnal provides points of reference for connecting key aspects of the Christian faith with illustrations readily available for discussion. For interested music listeners, the book will provide a means of giving voice to their own musings on faith. As with faith, good music is meant to be shared, and Your Neighbor's Hymnal offers a wonderful opportunity to do both. Endorsements: "How Keuss narrowed down his 'playlist' for this book is beyond me. There are a plethora of theological themes and 'religious' truths in popular music, and Keuss' selection is a wide and diverse sampling. It would be easy to dismiss popular music as vapid and superficial, driven and shaped by market forces that flatten the existential truths of the artists into commercial commodities, but Keuss enables us, like a fine teacher, to see the obvious, the beautiful, the transcendent, and the transformative in this powerful and omnipresent platform for giving voice to human desire. Those who have ears to hear already know this, those who do not could do no better than to surrender to Keuss' able guidance." -Eric G. Flett author of Persons, Powers, and Pluralities: Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Culture "With the mind of a theologian, the heart of the pastor, and the soul of an artist, nobody reflects more intelligently and provocatively at the intersection of theology and pop culture then Jeff Keuss. Your Neighbor's Hymnal shows how this generation does its God-talk through music and lyrics and passionately calls us to listen to and participate in their conversation." -Dick Staub author of About You: Fully Human. Fully Alive. "Keuss works with popular music from the inside, like someone with the music flowing through his veins. This book is a fantastic example of how pop culture can serve as a deep source of theological reflection, which will enable readers to encounter God, through the music in 'Your Neighbour's Hymnal.'" -Michael W. DeLashmutt Co-Chair of the Network for Religion and Popular Culture Author Biography: Jeffrey F. Keuss is Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University. He is the author of Freedom of the Self: Kenosis, Cultural Identity, and Mission at the Crossroads (Pickwick, 2010), The Sacred and the Profane: Current Demands on Hermeneutics (2003), and A Poetics of Jesus (2002).

Freedom of the Self revitalizes the question of identity formation in a postmodern era through a deep reading of Christian life in relation to current trends seen in the Emergent and Missional church movements. By relocating deep identity formation as formed and released through a renewed appraisal of kenotic Christology coupled with readings of Continental philosophy (Derrida, Levinas, Marion) and popular culture, Keuss offers a bold vision for what it means to be truly human in contemporary society, as what he calls the "kenotic self." In addition to providing a robust reflection of philosophical and theological understanding of identity formation, from Aristotle and Augustine through to contemporary thinkers, Freedom of the Self suggests some tangible steps for the individual and the church in regard to how everyday concerns such as economics, literature, and urbanization can be part of living into the life of the kenotic self.