St Maximus the Confessor, the greatest of Byzantine theologians, lived through the most catastrophic period the Byzantine Empire was to experience before the Crusades. This book introduces the reader to the times and upheavals during which Maximus lived. It discusses his cosmic vision of humanity and his Christology. The study makes available several of Maximus’ theological treatises, many of…
The present investigation has grown out of several preoccupations, some private, some professional, and others, finally, that I would call public. Private preoccupation: to say nothing of my gaze directed back now over a long life—Reflexion faite (looking back)—it is a question here of returning to a lacuna in the problematic of Time and Narrative and in Oneself as Another, where temporal e…
Some of the world's specialists provide in this handbook essays about what kinds of things there are, in what ways they exist, and how they relate to each other. They give the word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness.
From this cabin in the Wind River Range of the Rockies I look out onto a landscape of desire. In these recent years of drought everything longs for rain. My wife and I woke up to three inches of late snow a few days ago and mountain bluebells, delighted at the unexpected moisture, have suddenly appeared in a brief riot of color across the meadow...
In this work Jenkins takes a closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future. The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament.
At least two well-developed bodies of literature have emerged on practical questions relating to death, one the concern of psychology, the other the concern of ethics. These flow from two basic questions: how can we live well in the face of death? and when, if ever, is it legitimate deliberately to bring human life to an end? Related to both of these is a third question that seems to press eve…
Picking up on an incomplete ancient definition that requires some supplementation, we have grown accustomed to regarding a letter as “half of a dialogue” or as a continuation of a conversation by other means. Recently we have also learned to understand the letter as a speech or sermon, which has been put down in writing only of necessity under the pressure of circumstances. But does the ina…
“There is a disputation that will continue till mankind is raised from the dead, between the necessitarians and the partisans of free will.”
Through the ages no literary work has received so much attention as the Bible, which has been handed down from generation to generation so carefully, studied so diligently and commented upon so thoroughly. Many avenues of its writings have been explored and numerous aspects investigated in detail. Especially during the past century biblical scholars have devoted much time and energy in addressi…
This book examines the theology and ethics of land use, especially the practices of modern industrialized agriculture, in light of critical biblical exegesis. Nine interrelated essays explore the biblical writers’ pervasive concern for the care of arable land against the background of the geography, social structures, and religious thought of ancient Israel. This approach consistently brings …
This book was conceived in an unusual setting. The year was 1976. I had just arrived with my family in Aixen-Provence, France, where I was to spend a sabbatical year teaching at the university. We had rented a house for the year from Michel Vovelle, a well-known French historian who was just packing up to leave for a sabbatical year of his own at Princeton. The lease was for a certain rent, qui…
This book offers an intellectual and spiritual biography of Lesslie Newbigin, a figure of patristic proportions in the twentieth-century history of the Church. Drawing on thirty-five years of personal and literary acquaintance with his subject and on a thorough examination of the Newbigin archives, Geoffrey Wainwright crafts a rich and varied portrait of this outstanding witness to the Gospel.
Despite the challenging theological language of Alfred North Whitehead and some of his followers, process theology can be accessible to students, laypeople, and pastors as well as academics; but, more importantly, process theology can be life-transforming. I am a process theologian, who has integrated writing, teaching, preaching, administration, pastoral care, and spiritual direction, for over…
Augustine’s philosophy of life involves reviewing one’s past and exercises for self-improvement. Centuries after Plato and before Freud he invented a “spiritual exercise” in which every man and woman is able, through memory, to reconstruct and reinterpret life’s aims. Brian Stock examines Augustine’s unique way of blending literary and philosophical themes. He proposes a new interpr…
Besides the fact that Ethics, Education, and Eschatology all begin with the letter E readers may find the combination strange. However, the three are important themes in Calvin’s works that help to explain the development of western thought and action. Ethics is perhaps the most obvious theme to be found in his work as his first attempt at publication was on ethics; his work on Seneca’s De …
Cov-e-nant (n): A binding agreement; a compact; a promise. Since biblical times covenants have been a part of everyday life. Simply put, they are promises, agreements, or contracts. But how do they translate into faith and the reading of Scripture? Are covenants merely elements of a narrative? Or do they represent something more? And what are the eternal implications of "cutting" a covenant wit…
Berkeley i s generally regarded a s the inventor of subjective idealism; that is , of the theory that the physical world exists only in the experiences minds have of it. This is one version of the doctrine that reality i s wholly mental: the other version is pan-psychism (which is from the Greek, meaning 'everything mind-ism'). Pan-psychism holds that there are minds in everything.....
The Book of Common Prayer is one of the most important and influential books in English history, but it has received relatively little attention from literary scholars. This study seeks to remedy this by attending to the Prayerbook’s importance in England’s political, intellectual, religious, and literary history. The first half of the book presents extensive analyses of the Book of Common …
Unless you were a personal friend of C. S. Lewis, or one of his many correspondents, you are probably not aware that he went by “Jack” to his friends, a name he landed on as a child and decided it suited him better than his given one (Clive Staples Lewis). So at the end of most of his letters, you encountered “Yours, Jack.” This book is intended to extend that personal relationship to y…
This book started life as the final chapter of Jesus and the Victory of God (1996), the second volume in the series Christian Origins and the Question of God, of which the first volume is The New Testament and the People of God (1992). The present work now forms the third volume in the series. This is a departure from the original plan, and since people often ask me what is going on some explan…
I was raised in a mainline Protestant church, but in college I went through personal and spiritual crises that led me to question my most fundamental beliefs about God, the world, and myself.
A fascinating compendiu of early-twentieth-century mechanical devices, this wide-ranging work covers a variety of applications. More than 1,800 engravings-ranging from simple diagrams to detailed cross-sections-illustrate the workings of each item, from simple hooks and leavers to complex machinery used in stea, motive, hydraulic, air, and electric power, navigation, gearing, clocks, mining, co…
Scholars argue over where Hebrews fits in the first-century world. Kenneth L. Schenck works towards resolving this question by approaching Hebrews’ cosmology and eschatology from a text-orientated perspective. After observing that the key passages in the background debate mostly relate to the ‘settings’ of the story of salvation history evoked by Hebrews, Schenck attempts to delineate tho…
Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1956, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: “When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is …
This issue of History looks back at not one, but two monumental revolutions: the Reformation, which began in 1517, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Separated by 400 years, these two events don’t appear to have much in common, but at their core they are bound together by the power of great writing.....
Epistemology is currently in friendly ferment, bubbling away at the heart of everyday philosophical focus. Encouragingly many epistemologists are sampling and analysing new perplexities and fresh theories. And—a welcome sign—there are even probing assessments of epistemological methodology. What will emerge from this activity? What should emerge from it? How worthwhile a philosophical legac…
Immanuel Kant’s moral theory presupposes a theory of action that has not been well understood. As a consequence, his moral theory has not been well understood, at least in parts. So this book develops an interpretation of Kant’s theory of action in order to help us better understand his moral theory.
In the last few decades philosophers have rediscovered friendship as a distinct topic of interest. Aristotle’s thought has been, justifiably, the starting point for most philosophical work on friendship, and often its focus. This renewal of philosophical interest has seldom, however, translated into interest in what Aquinas and other medieval philosophers had to say about friendship. Interest…
On 5 October 1971, I wrote a short paper on Metaphysics 1004b25–6, for a tutorial with G. E. L. Owen at Harvard. Since then I have intermittently pursued some lines of inquiry connected with that passage; the current result of them is this book. The first chapter gives a survey of its contents, and some idea of the main argument. I try to explore some connexions between different areas of Ari…
This authoritative book introducing Karl Barth is written by leading scholars of his work, drawn from Europe and North America. They offer challenging yet accessible accounts of the major features of Barth's theological work, especially as it has become available through the publication of his collected works, and interact with the very best of contemporary Barth scholarship. The contributors a…
Whether a novel, a movie, or a television show—there is nothing like a good story. Combine compelling characters with dramatic conflict, and audiences will devour each installment until they know the ending.....
The subject of Being is one of the most important of all philosophical concerns. St Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest of all philosophers. It will be the aim of this book to show that on this crucial topic this first-rank philosopher was thoroughly confused. The project may well seem a bizarre one, and to need explanation at the outset. The explanation will take an autobiographical form
The purpose of this book is to tell the story of how God's Word went from being strictly for those in the pulpit to being read, understood, and acted upon by laypeople. It is a story of tragedy and triumph: spilled blood and the preservation of a sacred treasure.
The aim of this book is to offer such an analysis for those crucial sections of the Critique where Kant presents the constructive side of his theory of knowledge. This is an immodest aim and one that I could not hope to fulfill if I did not stand on the shoulders of giants. Drawing on their work, I shall try to show that the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason contains a sustained and cha…
As I have explained in the “personal introduction” to the first chapter, this book is the outgrowth of my lifelong study in the history of biblical interpretation, as amplified more recently by my consideration of the analogy between this history and the history of constitutional interpretation...
Before me is a grassy green field. A line of trees marks its far edge, which is punctuated by a spruce on its left side and a maple on its right. Birds are singing. A warm breeze brings the smell of roses from a nearby trellis. I reach for a glass of iced tea, still cold to the touch and flavored by fresh mint. I am alert, the air is clear, the scene is quiet. My perceptions are quite distinct.
Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays makes seventeen of the most important papers on Kierkegaard available in one place for the first time. Their author, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Alastair Hannay, has substantially revised many of his earlier essays and prepared three new essays especially for this volume.
"It is a strange fact that we have never known with certainty who produced the book that has played such a central role in our civilization," writes Friedman, a foremost Bible scholar. From this point he begins an investigation and analysis that readsa as compellingly as a good detective story. Focusing on the central books of the Old Testament-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuterono…
THIS BOOK IS about the young Kant. It is an investigation of the first two decades of his philosophical life, from the Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746/7) to the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766). I examine the rise and fall of the ‘‘precritical’’ theories and place them in their historical and topical context—exploring how Kant resolved problems his predecessors an…
This book represents an attempt to address questions of where humanity is going in terms of technological enhancement, bioengineering, and, in particular, artificial intelligence. Will we be able to construct artificial life and superintelligence? Will humans so modify themselves that they become something else entirely, and if so, what implications do advances in AI have on our worldviews in g…
At his inauguration to the chair in The History of Systems of Thought’ at the Collegè de France in Paris in 1970 Michel Foucault commented on the difficulties, the responsibilities and the risks, associated with entering the world of discourse. I suspect most of us can understand Foucault’s preference, namely to be already within discourse, to be ‘borne way beyond all possible beginnings…
This book is an attempt to bring interpretation under close scrutiny, not least as there is a widespread opinion that such an activity is something that comes naturally. What, however, does not come naturally, are the forms interpretation takes; thus their inspection will be the main objective of the argument of this book. An anatomy of interpretation is all the more pertinent as we currently w…
Angels. We all know what they look like. They have wings and halos. They appear in children’s nativity plays. They wear long white robes, apart from cherubs, who are like naked fat little children. They live in heaven on clouds but come to earth to guard or to guide. They are portrayed in stained glass windows and look down protectively from gravestones, but they also appear in films, cartoon…
This introductory-level text offers students and instructors a powerful pedagogical tool for increasing students ability to understand, analyze, evaluate, and construct arguments. THE POWER OF LOGIC provides balanced coverage of informal logic, traditional categorical logic, and modern symbolic logic. the authors direct and accessible writing style, along with a wealth of examples and imaginati…
Most significant problems of contemporary life have their origins in nihilism and its paradoxical logic, which is simultaneously destructive to, and constitutive of, society. Yet, in social theory, nihilism is a surprisingly under-researched topic.
After first publishing this book in 1995, in subsequent reprintings I was able to correct a few errata, add a biblical index, and update the bibliography. For the present task of thoroughly revising the whole text, I need to take account of the numerous biblical, historical, and systematic studies of Jesus that have appeared in recent years. Many valuable, as well as some questionable, books an…
Augustine of Hippo (354–430), whose accounts of the Trinity have heavily influenced much subsequent Western theology, has often been accused of over-emphasizing the unity of God and thus been maligned as a source of persistent problems in contemporary religious thought. In Augustine and the Trinity , Lewis Ayres offers a new treatment of this important figure, demonstrating how Augustine’s…
This book deals with the early history of the process that advanced atheism, agnosticism, and religious unbelief. This chapter discusses the coverage of the book and provides a brief background of the individuals who overtly rejected religious faith from 1520 to 1780. That period saw the fears that unbelief and irreligion were on the rise, as well as sustained and systematic attacks on Christia…
Issues of gender and sexuality have recently come to the fore in all humanities disciplines, and this book reflects this broad interdisciplinary situation, although its own standpoint is a theological one. In contrast to many contemporary feminist theologies, gender and sexuality (eros) are here understood within a distinctively Christian context characterized by the reality of agape - the New …
Divided Kingdom is the second part of a study of the early modern origins of Irish society. As with the first volume, Contested Island, its main concern is with the changing relationships and patterns of interaction among the different sections of an ethnically, and by this time religiously, divided society, continuing the story from Ireland’s part in the British civil wars of the mid-sevente…