In the 1940s and 1950s, Albert Schweitzer was one of the best-known figures on the world stage. Courted by monarchs, world statesmen, and distinguished figures from the literary, musical, and scientific fields, Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, cementing his place as one of the great intellectual leaders of his time. Schweitzer is less well known now but nonetheless a man of perennial fascination, and this volume seeks to bring his achievements across a variety of areas...

According to the editor's preface: "The City of God is the masterpiece of the greatest genius among the Latin Fathers, and the best known and most read of his works, except the Confessions. It embodies the results of thirteen years of intellectual labor and study (from A.D. 413-426). It is a vindication of Christianity against the attacks of the heathen in view of the sacking of the city of Rome by the barbarians, at a time when the old Greco-Roman civilization was approaching its downfall...

The orderliness of the universe and the existence of human beings already provides some reason for believing that there is a God - as argued in Richard Swinburne's earlier book Is There a God ? Swinburne now claims that it is probable that the main Christian doctrines about the nature of God and his actions in the world are true. In virtue of his omnipotence and perfect goodness, God must be a Trinity, live a human life in order to share our suffering, and found a church which wou...

Named A Best Spiritual Book of the Year by Spirituality & Practice The last twenty years have seen a dramatic increase in "nones": people who do not claim any religious affiliation. These "nones" now outnumber even the largest Protestant denominations in America. They are not to be confused with secularists, however, for many of them identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR). The response to this dramatic change in American religion has been amazingly mixed. Whil...

In his latest book, Laurence Freeman shows that the basic experience of contemplation is the experience of faith and that we all need to develop this in order to become fully human. We are all capable of it - indeed we are designed for it.Freeman re-defines faith for our secular age. He draws on his wide experience and travels in the modern world to show how a new sense of the spiritual dimension can transform the way we approach education, business, mental health, the environment,...

Based in New Zealand, the author, an Anglican priest, made a number of pilgrimages 1995–2008 to the extermination (and other camp) sites of the Third Reich, 1933–45. These find expression in Diary entries that describe the sites as they now are and scope the problems they raise for both Jews and Christians.The book thus places the Holocaust at the centre of Jewish-Christian dialogue. In face of the silence of God and the choiceless choices of the victims, the central question is ho...

The Summa Theologiae is Thomas Aquinas' undisputed masterwork, and it includes his thoughts on the elemental forces in human life. Feelings such as love, hatred, pleasure, pain, hope and despair were described by Aquinas as 'passions', representing the different ways in which happiness could be affected. But what causes the passions? What impact do they have on the person who suffers them? Can they be shaped and reshaped in order to better promote human flourishing? The aim of this book is...

Rabbinic tales of drought, disaster, and charismatic holy men illuminate critical questions about power, ethics, and ecology in Jewish late antiquity. Through a sustained reading of the Babylonian Talmud's tractate on fasts in response to drought, this book shows how Bavli Taʿanit challenges Deuteronomy's claim that virtue can assure abundance and that misfortune is an unambiguous sign of divine rebuke. Employing a new method for analyzing lengthy talmudic narratives, Julia Watts Belser tr...

This Festschrift in honour of Werner G. Jeanrond, currently Master of St Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, UK, investigates the challenge of alterity for Christianity, exploring and elaborating on this core concern in Jeanrond's hermeneutical theology. Blurring disciplinary boundaries, more than thirty of Jeanrond's colleagues and companions from ten countries track the dynamics of difference driven by the encounter with the self as other, the other as other, and God as the radical other...

In Travels in the Netherworld, Bryan J. Cuevas examines a fascinating but little-known genre of Tibetan narrative literature about the délok, ordinary men and women who claim to have died, traveled through hell, and then returned from the afterlife. These narratives enjoy audiences ranging from the most sophisticated monastic scholars to pious townsfolk, villagers, and nomads. Their accounts emphasize the universal Buddhist principles of impermanence and worldly suffering...

Why do Christians believe what they believe? What is it about Christianity that makes us believe we have the one and only way to heaven? After all, would a loving and caring God actually send somebody to hell just because they happened to follow a teacher who got a few facts wrong? What about the area of science? How can we claim with confidence that the universe had a beginning and will have an end when renowned scientists and physicists have claimed that the universe is eternal? If there...

Opening the Qur'an can be a bewildering experience to non-Muslim, English-speaking readers. Those who expect historical narratives, stories, or essays on morals are perplexed once they pass the beautiful first Surah, often shocked and then bogged down by Surah 2, and even offended by Surah 3’s strictures against nonbelievers. Walter H. Wagner “opens” the Qur’an by offering a comprehensive and extraordinarily readable, step-by-step introduction to the text, making it accessible to ...