John Locke's religious interests and concerns permeate his philosophical production and are best expressed in his later writings on religion, which represent the culmination of his studies. In this volume, Diego Lucci offers a thorough analysis and reassessment of Locke's unique, heterodox, internally coherent version of Protestant Christianity, which emerges from The Reasonableness of Christianity and other public as well as private texts. In order to clarify Locke's views on morality, sa...

Given the central role played by religion in early-modern Britain, it is perhaps surprising that historians have not always paid close attention to the shifting and nuanced subtleties of terms used in religious controversies. In this collection particular attention is focussed upon two of the most contentious of these terms: ’atheism’ and ’deism’, terms that have shaped significant parts of the scholarship on the Enlightenment. This volume argues that in the seventeenth and eighteenth cent...

A general introduction to the theology of Pope Benedict XVI, including his approach to issues in moral and political theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, interpretations of the of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and the theology of history. Tracey Rowland also addresses the question of Pope Benedict's place in the constellation of contemporary Catholic theologians. It has become a commonplace observation that Pope Benedict has been influenced by the thought of St Augustine, in con...

In this new three-part book series, Avis tackles a series of issues relevant to Anglicanism in the current day.The first book, In Search of Authority, seeks to examine Anglican Theology in relation to questions of authority. Anglican theology has been a hotbed of debate about the issue of authority since the Reformation. What do we really appeal to when attempting to decide matters of doctrine, worship, ministry or ethics? The debate is very much alive today, between Evangelical, L...

The writers known as the English deists were not simply religious controversialists, but agents of reform who contributed to the emergence of modernity. This title claims that these writers advocated a failed ideology which itself declined after 1730. It argues for an evolution of their ideas into a more modern form.

Rowland showcases here the dominant contemporary approaches to doing Catholic theology. Chapter 1 offers a summary of the two International Theological Commission (ITC) documents on the discipline of Catholic theology. These documents set out the general principles which should govern any approach to Catholic theology (at least according to the ITC). The subsequent chapters each focus on one of four different approaches frequently found in contemporary Catholic academies: the approach of T...

Born out of a love of language, text, classical learning, art, philosophy and philology, the Christian Humanist project lasted beyond the turmoil of sixteenth-century Europe to survive in a new form in post-Reformation thought. Jonathan Arnold here explores the finest intellects of late-Renaissance Europe, providing an essential guide to the most important scholars, priests, theologians and philosophers of the period, now collectively known as the Christian Humanists. "The Great Humanists"...

St. Augustine’s Confessions is one of the most important works in the history of literature and Christian thought. Written around 397, when Augustine was the Christian bishop of Hippo (in modern-day Algeria), the Confessions were designed both to spiritually educate those who already shared Augustine’s faith, and to convert those who did not. Augustine did this through the original maneuver of writing what is now recognized as being the first Western autobiography – letting reader...

Interprets the works of an important group of writers known as 'the English deists'. This title argues that this interpretation reads Romantic conceptions of religious identity into a period in which it was lacking. It contextualizes these writers within the early Enlightenment, which was multivocal, plural and in search of self definition.

A true account of a turning point in medieval history that shaped the modern world, from "a superb storyteller" and the author of When Jesus Became God ( Los Angeles Times).Europe was in the long slumber of the Middle Ages, the Roman Empire was in tatters, and the Greek language was all but forgotten—until a group of twelfth-century scholars rediscovered and translated the works of Aristotle.The philosopher's ideas spread like wildfire acr...

An "extremely rewarding" exploration of how these two great human endeavors can not only coexist but enrich each other ( Times Literary Supplement).The conflict between science and religion seems indelible, even eternal. Surely two such divergent views of the universe have always been in fierce opposition? Actually, that's not the case, says Peter Harrison: Our very concepts of science and religion are relatively recent, emerging only in the past three hund...

One of Slate’s 10 Best Books of the YearAnthony Gottlieb’s landmark The Dream of Reason and its sequel challenge Bertrand Russell’s classic as the definitive history of Western philosophy.Western philosophy is now two and a half millennia old, but much of it came in just two staccato bursts, each lasting only about 150 years. In his landmark survey of Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of ...