Field of Thunder is a work of historical fiction and high adventure based primarily on the exploits of Lewis Lasseter, a prospector and explorer who in the early 1930s held Australia and much of the world enthralled. He had recounted the tale of having discovered a fabulous reef of near- pure gold in the central australian desert some thirty years before and thereby caught the attention of a nation. Day by day the media of the period followed the progress of the best equipped expedition ev...

In Behold the Pierced One, Joseph Ratzinger recounts how the composition of a 1981 paper on the Sacred Heart of Jesus had led him to "consider Christology more from the aspect of its spiritual appropriation" than he had done previously. Upon realizing that this same year was the 1300th anniversary of the Third Council of Constantinople, he decided to study the pronouncements of this Council, and came to believe "that the achievement of a spiritual Christology had also been the Council's ul...

The theology of "the last things" has long been, and still is, a source of confusion and contention among Christians. Indeed, the century just past could be called the century of eschatology. In that century, theologians such as Albert Schweitzer, C. H. Dodd, Rudolf Bultmann, Oscar Cullmann, and Karl Barth loom large. On a popular level, the end of the second millennium was replete with predictions of the "end," or the "rapture," or the "great tribulation," and such predictions have not ce...

Since Vatican II, the key question that has developed in Catholic theology, often unstated or unrecognized, is, what is theology? The thesis presented here is that contemporary theologizing is "fractured" in many places and to varying degrees. These fractures can vary in seriousness between theologians, and a particular theologian may suffer from some fractures but not others. The fractures addressed here are between -theology and spirituality -theology and philosophy -theology and liturgy...

Theological Anthropology at the Beginning of the Third Millennium is the third volume of the Theology at the Beginning of the Third Millennium series. Bringing together Catholic and Orthodox scholars of diverse disciplines, this work sheds new light on the question "what does it mean to be a human person?" Beginning with an overview on the state of the discipline in our time, the book brings theological anthropology into dialogue with epistemology, Christology, science, spiritual theology,...

Since the Second Vatican Council the place of Mary in theology and generally in the life of the Church has been at times muted. This is perhaps understandable given the debates concerning Mary's "place" in the documents of Vatican II. In an ecumenical age, it was argued, the church needed a less triumphalist Mariology and piety with a greater focus on Mary as model disciple. In certain respects this has led to a dichotomy between the continued Marian piety of many faithful (and, truth be t...

Hidden within Edinburgh’s modern landscape lies the ghost of a railway network that once fuelled the growth of Scotland’s capital. Walking Edinburgh’s Lost Railways uncovers this forgotten world, tracing the routes of long-abandoned railway lines that have been transformed into some of the city’s most attractive walking and cycling paths. Featuring 14 interconnected walks beginning at Waverley Station in the heart of Edinburgh, the book offers a fascinating journey through two centuries of...

From 1901 ‘Mallaig fish’ was for some sixty years a staple traffic on the West Highland Railway, while the 40-mile Mallaig Extension became (and has remained) a renowned scenic experience. But the prospects of the West Highland, a late-comer to the region and authorised no further than Fort William, were at first uncertain. Continuation to the western seaboard was not assured. Extension through the Great Glen to Inverness was fiercely contentious. The ensuing inter-company strife was compl...

2014 sees the 120th anniversary of the opening of the West Highland Railway between Craigendoran and Fort William, when the through journey from Glasgow took some five hours. With the great age of railway building almost over, the West Highland was from the outset a ‘social line’, though corporate empire building and speculation played a part. Subsequently extended to Mallaig, with state assistance, the West Highland route has been voted top railway journey – and the most scenic – in the w...

The Mallaig Extension was approved in 1894 to provide a continuation of the West Highland route for the benefit of the fishing industry on Scotland's west coast. It revived, more ambitiously, the Fort William to Roshven line lost in 1889. With controversial state aid in place, construction began in 1897 and the Extension was opened in 1901. Steam was reintroduced on the line in 1984 and the Jacobite service to Mallaig is now a major tourist attraction. Crossing the famous Glenfinnan viaduc...

God, Sexuality and the Self is a new venture in systematic theology. Sarah Coakley invites the reader to re-conceive the relation of sexual desire and the desire for God and - through the lens of prayer practice - to chart the intrinsic connection of this relation to a theology of the Trinity. The goal is to integrate the demanding ascetical undertaking of prayer with the recovery of lost and neglected materials from the tradition and thus to reanimate doctrinal reflection both imaginative...

Over the last decade there has been a resurgence of writing on the Trinity, indicating a renewal of ideas and debate concerning this key element of Christian theology. This introduction challenges the standard account of a decline and revival in Trinitarian theology, taking into account recent, alternative readings of the theological tradition by Lewis Ayres and Michel Barnes amongst other scholars. By clearly analysing the scope of these new approaches, the authors establish the importanc...