The first comparative treatment of the topic of līlā in Hindu and Christian traditions, this volume explores what it means to consider divine and human action under the categories of play, wit, drama, grace, and compassionGod at Play presents a theological exploration of the multifaceted motif of līlā across diverse Hindu and Christian landscapes and its wide-ranging connections to divine and human creativity. Given its ubiquity in Hindu ...

This book recalls that a sapiential (wisdom) consciousness is central to the New Testament writings and remained the mode of theological understanding in Eastern and Western traditions for more than twelve centuries. It proposes the rediscovery--or, better--a new birth of this theology and understanding but with a new scope and new power for our time.

The Renewal of Mystical Theology is a memorial volume of important, original essays honoring the life and work of the late John N. Jones. Jones was a major figure in the renewal of mystical theology in the contemporary world, partly through his own writings, but especially through his generous help and sagacious care in soliciting, editing, and producing a wide range of books on spirituality and mysticism. Jones was an academic, trained in the critical study of religion at Yale University,...

By the time of early modernity, a widely deployed tenet of Christian thought had begun to vanish. The divine ideas tradition, the teaching that all beings have an eternal existence as aspects of God's mind, had functioned across a wide range of central Christian doctrines, providing Christian thinkers and mystical teachers with a powerful theological capacity: to illuminate the Trinitarian ground of all creatures, and to renew the divine truth of all creatures through human contemplation. ...

This book is a critique of western systematic theology. It borrows insights from India and other traditions; it is not a synthesis of religious traditions. The book includes two parts, method and systematics. It examines the traditional topics of systematic theology '- topics such as the existence and nature of God, revelation and reason, religious ethics and human practice, the relation of God to the world, Christology, and eschatology - and allows these topics to grow in conversation wit...

Cattoi and McDaniel present a selection of articles on the role of the body and the spiritual senses - our transfigured channels of sensory perceptions - in the context of spiritual practice. The volume investigates this theme across a variety of different religious traditions within Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism.

In the religions of the world, there is strongemphasis on the practice of "purification" for the religious transformation ofmind and body in connection with achieving such ultimate objectives asenlightenment and salvation. The contributors discuss the great diversity offorms and meanings with respect to religious transformation in their respectivefields of research. While invoking earlier debates within the study ofreligions and theology on the topic of "purification" the studies in thisvo...

This book is an original, non-denominational approach to the concept of divinity. The basic underlying philosophy is that, since the existence of God cannot be proven, one can only hypothesize about his/her/its existence. Mystics claim to know God through direct experience. Their views are amply represented. In conclusion, a hypothesis of divinity is formulated, inspired by the mystical view of the omnipresence of the Divine.

First published in 1990, East of Existentialism was written to explore new perspectives on eternal questions such as ‘Who am I?’, ‘Why am I here?’, and ‘Where am I going?’.The book brings together insights from existentialism in the West and Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism in the East, and presents practical case studies throughout to show the student how apparently abstruse themes relate to real-life situations. Divided into three parts, the first considers major Western c...

Steeped in the Catholic spiritual tradition, The Sacramentality of Music argues that musical experience, in its appeal to the entirety of the human person, can serve as a locus of encounter with the divine and an occasion of God’s self-revelation in love, with spiritually nurturing, ultimately transformative, ends. Christina Labriolacontends that this dynamic might most aptly be understood as sacramental, an all-encompassing perspective of the cosmos permeated by the divi...

Reason's Traces addresses some of the key questions in the study of Indian and Buddhist thought: the analysis of personal identity and of ultimate reality, the interpretation of Tantric texts and traditions, and Tibetan approaches to the interpretation of Indian sources. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship, Reason's Traces reflects current work in philosophical analysis and hermeneutics, inviting readers to explore in a Buddhist context the relationship between philoso...