Nature and existence of God Books

Book SynopsisIn Hope and Otherness, Jakob Wirén analyses the place and role of the religious Other in contemporary eschatology. In connection with this theme, he examines and compares different levels of inclusion and exclusion in Christian, Muslim, and Jewish eschatologies. He argues that a distinction should be made in approaches to this issue between soteriological openness and eschatological openness. By going beyond Christian theology and also looking to Muslim and Jewish sources and by combining the question of the religious Other with eschatology, Wirén explores ways of articulating Christian eschatology in light of religious otherness, and provides a new and vital slant to the threefold paradigm of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism that has been prevalent in the theology of religions. “Jakob Wirén’s study pushes forward the frontiers of three disciplines all at the same time: theology of religions; comparative religions and eschatology. (…) This is a challenging and important book.” - Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol, Professor of Catholic Theology, 2017 “This book explores of the status of religious others in Christian eschatology, and of eschatology itself as a privileged place for reflecting on religious otherness. Wiren mines not only Christian, but also Jewish and Muslim sources to develop an inclusive eschatology. Hope and Otherness thus represents an important contribution to both theology of religions and comparative theology.” - Catherine Cornille, Boston College, Professor of Comparative Theology, 2017Trade Review“Jakob Wirén’s study pushes forward the frontiers of three disciplines all at the same time: theology of religions; comparative religions and eschatology. He sophisticatedly explores how Christian, Jewish and Muslim eschatologies are open to the religious ‘Other’. He then returns to his own Christian theological tradition to incorporate what he has discovered to develop a more eschatologically open picture, while keeping Christologically rooted and liturgically relevant. This is a challenging and important book.” ̶- Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol, Professor of Catholic Theology. “This book explores of the status of religious others in Christian eschatology, and of eschatology itself as a privileged place for reflecting on religious otherness. Wiren mines not only Christian, but also Jewish and Muslim sources to develop an inclusive eschatology. Hope and Otherness thus represents an important contribution to both theology of religions and comparative theology.” - Catherine Cornille, Boston College, Professor of Comparative Theology.Table of ContentsPreface 1 Introduction  1.1 The Task  1.2 The Context of This Study   Theologies of Religions: Introduction   The Threefold Paradigm   The Threefold Paradigm and This Study   Beyond the Threefold Paradigm? i: Particularism as a Fourth Option   Beyond the Threefold Paradigm? ii: Comparative Theology  1.3 Methodological Considerations   The Method of Correlation   A Revised Method of Correlation   A Revised Method of Correlation as Comparative Theology?   Introducing the Heuristic Tools  1.4 Material  1.5 Terminological Considerations   How Some of the Terms are Interrelated   The Concepts of Hope and Eschatology   The Concepts of Other and Otherness   Otherness and Theological Integrity  1.6 The Structure of This Study 2 Christian Eschatologies and the Religious Other  2.1 Introduction   Eschatological Positions vis-à-vis the Religious Other  2.2 The Foundation: Four Cornerstones   Truth and the Religious Other: Joseph Ratzinger   Hope and the Religious Other: Jürgen Moltmann   History and the Religious Other: Wolfhart Pannenberg   The Real and the Religious Other: John Hick  2.3 The Rise of the Notion of the Religious Other in Christian Eschatology   ‘Old Doctrines for New Jobs’: Gavin D’Costa   Respecting Other’s Religious Ends: S. Mark Heim  2.4 Conclusion: Heuristic Tools 3 A Wider Horizon: Hope and Otherness in Muslim and Jewish Eschatologies  3.1 Introduction  3.2 Hope and Otherness in Muslim Eschatologies   Introduction   A Taxonomy of Contemporary Muslim Thinkers   Introducing Muslim Theologies of Religions   Picturing Paradise: Mujtaba Musavi Lari   Eschatology and Ethical Criteria: Fazlur Rahman   The Vision of Islam: William C. Chittick   Revisiting the Heuristic Tools  3.3 Jewish Eschatologies   Introduction   Contemporary Jewish Theology   Introducing Jewish Theologies of Religions   Election: Michael Wyschogrod and the Chosen People   The Messiah: Steven Schwarzschild and a Theology of Waiting   The Resurrection of the Dead: Neil Gillman and the Hereafter   Revisiting the Heuristic Tools  3.4 Conclusion: Heuristic Tools 4 Towards a Christian Eschatology with Theological Integrity for the Religious Other  4.1 Introduction  4.2 Theological Space: Religious Otherness Reassessed   Introduction   Contributions from Muslim and Jewish Eschatologies   Linguistic Hospitality   Death and Otherness  4.3 Theological Interplay: Eschatological Otherness Reassessed   Introduction   Contributions of Muslim and Jewish Eschatologies   The Apophatic Nature of the Eschaton   A Tradition-Specific Determination of the Eschaton?  4.4 The Heavenly Banquet   The Feast as a Human Symbol   The Feast as a Religious Symbol   The Heavenly Banquet as a Christian Symbol  4.5 Conclusion References Index of Names Index of Subjects

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Book SynopsisIn The Life and Work of Ernesto de Martino: Italian Perspectives on Apocalypse and Rebirth in the Modern Study of Religion, Flavio A. Geisshuesler offers a comprehensive study of one of Italy’s most colorful historians of religions. The book inserts de Martino’s dramatic life trajectory within the intellectual climate and the socio-political context of his age in order to offer a fresh perspective on the evolution of the discipline of religious studies during the 20th century. Demonstrating that scholarship on religion was animated by moments of fear of the apocalypse, it brings de Martino’s perspective into conversation with Mircea Eliade, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Clifford Geertz in order to recover an Italian approach that promises to redeem religious studies as a relevant and revitalizing field of research in the contemporary climate of crisis.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Let the Earth Shake: From Crisis-Born Hero to Master of Civilizational Crisis 1 The Decline of the West (1908–1929): The Rupture of Time in Modernity and the Rise of the Prophets of Crisis  1 Student Years under Fascism and the Guidance of a Spiritual Prophet of Crisis  2 The Arrow of Progress and the Unification of a Ruptured Modernity in Need of Orientation  3 The Crisis of the First World War and the Rise of Oswald Spengler’s Cultural Pessimism 2 Civil Religion (1929–1335): The Return to Something New as Modernist Alternative to Mircea Eliade’s Politics of Nostalgia  1 Rudolf Otto and the Return to Religion as Experience  2 Mircea Eliade’s Politics of Nostalgia and the Rebirth of Western Civilization  3 An Alternative to the Politics of Nostalgia: Modernism and the Dialectic Conception of Palingenesis as the Return to Something New  4 Questioning the Rupture of Modernity from a Dialectical Perspective: The Self-Secularization of Religion and the Self-Mythicization of Politics 3 The Crisis of the Presence (1936–1944): The Antifascist Sacralization of Politics and the Rise of Magical Thinking during WWII  1 The Antifascist Turn in the Laterza Circle and the Continued Sacralization of Politics  2 The Crisis of the Presence: Extreme States of Consciousness in Primitive Societies and the Shamanizing of Hitler in Europe  3 The Dark Side of the Soul Resurfaces in Religious Studies: The Split between the Insider-Phenomenological and the Outsider-Explanatory Approaches  4 The Savior of the European Sciences: The Redemption of the Presence and the Unifying Power of Magic 4 De-Historification (1944–1948): Shamanic Magic and the Dialectic Movement between Mircea Eliade and Claude Lévi-Strauss  1 The Integration of Eliade and Lévi-Strauss: Sacred Poles and Songs of Labor as Forms of De-Historification  2 Historicizing the De-Historifying Tendencies of the Modern Magicians in the Study of Religion  3 The Magic Christ of Science: Heroic Historicism and the Active Provocation of Crisis in Pursuit of Critical Thinking 5 Critical Ethnocentrism (1949–1959): The Southern Period and the Articulation of a Post-Colonial Anthropology alongside Claude Lévi-Strauss  1 Notoriety without Success: Controversies with the Philosopher and Intellectual Isolation within the Roman School of History of Religions  2 Shaking Earth and Intellectual Transitions: Political Militancy and Ethnographic Journeys in the Italian South  3 The Rise of the Cultural-Discursive Paradigm and Self-Reflexive Anthropology  4 Tristes Tropiques, Critical Ethnocentrism, and the Anticipation of the Cultural-Discursive Paradigm 6 Loyalty to the Cultural Homeland (1960–1965): Critical Ethnocentrism as an Anticipatory Defense against Relativism and Interpretative Anthropology  1 A Critic of Interpretative Anthropology Ante Litteram: The Anthropologist of Guilt Becomes a Philosopher of the Apocalypse of Relativism  2 Moving with and Beyond Antonio Gramsci: From Progressive Folklore to a More Successful Colonialization  3 Nostalgia for the Lost Homeland: An Anticipatory Analysis of the Cultural Turn and the Surprising Parallels between Cultural Relativism and the Insider-Phenomenological Approach  4 Science Is Not for the Stateless: An Anticipatory Critique of the Cultural Turn Based on the Ethnocentric Imperative 7 The Ethos of Transcendence (1965–1977): Decision and the Moral Imperative as Anticipatory Response to Postmodernism  1 The Philosophical Afterlife of The End of the World: Enzo Paci’s Existentialist Historicism and the Moral Imperative Grounded in the Contemporaneity of History  2 Impossible Nostalgia and the Anticipatory Analysis of the Discursive Turn  3 The Ethos of Transcendence of Life in Value as an Anticipatory Critique of the Discursive Turn Conclusion: Let the Earth Shake (Again) or Why Rebirth Must Lead to a New Crisis References Index

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Book SynopsisThe ancient religious thinker Tertullian asked: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”, implying that faith and philosophy have nothing to say to each other. The history of this dialogue has shaped the intellectual dialogue from the very beginning right up to the present. In this book, Jerry H. Gill has traced the dynamics of this dialogue and in the conclusion he has offered his own answer to the questions it raises.Table of ContentsPreface: The Why and Wherefore A Very Happy Acknowledgement  Introduction: Faith Seeking Understanding 1 Greek Thought  1 Pre-Socratics and Socrates  2 Plato: Theistic Idealism  3 Aristotle: Rational Theology  4 Plotinus: Neo-Platonism 2 Medieval Thought  1 Irenaeus: God and Evil  2 Augustine: Christian Platonism  3 Aquinas: Christian Aristotelianism  4 Eckhart: Christian Mysticism 3 Modern Thought  1 Descartes: Rationalist Faith  2 Locke: Empiricist Faith  3 Hume: Religious Skepticism  4 Kant: Reason Seeking Faith 4 Recent Thought  1 Kierkegaard: Faith without Reason?  2 Feuerbach: Naturalistic Humanism  3 A. N. Whitehead: Process Thought  4 Tillich: Philosophical Theology  Conclusion: Reasons of the Heart Bibliography Index

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