eBooks de filosofía, página 28 de 1309

In Divine Audacity, Peter Dillard presents a historically informed and rigorous analysis of the themes of mystical union, volition and virtue that occupied several of the foremost theological minds in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In particular, the work of Marguerite Porete raises complex questions in these areas, which are further explored by a trio of her near contemporaries. Their respective meditations are thoroughly analysed and then skilfully brought into dialogue. What emerges from Dillards synthesis of these voices is a contemporary mystical theology that is rooted in Hugh of Balmas affective approach, sharpened through critical engagement with Meister Eckharts intellectualism, and strengthened by crucial insights gleaned from the writings of John Ruusbroec. The fresh examination of these thinkers - one of whom paid with her life for her radicalism - will appeal to philosophers and theologians alike, while Dillards own propositions demand attention from all who concern themselves with the nature of the union between the soul and God.

Western civilization was built on the concept of God. Today modern science, based on the critical method and so-called objective facts, denies even the existence of our soul. There is only matter: atoms, molecules, and DNA sequences. There is no freedom; there are no well-grounded beliefs. The decline of Western civilization is not the simple consequence of decadence, hedonism, and malevolence. Modern critical science has liberated us from the old dogmas but failed to establish our freedoms, values, and beliefs. However, human knowledge is not objective but personal. We are the children of evolution. Everybody sees the world from his own personal point of view anchored into his/her body. We use our billions-of-years-old evolutionary skills and thousands-of-years-old cultural heritage to recognize and acknowledge the personal facts of our reality, freedom, and most important natural beliefs: respect and speak the truth. In reality, even science itself is based on our personal knowledge. Only our false conceptual dichotomies paralyze our thinking. God or matter? - there is a third choice: the emergence of life and human persons. This is the only way to defend our freedoms and the Christian moral dynamism of free Western societies.

In Thomas Merton and the Noonday Demon, Donald Grayson transforms a long-neglected cache of letters found in an ancient monastery into a book that offers new insight into the author of these letters, Thomas Merton, the renowned spiritual writer. At the time of their writing, the mid-1950s, he was living as a Trappist monk, at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Having reached an impasse in his monastic vocation he decided to leave Gethsamani for the Monastery of Camaldoli in Italy. Camaldoli at that time, bucolic and peaceful outwardly, was inwardly riven by a pre-Vatican II culture war; whereas Gethsemani, which he tried so hard to leave, became, when he was given his hermitage there in 1965, his place to recover Eden. In walking with Merton on this journey, and reading the letters he wrote and received at the time, we find ourselves asking, as he did, with so much energy and honesty, the deep questions that we may well need to answer in our own lives.

In response to the confluence of moral uncertainty with the increase of human power to alter nature, and through critical integration of the philosophical naturalism of Hans Jonas and the critical religious naturalism of James M. Gustafson, The Tangled Bank argues for an ecotheological ethics of responsible participation. By making the case that the moral pressures of our time call for a vision that is as deeply naturalistic as it is deeply theological, a critical perspective is advanced that is attuned to human embeddedness within nature as well as to human distinctiveness. In support of this, a moral anthropological method is deployed as a creative new way to integrate the comparative, critical, and constructive tasks of theological ethics. The insights of Hans Jonas and James M. Gustafson, interpreted comparatively for the first time, are critically drawn together to suggest new directions for scholarship and teaching in theology and religion and science studies.

How do our current notions of the workings of the universe fit with our deepest convictions about its meaning and value? From religion, we grasp the world as created, given, gift. From science, we apprehend it as evolving, in process, changing. How do webring these apprehensions together? Or can we? Is our impulse to find the two complementary: creation and evolution? Or is it to find them contradictory: creation or evolution? From the Preface: The way in which we answer these questions carries personal and intellectual consequences. It will constitute the first piece in a worldview within which we order our religious beliefs and scientific judgments.

Descartes attempt to ground the possibility of human knowledge in the existence of God was judged to be a complete failure by his contemporaries. This remains the universal opinion of philosophers to this day, despite the fact that three and a halfcenturies of secular epistemology which attempts to ground the possibility of knowledge either in the unaided human intellect or in natural processes has failed to do any better. Further, the leading twentieth century attempts at theistic epistemology reject both the conception of knowledge and the standards of epistemic evaluation that Descartes takes for granted. In this book - partly an interpretation of Descartes and partly an attempt to complete his project the author endeavours to show that a theistic epistemology incorporating Platonic and Aristotelian/Thomist elements can revitalize the Cartesian approach to the solution of the central problems of epistemology, including that most elusive of prizes the proof of the external world. This book is essential reading for students of epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy.

This is a book to which the attention of students of art theory and criticism, and all those interested in the important application of psychoanalysis to other fields of study, should be drawn. Psychoanalytic Aesthetics rethinks the classical account of the relation between art and madness, creativity and psychoneurosis, and the distinction between the primary and secondary processes. It covers a great deal of ground and reviews many psychoanalytic writers (predominantly of the British tradition) on aesthetics, as well as many of the aestheticians using a psychoanalytic background. It is well written and there is an impressive grasp of the many writers covered. More than this, the book is also a work of psychoanalytic scholarship, being a masterly overview of psychoanalytic schools of thought, and an in-depth study of the British object-relations schools. It amply achieves its overriding goal to demonstrate that the work of the British School presents a significant contribution to psychoanalytic aesthetics and criticism, updating Freud, Kris and the classical contributions to the field. It is therefore potentially a very useful source book for future scholars of both psychoanalysis and of aesthetics.

This is a book to which the attention of students of art theory and criticism, and all those interested in the important application of psychoanalysis to other fields of study, should be drawn. Psychoanalytic Aesthetics rethinks the classical account of the relation between art and madness, creativity and psychoneurosis, and the distinction between the primary and secondary processes. It covers a great deal of ground and reviews many psychoanalytic writers (predominantly of the British tradition) on aesthetics, as well as many of the aestheticians using a psychoanalytic background. It is well written and there is an impressive grasp of the many writers covered. More than this, the book is also a work of psychoanalytic scholarship, being a masterly overview of psychoanalytic schools of thought, and an in-depth study of the British object-relations schools. It amply achieves its overriding goal to demonstrate that the work of the British School presents a significant contribution to psychoanalytic aesthetics and criticism, updating Freud, Kris and the classical contributions to the field. It is therefore potentially a very useful source book for future scholars of both psychoanalysis and of aesthetics.

How freely can salvation be offered to people? How do Law and Grace find balance? What influence does federal theology have on the overall theological enterprise? How does a confessional church interact with both the civil government and other religious communions? These are the questions roiling the twenty-first-century church; these were the questions threatening to splinter the Scottish church in the early eighteenth century. In those earlier days of mounting theological confrontation withinthe Scottish church, Ebenezer Erskine - a parish minister renowned for his evangelistic zeal - had a major role to play. Through this examination of the theology and ministry of Erskine, one therefore gains not only a deeper understanding of a man critically important within Presbyterian history, but also insight into the pressing theological disputes of the day. By analysing Erskines contributions to ongoing theological discussion, greater clarity is gained on the development of federal theology; on the root causes of the Marrow controversy; and on the challenges involved as increasing religious diversity penetrated lands once dominated by national churches. In these areas and more, Erskine serves both to illuminate an obscure era and torefine modern understandings of still controversial theological issues.

What is post-colonial theology? How does it relate to theology that emerged in historically colonial situations? These are two questions that get to the heart of Robert S. Heaneys work as he considers the extent to which theologians predating the emergence of post-colonial theology might be considered as precursors to this theological movement. Heaney argues that the work of innovative theologians John S. Mbiti and Jesse N.K. Mugambi, important in their own right, must now also be considered in relation to the continued emergence of post-colonial theology. When this is done, fresh perspectives on both the nature of post-colonial theology and contextual theology emerge. Through a sympathetic and critical reading of Mbiti and Mugambi, Heaney offers a series of constructive moves that counter the ongoing temptation toward acontextualism that continues to haunt theology both in the North and in the South.

Walter W. Bryden was Principal of Knox College, Toronto, after the Second World War, and one of the leading Presbyterian theologians of the period from the 1920s to the 1950s. In The Neo-Orthodox Theology of W.W. Bryden, John Vissers makes an important contribution by analysing Brydens thought, placing it in the context of contemporary European and American theology. Vissers emphasises in particular Brydens role in introducing and popularising the ideas of Karl Barth in North America prior to the translation of Barths Commentary on Romans into English, and his Neo-Orthodox theology owed much to Barthian ideas. In his most important work, The Christians Knowledge of God, Bryden challenged the modernist emphasis on the rational, arguing for a Christocentric doctrine of Revelation. Vissers brings a wealth of scholarship and research to his subject, revealing Brydens pivotal role in the development of neo-orthodoxy within the Protestant tradition in North America, a role that previous studies have often failed to explore.

This essay on Soren Kierkegaard and economic matters from a theological perspective is well grounded in the Danes journals. In these writings, the late nineteenth-century thinker shows his solidarity with rural residents (90 percent of the population) and urbanite menial workers. Topics include the option for the poor; the ideology of impotence; the denouncing of a competitive society; the correlation of wealth and poverty; media, church, university, and theatre as social institutions shaping reality; Christendom; and the retribution doctrine.

Employing such disciplines as historical criticism, literary criticism, narrative theology, and hermeneutics, Reading Daniel as a Text in Theological Hermeneutics seeks to maintain an interdisciplinary approach to the Book of Daniel. Through this approach, the author sets out to understand and interpret the Book of Daniel as a narrative exercise in theological hermeneutics. Two inherently linked perspectives are utilised in this particular reading of the text: First is the perception that the character of Daniel is the paradigm of the good theological hermeneut; theology and hermeneutics are inseparable and converge in the character of Daniel. Second is the standpoint that the Book of Daniel on the whole should be read as a hermeneutics textbook. Readers are led through a series of theories and exercises meant to be instilled into their theological, intellectual, and practical lives. Attention to the reader of the text is a constant theme throughout this thesis. The authors concernis primarily with contemporary readers and their communities, and so greater emphasis is placed on what the Book of Daniel means for contemporary readers than on what it meant in its historical setting. However, sensible consideration is given to the historical readerly community with which contemporary readers find continuity. In the end, readers are left with difficult challenges, a sobering awareness of the volatility of the business of hermeneutics, and serious implications for readers to implement both theologically and hermeneutically.

Aimed at both biblical scholars and those interested in linguistic theory, this book makes use of insights from a modern theory of communication, Relevance Theory, in examining the function of the particle hina in New Testament Greek. Challenging accepted wisdom, Margaret Sim claims that the particle does not have a lexical meaning of in order that, but that it alerts the reader to expect an interpretation of the thought or attitude of the implied speaker or author. Evidence is adduced from pagan Greek and in particular the writings of Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Epictetus, as well as the New Testament. The implications of this claim open up opportunities for fresh interpretation of many problematic texts.

Death, judgement, heaven and hell - these are the Four Last Things traditionally linked together under the heading of Eschatology. In this book, John Robinson examines them all with trenchancy and lucidity, providing a new and vital understanding of how these themes relate to contemporary Christian life. In the End, God ... identifies a gap that exists in the treatment of eschatology within the Christian faith. As Robinson points out, eschatology had traditionally dealt with the last things in a way that is remote and removed from everyday life and Christianity, and the goal of his book is to make eschatology fully relevant to the modern world. Although it is commonly held that eschatology within modern Christianity is centred on the fact and moment of death, Robinson shows that the true nature of eschatology is something quite different. It is not about the last things after everything else, but rather is about the relation of all things to the last things or, as it were, about the lastness of all things. Revealing the foundation of biblical eschatology to be the experience of God by the community of faith, Robinson calls readers to embrace the eschatological vision of the Bible, but to do so in a way that is alert to its mythic character. In the course of these explorations he also lays bare his own theology of universal salvation. However, contrary to what one may expect, this universalism is one that seeks to take both human freedom and the reality of hell with the utmost seriousness. This special edition of John A.T. Robinsons classic text also includes an extended introductory essay by Professor Trevor Hart of the University of St Andrews, and an exchange between Robinson and Thomas F. Torrance, first published in 1949 in the Scottish Journal of Theology.

Faithfulness and the Purpose of Hebrews offers fresh answers to several unresolved questions by employing that branch of social psychology known as social identity theory. The author of Hebrews describes the faithfulness of Jesus as prototypical and relates the faithfulness of all other to Jesus faith. Utilizing a model of present temporal orientation, the study interprets the dynamic relationship between the

Can poetry matter to Christian theology? David Mahan asks in the introduction to this interdisciplinary work. Does the study of poetry represent a serious theological project? What does poetry have to contribute to the public tasks of theology andthe Church? How can theologians, clergy and other ministry professionals, and Christian laypeople benefit from an earnest study of poetry? A growing number of professional theologians today seek to push theological inquiry beyond the relative seclusion of academic specialisation into a broader marketplace of public ideas, and to recast the theological task as an integrative discipline, wholly engaged with the issues and sensibilities of the age. Accordingly, such scholars seek to draw upon and engage the insights and practices of a variety of cultural resources, including those of the arts, in their theological projects. Arguing that poetry can be a form of theological discourse, Mahan shows how poetry offers rich theological resourcesand instruction for the Christian church. In drawing attention to the peculiar advantages it affords, this book addresses one of the greatest challenges facing the church today: the difficulty of effectively communicating the Christian gospel withincreasingly disaffected late-modern people.

Deification is the transformation of believers into the likeness of God. While Christian monotheism does not support the notion of any literal god making of believers, the New Testament often speaks of a transformation of mind, a metamorphosis of character, a redefinition of selfhood, and an imitation of God. Most of these passages are tantalisingly brief, and none spell out the concept in detail. This idea was very important in the early Church, but it took a long time for one term to emerge as the standard label for the process. Eventually, the great fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus coined the term "theosis". Nowadays, theologians use "theosis" to designate all instances where any idea of taking on Gods character or being made divine occurs, even when the term "theosis" is not explicitly used. Quite naturally though, different Christian authors understood deification differently. While some of the articles in the first volume discuss pre-Christian antecedents of theosis, the majority of them focus on specific Christian understandings. Gregory Glazov in particular examines Old Testament covenant theology, with an emphasis on divine adoption, and on bearing the fruit of knowledge or attaining the stature of a tree of righteousness in Proverbs, Isaiah, and Sirach. The article by Stephen Finlan on 2 Peter 1:4 ("You may become participants of the divine nature") examines the epistles apparent borrowings from Middle Platonic spirituality, Stoic ethics and Jewish apocalyptic expectation. The second volume offers a variety of innovative approaches to the issue of theosis - the name by which this process of transformation has become known. The interconnections between the theology of deification and the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, anthropology, protology, hamartiology, soteriology, and eschatology are made manifest in these fascinating new studies. This two-volume collection provides a wealth of fresh thinking on a topic of considerable interest to modern theologians. It is aimed both at those who are already students of theosis and at those who are looking for an introductory text. It also contains a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography for those seeking further resources on the theme.

La Guía Comares de Zubiri presenta un conjunto de trabajos de algunos de los mejores expertos en la interpretación, discusión y desarrollo del pensamiento de Xavier Zubiri. Las contribuciones aquí reunidas giran en torno a dos polos: por un lado, se ha analizado el impacto que los principales filosofos de la historia han tenido en el pensamiento zubiriano. Esta serie abarca desde Aristoteles hasta Heidegger, Ortega o Maria Zambrano. Por otro lado, se reconstruye cada uno de los principales ambitos filosoficos tratados por Zubiri: desde la antropologia o la noologia hasta la logica, la filosofia de la ciencia o la filosofia de la religion. Desde este modo se ha cartografiado en sus rasgos esenciales el complejo y prometedor mundo del pensamiento de Zubiri. Este volumen pretende justamente ser una buena Guia para orientarse en ese mapa.

In Blind Evolution?: The Nature of Humanity and the Origin of Life, Professor David Frost challenges the dominant worldview derived from Darwins evolutionary theories and perpetuated in Richard Dawkinss atheistic propaganda for Neo-Darwinism: that our universe has at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. Frost deploys recent findings from a range of scientific studies that shake Neo-Darwinism to its foundation. Citing entertaining examples, from the inner workings of a single cell to the animal kingdom at large, from elephants and giraffes to the Japanese pufferfish, Frost maintains that Darwinian premises are wholly inadequate to engage with life or to provide a framework for our experiences of joy and sorrow, the problem of suffering, and the stark realities of good and evil. Reflecting on the nature of existence, Frost points to a mode of human understanding parallel to scientific enquiry through the path of vision accessed via the nous (or spiritual intellect). He argues that vision is as much essential to our understanding of creation as is scientific enquiry - reality is best approached through a complementary partnership of both.