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This book is a comparative study exploring the writings of an Indian Christian theologian named Ayadurai Jesudason Appasamy (1891–1975) and his comparative theological interaction with the twelfth-century Śrivaiṣṇava reformer, Rāmānuja. The doctrinal focus is Appasamy’s four-fold Johannine application of the ‘Body of God’ analogy—the ‘Universe’, ‘Incarnation’, ‘Eucharist’, and ‘Church’ being his four divine embodiments. Critics in Appasamy’s day described his theological project as ‘bold heresies’, a ‘synthesis of Christianity and Vedānta’ that has ‘shifted the axis’ from Christianity to ‘Hindu religion’. By reading Appasamy in the context of his devotional tradition, however, this study demonstrates that his application of the embodiment analogy is rooted, rather, in the sacramental theology of early twentieth-century Anglicanism. His embodiment theology, in fact, closely reflects the theological developments that took place in Anglican scholarship between the time of Charles Gore and William Temple. Methodologically, what is being argued for is the need to understand theological discourse as being already semiotically and traditionally situated. In doing so it is further argued that, just as Appasamy’s detractors have failed to read him in his devotional context, so too has Appasamy done with Rāmānuja. Reading Rāmānuja more as a Vedāntic philosophical theologian than as a Śrivaiṣṇava sectarian practitioner, the Ācārya has been abstracted from his temple-based devotional practice. On this basis, challenging Appasamy’s use of Rāmānuja’s analogy, a better reading of John’s Gospel is proposed, a temple Christology that emerges from the narrative shape of the text itself.

Does everything happen for a reason? Does “God’s will,” “karma,” or “fate” provide an overarching purpose to everything? Are disasters and tragedies random, meaningless events? Or is there something to our intuition that the world has a purpose? Abraham’s Dice explores this conversation with major scholars, including holders of chairs at Oxford and Cambridge universities and the University of Basel, several Gifford lecturers, and two Templeton Prize-winners. Bestselling author Jennifer Michael Hecht notes that the Judeo-Christian tradition has wrestled with questions of divine purpose for millennia. Although the Bible affirms that God blesses the righteous in an orderly way, the story of Job is a powerful counterexample to this scheme. The achingly beautiful but tragic story of Job pushes back against the idea that “everything happens for a reason.” Cosmologist John Barrow captures the dilemma with a simple question, “Is the world simple or complicated?” He notes that simple laws of physics—like gravity—produce complicated outcomes. An ordered collection of pencils standing upright falls into a disordered pile, though the gravitational force making them fall is simple and symmetric. Reality is a tangled mix of order and disorder, pattern and randomness. Nowhere is this problem more provocatively confronted than in Darwin’s theory of evolution, explored by Peter Harrison, Alister McGrath, and Michael Ruse. Ruse argues that Darwin’s theory is so devoid of purpose as to rule out the possibility that God has anything to do with the process, pushing back against the perennial intuition that humans were purposefully created.

This book explores the methodological connections between two quintessentially American traditions: liberation theology and pragmatism. It examines how pragmatism can lend philosophical clarity and depth to some of liberation theology’s core ideas and assumptions. In turn, it also shows how liberation theology offers pragmatism a more nuanced and sympathetic approach to religious faith, especially its social and pedagogical dimensions. Ultimately, this work seeks to craft a philosophical foundation that ensures the continued relevance of liberation thought in today’s world. Keeping true to the method of pragmatism, the book begins inductively with a set of actual experiences: the Good Friday liturgies at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas. The author offers a thick description of the way these performative rituals integrate the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith. Subsequent chapters probe this integration deductively at three levels of theoretical analysis: experience/metaphysics, sociality, and pedagogy. At all three levels, the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith emerge in different yet related ways. The author argues that utilizing the categories of the aesthetic and ethical enables a richer understanding of the dynamic relationship between faith and politics. This book builds new bridges between a number of discourses, including pragmatism, Latin American liberation theology, U.S. Latino/a theology, feminism, ritual studies, and the philosophy of education.

“Arminianism” was the subject of important theological controversies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it maintains an important position within Protestant thought. What became known as “Arminian” theology was held by people across a swath of geographical and ecclesial positions; it developed in European, British, and American contexts, and it engaged with a wide range of intellectual challenges. While standing together in their common rejection of several key planks of Reformed theology, proponents of Arminianism took various positions on other matters. Some were broadly committed to catholic and creedal theology; others were more open to theological revision. Some were concerned primarily with practical concerns; others were engaged in system building as they sought to articulate and defend an overarching vision of God and the world. The story of this development is both complex and important for a proper understanding of the history of Protestant theology. However, this historical development of Arminian theology is not well known. In this book, Thomas H. McCall and Keith D. Stanglin offer a historical introduction to Arminian theology as it developed in modern thought, providing an account that is based upon important primary sources and recent secondary research that will be helpful to scholars of ecclesial history and modern thought as well as comprehensible and relevant for students.

This is a sequel to Richard Muller's The Unaccommodated Calvin (OUP 2000). The previous book attempted to situate Calvin's theological work in its historical context and to strip away various 20th-century theological grids that have clouded our perceptions of the work of the Reformer. This book carries this approach forward, with the goal of overcoming a series of 19th- and 20th-century theological frameworks characteristic of much of the scholarship on Reformed orthodoxy, or what might be called “Calvinism after Calvin”.

Who or what comes after God? In the wake of God, as the last fifty years of philosophy has shown, God comes back again, otherwise: Heidegger's last God, Levinas's God of Infinity, Derrida's and Caputo's tout autre, Marion's God without Being, and Kearney's God who may be. This book attempts to represent some of the most considered responses to Richard Kearney's recent writings on the philosophy of religion, in particular The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion and Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. It brings together seventeen essays that share the common problematic of the otherness of the Other — seventeen different variations on the same theme: philosophy about God after God — that is to say, a way of thinking God otherwise than ontologically.

In the past half century there has been a significant amount of scholarly attention paid to the thought of Jonathan Edwards so that he is now one of the most studied figures in American history. Much less attention has been directed toward the theological movement that took its point of departure from Edwards, namely, the New England Theology. Yet this school of thought had a profound influence on the shape and character of nineteenth-century American theology, and it is to date the most important and influential indigenous theological movement in the history of the United States. This set of chapters by an international team of specialists in the philosophy, theology, and history of Edwards and the New England theology offers a fresh look at how Edwards’s ideas were transmitted, received, and reworked in the different phases of the life of the New England Theology. The chapters also trace the way in which his thought, and that of his intellectual progeny, had an international impact on the shape of theology in the UK, Europe, and Asia, and on present-day Reformed theology.

Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) is one of the most important theologians, philosophers, and Sufis of Islam. Born around 1056 in northeastern Iran, he became the holder of the most prestigious academic post in Islamic theology in Baghdad, only to renounce that position and teach at small schools in the provinces for no money. His contributions to Islamic scholarship range from responding to the challenges of Aristotelian philosophy to creating a new type of mysticism in Islam, and integrating both these traditions—falsafa and Sufism—into the Sunni mainstream. Using the most authoritative sources, including reports of his students, his contemporaries, and his own letters, this book reconstructs every stage in al-Ghazali’s turbulent career. The al-Ghazali that emerges still offers many surprises, particularly on his motives for leaving Baghdad and the nature of his “seclusion” afterwards. In its close study of al-Ghazali’s cosmology—meaning, how God creates things and events in the world, how human acts relate to God’s power, and how the universe is structured—the book reveals the significant philosophical influence on al-Ghazali. His cosmology has always been one of the most challenging aspects of his work. This book shows how al-Ghazali created a new discourse on cosmology that moved away from concerns held earlier among Muslim theologians and Arab philosophers. This new cosmology was structured to provide a framework for the pursuit of the natural sciences and a basis for science and philosophy in Islam to continue to flourish beyond the 12th century.

Karl Barth believes that not only our righteousness before God (justification) but also our goodness or holiness (sanctification) is accomplished by the work of God's grace in Jesus Christ. But if this is so, what is the nature and role of ethics? This book argues that Barth's moral theology attempts to answer this question, showing how both the development of his ethical thought and its central concepts are best understood from this perspective. The result is a comprehensive treatment of Barth's moral theology which also explores the rich, complex, and often surprising engagements of his position with traditional Christian ethics and modern moral thought.

Philosophy in the English-speaking world is dominated by analytical approaches to its problems and projects; but theology has been dominated by alternative approaches. Many would say that the current state in theology is not mere historical accident, but is, rather, how things ought to be. On the other hand, many others would say precisely the opposite: that theology as a discipline has been beguiled and taken largely deleterious. The methodological divide between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers of religion is ripe for exploration. This book attempts to bring a much-needed interdisciplinary conversation about the value of analytic philosophical approaches to theological topics. Most of the chapters are sympathetic to the enterprise of analytic theology; but with an eye towards balance.

Analytic theology can flourish in the secular academy, and flourish as authentically Christian theology. This book aims to explain analytic theology to other theologians and to scholars of religion, and to explain those other fields to analytic theologians. The book defends analytic theology from some common criticisms, but also argues that analytic theologians have much to learn from other forms of inquiry. Analytic theology is a legitimate form of theology, and a legitimate form of academic inquiry, and it can be a valuable conversation partner within the wider religious studies academy. All sides would benefit if analytic theology were given a seat at the interdisciplinary table. The book articulates an attractive vision of analytic theology, fosters a more fruitful interdisciplinary conversation, and enables scholars across the religious studies academy to understand one another better.

The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) accept slavery, and Deuteronomy 22 requires a single female who has been raped to marry her rapist. Biblical laws, including these two examples, continue to influence Christian (especially Protestant) attitudes toward women, homosexuals, the poor, as well as those who are from different faiths or racial/ethnic origins. This book argues that such ancient laws and the corresponding contemporary attitudes ignore the harm caused to such groups and fail to consider that these groups may have different, yet valid, perspectives on the meaning of these texts. Specifically, this book argues that the Christian tradition has become inseparable from a privileged male perspective not reflecting the full range of persons found in its faith communities. Furthermore, it is this male norm that has historically established the accepted singular and determinative meaning of any given biblical text. Contemporary controversies about biblical interpretation, then, result from those other groups acknowledging that their realities differ from the putative norm and offering their own interpretations of problematic biblical texts. The book finds that inclusive biblical interpretation and its consideration of these normally excluded perspectives are consistent with the Christian tradition. This work advances support for inclusive interpretation from the Bible (both Old and New Testaments)—from the Protestant tradition itself, based on the writings of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley—and from parallels with the interpretation and amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In the modern world, angels perhaps seem to be no more than a symbol—something encountered only on the top of Christmas trees, or seemingly emblematic of Christian beliefs at their most traditional and unchanging. But in the Middle Ages men and women thought differently. Some offered prayers intended to secure angelic assistance for the living and the dead; others erected stone monuments carved with images of winged figures; and still others made angels the subject of poetic endeavour and theological scholarship. This wealth of material has never been fully explored, and was once dismissed as the detritus of a superstitious age. This book offers a different perspective, by using angels as a prism through which to study the changing religious culture of an unfamiliar age. Focusing on one corner of medieval Europe which produced an abundance of material relating to angels, Richard Sowerby investigates the way that ancient beliefs about angels were preserved and adapted in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. Between the sixth century and the eleventh, the convictions of Anglo-Saxon men and women about the world of the spirits underwent a gradual transformation. This book is the first to explore that transformation, and to show the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons tried to reconcile their religious inheritance with their own perspectives about the world, human nature, and God.

This book is a study of the Anglican Reformed tradition (often inaccurately described as Calvinist) after the Restoration and it sets out to revise our picture of the theological world of the later Stuart period. Arguing that the importance of the Reformed theological tradition has frequently been underestimated, the study points to a network of conforming Reformed theologians which included many of the most prominent churchmen of the age. Focussing particularly on what these churchmen contributed in three hotly disputed areas of doctrine (justification, the Trinity and the divine attributes), the study argues that the most significant debates in speculative theology which erupted within the English Church after 1662 were the result of Anglican Reformed resistance to the growing influence of continental Arminianism. It demonstrates the strength and flexibility of the Reformed response to the developing Arminian school, and shows that the Reformed tradition remained a viable theological option for Anglicans well into the eighteenth century. The study therefore provides a significant bridge linking the Reformed writers of the Elizabethan and early Stuart period to the Reformed Evangelicals of the 18th Century. It also shows that, throughout its formative period, Anglicanism was not a monolithic tradition, but rather a contested ground between the competing claims of those adhering to the Church of England's Reformed doctrinal heritage and the insights of those who, to varying degrees, were prepared to explore new theological avenues.

Falling outside of the usual categories of Patristic Christological discourse, Augustine’s Christology remains a relatively neglected area of his thought. This study focuses on his understanding of the humanity of Christ as it emerged in dialogue with his anti-Pelagian conception of human freedom and Original Sin. By reinterpreting the Pelagian controversy as a Western continuation of the Origenist controversy before it, it argues that Augustine’s reading of Origen lay at the heart of his Christological response to Pelagianism. Augustine is, therefore, situated within the network of fourth- and fifth-century Western theologians concerned to defend Origen’s orthodoxy—and the orthodoxy of a broader Christian Platonism—against their opponents. Opening with a survey of scholarship in the areas of both Augustinian Christology and Augustine’s anti-Pelagianism, it proceeds by detailing Augustine’s engagement with the issues and personalities involved in both the Origenist and Pelagian controversies. Chapter 3 examines the importance of Augustine’s understanding of Christ ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom 8.3) within his anti-Pelagian works; Chapter 4 traces the dependence of this motif on Origen’s exegesis. The fifth chapter considers Augustine’s treatment of Christ’s soul in relation to his understanding of Apollinarianism. The study concludes by exploring Augustine’s handling of the origin of the soul, suggesting that the inconsistencies in his Christology can be explained by recourse to an Origenian framework, in which the soul of Christ remains sinless in the Incarnation because of its relationship to the eternal Word after the Fall of souls to embodiment

The first study in any language dedicated to the influential theological publications of Antoine de Chandieu begins by introducing us to the memory of Chandieu as it was at Theodore Beza’s death. Poets in Geneva mourned the end of an era of star theologians by reminiscing about Geneva’s Reformed triumvirate of gold, silver, and bronze: gold represented Calvin (d. 1564); silver Chandieu (d. 1591); and bronze Beza (d. 1605). The present work sets Chandieu within the context of Reformed theology in Geneva, the wider history of scholastic method in the Swiss cantons, and the gripping social and political milieus. The book shows why Chandieu developed a very elaborate form of the medieval quaestio disputata and made liberal use of hypothetical syllogisms. Chandieu was far from a mere ivory-tower theologian: as a member of French nobility in possession of many estates in France, he and his family acutely experienced the misery and triumph of the French Huguenots during the Wars of Religion. Connected to royalty from at least the beginning of his career, Chandieu later served the future Henry IV as personal military chaplain and cryptographer. His writings range from religious poetry (put to music by others in his own lifetime) to carefully crafted disputations that saw publication in his posthumous Opera Theologica in five editions between 1592 and 1620. The book argues that Chandieu utilized scholastic method in theology for the sake of clarity of argument, rootedness in Scripture, and certainty of faith.

The nine essays in The Appearing of God are situated on the fluid border of philosophy and theology, and follow a path leading from classic modern philosophical discussions of experience to some leading themes in contemporary phenomenology. After an introductory exploration of Kierkegaard’s classic text that straddles the border between philosophy and theology, the reader is introduced to Husserl’s account of perception, with its demonstration that the field of phenomena is wider than that of perceptible entities, allowing phenomena that give themselves primarily to feeling. Husserl’s theory of reduction is then subjected to a critique, which identifies phenomena wholly resistant to reduction. John Paul II’s encyclical on Faith and Reason elicits a critical rejection of its attempt to reify the boundary between natural and supernatural, the author asserting in its place that love is the distinguishing mark of the knowledge of God. This theme is continued in a discussion of Heidegger’s Being and Time, where a passing reference to Pascal invites interrogation of the work’s “methodological atheism,” which is found to leave more room than appears for love of the divine. The next three chapters deal with the themes of Anticipation, Gift, and Self-Identity, all exploring aspects of a single theme, the relation of present experience to the passage of time, and especially to the future. The final chapter, which is also the most personal, draws the main themes of the book together in asking how theology as an intellectual enterprise relates to the practice of worship.

This book considers two basic questions: how can we live well in the face of death?; and when, if ever, is it legitimate deliberately to bring human life to an end? It does so by considering the distinct theological approaches to death shown by four outstanding Christian thinkers: Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and Karl Rahner. These philosophers' thoughts constitute a single extended argument on the theology of death which can be set out in relation to the practical realities of grief, fear, and hope in the face of death. There is a rightful place for grief, a good grief, even for a Christian. Augustine teaches us that death is something with which we have to contend, and indeed that the difficult and painful process of contending with death is a means through which we are brought to our final joyful end. A key point for Thomas Aquinas is that, in itself, it is always wrong to kill a human being on account of the dignity of human nature. Rahner adds that it also stands in contradiction to the supernatural destiny of human beings. Rahner is at his most profound in describing how the need to surrender oneself to God in death is anticipated throughout life. The aim of this book is not primarily to make a contribution to the knowledge of the history of theology, but rather, through engagement with the thought of theologians of the past, to reflect on some of the practical and existential issues that the approach of death presents for us.

Aquinas and Calvin on Romans is a comparative study of John Calvin’s and Thomas Aquinas’s commentaries on the first eight chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Focusing on the role of human participation in God’s work of salvation, the book argues that Calvin’s critiques of the “schoolmen” arising from his reading of Romans fail to find a target in Aquinas’s theology while Calvin’s principal positive affirmations are embraced by Aquinas as well. Aquinas upholds many fundamental insights that Calvin would later also obtain in his reading of Romans, such as justification sola fide non merito (by faith alone and not by merit), the centrality of Christ for salvation, the ongoing imperfection of the sanctified life, the work of the Spirit guiding the believer along the path of sanctification, and the assurance of salvation that one obtains through the indwelling of the Spirit, to name only a few. Even more, numerous identical interpretations arising in their commentaries make it necessary to consider Calvin’s reading of Romans as appropriating a tradition of interpretation that includes Aquinas. At the same time, the nonparticipatory dimensions of Calvin’s reading of Romans become clear when set beside Aquinas’s reading, and these nonparticipatory dimensions create difficulties for Calvin’s interpretation, especially on Romans 8, that are not present in Aquinas’s account. The book therefore suggests how Calvin’s reading of Romans, especially as it pertains to justification and merit, should be augmented by the participatory framework reflected in Aquinas’s interpretation. The book concludes by revisiting Calvin’s criticisms of the Council of Trent in light of these suggestions.

This book examines St Thomas Aquinas’s much-neglected proof for the existence of God in De Ente et Essentia, Chapter 4. It offers a contemporary presentation and interpretation of this proof as well as a defense. Beginning with the distinction between the key concepts of ‘essence’ and ‘esse’ in Aquinas’s thought, the book moves from an account of these metaphysical principles to their use by Aquinas in establishing that there is a single unique primary cause from which all that is comes to be. Along the way, important themes in metaphysics, such as essence, existence, causality, and causal infinities are addressed, dealt with, and defended from a Thomistic perspective. The outlook of the book is not parochial, but engages contemporary authors who either misinterpret or disagree with Aquinas. By the end it is established that Aquinas is on firmer ground than all of his detractors, and that the success of this proof of God has ramifications for how we think about the nature of creation. This book is intended to fill a lacuna in the Thomistic studies literature, which until now has not given the proof from the De Ente et Essentia the attention it deserves.