A new and groundbreaking investigation which takes full account of the finding of the social and historical sciences whilst offering a religious interpretation of the religions as different culturally conditioned responses to a transcendent Divine Reality. Written with great clarity and force, and with a wealth of fresh insights, this major work (based on the author's Gifford Lectures of 1986-7) treats the principal topics in the philosophy of religion and establishes both a basis for religious affirmation today and a framework for the developing world-wide inter-faith dialogue.
This book offers a broad-ranging account of contemporary American culture, the complex network of symbols, practices, and beliefs at the heart of our society. Lundin explores the historical background of some of our "postmodern" culture's central beliefs and considers their crucial ethical and theological implications.
Dr Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists, working at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God. How does he reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable? In THE LANGUAGE OF GOD he explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes the reader on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry and biology -- indeed, reason itself -- are not incompatible with belief. His book is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all: why are we here? How did we get here? And what does life mean?
An updated new edition of the groundbreaking investigation which takes full account of the finding of the social and historical sciences whilst offering a religious interpretation of the religions as different culturally conditioned responses to a transcendent Divine Reality. Written with great clarity and force, and with a wealth of fresh insights, this major work (based on the author's Gifford Lectures of 1896-7) treats the principal topics in the philosophy of religion and establishes both a basis for religious affirmation today and a framework for the developing world-wide inter-faith dialogue. Includes a new Introduction to the second edition.
"While the patristic age is marked by the development of the Apostle's and the Nicene creeds, D. H. Williams contends we must not neglected the lesser known yet just as significant theological texts and expressions of worship that were seminal in shaping early Christian identity. In this sourcebook, Williams gathers key writings from the first through sixth centuries that illustrate the ways in which the church's confessions, teaching, and worship were expressed during that time. More than an anthology, this sourcebook introduces the primary sources of Christian antiquity."--BOOK JACKET.
Often different religious traditions offer very different pictures of the world. In fact, religions are so fascinating partly because they present alternative pictures of the nature of time, space, persons, food, community, life, death, and so on. How are we to make sense of this radical diversity of belief? The most common response is to say that religions are alternative conceptual frameworks or schemes, whose categories organize experience in sometimes diverse ways. On this view of the framework model of religious belief we cannot map religious frameworks onto a single, comprehensive grid because they themselves function as the maps. In this sense, the Buddhist and Baptist are sometimes said to live in different worlds.Religion, Interpretation, and Diversity of Belief traces the history of the framework model from Kant to Durkheim, and then argues for its replacement. Rather than seeing religions as all-encompassing grids, we must recognize that they themseleves are constrained in at least two unavoidable ways: first, by the formal rules that make human experience possible at all, and second, by the fact that as language users we must presuppose that we hold the vast bulk of our beliefs in common. Given these constraints, we can then see religious differences, however dramatic, as relatively limited and largely theoretical.The framework model is deeply entrenched in those disciplines central to the study of religion, especially so in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and theology. The negative thrust of this is to suggest this allegiance needs to be reconsidered. Positively, the book sketches a picture of linguistic interpretation on which our differences, religious or otherwise, stand out against the background of what we have in common
