The ups, downs, and exploits of a group of British Catholics--for whom the sexual revolution came a little later than it did for everybody else... In this bracing satire, a group of university students make their way through the fifties and into the turbulent sixties and seventies. We first meet Dennis, Michael, Ruth, Polly, and the others at the altar rail of Our Lady and St. Jude, but soon enough they get caught up in the alternately hilarious and poignant preoccupations of work, marriage, sex, and babies--not always in that order. A satirical comedy in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, Souls and Bodies take an unblinking look at the sexual revolution and the contemporaneous upheavals in the Catholic Church. The result is as unsettlingly true as it is funny.
Are humans composed of a body and a nonmaterial mind or soul, or are we purely physical beings? Opinion is sharply divided over this issue. In this clear and concise book, Nancey Murphy argues for a physicalist account, but one that does not diminish traditional views of humans as rational, moral, and capable of relating to God. This position is motivated not only by developments in science and philosophy, but also by biblical studies and Christian theology. The reader is invited to appreciate the ways in which organisms are more than the sum of their parts. That higher human capacities such as morality, free will, and religious awareness emerge from our neurobiological complexity and develop through our relation to others, to our cultural inheritance, and, most importantly, to God. Murphy addresses the questions of human uniqueness, religious experience, and personal identity before and after bodily resurrection.
What are humans? What makes us who we are? Many think that we are just complicated machines, or animals that are different from machines only by being conscious. In Are We Bodies or Souls? Richard Swinburne comes to the defence of the soul and presents new philosophical arguments that are supported by modern neuroscience. When scientific advances enable neuroscientists to transplant a part of brain into a new body, he reasons, no matter how much we can find out about their brain activity or conscious experiences we will never know whether the resulting person is the same as before or somebody entirely new. Swinburne thus argues that we are immaterial souls sustained in existence by our brains. Sensations, thoughts, and intentions are conscious events in our souls that cause events in our brains. While scientists might discover some of the laws of nature that determine conscious events and brain events, each person's soul is an individual thing and this is what ultimately makes us who we are.
An exceptional novel from the best-selling author of the modern classic City of Night, Bodies and Souls is a portrait of modern Los Angeles on an epic scale, "the most spiritual and physical of cities." Gorgeous, seedy, and striving, the Los Angeles of Rechy's imagination is a magnetic city that draws to it the nation's brightest and darkest energies--characters that include a female porn superstar; a young Chicano punk-rock fan; a Bel Air matron and her tyrannical husband, a Supreme Court judge; an aging male stripper; a black maid with apocalyptic visions; and a cynical TV anchorwoman. Through this rich tapestry of human struggle, Rechy paints a lush portrait of a paradise lost but also a heroic odyssey in search of redemption.
The book explores the relationship between Christology and theological anthropology through the lens provided by the theology of Karl Barth and the mind/body discussion in contemporary philosophy of mind. It thus comprises two major sections. The first develops an understanding of Karl Barth's theological anthropology focusing on three major facets: (1) the centrality of Jesus Christ for any real understanding of human persons; (2) the resources that such a christologically determined view of human nature has for engaging in interdisciplinary discourse; and (3) the ontological implications of this approach for understanding the mind/body relationship. The second part draws on this theological foundation to consider the implications that Christological anthropology has for analyzing and assessing several prominent ways of explaining the mind/body relationship. Specifically, it interacts with two broad categories of theories: 'nonreductive' forms of physicalism and 'holistic' forms of dualism. After providing a basic summary of each, the book applies the insights gained from Barth's anthropology to ascertain the extent to which the two approaches may be considered christologically adequate.
Isabel Vincent’s groundbreaking exploration brings to light a dark chapter in our recent history: the white slave trade and the international Jewish mobsters behind it. From the end of the 1860s until the beginning of the Second World War, thousands of young, impoverished Jewish women, most of them from the hard-scrabble shtetls of Eastern Europe, were sold into slavery by a notorious gang of mobsters called the Zwi Migdal. While the enterprise controlled brothels in various locales, its main centres of operation were Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and, to a lesser extent, New York City. To recruit vulnerable country girls, pimps would target villages of desperate poverty, where they posed as respectable suitors of considerable means who had made their money abroad. They would arrange sham marriages to their victims and promise them an easy life in the New World. But once they’d crossed the ocean, these Jewish women found themselves caught up in the white slave trade. Under frequently brutal conditions, the young women had to service the needs of a booming population of immigrant men. An added hardship to endure was being vehemently shunned by the “respectable” Jewish community. Banned from synagogue and reviled by their neighbors, the women were forbidden from partaking in the sacred Jewish burial ritual. So prostitutes banded together to form the Society of Truth, with the promise to do all could they could to help each other be buried in dignity. Through the society the women observed religious life together, setting up private synagogues and kosher kitchens. Cast aside by their community, they created their own: a society of love, honour to God and faith in each other. With the determination and skill of her training as an investigative journalist, Isabel Vincent tells an unforgettable and gripping tale of a shameful chapter in recent history.
This collection of essays, written primarily by Episcopalian scholars, address the broad topic of human sexuality in the context of today's issues. The essays take the forms of narrative, argument, first-person accounts, and theological reasoning.
A history of the abortion abolition campaign from Roe v Wade to the 1996 election, the author explores the subject historically, sociologically, theologically and politically, arguing for deepened understanding of pro-lifers. The Catholic, social movement and direct action angles are all examined.
