With the embarrassing Galileo condemnation far, far behind them, the time is ripe for a book by Vatican officials about how the Official Church sees the staggering developments in modern astronomy. Coyne and Omizzolo take readers through the history of human understandings of heavens to arrive at a deep understanding of what many secular physicists are themselves saying about the cosmos: that a loving Creator stands behind it all.
Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Life looks at both ends of the telescope: the unfathomable reaches of cosmic space and the excited stirrings within the human psyche. It takes a scientist to explain what we are looking at. It takes a theologian to understand who is doing the looking. This book's scientific authors update readers on astrobiology's search for extraterrestrial life. Theologians add to the science a theological analysis of the place of space in understanding God's creative work, the prospects of sharing God's creation with extraterrestrial neighbors, and the question of whether one or many incarnations are required for cosmic redemption. Finally, these scholars lay the foundations for an ethic of space exploration. This book introduces a comprehensive astrotheology with an accompanying astroethic.
This is the introductory volume of a multivolume, verse-by-verse, interfaith rereading of the New Testament letter to the Ephesians. It looks to the Tiantai Buddhist master Zhiyi and his “threefold truth” to enhance our appreciation of nascent trinitarian themes in Ephesians. And it draws upon a broad array of scientific, theological, and philosophical thinkers in aid of rejecting the epistle's ancient, geocentric cosmology and its accommodations to the misogynistic, patriarchal, and slaveholding norms of its first-century surroundings. As a whole, the work constitutes a twenty-first century apologetic for doctrinal humility and for theologizing within a global theological commons.
Theological reactions to the rise of the new atheist movement have largely been critically hostile or defensively deployed apologetics to shore up the faith against attack. Gary Keogh contends that focusing on scholarly material that is inherently agreeable to theology will not suffice in the context of modern academia. Theology needs to test its boundaries. Engaging Richard Dawkins illustrates how dialogue with antithetical viewpoints may offer new perspectives on classical theological problems. Keogh demonstrates how a dialogical paradigm may take shape—one which is up to the task of facing its critics in the context of modern academia.
The age-old debate between science and faith invites more players to the fore in this book. Proponents of the origin of life as a natural process and natural selection as a mechanism of evolution come face to face with advocates for the intervention of a creator, while other scholars believe that the gulf between science and religion should be bridged.At turns disconcerting, revelatory, and profound, readers are invited to leave their preconceived notions at the door and join these writers in this curious journey of discovery.
While the field of science has made incredible advances in the past century, and more and more scientists have gone to great lengths to make these developments accessible to the public, we still rarely hear ministers and communities of faith discussing the implications of these developments for the life of faith. Quantum Shift explores recent developments in science from relativity to quantum mechanics to cosmology and then suggests ways in which people of faith might engage these scientific developments to foster their understanding of God and what it means to be part of the world we believe God created. Heidi Ann Russell demonstrates how these scientific developments offer us new and exciting images that spark our theological imaginations and reinvigorate our spiritual lives. Includes Illustrations
This book is an anthology of philosophical essays. Its principle is simple: the moments of our life are original. What we perceive and think does not arise from an elusive and illusive entity called God, Soul or External World. This setting, in line with philosophical and scientific trends, is the starting point for reaching a coherent and innovative solution to the problems of knowledge. In the foreground we encounter the relationship between the mind and the brain, where the terms are composed according to the analogy with music and the musical score, and then the basis of time and the sense of the Big Bang. These are the frame and sketch of the book.
'The Power Within is a treasure trove of important information for people involved in self-exploration and healing, as well as individuals who facilitate and support their process." - Stanislav Grof, M.D., author of Psychology of the Future, Healing our Deepest Wounds, and The Cosmic Game and co-author of Holotropic Breathwork (with Christina Grof) "Only by accessing the healing and spiritual potential of the power within, which Tav Sparks so eloquently describes, can we respond, both as individuals and collectively, to the challenges involved in the birthing of a globally inter- connected and loving world." - Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) "A sweeping review of contemporary psychological thought through a lens of direct experience... A valuable and innovative book." - Jim Fadiman, author of The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide"In The Power Within, Tav shares a truth he has taught for decades... there is an Inner Healer within us all that, when met with awareness, cooperation and proper support, propels individuals and collectives into the fast lane for healing, consciousness, and empowerment." - Kylea Taylor, author of The Breathwork Experience, and Considering Holotropic Breathwork"Both healers and seekers will find The Power Within a treasure of hard-won insights and observations from a lifetime of therapeutic work with non- ordinary states of consciousness." - Richard Tarnas, professor of psychology and cultural history, California Institute of Integral Studies "The Power Within conveys the good news that expanded states of consciousness are more readily accessible than many of us may had suspected; in fact, in the right set and setting, expanded awareness is only a few breaths away." - Michael Mithoefer, M.D.
The Wayfarer’s End follows the human person’s journey to union with God in the theologies of Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas. It argues that these seminal thinkers of the 13th Century emphasize scriptural notions of divine rewards as ordering principles for the graced movement of human viators to eternal life. Divine rewards emerge as a fundamental category through the study’s emphasis on Thomas and Bonaventure as scriptural commentators and preachers whose work in sacra pagina structures the content of their sacra doctrina. Shawn Colberg places Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’s scriptural, dogmatic, and polemical works into conversation and illumines their mutually edifying depictions of the way to eternal life. Looking to the journey itself, The Wayfarer’s End demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the roles played by God and human beings in the movement to full beatitude. To that end, it explores the relationships between grace and human nature, the effects of sin on the human person, the vital themes of predestination, conversion, perseverance, and the place of “reward-worthy” human action within the overall movement toward union with God. While St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas both stress the priority of grace and divine action for the journey, the study also illustrates their distinct frameworks for human action, unpacking Bonaventure’s preference for the language of acceptatio versus Thomas’s emphasis on ordinatio. This difference inflects their language of rewards, their exposition of scripture, and the scope of free human action in the movement to union with God. This study places the two most seminal theologians of the 13th Century into conversation on central and enduring topics of Christian life. Such a comparative study has been sorely lacking in the field of studies on Aquinas and Bonaventure. It offers insight to those interested in high scholastic thought, Franciscan and Dominican understandings of human salvation, and Thomist and Franciscan theology as it pertains to questions of the Reformation, including biblical exegesis on justification and sanctification. Above all, the study appreciates and foregrounds the richness of Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’s vocations: mendicant theologians concerned to share the fruits of contemplation with fellow friars and others seeking the goal of the wayfarer’s end.
God—The World’s Future has been a proven textbook in systematic theology for over twenty years. Thoroughly revised and expanded, this third edition is explicitly crafted to address our postmodern context and explains the whole body of Christian historical doctrine from within a “proleptic” framework. Peters skillfully deploys this concept not only to organize the various theological areas or loci but also to rethink doctrines in light of key postmodern challenges from ecumenism, critical historical thinking, contemporary science, and gender and sexuality issues.
