Believing and Its Tensions
Believing and Its Tensions

Author: Neil Gillman

Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1580236693

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An intimate and candid examination of the changing nature of belief and where it can lead us--from the life experience of one of Judaism's leading thinkers. For over five decades, Rabbi Neil Gillman has helped people think through the most challenging questions at the heart of being a believing religious person. In this intimate rethinking of his own theological journey he explores the changing nature of belief and the complexities of reconciling the intellectual, emotional and moral questions of his own searching mind and soul. If what we have in recognizing, speaking of and experiencing God is a wide-ranging treasury of humanly crafted metaphors, what, then, is the ultimate reality, the ultimate nature of God? What lies beyond the metaphors? If humanity was an active partner in revelation--if the human community participated in what was revealed and gave it meaning--what then should be the authority of Jewish law? How do we cope--intellectually, emotionally and morally--with suffering, the greatest challenge to our faith commitment, relationship with God and sense of a fundamentally ordered world? Death is inevitable but why is it built in as part of the total life experience?

Where the Conflict Really Lies
Where the Conflict Really Lies

Author: Alvin Plantinga

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-08-01

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0199812101

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In this long-awaited book, pre-eminent analytical philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.

For God's Sake
For God's Sake

Author: Antony Loewenstein

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers Aus.

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1743289138

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Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

Divided by Faith
Divided by Faith

Author: Benjamin J. Kaplan

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-03-30

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 0674264940

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As religious violence flares around the world, we are confronted with an acute dilemma: Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Benjamin Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today. Divided by Faith begins in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, when the unity of western Christendom was shattered, and takes us on a panoramic tour of Europe's religious landscape--and its deep fault lines--over the next three centuries. Kaplan's grand canvas reveals the patterns of conflict and toleration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims across the continent, from the British Isles to Poland. It lays bare the complex realities of day-to-day interactions and calls into question the received wisdom that toleration underwent an evolutionary rise as Europe grew more "enlightened." We are given vivid examples of the improvised arrangements that made peaceful coexistence possible, and shown how common folk contributed to toleration as significantly as did intellectuals and rulers. Bloodshed was prevented not by the high ideals of tolerance and individual rights upheld today, but by the pragmatism, charity, and social ties that continued to bind people divided by faith. Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.

A Glorious Dark
A Glorious Dark

Author: A. J. Swoboda

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780801016967

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On Thursday as they ate the Passover meal with Jesus, the disciples believed that the kingdom was coming and they were on the front end of a revolution. Then came the tragedy of Friday and, somehow even worse, the silence of Saturday. They ran. They doubted. They despaired. Yet, within the grave, God's power was still flowing like a mighty river beneath the ice of winter. And then there was Sunday morning. Real, raw, and achingly honest, A Glorious Dark meets readers in the ambiguity, doubt, and uncertainty we feel when our beliefs about the world don't match up to reality. Tackling tough questions like Why is faith so hard? Why do I doubt? Why does God allow me to suffer? and Is God really with me in the midst of my pain? A. J. Swoboda puts into sharp focus a faith that is greater than our personal comfort or fulfilment. He invites readers to develop a faith that embraces the tension between what we believe and what we experience, showing that the very tension we seek to eliminate is where God meets us.

Philosophical Faith and the Future of Humanity
Philosophical Faith and the Future of Humanity

Author: Helmut Wautischer

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-01-02

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9400722230

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Karl Jaspers, who died in 1969, had a profound impact on 20th-century theology and philosophy. His central thesis called for, among other things, a de-centering of philosophy from its Eurocentric roots and a renewal of its dialogue with other traditions, especially Asian ones. This collection of essays includes unpublished work by Jaspers himself as well as testimonies to his life and career by colleagues, associates, and translators, some of who knew Jaspers personally. Readers will also find commentary and interpretation by researchers who have explored Jaspers’ work for decades, and a biographical account of Jaspers’ student Leonard Ehrlich, who handled much of Jaspers’ English translation. The book interrogates Jaspers’ conceptions of ‘philosophical faith’, his philosophy of communication, and the prospects for world philosophy in the future. Focusing on philosophical faith, it assesses Jaspers’ interpretations of key philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rosenzweig, as well as examining his personal relationships with Bultmann and Heidegger. Contributors also look at Jaspers’ philosophies of religion and history, his hypothesis of the ‘axial age’ (Achsenzeit), and his contributions to metaphysics, periechontology, and economics. Finally, chapters cover Jaspers’ philosophy of communication and world history. The latter are informed by a burgeoning interest in Kantian ‘Freiheitphilosophie’ that influenced Jaspers, as well as concerns over the future of humanity. These concerns in part account for Jaspers’ growing popularity in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central/South America, and Asia. Also included are lucid clarifications of the difference between religious and philosophical faith, and the relevance of certainty, trust, and communication for a future of mankind. Trained as a psychiatrist, Jaspers practiced this profession before becoming a philosopher and thus had a keen insight into the workings of the human mind even as he challenged the philosophical establishment of his time. It is perhaps this depth to his background that adds to the contemporary relevance of his work.

Tensions of Modernity
Tensions of Modernity

Author: Daniel R. Brunstetter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0415527848

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Where is the boundary line between civilization and barbarism drawn? When is the Other really Other, and thus no longer deserving of rights? Daniel R. Brunstetter expertly examines the place of inequality within the liberal thread of modernity by turning to the intellectual history surrounding the European discovery of the New World, and the notion of the human that emerged from the intellectual debates about the rights of the Indians.

Faith
Faith

Author: Louis Jacobs

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2008-11-05

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1725223600

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Jewish thinkers throughout the ages have been as passionate in their concern about the meaning and nature of faith as Christian theologians. This is a lucid and profound examination of Jewish approaches to belief, by a controversial and respected scholar who analyses the nature of God through a critical study of all vital philosophical sources. We are shown the conflicts--and how they are resolved--between rational and traditional views on faith, between instinctive acceptance and a more sophisticated, polemical approach. The views of mediaeval and modern theologians, Christian and Jewish (Kabbalists, religious existentialists, fundamentalists, mystics) are appraised and contrasted in the most open-minded manner. Of special interest, perhaps, is the understanding critique of the Freudian and Marxist opposition to belief in a deity. On a more mundane level, those seeming contradictions in the structure of existence which confound most men, such as the problem of evil, are analyzed in a way that is both practical and heartening. Dr. Jacobs has succeeded in demonstrating, to readers of all faiths, that particular nature of Judaism which is both universalistic and, at the same time, deeply concerned about the individual.

Knowledge, Belief, and Character
Knowledge, Belief, and Character

Author: Guy Axtell

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2000-04-26

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1461638542

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There have been many books over the past decade, including outstanding collections of essays, on the topic of the ethical virtues and virtue-theoretic approaches in ethics. But the professional journals of philosophy have only recently seen a strong and growing interest in the intellectual virtues and in the development of virtue-theoretic approaches in epistemology. There have been four single-authored book length treatments of issues of virtue epistemology over the last seven years, beginning with Ernest Sosa's Knowledge in Perspective (Cambridge, 1991), and extending to Linda Zabzebski's Virtue of the Mind (Cambridge, 1996). Weighing in with Jonathan Kvanvig's The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind (1992), and James Montmarquet's Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (1993), Rowman & Littlefield has had a particularly strong interest in the direction and growth of the field. To date, there has been no collection of articles directly devoted to the growing debate over the possibility and potential of a virtue epistemology. This volume exists in the belief that there is now a timely opportunity to gather together the best contributions of the influential authors working in this growing area of epistemological research, and to create a collection of essays as a useful course text and research source. Several of the articles included in the volume are previously unpublished. Several essays discuss the range and general approach of virtue theory in comparison with other general accounts. What advantages are supposed to accrue from a virtue-based account in epistemology, in handling well-known problems such as "Gettier," and "Evil-Genie"-type problems? Can reliabilist virtue epistemology handle skeptical challenges more satisfactorily than non-virtue-centered forms of epistemic reliabilism? Others provide a needed discussion of relevant analogies and disanalogies between ethical and epistemic evaluation. The readings all contribute

Popular Belief and Practice
Popular Belief and Practice

Author: Ecclesiastical History Society

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1972-03-02

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780521082204

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On popular piety, sanctity and customs in local and general settings.