In an axial volume from his celebrated compendium, the "Ihya ulum al din," al-Ghazali shares his startling and original exploration of the meaning of trust in Divine Providence and recommends specific spiritual skills to help the seeker develop a state whereby he or she may rightly respond to events as they happen. This judicious use of stories is intended to imitate the Sufi practice of the master/disciple relationship, where the novice is helped to discern correct action.
Interacting with theologians throughout the ages, Riches narrates the development of the church’s doctrine of Christ as an increasingly profound realization that the depth of the difference between the human being and God is realized, in fact, only in the perfect union of divinity and humanity in the one Christ. He sets the apostolic proclamation in its historical, theological, philosophical, and mystical context, showing that, as the starting point of “orthodoxy,” it forecloses every theological attempt to divide or reduce the “one Lord Jesus Christ.”
Since the first interactions between Christians and Muslims, a central point of contention has been the nature of God in relation to the doctrine of the trinity and divine oneness. Yet the belief that God is one is vociferously upheld by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. In this detailed historical study and subsequent analysis, Dr Michael F. Kuhn explores the teaching of two Arab Christian theologians from the Abbasid Era (750–1250), ‘Abd Allāh Ibn al-Ṭayyib and Iliyyā of Nisibis, and how they defended the Christian view of God as three-in-one in the Muslim milieu and in reference to the Islamic concept of tawḥīd, God’s absolute unity. The intellectual contribution of these two Christian thinkers can be seen in fact that the concepts they articulated continue to feature in Muslim–Christian dialogue to this day. Dr Kuhn shows the great lengths that Middle Eastern Christians went to explain their view of God’s oneness in the Trinity and the divinity of Christ to their fellow Christians and to commend it to their Muslim counterparts. There is much to learn from the historical debates investigated in this book to help Christians today to uphold the truth of the Christian scriptures, both in the Muslim context and beyond. Readers will appreciate the review of Nestorian Christology in light of recent studies and the important theological background to contemporary Muslim–Christian engagement that is provided. This book also makes a significant addition to the Christian understanding of the Trinity by linking the eternal attributes of God, a common theme in Islamic thought, to the three persons of the God-head deepening our understanding of the inter-relations of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Anyone engaging intellectually or academically with Muslims with hopes to dialogue thoughtfully in the area of theology, spirituality and ethics will find this book acutely helpful.
Experience Oneness with the Divine and Light Up the World On the publication of her first book, Larry Dossey, MD, author of Prayer Is Good Medicine , wrote: “Martella-Whitsett is a wise guide." Her new book makes the audacious claim that each of us can be “the light of the world” Jesus instructed his followers to be. Martella-Whitsett offers a path for living a deep and authentic life outside of the strictures of traditional religious categories. A refreshing approach, in essence, on how to be spiritual without being religious. We need to jettison the idea of a God who is out there and above us. God is not a super-human who gives and takes, punishes and rewards. God does not require human suffering and repentance. We truly find God when we go inside to connect with divine light, realize our oneness with God and others, and let our light shine in the world. Martella-Whittset looks at what “divine light” is and how it is both audacious and normal to claim it for ourselves. Next she introduces us to 12 spiritual powers we can all develop and learn to use on a daily basis: faith, understanding, will, imagination, zeal power, love, wisdom, strength, order, release, and life itself. When we consciously shine our spiritual powers on ourselves, not only are our lives improved, but all of humanity can be enriched and transformed. Let your light shine!
The little known history of an attempt to end a religious schism in imperial Russia, and the questions it raised about church and state. Established in 1800, edinoverie (translated as “unity in faith”) was intended to draw back those who had broken with the Russian Orthodox Church over ritual reforms in the seventeenth century. Called Old Believers, they had been persecuted as heretics. In time, the Russian state began tolerating Old Believers in order to lure them out of hiding and make use of their financial resources as a means of controlling and developing Russia’s vast and heterogeneous empire. However, the Russian Empire was also an Orthodox state, and conversion from Orthodoxy constituted a criminal act. So, which was better for ensuring the stability of the Russian Empire: managing heterogeneity through religious toleration, or enforcing homogeneity through missionary campaigns? Edinoverie remained contested and controversial throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as it was distrusted by both the Orthodox Church and the Old Believers themselves. The state reinforced this ambivalence, using edinoverie as a means by which to monitor Old Believer communities and employing it as a carrot to the stick of prison, exile, and the deprivation of rights. In Unity in Faith?, James White’s study of edinoverie offers an unparalleled perspective of the complex triangular relationship between the state, the Orthodox Church, and religious minorities in imperial Russia.
In Pilgrimage of Love Joy Ann McDougall offers an original reading and critical analysis of German Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann's social trinitarian theology. She identifies the driving theological impulses, methodological convictions, and practical concerns that shape the author's evolving trinitarian vision. She uncovers the narrative of divine love in Moltmann's early trilogy and shows how its conceptual trajectory shifts and deepens in his six-volume Systematic Contributions to Theology. Building on her analysis, McDougall advances a compelling case for the concept of trinitarian fellowship as the structuring theological principle in Moltmann's later work. She demonstrates how this concept of divine love unifies the author's theological anthropology, theology of grace, and the practices of the life of faith. Finally, she shows how this "social trinitarian analogy of fellowship" serves as an elastic rule of faith in the personal, political, and ecclesial realms of human existence. While McDougall highlights the prophetic potential of Moltmann's trinitarian theology for Christian praxis, she also challenges the author's underdeveloped doctrine of sin and theory of theological language. Pilgrimage of Love offers one of the first comprehensive interpretations of Moltmann's mature trinitarian theology. It introduces, systematizes, and clarifies the thought of one of the most significant Protestant theologians at the turn of the twenty-first century. This study will be an invaluable resource on Moltmann's thought for scholars of modern Protestant theology, and for all those interested in the current renaissance of trinitarian theology.
How does God relate to the world? What difference does our understanding of God make for conceiving of God's relation to us? Christian theology has seen a flourishing of activity in response to these questions under a common doctrinal theme: Trinity. That said, proposals for understanding how God relates to the world through the Trinity of God's being--otherwise known as the relationship between the immanent and the economic Trinity--vary significantly. This book, reflecting on the work of four modern theologians--Dorner, Barth, Pannenberg, and Jenson--offers a set of constructive proposals on key issues relating to the God-world relation, including a way to understand divine immutability without denying God's living history with others and a trinitarian notion of divine sovereignty that demonstrates how God transcends history from within the structures of time. At each step along the way the author conveys how Trinity opens up a richer, more expansive conception of God's relation to us. This book shows how Trinity serves the practical work of theology as faith seeking understanding.
Treatise on Divine Predestination is one of the early writings of the author of the great philosophical work Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature), Johannes Scottus (the Irishman), known as Eriugena (died c. 877 A.D.). It contributes to the age-old debate on the question of human destiny in the present world and in the afterlife. The work survives in a single manuscript of which editions were published in 1650 and 1853. It has been most recently edited in 1978. The present translation was made from that edition. Modern scholars are able to discern in this early work strong intimations of Eriugena's later major writings.
The quest for a systematic unity of the universe in all of its manifestations is a common topic in Western thought. In this book the author shows what Islam can bring to this field of human enquiry. Defining a paradigm of Islamic political economy and world systems, he presents a study of epistemology in the light of general systems derived from the Qur'anic premise. The result is an intellectual endeavour without any dogmatic or reglious and philosophoical enquiry. First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
