Boundaries of Our Habitations


Book Description

Brown's theory of tradition stands on its own as a significant contribution to the academic study of religions, but it also provides the framework for a challenging critique of contemporary American theologies—conservative, liberal, and radical — and the basis for a novel understanding of the significance of the racial/ethnic, feminist, and class-identified theologies now emerging.




The Seven Pillars of Creation


Book Description

In their highly selective and literal reading of Scripture, creationists champion a rigidly reductionistic view of creation in their fight against "soulless scientism." Conversely, many scientists find faith in God to be a dangerous impediment in the empirical quest for knowledge. As a result of this ongoing debate, many people of faith feel forced to choose between evolution and the Bible's story of creation. But, as William Brown asks, which biblical creation story are we talking about? Brown shows that, through a close reading of biblical texts, no fewer than seven different biblical perspectives on creation can be identified. By examining these perspectives, Brown illuminates both connections and conflicts between the ancient creation traditions and the natural sciences, arguing for a new way of reading the Bible in light of current scientific knowledge and with consideration of the needs of the environment. In Brown's argument, both scientific inquiry and theological reflection are driven by a sense of wonder, which, in his words, "unites the scientist and the psalmist." Brown's own wonder at the beauty and complexity of the created world is evident throughout this intelligent, well-written, and inspirational book.




Crossing the Borders


Book Description

Contributed articles.







Human Origins and the Image of God


Book Description

How did human beings originate? What, if anything, makes us unique? These questions have long been central to philosophers, theologians, and scientists. This book continues that robust interdisciplinary conversation with contributions from an international team of scholars whose expertise ranges from biology and anthropology to philosophical theology and ethics. The fourteen chapters in this volume are organized around Wentzel van Huyssteen's pioneering work in human rationality, embodiment, and evolutionary history. Bringing a variety of diverse perspectives to bear on a hotly debated issue, Human Origins and the Image of God showcases new research by some of today's finest scholars working on questions regarding human origins and human uniqueness.




Religion within the Limits of History Alone


Book Description

Among the greatest challenges facing religious thinkers today is that created by historicism, the notion that human beings and their myriad understandings of reality are utterly historical, conditioned by contingent circumstances and tied to particular contexts. In this book, Demian Wheeler confronts the historicist challenge by delineating and defending a particular trajectory of historicist thought known as pragmatic historicism. Rooted in the German Enlightenment and fully developed within the early Chicago school of theology, pragmatic historicism is a predominantly American tradition that was philosophically nurtured by classical pragmatism and its intellectual siblings, naturalism and radical empiricism. Religion within the Limits of History Alone not only undertakes a detailed genealogy of this pragmatic historicist lineage but also sets forth a constructive program for contemporary theology by charting a path for its future development. Wheeler shows that pragmatic historicism is an underdeveloped resource for contemporary theology since it offers a model for normative religious thought that is theologically compelling yet wholly nonsupernaturalistic, deeply pluralistic, unflinchingly liberal, and radically historicist.




The Holy Bible


Book Description




Pragmatic Historicism


Book Description

Presents a new option in theology, "pragmatic historicism" which emerges out of the historicist assumptions of recent Western thought and resists both confessionalism and universalism.




Boundaries


Book Description

Recovering The Borders of Your LifeWhen God created the earth He also established very specific boundaries for each element of creation to operate in. He did very much the same when He created man, each people group had its own geographic area in which to build its specific culture, language and traditions. The variety of these all these elements were expressions of Himself that He vested in each people group and expected that each one would protect and preserve them as specific expressions of identity. There was no desire to homogenize the races, the expressions of their cultures and traditions. This certainly included the variety of modalities of their art, music, crafts, agriculture, dance, dress and traditions.The boundaries that God created were for protection and continuance of the uniqueness of those cultures, not the homogenization of all the aspects so that we collectively no longer have anything that stands out as being special.This book details the boundaries that God established for each of us on the day we were created, all of which were in concert with the purpose for which He created us and the people group we were born into. The enemy has fiercely fought unique identity by bringing trauma, wounding, abuse, and wars in direct violation of each of those God-ordained boundaries and borders. We have cooperated with him by violating our own boundaries with our own bad decisions, mistakes and dysfunction, such that the combined result has been numerous delays, lack of maturity, detours, broken relationships and blockages that have kept us from fulfilling our individual purposes, which for many has created great sorrow and disappointment.Included in this book is an effective prayer and a series of personal exercises that will help you re-establish those boundaries and borders so that you can make some much needed progress in life, your career and relationships.




Philosophy, Freedom, Language, and their Others


Book Description

Kantian and Hegelian conceptions of freedom guide this collection of essays that engage with the linguistic turn in continental philosophy to explore contemporary interpretations of freedom. Using a broad approach to the tradition of German Idealism, this volume considers its modern recasting of philosophy as a rigorous thinking practice with profound implications for individual and communal praxis and wellbeing. Philosophy, Freedom, Language, and its Others further cultivates and demonstrates the freedom to think and engage philosophy in a critical dialogue with other fields of inquiry. This method is exemplified in the philosophy and teaching of Professor Jere P. Surber, whom this book honors by using his interdisciplinary method as a springboard for new understandings of freedom in contemporary life. Expert scholars working in the philosophy of language, continental philosophy of religion, ancient philosophy, critical theory, and ethics engage seminal thinkers on freedom including Plato, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Debord to provide a diverse range of perspectives on freedom. In so doing, they address the complex legacy of philosophical freedom across subjects from contemporary media and political patrimonial culture to literary imagination and the politics of Nelson Mandela.