Histories of the Hidden God


Book Description

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent and strong tradition of a God who actively hides. The two traditions have led to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible to humanity and yet inaccessible, a God who is both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. He becomes the hallmark of the mystics, Gnostics, sages, and artists who attempt to make accessible to humans the God who is secreted away. 'Histories of the Hidden God' explores this tradition from antiquity to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God.




The Hidden God


Book Description

This remarkable text, first published in 1964, was a landmark of its era and remains, in the words of Michael Lwy, a work of "remarkable richness." Drawing on Georg Lukcs' History and Class Consciousness, Lucien Goldmann applies the concept of "world visions" to flesh out the similarities between Pascal's Penses and Kant's critical philosophy, contrasting them with the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume. For Goldmann, a leading exponent of the most fruitful method of applying Marxist ideas to literary and philosophical problems, the "tragic vision" marked an important phase in the development of European thought, as it moved from rationalism and empiricism to the dialectical philosophy of Hegel, Marx and Lukcs. Here he offers a general approach to the problems of philosophy, of literary criticism, and of the relationship between thought and action in human society.




The Gnostic New Age


Book Description

Gnosticism is a countercultural spirituality that forever changed the practice of Christianity. Before it emerged in the second century, passage to the afterlife required obedience to God and king. Gnosticism proposed that human beings were manifestations of the divine, unsettling the hierarchical foundations of the ancient world. Subversive and revolutionary, Gnostics taught that prayer and mediation could bring human beings into an ecstatic spiritual union with a transcendent deity. This mystical strain affected not just Christianity but many other religions, and it characterizes our understanding of the purpose and meaning of religion today. In The Gnostic New Age, April D. DeConick recovers this vibrant underground history to prove that Gnosticism was not suppressed or defeated by the Catholic Church long ago, nor was the movement a fabrication to justify the violent repression of alternative forms of Christianity. Gnosticism alleviated human suffering, soothing feelings of existential brokenness and alienation through the promise of renewal as God. DeConick begins in ancient Egypt and follows with the rise of Gnosticism in the Middle Ages, the advent of theosophy and other occult movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contemporary New Age spiritual philosophies. As these theories find expression in science-fiction and fantasy films, DeConick sees evidence of Gnosticism's next incarnation. Her work emphasizes the universal, countercultural appeal of a movement that embodies much more than a simple challenge to religious authority.




Histories of the Hidden God


Book Description

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent and strong tradition of a God who actively hides. The two traditions have led to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible to humanity and yet inaccessible, a God who is both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. He becomes the hallmark of the mystics, Gnostics, sages, and artists who attempt to make accessible to humans the God who is secreted away. 'Histories of the Hidden God' explores this tradition from antiquity to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God.




The Hidden God


Book Description

"... offers a range of approaches to cinema's explorations of a hidden or absent God through a group of essays by thirty-five writers who discuss some fifty movies"--p. 11.




Ancient Gods


Book Description

Where do we come from? What are the origins of modern civilization? Do the world's pyramids, the Nazca Lines, Easter Island statues, and other enigmatic structures, archeological wonders, and geographic anomalies contain evidence of ancient gods? Sifting through the historical and archaeological evidence, Ancient Gods: Lost Histories, Hidden Truths, and the Conspiracy of Silence by ordained minister Jim Willis probes the myths, stories, history, and facts of ancient civilizations, lost technologies, past catastrophes, archetypical astronauts, and bygone religions to tease out the truth of our distant past and modern existence. It takes and in-depth look at the facts, fictions, and controversies of our ancestors, origins, who we are as a people—and who might have come before us. Ancient Gods: tackles more than 60 nagging stories of ancient gods, ancestors, alien visitors, theories and explanations, such as ... 40,000 years ago, why did our ancestors across Europe and Asia crawl deep underground—sometimes as much as a mile—to paint magnificent images on the walls of caves? How did the megalithic temple site called Göbekli Tepe come to be built—11,600 years before the agricultural revolution and before humans learned how to grow their own food? How were massive stones, weighing up to four tons, dragged 140 miles across England to build Stonehenge? Who—and why—were pyramids built on the equatorial band circling the earth? What does modern DNA analysis tell us of mankind's heritage? Are we to believe the Ancient Alien Theory? Along the way, Willis examines human history and searches for the sparks of contemporary society. It also includes a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness.




The Hidden God


Book Description

This new series brings together a number of great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in a uniform series design in Spring 2000, Oxford Scholarly classics will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.




The Hidden Book in the Bible


Book Description

Renowned biblical sleuth and scholar Richard Elliot Friedman reveals the first work of prose literature in the world-a 3000-year-old epic hidden within the books of the Hebrew Bible. Written by a single, masterful author but obscured by ancient editors and lost for millennia, this brilliant epic of love, deception, war, and redemption is a compelling account of humankind's complex relationship with God. Friedman boldly restores this prose masterpiece-the very heart of the Bible-to the extraordinary form in which it was originally written.




Finding God in Hidden Places


Book Description

Bestselling author and artist Joni Eareckson Tada invites readers to join her on a deeply personal journey as she explores the presence of a holy God in hidden places. Stories from Joni's life shine in this collection of gathered memories. Readers will recall quiet, out-of-the-way moments in their own lives when God was present--both in happy and sad times. Words of encouragement, comfort, and insight leave the soul satisfied and longing to be closer to a loving Father, who often shows up when least expected. Finding God in Hidden Places is the perfect size for bedtime reading or taking along for daytime moments of rest and reflection.




The Hidden Face of God


Book Description

Friedman examines how God gradually becomes hidden as the Bible progresses, and this phenomenon's place in the formation of Judaism and Christianity.