Coherent Christianity


Book Description

Throughout this book, Louis Roy illustrates his conviction that Christianity consists in the most profound experience to which human beings are invited by God. This experience involves meaning and truth, hope and love, suffering and joy, solidarity and critique. It is a space of freedom, where diverse persons seek the light and make their decisions, interacting with the intellectual and affective resources of their culture. Faith is understood as a personal and communal adventure--a sequence of real life experiences. The book proposes an articulate and coherent vision of the Christian faith. It surveys the complementary dimensions of Christian experience. It points to various paths, traveled by different people. It offers an actualization for our time, that is, a road map that is at the same time flexible and in keeping with truth. It engages in a dialogue with psychology and with non-Christian views, for example on meditation and on reincarnation. The book is addressed to a large audience of educated readers, who are likely to be very interested in its biblical, philosophical, psychological, sociological, interreligious, and pastoral components. Its originality consists in bringing together the interactions between several disciplines, in a practical way.




God Is No Thing


Book Description

This coolly written tract offers an erudite and eloquent argument for the importance of Christian values in modern life.




The Coherence of Theism


Book Description

The Coherence of Theism investigates what it means, and whether it is coherent, to say that there is a God. Richard Swinburne concludes that despite philosophical objections, most traditional claims about God are coherent (that is, do not involve contradictions); and although some of the most important claims are coherent only if the words by which they are expressed are being used in analogical senses, this is the way in which theologians have usually claimed that they are being used. When the first edition of this book was published in 1977, it was the first book in the new 'analytic' tradition of philosophy of religion to discuss these issues. Since that time there have been very many books and discussions devoted to them, and this new, substantially rewritten, second edition takes account of these discussions and of new developments in philosophy generally over the past 40 years. These discussions have concerned how to analyse the claim that God is 'omnipotent', whether God can foreknow human free actions, whether God is everlasting or timeless, and what it is for God to be a 'necessary being'. On all these issues this new edition has new things to say.




A Handbook for Christian Philosophy


Book Description

This handbook acquaints readers with philosophy in an introductory and nontechnical way. These materials, first developed for use in classes as a supplement to other formal textbooks, are designed to gain the confidence of students who have no technical level of expertise in the field of philosophy. There is a very useful glossary at the end that will be of help to all readers, listing more than just simple definitions. Often the glossary explanations are like brief essays in themselves. Many significant issues arise in the field, but this book treats three in particular: theistic proofs, evil, and creation. A Handbook for Christian Philosophy offers several contributions that make it unique. First, there is a section on logic that relates the subject of logic to biblical exegesis. Second, the treatment of evil puts special emphasis on the biblical themes that provide practical and theoretical help for people who are experiencing evil and going through suffering. Third, the chapter on creation includes an up-to-date critique of naturalistic evolution and a review of the recurrent Christian principles on this topic. The author provides an excellent worldview evaluation, something that is desperately needed today by all Christians. The chapters include: What is philosophy?; How to study philosophy; Learning to think logically; Recognizing worldviews; Testing worldviews; The existence of God; Creation, the reasonable alternative; and a final chapter on God and evil.




Medieval Christianity


Book Description

A new narrative history of medieval Christianity, spanning from A.D. 500 to 1500, focuses on the role of women in Christianity; the relationships among Christians, Jews and Muslims; the experience of ordinary parishioners; the adventure of asceticism, devotion and worship; and instruction through drama, architecture and art.




God, Time, and Eternity


Book Description

In this highly original and ground-breaking work, the author brings together discussions in the philosophy of time and space, philosophy of language, phenomenology, philosophy of science, Special and General Relativity, classical cosmology, quantum mechanics, and so forth, with the concerns of philosophy of religion and theology, in order to craft a philosophically informed and scientifically tenable doctrine of divine eternity and God's relationship to time.




Vital Christianity


Book Description

Challenge theses debilitating distinctions between spirituality and social justice by exploring the numerous threads that can and should connect these two components of holistic Christian living.




Bad Religion


Book Description

Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices.




Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity


Book Description

A study of the 'heretic' Jovinian and the Jovinianist controversy, this work examines early Christian views on marriage and celibacy in the first three centuries and the development of an anti-heretical tradition. It provides an analysis of the responses of Jovinian's main opponents.




The Crisis of Evangelical Christianity


Book Description

In the broad context of Christianity as it developed over two millennia, and with special reference to the last three centuries, this discussion finds that Evangelicalism has repeatedly offered a reduced and distorted understanding of the faith. The evangelical outlook is much less scriptural than evangelicals generally assume. When it comes to appreciating the order of creation, our calling to develop integral Christian thinking and living, the religious significance of culture, and the coming of the kingdom, reductionist Evangelicalism struggles with its only rarely acknowledged deficiencies. As a result, we have all too often ended up with a Christianity shorn of its cosmic scope and wide cultural implications, and restricted to institutional church life and the cultivation of private spiritual experience. The consequences are frequently enervating and corrosive. Without disregarding what is important in the past, evangelicals are here challenged to take the Bible much more seriously, and thereby transcend the limitations of their habitual reductionism. Evangelicals are encouraged to embrace an integral and full-orbed understanding of Christian discipleship that will equip the faithful to address the deep and complex challenges of the twenty-first century.