LITMIR.BIZ

Two major obstacles to belief in God in the twenty-first century are the idea that science is incompatible with religious faith, and the idea that the diversity of religions undermines the credibility of belief that any one religion could be truer than the others. This book addresses both of these challenges to belief in God and explores a connection between them. It argues that science and religion are not only compatible, but that some recent scientific discoveries actually support belief in the existence of the Creator God. The diversity of religions is widely believed to undermine the credibility of religious truth claims because of the assumed lack of any way to settle disagreements between different religions. This book argues that one rational way to adjudicate disagreements between the claims of diverse religions is to assess their consistency with contemporary science. The book considers how Christian theism and Buddhism fare in harmonizing their metaphysical frameworks with contemporary scientific cosmology. Although both theistic and Buddhist worldviews resonate with many recent scientific discoveries, the Big Bang theory and cosmic fine-tuning favor the Christian doctrine of creation.

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We human beings are mortal. Our lives in this world inevitably terminate in death. This reality, however, need not cause us to despair, since Jesus Christ has gone before us into the far country of death, giving us hope that this defining feature of our earthly lives is not the end, but instead is an entrance into Christ's presence and a path to the fullness of the Spirit's new creation in which God will be all in all. Christian Dying: Witnesses from the Tradition is a collection of essays containing reflections from Christian authors–whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant–on the meaning and appropriation of Christian hope in the face of death in conversation with a number of great voices from the Christian tradition.
CONTRIBUTORS: Michel Rene Barnes, John C. Cavadini, Marc Cortez, Brian E. Daley, S.J., Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Matthew Levering, David Luy, Mark McIntosh, Gilbert Meilaender, Cyril O'Regan, Marcus Plested, Brent Waters.

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The Jesus of the four Gospels–and we have no knowledge of any other–appears mainly as a healer and a teacher–that is, as a healer of the soul. Three of the historically most certain facts about him were (1) his pacifism, (2) his feminism, and (3) that his women followers were the true founders of Christianity! The proof of these astounding claims you will find in the book.

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What do Christianity and queerness have to do with each other? Can Christianity be queered? Queer Theology offers a readable introduction to a difficult debate. Summarizing the various apologetic arguments for the inclusion of queer people in Christianity, Tonstad moves beyond inclusion to argue for a queer theology that builds on the interconnection of theology with sex and money. Thoroughly grounded in queer theory as well as in Christian theology, Queer Theology grapples with the fundamental challenges of the body, sex, and death, as these are where queerness and Christianity find (and, maybe, lose) each other.

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What is real? What is the foundation of right and wrong? How can we know? There are many ways to answer these questions–Western religious views in which humanity is part of God's creation, Eastern religious views in which delusion traps humanity in a cycle of reincarnation, and secular views in which humanity evolved as part of the material universe driven by nothing other than the impersonal forces of evolution.
Each of these views paints unique and comprehensive pictures of the world to convey their vision. These pictures are as different from each other as if they were of three different lands separated from each other by patrolled borders. The border between Eastern and Western religions is guarded by arguments over the nature of the divine and rational versus experiential approaches to salvation. Both of these territories are separated from the land of scientific atheists who deny the existence of any supernatural reality and see the scientific method as the sole valid arbiter of truth.
This book presents all three views for non-specialists, enabling readers to enter them imaginatively. It then compares these approaches on different contemporary topics. This book is for anyone who wonders why people believe what they do.

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The Gospel of John would seem to be both the «spiritual Gospel» and a Gospel that promotes Christian mission. Some interpreters, however, have found John to be the product of a sectarian community that promotes a very narrow view of Christian mission and advocates neither love of neighbor nor love of enemy. In this book for both the academy and the church, Michael Gorman argues that John has a profound spirituality that is robustly missional, and that it can be summarized in the paradoxical phrase «Abide and go,» from John 15. Disciples participate in the divine love and life, and therefore in the life-giving mission of God manifested in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As God's children, disciples become more and more like this missional God as they become like his Son by the work of the Spirit. This spirituality, argues Gorman, can be called missional theosis.

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"I came that you may have life and have it in all its fullness" (John 10:10).
In this book, Revd Dr. Steven Underdown presents the paschal mystery–the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus–as the means by which the Son first realized that utter fullness of life which God had always intended for humankind. He also argues that it is only in and though the paschal mystery that human beings find their fulfillment. Only insofar as someone is open to be given in love is that person open to receive fullness of new life. The book explores some of the ways by which, under God's grace, the church can establish patterns of life and worship which will enable growth into the paschal mystery. It focuses in particular on a weekly pattern of life established in various parish and monastic communities in which every week is celebrated as a kind of «Holy Week in miniature.» This pattern–termed the Pattern of the Week–is seen as providing a context for life-giving response to the divine initiative.

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From 9/11 to Israel-Palestine to ISIS, the fear of the religious stranger is palpable. Conservative talk show hosts and liberal public intellectuals are united in blaming religion, usually Islam, for the world's instability. If religion is part of the problem, it can and should be part of the solution. Strangers, Neighbors, Friends–co-authored by a Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew–aims to inform and inspire Abraham's children that God calls us to extend our love beyond family and fellow believer to the stranger.

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It is the assertion of Old-Earth Creationism that God created the Earth and then made it into an inhabitable environment over the course of a «week» of epoch-long creation «days.» It is the assertion of modern science that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and has reached such an age by passing through a number of geologic periods that are differentiated by stratigraphic, paleontological, and other empirical markers. Therefore, it seems very logical that if one holds to the veracity of these two basic assertions, then the long «creation days» of Genesis and the geologic ages of modern science can and should be effectively correlated with one another in some cohesive and systematic manner. Here we offer our origins correlation model, The Genesis Column, which does just that.

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Are Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Rob Bell «yesterday's news,» as many evangelicals seem to think? Truth and the New Kind of Christian (2005) tried to provide a balanced assessment of McLaren's and Jones's views. But, they seem to be right about much more that is affecting evangelicals than was realized then. Also, that book misunderstood one of their core claims: everything is interpretation. Moreover, their views have developed over the years, e.g., ethically about colonialism, its influences, and how we should live now. They also have advanced several further claims about the gospel and traditional doctrines. To what extent should Christians embrace their views? Are these the ways to go forward toward a more authentic Christianity, one that is morally better, and a better fit, for our times? Like Truth, this book gives careful attention to their thought. It also offers its own portrait of major shaping influences on Western, Americanized Christianity. But, there remains a root issue that keeps the Western church, whether progressive emergents or evangelicals, in its «Babylonian captivity.» It is liberation from that root that will lead to an authentically emergent Christianity.

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