God's Kindness Has Overwhelmed Us

God's Kindness Has Overwhelmed Us
Author: Jerome I. Gellman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781618111708

Jerome Gellman presents a new theology of the Jews as the Chosen People, addressing self-serving ethnocentric supremacy, cultural isolation, and defamation of religions other than Judaism. This book is traditional in taking chosenness and the truth of Judaism seriously, and in eschewing a theology of multiple covenants. At the same time, it is critical, rejecting previous concepts of chosenness, and innovative, offering for the twenty-first century a fresh way of seeing the Jews' place in the world. On this foundation, Gellman suggests a new approach to inter-religious understanding from a Jewish point of view, and examines the impact of his proposal on traditional Jewish liturgy.

We Are Not Alone

We Are Not Alone
Author: Menachem Kellner
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1644696150

Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other uses Maimonides’ writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil. Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of traditionalist Judaism.

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology
Author: Steven Kepnes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108244157

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology offers an overview of Jewish theology, an aspect of Judaism that is equal in importance to law and ethics. Covering the period from antiquity to the present, the volume focuses on what Jews believe about God and also about the relation of God to humans and the world. Parts I and II cover exciting new research in Jewish biblical and rabbinic theology, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah (mysticism), and liturgy. Parts III and IV turn to modern theology with an exploration of works by leading figures, such as Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the relation of theology to issues such as feminism and the Holocaust, and the relation of Judaism to other world religions. In Part V, the book explores how the insights of analytic philosophy have been integrated with Jewish theology.

Judaism’s Challenge

Judaism’s Challenge
Author: Alon Goshen-Gottstein
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1644693739

One cannot think of Judaism without taking some stance relating to Israel’s special status, its election. The present collection highlights the challenges that Judaism faces, as it continues to uphold a sense of chosenness and as it seeks to engage the world beyond it—nations, as well as religions. The challenge is captured by the dual implication of election: divine love on the one hand and enmity with others on the other. Israel’s election, mission and vocation are played out within this tension of love, grounded in God and extending to humanity, and the opposite of love, as this finds expression in Israel’s relations with others. Israel must work out the purpose of its election and its realization in history in the tension between these two extremes. This challenge takes on great urgency in the context of advances in interfaith relations. These lead us to reflect on the meaning of Israel’s election as part of developing a contemporary Jewish theology of world religions.

The Craft of Innovative Theology

The Craft of Innovative Theology
Author: John Allan Knight
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2022-01-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 111960155X

A comprehensive collection of resources showing students of theology how to prepare and write creative research-oriented material The Craft of Innovative Theology: Argument and Process delivers a thorough examination of the method of producing and writing creative theological theses and projects, explaining to students how to write elegant, innovative research-oriented articles. Through a collection of papers written by distinguished scholars, the text exhibits numerous examples of well-executed creative writing on topics as varied as theodicy and evolution, and artificial intelligence and baptism. Each article includes an introduction by the editor that serves to guide the student through the material and elucidates what makes the work stand out as exceptional. The articles are also annotated to assist with the appreciation of the methodology and style used by the author. The Craft of Innovative Theology assists theology students in improving their research writing to a point where they’ll be ready for a Masters’ thesis or PhD dissertation, and is an excellent resource for a research methods course in a graduate program. The works incorporated by the editors include: A thorough introduction to God and the Incarnation, including knowing God through religious pluralism An exploration of God and church, including racial stigma and the southern Baptist public discourse in the twentieth century, and the appropriateness of baptizing artificial intelligence A discussion of God and the world, including where humanity has come from and where we’re going, and the challenges posed by biological evolution to Christian theology A treatment of God and ethics, including sin and the faces of responsibility Perfect for students of postgraduate theology and research methods courses, The Craft of Innovative Theology: Argument and Process will also earn a place in the libraries of students in courses that prepare them to write a Masters’ thesis in theology or to begin shaping their PhD dissertation topic.

Interreligious Philosophical Dialogues

Interreligious Philosophical Dialogues
Author: Graham Oppy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2017-09-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351617958

Interreligious Philosophical Dialogues, volume 1, provides a unique approach to the philosophy of religion, embracing a range of religious faiths and spiritualities. This volume brings together five leading scholars and philosophers of religion, who engage in friendly but rigorous cross-cultural philosophical dialogue. Each participant in the dialogue, as a member of a particular faith tradition, is invited to explore and explain their core religious commitments, and how these commitments figure in their lived experience and in their relations to other religions and communities. The religious traditions represented in this volume are: Daoism Traditional Judaism Panpsychism Non-theistic Hinduism Classical, Christian theism. This set of volumes uncovers the rich and diverse cognitive and experiential dimensions of religious belief and practice, pushing the field of philosophy of religion in bold new directions.

The Future of Jewish Philosophy

The Future of Jewish Philosophy
Author: Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2018-08-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900438121X

This anthology of original essays reflects on the future of Jewish philosophy in light of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers (Brill, 2013-2018). The volume assesses the strengths of Jewish philosophy, explores the place of Jewish philosophy within the Western academy as a critique of and contribution to the discipline of philosophy, and showcases the relevance of Jewish philosophy to contemporary Jewish culture. The volume argues that Jewish philosophy is more vibrant, diverse, and culturally significant than its public image implies. Special attention is paid to the interdisciplinary nature of Jewish philosophy, the institutional settings for generating Jewish philosophy, and the contribution of philosophizing to contemporary Jewish self-understanding.

Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures

Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures
Author: Berel Dov Lerner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2023-09-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000958892

This book addresses central theological issues and biblical narratives in terms of a bold thesis regarding relations between God and humans: that the actions of God and the actions of humans are informed by independently valid moral viewpoints which do not entirely overlap. The author suggests that God’s plans and actions refl ect the interests and obligations appropriate to His goal of creating a worthy world, but not necessarily our world. In contrast, humans must attend to special obligations grounded in their dependence on their existing created world and in their particular places in the human family. However, in acts of grace, God voluntarily takes on special obligations toward the created world by entering covenants with its inhabitants. When the covenant involves reciprocal obligations, as in the case of God’s covenant with Israel, it also recruits human beings to play conscious roles in God’s larger plans. These covenants frame the moral parameters of human-divine interaction and cooperation in which each party strains to negotiate confl icts between its original duties and the new obligations generated by covenants. The interpretive discussions in this book involve close readings of the Hebrew text and are also informed by rabbinic tradition and Western philosophy. They address major issues that are of relevance to scholars of the bible, theology, and philosophy of religion, including the relationship between divine commands and morality, God’s responsibility for human suff ering, God’s role in history and the intersection between politics and religion.

New Communities, New Ministries

New Communities, New Ministries
Author: Michel Bavarel
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2020-03-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532692285

This book is a journey to the land of faith. That land is our own planet, ablaze with the fire Jesus Christ came to set here twenty centuries ago. For most of those centuries, Christianity was something of a provincial phenomenon. It had won the West, then its American excrescences, and seemed to be happy with that. Islam, Buddhism, and the religions of India could go right ahead and divide up the soul of the other continents. To be sure, the church’s missionary thrust never ceased driving it out beyond bounds that were too narrow. But it did so in peaks and valleys, and self-complacency tricked us back into the ghetto more than once. This is a book of living witness. It teems with the witness of the new countries, the “young churches” that live the gospel today in the Third World, in another culture, and in a situation of poverty as their daily lot. The word of God is a critique of every human society. And so the activity of the Spirit among these Christians of the church resurgent in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is a critique of the way we of the West understand that word—and live it. Time was when we could magnanimously welcome Third World Christians’ “contribution.” Those days are gone forever. Today we have to be willing to be jostled in our certitudes. And we have to be willing to change our attitudes and behavior.