What is the difference between a god and a powerful alien? Can an android have a soul, or be considered a person with rights? Can we imagine biblical stories being retold in the distant future on planets far from Earth? Whether your interest is in Christianity in the future, or the Jedi in the present--and whether your interest in the Jedi is focused on real-world adherents or the fictional religion depicted on the silver screen--this book will help you explore the intersection between theology and science fiction across a range of authors and stories, topics and questions. Throughout this...

Scriptures Knowing is a guide to the emerging field of philosophical study of Scripture, specifically about knowing. Assuming that the Scriptures speak verbosely and persistently about knowing, what do the biblical authors have to say? How do they conceptualize ideas like truth and knowledge? Most importantly, how do we come to confidently know anything at all? Scriptures Knowing follows the discourse on knowledge through key biblical texts and shows the similarity of biblical knowing with the scientific enterprise. The findings are linked to the role of ritual in knowing and implications for...

The Confessions of St. Augustine is one of the few Christian classics that is still widely read in the secular academy. Yet, oddly enough, it is not often read in the manner Augustine appears to have intended and in which the church read it for centuries: as a model of conversion, devotion, friendship, and the love of God. This book is a companion for any reader of the Confessions--whether in an academic, ecclesial, or devotional context--informed by the latest scholarship yet always directed toward pushing the reader, with Augustine, toward God.

Augustines Confessions are a glorious...

""Affirming that 1 Peter represents from beginning to end a coherent and integrated line of thought, Prof. Elliott seeks to show in these two essays how this pastoral letter, forged to respond to the alienated situation of its readers, employs the conceptuality of the moral discourse and pivotal values of honor and shame that reigned in its contemporary world. The book is an excellent introduction to Prof. Elliotts seminal work in applying social-scientific analysis of this New Testament writing, and will richly reward its careful reader.""
--Paul J. Achtemeier
author of 1 Peter...

How can we speak about God without assuming that God is nothing but our own speaking, nothing but our cultures effort to name what cannot be named? How can we deny that our speaking of God is always culturally located? To answer these questions, we need to pay close attention to what we mean by culture, and how we use this very complex term both in our everyday language and especially in the language of faith. Culture is an exceedingly complex term that nearly everyone uses, but no one is sure what it means. This work examines various uses of the term culture in theology today.

""Modernity,...

How do our current notions of the workings of the universe fit with our deepest convictions about its meaning and value? From religion, we grasp the world as created, given, gift. From science, we apprehend it as evolving, in process, changing. How do we bring these apprehensions together? Or can we? Is our impulse to find the two complementary: creation and evolution? Or is it to find them contradictory: creation or evolution?
The way in which we answer these questions carries personal and intellectual consequences. It will constitute the first piece in a worldview within which we order our...

Christians have been interpreting Scripture with an aim of deepening their life with God and each other from the very beginning of the church. The past twenty years or so have witnessed an explosion of scholarly writing devoted to the theological interpretation of Scripture. Stephen Fowl, as an active participant in and contributor to the burgeoning literature, has written an ideal companion for guests at the ""large and somewhat chaotic party,"" introducing them to important people, texts, and issues. The companion explores some of the connections between the long-running and essential...

People too often enter into conflict with an eye on how to resolve, manage, or transform it, thereby losing sight of the people involved and the end desired. Justice and peace too often serve as abstract ideals or distant shores. We have not yet learned enough about how these ends can also be the means of conflict resolution. Drawing on the imaginations of some leading peace and restorative justice practitioners, Justpeace Ethics identifies components of a justpeace imagination--the basis of an alternative ethics, where the end is touched with each step. In this simple companion to justpeace...

Dorothee Soelle once wrote, ""Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the one German theologian who will lead us into the third millennium."" As we near the end of the first decade of this third millennium, Bonhoeffer continues to inspire new generations as a spiritual guide for their actions on behalf of peace and social justice. This book by Geffrey Kelly provides a critical analysis and reading guide to two of the spiritual classics that are now available in new translations through Fortress Press. Reading Bonhoeffer offers a running commentary of each segment of these popular texts along with discussion...