Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating the relation of religion to science. Across these disciplines, magic has regularly been configured as a definitively non-modern phenomenon, juxtaposed to distinctly modern models of religion and science. Yet this notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous.
In Making Magic, Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic...

The recovery of Dante's metaphysics - which are very different from our own - is essential, argues Christian Moevs, if we are to resolve what has been called "the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy." That problem is what to make of the Comedy's claim to the status of revelation, vision, or experiential record - as something more than imaginative literature. In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. Moevs...

Newman Robert Glass argues that there are three workings of emptiness capable of grounding thinking and behavior: presence, difference, and essence. The first two readings, exemplified by Heidegger and Mark C. Taylor respectively, present opposing views of the work of emptiness in thinking. The third, essence, presents a position on the work of emptiness in desire and affect. Glass begins by offering a close analysis of presence and difference. He then fashions his own understanding of essence, or emptiness. He goes on to use this third reading to construct a comprehensive Buddhist position...

This collection reflects the confluence of two contemporary developments: the Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the deconstruction theory of Jacques Derrida. The five essays both explore and demonstrate the relationship between postmodernism and Buddhist-Christian thought. The liberating and healing potential of de-essentialized concepts and images, language, bodies and symbols are revealed throughout. Included are essays by Roger Corless, David Loy, Philippa Berry, Morny Joy, and Robert Magliola.

This book, first published in 1979, contains Gordon Kaufman's initial attempt to articulate his conviction that theology is, and always has been, an activity of what he calls the "imaginative construction" of a comprehensive and coherent picture of humanity in the world under God. While Kaufman's 1993 work, In Face of Mystery, qualifies and deepens the programmatic proposals offered in An Essay on Theological Method, the earlier book nevertheless remains a sound and accessible statement on theological method by one of America's most distinguished theologians. The Third Edition includes an...

This book offers a hermeneutical reading of Franz Rosenzweig's 1921 masterpiece, The Star of Redemption. In her analysis, Yudit K. Greenberg draws on German idealistic and Romantic ideas as well as Kabbalistic philosophical strands in Rosenzweig's thinking. She portrays Rosenzweig as a transitional figure between philosophy and theology, Judaism and German culture, modernity and postmodernity.

A striking feature of the current philosophical scene is the division between those philosophers of religion primarily associated with the American Philosophical Association and those primarily associated with the American Academy of Religion. This difference is loosely correlated with two others: the comparative dominance of analytic philosophy in the APA and of hermeneutical philosophy in the AAR, and the greater visibility of traditional theists in the APA. In this book eight prominent philosophers of religion from these organizations explore the historical, cultural, and philosophical...

Thomas K. Carr examines the religious epistemology of John Henry Newman alongside the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The two writers are found to cover a surprising amount of common ground: They make similar claims, and they fall into similar errors. A critical examination of four of Newman's leading ideas -- first principles, antecedent probability, doctrinal development, and the illative sense -- are compared with such Gadamerian themes as self-understanding, Bildung, projection, tradition, and the fusion of horizons. Carr concludes with a constructive proposal that...

Beyond the Necessary God examines the trinitarian thought of German theologian Eberhard Jungel. One of the most creative theologians working with the legacy of Karl Barth, Jungel combines the critical interaction of his doctrine with metaphysical traditions, philosophical anthropology, and reflection on language. In this accessibly written book, Paul DeHart offers an elegant introduction, exposition, and interpretation of the work of a theologian who is only beginning to be translated and understood in the English-speaking world. By carefully guiding the reader through Jungel's assessment of...