We are trying to retrain our responses and form mental habits that are kinder, gentler, and less fearful of others.
Unlike Descartes, who had proved the existence of the self, God and the natural world in that order, Newton began with an attempt to explain the physical universe, with God as an essential part of the...
Today we often assume that before undertaking a religious lifestyle, we must prove to our own satisfaction that God or the Absolute exists. This is good scientific practice: first you establish a prin...
On 26 April 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, Nazi planes, under the orders of General Franco, attacked the Basque capital of Guernica on its market-day, killing 1654 of its 7000 inhabitan...
Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same wa...
The Rhineland cities were developing the market economy that would eventually replace agrarian civilization; they were therefore in the very early stages of modernization, a transition that always str...
Included: no religious doctrine or practice can be authentic if it does not lead to practical compassion.
Novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest. If
Pre-Islamic period jahiliyyah, which is usually translated as the time of ignorance. But the primary meaning of the root JHL is irascibility—an acute sensitivity to honor and prestige, excessive arrog...
So Enki tells Atrahasis to build a boat, instructing him about
Changed the course of history, but the process was not yet complete. It was only when Jesus returned at the Parousia that we shall all be changed and death be swallowed up in victory.64 Then and only...
Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edify...
Perhaps the central paradox of the religious life is that it seeks transcendence, a dimension of existence that goes beyond our mundane lives, but that human beings can only experience this transcende...
One of the first things I discovered was that Paul did not write all the letters attributed to him in the New Testament. Only seven of them are judged by scholars to be authentic: 1 Thessalonians, Gal...
There is a growing intolerance of inadequate images of the Absolute. This is a healthy iconoclasm, since the idea of God has been used in the past to disastrous effect. One of the most characteristic...
People would continue to adopt a particular conception of the divine because it worked for them, not because it was scientifically or philosophically sound.
Yet it is perhaps worth mentioning that the masculine tenor of God-talk is particularly problematic in English. In Hebrew, Arabic and French, however, grammatical gender gives theological discourse a...
Rudolf Otto, the German historian of religion who published his important book The Idea of the Holy in 1917, believed that this sense of the numinous was basic to religion. It preceded any desire to e...
One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect; yet religion, which should be making a major contribution, is se...
Rida was one of the first Muslims to advocate the establishment of a fully modernized but fully Islamic state, based on the reformed Shariah. He wanted to establish a college where students could be i...
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