Looking beneath the surface : medical ethics from Islamic and Western perspectives /
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Looking Beneath the Surface explores Arab-Islamic and Western perspectives on medical ethical issues: genetic research and treatment, abortion, organ donation, and palliative sedation and euthanasia. The contributions in this volume discuss the state of the (medical) art, the role of laws, counseling, and spiritual counseling in the decision-making process. The different approaches to the ethical issues, ways of moral reasoning, become clear in these contributions, especially the role of tradition for Islam and the importance of autonomy for the West. Beneath the differences, however, the reader will also discover common values, such as the role of dignity and the value of life, and similar practices. Some of the main differences are sociocultural in nature, rather than religious as such. Well-known experts in the fields of medicine and ethics have contributed to this volume from different religious and secular backgrounds. The book offers a carefully written introduction and final chapter on intercultural comparisons. Looking Beneath the Surface is more than a collection of writings on issues in medical ethics: it helps the reader to compare different paradigms of accountability and moral reasoning.
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1 online resource (xv, 324 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789401209830 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Naming and thinking God in Europe today : theology in global dialogue /
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Is there a new need and place for God-talk in Europe? The present volume both confirms this and opens up new questions for discussion. It shows how different traditions of naming and thinking God in Europe draw on various theoretical and philosophical foundations that are in competition with one another in many ways. Due to socio-cultural, historical and political divides between Eastern and Western Europe, these theological traditions often suffer from isolation and mutual misunderstanding. Can the inherent tensions and conflicts be understood more adequately? While exploring a variety of approaches in Europe on the topic, several authors also ask: How can God be named and thought in Europe, which finds itself in the midst of complex crosscultural and interreligious processes - particularly as immigration increases and peoples of non-Christian faith traditions name and think God in ways that differ from and sometimes conflict with Europe's dominant religion(s) and secular culture? What function and impact will traditional God-talk have in a globalizing Europe as religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism move into the foreground? This volume not only reveals the broad spectrum of its topic but also documents the vivid seeking undertaken by a new generation of European theologians and scholars of religion who openly engage the question of how to live and believe in Europe today, facing complex global challenges.
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"This volume is the first publication of a three-year-long European Socrates Intensive program entitled "The concept of God in Europe's global religious dialogue," compare pages [11]. The program comprised three conference seminars that met in 2003, 2004, and 2005. The papers in this volume were presented at the meeting held in May, 2003, in Vienna. :
1 online resource (536 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004358225 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jesus as Guru : the Image of Christ among Hindus and Christians in India.
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People in India form images of Jesus Christ that link up with their own culture. Hindus have given Jesus a place among the teachers and gods of their own religion, seeing in his life something of the wisdom and mysticism that is so central to Hinduism. Christians in India also make use of the concepts provided by Hinduism when they wish to express the meaning of Christ. Thus, in any case, Jesus is-for Hindus and Christians-a guru, a teacher of wisdom who speaks with divine authority. But for many Hindu philosophers and Christian theologians there is much more that can be said about him within the Indian framework. He can be described as an avatara , a divine descent, or linked to the Brahman, the all-encompassing Reality. This study looks at both Hindu and Christian views of Christ, starting with that of the Hindu reformer Rammohan Roy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as well as those of the first Christian theologians of India. The views of Mahatma Gandhi and the monks of the Ramakrishna Mission are discussed, and those of influential Christian schools such as the Ashram movement and dalit theology. Five intermezzos indicate how artists in India portray Jesus Christ.
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1 online resource (323 pages) :
9789401206198 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Roots and routes : identity construction and the Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue /
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Dialogue participants demonstrate strong motivations for contributing to interreligious dialogue, based on a firm belief that encountering the other generates understanding - the contact thesis. Interreligious dialogue meets with both suspicion and cynicism: the former because it may result in loss of identity, and the latter because important issues may be ignored. The hitherto unanswered question is how Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue affects the identities of its participants. In this study Rachel Reedijk analyses identity construction in an interreligious context against the backdrop of the dominant either/or discourse regarding religious diversity - and, for that matter, multiculturalism - in Western society. The conceptual framework of this study is constituted by the debate on essentialism and constructivism in the social sciences. She argues that, under the right circumstances, interreligious dialogue can move beyond polemics and apologetics and prepare the ground for understanding in the dual sense of prejudice reduction and interreligious hermeneutics.
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1 online resource (xv, 358) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references ([325]-344) and indexes. :
9789042028401 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Kierkegaard's indirect politics : interludes with Lukács, Schmitt, Benjamin and Adorno.
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This book argues that a radical political gesture can be found in Søren Kierkegaard's writings. The chapters navigate an interdisciplinary landscape by placing Kierkegaard's passionate thought in conversation with the writings of Georg Lukács, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. At the heart of the book's argument is the concept of "indirect politics," which names a negative space between methods, concepts, and intellectual acts in the work of Kierkegaard, as well as marking the dynamic relations between Kierkegaard and the aforementioned thinkers. Kierkegaard's indirect politics is a set of masks that displaces identities from one field to the next: theology masks politics; law masks theology; political theory masks philosophy; and psychology masks literary approaches to truth. As reflected in Lukács, Schmitt, Benjamin, and Adorno, this book examines how Kierkegaard's indirect politics sets into relief three significant motifs: intellectual non-conformism, indirect communication in and through ambiguous identities, and negative dialectics.
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1 online resource (297 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401210607 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
"Truth" is a divine name : hitherto unpublished papers of Edward A. Synan, 1918-1997 /
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This volume contains essays on an array of topics originally presented orally by a master teacher and scholar. With characteristic rhetorical elegance, Msgr. Synan, late professor at the Pontifical Institute in Toronto, delivered these papers in a variety of settings on issues relating to his specialty of mediaeval Christian philosophy and to his interest in Jewish-Christian dialogue, on the theology of sanctity and of death, and on morally significant historical events. Medieval figures represented here include Aquinas, Augustine, Abelard, and Godfrey of St. Victor; some topics treated are war and peace, philosophical innovations, ecclesiology, evil, goliardic verse, law and abortion, Church councils and Jews in the Middle Ages, and convictions uniting Jews and Christians. This book also contains representative sermons-including a Month's Mind for Etienne Gilson, an introduction detailing Synan's background and professional contributions, an updated bibliography of his published works, and an extensive index. Especially appealing to those who knew Synan are three posthumous tributes and thirteen photographs from throughout his life. The selections in this volume are scholarly but non-technical, intended for anyone moved to seek elucidation of the topics discussed.
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1 online resource (xxxiv, 264 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-238) and index. :
9789042031555 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inculturation as dialogue : Igbo culture and the message of Christ /
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Although Africa is today often seen, because of its large number of Christians, as the future hope of the Church, a closer examination of African Christianity, however, shows that the Christian faith has not taken deep root in Africa. Many Africans today declare themselves to be Christians but still remain followers of their traditional African religions, especially in matters concerning the inner dimensions of their lives. It is evident that, in strictly personal matters relating to such issues as passage rites and crises, most Africans turn to their African traditional religions. As an incarnational faith, part of the history of Christianity has been its encounter with other cultures and its becoming deeply rooted in some of these cultures. The central question remains: Why has the Christian faith not taken deep root in Africa? This volume is concerned with answering this question.
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1 online resource (xvi, 227 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-227). :
9789401204606 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Responses to the enlightenment : an exchange on foundations, faith and community /
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Since the time of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, discussions of faith and reason have often pitted the believer against the skeptic, the theist against the atheist, and the person of one faith against the person of no professed faith. But the relation of reason to faith has been a matter of debate among believers as well. There are those who hold that religious faith can be proven or supported by rational argument. Others say that to try to give reasons and arguments does violence to religious faith, or opens it to misunderstanding and doubt, or trivializes it. Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community is a dialogue between Hendrik Hart and William Sweet, two philosophers who identify themselves as Christians, and who seek to respond to the challenges of the Enlightenment and its legacy. The authors approach the relation of faith to reason, however, in very different ways: Hart from the perspective of the Calvinian tradition and postmodern philosophy, Sweet from the Catholic tradition and analytic philosophy. Among the topics discussed are the nature of religious faith and of reason, liberalism and orthodoxy in religion, the relation of religious experience and rationality, and building community in a religiously and culturally pluralistic world. This exchange presents two distinctive perspectives to some of the major challenges of the reason to religious belief, but seeks to find common ground between them.
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1 online resource (xvi, 294 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401207331 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Trajectories of religion in Africa : essays in honour of John S. Pobee /
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The book, in the main, discusses issues relating to mission, ecumenism, and theological education and is presented in four sections. The first segment discusses works on ecumenical and theological education and assesses the relevance of the World Council of Churches. Other issues discussed in this segment relate to the interrelationships that exist between academic theology, ecumenism, and Christianity. The World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, which set the agenda for world-wide mission in a promising manner in the 1920s, is also assessed in this section of the work. The second segment, which covers Religion and Public Space, discusses works that examine the relationships between religion and power, religion and development, religion and traditional religious beliefs, and religion and practices in Africa. The third segment of the book treats Religion and Cultural Practices in African and how all these work out in couching out an African theology and African Christianity. Some of the issues discussed in this section related to African traditional philosophy, spiritism, and the interrelationships that exist between African Christianity and African Traditional Religion. The last segment of the book discusses the issue of African biblical hermeneutics and specifically looks at contemporary hermeneutical approaches to biblical interpretations in Africa.
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1 online resource (414 pages) :
9789401210577 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Asian and Oceanic Christianities in conversation : exploring theological identities at home and in diaspora /
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The old contrast between "universal" and "local" is now collapsing, but a new paradigm has yet to be defined. The contributors claim that the questions they raise will help redraw the lines of demarcation each in a unique way. Their collaborative result is a re-submission of the century-old question regarding "the essence of Christianity," and the readers will hear answers to this question resounding in polyphonic voices. The book will make a unique contribution to the scholarship by constructing a common forum connecting diasporic Asians and Oceanians who live and work in regions around the Pacific Ocean. Publication in the field of theology has been thick on the American side of the Pacific, and the agenda of discussion are shaped largely in accordance with the concerns of those living on the North-American continent and in British Isles. Theologians living on the other side of the Pacific, while in daily contact with the multi-religious realities that beg theological attention, sometimes lack means of engaging in sustained discussion with other theologians who are similarly struggling to gain insights into different cultural contexts. This book will provide a shared ground for reflection and discussion.
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1 online resource (239 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789042032996 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Global Christianity : contested claims /
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In 2002 Philip Jenkins wrote The Next Christendom . Over the past half century the centre of gravity of the Christian world has moved decisively to the global South, says Jenkins. Within a few decades European and Euro-American Christians will have become a small fragment of world Christianity. By that time Christianity in Europe and North America will to a large extent consist of Southern-derived immigrant communities. Southern churches will fulfil neither the Liberation Dream nor the Conservative Dream of the North, but will seek their own solutions to their particular problems. Jenkins' book evoked strong reactions, a bit to his own surprise, as the book contained little new. In the United States of America, the prospect of a more biblical Christianity caused reactions of alarm in liberal circles. In contrast, conservatives were delighted by the same prospect. In Europe the book landed in the middle of the debate on Europe as an exceptional case. It was detested by those who stick to the theory of ongoing and irreversible secularisation and welcomed by those who see a resurgence of religion, also in Europe. In the present volume, scholars of religion and theologians assess the global trends in World Christianity as described in Philip Jenkins' book. It is the outcome of an international conference on Southern Christianity and its relation to Christianity in the North, held in the Conference Centre of Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
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"It is the outcome of an international conference on southern Christianity and its relation to Christianity in the north, held in the conference centre of Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands."--Page 4 of cover. :
1 online resource (231 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401204323 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.