Yahweh's coming of age /
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In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the deity YHWH is often portrayed as an old man. One of the epithets used of YHWH in the Hebrew Bible, the Ancient of Days, is a source for this depiction of God as elderly. Yet, when we look closely at the early traditions of biblical Israel, we see a different picture : God is relatively youthful, a warrior who defends his people. This book is an examination of the question: How did God become old? The transformation from young deity to Ancient of Days took place at the intersection of two trajectories in the traditions of Israel. One trajectory is reflected in the way that apocalyptic traditions found in the book of Daniel recast the old Canaanite mythic imagery seen in the Ugaritic and early biblical texts. This trajectory allows YHWH to take on qualities, such as old age, that were not associated with him during most of Israel's history but were associated with El in the Canaanite traditions. The second trajectory, a depiction of Israel's God as elderly, is connected with the development of the idea of YHWH as father. The more comfortable the biblical tradents became with portraying YHWH as a father a metaphor that was not embraced in the early traditions the easier it became for the people of Israel to think of YHWH as occupying a stage of the human life cycle.
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vii, 163 pages ; 24 cm :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
1575061724 (hardback : alk. paper)
9781575061726 (hardback : alk. paper)
Amor Dei in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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Amor Dei , "love of God" raises three questions: How do we know God is love? How do we experience love of God? How free are we to love God? This book presents three kinds of love, worldly, spiritual, and divine to understand God's love. The work begins with Augustine's Confessions highlighting his Manichean and Neoplatonic periods before his conversion to Christianity. Augustine's confrontation with Pelagius anticipates the unresolved disputes concerning God's love and free will. In the sixteenth-century the Italian humanist, Gasparo Contarini introduces the notion of "divine amplitude" to demonstrate how God's goodness is manifested in the human agent. Pierre de Bérulle, Guillaume Gibieuf, and Nicolas Malebranche show connections with Contarini in the seventeenth-century controversies relating free will and divine love. In response to the free will dispute, the Scottish philosopher, William Chalmers, offers his solution. Cornelius Jansen relentlessly asserts his anti-Pelagian interpretation of Augustine stirring up more controversy. John Norris, Malebranche's English disciple, exchanges his views with Mary Astell and Damaris Masham. In the tradition of Cambridge Platonism, Ralph Cudworth conveys a God who "sweetly governs." The organization of sections represents the love of God in ascending-descending movements demonstrating that, "human love is inseparable from divine love."
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1 online resource (175 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401209458 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The divine father : religious and philosophical concepts of divine parenthood in antiquity /
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The present volume is devoted to the theme of \'Divine Father\' in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian tradition and in its ancient pagan contexts. It brings together proceedings of a conference under the same title, held in Göttingen in September 2011. Selected articles by well-known scholars focus on religious and philosophical concepts of divine parenthood in antiquity, from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism (the Dead Sea Scrolls, Targums, Philo and Josephus) to the field of the New Testament. In addition, the volume deals with the designation of deity as \'father\' or \'mother\' from the broad spectrum of ancient Egypt and classical antiquity (Homer, Hesiod, Plato, and its reception) to late antiquity (Plotinus and Porphyry).
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1 online resource. :
9789004264779
The law of God : exploring God and civilization /
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In today's society, a positive relation between 'God' and 'civilization' is by no means self-evident. Religious believers who want to live their lives in accordance with 'the law of God' are often considered a threat to civilization. To many, monotheistic religion is inherently repressive and violent. The central aim of this volume is to think of both God and civilization in a more open, space-giving way. God is seen as the One who prevents man from making an absolute claim for a relative reality, including one's religion and culture. The multifaceted relations between God and civilization are explored from systematic-theological, missiological, philosophical and ethical perspectives.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource (vi, 330 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004281844 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Reflections on the Silence of God : a Discussion with Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor.
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In their recent book The Silent God , Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor presented a provocative view on the concept of divine silence in ancient Israel. In their view, divine silence can be explained as an answer to a variety of circumstances. Additionally, they opt for the view that divine silence needs to be answered by appropriate human conduct. The essays in this volume applaud and challenge their views from different perspectives: exegetical, ancient Near Eastern, semantic, philosophical et cetera Some authors hint at the view that divine silence should be construed as an indication of divine absence. Korpel and De Moor give a learned response to their critics. Contributors include: Bob Becking, Joel Burnett, Meindert Dijkstra, Walter Dietrich, Matthijs de Jong, Paul Sanders, Marcel Sarot, Anne-Mareike Wetter, Marjo Korpel and Johannes C. de Moor.
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1 online resource (196 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004259133 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The silent god /
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The silence of God is a recurring theme in modern reflection. It is not only addressed in theology, religious studies and philosophy, but also in literary fiction, film and theatre. The authors show that the concept of a silent deity emerged in the ancient Near East (including Greece). What did the Ancients mean when they assumed that under circumstances their deities remained silent? What reasons are discernable for silence between human beings and their gods? For the first time the close interrelation between the divine and the human in the revelatory process is demonstrated here on the basis of a wealth of translated ancient texts. In an intriguing epilogue, the authors explore the theological consequences of what they have found.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004206564 :
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.
Ontological aspects of early Jewish anthropology : the malleable self and the presence of God /
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In Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology , Tyson L. Putthoff explores early Jewish beliefs about how the human self reacts ontologically in God's presence. Combining contemporary theory with sound exegesis, Putthoff demonstrates that early Jews widely considered the self to be intrinsically malleable, such that it mimics the ontological state of the space it inhabits. In divine space, they believed, the self therefore shares in the ontological state of God himself. The book is critical for students and scholars alike. In putting forth a new framework for conceptualising early Jewish anthropology, it challenges scholars to rethink not only what early Jews believed about the self but how we approach the subject in the first place.
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"This book is a revision of my doctoral thesis, completed at Durham University"--Acknowledgements. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004336414 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Thinking the divine in interreligious encounter.
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Thinking the Divine in Interreligious Encounter seeks to take seriously our questions of cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue on God or the Divine: How can the Divine be named and thought as Europe finds itself in midst of cross-cultural processes of a global nature and as religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism come into the foreground in the West? What are some of the major shifts in Christian theology, as it recognizes that peoples of non-Christian faith traditions name and think the Divine in ways that differ from and sometimes conflict with Europe's dominant religion(s) and secular culture? Together with "Naming and Thinking God in Europe Today" and "Post-colonial Europe in the Crucible of Cultures" (Rodopi 2007), this volume allows us to discover opportunities for a multivalenced reflection on God or the Divine that achieves mutual intelligibility without surrendering to a dogmatic untranslatability or a crude relativism.
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1 online resource (321 pages : illustrations) :
9789401207577 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Necessity and Truthful Fictions : Panenmentalist Observations.
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This book discovers areas and themes, especially in philosophical psychology, for novel observations and investigations, the diversity of which is systematically unified within the frame of the author's original metaphysics, panenmentalism. The book demonstrates how by means of truthful fictions we may detect meaningful possibilities as well as their necessary relationships that otherwise could not be discovered.
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1 online resource (345 pages) :
9789042029200 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
YHWH is king : the development of divine kingship in ancient Israel /
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Amidst various methodologies for the comparative study of the Hebrew Bible, at times the opportunity arises to improve on a method recently introduced into the field. In YHWH is King , Flynn uses the anthropological method of cultural translation to study diachronic change in YHWH's kingship. Here, such change is compared to a similar Babylonian development to Marduk's kingship. Based on that comparison and informed by cultural translation, Flynn discovers that Judahite scribes suppressed the earlier YHWH warrior king and promoted a creator/universal king in order to combat the increasing threat of Neo-Assyrian imperialism. Flynn thus opens the possibility, that Judahite scribes engaged in a cultural translation of Marduk to YHWH, in order to respond to the mounting Neo-Assyrian presence.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004263048 :
0083-5889 ;
Trinity and man : Gregory of Nyssa's Ad Ablabium /
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Why is it that when we speak of three human subjects, we speak of a unique nature, but we say that they are "three men", while when we speak of the Trinity, we speak again of a unique nature, but we say that they are "one God"? Gregory of Nyssa gives the answer in his Ad Ablabium , work that lately is the focus of a discussion about the interpretation of Gregory's thought and the social analogy of the Trinity. Trinity and Man is the first monograph devoted entirely to this tract and contributes to the debate, offering a commentary to the text, which follows the development of the Nyssian arguments and frames them in the context of Gregory's theological grammar.
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1 online resource (xxxii, 216 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-210) and indexes. :
9789047420798 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
God, beyond me : from the I's absolute ground in Hölderlin and Schelling to a contemporary model of a personal God /
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German idealism has attempted to think an absolute ground to self-conscious I-hood. As a result it has been theologically disqualified as pantheistic or even atheistic since many maintain that such a ground cannot be reconciled with a personal God. In the early writings of Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), it is clear that he and his contemporaries were aware of this difficulty. His Tübinger fellow student, Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), was convinced of the ultimate inadequacy of any philosophical system to grasp the unitary ground of all that is and turned to poetry. The metaphysical insights expressed in his poetry have been largely neglected in both philosophical and theological scholarship. Drawing on the 20th century metaphysics of Dieter Henrich and Karl Rahner, this book elaborates on Hölderlin's poetry. This results in a novel concept of God as both unitary and personal ground of I-hood.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004182172 :
1878-9986 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Revisiting Aquinas' proofs for the existence of God /
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Edited and introduced by Robert Arp, Revisiting Aquinas' Proofs for the Existence of God is a collection of new papers written by scholars focusing on the famous Five Proofs or Ways ( Quinque Viae ) for the existence of God put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) near the beginning of his unfinished tome, Summa Theologica . It is not an exaggeration to say that not only is Aquinas' Summa a landmark text in the history of Western philosophy and Christianity, but also that the Five Proofs discussed therein-namely, the arguments that conclude to the Unmoved Mover, Uncaused Cause, Necessary Being, Superlative Being, and Intelligent Director-are as compelling today as they were in the 13th Century. Written in a debate format with different scholars arguing for and against each Proof, the papers in the book consist of arguments utilizing various combinations of contemporary science and philosophical ideas to bolster the positions. The result is a revisiting of Aquinas' Proofs that is relevant, stimulating, enlightening, and refreshing.
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1 online resource (x, 273 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-264) and index. :
9789004311589 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.