This book explores how Paul Tillich’s systematic theology, focusing on the concepts of being and reason can benefit nonhuman animals, while also analysing how taking proper account of nonhuman animals can prove immensely beneficial. The author first explains the body of Tillich’s system, examining reason and revelation, life and the spirit, and history and the kingdom of God. The second section undertakes a critical analysis of Tillichian concepts and their adequacy in relation to nonhuman animals, addressing topics such as Tillich’s concept of ‘technical reason’ and the multidimensional unity of life. The author concludes by discussing the positive concepts in Tillich’s systematic theology with respect to nonhuman animals and creation, including the concept of universal salvation and Tillich’s interpretation of nonhuman animals and the Fall in Genesis.

Many people who have thought about God have not thought about animals, or about the relationship between the two. But among those who have are some of the most celebrated religious thinkers, including Michel de Montaigne, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and Paul Tillich. This volume comprises 24 scholarly studies that detail challenges to the dominant anthropocentrism of most religious traditions. The editors have brought together Jewish, Unitarian, Christian, transcendentalist, Muslim, Hindu, Dissenting, deist, and Quaker voices, each offering a unique theological perspective that counters the neglect of the nonhuman. Animal Theologians is divided into three parts starting with the pioneers who first saw a relationship between animals and divinity, those who contributed to the expansion of social sensibility to animals, and ending with the work of contemporary theologians. The essays in this volume use contextual and historical background to describe what led animal theologians to their beliefs, and then pave way for further developments in this expanding field. This volume is an act of reclaiming different religious traditions for animals by recovering lost voices.

This book offers an up-to-date examination of the nature and development of animal theology. It considers what animal theology is and how it challenges, and is challenged by, liberation and ecological theology. At the heart of the work is a critical engagement with the Brazilian ecotheologian Leonardo Boff. Clair Linzey addresses ideas that originate from the papal encyclical Laudato Si’ and considers how Pope Francis is developing an animal friendly tradition within Catholicism. Exploring new vistas in animal theology, this volume makes a valuable to contribution to debates on how religion should be concerned with animals and the environment. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know the current state of debate with animal theology and its effects on the wider Christian community.

Paul Tillich's Philosophical Theology takes up the challenge as to whether his thought remains relevant fifty years after his death. In opposition to those who believe that his writings have little to say to us today, this book argues that his thought is largely exemplary of open theological engagement with the contemporary intellectual situation.

As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. What initially presented as a health emergency, has revealed itself to be a phenomenon of many facets. It has demonstrated human creativity, the oft neglected presence of nature, and the resilience of communities. Equally, it has exposed deep social inequities, conceptual inadequacies, and structural deficiencies about the way we organize our civilization and our knowledge. As the situation continues to advance, the question is whether the crisis will be grasped as an opportunity to address the deep structural, ecological and social challenges that we brought with us into the second decade of the new millennium. This volume addresses the collective sense that the pandemic is more than a problem to manage our way out of. Rather, it is a moment to consider our broken relationship with the natural world, and our alienation from a deeper sense of purpose and meaning. The contributors, though differing in their diagnoses and recommendations, share the belief that this moment, with its transformative possibility, not be forfeit. Equally, they share the conviction that the chief ground of any such reorientation ineluctably involves our collective engagement with both ecology and theology.

"The reader will find that I combine hearty enthusiasm for the philosophical traditions of my country with sharp partial disagreement with nearly all their representatives. My effort throughout my career has been to think about philosophical, that is, essentially a priori or metaphysical, issues, using the history of ideas as a primary resource. "This is the second of two volumes dealing with the history of philosophy, especially of metaphysics. The first, Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, discusses some thirty European philosophers, from Democritus to Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. In both volumes I try to learn and teach truth about reality by arguing, in a fashion, with those who in the past have sought such truth." — Charles Hartshorne In a remarkable tour de force, Charles Hartshorne presents a lively and illuminating study of what major American philosophers have said about creativity. With a special talent for perceiving and elegantly expressing the essence of a position, Dr. Hartshorne details his reactions to friend and foe, demonstrating that philosophy at its best is dialogue. Noting that metaphysics is a major theme in the American philosophical tradition, he states that "nowhere has the topic been more persistently and searchingly investigated than in this country."

William Rowe is one of the leading thinkers in contemporary philosophy of religion. Although he is best known for his contributions to the problem of evil, he has produced innovative and influential work across a wide array of subjects at the interface between philosophy and religion. He has, for example, written extensively on the existentialist theologian, Paul Tillich, on the challenging problem of divine freedom, and on the traditional arguments in support of the existence of God. His work in these areas is distinguished by its clarity, rigour, originality, and sensitivity towards the claims of his theistic opponents. Indeed, Rowe's work has played a pivotal role in the remarkable revival of analytic philosophy of religion since the 1970s. The present collection brings together for the first time Rowe's most significant contributions to the philosophy of religion. This diverse but representative selection of Rowe's writings will provide students, professional scholars as well as general readers with stimulating and accessible discussions on such topics as the philosophical theology of Paul Tillich, the problem of evil, divine freedom, arguments for the existence of God, religious experience, life after death, and religious pluralism.

Many of us keep pet animals; we rely on them for companionship and unconditional love. For some people their closest relationships may be with their pets. In the wake of the animal rights movement, some ethicists have started to re-examine this relationship, and to question the rights of humans to "own" other sentient beings in this way. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Stephen Webb brings a Christian perspective to bear on the subject of our responsibility to animals, looked at through the lens of our relations with pets--especially dogs. Webb argues that the emotional bond with companion animals should play a central role in the way we think about animals in general, and--against the more extreme animal liberationists--defends the intermingling of the human and animal worlds. He tries to imagine what it would be like to treat animals as a gift from God, and indeed argues that not only are animals a gift for us, but they give to us; we need to attend to their giving and return their gifts appropriately. Throughout the book he insists that what Christians call grace is present in our relations with animals just as it is with other humans. Grace is the inclusive and expansive power of God's love to create and sustain relationships of real mutuality and reciprocity, and Webb unfolds the implications of the recognition that animals too participate in God's abundant grace. Webb's thesis affirms and persuasively defends many of the things that pet lovers feel instinctively--that their relationships with their companion animals are meaningful and important, and that their pets have value and worth in themselves in the eyes of God. His book will appeal to a broad audience of thoughtful Christians and animal lovers.