In his new study, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God, author Philip A. Stahl uses atheism as a rational stepping stone to arrive at an emergent conception of the universe, exposing features that might be described as transcendent. He presents an impersonal approach to Being that is devoid of any specific religious overtones or affi liations. Each person becomes a quantum-based co-creator in his or her own right, according to physicist Henry Stapp. As such, we are able to thereby see ourselves and our humanity in a new light, as opposed to being merely reactive cogs in a vast mechanical-reductionist machine. Effectively, we emerge as much more than assemblies of molecules. This volume, the fourth and final entry in Stahls series on atheism, seeks to arrive at a transcendent concept of being that also surpasses absolutism and nave or dogmatic deity templates. It considers the development of a more realistic, cogent and effective ethics and morality less likely to be exploited by the power mongers or sacred source apologists, and it answers the question of whether God existsthough not in the way one would normally assume.

Judaism Beyond God presents a new secular and humanistic alternative to any of the forms of conventional Judaism. It provides new answers to old questions - questions about the essence of Jewish identity, about the real meaning of Jewish history, the significance of the Jewish personality, and, not least, it includes questions about the nature of Jewish ethics. It also provide a radical new way of being Jewish - new ways of celebrating Jewish holidays and ceremonies of the Jewish life cycle, a new approach to dealing with intermarriage and conversion, a new way of reinforcing Jewish identity.

This study is about everyday men. They are approached through a unique marriage of biblical theology and empirical research which gives birth to a missionary challenge. Part One attempts to build a theological foundation for looking at people from the aspect of belief and unbelief. It sees this distinction as a crucial theme in the biblical material which remains relevant to men everywhere. The author discovers five elements of Christian belief in the biblical material while unbelief spans the five elements by its void, denial, or choice of an alternative. Part Two starts with a random sample, in-depth interview of fifty men in a «working-class» area of Birmingham, England. The interviews attempt to discover the nature and saliency of the men's belief and unbelief in the Christian faith. The analysis stresses the qualitative response with the emphasis on listening to the men describe their lives, values, beliefs, and lack of beliefs in their own words. The findings are also compared to other related studies, prompting some conclusions regarding the meaning of these findings. The author attempts to bring the biblical material to bear on the findings about ordinary people and asks whether they can be described as believers or unbelievers. From this starting point, it becomes obvious that the scope of unbelief is very broad. Part Three takes the understanding of God's Word and men's words and moves toward a missiological goal of approaching unbelievers with a gospel for today. It sees both the content and context of the gospel as important. The cultural problem is briefly considered and specific approaches are suggested in relation to the climate of unbelief in «working-class» English culture.

This volume presents two works by Gabriel Marcel. The first, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, a collection of Marcel's later writings, shows the impact of his encounter with the later writings of Heidegger; the second, Conversations between Paul Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel, is a series of six conversations between Marcel and his most famous student.

It has been said that no one who reads Paul Tillich can fail to learn from him. But Tillich is not always easily read. Ronald Modras's study, Paul Tillich's Theology of the Church: A Catholic Appraisal, opens up Tillich's often esoteric system to non initiates and relates the Christian message to contemporary questions and concerns. It offers a systematic study of what it means to be a Catholic, a Protestant, or a believing Christian today. In this remarkable book, Ronald Modras enters into an extensive Catholic-Prot_ estant dialog with his subject, Tillich, on the theology of the church. His findings are based on an exhaustive study of the sources in Tillich. He also provides a helpful compendium of Catholic thought based on a thorough knowledge of both European and American theology of the church. Modras poses the questions: What is the nature and function of authority, of dogmas, of structures in the church? How can they claim for their origins someone like Jesus who championed freedom? How much reform can any church take? He focuses in on the central nerve of Tillich's theology: the polarity between the symbolic ritualistic embodiment of the Divine (Catholic substance) and the rejection of all attempts to accord these embodiments ultimacy (the Protestant principle). Modras shows that Vatican II went a long way in undermining dogmatic absolutism, and that Catholic theology since Vatican II has gone even further. Madras compares Tillich's stance with that of contemporary Catholic theology of the church and shows how Tillich can be reconciled with Catholic thinkers like Baum, Dewart, Kasper, Kung, and Schoonenberg. He thus not only translates Tillich for a non-theological reading audience, but also clarifies the central difficulty that faces Catholic and Protestant efforts at Christian unity today, demonstrating both the areas of substantive agreement and the areas where difficulties for Christian unity still remain. Hans Kling, in his Foreword to the book, says: "In both its presentation and appraisal Paul Tillich's Theology of the Church constitutes an important contribution to ecumenical understanding."