In "Passion for Truth", author and scholar Fr. Juan R. Vélez painstakingly uncovers the life and work of Blessed John Henry Newman. In the story of his early years, his family upbringing and university education, and through his vast correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues, Vélez acquaints us with Newman, the loyal friend, profound thinker, prolific writer, and holy priest. A true Catholic gentleman, who can be admired and loved by all who love the Truth.Newman was a talented but timid young man, who often doubted his own competence, but was to become one of the most influential teachers and writers of the 19th Century.Starting life as a devout and promising Anglican scholar, he finished the race a faithful and unwavering Catholic priest and Cardinal, to the disappointment of some of his closest friends and the great joy of many others.His prominent position as an Anglican clergyman and Oxford don made his long anticipated conversion the subject of great interest to many of his contemporaries and once he crossed over to Rome, many Anglicans followed his lead.His clarity of thought as a scholar was such as is hardly seen in contemporary society and was even growing rare in his own day.A relentless pursuit of wisdom did not allow him to simply store away his knowledge but urged him to conform his life to what was true wherever and whenever he discovered it. This passion for Truth did not always gain him friends, but it ultimately gained him what he valued above all else: a home in the True Church of Christ.

Can the intellectual life be a legitimate Christian calling? James Sire brings wit and wisdom to this question in his deeply personal exploration of how to think well for the glory of God and the sake of his kingdom, showing how to cultivate intellectual virtues—habits of the mind—that will strengthen you in pursuit of your calling.

While acknowledging the inherent tension between evangelicals who emphasize theological propositions and those who emphasize personal experience, Alister McGrath believes that spirituality represents the interface between ideas and life, between Christian theology and human existence. The book explores the centrality of McGrath's theology in the development of his views on spirituality. McGrath does not approach spirituality from a theological void, but instead uses his theological perspective as the foundation. Through detailed examination of McGrath's previous work and the writing of other evangelicals, The Merging of Theology and Spirituality offers an overview of a unique thinker's contributions and a guide for future theological and spiritual exploration.

Reproduction of the original.

From his early work as a lawyer on the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to his days as Philadelphia’s district attorney to his thirty-year career as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter found himself consistently in the middle of major historical events. During his five terms as senator, Specter met with the likes of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro and made significant contributions during the fallout of both the Iran-Contra scandal and the Clinton impeachment. His work had a profound influence on the configuration of the United States Supreme Court, the criminal justice system, LGBTQ rights, and stem cell research. Photographs from Specter’s personal collection highlight many of these key moments, revealing the rich narrative not only of one man’s political career, but how it helped shape a nation. While it will probably be long debated whether Specter’s complex and controversial political legacy merits mainly praise or criticism, Arlen Specter sheds new light on the life of a man who fought to make a difference.

Reflecting Walter Pater’s diverse engagements with literature, the visual arts, history, and philosophy, this collection of essays explores new interdisciplinary perspectives engaging readers and scholars alike to revisit methodologies, intertextualities, metaphysical positions, and stylistic features in the works of the Victorian essayist. A revised contextual portrait of Pater in Victorian culture questions representations of the detached aesthete. Current editorial and biographical projects show Pater as fully responsive to the emergence of modern consumer culture and the changes in readership in Britain and the United States. New critical views of rarely studied texts enhance the image of Pater as a cosmopolitan aesthete dialoguing with contemporary culture. Conceptual analysis of his texts brings new light to the aesthetic paradox embodied by Pater, between artistic detachment and immersion in the Heraclitean flux of life. Finally, aestheticism is redefined as proposing new artistic and linguistic synthesis by merging art forms and embracing interart poetics.

The Irish philosopher William Desmond is one of the most compelling and adventurous Christian thinkers of our time. The essays gathered here undertake a journey through the Bible with Desmond that ranges across biblical theology, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, political theory, and literary studies. Some of the essays examine the place of the Bible in Desmond's thought, considering his readings of the creation, the Abraham cycle, and the Beatitudes. Other essays bring Desmond's ideas to bear on broad questions that emerge from the Bible about philosophy and revelation, exegesis, theopoetics, eschatology, and tyranny. Still others bring Desmond into conversation with influential philosophers who engage (or conspicuously do not engage) the Bible, such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Tillich. Together, these essays show the rich possibilities of approaching the Bible with Desmond. All take their bearings from Desmond's "metaxological" approach, which does not seek to claim the final word, which attends to the text rather than simply imposing on it, and which allows for an ongoing dialogue. / Contributors: Ryan G. Duns, SJ / Caitlin Smith Gilson / Joseph K. Gordon / William Christian Hackett / Steven E. Knepper / Renee Kohler-Ryan / Andrew Kuiper / Brendan Thomas Sammon / Terence Sweeney / Ethan Vanderleek / Erik van Versendaal / Robert Wyllie

Søren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript has provoked a lively variety of divergent interpretations for a century and a half. It has been both celebrated and condemned as the chief inspiration for twentieth-century existential thought, as a subversive parody of philosophical argument, as a critique of mass society, as a forerunner of phenomenology and of postmodern relativism, and as an appeal for a renewal of religious commitment. These 2010 essays written by international Kierkegaard scholars offer a plurality of critical approaches to this fundamental text of existential philosophy. They cover hotly debated topics such as the tension between the Socratic-philosophical and the Christian-religious; the identity and personality of Kierkegaard's pseudonym 'Johannes Climacus'; his conceptions of paradoxical faith and of passionate understanding; his relation to his contemporaries and to some of his more distant predecessors; and, last but not least, his pertinence to our present-day concerns.

One of the best-known and most provocative spiritual teachers of our time presents the Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters, sharing his unique insights into its profound ancient wisdom This rich and refreshing book invites us to travel with the Buddha on a path of radical wisdom. In his inimitable style, Osho interprets the Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters—a scripture compiled by a Chinese emperor in the first century CE—using wonderful contemporary anecdotes to make profound points. As we laugh or shake our heads at the folly of the characters in the stories, or marvel at their goodness, Osho engages us at every level to let us experience the Buddha’s teachings and take in their timeless truths. As he writes in this powerful book: "No belief is required to travel with Buddha. You can come to him with all your skepticism—he accepts and welcomes you, and he says, 'Come with me.'"