Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga are not thought of as theological allies. Barth is famous for his opposition to philosophy's role in theology, while Plantinga is famous for his emphasis on warranted belief. Kevin Diller argues that they actually offer a unified response to the central epistemological dilemma in theology.

In Revitalizing Theological Epistemology Steven B. Sherman addresses questions about what evangelical theology ought to be doing in light of the changing cultural situation. He wonders if the Christian faith should continue to be presented and defended mainly according to Enlightenment principles when growing criticism of modern thought is affecting virtually every discipline, and if evangelicalism and its intellectual leaders ought to wait it out or whether they should re-vision their theology. This book is about contemporary evangelical approaches to the knowledge of God, considering - and suggesting - ways Christian philosophers and theologians envision and make use of theological knowledge in the postmodern context.

Today, religion is a complex issue. In Western Europe, the so-called “Christian heritage” is challenged by both other religious traditions and secular worldviews. It is therefore essential to understand the complexity of religion in different contexts. This volume addresses four questions in this regard: How can we assess religion and religiosity appropriately? What are important markers of religiosity? How does religion affect recent society? How can religion be taught in modern society? By dealing with these questions, the contributions to this volume offer an insight into the recent state-of-the-art of research on religion and religiosity within the field of religious education on an international level.

The book provides in depth studies of two epistemological aspects of Jewish Law (Halakhah) as the ‘Word of God’ – the question of legal reasoning and the problem of knowing and remembering. - How different are the epistemological concerns of religious-law in comparison to other legal systems? - In what ways are jurisprudential attitudes prescribed and dependent on theological presumptions? - What specifies legal reasoning and legal knowledge in a religious framework? The author outlines the rabbinic jurisprudential thought rooted in Talmudic literature which underwent systemization and enhancement by the Babylonian Geonim and the Andalusian Rabbis up until the twelfth century. The book develops a synoptic view on the growth of rabbinic legal thought against the background of Christian theological motifs on the one hand and Karaite and Islamic systemized jurisprudence on the other hand. It advances a perspective of legal-theology that combines analysis of jurisprudential reflections and theological views within a broad historical and intellectual framework. The book advocates two approaches to the study of the legal history of the Halakhah: comparative jurisprudence and legal-theology, based on the understanding that jurisprudence and theology are indispensable and inseparable pillars of legal praxis.

In this volume we present the proceedings from the fourth international Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST IV, November 5-8, 2003), which focussed on a critical investigation of the place and role of religious experience in the legitimation structures of contemporary theological thinking patterns. In the first part, the keynote lectures, including the responses, are gathered (among others from L. Boeve, F. Fiorenza, L. Hemming, G. Jantzen, S. Painadath, S. Robert, R. Schaeffler, and S. Van den Bossche). In the second part, a selection of the contributions offered in the thematic seminars is presented.

First published in 2002. This is Volume V of seven in the Library of Philosophy series on the Philosophy of Religion. The Library of Philosophy was designed as a contribution to the History of Modern Philosophy under the heads: first of Different schools of Thought - Sensationalist, Realist, Idealist, Intuitivist; secondly of different Subjects - Psychology, Ethics, Aesthetics, Political Philosophy, Theology. Written in 1961, this is an essay the Theological Frontier of Ethics given as lectures in the University of Birmingham.

Schleiermacher is now regarded as an influential figure in the history of Christian thought, theories and methods in religious studies, and hermeneutics. The German-language critical edition of his work beginning in 1980, Schleiermacher Kritische Gesamtausgabe, and English translations of key portions of his corpus beginning in the late nineteenth century, have allowed scholars to investigate the richness of his thought. German scholars have often focused on Schleiermacher's ties to early modern philosophy, his aesthetics, hermeneutics, and theory of religion, while English-speaking scholars have often focused on the theological influences and implications of Schleiermacher's work. Over the last 30 years, both German and Anglophone scholars have been at work translating and analyzing key texts. This Handbook gathers authoritative interpretations of Schleiermacher's work from both German and English-speaking scholars, bringing together the best that Schleiermacher scholarship has to offer. The chapters are divided into three parts. The first part offers a clear and nuanced understanding of Schleiermacher's own historical and intellectual context. The second part presents a close analysis of the structure and content of Schleiermacher's thought, in relation both to questions of method and particular theological themes and to broader inquiries in philosophy and the humanities. The third part provides an examination of the reception of his thought and of its contemporary implications for theology and the study of religion.

Contains a general introduction to the discipline, featuring classic and pioneering essays that address the history, methods, issues, and exemplary illustrations of research, teaching, and practice Presenting a diverse collection of landmark essays, The Wiley-Blackwell Reader in Practical Theology explores the turn-of-the-century renaissance of practical theology as an academic discipline and shows how the discipline has advanced a steady epistemological insurgency in theology throughout the twentieth- and twenty-first century. The text provides scholars, students, and ministerial professionals with easy access to original seminal sources that represent major milestones, growing edges, and useful classificatory rubrics. A handy, one-volume primer to practical theology, the book: Offers an excellent bird’s-eye-view of the discipline’s essential foundational contributions Provides significant introductory overview material helpful in guiding both new and experienced readers to practical theology Includes brief overview introductions before each essay to situate the reading and highlight key contributions and occasional limitations Features essay selections that consider race, gender, sexuality, age, and other differences as a critical subtheme The Wiley-Blackwell Reader in Practical Theology is an indispensable resource for students, faculty, and professionals in practical theology and colleagues in related cognate disciplines in theological education and religious studies.

This title was first published in 2002. How does one go about "doing Christian theology"? Yong explores this question by proposing a pneumatological-trinitarian hermeneutic. Its thesis is that interpretation and theological method is an ongoing tri-logue of Spirit-Word-Community: of interpretive subjects as imaginative, obligated and relational agents; of the horizons of the interpreter, the biblical and ecclesial traditions, and the world; and of founding, historical, and ongoing communities of faith and inquiry. Ecumenical perspectives on the topics of pneumatology (the doctrine of the Spirit), metaphysics (foundational pneumatology), epistemology (the pneumatological imagination), and trinitarian theology converge in this book to move forward the present discussion of theological method.

Heaney traces the hidden history of music's presence in Christian thought, including its often unrecognized influence on key figures such as von Balthasar, Barth and Bonhoeffer. She uses Lonergan's theological framework to explore musical composition as a theological act, showing why, when and how music is a useful symbolic form. The book introduces eleven ground-breaking theologians, and each chapter offers an entry point into the thought of the theologian being presented through an original piece of music, which can be found on the companion website: https://bloomsbury.pub/suspended-god. Heaney argues that music is a universally important means of making sense of life with which theology needs to engage as a means of expression and of development. Musical composition is presented as an appropriate and even necessary form of doing theology in its quest to engage with the past, mediate truth to the present and tradition it into the future.