This volume takes the reader on a journey from New Testament and early church views of incarnation to contemporary understandings of Christology. A prominent group of scholars explores and debates the idea of “deep incarnation”—the view that the divine incarnation in Jesus presupposes a radical embodiment that reaches into the roots of material and biological existence, as well as into the darker sides of creation. Such a wide-scope view of incarnation allows Christology to be meaningful when responding to the challenges of scientific cosmology and global religious pluralism.

Exploring the meeting of mystical and philosophical theology, Partakers of the Divine shows that Christian philosophical and contemplative practices arose together and that throughout much of Christian history, philosophy, theology, and contemplation remained internal to one another. Sherman demonstrates that the relation of philosophy, theology, and contemplation to one another provides theologians and philosophers of religion today with a way forward beyond many of the stalemates that have beset discussions about faith and reason, the role of religion in contemporary culture, and the challenges of modernity and postmodernity.

Most scholars would agree that there is an epochal threshold between the world of the Middle Ages and the modern world. Agreement on the nature and dynamic structure of that threshold is harder to come by. Hans Blumenberg's original and compelling account of the transition from medieval to modern, given in his 1966 work The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, has received wide attention. Elizabeth Brient begins her own account of the transition with an extensive, critical assessment of central aspects of Blumenberg's work. She elucidates his "dialogical" method of historical explanation, then discusses the shortcomings of his defense of the "legitimacy" of modernity. The transition to the modern world is marked by the process of making infinite the finite medieval cosmos. Whereas Blumenberg focused on the spatial infinitization of the universe, Brient claims that the process must be understood intensively as well as extensively. In the now-infinite universe of the new science, the problem of finding a measure for man's self-assertive activity, and for human knowledge, comes to the fore. The second half of the book focuses on the way in which this difficulty is addressed with conceptual resources developed in the tradition of late medieval Neoplatonism, in particular in the speculative thought of Meister Eckart and Nicholas of Cusa. Specific attention is given to the way in which Cusanus' notion of the immanence of the infinite in the finite responds to the need for a regulative ideal for human knowing. This is the first book-length treatment of Blumenberg to appear in English and will be a most welcome resource for readers engaged by debates concerning the status of modernity. It will be of equal interest to students of Eckhart and Cusanus, and to those generally concerned with the transition between the medieval and the modern world. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Brient is Assistant Professor of philosophy at The University of Georgia. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "Blumenberg could not have wished for a more reverent critique of his achievements or a more exacting textual exegesis regarding the sources of their philosophical content, all written in a lucid style that is forthright in the defense of the depth of thought during the Middle Ages but also pleasing in its subtle irony with respect to Blumenberg's and the author's own metaphysical creed."- Walter F. Veit, Speculum "Brient's analysis of Blumenberg's philosophy sheds significant light in the debate concerning modernity. . . ." --Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, German Studies Review

Is there any basis in reality for a religious experience? Is there any basis in reason for belief in God? Is it even possible to speak meaningfully of a transcendent being? And how does one account for evil? The authors answer these questions, representing the four most important issues in the philosophy of religion, in a comprehensive way and "form the perspective of classical theism." They support this position with in-depth argumentation, taking into account both classical and contemporary writers. With its well-outlined text, 'Philosophy of Religion' is "user friendly." An introduction, chapter summaries, a glossary, indexes, and bibliography contribute to this end. In this second edition, the authors have not only updated the text and bibliography, but also refined some of the arguments, "scaled down and evened out" the vocabulary, and added several pedagogical aids. The first edition, written by Norman L. Geisler alone, appeared in 1974.

Introduces the reader to the views of the most outstanding theologians in the history of Christianity. The book's three sections deal with Patristic Theology, Medieval and Reformation Theology, and Modern Theology.

The Divine Manifold is a postmodern enquiry in intersecting themes of the concept and reality of multiplicity in a chaosmos that does not refuse a dimension of theopoetics, but rather defines it in terms of divine polyphilia, the love of multiplicity. In an intricate play on Dante’s Divine Comedy, this book engages questions of religion and philosophy through the aporetic dynamics of love and power, locating its discussions in the midst of, and in between the spheres of a genuine philosophy of multiplicity. This philosophy originates from the poststructuralist approach of Gilles Deleuze and the process philosophical inspirations of Alfred N. Whitehead. As their chaosmos invites questions of ultimate reality, religious pluralism and multireligious engagement, a theopoetics of love will find paradoxical dissociations and harmonizations with postmodern sensitivities of language, power, knowledge and embodiment. At the intersection of poststructuralism’s and process theology’s insights in the liberating necessity of multiplicity for a postmodern cosmology, the book realizes its central claim. If there is a divine dimension of the chaosmos, it will not be found in any identification with mundane forces or supernatural powers, but on the contrary in the absolute difference of polyphilic love from creativity. Yet, the concurrent indifference of love and power—its mystical undecidability in terms of any conceptualization—will lead into existential questions of the insistence on multiplicity in a world of infinite becoming as inescapable background for its importance and creativeness, formulating an ecological and ethical impulse for a mystagogy of becoming intermezzo.