The book makes an significant contribution to comparative theology, and explores the wide-ranging implications of a religious symbol whose potency is perennial, cross-cultural, and of continuing contemporary importance.

This volume brings together leading theologians, biblical scholars, scientists, philosophers, ethicists, and others to explore the multidimensionality and depth of the human person. Moving away from dualistic (mind-body, spirit-flesh, naturalmental) anthropologies, the book's contributors examine human personhood in terms of a complex flesh-body-mind-heart-soul-conscience-reason-spirit spectrum. The Depth of the Human Person begins with a provocative essay on the question "Why is personhood conceptually difficult?" It then rises to the challenge of relating theological contributions on the subject to various scientific explorations. Finally, the book turns to contemporary theological-ethical challenges, discussing such subjects as human dignity, embodiment, gender stereotypes, and human personhood at the edges of life. Contributors: Maria Antonaccio Warren S. Brown Philip Clayton Volker Henning Drecoll Markus Hfner Origen V. Jathanna Malcolm Jeeves Isolde Karle Eiichi Katayanagi Andreas Kemmerling Stephan Kirste Bernd Oberdorfer John C. Polkinghorne Jeffrey P. Schloss Andreas Schle William Schweiker Gerd Theissen Gnter Thomas Frank Vogelsang Michael Welker

Can the comparison of two theologians vastly separated in space and time help contemporary theologians to think better? This book compares two preeminent theologians, Sri Ramanuja of the Hindu tradition and Friedrich Schleiermacher of the Christian tradition. Each argues that God sustains the universe at every moment of its existence, but they work out the divine sustenance in very different ways.

In Good Company answers a question that has confounded Christian theologians: What is the nature of the body that will enjoy resurrection at the end of time? In this exciting work of comparative theology, Bede Benjamin Bidlack derives a theory of the body from the French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, by putting him in dialogue with the Song Dynasty Daoist Xiao Yingsou. In addition to its contribution to comparative theology, In Good Company offers the first translation of the preface of Xiao’s commentary on the Duren jing in a Western language, as well as a careful explication of the provocative mountain diagram therein. Bidlack presents an original contribution for both scholars of Christian theology and Chinese religion. “An excellent example of comparative theology, Bede Bidlack’s In Good Company demonstrates how certain lacunae in one tradition may be addressed by drawing on resources from another religion. Having identified a neglect of the body in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and in much of the Christian tradition of divinization, Bidlack discusses the work of Daoist scholar Xiao Yingsou as a possible source of inspiration and theological imagination.” – Catherine Cornille, Newton College Alumnae Chair, Professor of Comparative Theology, Boston College “In Good Company takes comparative theology to a new level: it not only places Daoism front and center, but also opens Christian spirituality to a wider dimension. Concerned with the two core themes of the body and personal divinization (or resurrection), the book centers on the work of two influential thinkers in their traditions: Teilhard de Chardin and Xiao Yingsou. Although 800 years apart, their visions of the body as the means to ultimate fulfillment, in close relation to divinity and the cosmos as a whole, powerfully enhance each other, as do their understanding of the intricate process of personal divinization. The book is challenging in its outlook, unsettling in its destabilization of terms, and brilliant in its interweaving of the two traditions. A must for anyone concerned with the new global environment of religious pluralism and the ongoing process of interreligious dialogue.” – Livia Kohn, Professor Emerita of Religion & East Asian Studies, Boston University

Offering both a concise introduction to the spiritual vision of the mystic and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and a fascinating survey of contemporary themes in spirituality through a Teilhardian lens, this revised edition shows how Teilhard's perception of Christ in all things was the key to his holistic vision.

What is behind the success of America? Does America manifest its destiny by other means? Author Patrick Mendis explores unseen forces that have guided America to global dominance. He details how the creation of Madison's 'Universal Empire' through Hamilton's 'Federalism' realizes Jefferson's 'Empire of Liberty.' The author then unveils America's Masonic endgame of universal brotherhood: E Pluribus Unum.

The historical interplay of Hinduism as an ancient Indian religion and Christianity as a religion associated (in India, at least) with foreign power and colonialism, continues to animate Hindu–Christian relations today. On the one hand, The Routledge Handbook of Hindu–Christian Relations describes a rich history of amicable, productive, even sometimes syncretic Hindu–Christian encounters. On the other, this handbook equally attends to historical and contemporary moments of tension, conflict, and violence between Hindus and Christians. Comprising thirty-nine chapters by a team of international contributors, this handbook is divided into seven parts: Theoretical and methodological considerations Historical interactions Contemporary exchanges Sites of bodily and material interactions Significant figures Comparative theologies Responses The handbook explores: how the study of Hindu–Christian relations has been and ought to be done, the history of Hindu–Christian relations through key interactions, ethnographic reflections on current dynamics of Hindu–Christian exchange, important key thinkers, and topics in comparative theology, ultimately providing a framework for further debates in the area. The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations is essential reading for students and researchers in Hindu–Christian studies, Hindu traditions, Asian religions, and studies in Christianity. This handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as anthropology, political science, theology, and history.

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.

Can we take seriously religious experience, spirituality, and mysticism, without reducing them to either cultural-linguistic by-products or simply asserting their validity as a dogmatic fact? The contributors to this volume argue that we can, and they offer a new way: the "participatory turn," which proposes that individuals and communities have an integral and irreducible role in bringing forth ontologically rich religious worlds. They explore the ways this approach weaves together and gives voice to a number of robust trends in contemporary religious scholarship, including the renewed study of lived spirituality, the postmodern emphasis on embodied and gendered subjectivity, the admission of alternate epistemic perspectives, the irreducibility of religious pluralism, and the pragmatist emphasis on transformation—all trends that raise serious challenges to the currently prevalent linguistic paradigm. The first part of the book situates the participatory turn in the context of contemporary Religious Studies; the second part shows how this approach can be applied to various global traditions, ancient and contemporary, from Western esotericism to Jewish mysticism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sufism, and socially engaged Buddhism.

‘The Ocean of God’conveys the proposition that the future of religions, if they will not want to contribute to the destruction of humanity, will become transreligious. Based on the assumption that the spiritual impulse of humanity cannot simply be eradicated, religiosity will persist in transreligious forms, as secularizations, naturalizations and transhumanist dreams only envision such transformations, but fall short in their ability to replace the force of spirituality to further civilized peace of human existence on Earth and its future in evolutionary, ecological and cosmological dimensions. In relating the contributions of religious pluralism to the concept of the unity of religions, which have arisen in this “new axial age” for overcoming the checkered history of religions in furthering peace, the program of a polyphilic pluralism with its transreligious discourse, based on the insight of the fundamental relativity of (religious) truth and the special contributions of process philosophy and theology as well as the Bahá'í universe of thought, analyses and projects a new religiosity or spirit enabling religions to overcome their deepest motives of strife and warfare.