The essential companion to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenom of Man, The Divine Milieu expands on the spiritual message so basic to his thought. He shows how man's spiritual life can become a participation in the destiny of the universe. Teilhard de Chardin -- geologist, priest, and major voice in twentieth-century Christianity -- probes the ultimate meaning of all physical exploration and the fruit of his own inner life. The Divine Milieu is a spiritual treasure for every religion bookshelf.

During the twentieth century, Jesuit priest-scientist Pierre Teilhaid de Chardin developed a truly innovative spirituality. By integrating both a comprehensive evolutionary perspective and the discoveries of science into Christian spirituality, Teilhard presented a new way to understand the Word of God and the immensity of the Universal Christ. While many books have explored and explained Teilhard's theology, there has never been a spiritual guide for everyday use of his principles-until now. Savary transforms these challenging and difficult-to-understand concepts into a more accessible spirituality. The Divine Milieu Explained also offers a series of spiritual practices and exercises that integrate science and faith according to Teilhaid's evolutionary spirituality. "His purpose....[was] to see spiritual reality today-in the world contemporary men and women live in. thoroughly informed and transformed by science and technology." Book jacket.

The Future of Man is a magnificent introduction to the thoughts and writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the few figures in the history of the Catholic Church to achieve renown as both a scientist and a theologian. Trained as a paleontologist and ordained as a Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin devoted himself to establishing the intimate, interdependent connection between science—particularly the theory of evolution—and the basic tenets of the Christian faith. At the center of his philosophy was the belief that the human species is evolving spiritually, progressing from a simple faith to higher and higher forms of consciousness, including a consciousness of God, and culminating in the ultimate understanding of humankind’s place and purpose in the universe. The Church, which would not condone his philosophical writings, refused to allow their publication during his lifetime. Written over a period of thirty years and presented here in chronological order, the essays cover the wide-ranging interests and inquiries that engaged Teilhard de Chardin throughout his life: intellectual and social evolution; the coming of ultra-humanity; the integral place of faith in God in the advancement of science; and the impact of scientific discoveries on traditional religious dogma. Less formal than The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin’s most renowned works, The Future of Man offers a complete, fully accessible look at the genesis of ideas that continue to reverberate in both the scientific and the religious communities.

Theologian Harry Lee Poe and chemist Jimmy H. Davis argue that God's interaction with our world is a possibility affirmed equally by the Bible and the contemporary scientific record. Rather than confirming that the cosmos is closed to the actions of the divine, advancing scientific knowledge seems to indicate that the nature of the universe is actually open to the unique type of divine activity portrayed in the Bible.

One can say that the last true revolution in spirituality came with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. Many devout Christians use the Exercises unchanged from their origins in the sixteenth century. In the twentieth century, another Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard he Chardin, developed a revolutionary spirituality by integrating science and faith, offering us a new way to understand the Word of God and the immensity of the Universal Christ. Unfortunately, he never spelled out how to practice this new understanding in our daily lives. Louis Savary offers an approach on how the Spiritual Exercises could be re-envisioned for contemporary believers, using the transformative spirituality of Teilhard. The New Spiritual Exercises provides a vision of how a twenty-first century Teilhard might have adapted Ignatius' classic work-in the hope that Teilhard himself would approve. Book jacket.

The Deities Are Many is a lively and learned introduction to polytheism. Drawing from both his scholarly research and his personal experience, author Jordan Paper is the ideal guide into this milieu. Paper was drawn to polytheism through his love of nature, seeing it as a source of the divine. In this book he focuses on Chinese and Native American religious traditions, as well as West African, African-Brazilian, Hindu, Polynesian, and circum-Polar traditions, to describe the theology of polytheism. The book provides a topology of polytheistic deities, focusing on the cosmic couple, Father Sky and Mother Earth; animal, plant, and mineral deities; ancestral spirits; divine ghosts; and culture heroes and tricksters. Paper also shows how monotheists misunderstand polytheism and provides a polytheist perspective on what it means to be human when the "deities are many." This is a fascinating, illuminating book, especially for those raised in monotheistic societies.

The doctrine of divine simplicity has long played a crucial role in Western Christianity's understanding of God. It claimed that by denying that God is composed of parts Christians are able to account for his absolute self-sufficiency and his ultimate sufficiency as the absolute Creator of the world. If God were a composite being then something other than the Godhead itself would be required to explain or account for God. If this were the case then God would not be most absolute and would not be able to adequately know or account for himself without reference to something other than himself. This book develops these arguments by examining the implications of divine simplicity for God's existence, attributes, knowledge, and will. Along the way there is extensive interaction with older writers, such as Thomas Aquinas and the Reformed scholastics, as well as more recent philosophers and theologians. An attempt is made to answer some of the currently popular criticisms of divine simplicity and to reassert the vital importance of continuing to confess that God is without parts, even in the modern philosophical-theological milieu.

"The physical universe is telling us spiritual truths: We are all connected; The God of one is the God of all; Diversity is a blessing; The suffering of anyone or any part of the earth is a desecration to us all; God's grace runs through all creation and can heal us all." "Paradoxology encourages us to look at life through this new lens and see more than we have ever seen before. It is one of those rare books that transcends information and offers transformation."--Jacket.