A rare book that combines searing passion with a subject that has affected all of our lives. "Chicago Tribune" Novelist, cultural critic, and former priest James Carroll marries history with memoir as he maps the two-thousand-year course of the Church s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has sparked in his own life. Fascinating, brave, and sometimes infuriating ("Time"), this dark history is more than a chronicle of religion. It is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture to create a deeply felt work ("San Francisco Chronicle") as Carroll wrangles with centuries of strife and tragedy to reach a courageous and affecting reckoning with difficult truths."

David Birnbaum’s God and Evil is a major philosophical study which systematically confronts the philosophical problem of evil, and the Holocaust in particular. It presents an extensively researched and comprehensive review of the subject. In a clearly presented and readable exposition, Birnbaum then proposes an original and powerful formulation. Combining modern and classic, rationalist and mystic themes, Birnbaum’s proposed solution to the ancient problem of evil is perhaps the most elegant to appear in modern times. Anchored biblically and philosophically, Birnbaum’s formulation proposes that two paths lie before humankind: the path of dependence on God, which while leading to ultimate bliss, is humanly unsatisfying and unfulfilling. And the second path, that of maximum potential, in which the individual achieves fuller freedom and responsibility; a path fraught with peril, although ultimately more potentializing. According to Birnbaum’s paradigm, Quest for Potential∞ drives Man and god and the Cosmos. Potential is the nexus. God and Potential is juxtaposed against Man of Autonomy, Freedom and Potential. Through proceeding from a Jewish context, Birnbaum’s compelling presentation and original synthesis will be of considerable value to adherents of all Western religious. God and Evil has been acclaimed by philosophers and theologians of all faiths. This philosophically exciting work has generated very considerable attention. It has been widely reviewed, has been selected as a Main Feature Selection of The Jewish Book Club, has already been assigned as a course text at major universities around the world, and has been critically acclaimed as “the best book in print on the subject.” God and Evil: Religious Man (1988) is the first of three books in Birnbaum’s landmark three-volume Summa Metaphysica series crafted over a twenty-six year period. In Book #1 of the series, Birnbaum introduces the concepts of Quest for Potential∞ (Q4P∞) , as well as God of Potential. In Book #2 God and Good: Spiritual Man (2005) Birnbaum scuplts the concepts of Cosmic Womb of Potential as well as the concept of Infinite Divine Extraordinariation (E+). The concept Potential∞ Point is also in-the-mix. In Book #3 The Transcendent Dynamic: Secular Man (2014) Birnbaum introduce the concept of Complexification (C+). The Summa series reshapes the contours of metaphysics, philosophy, and theology.

Summa Metaphysica proposes a comprehensive and integrated metaphysical structure – a new paradigm. Summa I: God and Evil: Religious Man (published 1988) and Summa II: God and Good: Spiritual Man (first launched 2005 online) comprise Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica series. The author has proposed that one fundamental concept – and one fundamental concept alone – Quest for Potential∞ (recursive to the infinite power) – ignited – and drives – the cosmos – and the integral infinite divine. Building upon his 1988 treatise, in Summa II: God and Good: Spiritual Man (17 years later) the author lays out his overarching metaphysical structure in very significantly greater scope, depth, breadth and texture. Summa III: The Transcendent Dynamic: Secular Man offers a metaphysics for ‘Everyman’ – de-linked from any spirituality or religious aspects. It might best be classified as ‘scientific metaphysics’. It Is anchored In a creative finesse of science and logic. Birnbaum’s paradigm is non–linear, as opposed to the linearity of the great bulk of Western philosophy. It is non– circular, as opposed to the circularity of much of Eastern philosophy. Rather, Birnbaum’s paradigm is what the author refers to as a “spiral/reflexive” dynamic (elucidated in the text). The author proposes that this Quest for Potential∞ paradigm more elegantly explains the dynamics of the cosmos – and of life, in particular – than alternate propositions. According to Birnbaum, only the full plethora of potentials – and the quest thereof – could have ignited the cosmos. The combined potentials for love, life, intellectuality, spirituality and, indeed, for an infinitely Perfect Divine, ignited, birthed, nurtured, and projected the cosmos onward on its quest towards infinity. ‘Extraordinariation,’ according to the author, is the overarching goal. Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Theologica c. 1273 within a Christian context. The Summa Metaphysica series, proposing an original, dynamic, overarching, and integrated metaphysics, is crafted within a Jewish context seven hundred years later.

The Story of Civilization, Volume IV: A history of medieval civilization—Christian, Islamic, and Judaic—from Constantine to Dante: A.D. 325-1300. This is the fourth volume of the classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning series.