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Twenty years before his famous trial, Galileo Galilei had spent two years carefully considering how the results of his own telescopic observations of the heavens as well as his convictions about the truth of the Copernican theory could be aligned with the Catholic Church''s position on biblical interpretation and the authority of the magisterium. The product of these two years was an unpublished letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, the mother of his patron, Cosimo II de'' Medici.Much has changed since this letter was written in 1615, but much has remained the same. This collection of articles by renowned international scholars provides the historical context of the letter as well as a description of the scientific world of Galileo. It also explores those issues that make this 1615 letter a document for our time: the public role of religious authority, the truth of the Bible, and the relationship of scientific inquiry to social justice. Galileo''s letter to Christina has become a classic text in the history of the relationship between science and religion in the West for good reason; this volume explores why the letter has earned its rightful place as a classic even for today.""This singular book, at once instructive and delightful to read, returns readers to Galileo''s famous letter to Grand Duchess Christina. Here Galileo shines forth not only as the iconic figure of modern science he has become, but more surprisingly as, on balance, a modern interpreter of Scripture. A very fine book indeed.""--David Tracy, Professor of Theology and the Philosophy of Religions in the Divinity School of The University of Chicago""This remarkable interdisciplinary study of Galileo''s wide-ranging work includes chapters from the perspectives of philosophy and history, theology, physics, and mathematics. His achievements stand out in such scientific thought-experiments as those on time and mechanics and in his reflections on how science and religion are related, as recorded in his fascinating letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. The authors expertly convey and distill the contemporary significance of Galileo''s experiments, inventions, and understandings.""--Mary Gerhart, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, Hobart & William Smith Colleges; co-author of New Maps for Old: Explorations in Science and ReligionJohn P. McCarthy is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, the former chair of the Theology Department at Loyola University Chicago, and a Research Fellow at the Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton, New Jersey.Edmondo F. Lupieri holds the John Cardinal Cody Endowed Chair in Theology and is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Loyola University Chicago and President of ItalCultura. He is the author of In nome di Dio (2014).

This book charts a new direction in humanities scholarship through serious engagement with the geopolitical concept of the Anthropocene. Drawing on religious studies, theology, social science, history and philosophy, and what can be broadly termed the environmental humanities, this collection represents a groundbreaking critical analysis of diverse narratives on the Anthropocene. The contributors to this volume recognize that the Anthropocene began as a geological concept, the age of the humans, but that its implications are much wider than this.Will the Anthropocene have good or bad ethical outcomes? Does the Anthropocene idea challenge the possibility of a sacred Nature, which shores up many religious approaches to environmental ethics? Or is the Anthropocene a secularized theological anthropology more properly dealt with through traditional concepts from Catholic social teaching on human ecology? Do theological traditions, such as Christology, reinforce negative aspects of the Anthropocene? Not all contributors in this volume agree with the answers to these different questions. Readers will be challenged, provoked, and stimulated by this book.""Interpreting what it means to live in a time characterized by pervasive human influence throughout Earth''s systems involves questions and narratives that appear religious in scope, even while they also challenge conventional religious thought. The essays in this collection, edited well so that they are both coherent and helpfully contradictory with one another, offer readers multiple ways into the conflicts and possibilities in the idea of the Anthropocene.""--Willis Jenkins, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia""This timely book takes the notion of the Anthropocene literally by providing historical, theological, philosophical, and ethical elaborations on what it actually means that humanity has become a dominant force of the earth system. It is a scholarly account of the deeper human dimensions of the Anthropocene, moving beyond its predominating framing as a natural science phenomenon.""--Dieter Gerten, earth system scientist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, professor, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Geography Department""Religion in the Anthropocene marks the first thorough treatment of religious and quasi-religious dimensions of the Anthropocene from perspectives as diverse as philosophy, theology, anthropology, and history, among others. This impressive collection of international scholarly voices aims not at consensus or easy answers, but fully explores the Anthropocene''s profoundly ambivalent implications for humanity''s place in nature and deep time, and our responsibilities for nonhuman others. Readers new to the topic, as well as scholars in the field, will come away with fresh--and sometimes disconcerting--insights into what it means to be human in the Age of Humans."" --Lisa H. Sideris, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana UniversityCelia Deane-Drummond is Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing at the University of Notre Dame. Her recent books include The Wisdom of the Liminal (2014), Technofutures, Nature, and the Sacred (coeditor, 2015) and Ecology in Jurgen Moltmann''s Theology (Wipf & Stock, 2016). Sigurd Bergmann is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. His recent books include Religion, Space, and the Environment (2014) and Technofutures, Nature, and the Sacred (coeditor, 2015). Markus Vogt is Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. His recent books include Prinzip Nachhaltigkeit (3rd ed. 2013) Wo steht die Umweltethik? (coeditor 2013), and Die Welt des Anthropozan (coeditor 2016).

Who is God? What is God's relation to the world? How is God disposed towards us? What does God ask of us? These questions are not mere intellectual puzzles. They matter for us. A disinterested theology would be no theology at all, for we are fundamentally, at our very core, invested in God. God is the one who concerns us most deeply. Put differently, any theology worth the name is, as Miroslav Volf has put it, theology "for a way of life." We ask theological questions as those whose lives depend on the God whose character we try to articulate in the answers--and also in the asking. How we ask and answer these questions gives shape to our lives.In this volume, published in Volf's honor, leading Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theological scholars reflect on the shapes flourishing human life takes in light of God. Considering concrete questions--from how to talk about suffering to the value of singing in congregational worship--in light of their deep theological commitments, the contributors exemplify the kind of theological reflection our cultures so deeply need."Miroslav Volf loves a good conversation. And this book is exactly that, a conversation in his honor which explores a theme that he has so illumined with his own work over recent years: what it means for human beings to flourish in relation to each other and to the God who is Love."--Graham Tomlin, Bishop of Kensington, London; President, St. Mellitus College"Volf is one of the greatest theological minds of his generation, combining profound theological depth with adept creativity and willingness to mold his theology to address our many contemporary challenges. In this book you'll not only receive a resource to better understand Volf's work, but you'll be taken deep into a conversation that works the very center or aims of theology itself, directing its focus toward the good life. This book promises rich rewards for the interested reader."--Andrew Root, Luther Seminary; Author of Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross"How should people of faith think about a flourishing life and the common good? This book powerfully addresses this question through reflecting on the work of one of the most towering theologians and public intellectuals of the twenty-first century, Miroslav Volf. In a society marked by pluralism and conflicting claims about the place of faith in the public square, this text is a must-read."--Keri Day, Author of Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives"With the theme of 'human flourishing' as a response to, and fruit of, divine love providing a cantus firmus undergirding the volume as a whole, these essays unfold a wonderfully rich set of dialogues between Volf's theological vision and a range of theological and ethical concerns that spans continents and schools of thought. In so doing, the volume does theology a great service by laying out the full scope, vibrancy, and significance of Volf's theological vision."--Luke Bretherton, Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke University 

In this collection, Stations on the Journey of Inquiry, David Burrell launches a revolutionary reinterpretation of how any inquiry proceeds, boldly critiquing presumptuous theories of knowledge, language, and ethics. While his later publications, Analogy and Philosophical Language (1973) and Aquinas: God and Action (1979), elucidate Aquinas''s linguistic theology, these early writings show what often escapes articulation: how one comes to understanding and ""takes"" a judgment. Although Aquinas serves as an axial figure for Burrell''s expansive corpus of scholarship spanning more than fifty years, this selection of essays presents other positions and counterpositions to whom his own philosophical theology is beholden: Plato, Aristotle, Cajetan, Kant, Peirce, Moore, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Weiss, Ross, McInerny, and Lonergan. With renewed interest in philosophy of language by postmodern thinkers as well as in the wake of Mulhall''s Stanton Lectures on Wittgenstein and ""Grammatical Thomism,"" the publication of these formative writings proves timely for the academy at large. Burrell invites us to reconsider not only the way in which we conduct an inquiry, but what it is we take language to be and how we take responsibility for what we say.""A long-overdue gathering of David Burrell''s early work, this collection invites us to engage and learn from one of the most probing, erudite, and generous minds working in the borderlands between philosophy and theology for the past half-century. Consistently detaining, wide-ranging, and refreshingly eclectic, Burrell''s essays are a timely reminder of the deep and fertile kinship between philosophy and theology. A true gift to people working in either field, Mary Ragan''s fine edition is prefaced by intellectual testimonials by three of Burrell''s most eminent colleagues."" --Thomas Pfau, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English, Professor & Chair of Germanic Languages & Literatures, Duke Divinity SchoolDavid B. Burrell, CSC, Theodore Hesburgh Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Theology, taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1964 to 2007. In addition to authoring more than 150 scholarly articles, his many books include Analogy and Philosophical Language (1973), Aquinas: God and Action (1979), Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (1986), Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (1993), and Towards a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Theology (2011). He presently serves the Congregation of Holy Cross in Bangladesh.

We live in precarious times and are seeking to make a lasting impact through immediate solutions. But in our haste we often make decisions to fix problems and persons, forgetting that we are not called to fix but rather to reconcile. In this wide-ranging collection of essays we explore what it might look like if we were to live in the world first with the purpose of reconciling and then allow that vision to guide our actions. Each essay engages with reconciliation in different contexts, providing meaningful and potentially transformative insights that will lead the reader to more faithful lives and activities. The essays are not filled with theoretical reflections but with hard-earned wisdom from proven thinkers, practitioners, and innovators.

Most evangelical Christians believe that those people who are not saved before they die will be punished in hell forever. But is this what the Bible truly teaches? Do Christians need to rethink their understanding of hell? In the late twentieth century, a growing number of evangelical theologians, biblical scholars, and philosophers began to reject the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment in hell in favor of a minority theological perspective called conditional immortality. This view contends that the unsaved are resurrected to face divine judgment, just as Christians have always believed, but due to the fact that immortality is only given to those who are in Christ, the unsaved do not exist forever in hell. Instead, they face the punishment of the "second death"--an end to their conscious existence. This volume brings together excerpts from a variety of well-respected evangelical thinkers, including John Stott, John Wenham, and E. Earl Ellis, as they articulate the biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments for conditionalism. These readings will give thoughtful Christians strong evidence that there are indeed compelling reasons for rethinking hell.

Negating Negation critically examines key concepts in the corpus of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: divine names and perceptible symbols, removal and negation, hierarchy and hierurgy, ineffability and incomprehensibility. In each case it argues that the Dionysian corpus does not negate all things of an absolutely ineffable God; rather it negates few things of a God that is effable in important ways. Dionysian divine names are not inadequate metaphors or impotent attributes but transcendent divine causes. Divine names are not therefore flatly negated of God but removed as ordinary properties to be revealed as divine causes. The hierurgical rituals and hierarchical ranks of the church are also not negated or bypassed but serve as the necessary means of return to God. This Dionysian God is therefore not absolutely unknowable and ineffable but extraordinarily knowable and sayable as scripturally revealed and hierarchically conveyed. Negating Negation concludes that since the Dionysian corpus does not abandon all things to apophasis, it cannot be called to testify on behalf of (post)modern projects in religious pluralism and anti-ontotheology. Quite the contrary, the Dionysian corpus gives reason for suspicion of such projects, especially when they relativize or metaphorize religious belief and practice in the name of absolute ineffability.

Human beings have to ask how faith is possible, in this mixed world of trouble and joy. A safe universe with no scope for adversity would be a mechanical toy, not a creation. A glorious universe will be a place where troubles have eventually been overcome.Christians believe in one God, who is three Persons. God the heavenly Father took the risk of making a real world, full of living people capable of happiness. Jesus Christ, God the Son, came as a human being to take responsibility for creation. He suffered and died; and he rose from death to vindicate the whole enterprise and show that creation can and will be made good. People are not left to work out their own faith but are invited to belong to the church, in order to keep in touch with God the Spirit. They are to behave as God's children, not by rule-bound conformity but by grateful response to the glory of God the Holy Trinity.

Joe Jones, a retired and well-known systematic theologian, confesses he has a lover's quarrel with the church. In wide-ranging writings mostly dating since 2006, he forthrightly argues for a theologically sound understanding of the church. And he pursues a multi-faceted critique of the feckless ways in which actual churches--ministers and laity--balk and betray their rightful calling to witness in word and deed to God. He is especially critical of the practical ways in which congregations become no more than mirror images of their sociopolitical milieu, whether to the right or to the left. Hence the quarrel, trenchantly pursued in major essays, blogs, and spiritual reflections on his own past. But it remains crystal clear to Jones in his learned and profound confession that it is his beloved church with which he quarrels and about which he still has extravagant hopes. A Lover's Quarrel is a book appropriate for ministers and laity, students and professors, and learned skeptics.

Eugene Peterson may be the most influential theological writer in the church today. Yet because most of his career has not been in academia there is not much critical engagement with his work. Here some of the finest scholar-pastors we have describe the way Peterson has inspired and infuriated on the way to (hopefully) more faithful pastorates.

Embedded in modern print culture, biblical scholars have been projecting the assumptions and concepts of print culture onto the texts they interpret. In the ancient world from which those texts originate, however, literacy was confined to only a small number of educated scribes. And, as recent research has shown, even the literate scribes learned texts by repeated recitation, while the nonliterate ordinary people had little if any direct contact with written scrolls. The texts that had taken distinctive form, moreover, were embedded in a broader and deeper cultural repertoire cultivated orally in village communities as well as in scribal circles. Only recently have some scholars struggled to appreciate texts that later became ""biblical"" in their own historical context of oral communication. Exploration of texts in oral performance--whether as scribal teachers' instruction to their proteges or as prophetic speeches of Jesus of Nazareth or as the performance of a whole Gospel story in a community of Jesus-loyalists--requires interpreters to relinquish their print-cultural assumptions. Widening exploration of texts in oral performance in other fields offers exciting new possibilities for allowing those texts to come alive again in their community contexts as they resonated with the cultural tradition in which they were embedded.

Trygve Johnson invites us to consider a new metaphor of identity of The Preacher as Liturgical Artist. This identity draws on a theology of communion and the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ to relocate the preacher's identity in the creative and ongoing ministry of Jesus Christ. Johnson argues the metaphorical association of the preacher and artist understood within the artistic ministry of Jesus Christ frees the full range of human capacities, including the imagination to bear upon the arts of Christian proclamation. The Preacher as Liturgical Artist connects preachers to the person and work of Jesus Christ, whose own double ministry took the raw materials of the human condition and offered them back to the Father in a redemptive and imaginative fashion through the Holy Spirit. It is in the large creative ministry of Jesus Christ that preachers find their creativity freed to proclaim the gospel bodily within the context of the liturgical work of God's people.