This exploration of Thomas Aquinas's philosophical theology, decidedly "unorthodox" at the time of its original publication, had the good fortune to be employed extensively--notably at Yale and Cambridge--by my eminent colleagues George Lindbeck and Nicholas Lash. It essayed a "non-foundational" reading of the Summa Theologiae, unabashedly beholden to Wittgenstein, thereby preparing the way for a postmodern yet thoroughly traditional appreciation of the central role which Aquinas played in...

It is possible to eclipse a felt sense of physical dread or the expansive feeling of flourishing with the cognitive habit of universalizing our experience. We belong to a culture that surrenders the sacred vitality and dynamism of sensed experience to critical analytic cognition. Cognitional theories and emotions-as-cognitions dominate our understanding of the self; physiologic and anatomic models of normalcy dictate our approach to the body; socio-economic models of global utility shape t...

It is hubris to claim answers to unanswerable questions. Such questions, however--as part of their burden and worth--must still be asked, investigated, and contemplated. How there can be a loving, all-powerful God and a world stymied by suffering and evil is one of the unanswerable questions we must all struggle to answer, even as our responses are closer to gasps, silences, and further questions. More importantly, how and whether one articulates a response will have deep, lasting repercus...

Creatio ex nihilo is a foundational doctrine in the Abrahamic faiths. It states that God created the world freely out of nothing - from no pre-existent matter, space or time. This teaching is central to classical accounts of divine action, free will, grace, theodicy, religious language, intercessory prayer and questions of divine temporality and, as such, the foundation of a scriptural God but also the transcendent Creator of all that is. This edited collection explores how we might now re...

This collection of essays explores convergences and divergences between process thought and Roman Catholicism with the goal of identifying reasons for why process philosophy and theology has not had the same impact in Roman Catholic circles as in Protestantism, and of constructively navigating avenues of promising engagement between Process thought and Roman Catholicism. In creatively considering the Roman Catholic tradition from the vantage point of Process thought, different theoretical ...

An ancient commentator called Job a "strange and wonderful book." For many readers, "strange" might do. Though Job has been characterized as an answer to the problem of suffering, for many the book fails to satisfy the longing for answers it supposedly contains. Perhaps that, in fact, is the point of Job--there are no satisfactory arguments for why people suffer. In this compact yet substantial volume, David B. Burrell argues that this is the message of Job. Burrell engages major movements...

This book examines the contrasting interpretations of Islam and the Qur’an by Averroes and Al-Ghazali, as a way of helping us untangle current impasses affecting each Abrahamic faith. This has traditionally been portrayed as a battle between philosophy and theology, but the book shows that Averroes was rather more religious and Al-Ghazali more philosophical than they are usually portrayed.The book traces the interaction between two Muslim thinkers, showing how each is convinced of ...

Collections of sermons by noted preachers of different periods are not an altogether uncommon contribution to literature. Italy, Germany, Holland, France, Great Britain and the United States have in this way furnished copious illustrations of the gifts of their illustrious preachers. Such treasures are found in the Latin and even in the Greek Church. Protestant communions especially, in line with the supreme significance which they attach to the work of the pulpit, have thus sought to magn...

Herbert McCabe struck those who met him (Alasdair MacIntyre, Anthony Kenny, Terry Eagleton, Denys Turner) or those who read his writings (David Burrell, Stanley Hauerwas) for his high intelligence. He was the most intelligent philosopher after the death of Karl Popper. His philosophical inquiries on God and the Human Being have yet to be properly understood, not because they were abstruse (clarity was McCabe's inexorable sword!) but because of their dizzying depth, for which many are not y...

In Truthfulness and Tragedy Stanley Hauerwas provides an account of moral existence and ethical rationality that shows how Christian convictions operate, or should operate, to form and direct lives. In attempting to conceptualize the basis of Christian ethics in a manner that will render Christian convictions morally intelligible, the author casts fresh light on traditional theoretical issues and articulates the distinctive Christian response to contemporary concerns such as suici...

I am an old man now; the burden of fourscore years is resting upon me. But the events of a certain April day in the year 783 A.U.C.—full half a century ago—are as fresh in my memory as if they had happened yesterday. At that time I was stationed with my Hundred on garrison duty at the Castle of Antonia, in Jerusalem. I had been ordered to take charge of the execution of a malefactor who had just been sentenced to death. Accordingly, on the morning of the day mentioned, I selected twelve of...

In Knowing the Unknowable God, David Burrell traces the intellectual intermingling of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions that made possible the medieval synthesis that served as the basis for Western theology. He shows how Aquinas's study of the Muslim philosopher Ibn-Sina and the Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides affected the disciplined use of language when speaking of divinity and influenced his doctrine of God.