Reading as Method provides a concise and systematic account of how readers engage with texts, exploring the most paradigmatic techniques taught in the past and today and guiding readers on developing their own critical approach to literature. Oliver Simons argues that behind the dizzying variety of reading methods—deep interpretation, surface reading, symptomatic or scattered reading, close textual analysis—are three distinctions: depth versus sur...

The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was a German theorist whose anti-liberalism continues to inspire scholars and practitioners on both the Left and the Right. Despite Schmitt's rabid anti-semitism and partisan legal practice in Nazi Germany, the appeal of his trenchant critiques of, among other things, aestheticism, representative de...

Ordained Anglican ministry is changing rapidly. Soon the majority of clergy are likely to be volunteers and, especially in rural areas, female. All mainstream Churches recognise that new contexts need new forms of ministry. Ordained Local Ministers (OLMs) are priests specifically called out by their local congregation and ordained to minister in that locality.Half the dioceses in England and elsewhere in the Anglican Communion including Australasia, Scotland and North America have ...

This book offers a theological vision of learning informed by the mystagogical homilies of Ambrose of Milan, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. In dialogue with these four mystagogues, Hanna Lucas walks through the rites and liturgy surrounding baptism and the eucharist in order to establish a theological epistemology that sees knowledge as part of the "capacitation" of our nature for heavenly mysteries and union with God. The sacraments of initiation teach us...

When considering and confronting the problem of evil, we may be asking the wrong question: Why is there evil in the world if God is good and powerful? It may be wrong because it smuggles in an unbiblical premise: God can and should use his coercive power to relieve suffering since he is both good and able. But what if coercive power does not work to accomplish God's goals? This book is an investigation into the possibility that the noncoercive power of the Cross must be at the center of th...

In the post-Newtonian world motion is assumed to be a simple category which relates to the locomotion of bodies in space, and is usually associated only with physics. This book shows this to be a relatively recent understanding of motion and that prior to the scientific revolution motion was a broader and more mysterious category, applying to moral as well as physical movements.Simon Oliver presents fresh interpretations of key figures in the history of western thought including Pl...

This addition to our popular Guides for the Perplexed series tackles a subject that is enjoying renewed debate: Christianity, along with Judaism and Islam, claims that the universe is not a brute fact. It is 'created'. But what do we mean by 'creation'? Do we mean that the universe is 'designed'? Is it the product of an evolutionary process? How are creatures related to God, and does God act within creation?Simon Oliver begins with the background to the Christian theology of creati...

Cathedrals today face a paradox: on the one hand they represent one of the biggest success stories and mission opportunities of the present-day church; on the other they face seemingly insurmountable financial difficulties, and are largely left by the church and government to fend for themselves.Many—both within and outside the church—argue that cathedrals are an irrelevance. But cathedrals are one area of the church’s life where increasingly the unchurched and the half-believer en...

This book is no less than a guide to the whole of Western philosophy -- the ideas that have undergirded our civilization for two-and-a-half thousand years. Anthony Kenny tells the story of philosophy from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment into the modern world. He introduces us to the great thinkers and their ideas, starting with Plato, Aristotle, and the other founders of Western thought. In the second part of the book he takes us through a thousand years of med...

There is a widespread belief that reason and faith are incompatible and opposed to each other. Faith is viewed as subjective, emotional, a crutch for those who find the real world too hard. Though many of the world's finest minds hold this view, the Bible teaches that it is the fool who says there is no God.Dr. R. C. Sproul clearly and simply argues that at its core Christianity is rational. He focuses on defending the basic truth claims for two of the most crucial issues of apolog...

"No one looking for a well-informed introduction to . . the key views of history adopted by professional historians . . could find a better one than this." ―Richard J. Evans, author of In Defence of HistoryA broad perspective on historical thought and writing, with a new epilogue.In this book, now published in ten languages, a preeminent intellectual historian examines the profound changes in ideas about the nature of history and historiography. Geor...

Life's Ultimate Questions is unique among introductory philosophy textbooks. By synthesizing three distinct approaches—topical, historical, and worldview/conceptual systems—it affords students a breadth and depth of perspective previously unavailable in standard introductory texts.Part One, Six Conceptual Systems, explores the philosophies of: naturalism, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, and Aquinas.Part Two, Important Problems in Philosophy, sheds light on: ...