This book brings together process and postmodern theologians to reflect on the crucial topic of energy, asking: What are some of the connections between energy and theology? How do ideas about humanity and divinity interrelate with how we live our lives? Its contributors address energy in at least three distinct ways. First, in terms of physics, the discovery of dark energy in 1998 uncovered a mysterious force that seems to be driving the inflation of the universe. Here cosmology converges with theological reflection about the nature and origin of the universe. Second, the social and ecological contexts of energy use and the current energy crisis have theological implications insofar as they are caught up with ultimate human meanings and values. Finally, in more traditional theological terms of divine spiritual energy, we can ask how human conceptions of energy relate to divine energy in terms of creative power.

"This book brings together process and postmodern theologians to reflect on the crucial topic of energy, asking: What are some of the connections between energy and theology? How do ideas about humanity and divinity interrelate with how we live our lives? Its chapters address energy in at least three distinct ways. First, in terms of physics, the discovery of dark energy in 1998 uncovered a mysterious force that seems to be driving the expansion of the universe. Here cosmology converges with theological reflection about the nature and origin of the universe. Second, the social and ecological contexts of energy use and the current energy crisis have theological implications insofar as they are caught up with ultimate human meanings and values. Finally, in more traditional theological terms of divine spiritual energy, we can ask how human conceptions of energy relate to divine energy in terms of creative power. The book sketches out a fresh eco-theology of energy, and proposes new ways to think about the relationship between science and religion."--Publisher's abstract.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--University of Groningen). Includes bibliographical references: (p. [291]-316) and index.

Interreligious Philosophical Dialogues, volume 2, provides a unique approach to the philosophy of religion, embracing a range of religious faiths and spiritualities. This volume brings together four leading scholars and philosophers of religion, who engage in friendly but rigorous cross-cultural philosophical dialogue. Each participant in the dialogue, as a member of a particular faith tradition, is invited to explore and explain their core religious commitments, and how these commitments figure in their lived experience and in their relations to other religions and communities. The religious traditions represented in this volume are: Sunni Islam Mystical (Kabbalistic) Judaism Radical incarnational Christianity Shinto. This set of volumes uncovers the rich and diverse cognitive and experiential dimensions of religious belief and practice, pushing the field of philosophy of religion in bold new directions.

In the face of today's unprecedented ecological crisis, Christianity is often seen not only as sharing in the guilt of causing this crisis, but also as unwilling and incapable of providing any help in re-envisioning the required new way of life on earth. This view is justified when we consider how modern Christian theology has tended to denigrate the natural world and how the prevalent world-deserting Christian eschatology forms a spirituality that is fundamentally insensitive and indifferent to nature. In light of this, a meaningful Christian contribution to today's world of enormous ecological suffering must lie in envisioning a fundamentally new ecological vision of humanity's relationship to nature as well as providing an ethical energy to transform our current path of self-destruction. In this book, Bryan J. Lee finds, in Jÿrgen Moltmann's eschatological panentheism, a viable pathway toward a Christian ecological re-envisioning of the relationship between God and humanity and between humanity and nature. Furthermore, Lee demonstrates in a persuasive way how Christian worship can and should be the epicenter of ecological transformation of the society, emphatically interpreting Christian worship as an ecological-eschatological anticipation of God's cosmic perichoresis.

In this fascinating look at the spiritual side of modern cosmology, the author of "The Greening of Faith: God, the Environment, and the Good Life" seeks to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual, offering a vision of a "wider order of being".