Reading Philosophy of Religion combines a diverse selection of classical and contemporary texts in philosophy of religion with insightful commentaries. Offers a unique presentation through a combination of text and interactive commentary Provides a mix of classic and contemporary texts, including some not anthologized elsewhere Includes writings from thinkers such as Aquinas, Boethius, Hume, Plantinga and Putnam Divided into sections which examine religious language, the existence of God, reason, argument and belief, divine properties, and religious pluralism

In this book, abstract intellectual argument meets ordinary human experience on matters such as the existence of God and the relation between religion and morality.

Considering whether it is possible to analyse religious transcendence in a philosophical manner, this text explores French philosophy of religion, particularly Derrida, Marion, Levinas & Ricoeur, & the new ways they proposes thinking about religious experience in a postmodern world.

Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day.--Richard Rorty, Stanford University "MLN"

Recent years have seen growing popular absorption with "spirituality" in all its forms. But as this study shows, it is largely separated from theology. Spirituality has grown more self-referential and is subverted by consumerist mentality, while theology has grown critically proficient but uneasy in speaking from or to the heart of Christian mysteries. Through a study of exemplary writers such as Gregory of Nyssa, McIntosh recovers an understanding of the inner integrity of mystical consciousness and theological expression. The final chapters test the possibility of renewed conversation between spirituality and theology by drawing on spiritual traditions to re-think contemporary problems in Trinitarian thought, Christology, and the understanding of the self. This book offers not only an analysis of spirituality and theology in the eras of their united activity, but also a hermeneutic for the theological appropriation of spirituality and a sustained argument for the renewal of mystical theology.

In this exploration of the "very first utterance of philosophers," F. M. Cornford showed that the remarkable burst of abstract speculation among pre-Socratic thinkers of the sixth century B.C. emerged directly from the religious thought of the preceding era in Greece. Combining profound classical scholarship with striking anthropological and sociological insight, Cornford rejected the post-Darwinian rationalist assumption that religion and philosophy are fundamentally different from each other. His book supplies a needed reminder of the intricate connections between critical scientific thought and social and emotional experience. As he probes the mythic antecedents of such persistent metaphysical concepts as Destiny, God, Soul, Substance, Nature, and Immortality, Cornford warns us that "unless we have some grasp of that history [of myth], we are not likely to understand the speculation, which, however scientific its spirit may be, constantly operates with these religious ideas, and is to a large extent confined in its movement within the limits already traced by them." Classicists, historians of religion, students of ancient history, and everyone concerned with the subject of myth will find this lucid and highly original work to be a source of rich insights about the organic nature and continuity of Western thought.