Garrett Green examines the point at which divine revelation and human experience meet, where the priority of grace is acknowledged while allowing its dynamics to be described in analytical and comparative terms as a religious phenomenon.

An ever-growing number of Christians are becoming more and more uncomfortable with the tenets of the church, the stories of the Bible, and the church’s worldview. Statistics show that these feelings easily escalate into a crisis of faith, and for now their predicament is being resolved by leaving the church. This book will certainly help dealing with the crisis by showing that the language of faith is built by a web of metaphors taken from the Ancient Near East. We do not need to take biblical language literally, but as parables for human values in need to be assessed critically.

It's obvious from the bookshelves and the big screen that heaven is on everyone's mind. All of us long to know what life after death will be like. Bestselling author John Burke is no exception. For decades, he has been studying accounts of people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs). While not every detail of individual NDEs correlate with Scripture, Burke shows how the common experiences shared by thousands of survivors clearly point to the God of the Bible and the exhilarating picture of heaven he promises. Imagine Heaven is an inspirational journey through the Bible's picture of heaven, colored in with the real-life stories of heaven's wonders. Burke compares gripping stories of NDEs to what Scripture says about our biggest questions of heaven: Will I be myself? Will I see friends and loved ones? What will it look like? What is God like? What will we do forever? What about children and pets? This book will propel readers into an experience that will forever change their view of the life to come and the way they live life today. It also tackles the tough questions of heavenly reward and hellish NDEs. Anyone interested in NDEs or longing to imagine heaven more clearly will enjoy this fascinating and hope-filled book.

An ever-growing number of Christians are becoming more and more uncomfortable with the tenets of the church, the stories of the Bible, and the church's worldview. Statistics show that these feelings easily escalate into a crisis of faith, and for now their predicament is being resolved by leaving the church. This book will certainly help dealing with the crisis by showing that the language of faith is built by a web of metaphors taken from the Ancient Near East. We do not need to take biblical language literally, but as parables for human values in need to be assessed critically.

Ever since it was demonstrated in the 1920s that the universe, with its trillions of galaxies, is caught up in a process of steady expansion, it became evident that it must have originated from an "initial singularity," a "Big Bang," which gave rise to the formation of subatomic parts, atoms, molecules, clouds of gas, and finally, stars and galaxies. Running this expansion back in time, scientists began to reckon with the miracle of an evolving universe of which we are the outcome: the iron in our blood has been formed in the stars. This book gives an overview of the cosmologies that were in vogue in antiquity­--the Jewish and Christian concepts of Creation, and the classical thinkers in Greek cosmology: Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy--and in modern times, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. The book brings us right down to the present day with a careful and readable treatment of the scientific innovations inaugurated by Einstein and the specialists in quantum physics, and to recent developments in astrophysics. This path of exploration opens the avenue for imagining a Creator God who is so generous that he invites creation to share in his own creativity.

Is the question of God still relevant for our time? Empirical studies from an international perspective show the fact that there are both indications of God's importance and disappearance. The articles in this book deal with questions related to the content, structure and function of images of God. The studies document the actual variety and forms of religious practice and highlight the issues of God present - out of necessity from an ecumenical and interdisciplinary point of view. If and how the question of God is asked is not only of denominational interest, but is also of a cultural importance for the individual and public life in Europe. The empirical studies in this collection were discussed at the "Wurzburg Research Days - Practical Theology" in December 2000.

Jewish art has always been with us, but so has a broader canvas of Jewish imaginings: in thought, in emotion, in text, and in ritual practice. Imagining the Jewish God was there in the beginning, as it were, engraved and embedded in the ways Jews lived and responded to their God.This book attempts to give voice to these diverse imaginings of the Jewish God, and offers these collected essays and poems as a living text meant to provoke a substantive and nourishing dialogue. A responsive, living covenant lies at the heart of this book—a covenantal reciprocity that actively engages the dynamics of Jewish thinking and acting in dialogue with God. The contributors to this volume are committed to this form of textual reasoning, even as they all move us beyond the “text” as foundational for the imagined “people of the book.” That people, we submit, lives and breathes in and beyond the texts of poetry, narrative, sacred literature, film, and graphic mediums. We imagine the Jewish people, and the covenant they respond to, as provocative intimations of the divine. The essays in this volume seek to draw these vocal intimations out so that we can all hear their resonant call.