Interpreting Neville provides the first book-length treatment of the thought of Robert Cummings Neville, one of the most important and wide-ranging scholars working across the fields of philosophy, theology, and comparative studies today. Contributors assess the systematic structure and methodological unity of Neville's trilogy Axiology of Thinking provide a postmodern contextualization Neville's philosophy, and evalute the critical relation of Neville history of Western philosophy. Metaphysical questions crucial to Neville's project are critiqued from different vantage points, theological problems are examined, and, the comparative issues outstanding in Neville's understanding of Chinese philosophy are assessed. Enhancing the book is a rich concluding essay written by Neville himself in response to each author.

This study develops resources in the work of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) for the purposes of contemporary philosophy. It contextualizes Peirce's prevailing influences and provides greater context in relation to the currents of nineteenth-century thought. Dr Gary Slater articulates 'a nested continua model' for theological interpretation, which is indebted to Peirce's creation of 'Existential Graphs', a system of diagrams designed to provide visual representation of the process of human reasoning. He investigates how the model can be applied by looking at recent debates in historiography. He deals respectively with Peter Ochs and Robert C. Neville as contemporary manifestations of Peircean philosophical theology. This work concludes with an assessment of the model's theological implications.

Neville deciphered the Bible in such a way that the truth can be revealed for the first time. Many people who appreciate the old familiar verses of Scripture become disheartened when they try to read the Bible like any other book because they do not realise that the Bible is written in symbolic language. They twist their brains over it for a time before giving up, not realising that all of its characters are personifications of mental rules and functions; that the Bible is psychology rather than history.

The Message of a Master is the story of a seemingly miraculous change that takes place in a man after he meets a true master of life. He learns, and shares with us, teachings that allow him to develop his powers so that he can accomplish anything he desires.

Ernst Troeltsch and Comparative Theology examines the methodological attempts of Ernst Troeltsch and Robert Neville for discerning Christian normativity. The investigation of Troeltsch focuses on his treatment of the absoluteness of Christianity and highlights the crisis brought upon absolute religious claims by the study of the history of religions. By rejecting both the supernatural-exclusive apologetic of orthodox Protestantism and the evolutionary apologetic of liberal Protestantism, Troeltsch insists that theology's method should be the history of religions' method (die religionsgeschichtliche Methode). Like Troeltsch, Neville agrees with historical inquiries, but, contrary to Troeltsch, Neville advances an axiological hypothesis to thinking, which is founded in valuation. Neville explains the role of valuation at the imaginative level of thinking and relates it to his theory of normative truth in religious symbols. This study shows that Neville begins with Troeltsch's methodological presuppositions but achieves more normative theology than Troeltsch, especially on ways in which God is engaged in symbolically shaped thinking and practice. Both thinkers offer creative insights for theology that make possible a critical comparison of truth claims regarding the validity of Christianity in and for a historically conscious age.

In this first of three volumes, Dorrien identifies the indigenous roots of American liberal theology and demonstrates a wider, longer-running tradition than has been thought. The tradition took shape in the nineteenth century, motivated by a desire to map a modernist "third way" between orthodoxy and rationalistic deism/atheism. It is defined by its openness to modern intellectual inquiry; its commitment to the authority of individual reason and experience; its conception of Christianity as an ethical way of life; and its commitment to make Christianity credible and socially relevant to modern people. Dorrien takes a narrative approach and provides a biographical reading of important religious thinkers of the time, including William E. Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Charles Briggs. Dorrien notes that, although liberal theology moved into elite academic institutions, its conceptual foundations were laid in the pulpit rather than the classroom.

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