In this book, Professor Ramsey attempts to show how the concern of contemporary philosophy with language has implications for theology--its claims and apologetic, its problems and controversies. He argues that, far from being necessarily irreligious, logical empiricism provides us with a tool that can be of the greatest service to theology, making possible, between philosophy and theology, not only a new cooperation but a new venture altogether.

An original and accessible discussion of the nature of religious language that draws on the latest research in the philosophy of language. The historical background to research on religious language is also explored and connections are made with both Continental Philosophy and Theology.

The approaches of contemporary New Testament scholarship to Jesus and the Gospels have been, in Royce Gordon Gruenler's view, inadequate. Instead, he offers some imaginative and well-articulated reflections on several new and promising approaches. These "have meant a great deal to me over the past few years," he writes, "since in fact I had a change of personal commitment from a former liberalism which had run dry, to the rediscovery of the vitality of my earlier evangelical heritage." This change was precipitated by "the investigation of the data" that this provocative volume details. Gruenler employs a phenomenology of persons, borrowed from Wittgenstein, to highlight the fundamental claims of Jesus. Though limiting himself to the core of sayings accepted by radical critics as authentic, the author concludes that Jesus' concept of himself is so incredible on any human level that it becomes academic to insist on separating his implicit from his explicit christological claims. The use of redaction criticism to distinguish the two, therefore, is misguided. Marshaled in support are Lewis, who urges attentiveness and obedience to the story; Ramsey, who points to the "logically odd" supernaturalism of the Gospels; Polanyi, the tacit dimension of trust; Marcel, Jesus' creative fidelity; Tolkien, the spell of the story; and Van Til, the importance of presuppositions in Gospel research.

Symbols of the Sacred gathers four classic essays by Louis Dupr on the role of symbols in our understanding of the sacred and on their fundamental importance to religious consciousness. A leading philosopher of religion, Dupr here discusses the nature of religious symbols, the importance of language for capturing symbolic meaning, the ancient link between art and expressions of the sacred, and the vital relationship between religious symbol and myth. The volume concludes with a powerful reflection on the innate capacity of human minds to grasp the transcendent. Elegantly expressed, conversant with a wide range of thinkers, and marked by a lifetime of reflection on the subject, Symbols of the Sacred offers profound insights into the religious dimension of human life.

This book critically examines David Tracy's well-known methodology of fundamental theology, namely his revisionist model as developed in his Blessed Rage for Order (1975), together with his methodological shifts through the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. It explores how successful he has been in constructing a methodology for the public theological discourse that he deems so necessary. More particularly, this book asks how serviceable this methodology is for articulating Christian discourse in an intelligible and public way in the contemporary context of religious plurality.

This is the first comprehensive study of the thought of the Welsh theologian-philosopher Huw Parri Owen (1926-1996). Indebted to the heritage of Christian thought, and not bewitched by Barth, bothered by Flew, or bewildered by Bultmann, Owen brought considerable biblical, philosophical, and theological acumen to the articulation of a reasonable, experientially grounded faith. A sharp-minded Christian thinker--a number of whose discussions of philosophico-theological themes remain pertinent to current scholarly debate--is here rescued from unjustified neglect.