The challenges that Western culture keeps posing to the Christian faith are ever new. The goal-posts keep changing. This study guide will equip theology students to understand the culture-shaping beliefs that are driving the kinds of questions it brings to faith. It will be an historical overview of the key stages in the history of Western philosophy with each section carefully tracing the genealogical line of ideas and the Christian responses to them, right up to the present day.

An introduction to the study of the ways the church has evolved in its corporate life since its birth in the first century. Special attention is given to studying its changing relationship and interaction with the surrounding societies in which it has existed. The intended readership will be those training for ministry in English speaking churches, so the studyguide will concentrate on those aspects of this subject of most relevance to this group. This means there will be greater attention to developments in the West than in the East, especially in later centuries, and to topics such as the nature of ministry, the sacraments, places of worship, authority in the church and mission. These will be examined at each period of church history, in each chapter, to provide reference points of comparison throughout the book. Each chapter will also contain a specific case study, presenting extracts of some key documents with notes, commentary and questions for discussion, to allow readers to develop skills in historical research. General discussion questions and reading lists will be provided at the end of each chapter. The final chapter will provide guidance for the study of the history of the student’s own church and community.

The SCM Studyguide: Biblical Hermenuetics offers entry-level undergraduates a framework for interpreting the Bible. The book goes beyond offering guidance on how to do exegesis, and is intended as a practical tool to help readers develop good interpretative strategies for themselves. As such it features pedagogical tools such as Try-it-Out boxes to assist students to develop a tested and thought - through overall interpretative strategy of their own. This fully updated 2nd edition takes into account the changing church and world context, and the new challenges this context brings as students seek to read the Bible with attentiveness, integrity and faithfulness. Table of contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Where Do We Want to Go? 2. Past Experience and Present Expectations 3. Tools for Exegesis 4. Our Reality 5. Committed Readings 6. Enabling Dialogue with the Text 7. Our Goal: Life-Affirming Interpretations Summary of the Interpretative Process References and Further Reading Index of Biblical References Index of Names Index of Subjects

This book is a wide-ranging introduction to Christian ethics that assumes no prior knowledge of the subject. It introduces a range of approaches to Christian moral reasoning and discusses numerous practical ethical issues. Throughout the book, ethical theory and practical ethics are integrated with one another, in order to show how each informs the other. Topics often neglected in Christian ethics are dealt with here, including Christian ethics and science and Christian ethics and pastoral care. Case studies and exercises give readers the opportunity to formulate their own responses to the moral issues discussed in the book, and to reflect on the sources of their own moral deliberation and action. Chapter bibliographies list print and web resources offering more detailed coverage of the topics introduced in the book.

This Studyguide provides a succinct and lucid introduction to the subject for those studying and teaching religion at both undergraduate and GCE AS/A level. By exploring the key areas of both the empirical and theoretical study of religious and spiritual experience, the Studyguide will serve as an accessible and nonpartisan guide to enable its readers to explore the range of challenging data, debates, approaches, and issues that relate to the study of this widespread and significant phenomenon.

The challenges that Western culture keeps posing to the Christian faith are ever new. The goal-posts keep changing. This study guide will equip theology students to understand the culture-shaping beliefs that are driving the kinds of questions it brings to faith. It will be an historical overview of the key stages in the history of Western philosophy with each section carefully tracing the genealogical line of ideas and the Christian responses to them, right up to the present day. For most theology students, learning abstract philosophical concepts involves literally learning a new language, a language that the initiated converse in with ease but which leaves the uninitiated baffled. Thus, each chapter in this study guide opens with a glossary of terms. Throughout the studyguide students are encouraged to reflect on the ways in which what has been learned might be applied in both explicitly theological and wider cultural contexts - for example, they might be asked to think of a film or book that seems to express elements of existentialism or postmodernism, or to describe how something very like the extreme subjectivity of idealism can sometimes shows itself in Sunday morning worship.

This is an exciting, distinguished and indeed brave volume on the relation between belief and metaphysics. The volume of twenty essays is exciting in that the points of entry to the question of relation and styles of discourse are so varied, while less-established voices are allowed to sound with the more established; it is distinguished not simply because of its many famous names, but because it unites in one volume analytic and continental philosophical approaches to the issue to the common purpose of retrieving yet also reconceiving metaphysics; and it is brave in that not only does it refuse to indulge the contemporary prejudice against metaphysics and the necessity for belief to forgo the comfort of relation, but brings to the surface postmodernity's own penchant for axiomatics and its containment of the religious by uncoupling it from metaphysical commitments." -Cyril O'Regan, Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology, Department of Theology, Notre Dame "Without metaphysics theology is boring, some one says in this book; without theology metaphysics goes nowhere, some one else says. Of course it depends what you mean by metaphysics and for that matter theology. There is more than enough here to interest, entertain, and even enrage philosophers and especially theologians. A MARVELLOUS COLLECTION!" -Fergus Kerr O.P., Honorary Fellow in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh "This is a truly splendid collection of essays, admirable not only for its range, but for its depth. It would be hard to assemble a more distinguished cast of contributors, and harder still to find another volume that offers comparably rich and varied reflections on the profund relation between faith and metaphysical reasoning." -David Bentley Ha