Although the Hebrew Bible as a whole is centered on God and God's relations with Israel, the character of God appears in most biblical stories only indirectly. How are modern readers to make sense of this paradox? God as an Absent Character in Biblical Hebrew Narrative establishes a set of literary methods that both academic and non-academic readers can use to understand the character of God, who is the single most important character in Hebrew Bible narrative and, strangely, absent from the majority of it.

What does it mean to worship beings that one believes are completely indifferent to, and entirely beyond the reach of, any form of worship whatsoever? How would such a relationship with sacred beings affect the religious life of a community? Using these questions as his point of departure, Lawrence A. Babb explores the ritual culture of image-worshipping Svetambar Jains of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Jainism traces its lineages back to the ninth century B.C.E. and is, along with Buddhism, the only surviving example of India's ancient non-Vedic religious traditions. It is known and celebrated for its systematic practice of non-violence and for the intense rigor of the asceticism it promotes. A unique aspect of Babb's study is his linking of the Jain tradition to the social identity of existing Jain communities. Babb concludes by showing that Jain ritual culture can be seen as a variation on pan-Indian ritual patterns. In illuminating this little-known religious tradition, he demonstrates that divine "absence" can be as rich as divine "presence" in its possibilities for informing a religious response to the cosmos.

The author's theological inquiry is intended to raise questions of interpretation within the camp of openness theology and to direct a discussion on the implications of this movement for the charismatic/Pentecostal community. Open theism or openness theology affirms that the universe is open, the future is not settled, God is essentially relational love, and the risks of love and the threats against it are real. The author digs deep into this area of doctrine in order to question how far openness theology is willing to go. Is it only the future that is open to God, or are there perhaps unknown aspects to the past and present as well? What does God know about sin, and when does he know it? Is it possible for God to be totally absent from a person's life or even from an entire nation? If God can be absent, can he also be exceptionally present in the lives of believers? What would the divine presence and the charismata (spiritual ministries) look like in an open universe?

Safeguarding the distinction between God and world has always been a basic interest of negative theology. But sometimes it has overemphasized divine transcendence in a way that made it difficult to account for the sense of God's present activity and experienced actuality. Criticisms of the Western metaphysics of presence have made this even more difficult to conceive. On the other hand, there has been a widespread attempt in recent years to base all theology on (religious) experience; the Christian church celebrates God's presence in its central sacraments of baptism and Eucharist; process thought has re-conceptualized God's presence in panentheistic terms; and some have argued that God might be poly-present, not omnipresent. But what does it mean to say that God is present or absent? For Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike God is not an inference, an absentee entity of which we can detect only faint traces in our world. On the contrary, God is present reality, indeed the most present of all realities. However, belief in God's presence cannot ignore the widespread experience of God's absence. Moreover, there is little sense in speaking of God's absence if it cannot be distinguished from God's non-presence or non-existence. So how are we to understand the sense of divine presence and absence in religious and everyday life? This is what the essays in this volume explore in the biblical traditions, in Jewish and Christian theology and philosophy, and in contemporary philosophy of religion.