Divine Discourse

Prominent in the canonical texts and traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the claim that God speaks. Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that contemporary speech-action theory, when appropriately expanded, offers us a fascinating way of interpreting this claim and showing its intelligibility. He develops an innovative theory of double-hermeneutics - along the way opposing the current near-consensus led by Ricoeur and Derrida that there is something wrong-headed about interpreting a text to find out what its author said. Wolterstorff argues that at least some of us are entitled to believe that God has spoken. Philosophers have never before, in any sustained fashion, reflected on these matters, mainly because they have mistakenly treated speech as revelation.

Prominent in the canonical texts and traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the claim that God speaks. Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that contemporary speech-action theory, when appropriately expanded, offers us a fascinating way of interpreting this claim and showing its intelligibility. He develops an innovative theory of double-hermeneutics - along the way opposing the current near-consensus led by Ricoeur and Derrida that there is something wrong-headed about interpreting a text to find out what its author said. Wolterstorff argues that at least some of us are entitled to believe that God has spoken. Philosophers have never before, in any sustained fashion, reflected on these matters, mainly because they have mistakenly treated speech as revelation.

This important study examines the cultural turn for women in the Middle East and North Africa, analyzing the ways they have adjusted to and at times defended, socially conservative redefinitions of their roles in society in matters of marriage, work, and public codes of behavior. Whether this cultural turn is an autochthonous response, or an alternative to Western feminism, Islamic Feminism and the Discourse of Post-Liberation: The Cultural Turn in Algeria examines the sources, evolution, contradictions as well as consequences of the Cultural Turn. Focusing on Algeria, but making comparisons with Tunisia and Morocco, it takes an in-depth look at Islamic feminism and studies its functions in the geopolitics of control of Islam. It also explores the knowldge effects of the cultural turn and crucially identifies a critical way of re-orienting feminist thought and practice in the region. This new work from a highly regarded scholar will appeal to researchers, graduates, and undergraduates in North African studies; Middle Eastern studies; sociology, women and gender studies; anthropology; political science; and ethnic and critical race studies.

A leading philosopher of religion reflects on one of the central problems of Christian theology.

Theology's longest tradition is as a course of study that leads to wisdom. With the growth of the academy, however, theology fell into a fixation with the objective results of science. In this illuminating study Daniel Treier retrieves the older, deeper understanding of theology and connects wisdom in theological education to the theological interpretation of scripture, giving rise to a renewed understanding of the role of virtue in each. Dialoguing with a number of prominent proponents of theological interpretation of scripture, Treier builds on a biblical theology of wisdom that involves the daily lives of all God's people. Ultimately, Treier connects educational discussions of theology and hermeneutical discussions through a trinitarian understanding of wisdom. As a result, the increasingly diverse forms and social locations of theology can be integrated into the mainstream of theological reflection. Filled with interdisciplinary wisdom, Virtue and the Voice of God is a timely recovery of the essential conversation between theological education, virtue, and scriptural interpretation.

What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during the 8th/9th century. However, in contrast to contemporary philosophy, they were not tackled by scholars adhering to only one specific discipline. Rather, they were addressed across multiple fields and domains, no less by linguists, legal theorists, and theologians than by Aristotelian philosophers. In response to the different challenges faced by these disciplines, highly sophisticated and more specialized areas emerged, comparable to what nowadays would be referred to as semantics, pragmatics, and hermeneutics, to name but a few – fields of research that are pursued to this day and still flourish in some of the traditional schools. Philosophy of language, thus, has been a major theme throughout Islamic intellectual culture in general; a theme which, probably due to its trans-disciplinary nature, has largely been neglected by modern research. This book brings together for the first time experts from the various fields involved, in order to explore the riches of this tradition and make them accessible to a broader public interested both in philosophy and the history of ideas more generally.