Faith In Divine Unity Trust In Divine Providence

In an axial volume from his celebrated compendium, the "Ihya ulum al din," al-Ghazali shares his startling and original exploration of the meaning of trust in Divine Providence and recommends specific spiritual skills to help the seeker develop a state whereby he or she may rightly respond to events as they happen. This judicious use of stories is intended to imitate the Sufi practice of the master/disciple relationship, where the novice is helped to discern correct action.

"How, from a theological standpoint, should we make sense of gratitude? This rich interdisciplinary volume is the first concertedly to explore theologies of gratitude from both Christian and Muslim perspectives. While the available literature has tended to rhapsodize gratitude to God and others as both a virtue and an obligation, this book by contrast offers something new by detailing ways in which gratitude is complicated by inequality: even to the point of becoming a vice. Gratitude now emerges as something more than a virtue and other than merely transactional. It can be a burden, bringing about indebtedness and an imbalance of power; but it may also be a resonant source of reconciliation and belonging. Topics discussed cover the personal and political dimensions of gratitude, including such issues as justice, multiculturalism, racism, imperialism, grief, memory and hope. The book assembles, from different traditions, some of the leading theologians of our times"--

From Greco-Roman Antiquity through to the European Enlightenment, philosophy and religious thought were inseparably interwoven. This was equally the case for the popular natural or ‘pagan’ religions of the ancient world as it was for the three pre-eminent ‘religions of the book’, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The lengthy and involved encounter of the Greek philosophical tradition – and especially of the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic strands of that tradition – initially with the Hellenistic cults and subsequently with the three Abrahamic religions, played a critical role in shaping the basic contours of Western intellectual history from Plato to Philo of Alexandria, Plotinus, Porphyry, Augustine, and Proclus; from Aristotle to al-Fārābī, Avicenna, al-Ġazālī, Aquinas and the medieval scholastics, and eventually to Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus and such modern philosophers and theologians as Richard Hooker, the Cambridge Platonists, Jacob Boehme, and G. W. F. Hegel to name but a few. The aim of the twenty-four essays comprising this volume is to explore the intellectual worlds of the three Abrahamic religious traditions, their respective approaches to scriptural hermeneutics, and their interaction over many centuries on the common ground of the inheritance of classical Greek philosophy. The shared goal of the contributors is to demonstrate the extent to which the three Abrahamic religions have created similar shared patterns of thought in dealing with crucial religious concepts such as the divine, creation, providence, laws both natural and revealed, such problems as the origin of evil and the possibility of salvation, as well as defining hermeneutics, that is to say the manner of interpreting their sacred writings.

In this book, David Burrell, one of the foremost philosophical theologians in the English-speaking world, presents the best of his work on creation and human freedom. A collection of writings by one of the foremost philosophers of religion in the English-speaking world. Brings together in one volume the best of David Burrell’s work on creation and human freedom from the last twenty years. Dismantles the ‘libertarian’ approach to freedom underlying Western political and economic systems. Engages with Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and with modern and pre-modern systems of thought. The author is noted for his rigorous approach, his wry humor, his intellectual subtlety and his generous spirit.

Focusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic intellectual tradition – this book embarks on a study of doubt (shakk) and certainty (yaqīn) in his epistemology. The book looks at Ghazālī’s attitude to philosophical demonstration and Sufism as a means to certainty. In early scholarship surrounding Ghazālī, he has often been blamed as the one who single-handedly offered the death-blow to philosophy in the Muslim world. In much of contemporary scholarship, Ghazālī is understood to prefer philosophy as the ultimate means to certainty, granting Sufism a secondary status. Hence, much of previous scholarship has either focused on Ghazālī as a Sufi or as a philosopher; this book takes a parallel approach, and acknowledges each discipline in its right place. It analyses Ghazālī’s approach to acquiring certainty, his methodological scepticism, his foundationalism, his attitude to authoritative instruction (taʿlim), and the place of philosophical demonstration and Sufism in his epistemology. Offering a systematic and comprehensive approach to Ghazālī’s epistemology, this book is a valuable resource for scholars of Islamic philosophy and Sufism in particular, and for educated readers of Islamic studies in general.

Towards a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Theology delineates the ways that Christianity, Islam, and the Jewish tradition have moved towards each another over the centuries and points to new pathways for contemporary theological work. Explores the development of the three Abrahamic traditions, brilliantly showing the way in which they have struggled with similar issues over the centuries Shows how the approach of each tradition can be used comparatively by the other traditions to illuminate and develop their own thinking Written by a renowned writer in philosophical theology, widely acclaimed for his comparative thinking on Jewish and Islamic theology A very timely book which moves forward the discussion at a period of intense inter-religious dialogue

Devoting especial attention to questions of rationality, scriptural fidelity, and the construction of 'orthodoxy', this volume introduces key Muslim theories of revelation, creation, ethics, scriptural interpretation, law, mysticism, and eschatology. The treatment is firmly set in the historical, social and political context in which Islam's distinctive understanding of God evolved.

This book makes a major contribution to contemporary theological and philosophical debates, bridging scriptural and metaphysical approaches to the triune God. Bridges the gap between scriptural and metaphysical approaches to biblical narratives. Retrieves Aquinas’s understanding of theology as contemplative wisdom. Structured around Aquinas’s treatise on the triune God in his ‘Summa Theologiae’. Argues that intellectual contemplation is part of a broader spiritual journey towards a better understanding of God. Contributes to the current resurgence of Thomistic theology in both Protestant and Catholic circles.