God S Property

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Up to the twentieth century, Islamic charitable endowments provided the material foundation of the Muslim world. In Lebanon, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of French colonial rule, many of these endowments reverted to private property circulating in the marketplace. In contemporary Beirut, however, charitable endowments have resurfaced as mosques, Islamic centers, and nonprofit organizations. A historical anthropology in dialogue with Islamic law, God's Property demonstrates how these endowments have been drawn into secular logics—no longer the property of God but of the Muslim community—and shaped by the modern state and modern understandings of charity and property. Although these transformations have produced new kinds of loyalties and new ways of being in society, Moumtaz’s ethnography reveals the furtive persistence of endowment practices that perpetuate older ways of thinking of one’s self and one’s responsibilities toward family and state.

Rights are basic building blocks of the contemporary state and yet their rigorous justification is notoriously difficult. This book provides a thorough analysis of this central topic in modern political discourse. The book challenges the orthodox view that rights are a type of property claim in one's body. Drawing on the tradition of the social contract as well as the wealth of recent work in political theory the book argues for a different conception of rights. Rights are conceived as a certain type of political claim, justified by a Kantian ideal of autonomy. Moreover, that justification provides a moral basis for rights that, while independent of law and custom, is also tied to an image of citizenship particularly suited to the pluralistic nature of contemporary liberal society.

To Change your Position you must first change your Location. Those of us who are parents are fascinated when our children begin to Creep, Stand, take the first Steps on watery legs, then Walk and later Run. Every normal baby follow this pattern, from a horizontal posture to a vertical position. Our Creator has placed in all of us this drive, (or some may call it instinct) to change our position, from a sleeping posture to creeping, then sitting, then standing, then walking and then running. I would like to introduce another position to you and that is 'CLIMBING.' This will take some effort on your part, but our God said He will give you the strength and energy to do it because He wants you to come to Him to take you where you ought to be irrespective of your past and present circumstances because where you are may not be where you should be.. I was born on a small island in the Caribbean called St Vincent. Being the seventh child of a family of fifteen and a father who was a brick layer opportunities were non existent. Yet even though poverty was my stay I dreamed every night I am wearing white clothes. For a time I thought this means I am going to be a medical doctor so I studied hard and my parents ask an uncle who was living in England to help in sending me to the only secondary school in that part of the island. I was on my way to become a doctor because those white clothes burn within my soul. I never became a doctor and when Jesus called me the third time I left everything behind and followed him. When I met him He had this beautiful and spotless white robe waiting for me.

J rgen Moltmann's distinctive insights in trinitarian theology - especially about the relations within God and God's presence in creation - are revolutionary for theology and set the stage for these further explorations. The esteemed group of contributors in this volume probes new ways of understanding the triune character of God.Among the contributors are: Nicholas Constas Sarah A. Coakley Harvey G. Cox Jr. Lyle Dabney David Fergusson David H. Kelsey Daniel Migliore Gerald O'Collins John Polkinghorne William Schweiker Dirk Smit Bryan D. Spinks Kathryn Tanner Ronald F. Thiemann Miroslav Volf John Webster Nicholas Wolterstorff

Religion and Morality seeks to answer two fundamental questions regarding the relation between religion and morality. The first is the puzzle posed by Socrates, the so-called 'Euthyphro dilemma', which asks: is morality valuable by virtue of its intrinsic importance and worth, or is morality valuable because, and only because, God approves it and commands us to follow its dictates? The second question is raised by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling. He asks: Is a conflict between religion and morality possible? Does God ever demand that we neglect our moral commitments? The discussion on these questions is divided into three parts. In the first two parts, we discuss the idea that morality depends on religion. The authors distinguish two types of dependence: strong dependence, according to which the very existence, or validity, of moral obligations depends on God's command, and weak dependence, according to which though morality itself is independent of God, God (or belief in God) is necessary to enable human beings to know their moral duties and to carry them out. The authors reject the strong dependence thesis, as well as most versions of the weak dependence. The third part of the book discusses different versions of the view that religion might conflict with morality. The authors reject this view, and show that very few religious thinkers would follow it all the way through to its ultimate consequences. The book has implications for the philosophy of religion, in its emphasis on the centrality of the moral element in religion, and for moral philosophy, in its highlighting, among other things, of the nature of moral judgments.

Inquiring about God is the first of two volumes of Nicholas Wolterstorff's collected papers. This volume collects Wolterstorff's essays on the philosophy of religion written over the last thirty-five years. The essays, which span a range of topics including Kant's philosophy of religion, the medieval (or classical) conception of God, and the problem of evil, are unified by the conviction that some of the central claims made by the classical theistic tradition, such as the claims that God is timeless, simple, and impassible, should be rejected. Still, Wolterstorff contends, rejecting the classical conception of God does not imply that theists should accept the Kantian view according to which God cannot be known. Of interest to both philosophers and theologians, Inquiring about God should give the reader a lively sense of the creative and powerful work done in contemporary philosophical theology by one of its foremost practitioners.

Natural theology is the project of articulating, defending and CntlClzmg arguments for the existence and nature of God without the aid of special revelation. Philosophical theology, which employs the rational methods of natural theology, is not restricted to premises that are discernible through observation and reason; it may rightly employ premises that are knowable through special revelation. While the project of natural theology may be construed as an attempt to demonstrate God's existence, one cannot ignore the importance of using reason or experience to understand, determine or assess attributes. One will want to know at the conclusion of a proof in natural God's theology if one has proved the existence of God and not merely the prim urn mobilum, source of moral obligation or a committee of finite designers; while God may be the prime mover and designer of the cosmos, none of these attributes alone is sufficient for making a claim to divinity. It is, therefore, difficult to distinguish sharply the project of natural theology from philosophi cal theology. The project of classical natural theology has been the attempt to prove God's existence and nature with arguments that employ premises that all rational creatures are obliged to accept.