Humanity S Concept Of God

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Zealot and host of Believer explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Humanity's Concept of God is a well-researched masterpiece specifically written to encourage readers to discover the truth about creation as opposed to the theories of big bang and evolution. Written with real academic rigour, the author Onwusa Opiah, through persuasive arguments by facts and figures including photos, passionately postulates that from the beginning of time, humanity seems to be confused as to whether God exists simply because He cannot be seen. God, on the other hand, tries to make Himself known to humanity either by medium or by communicating with them directly as will be seen in the book. At different times of human existence, God has shown humanity that He loves them and that it was out of His love for humanity that He created them and wishes to interact with them, by manifesting His power to them using the weak or unschooled to show that all humankind's achievements are through Him and by Him. The book focuses specifically on how impossible it is for any cell or part of the human body to replicate into another it is not designed to be. The content of this book, Humanity's Concept of God, will help readers understand that the universe was created by an all-powerful, all-knowing and loving God, and that there is no scientific proof that the universe came to be as a result of big bang and evolution.

Christiane Tietz relates Karl Barth's fascinating life in conflict - conflict with the theological mainstream, against National Socialism, and privately, under one roof with his wife and his mistress, in conflict with himself

Engaging with the Complex Subject of Theological Anthropology. Theological anthropology is a complicated doctrinal subject that needs to be elaborated with careful attention to its relation to other major doctrines. Among other things, it must confess the glory and misery of humanity, from creation in the image of God to the fall into a state of sin. It must reckon with a holism that spans distinctions between body, soul, and spirit, and a unity that encompasses male and female, as well as racial and cultural difference. The Christian Doctrine of Humanity represents the proceedings of the sixth annual Los Angeles Theology Conference, which sought, constructively and comprehensively, to engage the task of theological anthropology. The twelve diverse essays in this collection include discussions on: Human thought and the image of God. The relevance of biblical eschatology for philosophical anthropology. Living and flourishing in the Spirit. Vocation and the "oddness" of human nature. Each of the essays collected in this volume engage with Scripture as well as with others in the field—theologians both past and present, from different confessions—in order to provide constructive resources for contemporary systematic theology and to forge a theology for the future.

On God's Path: The Unfolding Story of Humanity is an optimistic, realistic and pious view of humanity's role on the stage of creation. In this generation a variety of competing stories have been told to explain where we came from and where we are going, each story told with sincere conviction. These stories seem to turn on two centers: science and religion and they are often placed in opposition. The theme of this book is that the truths of science and religion need not be viewed as mutually exclusive, but complementary in the big picture. With significant advances in both science and theology in the recent past we have much more information to attempt to incorporate in humanity's story than ever before. More dots to connect give us a better chance of bringing into focus a much larger and more inclusive picture of where we came from and where we may be going. The story of humanity, as presented in this book, begins with the first moment of the cosmos and traces the rise of the human physically, socially and morally. It engages the reader to consider humanity's trajectory. With a Christian perspective respectful of all faiths, the author weaves the human religious impulse and the Spirit of Christ together brightly into the tapestry of Creation. Written with the lay reader in mind, On God's Path presents a wide spectrum of mainstream contemporary scientific and theological ideas in surprisingly straightforward and creative ways. Part of the author's objective in this book is to challenge readers to expand their thinking about God and science and to reconsider their own roles in advancing the human story.

Misunderstandings about what it means for humans to be created in God's image have wreaked devastation throughout history -- for example, slavery in the U. S., genocide in Nazi Germany, and the demeaning of women everywhere. In Dignity and Destiny John Kilner explores what the Bible itself teaches about humanity being in God's image. He discusses in detail all of the biblical references to the image of God, interacts extensively with other work on the topic, and documents how misunderstandings of it have been so problematic. People made according to God's image, Kilner says, have a special connection with God and are intended to be a meaningful reflection of him. Because of sin, they don't actually reflect him very well, but Kilner shows why the popular idea that sin has damaged the image of God is mistaken. He also clarifies the biblical difference between being God's image (which Christ is) and being in God's image (which humans are). He explains how humanity's creation and renewal in God's image are central, respectively, to human dignity and destiny. Locating Christ at the center of what God's image means, Kilner charts a constructive way forward and reflects on the tremendously liberating impact that a sound understanding of the image of God can have in the world today.

These three essays show how Karl Barth's later work moved beyond his revolt against the theology dominant in the first decades of this century.

Walter Cardinal Kasper has written, “It is time, it is the right time, to speak of God.” This book invites readers to use their God-given ability to work through important questions that many people have about God today: Why is God so angry in the Bible? Is the biblical God male or female (or what)? Who is Satan? Why do people suffer? By exploring the Bible’s answers to these and other biblical questions, people can come to understand better their living and loving God.