Theodicy And Eschatology

This collection of essays examine two pressing issues in theology - . One is theodicy, that is a blief that in a just God in the face of evil and suffering in our world. The other is the issue of Eschatology, a belief in the fulfilment of Jesus'; saving mission, experienced as God's healing of humanity afflicted by suffering and evil.

In Inscrutable Malice, Jonathan A. Cook expertly illuminates Melville's abiding preoccupation with the problem of evil and the dominant role of the Bible in shaping his best-known novel. Drawing on recent research in the fields of biblical studies, the history of religion, and comparative mythology, Cook provides a new interpretation of Moby-Dick that places Melville's creative adaptation of the Bible at the center of the work. Cook identifies two ongoing concerns in the narrative in relation to their key biblical sources: the attempt to reconcile the goodness of God with the existence of evil, as dramatized in the book of Job; and the discourse of the Christian end-times involving the final destruction of evil, as found in the apocalyptic books and eschatological passages of the Old and New Testaments. With his detailed reading of Moby-Dick in relation to its most important source text, Cook greatly expands the reader's understanding of the moral, religious, and mythical dimensions of the novel. Both accessible and erudite, Inscrutable Malice will appeal to scholars, students, and enthusiasts of Melville's classic whaling narrative.

In this provocative collection of essays, scientists, theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars look at eschatology through their various lenses.

Eschatology is the study of the last things: death, judgment, the afterlife, and the end of the world. Through centuries of Christian thoughtfrom the early Church fathers through the Middle Ages and the Reformationthese issues were of the utmost importance. In other religions, too, eschatological concerns were central. After the Enlightenment, though, many religious thinkers began to downplay the importance of eschatology which, in light of rationalism, came to be seen as something of an embarrassment. The twentieth century, however, saw the rise of phenomena that placed eschatology back at the forefront of religious thought. From the rapid expansion of fundamentalist forms of Christianity, with their focus on the end times; to the proliferation of apocalyptic new religious movements; to the recent (and very public) debates about suicide, martyrdom, and paradise in Islam, interest in eschatology is once again on the rise. In addition to its popular resurgence, in recent years some of the worlds most important theologians have returned eschatology to its former position of prominence. The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology will provide an important critical survey of this diverse body of thought and practice from a variety of perspectives: biblical, historical, theological, philosophical, and cultural. This volume will be the primary resource for students, scholars, and others interested in questions of our ultimate existence.

The topic of evil and redemption has been at the center of the Western tradition since the beginning of the Christian era. In The End of Evil, Suchocki explores the source and end of evil in the thought of Augustine, Leibniz, Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Whitehead's philosophy is used as a creative response to the problems and possibilities raised in these earlier developments.

This work seeks to demonstrate that Gregory's spirituality forms and is formed by his theology and especially his understanding of the person and work of Christ. His spirituality is that of a contemplative looking for Christ and finding him in the pain of this world. Gregory's theological emphases of the experience of pain and eschatology found in his Moralia in Iob find their connection in his Christology. In contemplative union with Christ the pain of this life will make sense and in the last judgment the great mystery of the divine purpose will be revealed.

Is it justice when deities allow righteous human beings to suffer? This question has occupied the minds of theologians and philosophers for many centuries and is still hotly disputed. All kinds of argument have been developed to exonerate the 'good God' of any guilt in this respect. Since Leibniz it has become customary to describe such attempts as 'theodicy', the justification of God. In modern philosophical debate this use of 'theodicy' has been questioned. However, this volume shows that it is still a workable term for a concept that originated much earlier than is commonly realised. Experts from many disciplines follow the emergence of the theodicy problem from ancient Near Eastern texts of the second millennium BCE through biblical literature, from both Old and New Testament, intertestamental writings including Qumran, Philo Judaeus and rabbinic Judaism.