There is a unified field in the cosmos that holds everything together, and every discipline is a portal to it. Science calls it a field of fundamental forces and elementary particles. Religion calls it God and accepts it by faith as an impenetrable mystery. How can their unbending perspectives be reconciled? In The Ambient Christ, the author proposes a novel paradigm that explains their complementarity as a seamless unity. This innovative model provides a new story for an ailing and divided planet in the twenty-first century, and a viable solution to the holy grail quest. "There is something too narrow and missing in the gospel as it is presented to us. In spite of appearances, our age is more religious than ever; it only needs stronger meat" -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin "A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge." -Carl Sagan”

There is a unified field in the cosmos that holds everything together, and every discipline is a portal to it. Science calls it a field of fundamental forces and elementary particles. Religion calls it God and accepts it by faith as an impenetrable mystery. How can their unbending perspectives be reconciled? In The Ambient Christ, the author proposes a novel paradigm that explains their complementarity as a seamless unity. This innovative model provides a new story for an ailing and divided planet in the twenty-first century, and a viable solution to the holy grail quest. "There is something too narrow and missing in the gospel as it is presented to us. In spite of appearances, our age is more religious than ever; it only needs stronger meat" -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. "A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge." -Carl Sagan

In a Tiantai theology, conventional truth is conventionally arisen, which means that such truth is never set once and for all, but is to be cherished and rethought in new circumstances, whether interreligious or scientific—but always in critical consonance with its ancient embodiments. Contexts shift frameworks, but life in Christ is translatable across cultures. Christian faith and theology discourage the assumption that the point of it can be clearly pinned down. God’s appearance to Elijah out of the whirlwind is an eternal reminder of the paltriness of all human perspectives. Symbolic worlds of faith and wisdom are not themselves finished products. Because it has a past and a future, the cosmos itself is unfinished. Christian creeds ought not be defended as last-word ideological positions and bastions against relativity, but instead recognized in their cultural contexts and affirmed as grammars of communal and personal assent.

Among the world's religions, Christianity and Judaism are the most symmetrical. But in our day of religious tolerance, a tendency to overlook the vital differences between the two religions in the name of good will can undermine constructive Jewish-Christian dialogue. In this book, Bruce D. Chilton describes early Christian thought and Jacob Neusner describes early Judaic thought on fundamental issues such as creation and human nature, Christ and Torah, sin and atonement, and eschatology. At the end of each chapter, each assesses the other's perspective, and a final chapter explains why the authors believe theological confrontation--not just comparison--defines the task of interfaith dialogue today.

The earliest Christians set forth the Torah as they understood it - they did not think of their religion as Christianity, but as Judaism. For the first time, in Judaism in the New Testament, two distinguished scholars take the earliest Christians at their word and ask: "If Christianity is (a) Judaism, then how should we read the New Testament?".

Reading Augustine is a new line of books offering personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars. The aim of the series is to make clear Augustine's importance to contemporary thought and to present Augustine not only or primarily as a pre-eminent Christian thinker but as a philosophical, spiritual, literary and intellectual icon of the West. Why did the ancients come to adopt monotheism and Christianity? On God, The Soul, Evil and the Rise of Christianity introduces possible answers to that question by looking closely at the development of the thought of Augustine of Hippo, whose complex spiritual trajectory included Gnosticism, academic skepticism, pagan Platonism, and orthodox Christianity. What was so compelling about Christianity and how did Augustine become convinced that his soul could enter into communion with a transcendent God? The apparently sudden shift of ancient culture to monotheism and Christianity was momentous, defining the subsequent nature of Western religion and thought. John Peter Kenney shows us that Augustine offers an unusually clear vantage point to understand the essential ideas that drove that transition.

This groundbreaking, first basic reference work on ancient religious beliefs collects and organizes available information on ten ancient cultures and traditions, including Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, and offers an expansive, comparative perspective on each one.