This collection of groundbreaking essays considers the many dimensions of prayer, and takes up the meaning of prayer from within a uniquely phenomenological point of view.

A study of how the world is experienced through Christian philosophy and phenomenology. How does Christian philosophy address phenomena in the world? Felix Ó Murchadha believes that seeing, hearing, or otherwise sensing the world through faith requires transcendence or thinking through glory and night (being and meaning). By challenging much of Western metaphysics, Ó Murchadha shows how phenomenology opens new ideas about being, and how philosophers of “the theological turn” have addressed questions of creation, incarnation, resurrection, time, love, and faith. He explores the possibility of a phenomenology of Christian life and argues against any simple separation of philosophy and theology or reason and faith. “Ó Murchadha makes abundant and timely references to the philosophical tradition from Plato through Heidegger, but also, perhaps more so, to the post-Heideggerian developments sometimes considered together and at once as “the theological turn” in phenomenology. He is equally at home in the Christian theological traditions from Paul to Barth and von Balthasar.” —Jeffrey Bloechl, Boston College “The book is engaging, well-written and, from this reviewer’s point of view, generally convincing. It constitutes an impressive and original contribution to both the philosophy of religion and has very much to offer to those interested in phenomenology and phenomenological analysis.” —Modern Theology “As an explication of how Christian belief can transform the meaning of the world . . . this book shows its greatest worth. Here it does as compelling a job as any in bringing out the novelty of Christianity before it became overly familiar and overwritten.” —Philosophical Quarterly

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rūzbihān Baqlī—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience.

In this thoroughly revised edition, James Cox provides an easily accessible introduction to the phenomenology of religion, which he contends continues as a foundational method for the academic study of religion in the twenty-first century. After dealing with the problematic issue of defining religion, he describes the historical background to phenomenology by tracing its roots to developments in philosophy and the social sciences in the early twentieth century. The phenomenological method is then outlined as a step-by-step process, which includes a survey of the important classifications of religious behaviour. The author concludes with a discussion of the place of the phenomenology of religion in the current academic climate and argues that it can be aligned with the growing scholarly interest in the cognitive science of religion.

The phenomenological method in the study of religions has provided the linchpin supporting the argument that Religious Studies constitutes an academic discipline in its own right and thus that it is irreducible either to theology or to the social sciences. This book examines the figures whom the author regards as having been most influential in creating a phenomenology of religion. Background factors drawn from philosophy, theology and the social sciences are traced before examining the thinking of scholars within the Dutch, British and North American 'schools' of religious phenomenology.

“Scrupulously prepared and eminently readable,” this volume presents Heidegger’s most important lectures on religion from 1920–21 (Choice). In the early 1920s, Martin Heidegger delivered his famous lecture course, Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion, at the University of Freiburg. He also prepared notes for a course on The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism that was never delivered. Though he never prepared this material for publication, it represents a significant evolution in his philosophical perspective. Heidegger’s engagements with Aristotle, Neoplatonism, St. Paul, Augustine, and Martin Luther give readers a sense of what phenomenology would come to mean in the mature expression of his thought. Heidegger reveals an impressive display of theological knowledge, protecting Christian life experience from Greek philosophy and defending Paul against Nietzsche.