Keith Ward

Many commentators claim that religion is dangerous and harmful. In addressing this question, this book begins by defining what religion actually is and how most human harm has been caused. It then looks at why people say that religion is dangerous, focusing particularly on religious wars and conflicts and on specific attacks on religion.

In Religion and Creation, the author explores the idea of a creator God in the work of twentieth-century writers from Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. He develops a positive concept of God which stresses God's dynamic and responsive relation to the temporal structure of the universe, and the importance of that structure to the self-expression of the divine being. Professor Ward goes on to present a Trinitarian doctrine of creation, drawing inspiration from a wider set of theistic traditions and recent discussions in physics in the realm of cosmology.

The idea of revelation has played a fundamental role in the history of religion. This book provides a new and detailed investigation of the concept, examining its nature, sources, and limits in five of the major scriptural religions of the world: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The first part of the book discusses the nature of theology, and expounds a comparative method as the most useful and appropriate for the modern age. Part Two focuses on the nature of religion and its early historical manifestations, whilst the third part of the book goes on to consider the idea of revelation as found in the great canonical religions of the world. Part Four develops the distinctively Christian idea of revelation as divine self-expression in history. The final part of the book discusses how far the idea of revelation must be revised or adapted in the light of modern historical and scientific thought, and proposes a new and positive theology of revelation for the future. The book includes discussions of the work of most major theologians and scholars in the study of religion - Aquinas, Tillich, Barth, Temple, Frazer, and Evans Pritchard - and should be of interest to scholars and students of comparative religion, philosophers of religion and theologians, and anthropologists.

Lineaments - an outline, feature, or contour of a body or figure, especially of a face. In this culmination of his life's work, the popular Orthodox lay theologian and translator of the Philokalia draws from the depths of tradition the "face" of Christianity as a world religion. Through a critique of the modern scientific and rationalist paradigm, Sherrard seeks to restore the foundations of Christian cosmology and ecology, and to reaffirm the prime importance of sacred symbolism and art. The book includes a creative engagement with non-Christian traditions, with the "metaphysical logic" of Rene Guenon, and with distinctively modern thinkers such as Nietzsche and Jung.