Books in the Religions and Discourse series

Through application of modern historiographical analysis and scriptural exegesis, the book explores the space between factual history and interpretive history, or histoire. Muhammad al-Tabari's History, written about 300 years after the establishment of Islam, is one of the religion's most important commentaries.

This book analyses religious identity transformations through inter-religious relations. It aims to highlight the link between religious discourse and social cohesion, or the lack of such a link, and ultimately seeks to contribute to the dominant discourse on Muslim-Christian relations. The book is based on fieldwork in Indonesia and Tanzania, and is timely because of the growing tensions between Muslims and Christians in both countries. Its relevance lies in its fresh look at theories of religion and science. From its establishment as an academic discipline, the phenomenology of religion has dominated religious studies. Its theory of religion is 'realist' (religion is a reality 'in itself') and its view of science is objectivist (scientific knowledge is true if its representation of reality corresponds with reality itself). Based on Discourse Theory, the author argues that religion does not exist 'in itself'. Human practices and artifacts become religious because they are placed in a narrative context by the believers. By using discourse analysis as a research method, the author shows how religious identities in Tanzania and Indonesia are constructed, negotiated and manipulated in order to gain material or symbolic profit.

Literature and theology have long been conversation partners. The great themes of human existence form the subject matter of their shared discussion. However, comedic literature has often been overlooked as a serious means to fostering such theological engagement. This book seeks to rectify this imbalance.

The challenge of methodic quality has haunted scholars in the human and social sciences since the end of the nineteenth century with the explosive and public success of the natural sciences and their precision and aim of controlling nature. The discussion has been dominated by the quest for proper scientific concepts and methods comparable to those employed in the natural sciences. This book discloses the limits of scientific concepts and methods, and the failure of approaches in the human sciences emulating the scientific procedures in the natural sciences, notably the cognitive science of religion, to articulate religious life in its actuality. The author demonstrates on the basis of his own field research conducted among Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka and Orthodox monks and pilgrims on the Holy Mountain of Athos in Greece how preconceptions and historical belongingness determine interpretation. He argues that in the human sciences words matter more than concepts and propositions, and elucidates how words are revelatory of the authenticity of being, when the attitude adopted is that the view of the encountered other might be right. In the conclusion the author identifies the methodic characteristics of hermeneutic reflection and proposes an analytic model for the human sciences that enables scholars to articulate the authenticity of actual life in words that reach the other.

This book takes a historical-theological approach to understanding the complex relationships among gender, religion, economics and politics in a global context, with particular reference to Islam and Catholicism as two worldwide, culturally diverse and patriarchal religious traditions. It looks at ways in which Catholic and Muslim women, both within and between their respective traditions, are critiquing fundamentalist theological and cultural positions and reclaiming their rightful place within the life of their religious traditions. In so doing, it argues that they offer to their respective religious communities, and beyond, a holistic way of negotiating the impact of modernity in a globalized world. The final chapter of the book gives voice to some Australian Muslim and Catholic women who, at a local level, reflect many of the overall concerns of women who find themselves at the cutting edge of their respective religious tradition's negotiation of modernity.

The paradox within the title of this book refers to its principal theme, that of elucidating our innate capacity to transform/convert from an inauthentic everyday mode of being to an authentic one. This study provides an analysis of affect as a means of highlighting a number of key points of contact between the disciplines of philosophy and theology when addressing this topic. The author explores Martin Heidegger's intimate connections with Christianity, firstly, by examining the close ties he and his family had to the Catholic Church and, secondly, from within his fundamental ontology as developed in Being and Time. Finally, he demonstrates through literary and comparative analysis the affinity that exists between a philosophy of facticity and Christian theology in their descriptions of humankind without faith or Dasein's inauthentic existence.

This book adds new impetus to ecumenical theology by focusing on embodied faith or the contextual interpretation of Revelation. It does so through an exploration of the insights of Lewis S. Mudge and Joseph Ratzinger. Mudge advocates catholicity as a hermeneutic which embraces the contextuality of faith in local contexts, including Christian communities and the religious practice of those of other Abrahamic faiths. Through his use of semiotics and social theory, Mudge offers novel ways to interpret faith lived as redemptive existence. Since for Joseph Ratzinger Revelation can never be fully confined to rational statements, it is nevertheless expressed in living praxis. This relates to his view of wisdom, Tradition, truth and the sensus fidei. Ratzinger focuses on embodied faith in Christian experience, the lives of the saints, New Ecclesial Movements and the plurality of different expressions of faith in synchronic unity. This study encourages the reader to explore the Church as a sacrament of redemption through contextuality and embodiment. Through the writings of two authors with contrasting and yet complimentary approaches, it highlights the transformative potential of Christianity which can serve as a point of ecumenical learning.

Awarded the 2007 National Research Prize SAES/AEFA. This study is a reappraisal of John Bunyan in the light of the dissenting religious culture of the late-seventeenth century. Charges of schism and fanaticism were repeatedly levelled against Bunyan, both from within the dissenting community and without, but far from being chastened by these accusations, Bunyan responded with a religious discourse marked by a rhetoric of excess. The focus of this book is therefore upon Bunyan¿s overwhelming spiritual experiences, especially the representation of torment, in his literary and polemical works. The believers¿ suffering was an obsessive concern of dissenting ministers, even to the point where their writings are often remembered today for little else. Hitherto, most scholars have termed all the mental states that they invoke ¿despair¿, but this simplifies the experiences at issue. A wealth of contemporary material helps to restore the nuances of seventeenth-century physical and spiritual conditions, from enthusiasm to melancholy and madness; from fear to desertion and sloth. These chapters explore fresh ways in which this subtle typology of torment and its extreme manifestations form the core of the literary expression of Restoration dissent, challenging Bunyan to represent spiritual equilibrium as the ultimate quest of the earthly pilgrimage.