Philosophy and Religion - reviews & further information

Christian Jewish Dialogue

" . . . the book will be invaluable to students and others who are new to the issues."
European Judaism, Volume 30, No. 1, Spring 1997

"The editor's contribution to this volume is invaluable. In addition to comments linking and summarising contributions, there is a succinct introduction on the background to the dialogue and a readable and personal final chapter. The bibliography and list of authors and sources is an excellent resource, revealing the huge amount of ongoing work currently taking place in Jewish-Christian dialogue. . . Overall, this book gives an excellent overview of the depth and breadth of thinking, discussion and writing which are rapidly and profoundly changing the relationship between Christians and Jews. Bringing together such material is a remarkable achievement and makes it a valuable resource for anyone wishing either to participate in dialogue or simply to understand the issues involved."
The Australian Jewish News, 17 October 1997

"The breadth of this thoughtfully-chosen selection is indicated by the inclusion, on the one hand, of the Palestinian Christian Naim Ateek in the section on Israel, and, on the other hand, of Judith Plaskow, who has argued that feminist attacks on the patriarchy of the Old Testament are a form of anti-Judaism."
Theological Book Review, June 1997

"The Reader introduces key ideas and issues as well as providing background material. I found my appetite whetted by many of the passages and I now intend to read in full many of the articles and books. I was particularly pleased to read several fascinating, but previously unpublished, pieces and at the end of each section there is an excellent list of suggestions for further reading. The book also has a very good bibliography and a glossary of terms. A Reader such as this will be very valuable to students at all levels who are studying some aspect of Christian-Jewish relations. It would also be of interest to Jews and Christians who are participating in dialogue or considering the need to do so. There is a great deal of material which would help someone to 'get their bearings' on both theory and practice. The extracts deal with some major theological issues which arise in dialogue such as the nature of God, Christology, the problem of suffering and soteriology and while these are not discussed in depth the commentary on the extracts enables the reader to get a sense of the wider picture."
Common Ground,1997

"The Reader's strength lies, in my view, in its inclusion of extracts from the writings on individual theologians and writers alongside those from statements by the institutional churches . . . Secondly, while the editor includes most of the obvious names one would expect in an anthology of this kind (such as Rosemary Radford Ruether, Franklin Littell, Emil Fackenheim and Pinchas Lapide), she also introduces some who are less well known . . . A third point of interest is the organization of the extracts into thematic chapters. The majority of these themes are those one would expect to find running through any book or anthology on Christian-Jewish dialogue (for example, the Holocaust, Mission, and the Jewish Jesus). However, the inclusion of a chapter on women is less predictable, and to be welcomed for precisely that reason."
Reviews in Religion and Theology

"This is an exceptionally good introduction to Christian-Jewish Dialogue. With the selections organised thematically, and reflecting the whole range of different positions in the dialogue, the Reader illuminates the hard questions dominating the Dialogue today. Helen Fry's Reader will not be surpassed for a long time to come."
Ian S. Markham, Professor of Theology, Liverpool Hope University College

"Can those who live differently live together? Can the bonds which unite us with God unite us with one another instead of setting us against one another at the cost, ultimately, of God's most precious creation, human life itself?"
From the foreword by Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks

Market: Undergraduate and advanced level Students of Theology. Teachers, rabbis and clergy. The Christian and Jewish communities. Academic and General libraries.

Author: Helen Fry teaches in the Department of Theology, University of Exeter

CONTENTS  

Foreword by Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Anti-Semitism
Chapter 3: The Holocaust
Chapter 4: Mission
Chapter 5: Israel
Chapter 6: The Jewish Jesus
Chapter 7: Scripture
Chapter 8: Salvation
Chapter 9: Women
Chapter 10: Mutual Witness
Chapter 11: The Challenges for the Future

Bibliography
Glossary
Index

Church and State

Anybody who believes in a division of power will have no difficulty in accepting Hasting's line. But the ageing left, who think that they may have a powerful apostle for disestablishment, are in for a wonderfully rude awakening."
Independent

"To be told of this book...would be enough to whet the appetite. ...Actually meeting the book goes beyond whetting appetites; it is somewhere near inflaming them. ...There are some pungent axe-edged quotes laid to the root of the tree."
Church Times

The Human Embryo

Questions asked by Greek philosophy and science - how do we come to be? how do we grow? when are we recognizably human? - are addressed with new intensity today. Modern embryology has changed the methods of enquiry and given new knowledge. Public interest and concern are high because medical applications of new knowledge offer benefits and yet awaken ancestral fears. The law and politics are called upon to secure the benefits without realizing the fears. Philosophers and theologians are involved once again.

In this volume some of the world's authorities on the subject trace the tradition of enquiry over two and a half thousand years. The answers given in related cultures - Greek, Latin, Jewish, Arabian, Islamic, Christian - reflected the purposes to be served at different times, in medical practice, penitential discipline, canon law, common law, human feeling. But the terms in which the questions were discussed were those set down by the Greeks and transmitted through the Arabic authors to medieval Europe.

"This book helps us with the history of the ethics that we must know if we are to deal with the technology of the future." Independent

"The book is thoroughly documented, carefully edited and beautifully produced ... care has also been taken to make the work readable and accessible to a non-specialist who wants to find out more about the thought of bygone ages concerning matters of 'contemporary concern'."
Bioethics

"All the chapters are well researched and annotated...the text becomes much more gripping as the relationship of contemporary opinion to the views of preceding generations becomes apparent."
British Medical Journal

The Secular City

Central to the Enlightenment is the ideal of the Secular City, in militant reply to the Civitas Dei of St Augustine. The essays in this volume, all by distinguished eighteenth century specialists, illustrate the elaboration of that vision, both in the planning and depiction of actual cities and in the speculation on social justice to which Voltaire in particular devoted himself. Yet even in him, secularization is never total, and the persistence of a displaced religious, even messianic strain in the Enlightenment is also illustrated in a variety of writers, culminating in the contradictions of the French Revolution.

CONTENTS

Introduction (David Meakin)

Section I: Images of the City

Paris et l'imaginaire de la ville dans les almanachs français du XVIIIe siécle (Lise Andries)
Enlightenment London and Urbanity (Roy Porter)
City Life in the 1720s: the Example of Four of Voltaire's Acquaintances (Norma Perry)
La cité des lumières at l'homme selon la nature dans les Lettres philosophiques (Michel Baridon)
City, Market-place, Meal: Some Figures of Totality in Voltaire's Contes (Robin Howells)

Section 2: Voltaire and the Secular Ideal

Some Reflections on Voltaire's L'Ingénu and a Hithero Neglected Source: the Questions sur les miracles (Graham Gargett)
Voltaire and Venality: the Ambiguities of an Abuse (William Doyle)
Réflexions alphabétiques sur la justice dans leDictionnaire philosophique portatif (Christiane Mervaud)
Signposts to the Secular City: the Voltaire-Condorcet Relationship (David Williams)

Section 3: Cross-currents in the Secular City

Enlightenment Cross-currents: the Dictionnaire philosophique of Chicaneau de Neuville (David Adams)
Candide and Paul et Virginie: Two Fictions of the Enlightenment (Simon Davies)
Bernadin de Saint-Pierre:Unpublished Prose Fables (Malcolm Cook)
Le combat de Condorcet contre « l'infâme » (Anne-Marie Chouillet)
Religion and the Secular City in Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes (Anthony Strugnell)
Le rêve universaliste de l'Orateur du Genre humain (Roland Mortier)

Spiritual Development in the State School: Worship and Spirituality in the Education System of England and Wales

The subject is examined in various contexts: its historical and cultural background; politics and legislation; philosophy and values; curriculum development. The book addresses the problem of how to define spiritual development and the contentious issue of compulsory school worship. It offers new insights and a thesis for the way forward.

• Analysis essential for schools and advisory councils in planning new syllabuses and policy statements
• Contributes vital information to the continuing and important debate
• " . . . a fine work, in which clarity and good humour are combined with scholarship and attention to detail . . ."
  PCfRE, reviewing the complementary volume, Teaching Religion: Fifty Years of Religious Education in England and Wales.

Author: Terence Copley is Professor of Religious Education in the University of Exeter. He is the author of more than thirty books in the field of religious education, including Teaching Religion: Fifty Years of Religious Education in England and Wales (Exeter, 1997).

Teaching Religion

Teaching Religion is the first book to trace the developments in religious education in England and Wales in the half century to 1994. It starts with the 1944 Butler Act and ends with the DFE Circular of 1994 which was issued to take further the RE provision in the 1988 Education Reform Act.

Teaching Religion sets the changes in religious education against changes in education as a whole and changes in society. The complex interaction between and influence of religious thinkers, religious educators and politicians is explored, as is the suggestion that how we handle religion within the national education system can offer insights into the sort of society we are and aspire to be.

• Religious education from 1944 to 1994, including discussion of the effects of the National Curriculum
• Suitable for use as a student textbook
• Sets religious education in a political and social context

Author: Terence Copley is Senior Lecturer in Religious Education, University of Exeter. He is author or editor of some twenty-five books in the field of religious education.

". . . a fine work, in which clarity and good humour are combined with scholarship and attention to detail to tell the RE story for the end of the 1990's. . . Students, teachers and colleagues in universities will use this, often with a smile, for many years to come."
Resource 21:1 Autumn 1998

"The book is well researched, well written and in a non-combative style. It offers a challenge to all involved in RE, whether politicians, the churches or RE teachers."
Journal of Beliefs and Values, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1998

" . . . a formidable survey of the political and social context in which religious education has developed since the landmark Education Act of 1944."
The Tablet, 8 November 1997

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