While few intellectuals today accept the notion that the world is literally about to end through a prophesied supernatural act, between 1500 and 1800 many of Europe's and America's most creative minds did believe it. Perhaps most surprisingly, apocalyptic expectations played a central role during this period in creating secular culture--arguably the signal achievement of the post-medieval west. The topic is much with us still, as many on the religious right look to the end of days, a goal that seems closer than ever Apocalyptic ideas and expectations shaped the world in profound and enduring ways. In the Early Modern era, a deeply religious set of ideas proved instrumental in enabling people to see their world through prisms other than that of religion. The apocalypse underwrote the Reformation in the 16th century, the English Revolution in the 17th century, and the American Revolution in the 18th century. This book explores such themes through an examination of a range of major figures and events from the period. Why was the apocalypse--so alien to us today--so pivotal to the creation of our culture and to what we are? Only by seeing its central and often creative role historically within western civilizations can we meaningfully assess its significance to the current world. Only by grasping apocalypse then, can we truly understand apocalypse now.

When most people think about Catholicism and science, they will automatically think of one of the famous events in the history of science - the condemnation of Galileo by the Roman Catholic Church. But the interaction of Catholics with science has been - and is - far more complex and positive than that depicted in the legend of the Galileo affair. Understanding the natural world has always been a strength of Catholic thought and research - from the great theologians of the Middle Ages to the present day - and science has been a hallmark of Catholic education for centuries.

1913. Contents: The New Birth; Man's Relation to God and to His Fellow Men; Areas of Consciousness; Self-Ness and Selflessness; Instances of Illumination and its After Effects; Examples of Cosmic Consciousness, Who Have Founded New Systems of Religion; Moses; Gautama; Jesus; Paul;Mohammed; Swedenborg; Modern Examples; Illumination as Expressed in the Poetical Temperament; methods of Attainment.

What does it mean to forgive? The answer is widely assumed to be self-evident but critical analysis quickly reveals the complexities of the subject. Forgiveness has traditionally been the preserve of Christian theology, though in the last half century - and at an accelerating pace - psychologists, lawyers, politicians and moral philosophers have all been making an important contribution to questions about and our understanding of the subject.

Today most people feel less interested in religion and more interested in spirituality. If you ask what they mean, they will tell you that organized religion tends to turn them off, but, nonetheless, they feel a hunger in the heart that they cannot seem to fill. They do not mean that they would rather have disorganized religion; they mean that institutional religion does not seem to satisfy their spirits and feel there must be something more, some better way of experiencing whatever that is for which they are hungry.

Design and Destiny approaches the question in religious terms, discussing human germline modification (the genetic modification of the embryonic cells that become the eggs or sperm of a developing organism) from the viewpoints of traditional Christian and Jewish teaching. The contributors, leading religious scholars and writers, call our attention not to technology but to humanity, reflecting upon the meaning and destiny of human life in a technological age.

Christianity as Mystical Fact is a fundamental book, both in Steiner's own development and in the development of Western esotericism and our understanding of the Christ event. Here readers will find the evolutionary development from the ancient Mysteries through the great Greek philosophers to the events portrayed in the Gospels. This new edition, therefore, newly translated, edited, and introduced by Andrew Welburn, is a welcome addition to the "Classics in Anthroposophy" series.

Beyond Monotheism is an absorbing and lyrical exploration of the possibility of a new, living theology of multiplicity that is grounded in fluidity, change, and incarnation. In this groundbreaking work of contemporary theology, Schneider shows that the One is not lost in divine multiplicity, and that in spite of its abstractions, divine multiplicity is realistic and worldly, impossible ultimately to abstract.

How do science and religion interact? This study examines the ways in which two minorities in Britain - the Quaker and Anglo-Jewish communities - engaged with science.

In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah - from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism - one of the world's foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical centre with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual centre, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism.

This handbook showcases current research and thinking in the sociology of religion. The contributors, all active writers and researchers in the area, provide original chapters focusing on select aspects of their own engagement with the field.

This book re-examines the so-called 'Abbāsid revolution, the ethnic character of whose effective constituency has been contested for over eight decades. It also brings to question the authenticity of the 'Abbāsid dynastic claim. To establish its two theses (neither Arab nor 'Abbāsid) this book employs, in its three parts, three distinct methodological approaches.

Борис Сахаров (Аров) - яркий представитель той прослойки русской интеллигенции, которая посвятила свою жизнь активному освоению, разработке и популяризации наследия Востока, автор многих книг по йоге, имеющих целью донести до читателя в неприкосновенности "золотой запас" индийской философии и культуры.