Product Description: True religious faith cannot be confirmed by any external proofs. Rather, it is founded on a basic act of trust—and the common root of that trust, for Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, is a belief in the divine creation of the universe...read more

Product Description: Comparing Avicenna’s and Thomas Aquinas’ positions regarding human knowledge, this volumes talks about God and the nature of the creative action and the beginning of the universe. The overall argument of the book is that their conception of theological language plays an important role in shaping their positions concerning the creation of the universe...read more

Product Description: In this book, David Burrell, one of the foremost philosophical theologians in the English-speaking world, presents the best of his work on creation and human freedom. A collection of writings by one of the foremost philosophers of religion in the English-speaking world...read more

Product Description: An exploration of mythology, religious belief, and scientific theory on the origins of the universe. A classic study of mythology, this examination investigates stories from all continents and ages—with all their startling similarities and contrasts—to reveal the workings of the human mind and imagination...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: In this provocative study, Zimmerman examines the creation myths of traditional cultures and compares them to Genesis in terms of symbolic content. While the Old Testament in general has only vague references to life in heaven, the myths discuss the notion of an after-life in a more vivid manner...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Van Wolde, Ellen, Wolde, E. J. Van (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In this book Barbara Holdrege has set a high standard for comparative work and has made an important contribution to both Hindu and Jewish studies. She has looked at Veda and Torah not simply as 'scripture', but as systems of meaning, symbol systems, each with its own affiliated meanings, each with its symbolic context, and each with its history of interpretation...read more

With creation of the universe as its focus and a deeper understanding of human freedom as its goal, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions is a work of philosophical theology that brings together Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives on the complex questions surrounding divine and human freedom. Burrell shows how the three traditions (each avowing the free creation of the universe by God) have developed a view of free human actors in relation to their initial affirmations that the universe is freely created by God. The concept of a free creation of the universe forms a motif for all three traditions, and their respective encounters with divine relation—in the Torah, Jesus Christ, and the Qur’an—offer distinctive ways of articulating and assimilating the original faith in a free creator. Burrell emphasizes the common ground among the traditions, but does not limit his discourse to a search for a common denominator among them. Instead, he traces the interactions among the traditions, employing an explicitly interfaith perspective that offers new ways to probe the vexing question of the relations between a free creator and free creatures. The results of this comparative method of reflection produce fresh insights into perennial human questions about creation and freedom—questions that have constituted a major body of theological reflection over the centuries.   Aimed at graduates and advanced undergraduates as well as laypersons interested in interfaith dialogue and reflection, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions illustrates the value of tradition-directed inquiry and clearly demonstrates the fruitfulness of comparative inquiries in philosophical theology.

Product Description: Book by Neville, Robert Cummings

Product Description: After discussing the nature of religion, mythic and scientific modes of thinking and the general character of creation myths, Charles Long interprets five major types of such myths: creation from nothing, emergence myths, world-parent myths, creation from Chaos and from the cosmic egg, and earth-diver myths...read more

A brief cross-cultural study of the myths man has created to explain his origins, the laws of nature, and his relation to the cosmos

Product Description: before the heavens were known