Abiding Faith: Christianity Beyond Certainty, Anxiety, and Violence [Paperback]

An investigation into the influence of Western culture on religious faith, pointing the way towards a more authentic form of faith as a way of life.

Australian theologian Scott Cowdell explores how 'having faith' has changed under the influence of modernity and post-modernity in the West. Following the understanding of faith typical of Saint Paul, the Fathers and the medieval monastic theologians, faith is returned from pious sentimentality and arid philosophy of religion to the realm of 'participating knowing', 'paradigmatic imagination', and personal transformation where it belongs as a 'form of life', shaped by encounter with Jesus Christ and worked out through the Eucharistic community.GB...Scott Cowdell's Abiding Faith will appeal to those who want a real theological challenge. A major strength is that it is extremely wide-ranging, referring to numerous theologians and philosophers and bringing an exhilarating coherent perspective to theological development over the centuries...Introduction

Part I: Faith in the Crucible of Modernity
1. Homeless Hearts: Faith and the Modern Self
2. Faith in the System : The Modern Captivity of God
3. The False Sacred: Modernity and Its Victims

Part II: Belonging, Believing, and Behaving
4. At Home in Jesus Christ: Abiding Faith
5. Faith's Knowledge: Abiding Faith and Modern Doubt
6. Behold, I Make All Things New: Vision, Self, Spirituality

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index