This volume, edited by Lucinda Mosher and David Marshall, emerges from the fourteenth annual Building Bridges Seminar, convened at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar, May 3–6, 2015. Eight paired essays comprise the volume, with the addition of three topical Scripture dialogues featuring passages from the Bible and the Qur’ān. The first two essays, featured in Part 1, provide an overview and engage the topic of God's creativity and human action. Mohsen Kadivar lays out the rich and varied responses of the Islamic theological tradition to the irresolvable paradox between determinism (human beings have no choice in their actions because God is considered the author of all acts) and delegation (human beings freely choose their actions and are morally responsible). Kadivar argues that the consensus has been to mediate between the two positions; God is aware of all that human beings do, but gives them the freedom and responsibility attendant to their actions. Lucy Gardener refracts the larger issues attending to the nature of existence from a Christian theological point of view in which Jesus is recognized as an embodied presence of God's Word in the world. Centering Christ and the church, she posits that while God remains utterly different from creation, the world reveals something of God's nature and purpose. For human beings to have been made in God's image suggests that they have representational and discursive power over all other creatures, allowing them the freedom to obey or disobey the injunctions laid upon them by God.

Part 2 takes up the topic of God's creation and its goal to highlight the multitude of ways in which God instantiates creation as an act of self-revelation so that creation might know and worship God. Both essays explore the nuances of how each tradition views the goals of creation in attempting to grasp the paradox of a God who is simultaneously utterly different from creation and yet also present to creation. The Muslim essay explores the attributes of God by which God is known, making the case that God's creation is continuous: through governance and facilitation, God allows all of creation to function according to its nature and intentions. The Christian essay explores God's transcendence and immanence, asserting that through transcendence the contingent nature of all creation is maintained, while through immanence God sustains creation with love that allows for creaturely redemption.

Part 3, “The Dignity and Task of Humankind within God's Creation,” examines the call to humans toward embodying a holy Christian or Muslim life, respectively. Brandon Gallagher argues for the “mediatorial vocation of humanity” in bringing creation into harmony with itself and God. Maria Massi Dakake finds the Qur‘ānic answer to humankind's purpose on earth to be God's vicegerent (khalīfa) on earth, entailing an accountability and responsibility toward God and creation, thus highlighting the commonality between the two traditions. Both Gallagher and Dakake underscore humanity's role in caring for creation (96) or protecting it from harm (108). However, the role of nature consequent to Adam's disobedience is conceptualized differently in Christianity, where nature becomes a curse to Adam, and in Islam, where nature is a bounty to human beings. Thus for Gallagher, “creation” is more properly centered on the human being, for whom through Christ the path of mediation in uniting heaven and earth is opened up again in a call to a life of grateful obedience. For Dakake, flawed humanity must strive for greater self-knowledge and protect itself and creation, including nature, from the human propensity to corrupt. Both emphasize the need for community; Gallagher identifies the Church as Christ's Body, and Dakake points to the community's centrality in nurturing the good Christian or Muslim life.

Part 4 engages the question of human action within the sovereignty of God. Feras Q. Hamza revisits the question of free will and predestination: its appearance in the Qur’ān, the political and pietistic considerations at play in the development of early Islamic theology on the question, and contemporary efforts to reconcile God's omnipotence with human freedom to act (ḥurriya). Hamza suggests that both are at work, and that these productive contraries, when underpinned by devotion, allow human agency and divine sovereignty to come into harmony. In exploring Christian perspectives, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen begins with the basic question of whether a human being is able to act with freedom from compulsion and for being able to choose how they will act. Is such human freedom real, or illusory? In a parallel fashion to Hamza's discussion, Kärkkäinen offers scriptural evidence that supports both divine sovereignty and human freedom to act. A brief, yet insightful foray into this irresolvable debate reveals the rhetorical flourishes of theologians such as the Thomists, William of Ockham, and Luis de Molina. Molina provides some food for thought for Kärkkäinen in reconfiguring God's omniscience as God's omnipresence, which continually makes room for human actions without determining them, even if they are foreknown. As with Hamza, Kärkkäinen underscores the radical necessity for daily immersion in prayer for developing knowledge and insights that harmonize God's will with ours.

The final section, Part 5, titled “Reflection,” draws the volume together in an essay by editor Lucinda Mosher. The essay invites the reader to “listen in” to the process and the deep discussions that ensued among contributors on the topics raised in the Building Bridges Seminar through engagement with one another's sacred texts. Refracting Qur’ānic passages through biblical passages and vice versa generated a rereading of one's own tradition's texts and debates, further nuancing the larger topics at hand. This section offers a rich window into the animated discussions that occurred outside of and informed the more formal essays contained in the volume. It offers the hope that as we learn about one another's traditions, we are ourselves transformed in our understanding of and respect for the other, while gaining a deeper awareness of our own traditions.