This chapter provides an account of Aquinas’s life and works. It then explains his intellectual perspectives as an author while noting how he distinguishes between faith and reason. It notes what he means by ‘divine revelation’ and why he thinks that to be important. It also explains what he has to say about ‘sacra doctrina, ‘articles of faith’, and ‘preambles of faith. The chapter then explains why Aquinas can be thought to be an advocate of ‘natural theology’ and why he takes it to be important. Finally, it provides an introduction to some key terms which recur in his philosophy of God, including ‘ens’, ‘ens per se’, ‘ens per accidens ‘form’, ‘substantial form’, ‘accidental form’, ‘matter’, ‘substance’, ‘accident’, ‘cause’, ‘efficient cause’, ‘final cause’, ‘formal cause’, ‘material cause’, ‘effect’, ‘essence’, ‘nature’, ‘substantial change’, ‘accidental change’, ‘sensation’, ‘individuation’, and ‘being’ (esse).

A brief review of Luther’s confessional summation of the central indisputable articles of faith for the reformed Christian religion; Luther’s practical reformation agendas are interpreted, noting the tensions regarding sacramental theology and teachings on marriage and sexuality.

This chapter deals with the first of the theological virtues, namely faith. The theological virtues open up a transcendent horizon that breaks down the immanent frame of a worldview characterized by ‘inattentiveness’ to the divine rule. Faith and its concomitant gifts of the Holy Spirit render the intellect more sensitive to things divine, effecting an existential reorientation and reintegration. After a discussion of faith, the chapter considers the gifts of knowledge and understanding.

Discussion on the rationale and potential for religion and being religious today. Naming Luther as a viable conversation partner with his theology of grace and hope, and particularly his freedom perspectives.

Luther offered a paradigm shift for theological method with his particular cross-orientation. With their own experience of suffering and despair serve, theologians of the cross can discern the true meaning of the gospel of Christ, name the reality as it is, and mystically know God radically present and compassionately loving.

In this chapter, I consider the deployment of the dominant philosophical conception of hope within political theory. I introduce different contexts in which political theorists ascribe hope an instrumental value, based on its suggested power to motivate agency: these theorists claim that belief in the possibility of a specific future can generate the confidence to engage in important political action. After discussing the relationship between agency and hope (found originally in Aristotle), I consider an ambitious neo-Kantian attempt (put forward by Jakob Huber) to vindicate the instrumental value of hope for democratic politics on a non-contingent basis. I argue that this attempt fails but does so instructively, as the power it ascribes to hope comes from an auxiliary concept, which is faith. I find further endorsements of hope that depend on a prior commitment to faith (in a moral sense) in the thought of Kant himself, and (in a predictive sense) in the Marxist tradition, and I suggest the value of separating these two ideas.

Luther insists that salvation is a gift and brings one into a mystical union with Christ, which is the true meaning of Christianity. Passive righteousness, Christ’s favor and gift, becomes one’s own, and in faith gains knowledge of God, transformation, and holiness in conformity with Christ.

This address calls for a return to the original mission of religion: to serve humanity. It emphasizes that all religions stem from one divine truth and were revealed to guide people toward justice, peace and unity. Religion’s decline into conflict occurs when it is co-opted for self-interest and power. True religion defends the vulnerable and opposes tyranny, aligning itself with the poor and oppressed.

The text urges unity among faiths to overcome division and serve human dignity. It criticizes modern civilization for sidelining faith and exploiting human energy through consumerism, inequality and the idolization of wealth. Religion, it argues, must restore balance, cultivate human potential and oppose injustice, lies and pride, which drain societal energy.

Human freedom, faith and moderation are essential for social harmony. The human being is central: the engine of history, bearer of divine qualities and the true wealth of Lebanon. Society must nurture every person’s potential, without marginalization or exclusion.

Sadr advocates for inclusive development, justice and unity in Lebanon, framing the country’s diversity and human capital as sacred trusts. Only through sincere commitment to human dignity and shared responsibility can Lebanon fulfill its moral, spiritual and national purpose.

This essay argues that understanding religion and the history of religion in the United States can help scholars, students, and the American public be more aware of the dynamics around war and wiser in the conclusions they reach about experiences of war and their relationship to American society. Put differently, when those who study war and society in America keep religion out of their stories, they remove from consideration not only some of the nation’s most influential institutions and voices, but also many of the ideas, stories, and symbols that help women and men find meaning and purpose in the uncertainty, the suffering, and the loss that go along with war.

This chapter considers how Plutarch, a Platonic philosopher and priest of Apollo, used the language of pistis (‘faith’) and pisteuein (‘to believe’). It rejects the view that Plutarch was the first to introduce a ‘fideistic’, proto-Christian concept of religious faith as opposed to reason, or that his faith was only a way to inscribe himself into ‘tradition’. Crucial for our understanding of Plutarch’s pistis is his initiation into the Dionysiac mysteries, which prevented him from ‘believing’ the Epicureans’ denial of immortality, as he deemed that the Platonists’ view of the immortality of the soul ‘is harder to disbelieve than to believe’. The chapter emphasises the convergence between Plutarch’s experience of the mysteries and his Platonic philosophy. Plutarch’s notion of faith is not fideistic and anti-philosophical but belongs to the domain of philosophy: unfounded faith must be criticised when it misrepresents the gods and strengthened when it aligns with sound philosophical doctrines. Not only can philosophical doctrines confirm expressions of pistis, but particular philosophical views are also the object of faith and are, conversely, reinforced by initiation into the mysteries. Throughout the chapter, it is intimated that Plutarch’s concept of pistis is not fundamentally different from that of Paul.

Over the past two decades, historians of ideas have posed searching questions about the relevance of some of the standard categories used in the investigation of past systems of thought and practice. The categories ‘science’, ‘philosophy’, and ‘religion’, in particular, have been subjected to intense scrutiny, and it is now often claimed that in antiquity and the Middle Ages there were no enterprises that can easily be mapped onto these modern categories. This chapter traces the origins of the modern conception of religion – understood as a generic entity characterised by sets of beliefs and practices – with some reference to the parallel emergence of modern notions of philosophy and science. It also offers some preliminary suggestions about how this might be relevant to the study of religion in antiquity.

This chapter distinguishes between religiously based arguments for toleration, based on the premise that only uncoerced religious belief is well pleasing to God, and purely philosophical arguments, in which religious freedom is just part of freedom in general, to which all are entitled, and which needs no special religious justification. John Locke and James Madison are examples of those who argue in the first manner, and Christoph Martin Wieland and Immanuel Kant examples of those who argue in the second. The second kind of argument may be philosophically cleaner, but the first may have rhetorical advantages in actual historical circumstances.

Chapter 1 examines faith in Lancelot Andrewes’s preaching. It shows that his discussions of religious belief frequently draw on the methods used in early modern England of evaluating forensic testimony. After a survey of Andrewes’s interest in religious belief and witness evidence, it turns its attention to discussions of faith and epistemology in his lectures from the 1580s. The chapter then shows how Andrewes’s interest in religious belief is reframed in explicitly legal terms in his seventeenth-century Easter sermons at court. Andrewes valued legal evidence for its ability to establish the Resurrection as an attested matter of fact. Yet these sermons also trace the limitations of legal methods of proof. For Andrewes, a true faith in the Resurrection involves a more diverse set of epistemic resources – bodily participation in the Eucharist, for instance. These mysterious aspects of faith are nevertheless articulated through the framework of legal proof and evidence.

Chapter 2 focuses on discussions of faith in John Donne’s religious prose. Donne often addresses such questions by turning to legal discourses. Processes of evaluating forensic testimony provide useful structures for measuring probability or certainty in evidence and the assent that it generates. This is exemplified in Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr, which relies on widely recognised rules about forensic testimony to discuss pressing questions regarding belief and its legitimacy in post-Reformation England. The chapter then shows how Donne adapts this legal handling of belief to address questions about salvation and certainty for a variety of audiences. To lawyers at Lincoln’s Inn, Donne uses the technicalities of civilian law to support and critique post-Reformation understandings of soteriology. To a broader congregation at St Paul’s, he deploys common law evidentiary procedures to show that, to a limited but helpful extent, the evidence of salvation can be apprehended through legal methods.

This book’s Introduction sets out the key intellectual and historical contexts for its argument. It shows that religious belief gained an important cultural emphasis after the Reformation and that it was considered to be distinct from other kinds of belief or assent. Engaging with scholarly discussions of belief, this introduction suggests that the period from around 1580 to the 1650s witnessed an attempt to investigate what was particular about a specifically religious kind of belief. Its certainty and spiritual origin were compared to, and contrasted with, other kinds of assent that were generated by probable forms of argument. An important and widespread way of effecting this comparison involved considering religious belief alongside the kinds of assent generated in legal settings – when witness evidence is evaluated for its credibility. The introduction roots this discursive method in contemporary legal culture, before surveying recent scholarship on literary culture, law and religion.