POWER DIVINE AND HUMAN

The latest volume to appear in the series of publications from the Building Bridges Seminar, an initiative in comparative theology and deep reading (even scriptural reasoning) of Christianity and Islam initiated by Lambeth Palace in 2002, addresses a somewhat obvious but perplexing issue of how we understand the nature of power both with respect to God and humans. While the earlier seminars tended to draw upon scriptural reasoning – which as a method of interfaith reflection owes much to the University of Virginia and the circle around Peter Ochs and then David Ford at Cambridge – to address issues of immediate theological concern such as justice, rights, community and cooperation, the last few years, perhaps reflecting the shift to the steer of the seminar from its new home at Georgetown, have focused on matters of formal theology and the doctrine of God, with sessions on divine creativity and human action as well as monotheisms. The remit of the seminar remains the same: deep and reflective engagement with each other’s tradition as well as a desire for the publications to engage a broadly well-read but non-specialist audience of ‘religious citizens’ of the world. The structure of this volume follows what is now an established pattern: each section has a Christian and Muslim author – an overview of the issue, an examination of the theme in the scriptures with a set of ‘texts’ appended, and examination of the theme in post-scriptural theological writings, a consideration of the theme in modern discourses and its wider impact, and finally a short section that draws upon the reflections of the participants put together by Lucinda Mosher.