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God at Play (Book 11) by Daniel Soars
£32.00
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781531510091
Published:
01 Jul 2025
Format:
Paperback
Number of pages:
320 pages
Dimensions:
228.6x152.4mm
Weight:
0.000kgs
Author:
Book 11 from the Comparative Theology: Thinking Across Traditions series
The first comparative treatment of the topic of lila in Hindu and Christian traditions, this volume explores what it means to consider divine and human action under the categories of play, wit, drama, grace, and compassion God at Play presents a theological exploration of the multifaceted motif of lila across diverse Hindu and Christian landscapes and its wide-ranging connections to divine and human creativity. Given its ubiquity in Hindu theologies and life-forms, lila offers a rich comparative framework for exploring certain ways of understanding divine and human action as expressed in Hindu and Christian sacred texts, philosophical theology, and ritual practices. Though lila is often interpreted simply as "play," the essays in this volume reflect a far richer semantic and conceptual field, ranging from spontaneity and gratuitousness, through joy and humor, to mercy and compassion. By focusing on the different contexts in which lila i
The first comparative treatment of the topic of lila in Hindu and Christian traditions, this volume explores what it means to consider divine and human action under the categories of play, wit, drama, grace, and compassion God at Play presents a theological exploration of the multifaceted motif of lila across diverse Hindu and Christian landscapes and its wide-ranging connections to divine and human creativity. Given its ubiquity in Hindu theologies and life-forms, lila offers a rich comparative framework for exploring certain ways of understanding divine and human action as expressed in Hindu and Christian sacred texts, philosophical theology, and ritual practices. Though lila is often interpreted simply as "play," the essays in this volume reflect a far richer semantic and conceptual field, ranging from spontaneity and gratuitousness, through joy and humor, to mercy and compassion. By focusing on the different contexts in which lila is found in Hindu traditions and resisting any uniform translation of the term, the contributors to this volume avoid the risk of using predominantly western or Christian categories to understand the Hindu other. The volume thus explores how lila functions in a variety of distinctive philosophical, theological, and devotional ways across Hindu traditions, and listens for echoes in Christian understandings of the gratuitousness of the created order in relation to God. God at Play is a genuine experiment in deep learning across traditions. Each chapter reflects on what is learned by taking lila as the category of comparison and invites the reader to think about what these conversations add, confirm, or change in relation to earlier twentieth-century scholarship on play-not least, in terms of what difference it might make to understand human life as an imitation and a participation in the divine life of a playful deity.
About the Author: Michelle Voss (Afterword By) Michelle Voss is Professor of Theology at Emmanuel College in the Toronto School of Theology. She is a scholar of comparative theology, with a particular focus on Christian and Hindu contexts, and has also written widely about aesthetics, gender, and embodiment. Recent works include Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology, and The Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations, which she edited with Chad Bauman. Daniel Soars (Edited By) Daniel Soars teaches in the divinity department at Eton College and is book reviews editor for the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies. Recent publications include a co-edited volume entitled Hindu-Christian Dual Belonging and a monograph entitled The World and God Are Not-Two: A Hindu-Christian Conversation. He has published articles on Neoplatonism, the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and divine ideas, the Calcutta School of Indology, and Meister Eckhart.
| Number of pages | 320 |
|---|
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