The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism

Lee Strobel

Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

@lt;DIV@gt;If you were a journalist, how would you handle a news story so big it would utterly eclipse all other world events? How thorough would your investigation be? How many hard-hitting questions would you ask? How carefully would you consult with top experts to get detailed, accurate answers? Lee Strobel knows firsthand. It was as an award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune and an avowed atheist that he first investigated the greatest news story of all -- the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, in The Case for Christ, he presents compelling evidence and expert testimony for the claims of Christianity. As a seasoned journalist with a Yale law background, Strobel systematically tracks down his leads and asks the blunt, tough questions you would want to ask -- questions that can make or break the Christian faith. He refuses contrived, simplistic answers. Instead, he pieces together hard facts through interviews with a dozen of the country's top scholars. Written in the style of a blockbuster investigative report, The Case for Christ is a provocative and spellbinding read, marshaling expert testimony and persuasive evidence. With unerring instincts, Strobel ferrets out: Historical ...

Slavoj Zizek, Slavoj A1/2ia3/4ek

The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity

One of our most daring intellectuals offers a Lacanian interpretation of religion, finding that early Christianity was the first revolutionary collective. Slavoj Zizek has been called "an academic rock star" and "the wild man of theory"; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality--New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism--and then tries to redeem the "materialist" kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a "postsecular" age, this book--with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy--is certain to stir controversy.

Brennan Manning

A Glimpse of Jesus: The Stranger to Self-Hatred

6, Beloved Christian writer Brennan Manning has long been illuminating the transforming power of God's constant love for us in his bestselling books. Now he identifies self-hatred as the reason that so many of us seem unable to accept this incredible, unchanging love. By clearly examining and understanding Jesus' life, we can put self-hatred behind us forever and truly be transformed in the ways God intended.