Gabriel Marcel delivered two series of ten lectures on the ‘mystery of being’, comprised of ordered reflections on nature and the goal of philosophy from an existentialist standpoint. In the first volume, Reflection and Mystery, he explains that rather than proceeding by expounding a system, his philosophy proceeds in a fashion more akin to a journey. First, he examines the need for philosophy as arising from a certain exigence or disquiet in the seeker, through lived situations, expectations and truth. The lectures go on to explore the distinction between truth and universal validity alongside the relation of a sense of the ego to feeling and to situations in what he describes as our broken world. Volume I concludes with a discussion of the quality of mystery, which not only prompts philosophical enquiry but also coincides with the depths it reaches. Volume II takes the significance of mystery as its starting point, and Faith and Reality as its title. In the first four lectures, Marcel presents an existentialist response to metaphysics, outlining his understanding of existence and being and the value and purpose of ontology. He then distinguishes opinion and faith, characterising faith as ‘believing in’ rather than ‘believing that’. This leads neatly to his existentialist interpretation of Christian themes such as prayer and humility, freedom and grace, and then testimony, death and hope. He concludes by showing the boundaries of philosophy as he sees it, past which the ‘fires of revelation’ can take over.

Gabriel Marcel delivered two series of ten lectures on the ‘mystery of being’, comprised of ordered reflections on nature and the goal of philosophy from an existentialist standpoint. In the first volume, Reflection and Mystery, he explains that rather than proceeding by expounding a system, his philosophy proceeds in a fashion more akin to a journey. First, he examines the need for philosophy as arising from a certain exigence or disquiet in the seeker, through lived situations, expectations and truth. The lectures go on to explore the distinction between truth and universal validity alongside the relation of a sense of the ego to feeling and to situations in what he describes as our broken world. Volume I concludes with a discussion of the quality of mystery, which not only prompts philosophical enquiry but also coincides with the depths it reaches. Volume II takes the significance of mystery as its starting point, and Faith and Reality as its title. In the first four lectures, Marcel presents an existentialist response to metaphysics, outlining his understanding of existence and being and the value and purpose of ontology. He then distinguishes opinion and faith, characterising faith as ‘believing in’ rather than ‘believing that’. This leads neatly to his existentialist interpretation of Christian themes such as prayer and humility, freedom and grace, and then testimony, death and hope. He concludes by showing the boundaries of philosophy as he sees it, past which the ‘fires of revelation’ can take over.

Reconciliation and Religion is the second course of Gifford Lectures given by H. H. Farmer in 1951. Left unpublished until 1998, Farmer never felt completely satisfied with the reception of these lectures, even though they provide much of the theological underpinning for his previous course of lectures, Revelation and Religion, presented in 1950. In this volume, Farmer provides a survey of the uniqueness of the Christian message of reconciliation in what continues to be an expressly Christian interpretation of religion.

In Beyond Ideology, Ninian Smart faces up to the reality that in the world of humans there exist different Beyonds, or at the very least there are different maps of the world hereafter. From this it becomes clear that the problem of the plurality of religions cannot be left unaddressed. Smart’s consideration of the plurality of religions is completed in a much broader perspective than is usual.