Unbelievable

Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. His books include Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (edited with John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock), Cities of God, The Certeau Reader, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, True Religion, Christ and Culture and Religion and Political Thought.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction : A Winter's TalePart One : Belief in the MakingPart Two: BelievabilityPart Three: The Making of BeliefConclusion : Lost in ParadiseBibliographyIndex

'When we think of beliefs we think of views and ideas, while (a bit more technically) philosophers speak of 'propositional attitudes' or 'judgments'. In his extremely original new book Graham Ward explores operations of belief that go much deeper: dispositions (some of which act at the physiological as well as cultural level), prior to conscious attentiveness, and thus informing perception, interpretation and action prior to rationalization. This is a bold and brilliant thesis, cogently worked out by the author, with ramifications well beyond Christian theology.' - Fergus Kerr, OP, Honorary Fellow, University of Edinburgh, author of Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity and of Theology after Wittgenstein 'From ghosts in Cambridge to angels in Ely, from the Lascaux caves to the Brighton of Graham Greene, and from the neurons in our brains to the dust between galaxies, Graham Ward's astonishing ability to command both sciences and humanities is here brought to bear on the mystery of belief. We may think ours a sceptical age, but in fact we are all too gullible; enjoined from all sides to believe in this or that - from the supplements that will give us longer life, to the governments that will cut our taxes - we willingly succumb to such blandishments. For our ability to believe is what makes us truly human, and our ability to believe in believing - to have faith in what we cannot see - is what opens to us the mystery of a believable world; the strange congruence of imagination and reality. In this remarkable book - which is not a work of theology, though written by one of today's most astute and cultured theologians - we are led to see the mystery that we are to ourselves, and so too the possibility of the transcendent from which our world may come.' - Gerard Loughlin, Professor of Theology, Durham University, author of Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology