Books and Kindle Books
By Richard E. Creel
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Richard Creel received a B.A. from Millsaps College, a Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University, and taught philosophy and religion at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY, for thirty years. Richard has published 4 books, and 3 Kindle books, numerous articles, and served as president of the New York Philosophical Association. In 2002 he retired to his home town, Biloxi, MS, and has enjoyed editing work with the Magnolia Quarterly and private individuals.
Love of Jesus: The Heart of Christianity
Paperback
(Click on link to purchase book at Amazon.com)
If you
would like to read many reasons for admiring and loving Jesus,
then this is the book for you! If you admire and love Jesus but have
difficulty identifying yourself as a Christian or have difficulty
joining a church because of problems with this or that aspect of
Christianity, then this is a book for you, too! Among other things, Love
of Jesus points out that Jesus accepted and even encouraged doubters.
Important as scholarship is, Love of Jesus is not a scholarly book.
Rather, it reaches out to lay people, believers, and non-believers. It
takes at face value a wide range of New Testament stories about Jesus
and asks of them why we should admire and love the man who inspired
them. Then, hoping it has inspired the reader to admire and love
Jesus-or to admire and love him even more-Love of Jesus offers answers
to the questions, “How should we follow him?" and "How should we relate
to one another as Christians when we have different understandings of
Christianity?"
Divine Impassibility
(
It has been about fifty years since the topic of divine
impassibility was the subject of book-length philosophical
treatments in English. In recent years process and analytic philosophers
have returned this issue to the forefront of professional attention.
Divine Impassibility traces the issue of classical sources, relates the
positions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books, and surveys
the writings of contemporary British analytic philosophers such as Peter
Geach, Anthony Kenny, Richard Swinburne, John Hick, and H. P. Owen,
American analytic philosophers such as Norman Kretzmann, Eleonore Stump,
Nelson Pike, Robert Adams, and Bruce Reichenbach, and process
philosophers such as Charles Hartshorne and Lewis Ford. The author shows
that clear, adequate analysis of the issue must distinguish four
respects in which God might be passible or impassible: nature, will,
knowledge, and feeling. He shows also how decisions on this topic bear
on numerous others in philosophical theology such as creation,
eternality, evil, and human freedom. His creative proposals on these and
other topics attempt to go beyond the difficulties of both classical and
process conceptions of God.
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2nd ed. (originally published by Prentice-Hall) Paperback
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Thinking Philosophically
(Blackwell Publishers). Paperback and Hardcover
Thinking Philosophically
begins by helping the reader acquire a lively sense of what
philosophy is, how it began, why it persists, and how it is
related to other fields of study, especially science. |
Kindle Books Below. $1.00 each. Simply click on the link to purchase from Amazon.com
Witty, Wise, and Otherwise: Aphorisms & Observations about Life
Some people write novels. Some write short stories. My
genre is aphorisms--pithy observations about life. If you like the
aphorisms of people like Will Rogers and Mark Twain, then you may like
what I have to say. I'm sure that the caliber of my aphorisms is not
equal to theirs—but if it were you would have to pay a lot more money
for this book! Nonetheless, as my father used to say, "Even an old blind
hog finds an acorn once in a while," and I think you will find that once
in a while I have found an acorn, have formulated a "bon mot." In brief,
I will be sharing with you my thoughts about topics such as friendship,
love, marriage, politics, aging, religion, depression, and more. If I
make you smile or laugh, if I make you think about something in a way
you had not thought of it before, if I give you a helpful insight for
the living of your life, if I annoy you into disagreeing with me but
cause you to understand our disagreement in a deeper way than you
understood it before, I will have achieved what I am aiming at. Ideally,
of course, the delivery of aphorisms should be part of a dialogue, so I
would be delighted to hear your reactions to what I have to say. I'm not
through learning yet. And if I get a word of praise along the way, I
will be delighted.
Most of these stories are from everyday life. Some are cerebral; some are emotional; some are funny; some are sad. Some are autobiographical; some are fiction; some are a mixture. You can probably tell which stories are which, but knowing which is which is not important as long as a story entertains you, leads to a new insight, or provokes thought. The special virtue of a short short story is that if it's not good, at least it's not long! But surely "Herman's Tail of Woe" and "Maybe you, too, can be a SADIST" will prove worth your time. Then there is "Singing for the Deaf" and "Real Ghosts." Of course all of these stories are special to me. I smiled writing some and shed tears writing others. What is important now is whether they connect with you. I hope they do. I have tried to make it so. Bon voyage.
I am a layman, not a psychiatrist or psychologist. I have, however, suffered from depressions from as early as I can remember, so I know depression from the inside, and I have read and thought about it a great deal, and although I am not a member of the mental health profession, I did teach philosophy and religion for 30 years and published several books and numerous articles on those topics, including at times the topic of happiness, so I believe my professional background has enriched my understanding of depression and what I have to say about it. I certainly hope so, and I hope that what I say will help others who suffer from depression—or at least make them feel that in me they have a sympathetic fellow sufferer.