Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--Stanford University, 2014, titled Divine institutions: religious practice, economic development, and social transformation in mid-Republican Rome.
"As a minister of the ostrogothic regime in the time of Theoderic, Cassiodorus had as brilliant a political career as any Roman of the late empire. Around 538 CE, on the eve of the Byzantine reconquest of Italy, he published a collection of his state letters under the title of Variae (TTH 12), and disappeared from the public record. Half a century later, dying at his country estate in Calabria, he left behind the exemplars for another world of texts: that of the Christian universe of Scripture, now encompassing the Seven Liberal Arts. The grand plan of this new dispensation is contained in the two books of his Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning, a work which would be excerpted and copied in monasteries throughout the Latin Middle Ages. The Institutions appears here in the first new English translation in more than fifty years, with explanatory notes and a historical and interpretative introduction that takes full account of recent scholarship. The treatise On the Soul, which was originally published as the thirteenth book of the Variae, is included as an appendix. For a long while mistakenly revered as a saviour of classical civilization, in recent times more often dismissed as an anachronism, Cassiodorus emerges from this edition of the Institutions as an exceptional but nonetheless representative exponent of the learned Christian culture of later Latin Antiquity. The work will be of interest to historians of the late Roman empire and the early Christian church, medievalists, and students of the classical tradition."-- Publisher description.
Christian Thomasius's natural jurisprudence is essential to understanding the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany, where his importance was comparable to that of John Locke's in England. First published in 1688, Thomasius's Institutionum jurisprudentiae divinae (Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence) attempted to draw a clear distinction between natural and revealed law and to emphasize that human reason was able to know the precepts of natural law without the aid of Scripture. Thomasius also argued that his orthodox Lutheran opponents had failed to understand this distinction and thereby had confused reason and Scripture. In addition to the Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, this volume contains significant selections from his Fundamenta juris naturae et gentium (Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations), published in 1705. In Foundations Thomasius significantly revised the theory he had put forward in the Institutes, and much of the Foundations therefore is a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on his earlier ideas. These works are a companion to Thomasius's Essays on Church, State, and Politics, and together they provide the first-ever English presentation of this preeminent German thinker.
Divine Variations offers a new account of the development of scientific ideas about race. Focusing on the production of scientific knowledge over the last three centuries, Terence Keel uncovers the persistent links between pre-modern Christian thought and contemporary scientific perceptions of human difference. He argues that, instead of a rupture between religion and modern biology on the question of human origins, modern scientific theories of race are, in fact, an extension of Christian intellectual history. Keel's study draws on ancient and early modern theological texts and biblical commentaries, works in Christian natural philosophy, seminal studies in ethnology and early social science, debates within twentieth-century public health research, and recent genetic analysis of population differences and ancient human DNA. From these sources, Keel demonstrates that Christian ideas about creation, ancestry, and universalism helped form the basis of modern scientific accounts of human diversity—despite the ostensible shift in modern biology towards scientific naturalism, objectivity, and value neutrality. By showing the connections between Christian thought and scientific racial thinking, this book calls into question the notion that science and religion are mutually exclusive intellectual domains and proposes that the advance of modern science did not follow a linear process of secularization.
This book uniquely explores the impact of indigenous ideology and thought on everyday life in Northeast Africa. Furthermore, in highlighting the diversity in pre-Christian, pre-Islamic regional beliefs and practices that extend beyond the simplistic political arguments of the current dominant narratives, the study shows that for millennia complex indigenous institutions have bound people together beyond the labels of Christianity and Islam; they have sustained peace through cultural exchange and tolerance (if not always complete acceptance). Through recent archaeological and ethnographic research, the concepts, landscapes, materials and rituals believed to be associated with the indigenous and shared culture of the Sky-God belief are examined. The author makes sense, for the first time, of the relationship between the notion of sacred fertility and a number of regional archaeological features and on-going ancient practices including FGM, spirit possessions, and other physically invasive practices and the ritual hunt. The book explores one of the most important pilgrimage centres in Somaliland and Somalia, the sacred landscape of Saint Aw-Barkhadle, founded ca. 12th century AD. It is believed to be the burial place of the rulers of the first Muslim Ifat and Awdal dynasties in this region, and potentially the lost first capital of Awdal kingdom before Harar. This ritual centre is seen as a ‘microcosm’ of the ancient Horn of Africa with its exceptional multi-religious heritage, through which the author lays out a locally appropriate archaeological interpretational framework, the "Ritual Set," also applied here to the Ethiopian sites of Tiya, Sheikh Hussein Bale, Aksum and Lalibela, setting these places against a wider historical background of indigenous Sky-God belief. This archaeological study of sacred landscapes, stelae traditions, ancient Christian and medieval Muslim centres of Northeast Africa is the first to put forward a theoretical and analytical framework for the interpretation of the shared regional heritage and the indigenous archaeology of the region. It will be invaluable to archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and policymakers interested in Africa and beyond.
"His book provides a comprehensive survey of G. W. Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the sciences of life, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. It is shown that these sundry interests were not only relevant to his core philosophical interests, but indeed often provided the insights that in part led to some of his most familiar philosophical doctrines, including the theory of corporeal substance and the theory of organic preformation"--Provided by publisher.
The Angelic Conflict rages around us. This is not a world war. This is a war beyond the world—an invisible warfare between the forces of Satan and the forces of God. Ultimately God will win. Long before the advent of human history, Satan arrogantly rebelled against his Creator. He wanted to make himself “like the Most High” and recruited one-third of the angels to follow him. God justly condemned Satan and his fallen angels to spend eternity in the lake of fire. Satan appealed the sentence, claiming unfairness—questioning how a loving God could cast His creatures into hell. Planet Earth is now the battleground where Satan seeks to outmaneuver God, prove the judgment unfair, and foil the execution of his sentence. Satan will not suffer defeat without an intense struggle. God created man to resolve this angelic conflict. Human volition is the focal point of the firestorm. Will man choose God’s grace plan of salvation or follow the arrogant system of Satan? Through the freewill decisions of mankind, God proves to Satan His perfect justice and love again and again. As believers, it is imperative we understand this spiritual warfare that surrounds us. Satan uses every ruse at his command to derail and discredit those who are in Christ. For our defense, God has provided an overwhelming advantage in a powerful suit of spiritual armor. With it we can withstand the “flaming missiles of the evil one” and become heroes in the invisible war. God is glorified as we lock shields and stand firm on His power and Word.
Within the Christian theological tradition there has always been a variety of perspectives on hell, usually distinguished according to their views about the duration of hell’s torments for the damned. Traditionalists maintain that the suffering of the damned is everlasting. Universalists claim that eventually every person is redeemed and arrives in heaven. And conditional immortalists, also known as “conditionalists” or “annihilationists,” reject both the concept of eternal torment as well as universal salvation, instead claiming that after a finite period of suffering the damned are annihilated. Conditionalism has enjoyed somewhat of a revival in scholarly circles in recent years, buoyed by the influential biblical defense of the view by Edward Fudge. However, there has yet to appear a book-length philosophical defense of conditionalism . . . until now. In Hell and Divine Goodness, James Spiegel assesses the three major alternative theories of hell, arriving at the conclusion that the conditionalist view is, all things considered, the most defensible position on the issue.
Provides a sustained account of how the thought of Aquinas may be used in conjunction with contemporary science to deepen our understanding of divine action and address such issues as creation, providence, prayer, and miracles.