Maximos the Confessor is one of the most challenging and original Christian thinkers of all time. The Ambigua is his greatest philosophical and doctrinal work, in which daring originality, prodigious talent for speculative thinking, and analytical acumen are on lavish display. The result is a labyrinthine map of the mind's journey to God.
In today's church, use of the term transformation has become commonplace. Various perspectives are offered on what a Christian view of transformation is--and on how it may be achieved. These often-conflicting views suggest an ecclesial landscape characterized by pluralism, division, fragmentation, confusion, relativism, individualism, pragmatism, and subjectivism. Despite the current interest in transformational theology, the absence of a common, coherent, and integrated vision (and the lack of transformation) is often accepted and affirmed. Re-Envisioning Transformation looks at the possibility of moving toward a vision of transformational theology that is cohesive, unified, broad, effectual, and distinctly Christian. In this book, the contributions of two radically different"theologians of the Christian life" are examined. This provides the basis from which to develop a comprehensive and integrated framework of transformational theology--pointing God's people toward the need to express and live out a distinctly Christian vision.
This volume constitutes an attempt at bringing together philosophies of time—or more precisely, philosophies on time and, in a concomitant way, history—emerging from Christianity’s and Islam’s intellectual histories. Starting from the Neoplatonic heritage and the voice of classical philosophy, the volume enters the Byzantine and Arabic intellectual worlds up to Ibn Al-Arabi’s times. A conscious choice in this volume is not to engage with, perhaps, the most prominent figures of Christian and Arabic philosophy, i.e., Augustine on the one hand and Avicenna/Ibn Sina on the other, precisely because these have attracted so much attention due to their prominence in their respective traditions—and beyond. In a certain way, Maximus the Confessor and Ibn Al-Arabi—together with Al-Fārābi—emerge as alternative representatives of their two traditions in this volume, offering two axes for this endeavor. The synthesis of those approaches on time and history, their comparison rather than their mere co-existence, is left to the reader’s critical inquiry and philosophical investigation.
Matthew Briel examines, for the first time, the appropriation and modification of Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of providence by fifteenth-century Greek Orthodox theologian Gennadios Scholarios. Briel investigates the intersection of Aquinas’s theology, the legacy of Greek patristic and later theological traditions, and the use of Aristotle’s philosophy by Latin and Greek Christian thinkers in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. A Greek Thomist reconsiders our current understanding of later Byzantine theology by reconfiguring the construction of what constitutes “orthodoxy” within a pro- or anti-Western paradigm. The fruit of this appropriation of Aquinas enriches extant sources for historical and contemporary assessments of Orthodox theology. Moreover, Scholarios’s grafting of Thomas onto the later Greek theological tradition changes the account of grace and freedom in Thomistic moral theology. The particular kind of Thomism that Scholarios develops avoids the later vexing issues in the West of the de auxiliis controversy by replacing the Augustinian theology of grace with the highly developed Greek theological concept of synergy. A Greek Thomist is perfect for students and scholars of Greek Orthodoxy, Greek theological traditions, and the continued influence of Thomas Aquinas.
This book presents the proceedings of the fourteenth annual Building Bridges seminar, a gathering of scholar-practioners of Islam and Christianity for study of selected texts pertaining to a chosen theme. Part I includes two brilliant essays that set the context for the book: "Human Action within Divine Creation: A Muslim Perspective" by Mohsen Kadivar of Duke University and "On the Possibility of Holy Living: A Christian Perspective" by Lucy Gardner of Oxford. The rest of the book includes paired essays--one from a Muslim perspective, one from a Christian perspective--that introduce scriptural material with commentary to aid readers in conducting dialogical study. Contributors include Richard Bauckham of St. Andrews, Sohaira Azhir Siddiqui of Georgetown, Brandon Gallagher of Exeter, Maria Massai Dakake of George Mason, Velli-Matti K rkk inen of Fuller Theological Seminary, and Feras Q. Hamza of the University of Wollongong in Dubai, among others. In her conclusion, coeditor Lucinda Marshall digests the illuminating small-group conversations that lie at the heart of the Building Bridges initiative.
All three Synoptic Gospels tell the story of Jesus's transfiguration. Yet there has been surprisingly little written about this key event, and many readers struggle to understand its significance and place in redemptive history, let alone how it might be applied. Here, Patrick Schreiner provides a clear and accessible study of the transfiguration with an eye toward its theological significance and practical application. Namely, this event points to Jesus's double sonship, revealing the preexistent glory of the eternal Son and the future glory of the suffering Messianic Son. Further, the transfiguration points to Christians' own formation and transfiguration. Schreiner traces the transfiguration theme through Scripture and employs hermeneutical, trinitarian, and christological categories to assist his exegesis, thus challenging modern readings. This enlightening study will be of interest to students, pastors, and serious lay readers.
The Bright and the Good examines the connection between intellectual and moral virtues both through the history of philosophy and as it can be illustrated in comprehensive examinations of specific virtues. The first part of the book investigates the original assumptions posited by Ancient Western philosophers concerning the apparent connection between moral and intellectual virtues. The second part follows the assumptions through history from the Medieval and Modern periods of philosophy, noting how the assumption has been tweaked to accommodate specific ideological and scientific precepts. The third part showcases inquiries into specific virtues, taking the reader on an investigation unfettered by any specific time period or ideology so as to consider the apparent connection between the moral and the intellectual on a case-by-case basis. These essays relate both historical context and contemporary concerns and examine topics including vice, ignorance, hope, courage, patience, justice and mercy.
Within contemporary orthodoxy, debates over sex and gender have become increasingly polemical over the past generation. Beginning with questions around women’s ordination, arguments have expanded to include feminism, sexual orientation, the sacrament of marriage, definitions of family, adoption of children, and care of transgender individuals. Preliminary responses to each of these topics are shaped by gender essentialism, the idea that male and female are ontologically fixed and incommensurate categories with different sets of characteristics and gifts for each sex. These categories, in turn, delineate gender roles in the family, the church, and society. Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy offers an immanent critique of gender essentialism in the stream of the contemporary Orthodox Church influenced by the “Paris School” of Russian émigré theologians and their heirs. It uses an interdisciplinary approach to bring into conversation patristic reflections on sex and gender, personalist theological anthropology, insights from gender and queer theory, and modern biological understandings of human sexual differentiation. Though these are seemingly unrelated discourses, Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy reveals unexpected points of convergence, as each line of thought eschews a strict gender binary in favor of more open-ended possibilities. The study concludes by drawing out some theological implications of the preceding findings as they relate to the ordination of women to the priesthood, same-sex unions and sacramental understandings of marriage, definitions of family, and pastoral care for intersex, transgender, and nonbinary parishioners.
Anne of France (1461-1522), daughter of Louis XI and sister of Charles VIII, was one of the most powerful women of the fifteenth century. She was referred to by her contemporaries as Madame la Grande, and remained an activeand influential figure in France throughout her life. As the fifteenth century drew to a close, Anne composed a series of enseignements, "lessons", for her daughter Suzanne of Bourbon. These instructions represent a distillation of a lifetime's experience, and are presented through the portrait of an ideal princess, thus preparing her daughter to act both circumspectly and politically. Having steered her own course successfully, Anne offers her daughter advice intended to help her negotiate the difficult passage of a woman in the world of politics. This is the first translation into English of Anne of France's Lessons.
In two world wars waged within the life time of one generation Death reaped a prolific harvest. His most formidable scythe in former days was not war but pestilence. But since medical science has forged all kinds of weapons wherewith to strike that dreaded tool out of his knuckles he resorted in our lifetime to a new technique of morticulture which has yielded him un dreamt-of results. Using race hatred as fertilizer he has grown on the soil of the globe a crop of dead whose size baffles the imagination. The executioners whom he employed in Hitler's Germany kept careful record of the loathsome work they did for him in torture camps and gas chambers. They reckoned that six million Jews were delivered to Death by their efforts. In Holland alone only fifteen thousand of her one hundred and fifty thousand Jews survived the massacre. Death was the chief war profiteer. Though his inflated power was reduced by the overthrow of his Nazi henchmen, his innings are still large as he stalks across the world with his satellites Poverty, Hunger, and Disease.
