This prize-winning text treats the subject of women in the context of the early Christian world, discussing ascetic renunciation and feminine advancement, female monasticism, and patristic exegesis of the story of Eve and Adam and the Song of Songs.
The Ayyubid and Mamluk periods were two of the most intellectually vibrant in Islamic history. Megan H. Reid's book, which traverses three centuries from 1170 to 1500, recovers the stories of medieval men and women who were renowned not only for their intellectual prowess but also for their devotional piety. Through these stories, the book examines trends in voluntary religious practice that have been largely overlooked in modern scholarship. This type of piety was distinguished by the pursuit of God's favor through additional rituals, which emphasized the body as an instrument of worship, and through the rejection of worldly pleasures, and even society itself. Using an array of sources including manuals of law, fatwa collections, chronicles, and obituaries, the book shows what it meant to be a good Muslim in the medieval period and how Islamic law helped to define holy behavior. In its concentration on personal piety, ritual, and ethics the book offers an intimate perspective on medieval Islamic society.
"Way of the Ascetics is a rich, compact introduction for modern readers to the Eastern Christian spiritual tradition that has been an inspiration to millions for centuries. These compassionate and insightful reflections on self-control and inner peace are meant to lead the readers to fuller union with God. The author makes a generous selection of succinct yet profound extracts from the spiritual Fathers and provides an illuminating commentary and practical applications for daily devotion. He tempers austerity with common sense, warmth, and even humor, as he urges us on our journey toward God. Written for lay persons living fully in the world as much as for clergy, Way of the Ascetics is an excellent resource for daily meditation, authentic spiritual guidance, and a revitalized religious life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Eschatology and ethics are joined at the hip, says Michael Allen, and both need theocentric reorientation. In Grounded in Heaven Allen retrieves the traditional concept of the beatific vision and seeks to bring Christ back into the heart of our theology and our lives on earth. Responding to the earthly-mindedness of much recent theology, Allen places his focus on God and the heavenly future while also appreciating ways in which the Reformed tradition provides a unique angle on broadly catholic concerns. Reaching back to classical ethics as well as its reformation by Calvin and other Reformed theologians, Grounded in Heaven offers a distinctly Protestant account of the ascetical calling to be heavenly-minded and to deny one’s self.
Winner of Biblical Archaeology Society Award - Best New Testament Book "We are left to construct a portrait of Paul with only scraps of what was once a large and imposing canvas - a small collection of letters and a historical narrative written a generation after his death. This reconstruction focuses on important parts of the image that usually fall in the shadows, parts dealing with Paul's sexual asceticism, his preoccupation with holiness - holy Spirit, holy community, and holy ethos - the evolution of his theology, and his emergence as a legendary figure. Although I have tried to follow the strict rules of historical investigation, of necessity much guesswork is involved in any exploration of Paul's life... All of these efforts are attempts to deal with the gaps in the text, understood in the broadest sense to include not just Paul's written words but also the culture, social world, and political realities surrounding them. - From the Introduction
Paul A. Wallace gathers the diaries and journals of John Heckewelder to prepare this engrossing account of a man who traveled extensively in the Western frontier in the service of the Moravian Church and the United States government, and recorded a great deal of early American history along the way. Heckewelder also lived among the Indians for nearly sixty years, learning their languages, sharing their activities, and wrote vividly of his life with them. Between 1762 and 1813 he crossed the Allegheny Mountains thirty times and made numerous trips down the Ohio River as far south as Kentucky, and along the Great Lakes to Detroit. Heckewelder tells of the first great migration of whites into the West, and also wrote of the early settlements in many important cities, including Detroit, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Schenectady and Albany.
This book represents the first continuous history of Sufism in Palestine. Covering the period between the rise of Islam and the spread of Ottoman rule and drawing on vast biographical material and complementary evidence, the book describes the social trajectory that Sufism followed. The narrative centers on the process by which ascetics, mystics, and holy figures living in medieval Palestine and collectively labeled "Sufis," disseminated their traditions, formed communities, and helped shape an Islamic society and space. The work makes an original contribution to the study of the diffusion of Islam's religious traditions and the formation of communities of believers in medieval Palestine, as well as the Islamization of Palestinian landscape and the spread of popular religiosity in this area. The study of the area-specific is placed within the broader context of the history of Sufism, and the book is laced with observations about the historical social dimensions of Islamic mysticism in general. Central to its subject matters are the diffusion of Sufi traditions, the extension of the social horizons of Sufism, and the emergence of institutions and public spaces around the Sufi friend of God. As such, the book is of interest to historians in the fields of Sufism, Islam, and the Near East.