The most important work of the towering intellectual of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae remains one of the great seminal works of philosophy and theology, while extending to subjects as diverse as law and government, sacraments and liturgy, and psychology and ethics. One of the largest volumes in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas tackles every virtue and every vice, laying out their relations, causes, and definitions.
Why do humans who seem to be exemplars of virtue also have the capacity to act in atrocious ways? What are the roots of tendencies for sin and evil? A popular assumption is that it is our animalistic natures that are responsible for human immorality and sin, while our moral nature curtails and contains such tendencies through human powers of freedom and higher reason. This book challenges such assumptions as being far too simplistic. Through a careful engagement with evolutionary and psychological literature, Celia Deane-Drummond argues that tendencies towards vice are, more often than not, distortions of the very virtues that are capable of making us good. After beginning with Augustine's classic theory of original sin, the book probes the philosophical implications of sin's origins in dialogue with the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Different vices are treated in both individual and collective settings in keeping with a multispecies approach. Areas covered include selfishness, pride, violence, anger, injustice, greed, envy, gluttony, deception, lying, lust, despair, anxiety, and sloth. The work of Thomas Aquinas helps to illuminate and clarify much of this discussion on vice, including those vices which are more distinctive for human persons in community with other beings. Such an approach amounts to a search for the shadow side of human nature, shadow sophia. Facing that shadow is part of a fuller understanding of what makes us human and thus this book is a contribution to both theological anthropology and theological ethics.
This book sets out some of the latest scientific findings around the evolutionary development of religion and faith and then explores their theological implications. This unique combination of perspectives raises fascinating questions about the characteristics that are considered integral for a flourishing social and religious life and allows us to start to ask where in the evolutionary record they first show up in a distinctly human manner. The book builds a case for connecting theology and evolutionary anthropology using both historical and contemporary sources of knowledge to try and understand the origins of wisdom, humility, and grace in ‘deep time’. In the section on wisdom, the book examines the origins of complex decision-making in humans through the archaeological record, recent discoveries in evolutionary anthropology, and the philosophical richness of semiotics. The book then moves to an exploration of the origin of characteristics integral to the social life of small-scale communities, which then points in an indirect way to the disposition of humility. Finally, it investigates the theological dimensions of grace and considers how artefacts left behind in the material record by our human ancestors, and the perspective they reflect, might inform contemporary concepts of grace. This is a cutting-edge volume that refuses to commit the errors of either too easy a synthesis or too facile a separation between science and religion. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of religious studies and theology – especially those who interact with scientific fields – as well as academics working in anthropology of religion.
Traditional philosophizing has generally depended upon reason as its primary access to truth. Subjective experiences such as feelings, the passions, and emotions have typically been viewed as secondary to reason, untrustworthy, or both. The Religious Existentialists and the Redemption of Feeling revisits how the movement of existentialism, via the religious existentialists, has contributed to a rethinking of the role of subjective experience, in contrast to the rationalist and idealist traditions, thus reframing the importance of feelings in general for the philosophical enterprise as a whole. Through the considerations of a variety of thinkers, this collection provides a fresh look at the contributions of twentieth-century existentialists, thereby re-contextualizing the very notion of existentialism, offering a powerful and genuine re-evaluation of the significance of subjectivity, and underscoring the continued relevance of the religious existentialists.
Righteous Indignation: Christian Philosophical and Theological Perspectives on Anger explores the philosophy of Christian anger—what anger is, what it means for God to be angry, and when anger is morally appropriate. The book explores specific biblical questions, such as how God communicates his anger in the Old Testament and whether anger at one's enemies in the imprecatory psalms is praiseworthy. In addition, some chapters focus on the practical application of anger to topics such as racial justice, criminal law, and civil discourse, and on the ideas of historical figures such as Thomas Aquinas and Jonathan Edwards. The purpose of the book is to provide multiple perspectives, examining anger from different angles, but most of all it is hoped that readers will come away with a better understanding of God's nature and how followers of Jesus ought to relate to those who wrong them.
This book is the first comprehensive study of images of rape in Italian painting at the dawn of the Renaissance. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Péter Bokody examines depictions of sexual violence in religion, law, medicine, literature, politics, and history writing produced in kingdoms (Sicily and Naples) and city-republics (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Bologna and Padua). Whilst misogynistic endorsement characterized many of these visual discourses, some urban communities condemned rape in their propaganda against tyranny. Such representations of rape often link gender and aggression to war, abduction, sodomy, prostitution, pregnancy, and suicide. Bokody also traces how the new naturalism in painting, introduced by Giotto, increased verisimilitude, but also fostered imagery that coupled eroticism and violation. Exploring images and texts that have long been overlooked, Bokody's study provides new insights at the intersection of gender, policy, and visual culture, with evident relevance to our contemporary condition.
Existential gratitude-gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole-is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time. A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character. Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analysing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism and theology.
In Natural and Political Conceptions of Community, Christoph Haar examines the role of the household community in Jesuit political thought. Introducing a fresh perspective on the early modern Jesuit academic discourse, the book explores how leading Jesuit thinkers drew on their theologically inspired conceptions of the family community to determine the usefulness as well as the limitations of the political realm. Natural and Political Conceptions of Community is about the place of the household in Scholastic theoretical works. The book demonstrates that Jesuits considered the human being as a household being when they determined the origin and purpose of the political community, producing a notion of politics that integrated their account of human nature with the sphere of law, rights, and virtues.
The crucial challenge for theology is that when it is read the reader thinks, ‘This is true.’ Recognizing claims that are ‘true’ enables readers to identify an honest expression of life’s complexities. The trick is to show that theological claims – the words that must be used to speak of God – are necessary if the theologian is to speak honestly of the complexities of life. The worst betrayal of the task of theology comes when the theologian fears that the words he or she must use are not necessary.
Like medieval maps with their intricate illustrations, unusual proportions, and omission of seemingly crucial details, medieval works of theology were designed to provide not an objective lay of the land for disinterested study but an itinerary for individuals traveling a specific route. To read was to be taken by the hand and to join fellow travelers on a journey of participation -- and ultimately union -- with God.
