Augustine's Early Theology of Image

Augustine's Early Theology of Image

Author: Gerald P. Boersma

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-01-15

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 019049350X

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What does it mean for Christ to be the "image of God"? And, if Christ is the "image of God," can the human person also unequivocally be understood to be the "image of God"? Augustine's Early Theology of Image examines Augustine's conception of the imago dei and makes the case that it represents a significant departure from the Latin pro-Nicene theologies of Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, and Ambrose of Milan only a generation earlier. Augustine's predecessors understood the imago dei principally as a Christological term designating the unity of divine substance. But, Gerald P. Boersma argues, Augustine affirms that Christ is an image of equal likeness, while the human person is an image of unequal likeness. Boersma's careful study thus argues that a Platonic and participatory evaluation of the nature of "image" enables Augustine's early theology of the image of God to move beyond that of his Latin predecessors and affirm the imago dei both of Christ and of the human person.


The Irrational Augustine

The Irrational Augustine

Author: Catherine Conybeare

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2006-04-20

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 019926208X

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Catherine Conybeare takes the notion of St Augustine as rigid and dogmatic Father of the Church and turns it on its head. She reads his early works to discover the anti-dogmatic Augustine who valued changeability and human interconnectedness and deplored social exclusion.


Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 1

Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 1

Author: Jason David BeDuhn

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-01-31

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0812207424

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Augustine of Hippo is history's best-known Christian convert. The very concept of conversio owes its dissemination to Augustine's Confessions, and yet, as Jason BeDuhn notes, conversion in Augustine is not the sudden, dramatic, and complete transformation of self we likely remember it to be. Rather, in the Confessions Augustine depicts conversion as a lifelong process, a series of self-discoveries and self-departures. The tale of Augustine is one of conversion, apostasy, and conversion again. In this first volume of Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, BeDuhn reconstructs Augustine's decade-long adherence to Manichaeism, apostasy from it, and subsequent conversion to Nicene Christianity. Based on his own testimony and contemporaneous sources from and about Manichaeism, the book situates many features of Augustine's young adulthood within his commitment to the sect, while pointing out ways he failed to understand or put into practice key parts of the Manichaean system. It explores Augustine's dissatisfaction with the practice-oriented faith promoted by the Manichaean leader Faustus and the circumstances of heightened intolerance, anti-Manichaean legislation, and pressures for social conformity surrounding his apostasy. Seeking a historically circumscribed account of Augustine's subsequent conversion to Nicene Christianity, BeDuhn challenges entrenched conceptions of conversion derived in part from Augustine's later idealized account of his own spiritual development. He closely examines Augustine's evolving self-presentation in the year before and following his baptism and argues that the new identity to which he committed himself bore few of the hallmarks of the orthodoxy with which he is historically identified. Both a historical study of the specific case of Augustine and a theoretical reconsideration of the conditions under which conversion occurs, this book explores the role religion has in providing the materials and tools through which self-formation and reformation occurs.


Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 2

Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 2

Author: Jason David BeDuhn

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-06-07

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 0812207858

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By 388 C.E., Augustine had broken with the Manichaeism of his early adulthood and wholeheartedly embraced Nicene Christianity as the tradition with which he would identify and within which he would find meaning. Yet conversion rarely, if ever, represents a clean and total break from the past. As Augustine defined and became a "Catholic" self, he also intently engaged with Manichaeism as a rival religious system. This second volume of Jason David BeDuhn's detailed reconsideration of Augustine's life and letters explores the significance of the fact that these two processes unfolded together. BeDuhn identifies the Manichaean subtext to be found in nearly every work written by Augustine between 388 and 401 and demonstrates Augustine's concern with refuting his former beliefs without alienating the Manichaeans he wished to win over. To achieve these ends, Augustine modified and developed his received Nicene Christian faith, strengthening it where it was vulnerable to Manichaean critique and taking it in new directions where he found room within an orthodox frame of reference to accommodate Manichaean perspectives and concerns. Against this background, BeDuhn is able to shed new light on the complex circumstances and purposes of Augustine's most famous work, The Confessions, as well as his distinctive reading of Paul and his revolutionary concept of grace. Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 2 demonstrates the close interplay between Augustine's efforts to work out his own "Catholic" persona and the theological positions associated with his name, between the sometimes dramatic twists and turns of his own personal life and his theoretical thinking.


Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 1

Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 1

Author: Jason BeDuhn

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780812242102

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Jason David BeDuhn reconstructs Augustine's decade-long adherence to Manichaeism, apostasy from it, and subsequent conversion to Nicene Christianity.


Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West

Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West

Author: Johannes van Oort

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9004439897

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This volume brings together the selected papers of the Fribourg-Utrecht symposium Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West, organized on behalf of the International Association of Manichaean Studies. It contains a considerable number of contributions by leading authorities on the subject, focussing on both the diffusion of Mani’s religion in the Latin West and its substantial impact upon St. Augustine.


The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950–2015: Volume Four

The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950–2015: Volume Four

Author: James Leo Garrett Jr.

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-05-06

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1532607393

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James Leo Garrett Jr. has been called "the last of the gentlemen theologians" and "the dean of Southern Baptist theologians." In The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950-2015, the reader will find a truly dazzling collection of works that clearly evince the meticulous scholarship, the even-handed treatment, the biblical fidelity, the wide historical breadth, and the honest sincerity that have made the work and person of James Leo Garrett Jr. so esteemed and revered among so many for so long. Volume 4 is the first of two volumes that will contain his theological essays. Spanning sixty-five years and touching on topics from Baptist history, theology, ecclesiology, church history and biography, religious liberty, Roman Catholicism, and the Christian life, The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett, Jr., 1950-2015 will inform and inspire readers regardless of their religious or denominational affiliations.


Temporality, Eternity, and Wisdom

Temporality, Eternity, and Wisdom

Author: Calvin L. Troup

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9781570033087

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Temporality, Eternity, and Wisdom invites readers into the text of Augustine's most widely read book to consider if rhetoric conflicts with Christianity and if Christians should condemn and abandon its use. In the Confessions, Augustine seems to answer such questions with an emphatic yes. Through a comprehensive review of the classic text, Calvin L. Troup argues that Augustine does indeed reject the dominant rhetorical tradition of the late Roman Empire, known today as the Second Sophistic. Troup notes, however, that Augustine's rejection of that rhetoric dates from long before his conversion. Troup argues that when Augustine converts, the semiotic integration of time and eternity in the incarnate Christ motivates him to espouse a substantial, practical alternative to the Second Sophistic that is nonetheless a form of rhetoric--a Christian rhetoric.