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Written around 397, Confessions is one of the most referenced works in the Western literary tradition. The initial nine of 13 books draw a compelling narrative of the first 43 years of Augustine's life. The tenth book uses these experiences as a meditation on the nature of memory, and the final three contemplate the Bible's Book of Genesis.
The articles in The Bounds of Myth, edited by Gustavo Esparza and Nassim Bravo, shed light on the internal shapes of the mythological discourse, showing the way in which myth borders religion, science, literature, theology, i.e., other forms of rationality. The contributing authors of the volume claim that myth is a valid form of thought and that the former evolves within other forms of discourse, even though its composition is independent and even precedes the latter. The articles collected here demonstrate the importance of myth as a form of thought that is in constant development, a feature that shows in turn that in spite of its remote and archaic origin, myth remains a valuable and relevant tool to interpret our own culture. Contributors are: Nassim Bravo, Claudio Calabrese, Teresa Enríquez, Gustavo Esparza, Ethel Junco, Enrique Martínez, Cecilia Sabido and Jon Stewart.
Offering a re-reading of Erasmus's works, this book shows that emotion and affectivity were central to his writings. It argues that Erasmus's conception of emotion was highly complex and richly diverse by tracing how the Dutch humanist writes about emotion not only from different perspectives-theological, philosophical, literary, rhetorical, medical-but also in different genres. In doing so, this book suggests, Erasmus provided a distinctive, if not unique, Christian humanist emotional style. Demonstrating that Erasmus consulted multiple intellectual traditions and previous works in his thoughts on affectivity, The Renaissance of Feeling sheds light on how understanding emotions in late medi...
A bold rereading of Augustinian thought for a world still haunted by slavery Over the last two decades, scholars have made a striking return to the resources of the Augustinian tradition to theorize citizenship, virtue, and the place of religion in public life. However, these scholars have not sufficiently attended to Augustine’s embrace of the position of the Christian slaveholder. To confront a racialized world, the modern Augustinian tradition of political thought must reckon with its own entanglements with the afterlife of the white Christian master. Drawing Augustine’s politics and the resources of modern Black thought into extended dialogue, Matthew Elia develops a critical analysi...
In An Augustinian Christology: Completing Christ, Joseph Walker-Lenow advances a striking christological thesis: Jesus Christ, true God and true human, only becomes who he is through his relations to the world around him. To understand both his person and work, it is necessary to see him as receptive to and determined by the people he meets, the environments he inhabits, even those people who come to worship him. Christ and the redemption he brings cannot be understood apart from these factors, for it is through the existence and agency of the created world that he redeems. To pursue these claims, Walker-Lenow draws on an underappreciated resource in the history of Christian thought: St. Augustine of Hippo's theology of the 'whole Christ.' Presenting Augustine's christology across the full range of his writings, Joseph Walker-Lenow recovers a christocentric Augustine with the potential to transform our understandings of the Church and its mission in our world.
In 1992, Peter Ochs and a few Christian and Muslim colleagues began to gather small groups, in and outside the classroom, to practice close and attentive reading of the sacred Scriptures of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions. The hope was that members of different religions could hear one another through the patient, respectful reading of each other’s Scripture. Hearing each other, participants might enter into interreligious relationships that might point a way to the peaceful engagement of religions—especially those who, after September 11, 2001, too often found themselves at each other’s throats. It was a hope for religion without violence. Nearly thirty years later, this ...
This book challenges the status quo of studies in literature and religion by returning to “experience” as a bridge between theory and practice. Essays focus on keywords of religious experience and demonstrate their applications in drama, fiction, and poetry. Each chapter explores the broad significance of its keyword as a category of psychological and social behavior and tracks its unique articulation by individual authors, including Conrad, Beecher Stowe and Melville. Together, the chapters construct a critical foundation for studying literature not only from the perspectives of theology and historicism but from the ways that literary experience reflects, reinforces, and sometimes challenges religious experience.
Examines what theological reading is, and how it shapes the interpretation of Biblical text through explicit focus on the reader.
This volume collects significant new scholarship on the late mediaeval and early modern Bible, engaging with the work of theologians, the devotional needs of the laity and the shape their concerns gave to the most important book of the age.
Syncretism has been a part of Christianity from its very beginning, when early Christians expressed Jesus' Aramaic teachings in the Greek language. Defined as the phenomena of religious mixture, syncretism carries a range of connotations. In Christian theology, use of syncretism shifted from a compliment during the Reformation to an outright insult in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The term has a history of being used as a neutral descriptor, a pejorative marker, and even a celebration of indigenous agency. Its differing uses indicate the challenges of interpreting religious mixture, challenges which today relate primarily to race and revelation. Despite its pervasiveness across r...