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The legacy of late medieval Franciscan thought is uncontested: for generations, the influence of late-13th and 14th century Franciscans on the development of modern thought has been celebrated by some and loathed by others. However, the legacy of early Franciscan thought, as it developed in the first generation of Franciscan thinkers who worked at the recently-founded University of Paris in the first half of the 13th century, is a virtually foreign concept in the relevant scholarship. The reason for this is that early Franciscans are widely regarded as mere codifiers and perpetrators of the earlier medieval, largely Augustinian, tradition, from which later Franciscans supposedly departed. In...
Built space is both a physical entity as well as a socially and historically constructed place. It constantly interacts with human beings, affecting their behavior, thinking, and feeling. Doing religious work in a particular environment implies acknowledging the surroundings to be integral to theology itself. The contributors to this volume view buildings, scriptures, conversations, prayers, preaching, artifacts, music and drama, and built and natural surroundings as contributors to a contextual theology. The view of the environment in which religion is practiced as integrated with theology represents not just a new theme but also a necessity if one is to understand religion's own depth. Ref...
How can we think of the “aura” of (sacred) contexts and (sacred) works? How to think of individual and collective (esthetic/religious) experiences? What to make of the manipulative dimension of (religious and esthetic) “auratic” experiences? Is the work of art still capable of mediating the experience of the “sacred,” and under what conditions? What is the significance of the “eschatological” dimension of both art and religion (the sense of “ending”)? Can theology offer a way to reaffirm the creative capacities of the human being as something that characterizes the very condition of being human? This Special Issue aspires to contribute to the growing literature on contemporary art and religion, and to explore the new ways of thinking of art and the sacred (in their esthetic, ideological, and institutional dimensions) in the context of contemporary culture.
Numerous contemporary theologians depict divine glory as overwhelming to or competitive with human agency. In effect, this makes humanity a threat to God's glory, and causes God's glory to remain opaque to human enquiry and foreign to human life. Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar have avoided this tendency, instead depicting God's glory as enabling people to participate in glorifying God. Nevertheless both accounts fall short of their initial promise by giving one-dimensional accounts of human obedience to God within largely conventional divine command accounts of ethics. The form of human obedience they present as compatible with divine glory does not actively overwhelm the human, but r...
Are you puzzled by the nature and system of Aidan Nichols's theological contribution? Are you looking for a way to renew your appreciation for Nichols's theological activity? Do you want to clarify your understanding of Nichols's anthropological view? Father Engoulou Paul discusses these and many others interesting matters in this book. He carefully analyzes the different layers on which Nichols posits his philosophical and theological principles of order. He explains historically each foundational step from which Nichols draws his public doctrine of man and God. He arrives at the conclusion that man arrives at a self-knowledge and the knowledge of God, to the extent that he makes use of practical, liturgical, and rational concepts and forms embedded in Philosophy, theology, and visual art. Designed to be primarily a scholarly treatment of God's evidences into personal, communal nature of man, and the meaning of his life-work, this book is also a critical treatment of secularism and its attendants: liberalism, relativism and positivism.
A comprehensive collection exploring the role of ideas, institutions, and movements in the evolution of Russian religious thought, Contains cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of one of the richest aspects of Russian cultural and intellectual life, Considers the influence of Russian religious thought in the West and the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art, film, and the novel, An authoritative reference for students and scholars Book jacket.
Theological Interpretation of Scripture often begins and ends in the academy even though it is intended to find its bearing in the heart of the church. This volume seeks to bridge that gap by showing how the exegetical methods of TIS are themselves spiritually formative and naturally intersect into the life of the church.
The philosophical and theological study of aesthetics has a long and rich history, stretching back to Plato’s identification of ultimate goodness and beauty, together representing the eternal form. Recent trends in aesthetic theory, however, characterised by a focus on the ‘beautiful’ at the expense of the ‘good’, have made it an object of suspicion in the Orthodox Church. In its place, Greek theologians have sought to emphasise philokalia as a truer theological discipline. Seeking to reverse this trend, Chrysostomos Stamoulis brings into conversation a plethora of voices, from Church fathers to contemporary poets, and from a Marxist political theorist to a literary critic. Out of this dialogue, Stamoulis builds a model for the re-appropriation of Orthodoxy’s patristic and Byzantine past that is no longer defined in antithesis to the Western present. The openness he proposes allows us to perceive afresh the world ‘shot through with divinity’, if only we can lift our gaze to see it. Dismantling the false dichotomy, philokalia or aesthetics, is the first step.
This fascinating monograph employs a world system model as the basis for archaeological investigation of Russian America that relates local findings to global patterns. Author Aron Crowell examines Russian, Spanish, and American historical sources along with the archaeological evidence to uncover a preliterate culture that left no written record of its contact with European colonial powers. Crowell's particular subject is the indigenous Qikertarmiut people of Kodiak Island off the coast of Alaska. The special case of this tribe serves as a microcosm of the history of colonialism, demonstrating how early European capitalism impacted and, in some cases, destroyed indigenous societies.
This book provides the first comprehensive examination of Karl Barth’s view of beauty. For over fifty years, scholars have assumed Barth recovered traditional belief in God’s beauty but refused to entertain any relationship between this and more familiar natural and artistic beauties. Hans Urs von Balthasar was the first to offer this interpretation, and his conclusion has been echoed ever since, rendering Barth’s view of beauty irrelevant to work in theological aesthetics. This volume continues the late-twentieth-century revision of Balthasar’s interpretation of Barth by arguing that this too is a significant misunderstanding of his theology. Andrew Dunstan demonstrates that, throug...