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This book establishes how the doctrine of divine simplicity was interwoven with the formation of a Christian Trinitarian understanding of God before Nicaea.For centuries, Christian theology affirmed God as simple (haplous) and Triune. But the doctrine of the simple Trinity has been challenged by modern critics of classical theism. How can God, conceived as purely one without multiplicity, be a Trinity? This book sets a new historical foundation for addressing this question by tracing how divine simplicity emerged as a key notion in early Christianity. Pui Him Ip argues that only in light of the Platonic synthesis between the Good and the First Principle (arche) can we make sense of divine simplicity as a refusal to associate any kind of plurality that brings about contraries in the divine life. This philosophical doctrine, according to Ip, was integral to how early Christians began to speak of the divine life in terms of a relationship between Father and Son.Through detailed historical exploration of Irenaeus, sources from the Monarchian controversy, and especially Origen's oeuvre, Ip contends that the key contribution from ante-Nicene theology is the realization that it is nontrivial to speak of the begetting of a distinct person (Son) from a simple source (Father). This question became the central problematic in Trinitarian theology before Nicaea and remained crucial for understanding the emergence of rival accounts of the Trinity ("e;pro-Nicene"e; and "e;anti-Nicene"e; theologies) in the fourth century. Origen and the Emergence of Divine Simplicity before Nicaea suggests a new revisional historiography of theological developments after Origen and will be necessary reading for serious students both of patristics and of the wider history of Christian thought.

Drawing on a wide context of bookmaking, this sweeping study traces fundamental changes in books made to support musical practice during the Carolingian Renaissance.During the late eighth and ninth centuries, there were dramatic changes in the way European medieval scribes made books for singers, moving from heavy reliance on unwritten knowledge to the introduction of musical notation into manuscripts. Well-made liturgical books were vital to the success of the Carolingian fight for Christian salvation: these were the basis for carrying out worship correctly, rendering it most effective in petitions to the Christian God. In Sounding the Word of God, Susan Rankin explores Carolingian concern with the expression and control of sound in writing-discernible through instructions for readers and singers visible in liturgical books. Her central focus is on books made for singers, including those made for priests. The emergence of musical notations for ecclesiastical chant and of books designed to accommodate those notations, Rankin concludes, are important aspects of the impact of Carolingian reforming zeal on material culture.The book has three sections. Part 1 considers late antique and early medieval texts, which deal with the value of singing and its necessary regulation. Part 2 describes and investigates techniques used by Carolingian scribes to provide instructions for readers and singers. The extant books themselves are the focus of part 3. Rankin's analysis of over two hundred manuscripts and extensive supporting images represents the work of a scholar who has spent a lifetime with the sources; her explication of the images, particularly those of the earlier manuscripts, changes the way in which musicologists and liturgical scholars will view the images. Indeed, it will change the way in which they approach the unfolding history of chant and liturgy in the Carolingian period.

Medicine and Shariah brings together experts from various fields, including clinicians, Islamic studies experts, and Muslim theologians, to analyze the interaction of the doctors and jurists who are forging the field of Islamic bioethics.Although much ink has been spilled in generating Islamic responses to bioethical questions and in analyzing fatwas, Islamic bioethics still remains an emerging field. How are Islamic bioethical norms to be generated? Are Islamic bioethical writings to be considered as part of the broader academic discourse in bioethics? What even is the scope of Islamic bioethics? Taking up these and related questions, the essays in Medicine and Shariah provide the groundwork for a more robust field. The volume begins by furnishing concepts and terms needed to map out the discourse. It concludes by offering a multidisciplinary model for ethical deliberation that accounts for the various disciplines needed to derive Islamic moral norms and to understand biomedical contexts. In between these bookends, contributors apply various analytic, empirical, and normative lenses to examine the interaction between biomedical knowledge (represented by physicians) and Islamic law (represented by jurists) in Islamic bioethical deliberation.By providing a multidisciplinary model for generating Islamic bioethics rulings, Medicine and Shariah provides the critical foundations for an Islamic bioethics that better attends to specific biomedical contexts and also accurately reflects the moral vision of Islam. The volume will be essential reading for bioethicists and scholars of Islam; for those interested in the dialectics of tradition, modernity, science, and religion; and more broadly for scholarly and professional communities that work at the intersection of the Islamic tradition and contemporary healthcare.Contributors: Ebrahim Moosa, Aasim I. Padela, Vardit Rispler-Chaim, Abul Fadl Mohsin Ebrahim, Muhammed Volkan Yildiran Stodolsky, Mohammed Amin Kholwadia, Hooman Keshavarzi, and Bilal Ali.

Using St. Thomas Aquinas's analogy of God as an architect, The Architecture of Law explores the metaphor of law as an architectural building project.

This much-needed anthology contains historically informed insights and analysis about Christian just war thinking and its application to contemporary conflicts.Recent Christian reflection on war has largely ignored questions of whether and how war can be just. The contributors to Just War and Christian Traditions provide a clear overview of the history and parameters of just war thinking and a much-needed and original evaluation of how Christian traditions and denominations may employ this thinking today.The introduction examines the historical development of Christian just war thinking, differences between just war thinking and the alternatives of pacifism and holy war, distinctions among Christian thinkers on issues such as the role of the state and "e;lesser evil"e; politics, and shared Christian theological commitments with public policy ramifications (for example, the priority of peace). The chapters that follow outline-from Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, and Anabaptist denominational perspectives-the positions of major church traditions on the ethics of warfare. The contributors include philosophers, military strategists, political scientists, and historians who seek to engage various and distinctive denominational approaches to the issues of church and state, war, peace, diplomacy, statecraft, and security over two thousand years of Christian history. Just War and Christian Traditions presents an essential resource for understanding the Judeo-Christian roots and denominational frameworks undergirding the moral structure for statesmanship and policy referred to as just war thinking. This practical guide will interest students, pastors, and lay people interested in issues of peace and security, military history, and military ethics.Contributors: John Ashcroft, Eric Patterson, J. Daryl Charles, Joseph E. Capizzi, Darrell Cole, H. David Baer, Keith J. Pavlischek, Daniel Strand, Nigel Biggar, Mark Tooley, and Timothy J. Demy.

The contributors to this original volume provide a new and nuanced approach to studying how discourses of religion shape public domains in sites of political contestation and "e;broken solidarities."e;Our public discourse is saturated with intractable debates about religion, race, gender, and nationalism. Examples range from Muslim women and headscarves to Palestine/Israel and to global anti-Black racism, along with other pertinent issues. We need fresh thinking to navigate the questions that these debates raise for social justice and solidarity across lines of difference. In Religion and Broken Solidarities, the contributors provide powerful reflections and wisdom to guide how we can approach these questions with deep ethical commitments, intersectional sensibilities, and intellectual rigor.Religion and Broken Solidarities traces the role of religious discourse in unrealized moments of solidarity between marginalized groups who ostensibly share similar aims. Religion, the contributors contend, cannot be separated from national, racial, gendered, and other ways of belonging. These modes of belonging make it difficult for different minoritized groups to see how their struggles might benefit from engagement with one another. The four chapters, which interpret historical and contemporary events with a sharp and critical lens, examine accusations of antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism in the Women's March in Washington, DC; the failure of feminists in Iran and Turkey to realize a common cause because of nationalist discourse concerning religiosity and secularity; Black Catholics seeking to overcome the problems of modernity in the West; and the disjunction between the Palestinian and Mizrahi cause in Palestine/Israel. Together these analyses show that overcoming constraints to solidarity requires alternative imaginaries to that of the modern nation-state.Contributors: Atalia Omer, Joshua Lupo, Perin E. Gurel, Juliane Hammer, Ruth Carmi, Brenna Moore, and Melani McAlister.

"Behind the wheel of this book is an insistent, humorous voice whose experiences have lent themselves to a deep, intimate knowledge of survival, driven by the pursuit of joy and exalted pleasure. Raised in and near auto body shops, Vickie Vâertiz remembers visiting them to elevate the family car to examine what's underneath, to see what's working and what's not. The poetry in this book is also a body shop, but instead we take our bodies, identities, desires, and see what's firing. In this shop we ask: What needs changing? How do our bodies transcend ways of being we have received so that we may become more ourselves?"--Page 4 of cover.

In this masterfully written book, Tomá¿ Halík calls upon Christians to touch the wounds of the world and to rediscover their own faith by loving and healing their neighbors.One of the most important voices in contemporary Catholicism, Tomá¿ Halík argues that Christians can discover the clearest vision of God not by turning away from suffering but by confronting it. Halík calls upon us to follow the apostle Thomas's example: to see the pain, suffering, and poverty of our world and to touch those wounds with faith and action. It is those expressions of love and service, Halík reveals, that restore our hope and the courage to live, allowing true holiness to manifest itself. Only face-to-face with a wounded Christ can we lay down our armor and masks, revealing our own wounds and allowing healing to begin.Weaving together deep theological and philosophical reflections with surprising, trenchant, and even humorous commentary on the times in which we live, Halík offers a new prescription for those lost in moments of doubt, abandonment, or suffering. Rather than demanding impossible, flawless faith, we can look through our doubt to see, touch, and confront the wounds in the hearts of our neighbors and-through that wounded humanity, which the Son of God took upon himself-see God.

This book uses insights from disability studies to understand in a deeper way the ethical implications that genetic technologies pose for Christian thought.Theologians have been debating genetic engineering for decades, but what has been missing from many theological debates is a deep concern for persons with genetic disabilities. In this ambitious and stimulating book, Devan Stahl argues that engagement with metaphysics and a theology of nature is crucial for Christians to evaluate both genetic science and the moral use of genetic technologies, such as human genetic engineering, gene therapy, genetic screenings, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and gene editing. Using theological notions of creation ex nihilo and natural law alongside insights from disability studies, the book seeks to recast the debate concerning genetic well-being. Following the work of Stanley Hauerwas, Stahl proposes the church as the locus for reimagining disability in a way that will significantly influence the debates concerning genetic therapies.Stahl's project in "e;genethics"e; proceeds with an acute awareness of her own liberal Protestant tradition's early embrace of the eugenics movement in the name of scientific and medical advancement, and it constructively engages the Catholic tradition's metaphysical approach to questions in bioethics to surpass limitations to Protestant thinking on natural law. Christianity has all too frequently been complicit in excluding, degrading, and marginalizing people with disabilities, but the new Christian metaphysics developed here by way of disability perspectives provides normative, theological guidance on the use of genetic technologies today. As Stahl shows in her study, only by heeding the voices of people with disabilities can Christians remain faithful to the call to find Christ in "e;the least of these"e; and from there draw close to God. This book will be of interest to scholars in Christian ethics, bioethics, moral theology, and practical theology.

Retrieving Freedom is a provocative, big-picture book, taking a long view of the "e;rise and fall"e; of the classical understanding of freedom.In response to the evident shortcomings of the notion of freedom that dominates contemporary discourse, Retrieving Freedom seeks to return to the sources of the Western tradition to recover a more adequate understanding. This book begins by setting forth the ancient Greek conception-summarized from the conclusion of D. C. Schindler's previous tour de force of political and moral reasoning, Freedom from Reality-and the ancient Hebrew conception, arguing that at the heart of the Christian vision of humanity is a novel synthesis of the apparently opposed views of the Greeks and Jews. This synthesis is then taken as a measure that guides an in-depth exploration of landmark figures framing the history of the Christian appropriation of the classical tradition. Schindler conducts his investigation through five different historical periods, focusing in each case on a polarity, a pair of figures who represent the spectrum of views from that time: Plotinus and Augustine from late antiquity, Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor from the patristic period, Anselm and Bernard from the early middle ages, Bonaventure and Aquinas from the high middle ages, and, finally, Godfrey of Fontaines and John Duns Scotus from the late middle ages. In the end, we rediscover dimensions of freedom that have gone missing in contemporary discourse, and thereby identify tasks that remain to be accomplished. Schindler's masterful study will interest philosophers, political theorists, and students and scholars of intellectual history, especially those who seek an alternative to contemporary philosophical understandings of freedom.

"Jordan Daniel Wood changes the trajectory of patristic scholarship with this comprehensive historical and systematic study of one of the most creative and profound thinkers of the patristic era: Maximus Confessor (560-662 CE). Wood's panoramic vantage on Maximus's thought emulates the theological depth of Hans Urs von Balthasar's Cosmic Liturgy while also serving as a corrective to that classic text. Maximus's theological vision may be summed up in his enigmatic assertion that 'the Word of God, very God, wills always and in all things to actualize the mystery of his Incarnation.' The Whole Mystery of Christ sets out to explicate this claim. Attentive to the various contexts in which Maximus thought and wrote--including the wisdom of earlier church fathers, conciliar developments in Christological and Trinitarian doctrine, monastic and ascetic ways of life, and prominent contemporary philosophical traditions--the book explores the relations between God's act of creation and the Word's historical Incarnation, between the analogy of being and Christology, and between history and the Fall, in addition to treating such topics as grace, deification, theological predication, and the ontology of nature versus personhood. Perhaps uniquely among Christian thinkers, Wood argues, Maximus envisions creatio ex nihilo as creatio ex Deo in the event of the Word's kenosis: the mystery of Christ is the revealed identity of the Word's historical and cosmic Incarnation."--Back cover.

How do we judge whether we should be willing to follow the views of experts or whether we ought to try to come to our own, independent views? This book seeks the answer in medieval philosophical thought.In this engaging study into the history of philosophy and epistemology, Peter Adamson provides an answer to a question as relevant today as it was in the medieval period: how and when should we turn to the authoritative expertise of other people in forming our own beliefs? He challenges us to reconsider our approach to this question through a constructive recovery of the intellectual and cultural traditions of the Islamic world, the Byzantine Empire, and Latin Christendom.Adamson begins by foregrounding the distinction in Islamic philosophy between taqlid, or the uncritical acceptance of authority, and ijtihad, or judgment based on independent effort, the latter of which was particularly prized in Islamic law, theology, and philosophy during the medieval period. He then demonstrates how the Islamic tradition paves the way for the development of what he calls a "e;justified taqlid,"e; according to which one develops the skills necessary to critically and selectively follow an authority based on their reliability. The book proceeds to reconfigure our understanding of the relation between authority and independent thought in the medieval world by illuminating how women found spaces to assert their own intellectual authority, how medieval writers evaluated the authoritative status of Plato and Aristotle, and how independent reasoning was deployed to defend one Abrahamic faith against the other. This clear and eloquently written book will interest scholars in and enthusiasts of medieval philosophy, Islamic studies, Byzantine studies, and the history of thought.

Seeking to understand the doctrine of justification by way of biblical hermeneutics, this book uncovers the differences between Martin Luther and the Council of Trent that set them on a collision course for conflict, and the church toward what has arguably been its most significant division in the West.As Catholics and Lutherans continue to engage in dialogue about their shared faith and differing confessions, the need remains for a discerning study of the ways in which the Bible functioned in the Reformation¿s central theological clash: the understanding and import of the doctrine of justification. Peter Folan¿s incisive analysis in this volume fulfills that need. Through a careful reading of the debate¿s most significant texts, he shows both how Martin Luther and the Council of Trent relied upon scripture to arrive at their respective formulations of the doctrine and how such seemingly divergent conclusions about the human person¿s salvation in Christ could be grounded in the same sacred book.This study begins with an examination of the key texts that Luther and his allies produced on justification and then turns to their Catholic respondents, whose work would ultimately inform the Council of Trent¿s decree on the doctrine. By comparing precisely which texts both parties relied upon to articulate and defend their positions, Folan puts into sharp relief how infrequently both sides made use of the same biblical passages and, when they did avail themselves of the same passages, just how distinct their interpretive tendencies were. This book will be a critical addition to the libraries of scholars and students in Catholic and Lutheran biblical hermeneutics, Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, ecumenical studies, and church history.

This volume examines the influence of African Catholics on the historical development of Black Christianity in America during the seventeenth century.Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation by focusing on the enduring legacy of seventeenth-century Afro-Atlantic Catholics in the broader history of African American Christianity. With homelands in parts of Africa with historically strong Portuguese influence, such as the Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome, and Kongo, these Africans embraced variants of early modern Portuguese Catholicism that they would take with them to the Americas as part of the forced migration that was the transatlantic slave trade. Their impact upon the development of Black religious, social, and political activity in North America would be felt from the southern states as far north as what would become New York.Dewulf's analysis focuses on the historical documentation of Afro-Atlantic Catholic rituals, devotions, and social structures. Of particular importance are brotherhood practices, which were critical in the dissemination of Afro-Atlantic Catholic culture among Black communities, a culture that was pre-Tridentine in nature and wary of external influences. These fraternal Black mutual-aid and burial society structures were critically important to the development and resilience of Black Christianity in America through periods of changing social conditions. Afro-Atlantic Catholics shows how a sizable minority of enslaved Africans actively transformed the American Christian landscape and would lay a distinctly Afro-Catholic foundation for African American religious traditions today. This book will appeal to scholars in the history of Christianity, African American and African diaspora studies, and Iberian studies.

This award-winning biography, now available for the first time in English, presents an illuminating introduction to Alasdair MacIntyre and locates his thinking in the intellectual milieu of twentieth-century philosophy.Winner of the prestigious 2005 Philippe Habert Prize, the late Emile Perreau-Saussine's Alasdair MacIntyre: Une biographie intellectuelle stands as a definitive introduction to the life and work of one of today's leading moral philosophers. With Nathan J. Pinkoski's translation, this long-awaited, critical examination of MacIntyre's thought is now available to English readers for the first time, including a foreword by renowned philosopher Pierre Manent.Amid the confusions and contradictions of our present philosophical landscape, few have provided the clarity of thought and shrewdness of diagnosis like Alasdair MacIntyre. In this study, Perreau-Saussine guides his readers through MacIntyre's lifelong project by tracking his responses to liberalism's limitations in light of the human search for what is good and true in politics, philosophy, and theology. The portrait that emerges is one of an intellectual giant who comes to oppose modern liberal individualism's arguably singular focus on averting evil at the expense of a concerted pursuit of human goods founded upon moral and practical reasoning. Although throughout his career MacIntyre would engage with a number of theoretical and practical standpoints in service of his critique of liberalism, not the least of which was his early and later abandoned dalliance with Marxism, Perreau-Saussine convincingly shows how the Scottish philosopher came to hold that Aristotelian Thomism provides the best resources to counter what he perceives as the failure of the liberal project. Readers of MacIntyre's works, as well as scholars and students of moral philosophy, the history of philosophy, and theology, will find this translation to be an essential addition to their collection.

A detailed study of the Catholic Church¿s acceptance of the historical-critical method and modernization through the pivotal work of European theologians and biblical scholars.One of the few topics in Catholic studies that demonstrates a marked about-face in theological attitudes within the Catholic Church is the reception of the historical-critical method in biblical exegesis and its dramatic rise from outright condemnation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its official acceptance by the 1990s. The Bible and the Crisis of Modernism tells the dramatic story of the ultimate acceptance of this modern method by the Catholic Church as it worked out the relationship between faith and reason in view of advances in the social and natural sciences. Particular attention to the contributions of Czech theologians to the field of biblical exegesis foregrounds the tensions at play in the church¿s gradual recognition of the value of the historical-critical method to a better understanding of the Christian scriptures.In this extensive study of the church¿s response to the historical-critical method, Petrá¿ek broaches wider topics, such as the relationship between the Catholic Church and society in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the modernization of the church in the face of a changing world, the balance between institutional authority and individual freedom of conscience, and the balance between scholarly independence and ecclesial convictions. The attitude of the Catholic Church to modern scholarly research in many ways reflects its complicated relationship to the modern world in general, as The Bible and the Crisis of Modernism shows. Scholars in biblical studies, Catholic studies, and the history of the church in the Czech Republic will find Petrá¿ek¿s work an enlightening addition to their collections.

Rene Girard's mimetic theory opens up ways to make sense of the tension between the progressive politics of George Eliot and the conservative moralism of her narratives.In this innovative study, Bernadette Waterman Ward offers an original rereading of George Eliot's work through the lens of Rene Girard's theories of mimetic desire, violence, and the sacred. It is a fruitful mapping of a twentieth-century theorist onto a nineteenth-century novelist, revealing Eliot's understanding of imitative desire, rivalry, idol-making, and sacrificial victimization as critical elements of the social mechanism. While the unresolved tensions between Eliot's realism and her desire to believe in gradual social amelioration have often been studied, Ward is especially adept at articulating the details of such conflict in Eliot's early novels. In particular, Ward emphasizes the clash between the ruthless mechanisms of mimetic desire and the idea of progress, or, as Eliot stated, "e;growing good"e;; Eliot's Christian sympathy for sacrificial victims against her general rejection of Christianity; and her resort to "e;Nemesis"e; to evade the systemic injustice of the social sphere. The "e;angels"e; in the title are characters who appear to offer a humanist way forward in the absence of religious belief. They are represented, in Girardian terms, as figures who try to rise above the snares of the mimetic machine to imitate Christ's self-sacrifice but are finally rendered ineffectual. Very few studies have tackled Eliot's short fiction and narrative poetry. Eliot's Angels gives the short fiction its due, and it will appeal to scholars of mimetic and literary theory, Victorianists, and students of the novel.

Arabic Disclosures presents readers with a comparative analysis of Arabic postcolonial autobiographical writing.In Arabic Disclosures Muhsin J. al-Musawi investigates the genre of autobiography within the modern tradition of Arabic literary writing from the early 1920s to the present. Al-Musawi notes in the introduction that the purpose of this work is not to survey the entirety of autobiographical writing in modern Arabic but rather to apply a rigorously identified set of characteristics and approaches culled from a variety of theoretical studies of the genre to a particular set of autobiographical works in Arabic, selected for their different methodologies, varying historical contexts within which they were conceived and written, and the equally varied lives experienced by the authors involved.The book begins in the larger context of autobiographical space, where the theories of Bourdieu, Bachelard, Bakhtin, and Lefebvre are laid out, and then considers the multiple ways in which a postcolonial awareness of space has impacted the writings of many of the authors whose works are examined. Organized chronologically, al-Musawi begins with the earliest modern example of autobiographical work in Taha Husayn's book, translated into English as The Stream of Days. Al-Musawi studies some of the major pioneers in the development of modern Arabic thought and literary expression: Jurji Zaydan, MikhaE il NuE aymah, Ahmad Amin, Salamah Musa, Sayyid Qutb, and untranslated works by the prominent critic and scholar Hammadi Sammud, the novelist E Aliah Mamduh, and others. He also examines the autobiographies of a number of women, including Nawal al-SaE dawi and Fadwa Tuqan, and fiction writers. The book draws a map of Arab thought and culture in its multiple engagements with other cultures and will be useful for scholars and students of comparative literature, Arabic studies, and Middle Eastern studies, intellectual thought, and history.

This comprehensive study investigates the role that Ignatian spirituality has played in the renewal of academic theology using three prominent Jesuits as case studies.Over several centuries, spirituality has come to define a field of concerns and themes increasingly treated separately from those of academic theology, as if the latter had little relation to the former. This raises the question for us today: How is spirituality related to the practice of theology? In Renewing Theology, J. Matthew Ashley provides an answer by turning to Ignatian spirituality and three prominent twentieth-century theologians who embraced its spiritual resources: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuria, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio-that is, Pope Francis.Ashley begins his investigation by considering the historical origins of the widening separation between spirituality and academic theology in the Christian West. He provides an initial overview of Ignatian spirituality, focusing on the openness and multidimensionality of Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, presented here as a text in which the conditions of modernity that defined its author's world are present, at least incipiently. Ashley then offers three case studies in order to show how each Jesuit-Rahner, Ellacuria, and Pope Francis-responded to the challenges of modernity in a way that is uniquely nourished and illuminated by themes constitutive of Ignatian spirituality. Their theologies, Ashley suggests, evince a particular clarity and force when the Ignatian spirituality that animates them is foregrounded. Providing new and productive avenues into understanding the theologies of these three individuals, this sophisticated and enlightening book will interest scholars and students of systematic theology, as well as readers who are interested in the future of theology and spirituality in a fragmented age.