Download or read book Confessions of a Rational Mystic written by Gregory Schufreider and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confessions of a Rational Mystic exposes both aspects of this transitional thinker through a multidimensional interpretation of his Pioslogion. It treats Anselm's famous proof for the existence of God as both a rational argument and an exercise in mystical theology, analyzing the logic of its reasoning while providing a phenomenological account of the vision of God that is embedded within it. Through a deconstructive reading of the cycle of prayer and proof that forms the overall structure of the text, not only is the argument returned to its place in the Proslogion as a whole, but the historic relationship that it attempts to establish between faith and reason is examined. In this way, the critical role that Anselm played in the history of philosophy is seen in a new light.
Download or read book Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent written by Robert McMahon and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Confessions, Proslogion, and Consolation of philosophy, like the Divine comedy, all enact Platonist accents. [These accents] generate implied meditative meanings, which scholars have explored only in part. Each work calls us to read forward, on its journey to understanding, and to meditate backwards on the stages of the ascent and the relations between them. Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Dante wrote for readers experienced in meditating on the Bible, adept at exploring relations between far distant passages They designed these works as spiritual exercises for the same kind of reading and meditations. This book uses literary analysis to discover new philosophical meaning in these works. --Book jacket.
Download or read book Ecstatic Confessions written by Martin Buber and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1996-11-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecstatic Confessions is Martin Buber's unique, personal gathering of the testimonies of mystics throughout the centuries expressing their encounters with the divine. It features the author's seminal introduction to mysticism, "Ecstasy and Confession," which probes the nature of what Buber terms the "most inward of all experiences. . . . God's highest gift." Buber sifted through texts from oriental, pagan, Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim sources down the centuries to cull those moving records that manage to convey some quality of an experience that is essentially beyond the power of words to capture. Ecstatic Confessions orchestrates these reports from the edge of human experience into a revealing look at the nature of the ecstatic experience itself and the tension arising from the mystic's compelling need to give witness to an event that can never truly be verbalized. Ecstatic Confessions illuminates the intellectual development of its author even as it probes the almost insurmountable barrier between language and authentic mystical experience, which is, in essence, beyond the grasp of rational constructs.
Download or read book A Cosmological Reformulation of Anselm s Proof That God Exists written by Richard Campbell and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Richard Campbell reformulates Anselm’s proof to show that factual evidence confirmed by modern cosmology validly implies that God exists. Anselm’s proof, which was never the “ontological argument” attributed to him, emerges as engaging with current philosophical issues concerning existence and scientific explanation.
Download or read book Purpose in the Universe written by Tim Mulgan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us.
Download or read book Cartesian Reflections written by John Cottingham and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-11 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Cottingham explores central areas of Descartes's rich and wide-ranging philosophical system, including his accounts of thought and language, of freedom and action, of our relationship to the animal domain, and of human morality and the conduct of life. He also examines ways in which his philosophy has been misunderstood. The Cartesian mind-body dualism that is so often attacked is only a part of Descartes's account of what it is to be a thinking, sentient, human creature, and the way he makes the division between the mental and the physical is considerably more subtle, and philosophically more appealing, than is generally assumed. Although Descartes is often considered to be one of the heralds of our modern secular worldview, the 'new' philosophy which he launched retains many links with the ideas of his predecessors, not least in the all-pervasive role it assigns to God (something that is ignored or downplayed by many modern readers); and the character of the Cartesian outlook is multifaceted, sometimes anticipating Enlightenment ideas of human autonomy and independent scientific inquiry, but also sometimes harmonizing with more traditional notions of human nature as created to find fulfilment in harmony with its creator.
Download or read book Claiming God written by Christine Helmer and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-11-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marilyn McCord Adams (1943-2017) was a world-renowned philosopher, a theologian who forever changed conversations about God and evil, a compelling preacher, and a fierce advocate for the full belonging of LGBTQ+ people, especially in churches. Over the course of her career, she mentored philosophers, theologians, pastors, and activists. In this book, authors from each of these fields engage and expand upon McCord Adams's work. Chapters address theodicy and the Holocaust, the nature and limits of human free will, sexual violence, Trinitarian relations, beatific vision, friendship, climate change, and how to protest heterosexism with truth, humor, and cookies. Examples of McCord Adams's revised Episcopal liturgies--previously unpublished--are used to affirm the expansive love of God. Accessible and varied, these essays attest to McCord Adams's vocational integration, as she claimed and proclaimed God's goodness in her different professional roles.
Download or read book Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word written by Eileen C. Sweeney and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweeney's study offers a comprehensive picture of Anselm's thought and its development, from the early, intimate, monastically based meditations to the later, public, proto-scholastic disputations
Download or read book The Christian Literary Imagination written by Michael Scott and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the Christian literary imagination? That question was put to the writers who have contributed to this collection of essays. They were asked, in answering it, to choose and write about a work of literature that seemed to them to illustrate one of the varied ways in which the Christian imagination sees the world, to define by example the meaning of the term. A variety of beliefs (or indeed unbeliefs) are expressed by the contributors and authors they selected to discuss. But what the essays have in common is an inquiry into the nature of belief and the means by which the reader’s imagination can itself be stirred through the work of the author under discussion. The book is structured chronologically, with essays on literature ranging from Anglo-Saxon England to 21st-Century America, but the contributors show a freedom of movement and reference across the centuries in their essays, sometimes deliberately juxtaposing the historical with the contemporary. What emerges from the collection is a shared inquiry into the enduring Christian vision of God’s engagement with the world.
Download or read book The Politics of Truth and Other Untimely Essays written by Ellis Sandoz and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the historical and theoretical underpinnings of personal liberty and free government and provides an analysis of the crisis of civic consciousness endangering both.
Download or read book Christian Humanism written by Alasdair A. MacDonald and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-03-25 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a misconception that Christianity and Humanism are in any way in conflict with each other. The present book shows that through many centuries, and especially in the Renaissance, the two stood in a relation that was mutually complementary. The contributions in this volume treat aspects and manifestations of this cultural symbiosis, and they throw new light on authors and texts both more and less familiar. The subject-areas discussed include: religion, history, philosophy, literature and education. The age of Renaissance and Reformation is the central focus, but earlier and later periods are also featured. The contributions comprise a Festschrift for Professor Arjo Vanderjagt, whose work deals centrally with both Christianity and Humanism. Contributors are Fokke Akkerman, István P. Bejczy, Alexander Broadie, Chris-toph Burger, Marcia L. Colish, Albrecht Diem, Stephen Gersh, Berndt Hamm, Volker Honemann, Adrie van der Laan, Alasdair A. MacDonald, Peter Mack, Zweder von Martels, Matthieu van der Meer, Hans Mooij, Simone Mooij-Valk, Just Niemeijer, John North, Willemien Otten, Jan Papy, Detlev Pätzold, Rob Pauls, Marc van der Poel, Burcht Pranger, Peter Raedts, Han van Ruler, Rudolf Suntrup, Jan R. Veenstra, and Ronald Witt.
Download or read book Irreconcilable Differences written by Jason C. Robinson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if philosophy, theology, and science spent a little more time together? These fields often seem at odds, butting metaphysical heads. Instead of talking at, how about talking with one another? This book engages three academic disciplines--distinct yet sharing much in common--in a slice of conversation and community in which participants have aimed at validating the other and the way the other sees the world. The result is a collection of essays united by a thread that can be hard to find in academia. In bringing together a wide range of contributors on a project that at first seemed unlikely, Irreconcilable Differences? is also a testament to the spirit of cooperation and hard work--evidence that small acts and events can make a big difference, and that sometimes all you need in order to make something good happen is an idea with a little support along the way. The editors of this collection are hopeful that its contributors and readers will keep looking for ways to bridge academic, social, and political gaps. We need to forge relationships based on personal knowledge and proper confidence seeking to make meaningful claims in an increasingly complex world.
Download or read book Thriving in Babylon written by David B. Capes and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This delightfully multifaceted volume, comprised of thoughtful essays by an esteemed array of cultural critics, probes the intersection of Christian faith and culture to honor the memory of A. J. "Chip" Conyers, a remarkably ecumenical Christian scholar and cultural "warrior" whose premature death in 2004 cut short a remarkable career in teaching and writing. As those who knew him can attest, Conyers lived his life at the intersection of Christian theology and cultural concern with a singular blend of astuteness, gracefulness, and Christian conviction. This festschrift, as esteemed theologian and Conyers's mentor Jurgen Moltmann indicates in the foreword, is intended to mirror Conyers's own commitment to incisive cultural criticism and theological faithfulness in the mold of the "great tradition." This is no small achievement even for so venerable a cast of scholars as the contributors to this volume, as Conyers crossed interdisciplinary boundaries--in a day of escalating hyper-specialization--with the greatest of ease. He was comfortable discussing contemporary church life or the christological controversy of the patristic era, Heideggerian hermeneutics or human dignity and the imago Dei, faith and the Enlightenment or the fatherhood of God, Catholic "substance" or Protestant reform. Yet Conyers always did this through the lens of historic Christian orthodoxy. Though he was a most incisive student of culture, in a most refreshing way he steered clear of being co-opted by the currents of culture. Neither retreating into pious devotionalism nor opting for the theologically unreflective activism that has become so chic in our post-consensus climate, he embodied a theological perspective that blends responsible cultural engagement with eschatological hope. The reader is sure to encounter the same blend in this festschrift, and to come away both challenged and edified toward fulfilling the message and hope of Conyers' life and work: to faithfully thrive in Babylon.
Download or read book A Historical Study of Anselm s Proslogion written by Toivo J. Holopainen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-08-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Historical Study of Anselm's Proslogion , Toivo J. Holopainen offers a new overall interpretation of Anselm’s Proslogion by providing a historical explanation for the distinctive combination of argument and devotion that this famous treatise exhibits.
Download or read book Anselm s Pursuit of Joy written by Gavin R. Ortlund and published by Catholic University of America Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interpretation of Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogion has a long and rich tradition. However, its study is often narrowly focused on its so-called “ontological argument.” As a result, engagement with the text of this work tends to be lopsided, and the prayerful purpose that undergirds the whole book is often completely ignored. Even the most rigorous engagements with the Proslogion often have little to say, for instance, about how the prayers of Proslogion 1, 14, and 18 contribute materially to Anselm’s argument, or how his doctrine of God develops organically from the divine formula in the early chapters to the doctrines of eternity, simplicity, and Trinity in later chapters. There are very few works that offer a sustained analysis to Anselm’s flow of thought throughout the entire Proslogion, and no one has explored how Anselm’s doctrine of creaturely joy in heaven in Proslogion 24-26 is a fitting climax and resolution to the book. Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy attempts a sustained, chapter-by-chapter textual analysis of the Proslogion, and offers the first effort to situate Anselm’s doctrine of heaven in Proslogion 24-26 as the climax of the earlier themes of Anselm’s work. Gavin Ortlund suggests that the basic purpose of Anselm’s argument in the Proslogion is to seek the visio Dei that he articulates as his soul’s deepest desire (Proslogion 1). While Anselm’s argument for God’s existence (Proslogion 2-4) is an important piece of this effort, it is only one step of a larger trajectory of thought that leads Anselm to meditate further on God’s nature as the highest good of the human soul (Proslogion 5-23), and then to anticipate the joy of possessing God in heaven (Proslogion 24-26). In other words, the establishment of God’s existence is only the penultimate consequence of Anselm’s famous formula “that than which nothing greater can be thought”—his ultimate concern is with the infinite creaturely joy that is entailed by his existence. The Proslogion is, far more than an argument for God’s existence, a meditation on God as the chief happiness of the human soul.
Download or read book The Blackwell Companion to the Theologians 2 Volume Set written by Ian S. Markham and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 1009 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume companion brings together a team of contemporary theologians and writers to provide substantial introductions to the key people who shaped the Christian story and tradition. A substantial two-volume reference work, bringing together over 75 entries on the most important and influential theologians in the history of Christianity Structured accessibly around five periods: early centuries, middle ages, reformation period, the Enlightenment, and the twentieth-century to the present A to Z entries range from substantial essays to shorter overviews, each of which locates the theologian in their immediate context, summarizes the themes of their work, and explains their significance Covers a broad span of theologians, from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, through to C. S. Lewis, James Cone, and Rosemary Radford Reuther Provides profiles of key Catholic, protestant, evangelical, and progressive theologians Includes a useful timeline to orientate the reader, reading lists, and a glossary of key terms
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Anselm written by Brian Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-02 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
