Download or read book The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany 1300 1500 written by Bernard McGinn and published by Herder & Herder. This book was released on 2005 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most eagerly awaited book in Catholic publishing! Bernard McGinn, the greatest scholar of Western Christian mysticism, offers the fourth volume of his Presence of God series, covering the greatest mystics of Germany, including Jan van Ruusbroeck, Meister Eckhart, and John Tauler.
Download or read book A Companion to Meister Eckhart written by Jeremiah Hackett and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-12-07 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the latest European Research on Meister Eckhart since 1970, the volume provides a comprehensive rereading of the Life, Works, Career, Trial of Meister Eckhart. Central Philosophical ideas and sources with an account of his preaching, teaching and the reception of his work from the 14th to the 21st century.
Download or read book Mystical Theology and Continental Philosophy written by David Lewin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploration of the interface between mystical theology and continental philosophy is a defining feature of the current intellectual and even devotional climate. But to what extent and in what depth are these disciplines actually speaking to one another; or even speaking about the same phenomena? This book draws together original contributions by leading and emerging international scholars, delineating emerging debates in this growing and dynamic field of research, and spanning mystical and philosophical traditions from the ancient, to the medieval, modern, and contemporary. At the heart of which lies Meister Eckhart, perhaps the single most influential Christian mystic for modern times. The book is organised around significant historical and contemporary figures who speak across the intersections of philosophy and theology, offering new insights into key interlocutors such as Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Isaac Luria, Eckhart, Hegel, Heidegger, Marion, Kierkegaard, Deleuze, Laruelle, and Žižek. Designed both to contribute to current trends in mystical theology and philosophy, and elicit dialogue and debate from further afield, this book speaks within an emerging space exploring the retrieval of the mystical within a post-secular context.
Download or read book Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus written by Jason Aleksander and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus engages with the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy through the lens of the 15th century philosopher and theologian, Nicholas of Cusa. The volume comprises nineteen essays that break down the barriers between medieval and Renaissance studies, reinterpreting Cusanus’ place in the history of thought by exploring the archive that informed his thinking, while also interrogating his works by exploring them from the standpoint of their later reception by modern philosophers and theologians. The volume also offers tribute to the career of Donald F. Duclow, a leading scholar in the field of Cusanus studies in particular and of the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy more generally.
Download or read book Ringleaders of Redemption written by Kathryn Dickason and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In popular thought, Christianity is often figured as being opposed to dance. Conventional scholarship traces this controversy back to the Middle Ages. Throughout the medieval era, the Latin Church denounced and prohibited dancing in religious and secular realms, often aligning it with demonic intervention, lust, pride, and sacrilege. Historical sources, however, suggest that medieval dance was a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. During the High and Late Middle Ages, Western theologians, liturgists, and mystics not only tolerated dance; they transformed it into a dynamic component of religious thought and practice. This book investigates how dance became a legitimate form of devotion in Christian culture. Sacred dance functioned to gloss scripture, frame spiritual experience, and imagine the afterlife. Invoking numerous manuscript and visual sources (biblical commentaries, sermons, saints' lives, ecclesiastical statutes, mystical treatises, vernacular literature, and iconography), this book highlights how medieval dance helped shape religious identity and social stratification. Moreover, this book shows the political dimension of dance, which worked in the service of Christendom, conversion, and social cohesion. In Ringleaders of Redemption, Kathryn Dickason reveals a long tradition of sacred dance in Christianity, one that the professionalization and secularization of Renaissance dance obscured, and one that the Reformation silenced and suppressed.
Download or read book Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and the Intellect written by K. Meredith Ziebart and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-11-14 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and the Intellect, K.M. Ziebart argues convincingly that Cusanus’ epistemology was a direct response to late-medieval debates over the relation between faith and reason—one which sought to resolve these debates by introducing a controversially strong integration of philosophy and theology. By examining his works in the context of debates with his peers, Ziebart shows how and why Cusanus came to articulate a theory of knowledge in which faith is posited as inherent to the very structure of mind, as the vis iudiciaria, or power of judgment. This well-grounded study sheds new light on the Cusan philosophy and expands our view of a crucial, liminal period in European intellectual history.
Download or read book Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism written by Amy Hollywood and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism is a multi-authored interdisciplinary guide to the study of Christian mysticism, with an emphasis on the 3rd through the 17th centuries. Written by leading authorities and younger scholars from a range of disciplines, the volume both provides a clear introduction to the Christian mystical life and articulates a bold new approach to the study of mysticism.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite written by Mark Edwards and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook contains forty essays by an international team of experts on the antecedents, the content, and the reception of the Dionysian corpus, a body of writings falsely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, a convert of St Paul, but actually written about 500 AD. The first section contains discussions of the genesis of the corpus, its Christian antecedents, and its Neoplatonic influences. In the second section, studies on the Syriac reception, the relation of the Syriac to the original Greek, and the editing of the Greek by John of Scythopolis are followed by contributions on the use of the corpus in such Byzantine authors as Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, Niketas Stethatos, Gregory Palamas, and Gemistus Pletho. In the third section attention turns to the Western tradition, represented first by the translators John Scotus Eriugena, John Sarracenus, and Robert Grosseteste and then by such readers as the Victorines, the early Franciscans, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dante, the English mystics, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino. The contributors to the final section survey the effect on Western readers of Lorenzo Valla's proof of the inauthenticity of the corpus and the subsequent exposure of its dependence on Proclus by Koch and Stiglmayr. The authors studied in this section include Erasmus, Luther and his followers, Vladimir Lossky, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jacques Derrida, as well as modern thinkers of the Greek Church. Essays on Dionysius as a mystic and a political theologian conclude the volume.
Download or read book Faith Reason and Theosis written by Aristotle Papanikolaou and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theosis shapes contemporary Orthodox theology in two ways: positively and negatively. In the positive sense, contemporary Orthodox theologians made theosis the thread that bound together the various aspects of theology in a coherent whole and also interpreted patristic texts, which experienced a renaissance in the twentieth century, even in Orthodox theology. In the negative sense, contemporary theologians used theosis as a triumphalistic club to beat down Catholic and Protestant Christians, claiming that they rejected theosis in favor of either a rationalistic or fideistic approach to Christian life. The essays collected in this volume move beyond this East–West divide by examining the relation between faith, reason, and theosis from Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives. A variety of themes are addressed, such as the nature–grace debate and the relation of philosophy to theology, through engagement with such diverse thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, John Wesley, Meister Eckhart, Dionysius the Areopagite, Symeon the New Theologian, Panayiotis Nellas, Vladimir Lossky, Martin Luther, Martin Heidegger, Sergius Bulgakov, John of the Cross, Delores Williams, Evagrius of Pontus, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The essays in this book are situated within a current thinking on theosis that consists of a common, albeit minimalist, affirmation amidst the flow of differences. The authors in this volume contribute to the historical theological task of complicating the contemporary Orthodox narrative, but they also continue the “theological achievement” of thinking about theosis so that all Christian traditions may be challenged to stretch and shift their understanding of theosis even amidst an ecumenical celebration of the gift of participation in the life of God.
Download or read book The Christian Path in a Pluralistic World and the Study of Spirituality written by Diana Villegas and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author discusses the importance of the theological study of spirituality as necessary for interpreting one's Christian path in a pluralistic world.
Download or read book Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 813 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although it seems that erotic love generally was the prevailing topic in the medieval world and the Early Modern Age, parallel to this the Ciceronian ideal of friendship also dominated the public discourse, as this collection of essays demonstrates. Following an extensive introduction, the individual contributions explore the functions and the character of friendship from Late Antiquity (Augustine) to the 17th century. They show the spectrum of variety in which this topic appeared ‐ not only in literature, but also in politics and even in painting.
Download or read book Making Confession Hearing Confession written by Annemarie S. Kidder and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is confession obsolete? Far from it, Annemarie Kidder has learned. At unexpected times and in unexpected places, we hear the "confession" of a friend or a perfect stranger; at crucial times in our lives we tend to unburden ourselves of matters that trouble our conscience. While some churches offer opportunities for sacramental confession, others provide counseling outside the sacramental framework. Some confessional practices have been secularized, as in psychotherapy and professional counseling; others find expression in evangelistic crusades and Christian 12-step programs. Meanwhile, the scope of "confessors" has widened to include men and women religious and lay spiritual directors. Addressing this broad audience, Kidder reviews the origins and history of confession from biblical times to the early modern era, examines contemporary practices of confession, penance, and spiritual direction that have emerged in the twentieth century, and offers practical considerations for evaluating and improving one's own practice, either as confessor or penitent. Readers will be grateful for this concise historical overview of confession and Kidder's assurance that, despite its undervalued or misunderstood practice, this "cure of souls" is anything but obsolete.
Download or read book The Absent Image written by Elina Gertsman and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Charles Rufus Morey Award from the College Art Association Guided by Aristotelian theories, medieval philosophers believed that nature abhors a vacuum. Medieval art, according to modern scholars, abhors the same. The notion of horror vacui—the fear of empty space—is thus often construed as a definitive feature of Gothic material culture. In The Absent Image, Elina Gertsman argues that Gothic art, in its attempts to grapple with the unrepresentability of the invisible, actively engages emptiness, voids, gaps, holes, and erasures. Exploring complex conversations among medieval philosophy, physics, mathematics, piety, and image-making, Gertsman considers the concept of nothingness in concert with the imaginary, revealing profoundly inventive approaches to emptiness in late medieval visual culture, from ingenious images of the world’s creation ex nihilo to figurations of absence as a replacement for the invisible forces of conception and death. Innovative and challenging, this book will find its primary audience with students and scholars of art, religion, physics, philosophy, and mathematics. It will be particularly welcomed by those interested in phenomenological and cross-disciplinary approaches to the visual culture of the later Middle Ages.
Download or read book Atone written by Brandon D. Lundy and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-02-26 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between religion and conflict has generated considerable academic and political debate. Although the majority of religions and spiritual traditions are replete with wisdom that propagates a broader unity among human beings, these same examples have been used to legitimize hatred and fear. While some studies claim that religion facilitates peacebuilding, reconciliation, and healing, others argue that religion exacerbates hostility, instigates vengeance-seeking behaviors, and heightens conflict. But religion does not act by itself, human beings are responsible for acts of peace or conflict, of division or reconciliation, in the name of religion. This book addresses these rather complex issues from the perspective of reconciliation, or atonement, to advance both the frontiers of knowledge and the global search for alternative paths to peace. The contributions in the volume focus in three areas: (1) Reconciling Religious Conflicts, (2) Reconciling Conflict through Religion, and (3) Religious Reconciliations. In each of these sections scholars, practitioners, and religious leaders address specific examples that highlight the complex intersections of religious practices with global conflict and reconciliation efforts. This informative and provocative book is relevant for students and faculty in peace and conflict studies, religious studies, humanities, social sciences, and provides insights useful to practitioners and professionals working in peacebuilding and international development seeking to promote effective resolution and reconciliation efforts.
Download or read book The Mystical Presence of Christ written by Richard Kieckhefer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mystical Presence of Christ investigates the connections between exceptional experiences of Christ's presence and ordinary devotion to Christ in the late medieval West. Unsettling the notion that experiences of seeing Christ's figure or hearing Christ speak are simply exceptional events that happen at singular moments, Richard Kieckhefer reveals the entanglements between these experiences and those that occur through the imagery, language, and rituals of ordinary, everyday devotional culture. Kieckhefer begins his book by reconsidering the "who" and the "how" of Christ's mystical presence. He argues that Christ's humanity and divinity were equally important preconditions for encounters, both exceptional and ordinary, which Kieckhefer proposes as existing on a spectrum of experience that moves from presupposition to intuition and finally to perception. Kieckhefer then examines various contexts of Christ manifestations—during prayer, meditation, and liturgy, for example—with attention to gender dynamics and the relationship between saintly individuals and their hagiographers. Through penetrating discussions of a diverse set of texts and figures across the long fourteenth century (Angela of Foligno, the nuns of Helfta, Margery Kempe, Dorothea of Montau, Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, and Walter Hilton, among others), Kieckhefer shows that seemingly exceptional manifestations of Christ were also embedded in ordinary religious experience. Wide-ranging in scope and groundbreaking in methodology, The Mystical Presence of Christ is a magisterial work that rethinks the interplay between the exceptional and the ordinary in the workings of late medieval religion.
Download or read book God the Revealed written by Michael Welker and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2013-12-14 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God revealed himself in Jesus Christ! Christian faith has confessed and proclaimed this message for nearly two thousand years. But what does it really mean? In God the Revealed Michael Welker delves into this declaration and shows how it offers genuine insight into Christian faith. He asks Who is Jesus Christ for us today? and approaches the answer from five different angles -- the historical Jesus, the resurrection, the cross, the reign of Christ, and eschatology. Uniquely, Welker argues for the need to place historical Jesus research in a Christology and proposes a Fourth Quest for the historical Jesus.
