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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs
Kelly Besecke offers an examination of reflexive spirituality, a
spirituality that draws equally on religions traditions and
traditions of reason in the pursuit of transcendent meaning. People
who practice reflexive spirituality prefer metaphor to literalism,
spiritual experience to doctrinal belief, religious pluralism to
religious exclusivism or inclusivism, and ongoing inquiry to
''final answers.'' Reflexive spirituality is aligned with liberal
theologies in a variety of religious traditions and among the
spiritual-but-not-religious. You Can't Put God in a Box draws on
original qualitative data to describe how people practiced
reflexive spirituality in an urban United Methodist church, an
interfaith adult education center, and a variety of secular
settings. The theoretical argument focuses on two kinds of
rationality that are both part of the Enlightenment legacy.
Technological rationality focuses our attention on finding the most
efficient means to a particular end. Reflexive spiritualists reject
forms of religiosity and secularity that rely on the biases of
technological rationality-they see these as just so many versions
of ''fundamentalism'' that are standing in the way of compelling
spiritual meaning. Intellectual rationality, on the other hand,
offers tools for analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of
religious ideas. Reflexive spiritualists embrace intellectual
rationality as a way of making religious traditions more meaningful
for modern ears. Besecke provides a window into the progressive
theological thinking of educated spiritual seekers and religious
liberals. Grounded in participant observation, her book uses
concrete examples of reflexive spirituality in practice to speak to
the classical sociological problem of modern meaninglessness.
Following on from his first book, 'Internal Revolution', 'A
Champion's Resolve' offers grace and inspiration to not only be
victorious, but to help others in their own walk with God. It's a
very transparent account of a modern man's pursuit and passion to
live a pure life, set apart for God. Containing personal testimony
backed up by solid Bible teaching it serves to ensure the reader
never gives up their own struggle. With the courage of a cage
fighter Rob Joy attacks the spiritual forces that have the
potential to rob the Christian of their effectiveness and
faithfulness.
One of the twentieth-century's masterpieces of Catholic theology.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC
BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship
Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected
open access locations. Latin is the language in which the New
Testament was copied, read, and studied for over a millennium. The
remains of the initial 'Old Latin' version preserve important
testimony for early forms of text and the way in which the Bible
was understood by the first translators. Successive revisions
resulted in a standard version subsequently known as the Vulgate
which, along with the creation of influential commentaries by
scholars such as Jerome and Augustine, shaped theology and exegesis
for many centuries. Latin gospel books and other New Testament
manuscripts illustrate the continuous tradition of Christian book
culture, from the late antique codices of Roman North Africa and
Italy to the glorious creations of Northumbrian scriptoria, the
pandects of the Carolingian era, eleventh-century Giant Bibles, and
the Paris Bibles associated with the rise of the university. In The
Latin New Testament, H.A.G. Houghton provides a comprehensive
introduction to the history and development of the Latin New
Testament. Drawing on major editions and recent advances in
scholarship, he offers a new synthesis which brings together
evidence from Christian authors and biblical manuscripts from
earliest times to the late Middle Ages. All manuscripts identified
as containing Old Latin evidence for the New Testament are
described in a catalogue, along with those featured in the two
principal modern editions of the Vulgate. A user's guide is
provided for these editions and the other key scholarly tools for
studying the Latin New Testament.
In 1636, residents at the convent of Santa Chiara in Carpi in
northern Italy were struck by an extraordinary illness that
provoked bizarre behavior. Eventually numbering fourteen, the
afflicted nuns were subject to screaming fits, throwing themselves
on the floor, and falling abruptly into a deep sleep. When medical
experts' cures proved ineffective, exorcists ministered to the
women and concluded that they were possessed by demons and the
victims of witchcraft. Catering to women from elite families, the
nunnery suffered much turmoil for three years and, remarkably,
three of the victims died from their ills. A maverick nun and a
former confessor were widely suspected to be responsible, through
witchcraft, for these woes. Based primarily on the exhaustive
investigation by the Inquisition of Modena, The Scourge of Demons
examines this fascinating case in its historical context. The
travails of Santa Chiara occurred at a time when Europe witnessed
peaks in both witch-hunting and in the numbers of people reputedly
possessed by demons. Female religious figures appeared particularly
prone to demonic attacks, and Counter-Reformation Church
authorities were especially interested in imposing stricter
discipline on convents. Watt carefully considers how the nuns of
Santa Chiara understood and experienced alleged possession and
witchcraft, concluding that Santa Chiara's diabolical troubles and
their denouement -- involving the actions of nuns, confessors,
inquisitorial authorities, and exorcists -- were profoundly shaped
by the unique confluence of religious, cultural, judicial, and
intellectual trends that flourished in the 1630s. Jeffrey R. Watt
is professor of history at the University of Mississippi.
The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature
explores the growth, makeup, and transformation of Chan (Zen)
Buddhist literature in late medieval China. The volume analyzes the
earliest extant records about the life, teachings, and legacy of
Mazu Daoyi (709-788), the famous leader of the Hongzhou School and
one of the principal figures in Chan history. While some of the
texts covered are well-known and form a central part of classical
Chan (or more broadly Buddhist) literature in China, others have
been largely ignored, forgotten, or glossed over until recently.
Poceski presents a range of primary materials important for the
historical study of Chan Buddhism, some translated for the first
time into English or other Western language. He surveys the
distinctive features and contents of particular types of texts, and
analyzes the forces, milieus, and concerns that shaped key
processes of textual production during this period. Although his
main focus is on written sources associated with a celebrated Chan
tradition that developed and rose to prominence during the Tang era
(618-907), Poceski also explores the Five Dynasties (907-960) and
Song (960-1279) periods, when many of the best-known Chan
collections were compiled. Exploring the Chan School's creative
adaptation of classical literary forms and experimentation with
novel narrative styles, The Records of Mazu and the Making of
Classical Chan Literature traces the creation of several
distinctive Chan genres that exerted notable influence on the
subsequent development of Buddhism in China and the rest of East
Asia.
Religions of the Constantinian Empire provides a synoptic review of
Constantine's relation to all the cultic and theological traditions
of the Empire during the period from his seizure of power in the
west in 306 cE to the end of his reign as autocrat of both east and
west in 337 cE. Divided into three parts, the first considers the
efforts of Christians to construct their own philosophy, and their
own patterns of the philosophic life, in opposition to Platonism.
The second assembles evidence of survival, variation or decay in
religious practices which were never compulsory under Roman law.
The 'religious plurality' of the second section includes those
cults which are represented as demonic burlesques of the sacraments
by Firmicus Maternus. The third reviews the changes, both within
the church and in the public sphere, which were undeniably prompted
by the accession of a Christian monarch. In this section on
'Christian polyphony', Mark Edwards expertly moves on from this
deliberate petrifaction of Judaism to the profound shift in
relations between the church and the civic cult that followed the
Emperor's choice of a new divine protector. The material in the
first section will be most familiar to the historian of philosophy,
that of the second to the historian of religion, and that of the
third to the theologian. All three sections make reference to such
factors as the persecution under Diocletian, the so-called 'edict
of Milan', the subsequent legislation of Constantine, and the
summoning of the council of Nicaea. Edwards does not maintain,
however, that the religious and philosophical innovations of this
period were mere by-products of political revolution; indeed, he
often highlights that Christianity was more revolutionary in its
expectations than any sovereign could afford to be in his acts.This
authoritative study provides a comprehensive reference work for
those studying the ecclesiastical and theological developments and
controversies of the fourth century.
Religious controversies frequently center on origins, and at the
origins of the major religious traditions one typically finds a
seminal figure. Names such as Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius, and Moses
are well known, yet their status as "founders" has not gone
uncontested. Does Paul deserve the credit for founding
Christianity? Is Laozi the father of Daoism, or should that title
belong to Zhuangzi? What is at stake, if anything, in debates about
"the historical Buddha"? What assumptions are implicit in the claim
that Hinduism is a religion without a founder? The essays in
Varieties of Religious Invention do not attempt to settle these
perennial arguments once and for all. Rather, they aim to consider
the subtexts of such debates as an exercise in comparative
religion: Who engages in them? To whom do they matter, and when?
When is "development" in a religious tradition perceived as
"deviation" from its roots? To what extent are origins thought to
define the "essence" of a religion? In what ways do arguments about
founders serve as a proxy for broader cultural, theological,
political, or ideological questions? What do they reveal about the
ways in which the past is remembered and authority negotiated? As
the contributors survey the landscape shaped by these questions
within each tradition, they provide insights and novel perspectives
about the religions individually, and about the study of world
religions as a whole.
Although disability imagery is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible,
characters with disabilities are not. The presence of the former
does not guarantee the presence of the later. While interpreters
explain away disabilities in specific characters, they celebrate
the rhetorical contributions that disability imagery makes to the
literary artistry of biblical prose and poetry, often as a trope to
describe the suffering or struggles of a presumably nondisabled
person or community. This situation contributes to the appearance
(or illusion) of a Hebrew Bible that uses disability as a rich
literary trope while disavowing the presence of figures or
characters with disabilities.
Isaiah 53 provides a wonderful example of this dynamic at work. The
"Suffering Servant" figure in Isaiah 53 has captured the
imagination of readers since very early in the history of biblical
interpretation. Most interpreters understand the servant as an
otherwise able bodied person who suffers. By contrast, Jeremy
Schipper's study shows that Isaiah 53 describes the servant with
language and imagery typically associated with disability in the
Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literature. Informed by
recent work in disability studies from across the humanities, it
traces both the disappearance of the servant's disability from the
interpretative history of Isaiah 53 and the scholarly creation of
the able bodied suffering servant.
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