By "the fear of freedom" Greer means the unconscious flight from
the heavy burden of individual choice an open society lays upon its
members. The miraculous represents a heavenly power brought down to
earth and tied to the life of the community. Understanding how
miracles were perceived in the late antiquity requires us to put
aside the notion of a miracle as the violation of the natural
order. "Miracles" for the church fathers refers to anything that
evokes wonder. Rowan Greer is not concerned with conclusions about
the truth or falsity of the miracles reported in the ancient
sources. He is concerned with how the miracle stories shaped the
way people understood Christianity in the fourth and fifth
centuries.
Once the Church gained the predominance in the Empire as part of
the Constantinian revolution, most Christians thought that a new
Christian commonwealth was in the making. The miracles associated
with the cult of the saints (the martyrs and their relics) in the
Christian Empire were part of this sacralization. In the Roman
imperial church we find a tension between the Christian message,
which revolved around virtue and the individual, and corporate
piety that focused upon the empowering of the people of God.
With Augustine we find Christian Platonism transformed into a
"new theology" far more congruent with the corporate poetry that
had by then developed. An emphasis upon grace and upon God's
sovereignty fits a preoccupation with miracles better than the old
emphasis upon human freedom and virtue and sets the stages for the
Western Middle Ages and the cult of the saints, organized and made
central to Christian piety.
From a study of Roman imperial Christianity before the collapse
of the West we discover the tendency to substitute one kind of
freedom for another. Freedom as the capacity of human beings to
choose the good does not, of course, disappear, but on the whole it
is made subordinate to notions of God's sovereign grace and even to
an insistence upon the authority of the church.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
