A thoroughgoing examination of Maximus Confessor’s singular theological vision through the prism of Christ’s cosmic and historical Incarnation. 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. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of patristics, historical theology, systematic theology, and Byzantine studies.

The life, advice, and many marriages of a ninety-something Tasmanian domestic goddess, the real-life Dame Edna

Marjorie Bligh is the ninety-five-year-old Martha Stewart you didn't know you were missing. Does your goldfish have constipation? Feed it Epsom salts. Have you run out of blush? Cut a beet in half and slap it on your cheeks. Are there possums in your ceiling? "Housewife Superstar "will tell you how to get them out. Famous for never wasting a thing, Marjorie crochets her bedspreads from plastic bags and used panty hose, and protects the plants in her garden with bras. In 1958, upon entering the food and craft contests at her town show, she won in seventy-eight categories; the next year she won in seventy-two but was denied the trophy by jealous rivals.
Once divorced and twice widowed, Marjorie is, according to her colossal fan Barry Humphries (of Dame Edna fame), "no slouch in the matrimonial department." Her first husband, Cliff, was loving but turned brutal. Her second marriage, to preacher and schoolteacher Adrian, was punctuated by endless love notes, breakfasts in bed, and territorial fights with his adult daughters. She snagged her third husband, Eric--a bus driver--with promises of fruitcake and flirtatious glances in his rearview mirror. Marjorie designed two homes and a museum devoted to her creations, worked for half a century as a journalist and columnist, and raised two sons, all while building a devoted following. Danielle Wood's "Housewife Superstar "is an illuminating look at a treasure.