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Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality (Paperback)
Thomas Arentzen, Ashley M. Purpura, Aristotle Papanikolaou; Foreword by Metropolitan Ambrosius Helsinki; Contributions by Thomas Arentzen, …
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R1,010
Discovery Miles 10 100
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Sex is a difficult issue for contemporary Christians, but the past
decade has witnessed a newfound openness regarding the topic among
Eastern Orthodox Christians. Both the theological trajectory and
the historical circumstances of the Orthodox Church differ
radically from those of other Christian denominations that have
already developed robust and creative reflections on sexuality and
sexual diversity. Within its unique history, theology, and
tradition, Orthodox Christianity holds rich resources for engaging
challenging questions of sexuality in new and responsive ways. What
is at stake in questions of sexuality in the Orthodox tradition?
What sources and theological convictions can uniquely shape
Orthodox understandings of sexuality? This volume aims to create an
agora for discussing sex, and not least the sexualities that are
often thought of as untraditional in Orthodox contexts. Through
fifteen distinct chapters, written by leading scholars and
theologians, this book offers a developed treatment of sexuality in
the Orthodox Christian world by approaching the subject from
scriptural, patristic, theological, historical, and sociological
perspectives. Chapters devoted to practical and pastoral insights,
as well as reflections on specific cultural contexts, engage the
human realities of sexual diversity and Christian life. From
re-thinking scripture to developing theologies of sex, from
eschatological views of eros to re-evaluations of the Orthodox
responses to science, this book offers new thinking on pressing,
present-day issues and initiates conversations about homosexuality
and sexual diversity within Orthodox Christianity.
This book examines the many ways Byzantines lived with their trees.
It takes seriously theological and hagiographic tree engagement as
expressions of that culture's deep involvement-and even
fascination-with the arboreal. These pages tap into the current
attention paid to plants in a wide range of scholarship, an
attention that involves the philosophy of plant life as well as
scientific discoveries of how communicative trees may be, and how
they defend themselves. Considering writings on and images of trees
from Late Antiquity and medieval Byzantium sympathetically, the
book argues for an arboreal imagination at the root of human
aspirations to know and draw close to the divine.
This book examines the many ways Byzantines lived with their trees.
It takes seriously theological and hagiographic tree engagement as
expressions of that culture's deep involvement-and even
fascination-with the arboreal. These pages tap into the current
attention paid to plants in a wide range of scholarship, an
attention that involves the philosophy of plant life as well as
scientific discoveries of how communicative trees may be, and how
they defend themselves. Considering writings on and images of trees
from Late Antiquity and medieval Byzantium sympathetically, the
book argues for an arboreal imagination at the root of human
aspirations to know and draw close to the divine.
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Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality (Hardcover)
Thomas Arentzen, Ashley M. Purpura, Aristotle Papanikolaou; Foreword by Metropolitan Ambrosius Helsinki; Contributions by Thomas Arentzen, …
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R3,253
Discovery Miles 32 530
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
Sex is a difficult issue for contemporary Christians, but the past
decade has witnessed a newfound openness regarding the topic among
Eastern Orthodox Christians. Both the theological trajectory and
the historical circumstances of the Orthodox Church differ
radically from those of other Christian denominations that have
already developed robust and creative reflections on sexuality and
sexual diversity. Within its unique history, theology, and
tradition, Orthodox Christianity holds rich resources for engaging
challenging questions of sexuality in new and responsive ways. What
is at stake in questions of sexuality in the Orthodox tradition?
What sources and theological convictions can uniquely shape
Orthodox understandings of sexuality? This volume aims to create an
agora for discussing sex, and not least the sexualities that are
often thought of as untraditional in Orthodox contexts. Through
fifteen distinct chapters, written by leading scholars and
theologians, this book offers a developed treatment of sexuality in
the Orthodox Christian world by approaching the subject from
scriptural, patristic, theological, historical, and sociological
perspectives. Chapters devoted to practical and pastoral insights,
as well as reflections on specific cultural contexts, engage the
human realities of sexual diversity and Christian life. From
re-thinking scripture to developing theologies of sex, from
eschatological views of eros to re-evaluations of the Orthodox
responses to science, this book offers new thinking on pressing,
present-day issues and initiates conversations about homosexuality
and sexual diversity within Orthodox Christianity.
According to legend, the Virgin appeared one Christmas Eve to an
artless young man standing in one of Constantinople's most famous
Marian shrines. She offered him a scroll of papyrus with the
injunction that he swallow it, and following the Virgin's command,
he did so. Immediately his voice turned sweet and gentle as he
spontaneously intoned his hymn "The Virgin today gives birth." So
was born the career of Romanos the Melodist (ca. 485-560), one of
the greatest liturgical poets of Byzantium, author of at least
sixty long hymns, or kontakia, that were chanted during the night
vigils preceding major feasts and festivals. In The Virgin in Song,
Thomas Arentzen explores the characterization of Mary in these
kontakia and the ways in which the kontakia echoed the cult of the
Virgin. He focuses on three key moments in her story as marked in
the liturgical calendar: her encounter with Gabriel at the
Annunciation, her child's birth at Christmas, and the death of her
son on Good Friday. Consistently, Arentzen contends, Romanos
counters expectations by shifting emphasis away from Christ himself
to focus on Mary-as the subject of the erotic gaze, as a
breastfeeding figure of abundance and fertility, and finally as an
authoritatively vocal woman who conveys the secrets of her son and
the joys of the resurrection. Through his hymns, Romanos inspired
an affective relationship between Mary and his audience, bringing
the human and the holy into dialogue. By plumbing her emotional
depths, the poet traces her process of understanding as she
apprehends the mysteries that she embodies. By giving her a
powerful voice, he grants subjectivity to a maiden who becomes a
mediator. Romanos shaped a figure, Arentzen argues, who related
intimately to her flock in a formative period of Christian
orthodoxy.
This collection explores how the body became a touchstone for late
antique religious practice and imagination. When we read the
stories and testimonies of late ancient Christians, what different
types of bodies stand before us? How do we understand the range of
bodily experiences-solitary and social, private and public-that
clothed ancient Christians? How can bodily experience help us
explore matters of gender, religious identity, class, and
ethnicity? The Garb of Being investigates these questions through
stories from the Eastern Christian world of antiquity: monks and
martyrs, families and congregations, and textual bodies.
Contributors include S. Abrams Rebillard, T. Arentzen, S. P. Brock,
R. S. Falcasantos , C. M. Furey, S. H. Griffith, R. Krawiec, B.
McNary-Zak, J.-N. Mellon Saint-Laurent, C. T. Schroeder, A. P.
Urbano, F. M. Young
This book explores how the Virgin Mary's life is told in hymns,
sermons, icons, art, and other media in the Byzantine Empire before
AD 1204. A group of international specialists examines material and
textual evidence from both Byzantine and Muslim-ruled territories
that was intended for a variety of settings and audiences and seeks
to explain why Byzantine artisans and writers chose to tell stories
about Mary, the Mother of God, in such different ways. Sometimes
the variation reflected the theological or narrative purposes of
story-tellers; sometimes it expressed their personal spiritual
preoccupations. Above all, the variety of aspects that this holy
figure assumed in Byzantium reveals her paradoxical theological
position as meeting-place and mediator between the divine and
created realms. Narrative, whether 'historical', theological, or
purely literary, thus played a fundamental role in the development
of the Marian cult from Late Antiquity onward.
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