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Edwin Hall's accessible study of Jan van Eyck's 1434 painting known as the "Arnolfini Wedding" makes a unique contribution to the fascinating history of betrothal and marriage custom, ritual, and ceremony, and offers a compelling new interpretation of this wonderful work of art. 16 color plates. 62 b&w illustrations.
One in an ongoing series of esteemed and popular Bible commentary volumes based on the New International Version text.
In this addition to the well-received Paideia series, a respected senior New Testament scholar examines cultural context and theological meaning in Second Corinthians. Paideia commentaries explore how New Testament texts form Christian readers by ∙ attending to the ancient narrative and rhetorical strategies the text employs ∙ showing how the text shapes theological convictions and moral habits ∙ commenting on the final, canonical form of each New Testament book ∙ focusing on the cultural, literary, and theological settings of the text ∙ making judicious use of maps, photos, and sidebars in a reader-friendly format Students, pastors, and other readers will appreciate the historical, literary, and theological insight offered in this practical commentary.
In this volume, Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle probes significant concepts of the human spirit in Western religious culture across more than two millennia, from the book of Genesis to early modern science. The Human Spirit treats significant interpretations of human nature as religious in political, philosophical, and physical aspects by tracing its historical subject through the Priestly tradition of the Hebrew Bible and the writings of the apostle Paul among the Corinthians, the innovative theologians Augustine and Aquinas, the reformatory theologian Calvin, and the natural philosopher and physician William Harvey. Boyle analyzes the particular experiences and notions of these influential authors while she contextualizes them in community. She shows how they shared a conviction, although distinctly understood, of the human spirit as endowed by or designed by a divine source of everything animate. An original and erudite work that utilizes a rich and varied array of primary source material, this volume will be of interest to intellectual and cultural historians of religion, philosophy, literature, and medicine.
Middle Platonism explained how a transcendent principle could relate to the material world by positing an intermediary, modeled after the Stoic active cause, that mediated the supreme principle’s influence to the world while preserving its transcendence. Having similar concerns as Middle Platonism, Hellenistic Jewish sapientialism, early Christianity, and Gnosticism appropriated this intermediary doctrine as a means for understanding their relationship to God and to the cosmos. However, these traditions vary in their adaptation of this teaching due to their distinctive understanding of creation and humanity’s place therein. The Jewish writings of Philo of Alexandria and Wisdom of Solomon espouse a holistic ontology, combining a Platonic appreciation for noetic reality with an ultimately positive view of creation and its place in human fulfillment. The early Christians texts of 1 Cor 8:6, Col 1:15-20, Heb 1:2-3, and the prologue of John provide an eschatological twist to this ontology when the intermediary figure finds final expression in Jesus Christ. Contrarily, Poimandres (CH 1) and the Apocryphon of John, both associated with the traditional rubric “Gnosticism”, draw from Platonism to describe how creation is antithetical to human nature and its transcendent source.
While the canonical status of the Apocrypha has been understood differently within Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, their longstanding use within the Christian churches makes them worthy of careful study and reflection. This ACCS volume presents a worthy feast of patristic comment on these ancient and important texts.
This timely book brings together the stories of St Francis – his preaching to birds, rejection of wealth, caring for lepers, befriending animals and living simply, his poetry and hymnody in praise of creation that is still sung today – and the influential writings and examples of inspiring Franciscans who have followed him such as Clare, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and Angela of Foligno, and draws them into conversation with contemporary concerns for our planet. It gathers 800 years of accumulated wisdom and practical examples of how Franciscans have found ways to live at home and at peace with creation. It explores that long tradition and experience to ask what lessons can be drawn for today to challenge and enable readers to re-visit their own relationship with creation.
Natural law theory is controversial today because it presumes that there is a stable 'human nature' that is subject to a 'law.' How do we know that 'human nature' is stable and not ever-evolving? How can we expect 'law' not to constrict human freedom and potential? Furthermore if there is a 'law,' there must be a lawgiver. Matthew Levering argues that natural law theory makes sense only within a broader worldview, and that the Bible sketches both such a persuasive worldview and an account of natural law that offers an exciting portrait of the moral life. To establish the relevance of biblical readings to the wider philosophical debate on natural law, this study offers an overview of modern natural law theories from Cicero to Nietzsche, which reverse the biblical portrait by placing human beings at the center of the moral universe. Whereas the biblical portrait of natural law is other-directed, ordered to self-giving love, the modern accounts turn inward upon the self. Drawing on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Levering employs theological and philosophical investigation to achieve a contemporary doctrine of natural law that accords with the biblical witness to a loving Creator who draws human beings to share in the divine life. This book provides both an introduction to natural law theory and a compelling challenge to re-think current biblical scholarship on the topic.
Navigating through the Bible's complex style--which intermixes poetry characteristic of the Old Testament and elaborate sentences found in Greek oratory--the author reveals the philosophical, ethical, ethological, historical, psychological and scientific issues raised by the text and wrestles with their contemporary relevance.