Download Free Readings In Christian Humanism Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Readings In Christian Humanism and write the review.

"Christian humanism is an aspect of the gospel showing new signs of life. Long neglected and often misunderstood, Christian humanism is nothing other than the traditional message of Christianity with the accent on how the coming of Christ into the world implies God's loving care for human creatures and all that affects our well being. . . . 'The Case for Christian Humanism' will have fulfilled its purpose if readers discover that the mainstream of traditional Christianity offers magnificent resources to anyone desiring a fully human life." - from the Introduction. "Franklin and Shaw provide a convincing case for the essential computability of humanism and the Christian faith. Careful definitions and learned historical inquiry clear the ground for substantial commentary on the 'humanism' (properly understood) of the Bible, worship, and theology. The arguments give pause, and then illuminate a set of fruitful conjunctions too often abandoned by partisans of a non-Christian humanism or an anti-humanistic Christianity." - Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame.
2013 CCED Book Prize winner Incarnational Humanism in an updated edition with a new foreword and preface. Having left its Christian roots behind, the West faces a moral, spiritual and intellectual crisis. It has little left to maintain its legacy of reason, freedom, human dignity and democracy. Far from capitulating, Jens Zimmermann believes the church has an opportunity to speak a surprising word into this postmodern situation grounded in the Incarnation itself that is proclaimed in Christian preaching and eucharistic celebration. To do so requires that we retrieve an ancient Christian humanism for our time. Only this will acknowledge and answer the general demand for a common humanity beyond religious, denominational and secular divides. Incarnational Humanism thus points the way forward by pointing backward. Rather than resorting to theological novelty, Zimmermann draws on the rich resources found in Scripture and in its theological interpreters ranging from Irenaeus and Augustine to de Lubac and Bonhoeffer. Zimmermann masterfully draws his comprehensive study together by proposing a distinctly evangelical philosophy of culture. That philosophy grasps the link between the new humanity inaugurated by Christ and all of humanity. In this way he holds up a picture of the public ministry of the church as a witness to the world's reconciliation to God.
From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, humanism played a key role in European culture. Beginning as a movement based on the recovery, interpretation and imitation of ancient Greek and Roman texts and the archaeological study of the physical remains of antiquity, humanism turned into a dynamic cultural programme, influencing almost every facet of Renaissance intellectual life. The fourteen essays in this 1996 volume deal with all aspects of the movement, from language learning to the development of science, from the effect of humanism on biblical study to its influence on art, from its Italian origins to its manifestations in the literature of More, Sidney and Shakespeare. A detailed biographical index, and a guide to further reading, are provided. Overall, The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism provides a comprehensive introduction to a major movement in the culture of early modern Europe.
By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others-sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world. In this book, Alan Jacobs explores the poems, novels, essays, reviews, and lectures of these five central figures, in which they presented, with great imaginative energy and force, pictures of the very different paths now set before the Western democracies. Working mostly separately and in ignorance of one another's ideas, the five developed a strikingly consistent argument that the only means by which democratic societies could be prepared for their world-wide economic and political dominance was through a renewal of education that was grounded in a Christian understanding of the power and limitations of human beings. The Year of Our Lord 1943 is the first book to weave together the ideas of these five intellectuals and shows why, in a time of unprecedented total war, they all thought it vital to restore Christianity to a leading role in the renewal of the Western democracies.
Shakespeare, Lee Oser argues, is a Christian literary artist who criticizes and challenges Christians, but who does so on Christian grounds. Stressing Shakespeare’s theological sensitivity, Oser places Shakespeare’s work in the “radical middle,” the dialectical opening between the sacred and the secular where great writing can flourish. According to Oser, the radical middle was and remains a site of cultural originality, as expressed through mimetic works of art intended for a catholic (small “c”) audience. It describes the conceptual space where Shakespeare was free to engage theological questions, and where his Christian skepticism could serve his literary purposes. Oser reviews the rival cases for a Protestant Shakespeare and for a Catholic Shakespeare, but leaves the issue open, focusing, instead, on how Shakespeare exploits artistic resources that are specific to Christianity, including the classical-Christian rhetorical tradition. The scope of the book ranges from an introductory survey of the critical field as it now stands, to individual chapters on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, the Henriad, Hamlet, and King Lear. Writing with a deep sense of literary history, Oser holds that mainstream literary criticism has created a false picture of Shakespeare by secularizing him and misconstruing the nature of his art. Through careful study of the plays, Oser recovers a Shakespeare who is less vulnerable to the winds of academic and political fashion, and who is a friend to the enduring project of humanistic education. Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature is both eminently readable and a work of consequence.
Milton's Great Poems--Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes--are here examined in the light of his lifelong commitment to the English revolutionary cause. The poems, Joan Bennett shows, reflect the issues Milton had dealt with in theological and public policy debate, foreign diplomacy, and propaganda; moreover, they work innovatively with these issues, reaching in epic and tragedy answers that his pamphlets and tracts of the past twenty years had only partially achieved. The central issue is the nature and possibility of human freedom, or "Christian liberty." Related questions are the nature of human rationality, the meaning of law, of history, of individuality, of society, and--everywhere--the problem of evil. The book offers a revisionist position in the history of ideas, arguing that Renaissance Christian humanism in England descended not from Tudor to Stuart Anglicanism but from Tudor Anglicanism to revolutionary Puritanism. Close readings are offered of texts by Richard Hooker, Milton, and a range of writers before and during the revolutionary period. Not only theological and political positions but also political actions taken by the authors are compared. Milton's poems are studied in the light of these analyses. The concept of "radical Christian humanism" moves current Milton criticism beyond the competing conceptions of Milton as the poet of democratic liberalism and the prophet of revolutionary absolutism. Milton's radical Christian humanism was built upon pre-modern conceptions and experiences of reason that are not alien to our time. It stemmed from, and resulted in, a religious commitment to political process which his poems embody and illuminate.
Humanism and the Death of God is a critical exploration of secular humanism and its discontents. Through close readings of three exemplary nineteenth-century philosophical naturalists or materialists, who perhaps more than anyone set the stage for our contemporary quandaries when it comes to questions of human nature and moral obligation, Ronald E. Osborn argues that "the death of God" ultimately tends toward the death of liberal understandings of the human as well. Any fully persuasive defense of humanistic values--including the core humanistic concepts of inviolable dignity, rights, and equality attaching to each individual--requires an essentially religious vision of personhood. Osborn shows such a vision is found in an especially dramatic and historically consequential way in the scandalous particularity of the Christian narrative of God becoming a human. He does not attempt to provide logical proofs for the central claims of Christian humanism along the lines some philosophers might demand. Instead, this study demonstrates how philosophical naturalism or materialism, and secular humanisms and anti-humanisms, might be persuasively read from the perspective of a classically orthodox Christian faith.
Beyond Tenebrae is about Christian humanism in all its breadth and depth, and the persons and groups best embodying it in the last century and a half. Readers who sense the greatness of the "Republic of Letters" that has endured for over two millennia will benefit from being introduced to the great men and women presented in these pages.
De Lubac traces the origin of 19th century attempts to construct a humanism apart from God, the sources of contemporary atheism which purports to have 'moved beyond God.' The three persons he focuses on are Feuerbach, who greatly influenced Marx; Nietzsche, who represents nihilism; and Comte, who is the father of all forms of positivism. He then shows that the only one who really responded to this ideology was Dostoevsky, a kind of prophet who criticizes in his novels this attempt to have a society without God. Despite their historical and scholarly appearance, de Lubac's work clearly refers to the present. As he investigates the sources of modern atheism, particularly in its claim to have definitely moved beyond the idea of God, he is thinking of an ideology prevalent today in East and West which regards the Christian faith as a completely outdated.