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While the diversity of early Christian thought and practice is now generally assumed, and the experiences and beliefs of Christians beyond the works of great theologians increasingly valued, the question of God is perennial and fundamental. These essays, individually modest in scope, seek to address that largest of questions using particular issues and problems, or single thinkers and distinct texts. They include studies of doctrine and theology as traditionally conceived, but also of understandings of God among the early Christians that emerge from study of liturgy, art, and asceticism, and in relation to the social order and to nature itself.
In The Trinitarian Testimony of the Spirit, Kyle R. Hughes offers a new approach to the development of early Christian pneumatology by focusing on how Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian linked the Holy Spirit with testimony to the deity and lordship of the Father and the Son. Drawing extensively on recent studies of prosopological exegesis and divine testimony in the ancient world, Hughes demonstrates how these three pre-Nicene Christian writers utilized Scripture and the conventions of ancient rhetoric and exegesis to formulate a highly innovative approach to the Holy Spirit that would contribute to the identification of the Spirit as the third person of the Trinity.
God, Sexuality and the Self is a new venture in systematic theology. Sarah Coakley invites the reader to re-conceive the relation of sexual desire and the desire for God and - through the lens of prayer practice - to chart the intrinsic connection of this relation to a theology of the Trinity. The goal is to integrate the demanding ascetical undertaking of prayer with the recovery of lost and neglected materials from the tradition and thus to reanimate doctrinal reflection both imaginatively and spiritually. What emerges is a vision of human longing for the triune God which is both edgy and compelling: Coakley's théologie totale questions standard shibboleths on 'sexuality' and 'gender' and thereby suggests a way beyond current destructive impasses in the churches. The book is clearly and accessibly written and will be of great interest to all scholars and students of theology.
Early Christian theologian Novatian’s (c. 200-258) work begins with the topic of the unique and supreme Father. The categories he uses to describe the Father include both traditions from Christian sources and articulations of negative theology, especially as seen in Middle Platonism. After establishing the limitations set by philosophical and theological language, Daniel Lloyd turns to the positive categories Novatian chooses for describing the Father, highlighting Novatian’s emphasis on revelation, evaluating the parameters of the uniqueness of the Father, and showing that his theology presents the Father as distinct in attributes such as incomprehensibility, eternality, and inability t...
How did Origen, one of the major Patristic thinkers, construct his philosophical theology? What are his main innovations in metaphysics, protology, Trinitarian Theology and Christology? How did he view the relation between philosophy and theology? This is a collection of over twenty essays, mostly from world-leading journals and books from outstanding publishers, besides two new ones, from Professor Ilaria L.E. Ramelli’s life-long, and always continuing, research on Origen. This coherent set of studies is grouped around Origen’s metaphysics, protology, Trinitarian theology and Christology, and the relation between theology and philosophy, with reception aspects. The essays address Origen...
In the past decade analytic theology has established itself as a flourishing research program that includes academic journals, monograph series, a dedicated annual conference, research centres on several continents, and a growing and diverse body of work produced by scholars drawn from philosophy, theology, and biblical studies. In this short monograph Oliver Crisp, James Arcadi, and Jordan Wessling introduce readers to analytic theology. The work provides an account of analytic theology, some of the main areas in which analytic theologians have worked, and some of the prospects for the future of analytic theology going forward. It also addresses some key objections to analytic theology as a theological method. Written by three leading researchers in the field, this work is an excellent way for scholars and students to get acquainted with this new theological movement.
In a day fascinated with questions of historiography and with explicating a distinctive Christian philosophy of time and history, Henri-Charles Puech’s (1950s) work on Gnosis and time found an audience. Studying four second-century texts he marked as Gnostic, he argued for the Gnostic, anti-cosmic, anti-historical pessimism about existence within the tyrannical temporal world of bondage and error. Bliss and truth were otherworldly and atemporal. This book reassesses Puech’s argument by analysis of the writings undergirding his sample and a wide array of second-century Christian and Gnostic-Christian texts that display not the Gnostic view, as if there were one, but a broader second-centu...
Khaled Anatolios, a noted expert on the development of Nicene theology, offers a historically informed theological study of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, showing its relevance to Christian life and thought today. According to Anatolios, the development of trinitarian doctrine involved a global interpretation of Christian faith as a whole. Consequently, the meaning of trinitarian doctrine is to be found in a reappropriation of the process of this development, such that the entirety of Christian existence is interpreted in a trinitarian manner. The book provides essential resources for this reappropriation by identifying the network of theological issues that comprise the "systematic scope" of Nicene theology, focusing especially on the trinitarian perspectives of three major theologians: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. It includes a foreword by Brian E. Daley.
This book argues that Origen’s early Trinitarian theology cannot be understood apart from his engagement with monarchianism. After providing a detailed, synthetic account of monarchianism in the early third century, the book considers Origen’s response to monarchianism alongside the responses of his rough contemporaries. Specifically, the final chapters address the question of Origen’s subordinationism. When viewed in his contemporary context and not through the anachronistic lens of Nicene theology, this study argues that Origen’s so-called subordinationism was an intentional anti-monarchian polemic strategy.
"Sara Contini examines a crucial junction in the history of the idea of universal human dignity. She argues that a key role was played by Latin authors of the 4th century who mediated between the traditional Roman notion of dignitas and Greek Christian views on the human being made in the image of God." --