Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite

Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite PDF Author: Charles M. Stang
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199640424
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This book examines the writings of an early sixth-century Christian mystical theologian who wrote under the name of a convert of the apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, and argues that the pseudonym and the corresponding influence of Paul are the crucial lens through which to read this influential corpus.

Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite

Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite PDF Author: Charles M. Stang
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199640424
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This book examines the writings of an early sixth-century Christian mystical theologian who wrote under the name of a convert of the apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, and argues that the pseudonym and the corresponding influence of Paul are the crucial lens through which to read this influential corpus.

The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite

The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite PDF Author: Mark Edwards
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198810792
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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Book Description
This Handbook contains forty essays by an international team of experts on the antecedents, the content, and the reception of the Dionysian corpus, a body of writings falsely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, a convert of St Paul, but actually written about 500 AD. The first section contains discussions of the genesis of the corpus, its Christian antecedents, and its Neoplatonic influences. In the second section, studies on the Syriac reception, the relation of the Syriac to the original Greek, and the editing of the Greek by John of Scythopolis are followed by contributions on the use of the corpus in such Byzantine authors as Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, Niketas Stethatos, Gregory Palamas, and Gemistus Pletho. In the third section attention turns to the Western tradition, represented first by the translators John Scotus Eriugena, John Sarracenus, and Robert Grosseteste and then by such readers as the Victorines, the early Franciscans, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dante, the English mystics, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino. The contributors to the final section survey the effect on Western readers of Lorenzo Valla's proof of the inauthenticity of the corpus and the subsequent exposure of its dependence on Proclus by Koch and Stiglmayr. The authors studied in this section include Erasmus, Luther and his followers, Vladimir Lossky, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jacques Derrida, as well as modern thinkers of the Greek Church. Essays on Dionysius as a mystic and a political theologian conclude the volume.

Our Divine Double

Our Divine Double PDF Author: Charles M. Stang
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674970187
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
What if you were to discover that you were only one half of a whole—that you had a divine double? In the second and third centuries CE, Charles Stang shows, this idea gripped the religious imagination of the Eastern Mediterranean, offering a distinctive understanding of the self that has survived in various forms down to the present.

How God Becomes Real

How God Becomes Real PDF Author: T.M. Luhrmann
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211981
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.

The Authorship of the Pseudo-Dionysian Corpus

The Authorship of the Pseudo-Dionysian Corpus PDF Author: Vladimir Kharlamov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000762564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
This monograph revisits one of the most debated aspects of Dionysian scholarship: the enigma of its authorship. To establish the identity of the author remains impossible. However, the legitimacy of the attribution of the corpus to Dionysius the Areopagite should not be seen as an intended forgery but rather as a masterfully managed literary device, which better indicates the initial intention of the actual author. The affiliation with Dionysius the Areopagite has metaphorical and literary significance. Dionysius is the only character in the New Testament who is unique in his conjunction between the apostle Paul and the Platonic Athenian Academy. In this regard this attribution, to the mind of the actual author of the corpus, could be a symbolic gesture to demonstrate the essential truth of both traditions as derived essentially from the same divine source. The importance of this assumption taken in its historical context highlights the culmination of the formation of the civilized Roman-Byzantine Christian identity.

The Book of Acts

The Book of Acts PDF Author: Charles Raith II
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press
ISBN: 0813231671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The Book of Acts brings together leading Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical theologians to read and interpret the book of Acts from within their ecclesial tradition, while simultaneously engaging one another in critical dialogue. Combining both theological exegesis and ecumenical dialogue, each chapter is uniquely structured to facilitate a rich reading of Scripture and an engaging though critical dialogue across the traditions. Each chapter begins with a main essay by either a Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical theologian on a section of the book of Acts; the main essay is followed by responses from theologians of the other two traditions. The chapter concludes with a final response from the main author. Readers are thus provided with not only a deep and engaging reading of the book of Acts but also the unfolding of a rich theological-ecumenical dialogue centered on Scripture. Anyone interested in understanding how our ecclesial traditions inform our reading of Scripture would do well to read this book, as would anyone interested in the book of Acts, ecumenical dialogue, and the theological interpretation of Scripture

Negation and Knowledge of God: Neoplatonism and Christianity

Negation and Knowledge of God: Neoplatonism and Christianity PDF Author: Daniel Jugrin
Publisher: Scholars' Press
ISBN: 6202302046
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
It is not soul, not intellect, not imagination, opinion, reason and not understanding, not logos, not intellection, not spoken, not thought, not number, not order, not greatness, not smallness, not equality, not inequality, not likeness, not unlikeness, not having stood, not moved, not at rest, not powerful, not intepowerful, not light, not living, not life, not eternity, not time, not intellectual contact with it, not knowledge, not truth, not kingship, not wisdom, not one, not unity, not divinity, not goodness, not spirit , not sonhood, not fatherhood, ..., not something among what is not, not something among what is, not known as it is by beings, not a knower of beings as they are. There is neither logos, name, or knowledge of it. It is neither dark nor light, not error, and not truth. There is universally neither postulation nor abstraction of it. While there are produced postulations and abstractions of those after it, we neither postulate nor abstract it. Since beyond all postulation is the all-complete and single Cause of all; beyond all abstraction: the preeminence of that absolutely free of all and beyond the whole. (Dionysius the Areopagite, De mystica theologia V).

Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation

Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation PDF Author: Kjetil Kringlebotten
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666771279
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Providing a metaphysical grounding for liturgical participation, this book argues that “active participation” in the liturgy must be understood principally as our participation in God’s act, particularly in the act of Christ, and only secondarily as our ritual involvement. Utilizing Neoplatonist philosophy, Kjetil Kringlebotten proposes that this should be understood in terms of theurgy, which is the human participation in divine action, which finds its consummation in the incarnation of Christ. Without the incarnation all acts will remain extrinsic and imposed but acts can become real and intrinsic precisely because the incarnation makes possible true union with the divine, a metaphysical union-in-distinction, without confusion, because this union is not extrinsic. Through union with Christ, as the one common focus of the divine-human relation, we can have true union with God and may offer true worship. In order to make sense of active participation, then, we need to understand theology in theurgic terms, where theurgy is understood not as a mechanical “coercion” of God but as a participation in His act, in creation and through Christ as the true theurgist, the “master theurgist,” Whose work transforms our act and the liturgy.

Angels in Late Ancient Christianity

Angels in Late Ancient Christianity PDF Author: Ellen Muehlberger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199931941
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body and mind to further the progress of individual Christians. Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety, Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels. The book begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the first, delineated by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions and Christian culture in late antiquity.

Celebration of Living Theology

Celebration of Living Theology PDF Author: Justin Mihoc
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567145603
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Peeler recognizes the inherent connection between the paternal identity of God, the filial identity of the Son, and the filial identity of the audience.