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Author: David Lyle Jeffrey
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 9780830868407
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
"What has Jesus Christ to do with English literature?" ask David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet in this insightful survey. First and foremost, they reply, many of the world's best authors of literature in English were formed--for better or worse--by the Christian tradition. Then too, many of the most recognized aesthetic literary forms derive from biblical exemplars. And finally, many great works of literature demand of readers evaluative judgments of the good, the true and the beautiful that can only rightly be understood within a Christian worldview. In this book Jeffrey and Maillet offer a feast of theoretical and practical discernment. After an examination of literature and truth, theological aesthetics, and the literary character of the Bible, they turn to a brief survey of literature from medieval times to the present, highlighting distinctively Christian themes and judgments. In a concluding chapter they suggest a path for budding literary critics through the current state of literary studies. Here is a must-read for all who are interested in a Christian perspective on literary studies.
Author: David Lyle Jeffrey
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 9780830868407
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335
Get Book
Book Description
"What has Jesus Christ to do with English literature?" ask David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet in this insightful survey. First and foremost, they reply, many of the world's best authors of literature in English were formed--for better or worse--by the Christian tradition. Then too, many of the most recognized aesthetic literary forms derive from biblical exemplars. And finally, many great works of literature demand of readers evaluative judgments of the good, the true and the beautiful that can only rightly be understood within a Christian worldview. In this book Jeffrey and Maillet offer a feast of theoretical and practical discernment. After an examination of literature and truth, theological aesthetics, and the literary character of the Bible, they turn to a brief survey of literature from medieval times to the present, highlighting distinctively Christian themes and judgments. In a concluding chapter they suggest a path for budding literary critics through the current state of literary studies. Here is a must-read for all who are interested in a Christian perspective on literary studies.
Author: Helen Rhee
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415354882
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
This work concerns the early Christians' self-definitions and self-representations in the context of pagan-Christian conflict, reflected in the literatures from the mid-second to the early third centuries (ca. 150 - 225 CE).
Author: Dirk Rohmann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110485559
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
It is estimated that only a small fraction, less than 1 per cent, of ancient literature has survived to the present day. The role of Christian authorities in the active suppression and destruction of books in Late Antiquity has received surprisingly little sustained consideration by academics. In an approach that presents evidence for the role played by Christian institutions, writers and saints, this book analyses a broad range of literary and legal sources, some of which have hitherto been little studied. Paying special attention to the problem of which genres and book types were likely to be targeted, the author argues that in addition to heretical, magical, astrological and anti-Christian books, other less obviously subversive categories of literature were also vulnerable to destruction, censorship or suppression through prohibition of the copying of manuscripts. These include texts from materialistic philosophical traditions, texts which were to become the basis for modern philosophy and science. This book examines how Christian authorities, theologians and ideologues suppressed ancient texts and associated ideas at a time of fundamental transformation in the late classical world.
Author: Christopher Douglas
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501703528
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
The rise of the Christian Right took many writers and literary critics by surprise, trained as we were to think that religions waned as societies became modern. In If God Meant to Interfere, Christopher Douglas shows that American writers struggled to understand and respond to this new social and political force. Religiously inflected literature since the 1970s must be understood in the context of this unforeseen resurgence of conservative Christianity, he argues, a resurgence that realigned the literary and cultural fields. Among the writers Douglas considers are Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, N. Scott Momaday, Gloria Anzaldúa, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown. Their fictions engaged a wide range of topics: religious conspiracies, faith and wonder, slavery and imperialism, evolution and extraterrestrial contact, alternate histories and ancestral spiritualities. But this is only part of the story. Liberal-leaning literary writers responding to the resurgence were sometimes confused by the Christian Right’s strange entanglement with the contemporary paradigms of multiculturalism and postmodernism —leading to complex emergent phenomena that Douglas terms "Christian multiculturalism" and "Christian postmodernism." Ultimately, If God Meant to Interfere shows the value of listening to our literature for its sometimes subterranean attention to the religious and social upheavals going on around it.
Author: Justo L. González
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611649544
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
Historical events have long been the standard lens through which scholars have sought to understand the theology of Christianity in late antiquity. The lives of significant theological figures, the rejection of individuals and movements as heretical, and the Trinitarian and christological controversiesthe defining theological events of the early churchhave long provided the framework with which to understand the development of early Christian belief. In this groundbreaking work, esteemed historian of Christianity Justo González chooses to focus on the literature of early Christianity. Beginning with the epistolary writings of the earliest Christian writers of the second century CE, he moves through apologies, martyrologies, antiheretical polemics, biblical commentaries, sermons, all the way up through Augustines invention of spiritual autobiography and beyond. Throughout he demonstrates how literary genre played a decisive role in the construction of theological meaning. Covering the earliest noncanonical Christian writings through the fifth century and later, this book will serve as an indispensable guide to students studying the theology of the early church.
Author: Marc DiPaolo
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786467800
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
When computers freeze, they are "rebooted" and soon working properly again. Similarly, legendary thinkers throughout history have argued that Christianity should start fresh by recapturing the humanitarian spirit of Jesus' original message. These include such disparate individuals as Thomas Jefferson, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, and the religious leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Surprisingly enough, even classic television shows and films meant to be entertaining--Lost, Battlestar Galactica, It's a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day, Decalogue, and A Charlie Brown Christmas--are attempts to apply the basic principles of Christianity to modern times. This book offers new essays by scholars of literature, film, history, theology and philosophy examining how various thinkers and storytellers over time have conceived of a reinvented Christianity. In confronting this controversial idea, this book examines how unorthodox interpretations of the Bible can be some of the most valid, how visions of Jesus as a revolutionary may be the most historically sound, and how compassionate Christians such as Origen have wrestled with the eternal questions of the existence of evil, the gift of free will and the promise of universal salvation.
Author: Alister E. McGrath
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631216056
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 816
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Book Description
This anthology of Christian literature gathers together writings drawn from 2000 years of Christian history.
Author: Anita Gandolfo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313083614
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
In recent years, there has been an explosion in the market for fiction on religious topics and themes, most notably Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The variety of contemporary religious fiction and the publishing phenomenon surrounding it indicate that this literature transcends any overt religious meaning and is significant in its political and social implications; it is emblematic of the contemporary American Zeitgeist. Traditionally, literature is both mirror and lamp, reflecting the society that produces it and illuminating the values and interests of that society. Recognizing both of those perspectives, Gandolfo examines Christian literature's place in American culture today and explores the cultural meaning and significance of the wildly popular Christian fiction now available. The phenomenon surrounding Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has led to a cottage industry of interpretations, attacks, and commentaries, but one thing is certain: the book has had an enormous impact on American society, culture, and religious understanding, not to mention the publishing industry, which scrambles to find similar religious books to feed to an eager public. But The Da Vinci Code is not the only book of its type on the market today. In recent years, there has been an explosion in the market for fiction on religious topics and themes, with an entire series devoted to the impending Rapture as described in the Left Behind series. Some fiction does not take an explicitly religious theme as these books do. Instead, writers like Andre Dubus and Ron Hansen imbue their creative work with spiritual and religious themes embedded in the everyday lives and concerns of their characters. Regardless of the specific approach, what is not in doubt is that American readers have made the authors of these works wealthy as bookstores cannot stock their shelves with enough copies. Why the recent surge of interest in Christian fiction? How does it reflect trends in our culture and our lives? How has it changed our society and our understanding of spirituality and religion? How accurate are these books in terms of the theology they espouse? The variety of contemporary religious fiction and the publishing phenomenon surrounding it indicate that this literature transcends any overt religious meaning and is significant in its political and social implications; it is emblematic of the contemporary American Zeitgeist. Traditionally, literature is both mirror and lamp, reflecting the society that produces it and illuminating the values and interests of that society. Recognizing both of those perspectives, Faith and Fiction examines Christian literature's place in American culture today and explores the cultural meaning and significance of the wildly popular Christian fiction now available.
Author: Helen Rhee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134256590
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
Helen Rhee’s outstanding work is the first book to bring together The Apologies and the semi-fictional Apocryphal Acts and Martyr Acts in a single study. Filling a significant gap in the scholarship, she looks at Christian self definition and self representation in the context of pagan-Christian conflict. Using an interdisciplinary approach; historical, literary, theological, sociological, and anthropological, Rhee studies the Christians in the formative period of their religion; from mid first to early third centuries. She examines how the forms of Greco-Roman society were adapted by the Christians to present the superiority of Christian monotheism, Christian sexual morality, and Christian (dis)loyalty to the Empire. Tackling broad topics, including theology, asceticism, sexuality and patriotism, this book explores issues of cultural identity and examines how these propagandist writings shaped the theological, moral and political trajectories of Christian faith and contributed largely to the definition of orthodoxy. This thorough study will benefit all students of early Christianity and Greco-Roman literary culture and civilization.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christianity
Languages : en
Pages : 748
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Book Description
