Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine

Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine PDF Author: Kevin Uhalde
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Augustine, bishop of Hippo between 395 and 430, and his fellow bishops lived and worked through massive shifts in politics, society, and religion. Christian bishops were frequently asked to serve as intellectuals, legislators, judges, and pastors—roles and responsibilities that often conflicted with one another and made it difficult for bishops to be effective leaders. Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine examines these roles and the ways bishops struggled to fulfill (or failed to fulfill) them, as well as the philosophical conclusions they drew from their experience in everyday affairs, such as oath-swearing, and in the administration of penance. Augustine and his near contemporaries were no more or less successful at handling the administration of justice than other late antique or early medieval officials. When bishops served in judicial capacities, they experienced firsthand the complex inner workings of legal procedures and social conflicts, as well as the fallibility of human communities. Bishops represented divine justice while simultaneously engaging in and even presiding over the sorts of activities that animated society—business deals, litigations, gossip, and violence—but also made justice hard to come by. Kevin Uhalde argues that serving as judges, even informally, compelled bishops to question whether anyone could be guaranteed justice on earth, even from the leaders of the Christian church. As a result, their ideals of divine justice fundamentally changed in order to accommodate the unpleasant reality of worldly justice and its failings. This philosophical shift resonated in Christian thought and life for centuries afterward and directly affected religious life, from the performance of penance to the way people conceived of the Final Judgment.

Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine

Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine PDF Author: Kevin Uhalde
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
Augustine, bishop of Hippo between 395 and 430, and his fellow bishops lived and worked through massive shifts in politics, society, and religion. Christian bishops were frequently asked to serve as intellectuals, legislators, judges, and pastors—roles and responsibilities that often conflicted with one another and made it difficult for bishops to be effective leaders. Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine examines these roles and the ways bishops struggled to fulfill (or failed to fulfill) them, as well as the philosophical conclusions they drew from their experience in everyday affairs, such as oath-swearing, and in the administration of penance. Augustine and his near contemporaries were no more or less successful at handling the administration of justice than other late antique or early medieval officials. When bishops served in judicial capacities, they experienced firsthand the complex inner workings of legal procedures and social conflicts, as well as the fallibility of human communities. Bishops represented divine justice while simultaneously engaging in and even presiding over the sorts of activities that animated society—business deals, litigations, gossip, and violence—but also made justice hard to come by. Kevin Uhalde argues that serving as judges, even informally, compelled bishops to question whether anyone could be guaranteed justice on earth, even from the leaders of the Christian church. As a result, their ideals of divine justice fundamentally changed in order to accommodate the unpleasant reality of worldly justice and its failings. This philosophical shift resonated in Christian thought and life for centuries afterward and directly affected religious life, from the performance of penance to the way people conceived of the Final Judgment.

Augustine: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide

Augustine: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide PDF Author: Eric Rebillard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199804966
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 39

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Book Description
This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of the ancient world find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In classics, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is just one of many articles from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Classics, a continuously updated and growing online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through the scholarship and other materials relevant to the study of classics. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.

Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America

Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America PDF Author: A. G. Roeber
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 1531505066
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
A distinctive and unrivaled examination of North American Eastern Orthodox Christians and their encounter with the rights revolution in a pluralistic American society. From the civil rights movement of the 1950s to the “culture wars” of North America, commentators have identified the partisans bent on pursuing different “rights” claims. When religious identity surfaces as a key determinant in how the pursuit of rights occurs, both “the religious right” and “liberal” believers remain the focus of how each contributes to making rights demands. How Orthodox Christians in North America have navigated the “rights revolution,” however, remains largely unknown. From the disagreements over the rights of the First Peoples of Alaska to arguments about the rights of transgender persons, Orthodox Christians have engaged an anglo-American legal and constitutional rights tradition. But they see rights claims through the lens of an inherited focus on the dignity of the human person. In a pluralistic society and culture, Orthodox Christians, both converts and those with family roots in Orthodox countries, share with non-Orthodox fellow citizens the challenge of reconciling conflicting rights claims. Those claims do pit “religious liberty” rights claims against perceived dangers from outside the Orthodox Church. But internal disagreements about the rights of clergy and people within the Church accompany the Orthodox Christian engagement with debates over gender, sex, and marriage as well as expanding political, legal, and human rights claims. Despite their small numbers, North American Orthodox remain highly visible and their struggles influential among the more than 280 million Orthodox worldwide. Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America offers an historical analysis of this unfolding story.

On Agamben, Arendt, Christianity, and the Dark Arts of Civilization

On Agamben, Arendt, Christianity, and the Dark Arts of Civilization PDF Author: Peter Iver Kaufman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567682781
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Many progressives have found passages in Augustine's work that suggest he entertained hopes for meaningful political melioration in his time. They also propose that his “political theology” could be an especially valuable resource for “an ethics of democratic citizenship” or for “hopeful citizenship” in our times. Peter Kaufman argues that Augustine's “political theology” offers a compelling, radical alternative to progressive politics. He chronicles Augustine's experiments with alternative polities, and pairs Augustine's criticisms of political culture with those of Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt. This book argues that the perspectives of pilgrims (Augustine), refugees (Agamben), and pariahs (Arendt) are better staging areas than the perspectives and virtues associated with citizenship-and better for activists interested in genuine political innovation rather than renovation. Kaufman revises the political legacy of Augustine, aiming to influence interdisciplinary conversations among scholars of late antiquity and twenty-first century political theorists, ethicists, and practitioners.

The Cambridge Companion to Roman Law

The Cambridge Companion to Roman Law PDF Author: David Johnston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316239624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
This book reflects the wide range of current scholarship on Roman law. The essays, newly commissioned for this volume, cover the sources of evidence for classical Roman law, the elements of private law, as well as criminal and public law, and the second life of Roman law in Byzantium, in civil and canon law, and in political discourse from AD 1100 to the present. Roman law nowadays is studied in many different ways, which is reflected in the diversity of approaches in the essays. Some focus on how the law evolved in ancient Rome, others on its place in the daily life of the Roman citizen, still others on how Roman legal concepts and doctrines have been deployed through the ages. All of them are responses to one and the same thing: the sheer intellectual vitality of Roman law, which has secured its place as a central element in the intellectual tradition and history of the West.

Disciplining Christians

Disciplining Christians PDF Author: Jennifer V. Ebbeler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195372565
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
"Disciplining Christians reconsiders several of Augustine's most well-known letter exchanges with close attention to conventional epistolary norms & practices, in an effort to identify & analyze Augustine's adaptation of the traditionally friendly letter exchange to the correction of perceived error in the Christian community"--OCLC

An Intellectual History of Political Corruption

An Intellectual History of Political Corruption PDF Author: B. Buchan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137316616
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Few concepts have witnessed a more dramatic resurgence of interest in recent years than corruption. This book provides a compelling historical and conceptual analysis of corruption which demonstrates a persistent oscillation between restrictive 'public office' and expansive 'degenerative' connotations of corruption from classical Antiquity to 1800.

The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity

The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity PDF Author: John H. Arnold
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191015016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity takes as its subject the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Christian Church between 400 and 1500AD. It addresses topics ranging from early medieval monasticism to late medieval mysticism, from the material wealth of the Church to the spiritual exercises through which certain believers might attempt to improve their souls. Each chapter tells a story, but seeks also to ask how and why 'Christianity' took particular forms at particular moments in history, paying attention to both the spiritual and otherwordly aspects of religion, and the material and political contexts in which they were often embedded. This Handbook is a landmark academic collection that presents cutting-edge interpretive perspectives on medieval religion for a wide academic audience, drawing together thirty key scholars in the field from the United States, the UK, and Europe. Notably, the Handbook is arranged thematically, and focusses on an analytical, rather than narrative, approach, seeking to demonstrate the variety, change, and complexity of religion throughout this long period, and the numerous different ways in which modern scholarship can approach it. While providing a very wide-ranging view of the subject, it also offers an important agenda for further study in the field.

Staying Roman

Staying Roman PDF Author: Jonathan Conant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107375843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
What did it mean to be Roman once the Roman Empire had collapsed in the West? Staying Roman examines Roman identities in the region of modern Tunisia and Algeria between the fifth-century Vandal conquest and the seventh-century Islamic invasions. Using historical, archaeological and epigraphic evidence, this study argues that the fracturing of the empire's political unity also led to a fracturing of Roman identity along political, cultural and religious lines, as individuals who continued to feel 'Roman' but who were no longer living under imperial rule sought to redefine what it was that connected them to their fellow Romans elsewhere. The resulting definitions of Romanness could overlap, but were not always mutually reinforcing. Significantly, in late antiquity Romanness had a practical value, and could be used in remarkably flexible ways to foster a sense of similarity or difference over space, time and ethnicity, in a wide variety of circumstances.

Church and Empire

Church and Empire PDF Author: Maria E. Doerfler
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506416934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
The history of the church’s relationship with governing authorities unfolds from its beginnings at the intersection of apprehension and acceptance, collaboration and separation. This volume is dedicated to helping students chart this complex narrative through early Christian writings from the first six centuries of the Common Era. Church and Empire is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series will make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the church. Developed in light of recent patristic scholarship, the volumes will provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series provides volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive, but rather representative enough to denote for a nonspecialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.