Religion

Falling outside of the usual categories of Patristic Christological discourse, Augustine’s Christology remains a relatively neglected area of his thought. This study focuses on his understanding of the humanity of Christ as it emerged in dialogue with his anti-Pelagian conception of human freedom and Original Sin. By reinterpreting the Pelagian controversy as a Western continuation of the Origenist controversy before it, it argues that Augustine’s reading of Origen lay at the heart of his Christological response to Pelagianism. Augustine is, therefore, situated within the network of fourth- and fifth-century Western theologians concerned to defend Origen’s orthodoxy—and the orthodoxy of a broader Christian Platonism—against their opponents. Opening with a survey of scholarship in the areas of both Augustinian Christology and Augustine’s anti-Pelagianism, it proceeds by detailing Augustine’s engagement with the issues and personalities involved in both the Origenist and Pelagian controversies. Chapter 3 examines the importance of Augustine’s understanding of Christ ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom 8.3) within his anti-Pelagian works; Chapter 4 traces the dependence of this motif on Origen’s exegesis. The fifth chapter considers Augustine’s treatment of Christ’s soul in relation to his understanding of Apollinarianism. The study concludes by exploring Augustine’s handling of the origin of the soul, suggesting that the inconsistencies in his Christology can be explained by recourse to an Origenian framework, in which the soul of Christ remains sinless in the Incarnation because of its relationship to the eternal Word after the Fall of souls to embodiment

The hope that we might one day upload our minds into robots and, eventually, cyberspace has become commonplace and now affects life across a broad spectrum of western culture. Popular science books on robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) by Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil, and others argue that one day advances in robotics, AI and neurobiology will enable us to copy our conscious selves into machines, which will take over the cosmos and live eternally in a perfect world of supremely intelligent Mind. Such views borrow from the apocalyptic traditions of Judaism and Christianity and influence the politics of research grants, life in online virtual reality environments, and conversations within philosophical, legal and theological circles. Apocalyptic AI is important to scientific research because it promotes public and private funding for robotics and AI. In addition, residents of the online world Second Life have adopted it as a worldview that gives meaning to their activities and many already wish to live in Second Life or a similar environment forever, just as Moravec and Kurzweil promise they will. Finally, several of the claims of Apocalyptic AI have become a serious topic of debate for philosophers of mind, legal scholars and theologians. The successful integration of religion, science and technology in Apocalyptic AI creates a powerful worldview with considerable influence in modern life and challenges many of our long held assumptions about the relationship between religion and science.

The chapters in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the chapters: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennial speculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the formation of this mentality? What were the social ramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000?

This book examines the development in medieval European literature of the story of Adam and Eve after the expulsion from paradise. The gaps in what the Bible records of their lives were filled in early and medieval times to a great extent by apocrypha or pseudepigrapha such as the Latin Life of Adam and Eve (which merges at some points with a series of legends of the Holy Rood). It describes their attempt to return to paradise by undertaking penance whilst immersed in a river, Eve's second temptation, and the ways in which Adam and Eve cope with the novelties of childbirth and death. The Vita Adae et Evae is part of a broad apocryphal tradition, but is not a unified text, and there are very many variations within the substantial number of extant versions. It was translated and adapted in prose, verse, and drama (as tracts, in chronicles, or as literary works) in virtually all western and some eastern European languages in the Middle Ages, and survived sometimes beyond that. These adaptations are examined on a comparative basis. There is a limited iconographical tradition. The book argues that the study of the apocryphal tradition demands examination of these vernacular texts; and also brings to light a very widespread aspect of European culture that disappeared to a large extent—though it did not die out completely—at the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, with their renewed insistence on canonicity and on the establishment of a foundation text for works of antiquity.

An English translation of the oldest and most important early Christian non‐canonical writings. It is based on the earlier collection edited in 1924 by Montague Rhodes James. The book is divided into the conventional categories of gospels, acts, epistles, and revelatory texts. A long subsection deals with stories of Jesus’ infancy and childhood. Another section deals with fragmentary gospel texts on papyrus. The bulk of the book is given over to second‐century legends of individual apostles. Another section covers apocryphal acpocalypses. An appendix gives a selection of stories about the Virgin Mary's assumption and dormition. Each translated text is prefaced with an introduction and select bibliography. Full indexes of citations and themes are provided.

This book argues that the pseudonym, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the influence of Paul together constitute the best interpretive lens for understanding the Corpus Dionysiacum [CD]. This book demonstrates how Paul in fact animates the entire corpus, that the influence of Paul illuminates such central themes of the CD as hierarchy, theurgy, deification, Christology, affirmation (kataphasis) and negation (apophasis), dissimilar similarities, and unknowing. Most importantly, Paul serves as a fulcrum for the expression of a new theological anthropology, an “apophatic anthropology.” Dionysius figures Paul as the premier apostolic witness to this apophatic anthropology, as the ecstatic lover of the divine who confesses to the rupture of his self and the indwelling of the divine in Gal 2:20: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Building on this notion of apophatic anthropology, the book forwards an explanation for why this sixth‐century author chose to write under an apostolic pseudonym. It argues that the very practice of pseudonymous writing itself serves as an ecstatic devotional exercise whereby the writer becomes split in two and thereby open to the indwelling of the divine. Pseudonymity is on this interpretation integral and internal to the aims of the wider mystical enterprise. Thus this book aims to question the distinction between “theory” and “practice” by demonstrating that negative theology—often figured as a speculative and rarefied theory regarding the transcendence of God—is in fact best understood as a kind of asceticism, a devotional practice aiming for the total transformation of the Christian subject.

This book considers two basic questions: how can we live well in the face of death?; and when, if ever, is it legitimate deliberately to bring human life to an end? It does so by considering the distinct theological approaches to death shown by four outstanding Christian thinkers: Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and Karl Rahner. These philosophers' thoughts constitute a single extended argument on the theology of death which can be set out in relation to the practical realities of grief, fear, and hope in the face of death. There is a rightful place for grief, a good grief, even for a Christian. Augustine teaches us that death is something with which we have to contend, and indeed that the difficult and painful process of contending with death is a means through which we are brought to our final joyful end. A key point for Thomas Aquinas is that, in itself, it is always wrong to kill a human being on account of the dignity of human nature. Rahner adds that it also stands in contradiction to the supernatural destiny of human beings. Rahner is at his most profound in describing how the need to surrender oneself to God in death is anticipated throughout life. The aim of this book is not primarily to make a contribution to the knowledge of the history of theology, but rather, through engagement with the thought of theologians of the past, to reflect on some of the practical and existential issues that the approach of death presents for us.

Presents a comprehensive account of sanctification and divinization in Cyril as set forth in his New Testament biblical commentaries. By establishing the importance of pneumatology in Cyril’s narrative of divine life and by showing the requirement for an ethical aspect of divinization grounded in the example of Christ himself, this study brings a corrective to certain readings of Cyril that tend to exaggerate the ‘somatic’ or ‘physicalistic’ character of his understanding of divinization, by arguing that Cyril correlates the somatic and pneumatic means of our union with Christ, and impressively integrates the ontological and ethical aspects of our sanctification and divinization. The final chapter offers brief sketches of Cyril in comparison with Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine, and Leo the Great, with the aim of gaining further clarity to the Christological debates of the fifth century, and a better grasp of the theological similarities and differences between the East and West.