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A. J. Appasamy and his Reading of Rāmānuja: A Comparative Study in Divine Embodiment

Brian Philip Dunn

This book is a comparative study exploring the writings of an Indian Christian theologian named Ayadurai Jesudason Appasamy (1891–1975) and his comparative theological interaction with the ... More

This book is a comparative study exploring the writings of an Indian Christian theologian named Ayadurai Jesudason Appasamy (1891–1975) and his comparative theological interaction with the twelfth-century Śrivaiṣṇava reformer, Rāmānuja. The doctrinal focus is Appasamy’s four-fold Johannine application of the ‘Body of God’ analogy—the ‘Universe’, ‘Incarnation’, ‘Eucharist’, and ‘Church’ being his four divine embodiments. Critics in Appasamy’s day described his theological project as ‘bold heresies’, a ‘synthesis of Christianity and Vedānta’ that has ‘shifted the axis’ from Christianity to ‘Hindu religion’. By reading Appasamy in the context of his devotional tradition, however, this study demonstrates that his application of the embodiment analogy is rooted, rather, in the sacramental theology of early twentieth-century Anglicanism. His embodiment theology, in fact, closely reflects the theological developments that took place in Anglican scholarship between the time of Charles Gore and William Temple. Methodologically, what is being argued for is the need to understand theological discourse as being already semiotically and traditionally situated. In doing so it is further argued that, just as Appasamy’s detractors have failed to read him in his devotional context, so too has Appasamy done with Rāmānuja. Reading Rāmānuja more as a Vedāntic philosophical theologian than as a Śrivaiṣṇava sectarian practitioner, the Ācārya has been abstracted from his temple-based devotional practice. On this basis, challenging Appasamy’s use of Rāmānuja’s analogy, a better reading of John’s Gospel is proposed, a temple Christology that emerges from the narrative shape of the text itself.Less

A. J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist

Roger Glenn Robins

This book explores the life of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, chronicling his childhood and family life, spiritual journey, missionary work, and his role in establishing the Church of God. Its main ... More

This book explores the life of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, chronicling his childhood and family life, spiritual journey, missionary work, and his role in establishing the Church of God. Its main objective is to reconcile the holiness-pentecostal tradition to its origins, and the trajectory of its subsequent history. The term “plainfolk modernist” is coined, to suggest that both Tomlinson and the world he inhabited expressed a vibrant strain of modernism, though voiced in the idioms of American plainfolk culture.Less

Abelard and Heloise

Constant J. Mews

In Abelard and Heloise, a dual intellectual biography of Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and Heloise (d. 1164), I argue that there is a fundamental continuity to the evolution of Abelard’s thought from his ... More

In Abelard and Heloise, a dual intellectual biography of Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and Heloise (d. 1164), I argue that there is a fundamental continuity to the evolution of Abelard’s thought from his early concern with dialectic, to his growing interest in theology in the 1120s and in ethical questions in the 1130s. Heloise was much more than the disciple and lover of Abelard. She emerges as a distinct thinker in her own right, deeply versed in classical ideals of friendship and ethics, which she wished to apply to her relationship to Abelard. While they have both functioned as mythic figures in the western imagination, I argue that both participated in a broader 12th-century renewal of interest in both classical literature and in religious reform. I examine Abelard’s dialectic as a theory not just about universals, but about language as a whole. Tracing the maturing of his dialectic from his earliest glosses to the Logica ‘Ingredientibus’, written after his early affair with Heloise (1115–17), I argue that Abelard was initially unable to come to terms with the ethical questions presented by Heloise in her side of messages (Epistolae duorum amantium) they exchanged during those years. After Abelard became a monk at St Denis, he started to write about theology. I trace the evolution of his theological interests, from his early concern with linguistic concerns to increasing preoccupation with the Holy Spirit and divine goodness, as manifest in Jesus. After Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete from 1129, responded to his Historia calamitatum and demanded he pay greater attention to the community he had founded, Abelard started to devote much more attention to commenting on Scripture and to reflecting on the ethical questions with which she had always been concerned. Accusations spread by St Bernard that Abelard promoted heresy distort the true character of his contribution to theology, on which Heloise exercised a profound influence.Less

Abject Joy: Paul, Prison, and the Art of Making Do

Ryan S. Schellenberg

No extant text gives so vivid a glimpse into the experience of an ancient prisoner as Paul’s letter to the Philippians. As a letter from prison, however, it is not what one would expect. For although ... More

No extant text gives so vivid a glimpse into the experience of an ancient prisoner as Paul’s letter to the Philippians. As a letter from prison, however, it is not what one would expect. For although it is true that Paul, like some other ancient prisoners, speaks in Philippians of his yearning for death, what he expresses most conspicuously is contentment and even joy. Setting aside pious banalities that contrast true joy with happiness, and leaving behind too heroic depictions that take their cue from Acts, Abject Joy offers a reading of Paul’s letter as both a means and an artifact of his provisional attempt to make do. By outlining the uses of punitive custody in the administration of Rome’s eastern provinces and describing prison’s complex place in the social and moral imagination of the Roman world, this book provides a richly drawn account of Paul’s non-elite social context, where bodies and their affects were shaped by acute contingency and habitual susceptibility to violent subjugation. Informed by recent work in the history of emotions, and with comparison to modern prison writing and ethnography provoking new questions and insights, Abject Joy describes Paul’s letter as an affective technology, wielded at once on Paul himself and on his addressees, that works to strengthen his grasp on the very joy he names.Less

Abraham's Dice: Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions

Karl W. Giberson (ed.)

Does everything happen for a reason? Does “God’s will,” “karma,” or “fate” provide an overarching purpose to everything? Are disasters and tragedies random, meaningless events? Or is there something ... More

Does everything happen for a reason? Does “God’s will,” “karma,” or “fate” provide an overarching purpose to everything? Are disasters and tragedies random, meaningless events? Or is there something to our intuition that the world has a purpose? Abraham’s Dice explores this conversation with major scholars, including holders of chairs at Oxford and Cambridge universities and the University of Basel, several Gifford lecturers, and two Templeton Prize-winners. Bestselling author Jennifer Michael Hecht notes that the Judeo-Christian tradition has wrestled with questions of divine purpose for millennia. Although the Bible affirms that God blesses the righteous in an orderly way, the story of Job is a powerful counterexample to this scheme. The achingly beautiful but tragic story of Job pushes back against the idea that “everything happens for a reason.” Cosmologist John Barrow captures the dilemma with a simple question, “Is the world simple or complicated?” He notes that simple laws of physics—like gravity—produce complicated outcomes. An ordered collection of pencils standing upright falls into a disordered pile, though the gravitational force making them fall is simple and symmetric. Reality is a tangled mix of order and disorder, pattern and randomness. Nowhere is this problem more provocatively confronted than in Darwin’s theory of evolution, explored by Peter Harrison, Alister McGrath, and Michael Ruse. Ruse argues that Darwin’s theory is so devoid of purpose as to rule out the possibility that God has anything to do with the process, pushing back against the perennial intuition that humans were purposefully created.Less

Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History

Aaron W. Hughes

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a virtual cottage industry in all things “Abrahamic.” Directly proportionate to the rise of religious exclusivism, perhaps best epitomized by the attacks ... More

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a virtual cottage industry in all things “Abrahamic.” Directly proportionate to the rise of religious exclusivism, perhaps best epitomized by the attacks of 9/11 and the current problems plaguing the Middle East and Afghanistan, there has been a real desire both to find and map a set of commonalities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This is often done, however, not for the sake of scholarship, but interfaith dialogue. Recently, however, the term “Abrahamic religions” has been used with exceeding frequency in the academy. We now regularly encounter academic books, conferences, and even positions (including endowed chairs) devoted to the so-called “Abrahamic religions.” Often lost in contemporary discussions of “Abrahamic religions” is a set of crucial questions: whence does the term “Abrahamic religions” derive? Who created it and for what purposes? What sort of intellectual work is it perceived to perform? In order to answer these and related questions, the book examines the creation and dissemination of this category. Part genealogical and part analytical, this study seeks to raise and answer questions about the appropriateness and usefulness of employing “Abrahamic religions” as a vehicle for understanding and classifying data. In so doing, this book can be taken as a case study that examines the construction of categories within the academic study of religion, showing how the categories we employ can become more an impediment than an expedient to understanding.Less

Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought

Torstein Theodor Tollefsen

This book is an investigation into two basic concepts of ancient pagan and Christian thought, namely activity and participation. It shows how activity in Christian thought is connected with the topic ... More

This book is an investigation into two basic concepts of ancient pagan and Christian thought, namely activity and participation. It shows how activity in Christian thought is connected with the topic of participation: for the lower levels of being to participate in the higher means to receive the divine activity into their own ontological constitution. It is mainly a discussion of some important Church Fathers. Against a background of Aristotelian and Neoplatonist philosophy, the book discusses Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, and culminates with a chapter on Gregory Palamas before some conclusions are drawn. The concern of the author is to highlight how the Christians think energeia (i.e. activity or energy) is manifested as divine activity in the eternal constitution of the Trinity, the creation of the cosmos, the Incarnation of Christ, and in salvation understood as deification. Terms such as essence and energy are associated with the theology and spirituality of the fourteenth-century Byzantine thinker Gregory Palamas. One purpose of this book is to show how Palamas’ theology is in accordance with Greek patristic thinking, with its background in a definite trend in ancient pagan philosophy.Less

The Acts of the Early Church Councils: Production and Character

The present study examines the acts of ancient church councils as the objects of textual practices, in their editorial shaping and in their material conditions. The book analyses the purposes and ... More

The present study examines the acts of ancient church councils as the objects of textual practices, in their editorial shaping and in their material conditions. The book analyses the purposes and expectations governing and inscribed into the use and creation of these acts. It traces the processes of their production, starting from the recording of spoken interventions during a meeting, to the preparation of minutes of individual sessions, to their collection into larger units, their storage, and the earliest attempts at their dissemination. It contends that the preparation of ‘paperwork’ is central to the work of a council, and much of its effectiveness resides in the relevant textual and bureaucratic processes. As council leaders and administrators paid careful attention to the creation of a ‘proper’ record suited to their requirements, they also scrutinized documents and records of previous occasions with equal attention and inspected document features meant to assure and project validity and authority. From the evidence of such examinations the study further reconstructs the textual and physical characteristics of ancient conciliar documents and the criteria of their assessment. Papyrological evidence and contemporary legal regulations are used to contextualize these efforts. The book seeks to demonstrate that scholarly attention to the production processes, character, and material conditions of council acts is essential to their understanding, and to any historical and theological research into the councils of the ancient church.Less

Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants

Samuel L. Perry

Few other cultural issues alarm conservative Protestant families and communities more than the seemingly ubiquitous threat of pornography. Thanks to widespread access to the internet, conservative ... More

Few other cultural issues alarm conservative Protestant families and communities more than the seemingly ubiquitous threat of pornography. Thanks to widespread access to the internet, conservative Protestants now face a reality in which every Christian man, woman, and child with a smartphone can access limitless pornography in his or her bathroom, at work, or at a friend’s sleepover. Once confident of their victory over pornography in society at large, conservative Protestants now fear that “porn addiction” is consuming even the most faithful. How are conservative Protestants adjusting to this new reality? And what are its consequences in their lives? Drawing on over 130 interviews, as well as numerous national surveys, Addicted to Lust shows that, compared to other Americans, pornography shapes the lives of conservative Protestants in ways that are uniquely damaging to their mental health, spiritual lives, and intimate relationships. Samuel Perry demonstrates how certain pervasive beliefs within the conservative Protestant subculture unwittingly create a context in which those who use pornography are often overwhelmed with shame and discouragement, sometimes to the point of depression or withdrawal from faith altogether. Conservative Protestant women who use pornography feel a “double shame,” both for sinning sexually and for sinning “like a man,” while conflicts over pornography in marriages are escalated with patterns of lying, hiding, blowing up, or threats of divorce. Addicted to Lust shines new light on one of the most talked-about problems facing conservative Christians.Less

The Aesthetics and Ethics of Faith: A Dialogue Between Liberationist and Pragmatic Thought

Christopher D. Tirres

This book explores the methodological connections between two quintessentially American traditions: liberation theology and pragmatism. It examines how pragmatism can lend philosophical clarity and ... More

This book explores the methodological connections between two quintessentially American traditions: liberation theology and pragmatism. It examines how pragmatism can lend philosophical clarity and depth to some of liberation theology’s core ideas and assumptions. In turn, it also shows how liberation theology offers pragmatism a more nuanced and sympathetic approach to religious faith, especially its social and pedagogical dimensions. Ultimately, this work seeks to craft a philosophical foundation that ensures the continued relevance of liberation thought in today’s world. Keeping true to the method of pragmatism, the book begins inductively with a set of actual experiences: the Good Friday liturgies at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas. The author offers a thick description of the way these performative rituals integrate the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith. Subsequent chapters probe this integration deductively at three levels of theoretical analysis: experience/metaphysics, sociality, and pedagogy. At all three levels, the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith emerge in different yet related ways. The author argues that utilizing the categories of the aesthetic and ethical enables a richer understanding of the dynamic relationship between faith and politics. This book builds new bridges between a number of discourses, including pragmatism, Latin American liberation theology, U.S. Latino/a theology, feminism, ritual studies, and the philosophy of education.Less

After Arminius: A Historical Introduction to Arminian Theology

Thomas H. McCall and Keith D. Stanglin

“Arminianism” was the subject of important theological controversies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it maintains an important position within Protestant thought. What became known ... More

“Arminianism” was the subject of important theological controversies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it maintains an important position within Protestant thought. What became known as “Arminian” theology was held by people across a swath of geographical and ecclesial positions; it developed in European, British, and American contexts, and it engaged with a wide range of intellectual challenges. While standing together in their common rejection of several key planks of Reformed theology, proponents of Arminianism took various positions on other matters. Some were broadly committed to catholic and creedal theology; others were more open to theological revision. Some were concerned primarily with practical concerns; others were engaged in system building as they sought to articulate and defend an overarching vision of God and the world. The story of this development is both complex and important for a proper understanding of the history of Protestant theology. However, this historical development of Arminian theology is not well known. In this book, Thomas H. McCall and Keith D. Stanglin offer a historical introduction to Arminian theology as it developed in modern thought, providing an account that is based upon important primary sources and recent secondary research that will be helpful to scholars of ecclesial history and modern thought as well as comprehensible and relevant for students.Less

After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition

Richard A. Muller

This is a sequel to Richard Muller's The Unaccommodated Calvin (OUP 2000). The previous book attempted to situate Calvin's theological work in its historical context and to strip away various ... More

This is a sequel to Richard Muller's The Unaccommodated Calvin (OUP 2000). The previous book attempted to situate Calvin's theological work in its historical context and to strip away various 20th-century theological grids that have clouded our perceptions of the work of the Reformer. This book carries this approach forward, with the goal of overcoming a series of 19th- and 20th-century theological frameworks characteristic of much of the scholarship on Reformed orthodoxy, or what might be called “Calvinism after Calvin”.Less

After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology

Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney (eds)

In the past half century there has been a significant amount of scholarly attention paid to the thought of Jonathan Edwards so that he is now one of the most studied figures in American history. Much ... More

In the past half century there has been a significant amount of scholarly attention paid to the thought of Jonathan Edwards so that he is now one of the most studied figures in American history. Much less attention has been directed toward the theological movement that took its point of departure from Edwards, namely, the New England Theology. Yet this school of thought had a profound influence on the shape and character of nineteenth-century American theology, and it is to date the most important and influential indigenous theological movement in the history of the United States. This set of chapters by an international team of specialists in the philosophy, theology, and history of Edwards and the New England theology offers a fresh look at how Edwards’s ideas were transmitted, received, and reworked in the different phases of the life of the New England Theology. The chapters also trace the way in which his thought, and that of his intellectual progeny, had an international impact on the shape of theology in the UK, Europe, and Asia, and on present-day Reformed theology.Less

After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory

John Casey

Christianity from its earliest times taught the existence of heaven and hell as places where good and evil deeds in this life were judged, rewarded and punished. In the course of time ideas both of ... More

Christianity from its earliest times taught the existence of heaven and hell as places where good and evil deeds in this life were judged, rewarded and punished. In the course of time ideas both of promised bliss and threatened woe went beyond anything than can have a purchase on human experience. Nevertheless, in their most developed form, doctrines of heaven and hell were explorations of moral psychology, as seen in their greatest imaginative expression, Dante's Divine Comedy. The present book explores and comments on ideas about post-mortem existence from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece and Rome, as well as in Christianity and (more briefly) Islam. Having traced the early history, growth, and refinement of these ideas over five millennia, it ends with the discordant voices of spiritualism, liberal theology, Mormonism, Evangelical Christian preachers of Rapture and Armageddon, modern Muslim apocalyptics, and Coptic visions of the Last Days. In a Prologue and an Epilogue the ironic treatment of some of these themes in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is evoked to set them in a context of modernity.Less

After the Evil: Christianity and Judaism in the Shadow of the Holocaust

Richard Harries

The evil of the holocaust demands a radical rethink of the traditional Christian understanding of Judaism. This is because the anti‐Judaism of the Christian Church prepared the way for the holocaust. ... More

The evil of the holocaust demands a radical rethink of the traditional Christian understanding of Judaism. This is because the anti‐Judaism of the Christian Church prepared the way for the holocaust. This rethink includes looking at theological responses to the holocaust and examining which, if any, are adequate. It also means looking at issues of suffering and forgiveness in both Judaism and Christianity. On examination, the approach of the two religions is not as far apart as is sometimes suggested. The basic covenant is not with either Judaism or Christianity but with humanity. These, like other religions, are different, distinctive voices in response to God's primal affirmation of human life, which for Christians is achieved and given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians should not set out to convert Jews. Jesus is, traditionally, a highly divisive figure for the two religions but modern scholarship, including Jewish scholarship, has revealed some common ground. In addition to the common ground here, there is a shared hope and a common task though contentious questions still remain on questions such as Israel and Jerusalem. The church has a particular responsibility to ensure that its teaching and preaching is not implicitly anti‐Judaic.Less

After the Invasion: A Reading of Jeremiah 40-44

Keith Bodner

The last act of Jeremiah’s eventful career takes place in the wake of Babylonian destruction, as he is part of a contingent left behind in the land of Judah after the invasion. Jer 40–44 is not among ... More

The last act of Jeremiah’s eventful career takes place in the wake of Babylonian destruction, as he is part of a contingent left behind in the land of Judah after the invasion. Jer 40–44 is not among the most popular sections of the Hebrew Bible, but a remarkable story is contained in these chapters. Despite the trauma of Jerusalem’s collapse, the community who remain have every reason for cautious optimism about their future: they are provided with reasonable leadership, the Babylonians seem unexpectedly benevolent, and the prophet Jeremiah resides in their midst. But any sanguinity disintegrates in the midst of factionalism, unsubstantiated rumors of covert foreign involvement, and then, more darkly, murder, carnage, and a hostage crisis that results in an armed clash among the remnant. So, in these chapters there is an internal war after the external invasion, prompting the reader to ask how matters go so terribly awry. In this book the narrative of Jer 40–44 is subject to a literary reading that analyzes a powerfully composed story that features a host of stylistic devices and deftly sketched characters.Less

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion

Anthony M. Petro

This book demonstrates how Christian leaders and AIDS activists in the United States have posited HIV/AIDS as a religious and moral epidemic and asks how this understanding has informed cultural and ... More

This book demonstrates how Christian leaders and AIDS activists in the United States have posited HIV/AIDS as a religious and moral epidemic and asks how this understanding has informed cultural and political debates about prevention, healthcare, and sex education all over the world. Drawing upon archival research, oral histories, and textual analysis, this book maps the moral language regarding sexuality–and especially homosexuality–through which evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholic leaders, and gay and lesbian AIDS activists made sense of and responded to the epidemic. Moving beyond the politics of the culture wars and the focus on the Christian Right, After the Wrath of God tracks how mainstream religious understandings of sexual morality and AIDS have shaped national and global public health discourse about prevention and care. It also situates the AIDS crisis alongside competing moral concerns, such as those surrounding abortion, drug use, and race, in delineating American religious responses to the epidemic. This history illustrates in turn how the AIDS epidemic has transformed American Christianity by allowing religious leaders and organizations a new way in which to articulate their understandings of sexuality, health, and social activism and to advance new boundaries for national moral citizenship.Less

Against Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan

James Mark Shields

Against Harmony traces the history of progressive and radical experiments in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice from the mid-Meiji period through the early Shōwa period (1885–1935), when ... More

Against Harmony traces the history of progressive and radical experiments in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice from the mid-Meiji period through the early Shōwa period (1885–1935), when historical events coalesced to eliminate all such experiments. It is a work of both intellectual history and of critical, comparative thought. Perhaps the two best representations of progressive Buddhism during this period were the New Buddhist Fellowship (1899–1915) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (1931–1936). Both were nonsectarian, lay movements comprising young men with education in classical Buddhist texts as well as Western literature, philosophy, and religion. Their work effectively collapses commonly held distinctions between religion, philosophy, ethics, politics, and economics. Unlike many others of their day, these “New Buddhists” did not regard the novel forces of modernization as problematic and disruptive, but rather, as an opportunity to explore and expand the possibilities of the dharma. Moreover, these and similar Buddhist and Buddhist-inspired movements experimented with novel, alternative forms of modernity, rooted in variations on what might be called “dharmic materialism.” In short, they did not simply inherit or mimic the dominant Western model(s). For this reason, their work remains of relevance in the early twenty-first century.Less

Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century

Mark Sedgwick

Explores the history and doctrines of Traditionalism, a movement established by Ren” Gu”non in the 1920s, and later developed further by Julius Evola (in politics), Frithjof Schuon (in religion), and ... More

Explores the history and doctrines of Traditionalism, a movement established by Ren” Gu”non in the 1920s, and later developed further by Julius Evola (in politics), Frithjof Schuon (in religion), and Mircea Eliade (in academia). Traditionalism sees modernity as terminal decline from traditional metaphysical truth, and attempts to remedy this at both a personal and societal level. All responses depend on the recovery of lost tradition, notably of the “perennial philosophy.” Personal responses are generally religious, and Sufism (mystical Islam) was the most important of these, followed by Freemasonry. Societal responses range from Eliade’s scholarly investigation of archaic religion to Evola’s ultra fascism, by 2000 a major stream in far-right thought. The book examines the origins of Traditionalism in the Renaissance, and then traces the development of the groups and movements that resulted, as well as modification in doctrine. The final chapter looks at Traditionalism’s possible influence in the future, and asks why so many intellectuals found this anti-modernist movement so attractive.Less