Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance PDF Download

Author: Giles E.M. Gasper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351957910
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Anselm of Canterbury is one of the most famous of medieval Christian thinkers, who left a considerable political and intellectual inheritance of his own. This book reveals that the theological and intellectual inheritance available to Anselm was more dynamic, broader and deeper than is traditionally thought and Anselm was influenced by more than just the works of St Augustine. Giles Gasper focuses particularly on the part played by the translated works of the Greek Fathers. Demonstrating how widely the writings of the Fathers of the Church were available in western libraries, Gasper goes on to compare key aspects of doctrine in Anselm's thought with that of the notable Greek Fathers. Questioning the way in which Anselm and other authors have been described, this book moves away from well worn routes of interpretation and provides new perspectives on this most significant figure in the history of the church, the middle ages, and western thought.

Author: Gavin R. Ortlund
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press
ISBN: 0813232759
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The interpretation of Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogion has a long and rich tradition. However, its study is often narrowly focused on its so-called “ontological argument.” As a result, engagement with the text of this work tends to be lopsided, and the prayerful purpose that undergirds the whole book is often completely ignored. Even the most rigorous engagements with the Proslogion often have little to say, for instance, about how the prayers of Proslogion 1, 14, and 18 contribute materially to Anselm’s argument, or how his doctrine of God develops organically from the divine formula in the early chapters to the doctrines of eternity, simplicity, and Trinity in later chapters. There are very few works that offer a sustained analysis to Anselm’s flow of thought throughout the entire Proslogion, and no one has explored how Anselm’s doctrine of creaturely joy in heaven in Proslogion 24-26 is a fitting climax and resolution to the book. Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy attempts a sustained, chapter-by-chapter textual analysis of the Proslogion, and offers the first effort to situate Anselm’s doctrine of heaven in Proslogion 24-26 as the climax of the earlier themes of Anselm’s work. Gavin Ortlund suggests that the basic purpose of Anselm’s argument in the Proslogion is to seek the visio Dei that he articulates as his soul’s deepest desire (Proslogion 1). While Anselm’s argument for God’s existence (Proslogion 2-4) is an important piece of this effort, it is only one step of a larger trajectory of thought that leads Anselm to meditate further on God’s nature as the highest good of the human soul (Proslogion 5-23), and then to anticipate the joy of possessing God in heaven (Proslogion 24-26). In other words, the establishment of God’s existence is only the penultimate consequence of Anselm’s famous formula “that than which nothing greater can be thought”—his ultimate concern is with the infinite creaturely joy that is entailed by his existence. The Proslogion is, far more than an argument for God’s existence, a meditation on God as the chief happiness of the human soul.

Author: Toivo J. Holopainen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004426663
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In A Historical Study of Anselm's Proslogion , Toivo J. Holopainen offers a new overall interpretation of Anselm’s Proslogion by providing a historical explanation for the distinctive combination of argument and devotion that this famous treatise exhibits.

Author: Justin S. Holcomb
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814762948
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
This text introduces the reader to the great variety of distinctive interpretations within the Christian tradition regarding theologies of salvation, distinctive interpretations expressed by a wide range of Christian theologians.

Author: Willemien Otten
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004184961
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
This volume contains articles on various aspects of literary imagination, with essays ranging from Petrarch to Voltaire, on the canon, with essays on western history as one of shifting cultural ideals, and on the Christian Middle Ages. The volume is a Festschrift for Burcht Pranger of the University of Amsterdam.

Author: Eileen C. Sweeney
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813219582
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Sweeney's study offers a comprehensive picture of Anselm's thought and its development, from the early, intimate, monastically based meditations to the later, public, proto-scholastic disputations

Author: Hugh B. Feiss
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0879071753
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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Book Description
A Benedictine Reader, 530–1530, has been more than twenty years in the making. A collaboration of a dozen scholars, this project gives as broad and deep a sense of the reality of the first one thousand years of Benedictine monasticism as can be done in one volume, using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and from several languages and areas of Europe. The introduction to each of the thirty-two chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. The general introduction summarizes the main ideas and practices that are present in the Rule of Saint Benedict and in the first thousand years of Benedictine monasticism while suggesting questions that a reader might bring to the texts.

Author: Sally N. Vaughn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131717982X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
St Anselm's archiepiscopal career, 1093-1109, spanned the reigns of two kings: William Rufus and the early years of Henry I. As the second archbishop of Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, Anselm strove to extend the reforms of his teacher and mentor at Bec, and his predecessor at Canterbury, Archbishop Lanfranc. Exploring Anselm's thirty years as Prior and Abbot of the large, rich, Norman monastery of Bec, and teacher in its school, this book notes the wealth of experiences which prepared Anselm for his archiepiscopal career--in particular Bec's missionary attitude toward England. Sally Vaughn examines Anselm's intellectual strengths as a teacher, philosopher and theologian: exploring his highly regarded theological texts, including his popular Prayers and Meditations, and how his statesmanship was influenced as he dealt with conflict with the antagonistic King William Rufus. Vaughn argues that Rufus's death influenced Anselm's rivalry with King Henry I and fostered a more subdued and civil conflict between Anselm and Henry which ended with cooperation between king and archbishop at the end of Anselm's life. King and archbishop became’yoked together as two oxen pulling the plow of the church through the land of England’. Anselm’s final years at the pinnacle of power reveal a superb administrator over Canterbury and Primate over the churches of all Britain, in which position his followers described him as 'Pope of another world'. The final section includes a selection of original source material including archiepiscopal letters drawn primarily from Lambeth Palace Library.

Author: Lydia Schumacher
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110685108
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
For generations, early Franciscan thought has been widely regarded as unoriginal: a mere attempt to systematize the longstanding intellectual tradition of Augustine in the face of the rising popularity of Aristotle. This volume brings together leading scholars in the field to undertake a major study of the sources and context of the so-called Summa Halensis (1236-45), which was collaboratively authored by the founding members of the Franciscan school at Paris, above all, Alexander of Hales, and John of La Rochelle, in an effort to lay down the Franciscan intellectual tradition or the first time. The contributions will highlight that this tradition, far from unoriginal, laid the groundwork for later Franciscan thought, which is often regarded as formative for modern thought. Furthermore, the volume shows the role this Summa played in the development of the burgeoning field of systematic theology, which has its origins in the young university of Paris. This is a crucial and groundbreaking study for those with interests in the history of western thought and theology specifically.

Author: Gillian Rosemary Evans
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN: 9780826457738
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
St Anselm of Canterbury was one of the great Christian writers of medieval Europe and among the best theologians of any age. He is perhaps best known as the inventor of the famous ontological argument for God's existence but his theology has a much broader basis. His originality consisted not in challenging existing understanding of doctrine, but in finding new ways to reinforce and clarify the truths of faith. Parallel with Anselm's theology are the spiritual writings which balance his notion of God's justice with an understanding of the gentleness and mercy of a God who comes to meet humanity in its suffering and striving. In this study Dr Evans explores the two sides of Anselm's work demonstrating that prayer formed the foundations for the soaring structures of his reasoning.