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This chapter introduces the doctrinal background to the controversy between Durandus of St Pourcain and his order, mainly those authors who contributed with the basic terminology and insights which informed later discussions on the Trinity in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. These contributions converged in one tradition, exemplified by the doctrinal programme put forward by the dogmatic definition of the Trinity at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The contrast between Durandus’s position and the Dominican accepted view will often be read against the backdrop of this more or less unified doctrinal tradition.

The first part of chapter 4 addresses several of the most pressing critical challenges to Frei's work leveled by evangelical theologians. The first is that he forgoes all concern for whether or not the biblical accounts of Jesus do, in fact, truly correspond to actual historical events. The second is that Frei reduces the biblical witness to a self-contained literary world. The second part of chapter 4 reassesses the Barthian dimensions of Frei's work in light of the potentially devastating criticism that Frei's reading of Karl Barth is decidedly undialectical, inordinately stressing the role of analogy therein, and that this deficiency has been transmitted to many of the so-called "American neo-Barthians" (or "postliberals") influenced by Frei. The argument critically retrieves material from Frei's dissertation, his earliest publications, and recently circulated material from his unpublished archival papers in order to make the case that Frei identified a complex interrelation of dialectic and analogy in Barth's theology dating back as far as the second edition of Barth's Romans commentary and reaching forward into the Church Dogmatics.

Piacenza was the fourth council celebrated by Pope Urban II. Subsequently he convened synods at Clermont (late 1095), Tours and Nîmes (1096), at the Lateran in 1097 at an undetermined date, at Bari in 1098, and at St. Peter’s in Rome, in 1099. The loss of the canons from Bari is especially unfortunate for understanding Pope Urban’s policies toward the end of his reign. Bari iis also famous as the location in which St. Anselm, requested by Pope Urban, delivered an address explicating the Latin Church’s doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Spirit. The legislative traditions from these synods are fragmentary, but Clermont certainly seems to have influenced Tours and Nîmes, and the canons from Rome, 1099, repeat texts from Piacenza. The decrees from the 1099 synod merit a study in their own right because the texts that survive occur in a number of canonical collections stemming from northern France (although there are indications that the council promulgated a series of canons that have not survived treating Latin-Greek issues. In all of the assemblies after Clermont, of course, the Crusade also would have been on the agenda. The chapter concludes with a list of ithe ncipits and explicits of the canons of Rome, taken from Mansi, Amplissima collectio.

This chapter explores African American Catholicism in the parishes of St. Elizabeth’s, Corpus Christi, and St. Anselm’s in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood during the 1930s and 1940s. White missionary priests and nuns from the religious orders of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD), Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (SBS), and Franciscans staffed the black churches. Since most African American migrants from the South did not arrive in Chicago as Catholics, parish growth depended largely on conversions. The Rev. Joseph Eckert, SVD, converted thousands of black Chicagoans at St. Elizabeth’s and St. Anselm’s during the interwar period. Four qualities attracted converts: parochial education, Catholic aesthetics and ritual, opportunities in parish life for community building and civic involvement, and the church’s universality and promise of justice. Catholicism engendered status in the black community, while providing economic and political opportunities through access to Chicago’s Irish Catholic business community and Democratic Party political machine.

This chapter examines Thomas Usk's imprisonment and its causes, and discusses how Usk's text, The Testament of Love, invites the reader to view the ‘I’ voice as the author's presented autobiographical identity. It demonstrates how this identity is constructed favourably through intertextuality and the comparison with exemplars from literature, scripture, and history; in particular Boethius, Chaucer, Gower, and St Anselm. The chapter also examines how The Testament deploys elements from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, emulating its structure and borrowing from its content. It also discusses Usk's allusions to John Gower's Vox Clamantis and his political reasons for so doing. Finally, the chapter examines Usk's reasons for such artful self-depiction, discussing the intended audience of The Testament of Love, Usk's political motivations, and how his textual identity is designed to impact upon extra-textual concerns.

this chapter discusses Descartes's Ontological Argument—a thesis considering the existence of God, which was first developed by St. Anselm. Descartes's version refers to God as a “supremely perfect being,” whose perfection is defined by existence. Existence is perfection, therefore a perfect being that cannot exist is not perfect at all. There are many weaknesses in the Argument, however, as pointed out by the likes of Gaunilo, Kant, and Caterus. Unfortunately, the Ontological Argument remains implausible in light of their scholarship, however it may only compromise some of Descartes's discourse later on.

This chapter examines Amerasians, those who could have been but were not adopted by American families in the 1970s. National concern about this population revived ideas about responsibility to the unwanted children of Vietnam and enabled the passage of legislation that facilitated their migration. Amerasians imagined rediscovering their fathers, winning social acceptance, and escaping poverty, but charges of fraud and misrepresentation, the complexity and rarity of father-child reunions, and the difficulties of adjustment in a national where one was presumed an American rather than guided to become one, compromised their sense of citizenship.

In the future, perhaps all styles of computation will coalesce, each compensating for the weaknesses of the others. Humans are wary of intelligence in other species for good reason, for example, Neanderthals. “The Singularity” is when all things change due to exponentially increasing machine intelligence: machines will get more intelligent and start to design themselves, causing an explosive increase in machine intelligence until, “Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence. This is the destiny of the universe.” Depending on the starting point, there may be many solutions to intelligence in the Singularity, a kind of machine polytheism, but it may be that waiting without commitment and without confining, inaccurate concepts is better. A more likely future is symbiosis, where machines and humans become indispensable to each other.