Adam G. Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546626
- eISBN:
- 9780191720208
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546626.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Christianity is deeply interested in the living human body, since each body is a person, and each person a creature and image-bearer of God. The classic sources of the Christian tradition engender a ...
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Christianity is deeply interested in the living human body, since each body is a person, and each person a creature and image-bearer of God. The classic sources of the Christian tradition engender a spiritual philosophy that challenges the contemporary gnostic impulse to marginalize the body, to reduce it to meat. At the same time, a Christian metaphysics of the flesh affirms the human substructure as a bodily-spiritual synthesis. Since the person is an enfleshed spiritual being, the human body bears intrinsic personal meaning. In the three great mysteries of God's dealings with the universe—creation, incarnation, and resurrection—all material reality, but especially spirited, sensible, sexed, and social human flesh, is radically implicated. By dwelling in these mysteries, that is, by mentally and physically assimilating ourselves to the semitive and sacramental symbols that communicate their truth, we find that they have power to illumine whole vistas of knowledge that do not belong exclusively to the provenance of Christian revelation and belief, but are open to all people. In the light of the incarnate Christ, these other spheres of reality become especially luminous. With a Christian metaphysics of flesh, illuminated by the incarnation, we are able to address a number of pressing intellectual, ethical, and social questions about bodily life with philosophical integrity.Less
Christianity is deeply interested in the living human body, since each body is a person, and each person a creature and image-bearer of God. The classic sources of the Christian tradition engender a spiritual philosophy that challenges the contemporary gnostic impulse to marginalize the body, to reduce it to meat. At the same time, a Christian metaphysics of the flesh affirms the human substructure as a bodily-spiritual synthesis. Since the person is an enfleshed spiritual being, the human body bears intrinsic personal meaning. In the three great mysteries of God's dealings with the universe—creation, incarnation, and resurrection—all material reality, but especially spirited, sensible, sexed, and social human flesh, is radically implicated. By dwelling in these mysteries, that is, by mentally and physically assimilating ourselves to the semitive and sacramental symbols that communicate their truth, we find that they have power to illumine whole vistas of knowledge that do not belong exclusively to the provenance of Christian revelation and belief, but are open to all people. In the light of the incarnate Christ, these other spheres of reality become especially luminous. With a Christian metaphysics of flesh, illuminated by the incarnation, we are able to address a number of pressing intellectual, ethical, and social questions about bodily life with philosophical integrity.
Stephen H. Webb
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199827954
- eISBN:
- 9780199919468
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827954.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This book is the first to reconstruct the obscure origins of Heavenly Flesh Christology, examine its implications, and defend it from the charge of heresy. More importantly, this book uses this ...
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This book is the first to reconstruct the obscure origins of Heavenly Flesh Christology, examine its implications, and defend it from the charge of heresy. More importantly, this book uses this Christology to re‐examine theology's commitment to the metaphysics of immaterialism. After surveying ancient metaphysical debates and the contemporary insights of physics about the nature of matter, the author argues that theology needs to reconsider the relationship of spirit to matter, beginning with a new, post-Platonic understanding of the eternal body of Jesus Christ. The result is a defense of an anthropomorphic and corporeal understanding of the nature of God. This portrait of God is tested against the theologies of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth. It is also put into dialogue with the metaphysical materialism of Mormonism. Along the way, the author shows how the thought of Duns Scotus and Caspar Schwenckfeld contribute to a new understanding of heavenly flesh, and how this Christology can enable a new way of appreciating the much-neglected position of Monophysitism.Less
This book is the first to reconstruct the obscure origins of Heavenly Flesh Christology, examine its implications, and defend it from the charge of heresy. More importantly, this book uses this Christology to re‐examine theology's commitment to the metaphysics of immaterialism. After surveying ancient metaphysical debates and the contemporary insights of physics about the nature of matter, the author argues that theology needs to reconsider the relationship of spirit to matter, beginning with a new, post-Platonic understanding of the eternal body of Jesus Christ. The result is a defense of an anthropomorphic and corporeal understanding of the nature of God. This portrait of God is tested against the theologies of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth. It is also put into dialogue with the metaphysical materialism of Mormonism. Along the way, the author shows how the thought of Duns Scotus and Caspar Schwenckfeld contribute to a new understanding of heavenly flesh, and how this Christology can enable a new way of appreciating the much-neglected position of Monophysitism.
John V. Kulvicki
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199290758
- eISBN:
- 9780191604010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019929075X.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter considers John Haugeland’s original proposal for how bare-bones content should figure in an account of depiction. It argues that his account fails and identifies where the account fails, ...
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This chapter considers John Haugeland’s original proposal for how bare-bones content should figure in an account of depiction. It argues that his account fails and identifies where the account fails, transparency, and the other conditions set forth in Chapters 2 and 3 step in to fill the gaps and explain Haugeland’s mistakes. The upshot is that Haugeland introduced an important (and neglected) tool for understanding pictures, but he did not use it to its fullest potential.Less
This chapter considers John Haugeland’s original proposal for how bare-bones content should figure in an account of depiction. It argues that his account fails and identifies where the account fails, transparency, and the other conditions set forth in Chapters 2 and 3 step in to fill the gaps and explain Haugeland’s mistakes. The upshot is that Haugeland introduced an important (and neglected) tool for understanding pictures, but he did not use it to its fullest potential.
John V. Kulvicki
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199290758
- eISBN:
- 9780191604010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019929075X.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Dominic Lopes proposed that pictures differ from other kinds of representations in that only pictures explicitly non-commit to properties. That is to say, with pictures, the price of representing ...
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Dominic Lopes proposed that pictures differ from other kinds of representations in that only pictures explicitly non-commit to properties. That is to say, with pictures, the price of representing something — say someone standing in front of someone else — is not being able to represent other things, such as the features of things behind the person represented. It is argued that this is not essential or unique to depiction, even though it is common only in pictures. Moreover, explicit non-commitment is only a feature of pictures’ fleshed-out contents: it does not appear in their bare-bones contents.Less
Dominic Lopes proposed that pictures differ from other kinds of representations in that only pictures explicitly non-commit to properties. That is to say, with pictures, the price of representing something — say someone standing in front of someone else — is not being able to represent other things, such as the features of things behind the person represented. It is argued that this is not essential or unique to depiction, even though it is common only in pictures. Moreover, explicit non-commitment is only a feature of pictures’ fleshed-out contents: it does not appear in their bare-bones contents.
John V. Kulvicki
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199290758
- eISBN:
- 9780191604010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019929075X.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
With some sense of the relation between bare-bones content and fleshed-out content on the table, this chapter answers four important questions. First, why do we flesh out the contents of pictures in ...
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With some sense of the relation between bare-bones content and fleshed-out content on the table, this chapter answers four important questions. First, why do we flesh out the contents of pictures in the way that we do? Second, what is the source of explicit non-commitment in fleshed-out content? Third, how and why do we flesh out pictures’ bare-bones contents consistently as we change the position from which we view pictures? And finally, anamorphic pictures challenge the answers offered to the first three questions, so how should the current account handle them? This completes the account of pictorial content and picture perception.Less
With some sense of the relation between bare-bones content and fleshed-out content on the table, this chapter answers four important questions. First, why do we flesh out the contents of pictures in the way that we do? Second, what is the source of explicit non-commitment in fleshed-out content? Third, how and why do we flesh out pictures’ bare-bones contents consistently as we change the position from which we view pictures? And finally, anamorphic pictures challenge the answers offered to the first three questions, so how should the current account handle them? This completes the account of pictorial content and picture perception.
Adam G. Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546626
- eISBN:
- 9780191720208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546626.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The Hebrew Scriptures contain the seeds of later Christian theology of the body. Created by God, human flesh is integral to personal and relational constitution. Sacrificial flesh, manipulated in ...
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The Hebrew Scriptures contain the seeds of later Christian theology of the body. Created by God, human flesh is integral to personal and relational constitution. Sacrificial flesh, manipulated in accordance with the divine mandate, becomes the means of purification from sin and the locus of spiritual communion with God. Flesh, as a metaphor for weakness and humility, creates in the human being the requisite vulnerability to suffer the action of divine mercy.Less
The Hebrew Scriptures contain the seeds of later Christian theology of the body. Created by God, human flesh is integral to personal and relational constitution. Sacrificial flesh, manipulated in accordance with the divine mandate, becomes the means of purification from sin and the locus of spiritual communion with God. Flesh, as a metaphor for weakness and humility, creates in the human being the requisite vulnerability to suffer the action of divine mercy.
Adam G. Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546626
- eISBN:
- 9780191720208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546626.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
In the Christian New Testament, flesh becomes a metaphor for the sinful force operative within the fallen human constitution. Yet, along with soul and spirit, it also remains a positive ...
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In the Christian New Testament, flesh becomes a metaphor for the sinful force operative within the fallen human constitution. Yet, along with soul and spirit, it also remains a positive anthropological category, indicative of that physical, external and personal aspect of human nature created by God, assumed by Christ in the incarnation, and glorified in his resurrection. In their eucharistic and ecclesial theology, the New Testament writers privilege flesh and body as spiritually pregnant symbols over against the anti-material doctrines of early gnostic and docetic communities.Less
In the Christian New Testament, flesh becomes a metaphor for the sinful force operative within the fallen human constitution. Yet, along with soul and spirit, it also remains a positive anthropological category, indicative of that physical, external and personal aspect of human nature created by God, assumed by Christ in the incarnation, and glorified in his resurrection. In their eucharistic and ecclesial theology, the New Testament writers privilege flesh and body as spiritually pregnant symbols over against the anti-material doctrines of early gnostic and docetic communities.
Adam G. Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546626
- eISBN:
- 9780191720208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546626.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
For the church Fathers the human body presents a focal symbol impinging upon nearly all theological reflection. Their doctrines of creation, Scripture, incarnation, salvation, church, sacraments, ...
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For the church Fathers the human body presents a focal symbol impinging upon nearly all theological reflection. Their doctrines of creation, Scripture, incarnation, salvation, church, sacraments, asceticism, morality, and eschatology all hinge upon the specific nature and function of the human body in the divine economy. Christ's flesh, present in and as the church, is the effective locus of human and cosmic deification.Less
For the church Fathers the human body presents a focal symbol impinging upon nearly all theological reflection. Their doctrines of creation, Scripture, incarnation, salvation, church, sacraments, asceticism, morality, and eschatology all hinge upon the specific nature and function of the human body in the divine economy. Christ's flesh, present in and as the church, is the effective locus of human and cosmic deification.
Adam G. Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546626
- eISBN:
- 9780191720208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546626.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
In Aquinas's hylomorphic theory of the universe, the patristic theology of the body is strengthened and enriched with deeper philosophical underpinnings. Always sensitive to the spiritualizing ...
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In Aquinas's hylomorphic theory of the universe, the patristic theology of the body is strengthened and enriched with deeper philosophical underpinnings. Always sensitive to the spiritualizing tendencies in the Platonic philosophical framework, Aquinas perfects a metaphysical synthesis in which matter, existentially bound to form, is granted definite ontological stability and permanence. Aquinas's metaphysics of the flesh represents an integral development in the history of anthropology and opens the way for a moral theory that does full justice to the human body and affectivity.Less
In Aquinas's hylomorphic theory of the universe, the patristic theology of the body is strengthened and enriched with deeper philosophical underpinnings. Always sensitive to the spiritualizing tendencies in the Platonic philosophical framework, Aquinas perfects a metaphysical synthesis in which matter, existentially bound to form, is granted definite ontological stability and permanence. Aquinas's metaphysics of the flesh represents an integral development in the history of anthropology and opens the way for a moral theory that does full justice to the human body and affectivity.
Adam G. Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546626
- eISBN:
- 9780191720208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546626.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Luther's theology is not sufficiently appreciated for its intensely incarnational and sacramental character. Recent Luther research has uncovered the intellectual roots of his thought in patristic ...
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Luther's theology is not sufficiently appreciated for its intensely incarnational and sacramental character. Recent Luther research has uncovered the intellectual roots of his thought in patristic and medieval sacramental theology, and his resultant and vigorous anti-spiritualizing impulse. Luther redefines ‘spiritual’ to mean not ‘non-material’, but impregnated with the Holy Spirit. In localizing himself in specific material and liturgical realities, God fills them with Spirit, imbues them with deifying power, and constitutes them as ‘the bodily word of the Gospel.’Less
Luther's theology is not sufficiently appreciated for its intensely incarnational and sacramental character. Recent Luther research has uncovered the intellectual roots of his thought in patristic and medieval sacramental theology, and his resultant and vigorous anti-spiritualizing impulse. Luther redefines ‘spiritual’ to mean not ‘non-material’, but impregnated with the Holy Spirit. In localizing himself in specific material and liturgical realities, God fills them with Spirit, imbues them with deifying power, and constitutes them as ‘the bodily word of the Gospel.’
Robert C. Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195369175
- eISBN:
- 9780199871186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369175.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate ...
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Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate objects in our immediate environment. The final chapter thus explores how these “embodied categories of thought” influence both why and how we think about religious topics (e.g., the body of Christ, the lifting of burdens, finding balance, being touched by Jesus, opening our heart to God). A concluding observation notes that studying the biological sources of religion need not be reductionistic. Indeed, a spirituality in the flesh might lead to a spirituality of the flesh that affirms nature itself as teeming with sacred significance.Less
Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate objects in our immediate environment. The final chapter thus explores how these “embodied categories of thought” influence both why and how we think about religious topics (e.g., the body of Christ, the lifting of burdens, finding balance, being touched by Jesus, opening our heart to God). A concluding observation notes that studying the biological sources of religion need not be reductionistic. Indeed, a spirituality in the flesh might lead to a spirituality of the flesh that affirms nature itself as teeming with sacred significance.
Phillip Cary
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195336498
- eISBN:
- 9780199868629
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336498.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Augustine belongs with Calvin in denying that external signs can confer grace, in contrast to the medieval view, shared by Luther, which makes sacraments efficacious external means of grace. Because ...
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Augustine belongs with Calvin in denying that external signs can confer grace, in contrast to the medieval view, shared by Luther, which makes sacraments efficacious external means of grace. Because they do not take them literally, Augustine contends, Christians are less burdened by external signs and sacraments than the Jews are. Unlike the medieval theologians, when Augustine speaks of the virtue of the sacrament he means not its power but the piety it signifies. Even the flesh of Christ, for instance in the Eucharist, has no life‐giving efficacy because it is external.Less
Augustine belongs with Calvin in denying that external signs can confer grace, in contrast to the medieval view, shared by Luther, which makes sacraments efficacious external means of grace. Because they do not take them literally, Augustine contends, Christians are less burdened by external signs and sacraments than the Jews are. Unlike the medieval theologians, when Augustine speaks of the virtue of the sacrament he means not its power but the piety it signifies. Even the flesh of Christ, for instance in the Eucharist, has no life‐giving efficacy because it is external.
Paul Gilbert and Kathleen Lennon
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748614981
- eISBN:
- 9780748652495
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748614981.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This work brings contemporary continental thought into conversation with analytic philosophy on the principal topics of philosophy of mind, considering three themes – the world, the flesh and the ...
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This work brings contemporary continental thought into conversation with analytic philosophy on the principal topics of philosophy of mind, considering three themes – the world, the flesh and the subject – to resolve the puzzles that beset contemporary philosophy of mind. The authors provide a coherent approach that draws upon phenomenology, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis and poststructuralism, and also relate recent feminist work on the body to traditional concerns with the mind. Other topics discussed include the problem of consciousness, perception and sensation, imagination, desire, emotion, reason, and agency, and the self and others.Less
This work brings contemporary continental thought into conversation with analytic philosophy on the principal topics of philosophy of mind, considering three themes – the world, the flesh and the subject – to resolve the puzzles that beset contemporary philosophy of mind. The authors provide a coherent approach that draws upon phenomenology, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis and poststructuralism, and also relate recent feminist work on the body to traditional concerns with the mind. Other topics discussed include the problem of consciousness, perception and sensation, imagination, desire, emotion, reason, and agency, and the self and others.
Amber Jamilla Musser
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479807031
- eISBN:
- 9781479845491
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479807031.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This book offers multiple inroads into thinking with and through the dominant tropes of sexuality. By analyzing particular works of art, each chapter draws our attention to specific aspects of ...
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This book offers multiple inroads into thinking with and through the dominant tropes of sexuality. By analyzing particular works of art, each chapter draws our attention to specific aspects of pornotropic (violent and exoticizing) capture that black and brown people must negotiate. These technologies differ, but together, they add to our understanding of the ways that structures of domination produce violence and work to contain bodies and pleasures within certain legible parameters. In addition, the book identifies and analyzes moments that exceed these constraints—the sensual excess that is theorized as brown jouissance. Brown jouissance is a political and philosophical intervention into what constitutes selfhood, knowledge, and fleshiness. The book works through several examples of brown jouissance in the work of Lyle Ashton Harris, Kara Walker, Mickalene Thomas, Xandra Ibarra, Amber Hawk Swanson, Cheryl Dunye, Carrie Mae Weems, Nao Bustamante, Patty Chang, and Maureen Catbagan by dwelling on the analytic possibilities opened by the artwork’s entanglement with the sensual. The sensual, in turn, leads us to imagine possibilities for orienting relationality around queer femininity.Less
This book offers multiple inroads into thinking with and through the dominant tropes of sexuality. By analyzing particular works of art, each chapter draws our attention to specific aspects of pornotropic (violent and exoticizing) capture that black and brown people must negotiate. These technologies differ, but together, they add to our understanding of the ways that structures of domination produce violence and work to contain bodies and pleasures within certain legible parameters. In addition, the book identifies and analyzes moments that exceed these constraints—the sensual excess that is theorized as brown jouissance. Brown jouissance is a political and philosophical intervention into what constitutes selfhood, knowledge, and fleshiness. The book works through several examples of brown jouissance in the work of Lyle Ashton Harris, Kara Walker, Mickalene Thomas, Xandra Ibarra, Amber Hawk Swanson, Cheryl Dunye, Carrie Mae Weems, Nao Bustamante, Patty Chang, and Maureen Catbagan by dwelling on the analytic possibilities opened by the artwork’s entanglement with the sensual. The sensual, in turn, leads us to imagine possibilities for orienting relationality around queer femininity.
Rebecca Krawiec
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195129434
- eISBN:
- 9780199834396
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195129431.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
I begin by giving a general description of Shenoute and what survives of his monastic literature. I then turn to the evidence of women's lives within that literature, focusing on 13 letter fragments ...
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I begin by giving a general description of Shenoute and what survives of his monastic literature. I then turn to the evidence of women's lives within that literature, focusing on 13 letter fragments that address the female community or individual female monks directly. I argue that the genre of this material requires a methodology similar to that of feminist studies of Paul, rather than solely comparing Shenoute to his contemporaries: both Shenoute and Paul wrote rhetorically complex letters that responded to actual events, indeed crises, in physically distant communities over which they wished to exert their authority. I then lay out the major arguments of the chapters that follow, which, after giving a narrative of the women's conflicts recorded in the letters, analyze the material through three lenses, namely, power, gender, and family. One central thesis links these three approaches: that Shenoute advocated a universal monasticism he defined in terms of purity of the body (both individual and communal), a purity that could result from properly disciplining the flesh by the spirit so that differences located in the flesh (gender, biological kinship, social status) would not affect monastic or ascetic practicesLess
I begin by giving a general description of Shenoute and what survives of his monastic literature. I then turn to the evidence of women's lives within that literature, focusing on 13 letter fragments that address the female community or individual female monks directly. I argue that the genre of this material requires a methodology similar to that of feminist studies of Paul, rather than solely comparing Shenoute to his contemporaries: both Shenoute and Paul wrote rhetorically complex letters that responded to actual events, indeed crises, in physically distant communities over which they wished to exert their authority. I then lay out the major arguments of the chapters that follow, which, after giving a narrative of the women's conflicts recorded in the letters, analyze the material through three lenses, namely, power, gender, and family. One central thesis links these three approaches: that Shenoute advocated a universal monasticism he defined in terms of purity of the body (both individual and communal), a purity that could result from properly disciplining the flesh by the spirit so that differences located in the flesh (gender, biological kinship, social status) would not affect monastic or ascetic practices
Rebecca Krawiec
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195129434
- eISBN:
- 9780199834396
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195129431.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
Biological kin, who were defined with precise language as “those according to the flesh,” lived in the monastery alongside those monks who had renounced their families to join the monastery. These ...
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Biological kin, who were defined with precise language as “those according to the flesh,” lived in the monastery alongside those monks who had renounced their families to join the monastery. These monks faced particular challenges since they experienced enforced gender separation from spouses and relatives, witnessed the corporal punishment of relatives, and even saw relatives expelled from the monastery. Overall, the monks with kin were expected to live as though they had also renounced each other so that all monks had the same “kinship” with each other and so shared the same salvation. Despite these expectations, Shenoute found a way to have male and female monks visit each other without violating his own commands: male relatives often served as envoys carrying these very letters from Shenoute to the female community. Finally, the experiences of one female monk, Tachom, shows the intersection of the three patterns that determined a monk's life: power, gender, and family.Less
Biological kin, who were defined with precise language as “those according to the flesh,” lived in the monastery alongside those monks who had renounced their families to join the monastery. These monks faced particular challenges since they experienced enforced gender separation from spouses and relatives, witnessed the corporal punishment of relatives, and even saw relatives expelled from the monastery. Overall, the monks with kin were expected to live as though they had also renounced each other so that all monks had the same “kinship” with each other and so shared the same salvation. Despite these expectations, Shenoute found a way to have male and female monks visit each other without violating his own commands: male relatives often served as envoys carrying these very letters from Shenoute to the female community. Finally, the experiences of one female monk, Tachom, shows the intersection of the three patterns that determined a monk's life: power, gender, and family.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This is the first of four chapters exploring the turn‐of‐the‐century disturbances in the relation between life‐writing and fiction. It argues that ‘autobiography’ begins to seem a problematic ...
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This is the first of four chapters exploring the turn‐of‐the‐century disturbances in the relation between life‐writing and fiction. It argues that ‘autobiography’ begins to seem a problematic category in the period, and gets displaced towards fiction. The chapter focuses on ‘Mark Rutherford’, not just for his autobiography, but for his later inclusion of the story ‘A Mysterious Portrait’. The concept of the heteronym is introduced, to be developed in Chapters 7 and Chapter 8. Other authors discussed here include George Gissing (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft), H. G. Wells (Boon), Henry Adams, Samuel Butler (The Way of All Flesh), and Edmund Gosse (Father and Son). The various displacements of auto/biography are shown to complicate Lejeune's concept of the autobiographic contract guaranteeing the identity of author, narrator, and subject.Less
This is the first of four chapters exploring the turn‐of‐the‐century disturbances in the relation between life‐writing and fiction. It argues that ‘autobiography’ begins to seem a problematic category in the period, and gets displaced towards fiction. The chapter focuses on ‘Mark Rutherford’, not just for his autobiography, but for his later inclusion of the story ‘A Mysterious Portrait’. The concept of the heteronym is introduced, to be developed in Chapters 7 and Chapter 8. Other authors discussed here include George Gissing (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft), H. G. Wells (Boon), Henry Adams, Samuel Butler (The Way of All Flesh), and Edmund Gosse (Father and Son). The various displacements of auto/biography are shown to complicate Lejeune's concept of the autobiographic contract guaranteeing the identity of author, narrator, and subject.
Meredith Baldwin Weddle
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195131383
- eISBN:
- 9780199834839
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019513138X.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
In 1675, King Philip's War – a war redolent of sin and flesh – broke out in New England between English settlers and Indians. All of the antagonists in this war saw each other as sinners: the ...
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In 1675, King Philip's War – a war redolent of sin and flesh – broke out in New England between English settlers and Indians. All of the antagonists in this war saw each other as sinners: the Puritans blamed Quakers for drawing the wrath of God upon them in the form of angry Indians; the Quakers blamed Puritans for persecuting fellow Christians; the Indians felt the English had abused them in multiple ways; the English saw the Indians as Godless, and so as sinners as well. As for flesh, the physical costs of war were devastating: the Indians suffered massive losses of population, and 12 English towns were utterly destroyed. The major leaders when war erupted were King Philip of the Wampanoags, Canonchet of the Narragansetts, the Quaker Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island, Governors John Leverett of Massachusetts Bay, Josiah Winslow of Plymouth, and John Winthrop Jr. of Connecticut. Quakers dominated the Rhode Island government and sent Quaker John Easton to negotiate with Philip in a failed effort to forestall hostilities.Less
In 1675, King Philip's War – a war redolent of sin and flesh – broke out in New England between English settlers and Indians. All of the antagonists in this war saw each other as sinners: the Puritans blamed Quakers for drawing the wrath of God upon them in the form of angry Indians; the Quakers blamed Puritans for persecuting fellow Christians; the Indians felt the English had abused them in multiple ways; the English saw the Indians as Godless, and so as sinners as well. As for flesh, the physical costs of war were devastating: the Indians suffered massive losses of population, and 12 English towns were utterly destroyed. The major leaders when war erupted were King Philip of the Wampanoags, Canonchet of the Narragansetts, the Quaker Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island, Governors John Leverett of Massachusetts Bay, Josiah Winslow of Plymouth, and John Winthrop Jr. of Connecticut. Quakers dominated the Rhode Island government and sent Quaker John Easton to negotiate with Philip in a failed effort to forestall hostilities.
Ceri Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199547845
- eISBN:
- 9780191720901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547845.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Each element in the syllogism of the conscience has been tested and found faulty, and each breakdown has been expressed through an alteration in the poet's flesh. Though under Christian theology an ...
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Each element in the syllogism of the conscience has been tested and found faulty, and each breakdown has been expressed through an alteration in the poet's flesh. Though under Christian theology an enquiry into the body is also an enquiry into the godhead that it images, the form mirrored by the poems is not flawless. In Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan, the body is forced into a grotesque shape by the divine pressure to speak. The psychological costs of maintaining a conscience are the aetiolated attitudes of boredom, irony, and opportunistic agreement. They appear in a caricature of a body which is tortured, particulated, involuted, written, on and wrung out. It is thus never wholly the poets' own as it utters someone else's intruded words. Though poems murmur about techniques of control, the devices of grace force disgruntled ejaculations from them. They are more than they mean to say. Such a consciously inadequate use by the poets must shake the position which metaphysical poetry has held for two decades, through Lewalski's scholarly vigour, of being a solely and stoutly Protestant poetics of the Word. Indeed, Stuart writers show that the torques produced by enigma, aposiopesis, subjectio, antanaclasis, and chiasmus engineer the conscience with perhaps a little discomfort in a prosthetic poetics.Less
Each element in the syllogism of the conscience has been tested and found faulty, and each breakdown has been expressed through an alteration in the poet's flesh. Though under Christian theology an enquiry into the body is also an enquiry into the godhead that it images, the form mirrored by the poems is not flawless. In Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan, the body is forced into a grotesque shape by the divine pressure to speak. The psychological costs of maintaining a conscience are the aetiolated attitudes of boredom, irony, and opportunistic agreement. They appear in a caricature of a body which is tortured, particulated, involuted, written, on and wrung out. It is thus never wholly the poets' own as it utters someone else's intruded words. Though poems murmur about techniques of control, the devices of grace force disgruntled ejaculations from them. They are more than they mean to say. Such a consciously inadequate use by the poets must shake the position which metaphysical poetry has held for two decades, through Lewalski's scholarly vigour, of being a solely and stoutly Protestant poetics of the Word. Indeed, Stuart writers show that the torques produced by enigma, aposiopesis, subjectio, antanaclasis, and chiasmus engineer the conscience with perhaps a little discomfort in a prosthetic poetics.
Dominic Keech
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199662234
- eISBN:
- 9780191746314
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662234.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies, Theology
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 ...
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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 embodimentLess
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
