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Theologians have always struggled to understand how humanity and divinity coexisted in the person of Christ. Proponents of the Arian heresy, which held that Jesus could not have been fully divine, found significant scriptural evidence of their position. The defenders of orthodoxy, such as Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, and Augustine, believed that these biblical passages could be reconciled with Christ's divinity. Medieval theologians such as Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure, also grappled with these texts when confronting the rising threat of Arian heresy. They too faced the need to preserve Jesus' authentic humanity and to describe a mode of experiencing the passions that cast no doubt upon the perfect divinity of the Incarnate Word. However, they also confronted an additional obstacle. The medieval theologians had inherited from the Greek and Latin fathers a body of opinion on the passages in question, which by this time had achieved normative cultural status in the Christian tradition. However, the Greek and Latin fathers wrote in a polemical situation, responding to the threat to orthodoxy posed by the Arians. As a consequence, they sometimes found themselves driven to extreme and sometimes contradictory statements. These statements seemed to their medieval successors either to compromise the true divinity of Christ, his true humanity, or the possibility that the divine and human were in communication with or metaphysically linked to one another. As a result, medieval theologians also needed to demonstrate how two equally authoritative but apparently contradictory statements could be reconciled. This book examines the arguments that resulted from these dual pressures and finds that, under the guise of unchanging assimilation and transmission of a unanimous tradition, there were in fact many fissures and discontinuities between the two bodies of thought, ancient and medieval. Rather than organic change or development, the book finds radical change, trial, novelty, and even heterodoxy.

This book comprises three main chapters on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It explores the common ground of the great early-modern rationalist theories, and provides an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. One chapter identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes’s cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and ‘contemplative’, the other modern and ‘controlling’. It finds the same tension in Descartes’s moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? The second chapter argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes’s Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology — like the physics — is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. The final chapter focuses on the Rationalists’ arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of ‘the priority of the perfect’, i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. It finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz’s for consideration. These chapters receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza.

This book contains chapters by philosophers and scholars working at the interface of Western philosophy and Buddhist Studies. Many have distinguished scholarly records in Western philosophy, with expertise in analytic philosophy and logic, as well as deep interest in Buddhist philosophy. Others have distinguished scholarly records in Buddhist Studies with strong interests in analytic philosophy and logic. All are committed to the enterprise of cross-cultural philosophy and to bringing the insights and techniques of each tradition to bear in order to illuminate problems and ideas of the other. These chapters address a broad range of topics in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, and demonstrate the fecundity of the interaction between the Buddhist and Western philosophical and logical traditions.

This book is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late 17th and 18th century. It is partly an historical survey of the central figures and themes of this tradition, but it is also a philosophical defence of some of its leading ideas such as: that beauty plays an integral role in life; that aesthetic pleasure is the perception of perfection; and that aesthetic rules are inevitable and valuable. It shows that the criticisms of Kant and Nietzsche of this tradition are largely unfounded. The rationalist tradition deserves re-examination because it is of great historical significance, marking the beginning of modern aesthetics, art criticism, and art history.

This book is a study of the relationship of oral tradition to written sources among different Jewish groups that thrived in Palestine from the later Second Temple period into Late Antiquity. Its main concern is to track the emerging awareness, within diverse Palestinian scribal groups, of the distinction between written books and the oral traditions upon which they were based or in light of which they were interpreted. The thesis holds that during the Second Temple period in particular, diverse Jewish scribal communities –such as the composers of Jewish pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea community, and the Pharisees – certainly employed oral traditions in their literary and interpretive work. But they did not appeal to oral tradition as an authoritative source of knowledge. This was reserved for written books regarded as prophetic transmissions from antiquity. The emergence of a coherent ideology of oral tradition as a kind of revelation comparable to that of Scripture is associated with the consolidation of third century rabbinic Judaism. The book argues that the rabbinic ideology of Oral Torah – “Torah in the Mouth” – is, in great measure, a legitimation of the institution of rabbinic discipleship, which depended upon the primacy of face‐to‐face relationships, unmediated by the written word.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus has been one of the most influential of ancient thinkers, both in antiquity itself and in modern times. This book includes ten chapters which discuss Epictetus' thought on a wide range of subjects, including ethics, logic, theology, and psychology. They explore his relations to his predecessors (including his two philosophical heroes, Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic, as well as the earlier Stoic tradition) and examine his influence on later thinkers. Topics which receive special attention include Epictetus' conception of philosophical education; his view of God, and of the philosopher's divine vocation; his distinctive conception of proairesis (will or rational decision), which is one of the most innovative features of his philosophy; and his theory of the different roles an individual can perform in life, and the different perspectives which they involve.

“The poem is rising into splendid popularity. Some say it is better than Milton — but that is all bosh — nothing can be better than Milton; many say it licks Kalidasa; I have no objection to that. I don't think it impossible to equal Virgil, Kalidasa, and Tasso.” Michael Madhusudan Datta wrote this in a letter to a friend about his verse narrative, The Slaying of Meghanada (1861). The epic, a Bengali version of the Ramayana story in which Ravana, not Rama, is the hero, has become a classic of Indian literature. Datta lived in Bengal at the height of what is frequently called the Bengal Renaissance, a time so labeled for its reinvigoration and reconfiguration of the Hindu past and for the florescence of the literary arts. It was also a period when the Bengali city of Kolkata was a center of world trade-the second city of the British empire — and thus a site of cultural exchange between India and the West. Datta was the perfect embodiment of this time and place. The Slaying of Meghanada is deeply influenced by western epic tradition, and is sprinkled with nods to Homer, Milton, and Dante. Datta's deft intermingling of western and eastern literary traditions brought about a sea change in South Asian literature, and is generally considered to mark the dividing line between pre-modern and modern Bengali literature. Datta's masterpiece is now accessible to readers of English in this translation, which captures both the sense and the spirit of the original. The poem is supplemented by an extensive introduction, notes, and a glossary.

The surviving body of ancient letters offers the reader a stunning variety of material, ranging from the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri to imperial rescripts, New Testament Epistles, fictional or pseudepigraphical letters and a wealth of missives on almost every conceivable subject. They offer us a unique insight into ancient practices in the fields of politics, literature, philosophy, medicine, and many other areas. This collection presents a series of case studies in ancient letters, asking how each letter writer manipulates the epistolary tradition, why he chose the letter form over any other, and what effect the publication of volumes of collected letters might have had upon a reader's engagement with epistolary works. This volume brings together both well-established and new scholars currently working in the fields of ancient literature, history, philosophy, and medicine to engage in a shared debate about this most adaptable and ‘interdisciplinary’ of genres.

The religious ambiguity of the world has many aspects, one of which is the hiddenness of God. Theists have proposed a number of explanations of God's hiddenness. Some putative explanations contend that the advantages of God's hiddenness (“goods of mystery”) outweigh whatever benefits would result if God's existence and nature were clear to us (“goods of clarity”). Goods of mystery that have received a lot of discussion include human moral autonomy and the ability on our part to exercise control over whether we believe in the existence of God. The extent of the ambiguity that surrounds God's existence, and indeed all important religious matters, combined with our lack of an obviously correct and adequate explanation of this lack, suggest that, even if God exists, it is not important that people believe in God. Another central theme in the book is the significance of religious diversity for religious belief. The character of this diversity is such that it provides people who take a position on religious matters with reason to adopt the “Critical Stance” – which requires people in all the religious traditions to subject their religious beliefs to critical scrutiny and hold those beliefs in a tentative way.Some contend that religious faith requires complete confidence in what is believed but tentative belief actually is sufficient to sustain many forms of religious commitment.

For the past two decades, the nature of ancient Israel’s origins has been debated heatedly. Much of this debate has concentrated on part of the book of Exodus and the book of Joshua. Little attention, however, has been given to the wilderness tradition, for example, the episodes set in Sinai (Exodus 16 through Numbers 20). The current study investigates the importance of the wilderness tradition to ancient Israel’s religious and social formation. The location of Mt. Sinai, Israel’s law or covenant, and the possible Egyptian origins of Israel’s desert sanctuary, the tabernacle, are explored in the light of Egyptian archaeological materials. The book further argues that the Torah’s narratives preserve accurate memories of the wilderness period as evidenced by the accuracy of geographical place names in Egypt and Sinai, and by the use of many personal names and technical terms that are of Egyptian etymology. These factors lend credibility to the authenticity sojourn in Egypt and the exodus traditions, rather than viewing them as purely ideological or literary fictions dating to 1,000 years after the events.

The present‐day situation of the Roman Catholic Church has been described as a state of ‘peril’. That fact alone, to say nothing of the challenges inseparable from faith in God, implies that the embrace of ecclesial faith is less likely today. Seeks both to account for the emergence of such a situation and to identify sources of possibility for the church. In order to do so, begins by examining both the internal life of the Catholic Church, especially what has occurred in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), and the relationship between the church and the wider society, with a particular emphasis on the Western world. As the necessary foundation for expressing how the church might respond to its present situation and what might enable or support the embrace of ecclesial faith, the book focusses on a broad understanding of ‘the church’, one that highlights its multiple implications for human communion and for the communion between God and humanity. In particular, develops a contemporary theology of the foundational elements of Christian faith in regard to the church, especially its relationship to Jesus Christ and its existence as symbol of the Holy Spirit. In the light of that theology, analyses also how controversial elements of ecclesial faith – such as tradition and authority – might be appropriated positively. The final chapters identify possibilities for both a constructive relationship between the church and the surrounding culture and for a more reconciled diversity within the church. The emphasis of the final chapters is on the need to understand the church as ‘unfinished’, as not simply able to develop, but as defined by the dynamism that expresses the presence of God. Concludes that a willingness to embrace the need for movement, for being a pilgrim, is inseparable from the risk of ecclesial faith.

This book examines wars and military occupation, and the ideas underlying them. The search for these ideas is conducted in the domain of the laws of war, a body of rules that sought to regulate the practices of war and those permitted to fight in it. This work introduces three ideologies: the martial, Grotian, and republican. These traditions were rooted in incommensurable conceptions of the good life, and the overall argument is that their differences lay at the heart of the failure fully to resolve the distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants at successive diplomatic conferences of Brussels in 1874, the Hague in 1899 and 1907, and Geneva in 1949. Based on a wide range of sources and a plurality of intellectual disciplines, the book places these diplomatic failures in their broader social and political contexts. By bringing out ideological continuities and drawing on the social history of army occupation in Europe and resistance to it, the book both challenges and illuminates the understanding of modern war.