Jean-Louis Chrétien – författare

The Ark of Speech investigates the interplay of speech and silence in the dialogue between God and human beings, and human beings and the world. Ranging from the Old Testament and its depiction of God's creative word to the New Testament and its focus on the life and words of Jesus as the Word of the Father, the book shows how important it is for the believer to listen to God and to others in silence and devotion.

The Ark of Speech investigates the interplay of speech and silence in the dialogue between God and human beings, and human beings and the world. Ranging from the Old Testament and its depiction of God's creative word to the New Testament and its focus on the life and words of Jesus as the Word of the Father, the book shows how important it is for the believer to listen to God and to others in silence and devotion.

In this first English translation of an important work, a leading phenomenologist unfolds the ideas of memory and loss, of the immemorable, and of hope, as he opens a phenomenological path to the heart of classical thought. He stands with Levinas, Marion, and Henry in attempting to join philosophy and religion after Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

A leading philosopher and theologian, Jean-Louis Chrétien uses poetry and painting to explore a theme that runs through all of his work: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response. For Chrétien, we live by responding to the call of experience with words, gestures, expressions, and silence. In luminous meditations on Rembrandt, Delacroix, Manet, Verlaine, Keats, and other artists, Chrétien shows how "talking hands of painters" and the "secretly lucid" voices of poets confront the finitude of the human body. Hand to Hand is a deeply cultured renewal of art in all its provocative, transforming, spiritual presence.

A leading philosopher and theologian, Jean-Louis Chrétien uses poetry and painting to explore a theme that runs through all of his work: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response. For Chrétien, we live by responding to the call of experience with words, gestures, expressions, and silence. In luminous meditations on Rembrandt, Delacroix, Manet, Verlaine, Keats, and other artists, Chrétien shows how "talking hands of painters" and the "secretly lucid" voices of poets confront the finitude of the human body. Hand to Hand is a deeply cultured renewal of art in all its provocative, transforming, spiritual presence.

In the aptly titled The Call and the Response, renowned philosopher and theologian Jean-Louis Chrétien revisits a favorite theme: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response, explored using art as a context. For Chrétien, art is about acts in response to what the artist sees or hears and how these acts provoke responses from viewers. Deeply spiritual and intellectual without being academic, his arguments are unique, in both style and content.

In the aptly titled The Call and the Response, renowned philosopher and theologian Jean-Louis Chrétien revisits a favorite theme: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response, explored using art as a context. For Chrétien, art is about acts in response to what the artist sees or hears and how these acts provoke responses from viewers. Deeply spiritual and intellectual without being academic, his arguments are unique, in both style and content.

Chretien's essays on reading sacred scripture are enriched by his immersion in the classics of ancient philosophy and theology, as well as his poetic sensibility. He is as likely to quote Claudel as Aquinas or Origen. His intimate acquaintance with Patristic writings combines with a sympathetic understanding of such Protestant sources as Luther, Calvin, and Barth to yield an admirably ecumenical perspective.The book's title refers to James 1:23–24, which portrays the Word of God as a mirror into which one gazes. The concomitant notion of not only examining the text but also being examined by the Word is a fruitful one for learning how to be more fully nourished by one's study of the Bible.

Chretien's essays on reading sacred scripture are enriched by his immersion in the classics of ancient philosophy and theology, as well as his poetic sensibility. He is as likely to quote Claudel as Aquinas or Origen. His intimate acquaintance with Patristic writings combines with a sympathetic understanding of such Protestant sources as Luther, Calvin, and Barth to yield an admirably ecumenical perspective.The book's title refers to James 1:23–24, which portrays the Word of God as a mirror into which one gazes. The concomitant notion of not only examining the text but also being examined by the Word is a fruitful one for learning how to be more fully nourished by one's study of the Bible.

The Song of Songs is a song of love; it is also a song of the body, masculine and feminine, that praises its members, one by one. Over time, the vigilance of its Christian readers drew from the Song a powerful and differentiated logic and symbolism of the body. This book studies the meaning and constitution of this symbolic logic, from the origins to the thirteenth century, across thirty or so authors (notably Origen, St. Augustine, and St. Bernard), as well as its posterity among certain modern authors (like Luther, St. Francis de Sales, or Paul Claudel).The body’s meaning is pondered here in the diversity of its gestures and its members—the eyes, the nose, hair, the lips, the arms and legs, the breasts, and more. This symbolic logic of the organs is twofold: it is applied to the collective body of the community as well as to the powers of the inner man. Essential dimensions of Christian thinking about the body, largely unrecognized, are thus explored. They have influenced our language and our relation to the world in many ways.What are the powers of our body’s members, and how far does the light of the body shine? What does it show? What does it mean to belong to a community? The strength of the Song of Songs’ words gives us endless food for thought about these questions.