Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology – serie

Richard Cross explores the largely uncharted territory of seventeenth-century Christology, paying close attention to its metaphysical and semantic presuppositions and consequences. He shows that theologians of all stripes develop and expand theories that are associated respectively with the medieval theologians Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Italian and French Dominicans follow Aquinas closely, read through the lens of Cardinal Cajetan. But most Iberian Dominicans incorporate Suárez's theory of modes into their account, and Suárez, whose account is a modification of Scotus's, is in turn followed by his fellow Jesuits. Lutherans use Cajetan's account to fill explanatory gaps in their own accounts; and Reformed theologians by and large adapt the position associated with Scotus. The study ends with an account of Leibniz's Christology in its historical and conceptual context.

This book is focused on the reception history of Thomas Aquinas' account of Eucharistic sacrifice during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although the sacrificial character of the Eucharist has been of interest to theologians throughout the Church's history, during the early sixteenth century renewed attention was given to this subject, in part because of disputes that arose between Reformed and Catholic theologians about the relationship between the Eucharistic liturgy and Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Does the Eucharistic presence itself have a sacrificial quality? Can aspects of the liturgy or dimensions of the moral life be considered a sacrifice, and if so in what way? The emergence of these and other new questions in Eucharistic theology at the beginning of the sixteenth century coincided with a shift within the practice of theology in universities that began to emphasize Aquinas' Summa theologiae as the standard text of theological instruction, in place of Peter Lombard's Sentences. Because of the Summa's relatively late ascendency as a text of commentary and instruction, studying the Summa's reception history involves the interpreter in a complex textuality. Although itself a product of the middle ages, as a received text the Summa is in many ways a creature of the early modern period. Interpreting the reception of this text therefore requires one to consider not only the Summa in its original environment, but the life of this same text as it was received in new interpretive contexts.

Modern theology has an enduring and often intense interest in the relationship between God and creation, expressed commonly as the interplay of nature and grace. Literature on the topic abounds and often appears as fierce polemic about the relevance of such concepts as "pure" nature and "gratuitous" grace, with implications for topics ranging from theological anthropology to modern politics. This study traces the emergence of such thinking in classical and biblical sources. The writing of authors, including Philo and Paul, give evidence of two distinct but related traditions of nature and grace, one "graded" and the other "filial," which shape the origins of reflection on the bond between God and creation. Many sources present nature as a stable essence that God's grace sustains and gradually elevates, while other sources view nature primarily in light of the term's linguistic roots, as that which is inborn, and that which can be transformed through the grace of adoption in the Holy Spirit. The mutual influence and the tension between those two traditions appears in famous trinitarian and Christological debates of the early Church and remains even as the pairing of nature and grace becomes formulaic in the late fourth century. The prehistory informs the first great debates specifically related to nature and grace, in Augustine's debate with Pelagius. This study provides some background to the emergence and formalization of nature-grace thinking, and clarifies the issues behind contemporary debates on dependence, autonomy, and God's generosity.

Georges Florovsky is the mastermind of a 'return to the Church Fathers' in twentieth-century Orthodox theology. His theological vision-the neopatristic synthesis-became the main paradigm of Orthodox theology and the golden standard of Eastern Orthodox identity in the West. Focusing on Florovsky's European period (1920-1948), this study analyses how Florovsky's evolving interpretation of Russian religious thought, particularly Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov, informed his approach to patristic sources. Paul Gavrilyuk offers a new reading of Florovsky's neopatristic theology, by closely considering its ontological, epistemological and ecclesiological foundations. It is common to contrast Florovsky's neopatristic theology with the 'modernist' religious philosophies of Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, and other representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance. Gavrilyuk argues that the standard narrative of twentieth-century Orthodox theology, based on this polarization, must be reconsidered. The author demonstrates Florovsky's critical appropriation of the main themes of the Russian Religious Renaissance, including theological antinomies, the meaning of history, and the nature of personhood. The distinctive features of Florovsky's neopatristic theology--Christological focus, 'ecclesial experience', personalism, and 'Christian Hellenism'--are best understood against the background of the main problematic of the Renaissance. Specifically, it is shown that Bulgakov's sophiology provided a polemical subtext for Florovsky's theology of creation. It is argued that the use of the patristic norm in application to modern Russian theology represents Florovsky's theological signature.Drawing on unpublished archival material and correspondence, this study sheds new light on such aspects of Florovsky's career as his family background, his participation in the Eurasian movement, his dissertation on Alexander Herzen, his lectures on Vladimir Solovyov, and his involvement in Bulgakov's Brotherhood of St Sophia.

This book is the first exploration of the remarkable odyssey of Thomas Aquinas in the Orthodox Christian world, from the Byzantine to the modern era. Aquinas was received with astonishing enthusiasm across the Byzantine theological spectrum. By contrast, modern Orthodox readings of Aquinas have been resoundingly negative, routinely presenting Aquinas as the archetype of as a specifically Western form of theology against which the Orthodox East must set its face. Basing itself primarily on a close study of the Byzantine reception of Thomas, this study rejects such hackneyed dichotomies, arguing instead for a properly catholic or universal construal of Orthodoxy - one in which Thomas might once again find a place. In its probing of the East-West dichotomy, this book questions the widespread juxtaposition of Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas as archetypes of opposing Greek and Latin theological traditions. The long period between the Fall of Constantinople and the Russian Revolution, conventionally written off as an era of sterility and malformation for Orthodox theology, is also viewed with a fresh perspective. Study of the reception of Thomas in this period reveals a theological sophistication and a generosity of vision that is rarely accounted for. In short, this is a book which radically re-thinks the history of Orthodox theology through the prism of the fascinating and largely untold story of Orthodox engagement with Aquinas.

Georges Florovsky is the mastermind of a 'return to the Church Fathers' in twentieth-century Orthodox theology. His theological vision-the neopatristic synthesis-became the main paradigm of Orthodox theology and the golden standard of Eastern Orthodox identity in the West. Focusing on Florovsky's European period (1920-1948), this study analyses how Florovsky's evolving interpretation of Russian religious thought, particularly Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov, informed his approach to patristic sources. Paul Gavrilyuk offers a new reading of Florovsky's neopatristic theology, by closely considering its ontological, epistemological and ecclesiological foundations. It is common to contrast Florovsky's neopatristic theology with the 'modernist' religious philosophies of Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, and other representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance. Gavrilyuk argues that the standard narrative of twentieth-century Orthodox theology, based on this polarization, must be reconsidered. The author demonstrates Florovsky's critical appropriation of the main themes of the Russian Religious Renaissance, including theological antinomies, the meaning of history, and the nature of personhood. The distinctive features of Florovsky's neopatristic theology Christological focus, 'ecclesial experience', personalism, and 'Christian Hellenism' are best understood against the background of the main problematic of the Renaissance. Specifically, it is shown that Bulgakov's sophiology provided a polemical subtext for Florovsky's theology of creation. It is argued that the use of the patristic norm in application to modern Russian theology represents Florovsky's theological signature.Drawing on unpublished archival material and correspondence, this study sheds new light on such aspects of Florovsky's career as his family background, his participation in the Eurasian movement, his dissertation on Alexander Herzen, his lectures on Vladimir Solovyov, and his involvement in Bulgakov's Brotherhood of St Sophia.

Cosmic Time and the Divine Plan draws on extensive research to explore the relationship between theological thought about the story of human existence, and the histories and historical chronologies of the world, in the pre-modern period. It argues that until the sixteenth-century Reformation, two ways of thinking and two genres of writing, technical chronology on one hand and theological meaning-making in history on the other, were generally practised separately from one another, even though the relationship between them was acknowledged. With the Protestant Reformation, histories of the world, including those inherited from previous centuries, were brought within the scope of the movement's theological project. Historical narrative demonstrated the hand of God at work in the apparently random events of history, especially when prophets foretold future events. The interpretation of Scripture, especially the prophetic writings, was thus understood to provide essential underpinning for understanding the story of world history. Biblical exegesis and historical chronology were interwoven: biblical commentaries, especially of the Book of Daniel, were often explained through detailed time-lines.This confessional argument reflected how the Reformation saw itself. The reformers understood the divine plan of salvation to be worked out over time, through rise and decline, exile and return, loss and recovery, in the life of the Church and in the life of the individual. This approach was distinctly Protestant: while Catholic scholars also carried out meticulous historical research, their historical vision presupposed a continuous and stable, rather than interrupted, relationship between the Church and the divine. In the seventeenth century, scholars pursued the goal of chronological exactitude with ever greater precision and skill in ancient calendars, without ever agreeing. The religious and theological rationale for the quest was never forgotten. Some calculators emphasized the use of astronomical data to refine calculations, culminating in Isaac Newton in the 1720s; others insisted that Scriptural evidence was more reliable. Only with changing intellectual fashions in the mid-eighteenth century did the quest for meaningful world history through Scriptural computations gradually forfeit the attention of the learned.

Kant actively struggles with the problem of how to conceive of God's creative action in relation to human freedom. He comes to the view that human freedom can only be protected if God withdraws in certain ways from the created world. The two pillars of Kant's mature philosophy - transcendental idealism and freedom - are in part shaped and motivated by Kant's need to provide a solution to his theological problem. The medieval and early modern theological tradition conceives of divine action as unlike the action of any created being. When the creature acts, God directly causes this action, but without reducing the creature's freedom. Kant explicitly discusses and rejects this account of divine and human concursus. This rejection has significant and surprising ramifications for Kant's wider philosophy, explaining otherwise incomprehensible claims in his critical philosophy. Christopher J. Insole presents a definitive study in the history of ideas, engaging with a wide range of Kant's texts from 1749 until the early 1800s. Many of these texts have received little or no attention in Kant studies to date. Insole places Kant's thought in relation to numerous historical and traditional positions and illuminates these positions by a close engagement with recent debates in analytical philosophy and systematic theology. Kant is unrelentingly honest when grappling with the difficulty of relating divine and human freedom. This study, of Kant's theological struggle and legacy, goes to the heart of the problem in the modern reception of what the Christian tradition has affirmed about human freedom. As such, the book throws light on one of the defining fault-lines in modern theology and philosophy.

The influence of the theology and philosophy of Augustine of Hippo on subsequent Western thought and culture is undisputed. Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition argues that the notion of the 'Augustinian tradition' needs to be re-thought; and that already in the generation after Augustine in the West such a re-thinking is already and richly manifest in more than one influential form. In this work, Jonathan D. Teubner encourages philosophical, moral, and historical theologians to think about what it might mean that the Augustinian tradition formed in a distinctively Augustinian fashion, and considers how this affects how they use, discuss, and evaluate Augustine in their work. This is exemplified by Augustine's reflections on prayer and how they were taken up, modified, and handed on by Boethius and Benedict, two critically influential figures for the development of Latin medieval philosophical and theological cultures. Teubner analyses and exemplifies the particular theme of prayer and the other topics it constellates in Augustine and to show how it already forms a distinctively 'Augustinian' concept of tradition that was to prove to have fascinatingly diverse manifestations. Part I traces the development of Augustine's understanding of prayer. Patience and hope as articulated in prayer sit at the centre of Augustine's understanding of Christian existence. In Part II, Teubner turns to suggest how this is picked up by Boethius and Benedict.

To what kind of existence does Christ call us?Christian theology has from its inception posited a powerful vision of humanity's ultimate and eternal fulfilment through the person and work of Jesus Christ. How precisely to understand and approach the human perfection to which the Christian is summoned is a question that has vexed the minds of many and diverse theologians.Orthodox Christian theology is notable for its consistent interest in this question, and over the last century has offered to the West a wealth of theological insight on the matter, drawn both from the resources of its Byzantine theological heritage as well as its living interaction with Western theological and philosophical currents. In this regard, the important themes of personhood, deification, epektasis, apophaticism, and divine energies have been elaborated with much success by Orthodox theologians; but not without controversy. Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology addresses the question of human perfection in Orthodox theology via a retrieval of the sources, examining in turn the thought of leading representatives of the Byzantine theological tradition: St Maximus the Confessor, St Theodore the Studite, St Symeon the New Theologian, and St Gregory Palamas. The overarching argument of this study is that in order to present an Orthodox Christian understanding of human perfection which remains true to its Byzantine inheritance, supreme emphasis must be placed on the doctrine of Christ, especially on the significance and import of Christ's humanity. The intention of this work is thus to keep the creative approach to human destiny in Orthodox theology firmly moored to its theological past.

God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered considers the early development and reception of what is today the most widely professed Christian conception of Christ. The development of this doctrine admits of wide variations in expression, understanding, and interpretation that are as striking in authors of the first millennium as they are among modern writers. The seven early ecumenical councils and their dogmatic formulations were crucial facilitators in defining the shape of this study. Focusing primarily on the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, Brian E. Daley argues that previous assessments that Christ was one Person in two natures - the Divine of the same substance as the Father and the human of the same substance as us - can sometimes be excessively narrow, even distorting our understanding of Christ's person. Daley urges us to look beyond the Chalcedonian formula alone, and to consider what some major Church Fathers - from Irenaeus to John Damascene - say about the person of Christ.

This study offers a radical reinterpretation of the sixteenth-century Christological debates between Lutheran and Reformed theologians on the ascription of divine and human predicates to the person of the incarnate Son of God (the communicatio idiomatum). It does so by close attention to the arguments deployed by the protagonists in the discussion, and to the theologians' metaphysical and semantic assumptions, explicit and implicit. It traces the central contours of the Christological debates, from the discussion between Luther and Zwingli in the 1520s to the Colloquy of Montbéliard in 1586.Richard Cross shows that Luther's Christology is thoroughly Medieval, and that innovations usually associated with Luther-in particular, that Christ's human nature comes to share in divine attributes-should be ascribed instead to his younger contemporary Johannes Brenz. The discussion is highly sensitive to the differences between the various Luther groups-followers of Brenz, and the different factions aligned in varying ways with Melanchthon-and to the differences between all of these and the Reformed theologians. By locating the Christological discussions in their immediate Medieval background, Cross also provides a comprehensive account of the continuities and discontinuities between the two eras. In these ways, it is shown that the standard interpretations of the Reformation debates on the matter are almost wholly mistaken.

The late middle ages was a period of great speculative innovation in Christology, within the framework of a standard Christological opinion established by the Franciscan John Duns Scotus and the Dominican Hervaeus Natalis. According to this view, the Incarnation consists in some kind of dependence relationship between an individual human nature and a divine person. The Metaphysics of Christology in the Late Middle Ages: William of Ockham to Gabriel Biel explores ways in which this standard opinion was developed in the late middle ages. Theologians offered various proposals about the nature of the relationship--as a categorial relation, or an absolute quality, or even just the divine will.Author Richard Cross also considers alternative positions: Peter Auriol's claim that the divine person is a 'quidditative termination' of the human nature; the homo assumptus theology of John Wyclif and Jan Hus; and the retrieval of a truly Thomistic Christology in the fifteenth century in the thought of John Capreolus and Denys the Carthusian. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were pre-eminently the age of nominalism, and this book examines the impact of nominalism on Christological discussions, as well as the development of Thomist and Scotist theology in the period. It also provides essential background for the correct understanding of Reformation Christology.

This book traces developments in Christology--and specifically the metaphysics of the union of divine and human natures in one person--from 1050 (the age of Anselm of Canterbury) to 1250 (the age of Albert the Great). During the first part of the period, the key issue is the conflict between Augustine's homo assumptus (assumed man) Christology, defended by the Victorines, and that of Boethius's Chalcedonian Christology, defended by Gilbert of Poitiers (sometimes known as the 'subsistence' theory). By 1180, the latter of these was almost universally accepted. A third view, apparently accepted by Peter Lombard among others, according to which it is not true that Christ as man is something--the non-aliquid Christology--was condemned in 1177.The second part of the book traces the way in which theologians attempted to develop the presentation of Conciliar Christology by working out inchoate solutions to some of the metaphysical questions that the issue raises: what is the nature of the hypostatic union between the two natures, or the human nature and the divine person--is it something created, or something uncreated? And, given that the human nature is a particular substance, what prevents it from being a person? Theologians used insights from both of the rejected theories (the homo assumptus Christology and the non-aliquid Christology) in attempting to answer these issues.The early thirteenth century saw both the founding of the universities of Paris and Oxford, and the founding of the Franciscan and Dominican orders. The book explores the impact of these religious identities on the formation of Christological teaching.

The churches of the Reformation highlight the righteousness of faith (Iustitia Dei) as the core of their theology. Martin Luther formulated this doctrine as an alternative to the Aristotelian virtue of justice. This volume shows, however, that many different versions of philosophical justice circulated in Luther's days. Some of them already affirm the relational features that characterize later Reformation theology. As Protestant scholarship has not attended to the philosophical commentaries on Aristotle and the formative impact of Anselm and John Duns Scotus in philosophy and theology, the medieval background of imputative and forensic righteousness is much broader than earlier studies assume. This volume argues that a new historical paradigm of Iustitia Dei can be outlined by investigating the complex interaction between Anselmian and Aristotelian thought available in late medieval and Renaissance commentaries. The philosophical trajectory of justice underwent a profound transformation before the sixteenth century. While Thomas Aquinas considers that 'the just' is the object of justice, later scholastic commentators affirm an increasingly subjective and voluntary constitution of justice. In Franciscan thinking, this development leads to a view in which the interplay between the lord and the subjects defines the realm of justice. On the one hand, this interplay is connected to biblical views and the teaching of Anselm. On the other, it permeates the early modern considerations of justice. Therefore, the new paradigm outlined in this study influences both Reformation theology and the broader intellectual history of justice in Western thought.

This book provides a complete account of the metaphysical aspects of Christology in Western theology, during the years from 1250 to 1310. This period is the most significant for the theology of the middle ages, beginning with Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, and ending with Duns Scotus. The book opens with an extensive treatment of the different theories of the union between Christ's human nature and the second person of the Trinity: primarily that of Bonaventure, according to which the union is a kind of dependence relationship, and that of Aquinas, according to which the union consists in a sharing of the divine being with a human nature. The work proceeds to outline various theories that attempt to explain why it is that a human nature assumed to union with a divine person should not itself count as a person. It makes it clear that these theories about subsistence correspond to different accounts of the union. A final part deals with three issues: what the feature is of a divine person that makes it possible for this person to be united to a human nature (be it the person's divine nature, or the personal property that distinguishes the divine person from other such persons); and the question of Christological predication, as a prelude to, thirdly, a treatment of Christ's human activity.

Is the God of Calvin a fountain of blessing, or a forceful tyrant? Is Calvin's view of God coercive, leaving no place for the human qua human in redemption? These are perennial questions about Calvin's theology which have been given new life by Gift theologians such as John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Stephen Webb.J. Todd Billings addresses these questions by exploring Calvin's theology of `participation in Christ'. He argues that Calvin's theology of `participation' gives a positive place to the human, such that grace fulfils rather than destroys nature, affirming a differentiated union of God and humanity in creation and redemption. Calvin's trinitarian theology of participation extends to his view of prayer, sacraments, the law, and the ecclesial and civil orders. In light of Calvin's doctrine of participation, Billings reframes the critiques of Calvin in the Gift discussion and opens up new possibilities for contemporary theology, ecumenical theology, and Calvin scholarship as well.

God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered considers the early development and reception of what is today the most widely professed Christian conception of Christ. The development of this doctrine admits of wide variations in expression and understanding, varying emphases in interpretation that are as striking in authors of the first millennium as they are among modern writers. The seven early ecumenical councils and their dogmatic formulations are crucial way-stations in defining the shape of this study. Brian E. Daley argues that the scope of previous enquiries, which focused on the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 that Christ was one Person in two natures, the Divine of the same substance as the Father, and the human of the same substance as us, now seems excessively narrow and distorts our understanding. Daley sets aside the Chalcedonian formula and instead considers what some major Church Fathers--from Irenaeus to John Damascene--say about the person of Christ.

John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman is generally known to have been devoted to reading the Church Fathers. In this volume, Benjamin King draws on archive as well as published material to explore how Newman interpreted specific Fathers at different periods of his life. King draws connections between the Alexandrian Fathers Newman was reading and the development of his thought. This analysis shows that it was events in Newman's life that changed his interpretation of the Fathers, not the interpretation of the Fathers that caused Newman to change his life. King argues that Newman tailored his reading, 'trying on' the ideas of different Fathers to fit his own needs. An innovative comparison of Newman's two translations of Athanasius of Alexandria, from 1842-44 and 1881, demonstrates that by 1881 the Cardinal was swayed by the theology favored by Pope Leo XIII. King reveals that although Newman was a controversial figure in his own day, eventually his view of the Fathers and their doctrines came to be accepted by many scholars. This new exploration of his work, however, shows that the Cardinal's interpretation of the Fathers should still be controversial today.

Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus provides the first full study of Thomas Gallus (d. 1246) in English and represents a significant advance in his distinctive theology. Boyd Taylor Coolman argues that Gallus distinguishes, but never separates and intimately relates two international modalities in human consciousness: the intellective and the affective, both of which are forms of cognition. Coolman shows that Gallus conceives these two cognitive modalities as co-existing in an interdependent manner, and that this reciprocity is given a particular character by Gallus anthropological appropriation of the Dionysian concept of hierarchy. Because Gallus conceives of the soul as hierarchized on the model of the angelic hierarchy, the intellect-affect relationship is fundamentally governed by the dynamism of a Dionysian hierarchy, which has two simultaneous trajectories: ascending and descending. Two crucial features are noteworthy in this regard: in ascending, firstly, the lower is subsumed by the higher; in descending, secondly, the higher communicates with the lower, according to the nature of the lower. When Gallus posits a higher, affective cognitio above an intellective cognitio at the highest point in the ascent, accordingly, this higher affective form both builds upon and sublimates the lower intellective form. At the same time, this affective cognitio descends back down into the soul, both enriching its properly intellective capacity and also renewing the ascending movement in love. For Gallus, then, in the hierarchized soul a dynamic mutuality between intellect and affect emerges, which he construes as a spiralling motion, by which the soul unceasingly stretches beyond itself, ecstatically, in knowing and loving God.

This study describes the origin, development and crisis of the German nineteenth-century project of theology as science. Its narrative is focused on the two predominant theological schools during this period, the Tübingen School and the Ritschl School. Their work emerges as a grand attempt to synthesize historical and systematic theology within the twin paradigms of historicism and German Idealism. Engaging in detail with the theological, historical and philosophical scholarship of the story's protagonists, Johannes Zachhuber reconstructs the basis of this scholarship as a deep belief in the eventual unity of human knowledge. This idealism clashed with the historicist principles underlying much of the scholars' actual research. The tension between these paradigms ran through the entire period and ultimately led to the disintegration of the project at the end of the century. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been used in English speaking scholarship before, Zachhuber embeds the essentially theological story he presents within broader intellectual developments in nineteenth century Germany. In spite of its eventual failure, the project of theology as science in nineteenth century Germany is here described as a paradigmatic intellectual endeavour of European modernity with far-reaching significance beyond the confines of a single academic discipline.

The fourteenth-century Greek hesychast and controversialist, Gregory Palamas, has been so successfully cast as 'the other' in Western theological discourse that it can be difficult to gain a sympathetic hearing for him. In the first part of this book, Norman Russell traces the historical reception of Palamite thought in Orthodoxy and in the West, and investigates how 'Palamism' was constructed in the early twentieth century by both Western and Eastern theologians (principally Martin Jugie and John Meyendorff) for polemical or apologetic purposes. Russell argues that we need to go behind these ideological constructions in order to gain a true perception of the teaching of Gregory Palamas. In his recent survey of Palamite scholarship, Robert Sinkewicz noted that it is now time to raise the larger questions. The second part of the book attempts to do this, following the contours of Palamas' thinking in three areas: his relationship to tradition, his philosophy, and his theology. Russell shows that Palamite thought, when freed of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, has the potential to enrich our understanding of divine-human communion. This study contributes to the changing paradigm of scholarship on Palamas, nudging it towards the point at which Palamite thought can be used fruitfully by contemporary Western and Eastern theologians without the need to subscribe to what has been regarded as 'Palamism'.

This book is the first exploration of the remarkable odyssey of Thomas Aquinas in the Orthodox Christian world, from the Byzantine to the modern era. Aquinas was received with astonishing enthusiasm across the Byzantine theological spectrum. By contrast, modern Orthodox readings of Aquinas have been resoundingly negative, routinely presenting Aquinas as the archetype of as a specifically Western form of theology against which the Orthodox East must set its face. Basing itself primarily on a close study of the Byzantine reception of Thomas, this study rejects such hackneyed dichotomies, arguing instead for a properly catholic or universal construal of Orthodoxy - one in which Thomas might once again find a place. In its probing of the East-West dichotomy, this book questions the widespread juxtaposition of Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas as archetypes of opposing Greek and Latin theological traditions. The long period between the Fall of Constantinople and the Russian Revolution, conventionally written off as an era of sterility and malformation for Orthodox theology, is also viewed with a fresh perspective. Study of the reception of Thomas in this period reveals a theological sophistication and a generosity of vision that is rarely accounted for. In short, this is a book which radically re-thinks the history of Orthodox theology through the prism of the fascinating and largely untold story of Orthodox engagement with Aquinas.

Blaise Pascal's account of the cognitive consequences of the Fall is clearly set out by William Wood in the first book on Pascal's theology to appear in English in more than forty years. Wood's central claim is that for Pascal, the Fall is a fall into duplicity. Pascal holds that as fallen selves in a fallen world, human beings have an innate aversion to the truth that is also, at the same time, an aversion to God. According to Pascal, we are born into a duplicitous world that shapes us into duplicitous subjects, and so we find it easy to reject God continually and deceive ourselves about our own sinfulness. Pascal's account of the noetic effects of sin has long been overlooked by theologians, but it is both traditional and innovative. It is robustly Augustinian, with a strong emphasis on the fallen will, the darkened intellect, and the fundamental sin of pride. Yet it also embraces a view of subjectivity that seems strikingly contemporary. For Pascal, the self is a fiction, constructed from without by an already duplicitous world. The human subject is habituated to deception because it is the essential glue that holds his world together. This book offers more than just a novel interpretation of Pascal's Pensées. Wood demonstrates, by exegetical argument and constructive example, that 'Pascalian' theology is both possible and fruitful.

Kant actively struggles with the problem of how to conceive of God's creative action in relation to human freedom. He comes to the view that human freedom can only be protected if God withdraws in certain ways from the created world. The two pillars of Kant's mature philosophy - transcendental idealism and freedom - are in part shaped and motivated by Kant's need to provide a solution to his theological problem. The medieval and early modern theological tradition conceives of divine action as unlike the action of any created being. When the creature acts, God directly causes this action, but without reducing the creature's freedom. Kant explicitly discusses and rejects this account of divine and human concursus. This rejection has significant and surprising ramifications for Kant's wider philosophy, explaining otherwise incomprehensible claims in his critical philosophy. Christopher J. Insole presents a definitive study in the history of ideas, engaging with a wide range of Kant's texts from 1749 until the early 1800s. Many of these texts have received little or no attention in Kant studies to date. Insole places Kant's thought in relation to numerous historical and traditional positions and illuminates these positions by a close engagement with recent debates in analytical philosophy and systematic theology. Kant is unrelentingly honest when grappling with the difficulty of relating divine and human freedom. This study, of Kant's theological struggle and legacy, goes to the heart of the problem in the modern reception of what the Christian tradition has affirmed about human freedom. As such, the book throws light on one of the defining fault-lines in modern theology and philosophy.