Retrieving The Past

The Age of Projects uses the notion of a project as a key to understanding the massive social, cultural, political, literary, and scientific transitions that occurred in Europe during the late seventeenth century.

This volume directs attention to the teaching of Jesus; it introduces the question of how the imagination has to work in order to retrieve the teaching of Jesus and apply it to actual life in our day. Teachers and preachers are engaged in this work all the time, but upon examination it involves a process that bears reflection. We live in a world that is so different from the world in which Jesus taught that many ask about its practicability relative to our complex everyday lives. The volume turns to three authors who work at this, have thought through present-day theory of interpretation, and respond to basic questions that explain the adjustments that allow us to apply Jesus’ teaching to our dilemmas with interpretation that remain faithful to the content that he proposed. Sandra Schneiders turns to modern hermeneutics, the theory of interpretation, and explains what is going on in the human mind that allows us to say that present-day interpretation, while different from Jesus because our “worlds” are different, corresponds to what Jesus communicated in the past relative to his world. William Spohn pushes the same idea further to concrete examples of how analogy, sameness and difference together, both binds the imagination to Jesus and frees us to see new relevance for Jesus’ actual teaching. And Lisa Sowle Cahill takes the spirit of the other two into the social order to show how Jesus’ teaching has a real relevance for the highly complex societies in which we live today. The logics of these three authors offer models for what is going on in all of the Past Light on Present Life volumes as they represent different historical periods and distinct themes in Western Christian spirituality.

A learned and uniquely constructive book that gently urges "suspicious" Christians to reclaim the patristic roots of their faith. This is the first book of its kind meant to help Protestant Christians recognize the early church fathers as an essential part of their faith. Writing primarily to the evangelical, independent, and free church communities, who remain largely suspicious of church history and the relationship between Scripture and tradition, D. H. Williams clearly explains why every branch of today's church owes its heritage to the doctrinal foundation laid by postapostolic Christianity. Based on solid historical scholarship, this volume shows that embracing the "catholic" roots of the faith will not lead to the loss of Protestant distinctiveness but is essential for preserving the Christian vision in our rapidly changing world.

Provides an accessible introduction to ancient Greek philosophy, enhanced with new features and content Retrieving the Ancients offers a clear and engaging narrative of one of the most fertile periods in the history of human thought, beginning with the Ionian Philosophers of the sixth century and concluding with the works of Aristotle. Organized chronologically, this student-friendly textbook approaches Greek philosophy as an illuminating conversation in which each key thinker—including Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Socrates, and Plato—engages with, responds to, and moves beyond his predecessor. Throughout the text, author David Roochnik highlights how this conversation remains as relevant and urgent to modern readers as ever. Now in its second edition, Retrieving the Ancients features an entirely new epilogue that introduces Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, Cynicism, and various schools of thought that emerged after Aristotle, as well as a useful appendix designed to help students write philosophically. This edition offers expanded online teaching resources for instructors, including a downloadable web pack with sample syllabi. Offers a compelling, readable, and humorous introduction to ancient Greek philosophy Approaches the history of ancient Greek philosophy dialectically Illustrates how the works of the ancients are as valuable today as ever Includes an accessible, modern introduction to Hellenistic philosophers, new to this edition Offering a sophisticated yet accessible account of the first philosophers of the West, Retrieving the Ancients: An Introduction to Greek Philosophy, Second Edition is an ideal textbook for introductory and intermediate undergraduate courses in Ancient Greek Philosophy, as well as general courses in Ancient Philosophy.

J. Daryl Charles argues that a traditional metaphysics of natural law lies at the heart of the present reconstructive project, and that a revival in natural-law thinking is of the highest priority for the Christian community as we contend in, rather than abdicate, the public square. Nowhere is this more on display than in the realm of bioethics, where the most basic moral questions--human personhood, human rights versus responsibilities, the reality of moral evil, the basis of civil society--are being debated. -- from publisher description.

Paul Tillich is best known today as a theologian of mediation. Many have come to view him as an out-of-date thinker a safe exemplar of a mid-twentieth-century theological liberalism. The way he has come to be viewed contrasts sharply with the current theological landscape one dominated by the notion of radicality. In this collection, Russell Re Manning breaks with the widespread opinion of Tillich as 'safe' and dated. Retrieving the Radical Tillich depicts the thinker as a radical theologian, strongly marked but never fully determined by the urgent critical demands of his time. From the crisis of a German cultural and religious life after the First World War, to the new realities of religious pluralism, Tillich's theological responses were always profoundly ambivalent, impure and disruptive, asserts Re Manning. The Tillich that is outlined and analyzed by this collection is never merely correlative. Far from the dominant image of the theologian as a liberal accommodationist, Re Manning reintroduces the troubled and troubling figure of the radical Tillich.