Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern


Book Description

The fourth-century Christian thinker, Gregory of Nyssa, has been the subject of a huge variety of interpretations over the past fifty years. Morwenna Ludlow analyses these recent readings, and asks: What do they reveal about modern and postmodern interpretations of the Christian past? What do they say about the nature of Gregory's writing?




Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern


Book Description

The fourth-century Christian thinker, Gregory of Nyssa, has been the subject of a huge variety of interpretations over the past fifty years, from historians, theologians, philosophers, and others. In this highly original study, Morwenna Ludlow analyses these recent readings of Gregory of Nyssa and asks: What do they reveal about modern and postmodern interpretations of the Christian past? What do they say about the nature of Gregory's writing? Working thematically through studies of recent Trinitarian theology, Christology, spirituality, feminism, and postmodern hermeneutics, Ludlow develops an approach to reading the Church Fathers which combines the benefits of traditional scholarship on the early Church with reception-history and theology.




Gregory of Nyssa's Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian Contexts


Book Description

Intergrating patristics and early Jewish mysticism, this book examines Greogry of Nyssa's tabernacle imagery, as found in Life of Moses 2. 170-201. Previous scholarship has often focused on Gregory's interpretation of the darkness on Mount Sinai as divine incomprehensibility. However, true to Exodus, Gregory continues with Moses's vision of the tabernacle "not made with hands" received within that darkness. This innovative methodology of heuristic comparison doesn't strive to prove influence, but to use heavenly ascent textsas a foil, in order to shed new light on Gregory's imagery. Ann Conway-Jones presents a well-rounded, nuanced understanding of Gregory's exegesis, in which mysticism, theology, and politics are intertwined. Heavenly ascent texts use descriptions of religious experience to claim authoritative knowledge. For Gregory, the high point of Moses's ascent into the darkness of Mount Sinai is the mystery of Christian doctrine. The heavenly tabernacle is a type of the heavenly Christ. This mystery is beyond intellectual comprehension, it can only be grasped by faith; and only the select few, destined for positions of responsibility, should even attempt to do so.




Ancient & Postmodern Christianity


Book Description

Built on the writings of the early church fathers, these essays--created in honor of Thomas C. Oden--span theological perspectives that emphasize what various Christian traditions hold in common. Edited by Kenneth Tanner and Christopher A. Hall.




The Orthodox Icon and Postmodern Art


Book Description

This study examines the theories of postmodern visuality and representation and identifies concepts that resonate with Orthodox theology and iconography. C.A. Tsakiridou frees the Orthodox icon from iconological precepts that limit its aesthetic and expressive range. The book’s key argument is that poststructuralist thought is not alien to Orthodox theology and iconography. Dissonance, liminality, and ambiguity are essential for conveying the paradoxes of Christian faith and recognizing the hagiopneumatic vitality and openness of the Orthodox tradition. Perichoresis or coinherence, a concept in patristic theology that defines the relationship between the three persons of the Holy Trinity and the two natures of Christ, acquires a feminine dimension in the person of the Theotokos. Like the ascetical concept of nepsis, it has aesthetic implications. Intermedial qualities present in iconography, photography, and cinema help explain how icons become hosts to transcendent realities and how their experience in Orthodox liturgy and devotion has anticipated and resolved the postmodern disorientation of visuality and representation. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, postmodernism, philosophy, theology, religion, and gender studies.




Exploring Gregory of Nyssa


Book Description

Exploring Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical, Theological, and Historical Studies brings together an interdisciplinary team of historians, classicists, philosophers, and theologians to offer a holistic exploration of the thought of Gregory of Nyssa. The volume considers Gregory's role in the main philosophical and religious controversies of his era, such as his ecclesiastical involvement in the Neo-Nicene apologetical movement. It looks at his complex relationships-for example with his brother Basil of Caesarea and with Gregory of Nazianzus. Contributors highlight Gregory's debt to Origen, but also the divergence between the two thinkers, and their relationships to Platonism. They also examine Gregory of Nyssa's wider philosophy and metaphysics; deep questions in philosophy of language such as the nature of predication and singular terms that inform our understanding of Gregory's thought; and the role of metaphysical concepts such as the nature of powers and identity. The study paints a picture of Gregory as a ground-breaking philosopher-theologian. It analyses the nature of the soul, and connection to theological issues such as resurrection; questions that are still of interest in the philosophy of religion today, such as divine impassibility and the nature of the Trinity; and returning to more immediately humane concerns, Gregory also has profound thoughts on topics such as vulnerability and self-direction. The volume will be of primary interest to researchers, lecturers, and postgraduate students in philosophy, classics, history, and theology, and can be recommended as secondary reading for undergraduates, especially those studying classics and theology.




Beauty


Book Description

Beauty engages fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa to address beauty's place in theology and the broader world. With the recent resurgence of attention to beauty among theologians, questions still remain about what exactly beauty is, how it is perceived, and whether we should celebrate its return. If beauty fell out of favor because it was seen to distract from the weightier concerns of poverty and suffering--because it can even be a tool of oppression--why should we laud it now? Gregory's writings offer surprisingly rich and relevant reflections that can move contemporary conversations beyond current impasses and critiques of beauty. Drawing Gregory into conversation with such disparate voices as novelist J. M. Coetzee and art theorist Kaja Silverman, Beauty displays the importance of beauty to theology and theology to beauty in a discussion that bridges ancient and modern, practical and theoretical, secular and religious.




The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa


Book Description

The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa is the fruit of wide-ranging collaboration between experts in Philology, Philosophy, History and Theology. These scholars shared the desire to develop a comprehensive reference work that would help attract more people to the tudy of the 'Father of Fathers' and assist them in their work. Gregory of Nyssa's thought is at once quintessentially classic and modern, as it speaks directly to the contemporary reader. As interest in Gregory has increased along with the number of works devoted to him, the need for a comprehensive introduction and bibliographical reference work has arisen. In order to meet this need, more than forty scholars from various disciplines and perspectives have contributed to this work. In two hundred articles, the Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa provides a symphonic vision of the studies on Gregory of Nyssa and his thought.




Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors


Book Description

Ancient authors commonly compared writing with painting. The sculpting of the soul was also a common philosophical theme. Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors takes its starting-point from such figures to recover a sense of ancient authorship as craft. The ancient concept of craft (ars, techne) spans 'high' or 'fine' art and practical or applied arts. It unites the beautiful and the useful. It includes both skills or practices (like medicine and music) and productive arts like painting, sculpting and the composition of texts. By using craft as a guiding concept for understanding fourth Christian authorship, this book recovers a sense of them engaged in a shared practice which is both beautiful and theologically useful, which shapes souls but which is also engaged in the production of texts. It focuses on Greek writers, especially the Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nysa) and John Chrysostom, all of whom were trained in rhetoric. Through a detailed examination of their use of two particular literary techniques—ekphrasis and prosōpopoeia—it shows how they adapt and experiment with them, in order to make theological arguments and in order to evoke a response from their readership.




The Early Christian World


Book Description

Since its publication in 2000, The Early Christian World has come to be regarded by scholars, students and the general reader as one of the most informative and accessible works in English on the origins, development, character and major figures of early Christianity. In this new edition, the strengths of the first edition are retained. These include the book’s attractive architecture that initially takes a reader through the context and historical development of early Christianity; the essays in critical areas such as community formation, everyday experience, the intellectual and artistic heritage, and external and internal challenges; and the profiles on the most influential early Christian figures. The book also preserves its strong stress on the social reality of early Christianity and continues its distinctive use of hundreds of illustrations and maps to bring that world to life. Yet the years that have passed since the first edition was published have seen great advances made in our understanding of early Christianity in its world. This new edition fully reflects these developments and provides the reader with authoritative, lively and up-to-date access to the early Christian world. A quarter of the text is entirely new and the remaining essays have all been carefully revised and updated by their authors. Some of the new material relates to Christian culture (including book culture, canonical and non-canonical scriptures, saints and hagiography, and translation across cultures). But there are also new essays on: Jewish and Christian interaction in the early centuries; ritual; the New Testament in Roman Britain; Manichaeism; Pachomius the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. This new edition will serve its readers for many years to come.