It is virtually impossible to discern the character of western literature apart from its relation to the various forms of Christian tradition, no matter whether this Christian literary presence is central or tangential, affirmative or hostile. Augustine, Dante, Milton, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hopkins, Joyce, and Eliot are obvious examples. Roughly considered, two kinds Christian theology have been recently employed in making such theological discernments. The first is represented by Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner. It seeks to discern both smaller and larger intersections between Christianity and secularity, detecting the Sacred even in such non-Christian texts as Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. The second approach is found in Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Their theologies are often employed in making both a prophetic critique and a sacramental reclamation of the Christian Gospel as it is present or absent in such authors as Flannery O’Connor.
In this thoughtful and carefully argued book, John Desmond uncovers Christian and transcendent elements in Seamus Heaney's poetry by reading it through the intellectual perspectives of the well-known...
Thomas Gardner artistically describes Jesus--"the Word made flesh"--as a poem penned by God for the world, and John--author of the Fourth Gospel--as the poem's interpreter. John's structural patterns,...
G. Douglas Atkins here offers an original consideration of T. S. Eliot's essay as a form of embodied thinking. A combination of literature and philosophy, the genre of the essay holds within itself...
Asceticism in Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture
by David Jasper
Price: $44.99
ISBN: 9781602581418
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Pub Date: August 2009
Format: Hardcover
Continuing the work began in The Sacred Desert, David Jasper here turns his attention to the body, seeking a profound understanding of what it means to be in the flesh. A deeply autobiographical journey...
American literature offers exceptional resources for understanding the complex role religion has played in the life of the culture and in the experience of its people. In recent decades, however, the...
Seeming Knowledge revisits the question of Shakespeare and religion by focusing on the conjunction of faith and skepticism in his writing. Cox argues that the relationship between faith and skepticism...
