Blockchain Papers

Follow blockchain research across journals, conferences, and preprint repositories.

5 papersLast indexed Aug 31, 2026
Search papers

Paper index

5 results · page 1 of 1

Clear filters
Jan 1, 2024·Contagion Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture
0 cites
The Novelistic Incarnation and the Question of Truth

Christine Orsini, William A. Johnsen

Like many of you, I was overwhelmed by reading RenĂ© Girard's first book Mensonge romantique et vĂ©ritĂ© romanesque, published in 1961.1 But I belong to a special class: Compared to all the young and less young readers and researchers who make up this assembly, I am what in high places, at the ARM [Association Recherches mimĂ©tiques], we do not hesitate to qualify as a “historical Girardian”: I read this book in 1961, thanks to Michel Deguy. And, of course, all his other books in the order of their publication. So I'm probably the oldest surviving groupie of RenĂ© Girard. It's not a claim to fame, but it's in this way that I find a fellowship with you and that I'm happy to be before you. Indeed, I think that between Girardians, the differences matter less than the similarities.It is about another event, very recent, but directly linked to the previous one and also moving for me, that I am going to talk to you: the discovery of RenĂ© Girard, biographie, the forthcoming book by BenoĂźt Chantre, that I had the chance, once again, to read before everyone else. I read it passionately because of all the things it teaches us about the genesis of Girard's work and above all because it gives this work an extraordinary and indisputable unity.I had assumed the unity of Girard's work but BenoĂźt Chantre's book confirms it: What is called the mimetic theory is not a whole made up of separate and detachable parts, like a three-stage rocket, to which we like to compare it. Even if the writing of mimetic theory has undergone the turbulence of world history and the biography of its author, the whole determines its parts; the whole comprehends the boundaries of the work, the first writings and the last, in both senses of the word: to be taken altogether, understood as a whole, or discarded altogether. Moreover, its radical nature prohibits any form of readjustment or compromise. Girard has said it expressly in his interviews: There is no “Girardian system” but at the outset, a very compact intuition that fertilized all his research. This same intuition allowed Girard to profit from the work of his contemporaries and to maintain real relationships with the thought leaders of his time, such as Goldmann, Deguy, Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, and Derrida, without ever turning away from his own path. This intuition takes shape even before the conception of a “triangular” desire on an individual scale, a desire that will subsequently become “mimetic” on the scale of human societies.By reading the biography of Girard by BenoĂźt Chantre, I better understood the importance of literature in the genesis of what we call mimetic theory. Marx wrote that ideas are not born like mushrooms; they always reflect a state of social reality. Girard showed, on the contrary, that social reality is not merely reflected but revealed by great literature. And with Girard, brilliant ideas are of the order of an event, intuitions inspired by readings in tune with events in his life. Reading Girard's intellectual biography therefore holds some surprises, things we did not know and things that can shed new light on those we already know.A genuine surprise is to learn that the excellent title “mensonge romantique et vĂ©ritĂ© romanesque” of his first work was imposed on him by his publisher. Girard had titled his history of the novel, which is at the same time a history of desire, “L'incarnation romanesque.” At first, we will see what this mysterious title can mean; then, we will see that there are not only circumstantial reasons, linked to his teaching, to explain the confidence that Girard placed in literature, and not in philosophy and the human sciences, in his search for truth.It was in Girard's personal papers, described by him as “very important papers” and carefully preserved and carried around from one move to another, that BenoĂźt Chantre found, among other things, the drafts of “the novelistic incarnation.” Now this is quite extraordinary, as we are witnessing the blossoming of the intuition that presided over the mimetic theory even before the conception of desire as “mimetic.” Girard, a young assistant professor, pressured by the American university imperative to “publish or perish,” had set to work. His first articles dealt with Saint-John Perse and Malraux. From these “apocalyptic” authors, who seek meaning in a fragmented world that has lost its bearings, he caught hold of an idea that gave meaning to his own inner exile: “The absolute is looming behind the absurd.”2 The absolute or the sacred is not part of the ideology of the modern world. In order to take its measure, Girard believed, it is necessary not only to resist the dominant mystification of positivism and progressivism but also to resist nihilism. He is grateful to Saint-John Perse for this double negation: “The senseless world whose meaning is served up to us by the rationalist philosophers is followed by a flat refusal of the broken world in which we find ourselves. The poet refuses to abandon the search for meaning.”3Girard's intuition is existential. It is always an event in his life, a founding event. He remembers how, as a child, he suddenly realized that he could read. And it is just as suddenly that the poems of Saint-John Perse, previously indecipherable, have become, in exile, like a light in his dark night: “I remember that it came suddenly, a bit like when I had learned to read the works I was assigned to teach: Balzac, Stendhal, Proust.”4 The poetry of Saint-John Perse opens the doors of the sacred. What does this intuition consist of? The sacred, amid the fragments of the world, can only be said poetically, in “the work of language.” Girard retains the image of an “immobile center in the middle of the movement.”5 In this early article, he remarks: “The sacred imposes itself with increasing force as we come into closer contact with nothingness.”6 Saint-John Perse defines himself as one of those “great adventurers of the soul . . . questioning the entire surface of the globe to understand the meaning of this terrific disorder.”7 But there is nothing “unreal” about the sacred here, as if it were the product of a “nihilating” imagination according to Sartre. The intuition that Girard attributes to Perse in his article is, on the contrary, an “intuition of being at the heart of nothingness.” In his poem the death of cultures displays their hidden source, the secret of their composition and their decomposition. The sacred is seen endowed with a reality that escapes rationalism and all its avatars, the idealism and realism of philosophers, the naturalism of writers, the positivism and progressivism of historians; it is a reality that escapes the closure of the conceptual thinking and is born aloft by images. To evoke this “beyond the absurd,” this beyond death, which is the sacred, metaphor reveals itself more lucid and more powerful than the concept.Even before the “novelistic revelation” of “a desire that from the outset is oriented toward death,” Girard has an intuition of an “apocalyptic” sacred that gives meaning to history, and he has chosen literature as a source of inspiration for the “demystification” that he is about to make of . . . literature. The young Sartrean professor Girard seeks the authenticity of a work in its ability to resist a dominant mystification: It is for the hero of a novel to assume his freedom, and for that, he must cut the ties that link him to a worldliness ruled by bad faith and inauthentic desires. The conclusion of the novel La Princesse de ClĂšves, for a Sartrean, would express this freedom: Her husband has died and nothing prevents Madame de La Fayette's heroine from marrying the Duke of Nemours, with whom she experiences a shared amorous passion. Yet she has arrived at “greater and more distant views”; she renounces her love and the world altogether and retires to a convent to die. A sublime action, but one that could also be described as suicidal and driven by pride. The reading that RenĂ© Girard makes of it, in an article written well before Deceit, Desire and the Novel, is altogether different. What we find there is his intuition of the sacred: The sacred imposes itself with all the more force as we rub shoulders with nothingness.In Deceit, Desire and the Novel, Girard emphasizes the lucidity of the Princess of ClĂšves: She leaves the Duke of Nemours and the romantic world to escape the hell of jealousy, too aware that “only obstacles” have strengthened the ardor of the passion she inspired in the man she loves. But in a text that Girard has reworked several times entitled “Les vues grandes et Ă©loignĂ©es de Madame de ClĂšves,”8 the heroine's self-control is not the subject; it is her death that is at stake, and this death is sacrificial. We learn that in one way or another, every great novel is “autobiographical,” in the sense that the author of the novel, even if at the beginning he distinguishes himself from it, maintains links that become closer and closer to its main character as the novel progresses. Distancing himself to mock his heroine, Flaubert ends up with the acrid taste in his mouth of the poison that kills her and confesses, “I am Madame Bovary.” The coincidence of Madame de La Fayette ending up being confused with Madame de ClĂšves, at the precise moment when the princess, who wanted to be different, discovers herself identical to all women, this perfect coincidence cannot be accomplished, says Girard, other than in the “sacrifice” of the heroine by the novelist. At the end of the novel, her amorous passion, which makes her look like all women, is replaced by a “Christic” passion, the final and redemptive point of the novel, a dying that evokes the Pauline “old man” whom we must slay within us in order to be reborn.Readers sense keenly this “fictional incarnation.” The novelist is embodied in her heroine. The heroes of novels “are not creatures in the same way as other characters because it is by creating them that the novelist creates himself,”9 writes Girard. By creating them or by killing them? By creating them first: The hero or heroine is not a character that the novelist disposes of as he pleases, as he disposes of other characters—it is “an abrupt crystallization of a will,” writes Girard, in short, an individuality endowed with a force, which Madame de ClĂšves calls “virtue,” “honor,” “fidelity,” and which Julien Sorel calls “duty,” Raskolnikov “remorse,” Des Grieux “love.” This “force, (I quote), which uproots them from the novelistic world is the very one which guides the novelist's hand.”10 To put it in other terms, the novelist, Madame de La Fayette, embodies herself in her heroine to enact her exit from the world, to free herself from and as we would are the way of the that the is embodied in her that the is a is to that the novelist does not just look at the from the it from the In literature, the writes Girard, does not on and but on the free from the to the But what Girard will call novelistic more than an of the novelist with her It a death and a To a from desire, to this point of from which it to know the of and to the world and history, the heroine must be and therefore put to By the Princess of ClĂšves, Madame de La Fayette into the world and is as a Her an to a It is this that the novel In conclusion to his article on Madame de La Fayette, Girard must not seek the to the in or in some of but in the that Madame de ClĂšves for her with the Duke of And this because it like the by her we are to it. us seek it the novel of it is the novel novelistic work would therefore be an of The novelistic from the killing of a But for the to for “the of to into the of which is the meaning of novelistic the author of the novel must with his And not only the author, but the as the novel will not itself to be that is to to the or that one would like to make of by a of the novel itself of its or of reading its I BenoĂźt the between the first and the Madame de ClĂšves, which is also the between the novelist and the princess, the that the novelist from its all the that social to it, the novelistic from the of desire a intuition of the sacred therefore served as a to a that of a death would be the of “The sacred imposes itself with all the more force as we rub shoulders with wrote Girard in his first article on Saint-John This is in the of Deceit, Desire and the Novel, in a from like a to to the social world, it did a for if the does not it is it will and will not novelistic therefore has not only a or but an and even himself any more than from to RenĂ© Girard, even before his did not hesitate to of the heroine as a of as a to his in “Les vues grandes et Ă©loignĂ©es de Madame de The of a “novelistic by the author over his is for him to the of as a to his Girard the to these characters of novels who have according to in order to be by the of the novelist. A Sartrean will be to about these characters who are by the of but in their know to But Girard with this of he the heroes as it is because he refuses to make them are not of desire, he but of the of of and they and To like Girard has beyond the to himself at the at the very of the novelistic not only has an it is a as we have which for between the differences but because the same of the great they are also the of the Princess of ClĂšves, Girard himself to the of a novel of from the in which he the modern or The hero is the Des who will also the world, or more be by it, in order to to a he has in love He from to to and to his by into it It's an exit from the world from just the of an a into at the end of which this will free himself from of the says to his individuality and new This which is realized by the of the hero and thanks to the of the novelist, very to a creates new which the cannot in the that the author, with his Girard the again, the novelistic from the of desire, about a This is that of the author and his character whose are by the of the novel, “a man of who has from to whom the must be the that author, and is no that of the world that the hero but that of the novel that the world and reveals its Girard “The hero is therefore the between the novelist and the of the novel, as the perfect is the between the world and its He from the of the novel, from this world in which he is and his passion him by to the of the and above the world in which he does not will have understood that the for Girard the heart of novelistic only reveals himself in the death and of his Madame de La Fayette and the are revealed to as only in their “novelistic a death followed by a this of the above the is more of the of the who himself as a than of a and between the author, the and the The on it to me, that the author of the had to with himself and within himself a an he shared with “The the one who this “I am and they are and to the novelistic can therefore be like all the great works the of an the moment of the novelistic the which was the of the writing of the “very important papers” and the of his of in the one that in the of Deceit, Desire and the Novel, many things It time for Girard to “the man” of his Sartrean and become the new that of his time to free himself from the of and to the of the world in of the of would like to take of what Girard's first some published and us about the genesis of Girard's work, and the in is this importance to Chantre us that “The has become Deceit, Desire and the He also us that RenĂ© Girard this The his of the To of the to of is to the of the too of the closure of conceptual The sacred, that hidden form of all the great is death in the of life. The novelistic has this of the at of the and the we have it also makes it to works as as La Princesse de ClĂšves and discovery is this of But before that, another discovery was also for of and the of the It is the discovery of the form of the great their It is this that new as between the novel of an and the novel of a into In literature, this is It the of the to the and the of at the source of the it reveals the of the and the the of that refuses to It is a double and says BenoĂźt Chantre, to the to be the of Girard therefore himself with this discovery of This would him to this of that was his first published work. He will to the whole the revealed in the of BenoĂźt Chantre that, in the of death and his is as the novelist his on the of the novel, the novelistic will the novelist on the of Girard can novel is in a way to beyond the novel its We know that we can be of the novel, once again, in a that is we that it is a of the novel in the of its own in the which is its but on the which many have by death, or to the is because the of the novel is a the of in the of the will Girard to and the of the intuition from reading the great This was like a “the that there was no meaning suddenly there was meaning It was a real but not it was like a that is and will or Girard that the of the novels is inspired by that of the of and The embodied hero is both in the world and at with it. The great novels are made of a into hell followed by an or a which is like a to death, followed by To the who him for “the of Girard that the novel is to the of and that this can only be revealed if it is and in a he you have to to the point the from the us to think of the conclusion of Deceit, Desire and the Novel, which with the redemptive conclusion of of is born And to these of And To the But in of that which In Saint-John Perse, Girard had as we have an intuition of being at the heart of It is at the of what Girard will as a that the of novel characters take in Girard's thought has from the and that is also he is There is no the of the with that of the the does not . . . . The is which even to to But this does not in and a The of the novel is by the of the individual and the of the as Girard is novelistic according to his It is in literature such an important in his search for and in his life. Girard by the poetry of Saint-John Perse, that the is It the to within the the within the when they are as is the with in literature, make it to to make new and therefore to find to the reality of human The novel itself is a says Girard, as it makes a world up from its a new world on the of an novelistic is a title it is a as we have for a of on the of character in a novel is only made of the of to be embodied in a there is also a literature, the text to be It was even very at the time when Girard in to of when of literature is it is to that a text is it embodies a it to of it has a that must be by And this is double for Girard, who a work both to an reality and to the of the work, which would be like the of this Chantre in his book that the of this of novelistic the young Girard from his and the way to for This an or has an and is a in the sense that “the first would be a if it were not followed by a which it in a redemptive (I BenoĂźt is for Girard a a of It us away from from The of the work set up the of the world is also for the an to another for “The of the novelist, says Chantre, is like the he death and The of the novel a in death from which a Girard, it is the that in the great a that of death and What as we see in the conclusion of great is the this and BenoĂźt Chantre of a of that Girard's a that is being of came to his And his own did not Girard, the refusal of this of is the is what the that which does not see and is always in search of a The of life, the that Girard will to the is this that was in both senses of the will have understood that great literature, work according to Girard, into the of and itself of between the author, his character or and the It is the in the of a “novelistic This can be in the of the the novelist himself of killing the “old man” in and of himself from one novel to another or within his novel, as in the novelist of and Mensonge romantique in 1961, Michel had very the of the work and the by Girard to take of his and the of the In a Girard assumed of the is the escape from the of the the from to what calls if it is not is at the of the and the a of shared And we understand that this death to which is the of a has an meaning even more than an It could only be in novels and in the of RenĂ© Girard, it the for a that cannot be without

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
Karl Barth and Christian Theology
Medieval Philosophy and Theology
Original source
Jul 1, 2010·Durham Research Online (Durham University)
3 cites
The Master and the Mirror: The Influence of Marguerite Porete on Meister Eckhart*

Justine L. Trombley

When twenty-one masters of theology at the University of Paris condemned the book The Mirror of Simple Souls as heretical, no doubt the inquisitor William of Paris felt justified in his proceedings against its author, the beguine Marguerite Porete. She had, for a year and a half, contumaciously refused to take the inquisitorial oath and give either an account of herself or of her book. The most learned minds of the Church had confirmed William's belief in the erroneous nature of her work, and with this confirmation he proceeded to call for its extermination. All those who possessed a copy were to turn it in to the Dominican friars fraud under pain of excommunication.1 Its author was likewise condemned, and on June 1, 1310, Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic in the Place de Greve in Paris. For William of Paris, a job neatly done. It ended up being not as neat as William would probably have liked, for the pestiferous Mirror of Simple Souls was never exterminated. It would, without the name of its author, go on to enjoy a long and unusual afterlife throughout Europe as a popular spiritual work. Perhaps one of the most interesting events in its afterlife would occur just one year after Marguerite's execution, when another master theologian, the renowned Meister Eckhart, returned to Paris to serve as the Dominican Chair at the university. Here he lived with William of Paris in the Dominican convent of St. Jacques, where any of the turned-in copies of Marguerite's Mi rror would have been kept. Two years later, upon his return to German lands, Meister Eckhart's vernacular preaching intensified. His most innovative concepts solidified and progressed well beyond what they had previously been. In an interesting twist, however, many of Meister Eckhart's famous ideas from this time exhibit distinct characteristics and language that bear notable resemblances to those found in Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls. It is possible not only that Meister Eckhart encountered The Mirror during his time in Paris, but it may also have influenced his vernacular theology. If so, it is clear that Eckhart must have viewed The Mirror far differently than his Dominican brother William and his fellow masters of theology. It is the purpose of this paper to argue that Meister Eckhart did come across The Mirror of Simple Souls, and that the concepts and language of Marguerite Porete greatly contributed to the ideas found in Meister Eckhart's later vernacular treatises and sermons. Unfortunately, there is no smoking gun that definitively proves a connection between Meister Eckhart and The Mirror of Simple Souls, and so the question remains an open and controversial one. Several prominent scholars have weighed in on the matter over the past few decades, with varying results and opinions. The well-known German scholar Herbert Grundmann had some of the strongest convictions concerning this issue. He believed in a very real connection between Marguerite and Eckhart, citing mostly temporal and geographical evidence as strong support for this assertion. He rejected the idea of a reverse influence, that is, the ideas of Meister Eckhart being appropriated by Marguerite, stating that the works of Meister Eckhart could hardly have been known to her early enough for his ideas to be incorporated into her book.2 He also asserted that, even if it is too much to acknowledge an actual influence of Marguerite on Eckhart, there is still a remarkable accord (^'merkwurdiger Einklang) in many of their spiritual ideas. Perhaps the most intriguing (and frustrating) of Grundmann's statements appears in a footnote, where he states that Josef Koch, in a letter sent to Grundmann in 1961, was thoroughly convinced that Meister Eckhart obtained knowledge of both Marguerite's trial and her book.4 However, as other scholars have pointed out, examination of Koch's papers after his death has produced no proof that may have led him to so solid a conviction. 


Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
Medieval Literature and History
Medieval Philosophy and Theology
Original source
Apr 1, 1997·Journal of the history of philosophy
0 cites
Duns Scotus, Metaphysician (review)

Gregory Schufreider

302 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:2 APRIL ~997 William A. Frank and Allan B. Wolter. DunsScotus,Metaphysician.West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1995. Pp. ix + 224. Cloth, $28.95. Paper, $14.95. Books such as this are not easy to write. I know, because I have written one, and for the same series. In fact, my book on Anselm is advertised on the back of the paperback edition of the work under review. I mention this neither as a plug nor to reveal from the start any possible conflict of interest, but to make it clear that I am not an expert in Duns Scotus, and that this makes me an ideal reviewer for a work in the Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy. For that series aims to produce a specific kind of book, its own sort of Studienausgabe:one that is organized around the original text of a historical author (which is included with the translation) and that provides an extensive commentary , presumably relevant both to those who are experts in the field as well as to those who are not. The aim, then, is to produce a book that could be of use in a class or seminar in which one is expected to teach at a rather high level something in which one may not be a specialist. In this respect, Frank and Wolter do an admirable job of making the difficult look easy. For Scotus is notoriously dense, and yet the ease of their commentary renders such potentially off-putting thinking available even to the introductory reader. The selections from the Subtle Doctor are well-chosen, well-organized and well-translated. As is to be expected, they are at times difficult, but they are kept to a length that even an undergraduate could bear. Moreover, the commentary is always lucid and never fails to be helpful, in which case, when the original text gets thick, the reader can always look forward to an explanation just a few pages away. After a brief introduction to his life and works, the text proper begins with Scotus's doctrine of transcendentals. As Frank and Wolter have organized it (and not all books in the series are organized in the same way), each chapter begins with a reading upon which they then comment. The initial selections are short and to the point, as they reserve the more extensive readings for the heart of the book: its concentration in chapter three on the Parisian proof for the existence of God and in chapter four on Scotus's theory of knowledge. The work concludes with a short fifth chapter that discusses two metaphysical questions: of individuation and, finally, of the will. I cannot here retrace the road that is followed to weave these various texts and topics together. I can say, however, that its unity and clarity obviously derive from a lifetime--or, indeed, two--dedicated to the study of Scotus. I would only underscore the impressive treatment of its central questions: of the existence of God and of Scotus's theory of knowledge. Given my own interest in Anselm, it is not surprising that I would appreciate the depth and detail of both of these discussions. While Frank and Wolter do not consider the connection to Anselm's arguments for the existence of God in the Monologion, their development of Scotus's notion of infinity demonstrates his appreciation and appropriation of Anselm's famous Proslogionproof. Similarly, their treatment of Scotus's theory of knowledge goes out of its way to place the issue in its historical context. While Anselm is not mentioned, the discussion of Augustine and especially of the conflict between Scotus's Aristoteleanism and the Platonism of Henry BOOK REVIEWS 303 of Ghent could not be more illuminating (no pun intended). No reader will leave this chapter unappreciative of what is at stake in the epistemological disputations of late Medieval thought or of the historic role that Scotus played in them. I would conclude by noting that works such as this are particularly important in the field of medieval philosophy. Its at times arcane vocabulary and interests have led even some...

Medieval Philosophy and Theology
Original source
Jan 1, 1979·The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review
0 cites
Theology in a New Key by Robert McAfee Brown

Gregory Baum

672 BOOK REVIEWS not with the evil that fear has to do with, but rather with " the eminence of the divine good, by whose power some evil can be inflicted." And in the ad 2 St. Thomas quickly tosses aside the objection, as not being about the gift of foar at all, because that objection had to do with the sort of fear which has evil for its object. Plainly, the position now is that the gift of fear does not have any sort of evil for its object. That is not the position either of the De spe or the ST 2-2 (and seems at odds also with ST 2-2.19.9. ad 2 and ad 3) . And if reverence, an act of the gift of fear, is a form of fear, what has become of the position that the objectof fear is evil? All I mean to argue here is that Guindon should have presented a full-dress discussion of this issue, not the few remarks such as he gives at pp. 77-79 and 246-247. This is especially so in view of his own judgment concerning the importance of the doctrine at stake: thus, at p. 319, he can speak of St. Thomas's keen awareness of the ultimate foundation of fear, namely the finitude of the creature faced with the infinity of God. A much less serious point: Guindon's use of the expression "la pedagogic nouvelle" for the learning process proper to the New Law (cf. p. 139, p. 323, etc.). "Pedagogue" suggests the stern discipline proper to the Old Law (cf. p. 134). At p. 330 he speaks with more finesse, in my opinion, using "pedagogic" for the Old Law and "education" for the New. The book is well proof-read by today's standards, but on p. 359, the first mode of amor sui (wrongly numbered" 3 ") has a lacuna: this at an important moment of the discussion. The size of the numbers used to designate the notes is inconveniently small. College dominicain de philosophie et de theologie Ottawa, Ontario, Canada LAWRENCE DEWAN, 0. P. Theology in a New Key. By ROBERT McAFEE BROWN. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978. Pp. 212. $6.95. This appealing book is an introduction to a body of literature, Latin American liberation theology, that is not well-known in the Englishspeaking world. Thanks to Orbis Books, founded by the Maryknoll Fathers, the principal books and documents of this theology are available in English. Still, since the method of this theology is of recent origin, and since its starting point is very disturbing to the industrialized countries of the West, it is not easy to understand what is being said by this theology. What is this disturbing starting point? According to the theology of liberation, the Gospel can be grasped only if we analyse the concrete form which BOOK REVIEWS 678 evil takes in our society and understand the Christian message as God's initiative summoning and directing us to overcome evil. According to the Latin American theologians, the dominant systemic evil in their society is the international capitalistic system that inflicts on this society economic and cultural dependency, pushes large sections of the population into destitution and early mortality, and creates in the middle classes a distorted perception of reality. Robert McAfee Brown, a well-known Protestant theologian, is famous for his ability to introduce a wide Christian audience to issues discussed in high theology. Brown writes about learned things in a simple and direct style and relates them to people's experiences. He knows where the mind and heart of the Protestant community are. For him, theology is never a conversation confined to academics: 1t must always involve the believing community. This is so because Christian truth is propter salutem. The conversation with the local congregation protects the theologian from losing the thread. The book under review is a brilliant application of this method to an explosive topic. Can one kee'P a congregation in their seats while explaining to them that capitalism may have a distorting effect on the perception of God and divine salvation? Brown does it. Brown offers us a propaedeutic of...

Medieval Philosophy and Theology
Catholicism and Religious Studies
Theology and Canon Law Studies
Original source
Dec 1, 1920·The Expository Times
0 cites
The Parable of the Unrighteous Steward

Eden Pargiter

of Paul's chapters two definitions of the Christian ideal blend-' For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God'; John makes Jesus stake the future on the ' other Paraclete.'These texts represent all schools of New Testament thought.Indeed, the New Testament is just 'the book of the Spirit.'It is not necessary to repeat the old proofs that in it the ' Spirit of God' and the 'Spirit of Christ' are one, nor to argue that he who has another's spirit and none other is sure to grow really like him.He who receives God's Spirit becomes Christ-like and God-like.This third notion of true manhood is synonymous with the other two.' 1 C. Ryder Smith,

Open access
Philosophical Ethics and Theory
Theology and Philosophy of Evil
Medieval Philosophy and Theology
Original source