This episode of the Church Debates series reflects on the question of How Christians Should Spread the Gospel by examining the spread of Christianity in the medieval period.
Tag Archives: Monasticism
The Wilderness and Early Christian Monasticism
In the sixth chapter of his The Word in the Desert, Douglas Burton-Christie reflects on the influence of eschatology, compunction (penthos), asceticism, and the struggle against evil on the shape of the scriptural interpretation of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers). Highlighting monastic awareness of coming death and judgment (182-3), compunction and the power of scriptureContinue reading “The Wilderness and Early Christian Monasticism”
The Scriptures of Saint Patrick: The Medieval Scriptural World
This post is part of an ongoing series on the Scriptures of Saint Patrick of Ireland. Two factors shaped the used and form of Patrick’s scriptural context, namely, the “lack of early medieval pandects (single-volume Bibles) and the fundamentally liturgical quality of early medieval biblical books….”[1] There is no doubt that the Bible’s liturgical useContinue reading “The Scriptures of Saint Patrick: The Medieval Scriptural World”
SSP: Other Historical Patrick Issues
This post is part of an ongoing series on the Scriptures of Saint Patrick of Ireland. Less divisive than the issues of chronology and geography, but no less important, are claims surrounding Patrick’s possible monasticism, his Latinity, and the plethora of extant traditions about Patrick’s life and work. From time to time the question ofContinue reading “SSP: Other Historical Patrick Issues”
Religion and World Construction
This post is part of our ongoing series of reflections concerning “Conceptions of the Ultimate”, the ways in which various world religions conceive of and interpret the Ultimate Being of the cosmos. Today’s post consists of reflections upon the first chapter of Peter Berger’s The Sacred Canopy, entitled “Religion and World Construction.“ In this chapterContinue reading “Religion and World Construction”
Book Review: The Body and Society (Brown)
In the updated 20th anniversary edition of his classic work, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Peter Brown examines the “practice of permanent sexual renunciation—continence, celibacy, life-long virginity” that developed in Christian circles from the first through fifth centuries.[1] In this work, Brown examines a vast array of perspectivesContinue reading “Book Review: The Body and Society (Brown)”
Pursuing Veritas 