The Reading Augustine series presents short, engaging books offering personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo's contributions to western philosophical, literary, and religious life. Mark Clavier's On Consumer Culture, Identity, The Church and the Rhetorics of Delight draws on Augustine of Hippo to provide a theological explanation for the success of marketing and consumer culture. Augustine's thought, rooted in rhetorical theory, presents a brilliant understanding of the experiences of damnation and salvation that takes seriously the often hidden psychology of human motivation. Clavier examines how Augustine's keen insight into the power of delight over personal notions of freedom and self-identity can be used to shed light on how the constant lure of promised happiness shapes our identities as consumers. From Augustine's perspective, it is only by addressing the sources of delight within consumerism and by rediscovering the wellsprings of God's delight that we can effectively challenge consumer culture. To an age awash with commercial rhetoric, the fifth-century Bishop of Hippo offers a theological rhetoric that is surprisingly contemporary and insightful.
A Flight of Delight is a work of experiential philosophical text that contemplates the nature of such subtle topics as Karmic evolution, Divine Cosmic Truth, and the relationship between Divinity and Humankind. Utilising an expressive narrative approach that places emphasis on description and aesthetics finely, the author has endeavoured to render a thought provoking analysis in a prose poetic style. The fine text touches the core concepts of theology that look at life as a freely flowing channel of energies in profound human experiences. One of the central ideas of the work is the difference between institutional religion and experiential philosophy, with the conceptual emphasis leaning toward the latter. Fear destroys true faith. Institutional religion is constrictive that remains fixated on rules, systems, and political bureaucracies. A profound human spiritualism on the other hand suggests a cyclical direction of energy that flows without fear, suppression, oppression, exploitation, manipulation, and falsity. Realising and understanding compassion and love is much more important and significant than following set of doctrines in conflict. This is attainable in spiritual evolution - a self-discovery in profound experiences without the confines of specific creed, cast, or race. The discourse includes detailed explorations of different types of Vedic yoga's, mantras, and consciousness. The emphasis placed on the pursuit of divine wisdom and divinity incorporates all of these elements to form a comprehensive insight of profound experience for the inner well-ness and peace. The reader of 'A Flight of Delight' may also benefit from the organised structure afforded to the text. The detailed explanation of the experiential theories familiarises the reader with carefully distilled notions of spiritualism and divinity. Here is an extra ordinary work of self-healing texts from a very special person who has journeyed through adversities himself. The lyrics of this book are particularly special because the author writes from the depth of his heart, to express in the profoundest sense, the relevance of the ancient Vedic Wisdom to the hectic modern world. The mind enriching lyrics bring to us a re-awakening of beautiful divinity filled with solace, hope, and compassionate love. Life oh life! Let it be 'a flight of delight'.
"The world is our parish and all her creatures our congregation." Based on talks given to ordinands in Wales, this book presents the ministry as responding to God's call to be priestly stewards of creation and to participate in the blossoming of the new creation. Clavier engages with Scripture and people such as Augustine, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, and Rowan Williams to portray the whole ministry of God's people as being animated by the generosity, freedom, delight, and love of God. Our understanding of the ministry must break free from managerial philosophy and business know-how to recapture an approach to ministry that seeks to delight in God, neighbors, and all of creation in order to reveal the depth of God's love to a world increasingly immersed in mass consumption.
Khaled Anatolios, a noted expert on the development of Nicene theology, offers a historically informed theological study of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, showing its relevance to Christian life and thought today. According to Anatolios, the development of trinitarian doctrine involved a global interpretation of Christian faith as a whole. Consequently, the meaning of trinitarian doctrine is to be found in a reappropriation of the process of this development, such that the entirety of Christian existence is interpreted in a trinitarian manner. The book provides essential resources for this reappropriation by identifying the network of theological issues that comprise the "systematic scope" of Nicene theology, focusing especially on the trinitarian perspectives of three major theologians: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. It includes a foreword by Brian E. Daley.
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What would youth ministry look like if it were based on a pursuit of authentic Christian joy? Joy is not often a word young people associate with church—but it should be. By reimagining three common practices in youth ministry through the theological lens of joy, veteran youth workers Kenda Creasy Dean, Wesley Ellis, Justin Forbes, and Abigail Visco Rusert demonstrate how to shift this association and become more honest about what youth ministry can, and can’t, do to support young people and their faith. Grounding youth ministry in joy rather than in fear also models a way forward for the church. It reminds us that youth ministry is not a tool for anxious congregations to use to ensure their survival. Rather, youth ministry—like all ministry—is a way to help people name and experience God’s delight, free from fear and anxiety about their futures. Delighted is the first book to emerge from the Yale Center for Faith and Culture’s Adolescent Faith and Flourishing project, offering a sustained reflection on joy’s practical importance for youth ministry. With reflection questions offered at the end of each chapter, Delighted is easy for youth ministers, volunteers, and pastors to pick up and use immediately—tapping into young people’s instinctive desire for joy for the entire church, as well as for ministry with teenagers.
Does the concept of loving law sound strange to you—like two things that just don’t go together? Christians today often don’t want to read about law because they would rather revel in gospel and grace. Yet the Bible clearly links law with love, a connection we see in Psalm 119. In these insightful meditations, author Glenda Mathes sheds light on this “long psalm that often gets short shrift.” A closer look at Psalm 119, in particular, and several other psalms and Old and New Testament passages encourages readers to discover the delight of God’s written Word and rejoice in loving His law.
In this compelling study of two seventeenth-century female mystics, Bo Karen Lee examines the writings of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, who, despite different religious formations, came to similar conclusions about the experience of God in contemplative prayer. Van Schurman was born into a Dutch Calvinist family and became a superb scriptural commentator before undergoing a dramatic religious conversion and joining the Labadist community, a Pietistic movement. Guyon was a French layperson whose thought would be identified with Quietism—a spiritual path that was looked upon with suspicion both by the French Catholic Church and by Rome. Lee analyzes and compares the themes of self-denial and self-annihilation in the writings of these two mystics. In van Schurman's case, the focus is on the distinction between scholastic knowledge of God and the intima notitia Dei accessible only by radical self-denial. In Guyon's case, it is on the union with God that is accessible only through a painful self-annihilation. For both authors, Lee demonstrates that the desire for enjoyment of God plays an important role as the engine of the soul's progress away from self-centeredness. The appendices offer facing Latin and English translations of two letters by van Schurman and a selection from her Eukleria.
