The Art of Listening in the Early Church

The Art of Listening in the Early Church
Author: Carol Harrison
Publisher:
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199641439

The sense of hearing was particularly important in the ancient world when the majority of people were illiterate. Rhetoric has been given attention in this context, but listening has been virtually ignored. This book deals with the practical and theological issues which listening to an incorporeal, unknowable God raised for early Christians.

The Art of Listening in the Early Church

The Art of Listening in the Early Church
Author: Carol Harrison
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-07-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191664022

How did people think about listening in the ancient world, and what evidence do we have of it in practice? The Christian faith came to the illiterate majority in the early Church through their ears. This proved problematic: the senses and the body had long been held in suspicion as all too temporal, mutable and distracting. Carol Harrison argues that despite profound ambivalence on these matters, in practice, the senses, and in particular the sense of hearing, were ultimately regarded as necessary - indeed salvific -constraints for fallen human beings. By examining early catechesis, preaching and prayer, she demonstrates that what illiterate early Christians heard both formed their minds and souls and, above all, enabled them to become 'literate' listeners; able not only to grasp the rule of faith but also tacitly to follow the infinite variations on it which were played out in early Christian teaching, exegesis and worship. It becomes clear that listening to the faith was less a matter of rationally appropriating facts and more an art which needed to be constantly practiced: for what was heard could not be definitively fixed and pinned down, but was ultimately the Word of the unknowable, transcendent God. This word demanded of early Christian listeners a response - to attend to its echoes, recollect and represent it, stretch out towards it source, and in the process, be transformed by it.

Holy Listening

Holy Listening
Author: Margaret Guenther
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 162
Release: 1992
Genre: Spiritual direction
ISBN: 1561010561

Describes the role and practice of a spiritual director as distinct from pastoral care and from psychotherapy. Compares the spiritual director to a midwife for the soul, describing actions of teaching prayer and offering exercise suggestions.

Cast Out of the Covenant

Cast Out of the Covenant
Author: Adele Reinhartz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978701187

The Gospel of John presents its readers, listeners, and interpreters with a serious problem: how can we reconcile the Gospel’s exalted spirituality and deep knowledge of Judaism with its portrayal of the Jews as the children of the devil (John 8:44) who persecuted Christ and his followers? One widespread solution to this problem is the so-called “expulsion hypothesis.” According to this view, the Fourth Gospel was addressed to a Jewish group of believers in Christ that had been expelled from the synagogue due to their faith. The anti-Jewish elements express their natural resentment of how they had been treated; the Jewish elements of the Gospel, on the other hand, reflect the Jewishness of this group and also soften the force of the Gospel’s anti-Jewish comments. In Cast out of the Covenant, this book, Adele Reinhartz presents a detailed critique of the expulsion hypothesis on literary and historical grounds. She argues that, far from softening the Gospel’s anti-Jewishness, the Gospel’s Jewish elements in fact contribute to it. Focusing on the Gospel’s persuasive language and intentions, Reinhartz shows that the Gospel’s anti-Jewishness is evident not only in the Gospel’s hostile comments about the Jews but also in its appropriation of Torah, Temple, and Covenant that were so central to first-century Jewish identity. Through its skillful use of rhetoric, the Gospel attempts to convince its audience that God’s favor had turned away from the Jews to the Gentiles; that there is a deep rift between the synagogue and those who confess Christ as Messiah; and that, in the Gospel’s view, this rift was initiated in Jesus’ own lifetime. The Fourth Gospel, Reinhartz argues, appropriates Jewishness at the same time as it repudiates Jews. In doing so, it also promotes a “parting of the ways” between those who believe that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God, and those who do not, that is, the Jews. This rhetorical program, she suggests, may have been used to promote outreach or even an organized mission to the Gentiles, following in the footsteps of Paul and his mid-first-century contemporaries.

The Early Christian World

The Early Christian World
Author: Philip Esler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 2044
Release: 2017-07-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351678299

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.

The Cross and the Eucharist in Early Christianity

The Cross and the Eucharist in Early Christianity
Author: Daniel Cardó
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2019-01-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108605419

The Cross was present at the Eucharist in early Christianity as an idea, a gesture, and an object. Over time, these different actualizations of the quintessential symbol of Christianity have generated important questions about their meaning and function, among them: is the Eucharist a meal and/or a sacrifice? Can the sign of the Cross illuminate the absence of a Roman epiclesis? Is it pertinent -historically and theologically - to use an altar Cross? In this study, Daniel Cardó explores the relation between the Cross and the Eucharist. Offering a thorough and fresh reading of patristic and Roman liturgical texts, he identifies their emphases and common themes on the Cross and the Eucharist, and demonstrates their significance for the liturgical debates of recent decades.

The Art of Preaching

The Art of Preaching
Author: Daniel Cardo
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2021-08-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0813234735

"The Art of Preaching: A Theological and Practical Primer explores the theological understanding of the homily, lessons from classical and contemporary rhetoric, the relevance of preaching for the life of the Church, highlighting recent teachings of the Magisterium, and it presents the incarnation as the foundation for preaching, understood as an essential aspect of the priestly life and mission. This primer offers a simple and effective method for the preparation and delivery of homilies. The book also provides a selection of homilies from the great preachers of the Church, organized chronologically, with brief introductions and commentaries that highlight what those homilies teach us for preaching today"--

Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium

Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium
Author: Andrew Mellas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2020-07-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108487599

Emotions in Byzantium came to life through hymnody, which invited the faithful to step into a liturgical world of compunction.

Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking

Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking
Author: Mark Porter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-09-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0197534112

Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking Rexplores a diverse range of Christian musical activity through the conceptual lens of resonance, a concept rooted in the physical, vibrational, and sonic realm that carries with it an expansive ability to simultaneously describe personal, social, and spiritual realities. In this book, Mark Porter proposes that attention to patterns of back-and-forth interaction that exist in and alongside sonic activity can help to understand the dynamics of religious musicking in new ways and, at the same time, can provide a means for bringing diverse traditions into conversation. The book focuses on different questions arising out of human experience in the moment of worship. What happens if we take the entry point of a human being experiencing certain patterns of (more than) sonic interaction with the world around them as a focus for exploration? What different ecologies of interaction can be encountered? What kinds of patterns can be traced through different Christian worshiping environments? And how do these operate across multiple dimensions of experience? Chapters covering ascetic sounding, noisy congregations, and Internet live-streaming, among others, serve to highlight the diverse ecologies of resonance that surround Christian musicking, suggesting the potential to develop new perspectives on devotional musical activity that focus not primarily on compositions or theological ideals but on changing patterns of interaction across multiple dimensions between individuals, spaces, communities, and God.