The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God - Hardcover

Wilken, Robert Louis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300097085 ISBN 13: 9780300097085

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2003

Synopsis

In this eloquent introduction to early Christian thought, eminent religious historian Robert Louis Wilken examines the tradition that such figures as St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and others set in place. These early thinkers constructed a new intellectual and spiritual world, Wilken shows, and they can still be heard as living voices in the modern world.
In chapters on topics including early Christian worship, Christian poetry and the spiritual life, the Trinity, Christ, the Bible, and icons, Wilken shows that the energy and vitality of early Christianity arose from within the life of the Church. While early Christian thinkers drew on the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of the ancient world, it was the versatile vocabulary of the Bible that loosened their tongues and minds and allowed them to construct the world anew, intellectually and spiritually. These thinkers were not seeking to invent a world of ideas, Wilken shows, but rather to win the hearts of men and women and to change their lives.
Early Christian thinkers set in place a foundation that has endured. Their writings are an irreplaceable inheritance, and Wilken shows that they can still be heard as living voices within contemporary culture.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Also available by Robert Louis Wilken: The Christians as the Romans Saw Them

From the Inside Flap:

"By turns scholarly, contemplative, and argumentative, this is an exposition in which the early Christian writers speak for themselvesand to us." Jaroslav Pelikan, author of The Christian Tradition; "An elegant and learned introduction to the giants of Christian antiquity, this book shows brilliantly how the Church can live by continually pondering the Word of God."Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Fordham University

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0300097085
• ISBN 13: 9780300097085
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 398