Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love - Hardcover

Williams, Rowan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819281182 ISBN 13: 9780819281180

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006

Synopsis

In this original book Rowan Williams sketches out a new understanding of how human beings open themselves to transcendence. Drawing on the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, the Welsh poet and painter David Jones, and the American novelist Mary Flannery O`Connor, Rowan Williams fulfils his ambition for Christianity to engage with contemporary culture, and that a man who holds highest office in the Church has the time and intellectual energy to write such original theology is encouraging for us all.

‘Unabashedly erudite in tone, this book may appeal to scholars and readers interested in grappling with a debate that has probably been engaged as long as there have been artists and theologians.' Publishers Weekly

'Discusses important issues in a profound and original way.' Church of England Newspaper

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About this title

About the Author

The Rt. Hon. and Most Reverend Rowan Williams is Archbishop of Canterbury. He was formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Archbishop of Wales.

Reviews

In this insightful but sometimes hard-to-fathom work, the present archbishop of Canterbury explores a theme that he says has long intrigued him: the connection between the arts and Christian thought. The nature of art, the role of the artist and the being of God are some of the topics explored by Williams, formerly Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Oxford. He begins by assessing the aesthetic theory of the 20th-century Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain. Williams explores Maritain's influence on Catholic poet and painter David Jones and writer Flannery O'Connor, and examines the relationships between art and morality, artists and their work, and the ways in which art approaches the self-giving nature of God. Human creation that is more than practical, Williams argues, "gives us some clue as to what the theologian means by creation, the setting in being [of] something that is both an embodiment of what is thought or conceived and a radically independent reality with its own logic and integrity unfolding over time." Unabashedly erudite in tone, this book, originally given as the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, may appeal to scholars and readers interested in grappling with a debate that has probably been engaged as long as there have been artists and theologians. (Aug.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819281182
• ISBN 13: 9780819281180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144