Christian Hope and Christian Life: Raids on the Inarticulate

What is the destiny of the human soul in this life and the next? Dare we hope to “see God face to face,” or will our vision of God remain forever filtered “through a glass, darkly”? In this remarkable volume, Rowan A. Greer turns to the New Testament, the church fathers, and later writers to throw light on their own visions of the human soul. He suggests that Augustine of Hippo and Gregory of Nyssa represent two distinct strands of Christian thinking that find expression later in writers such as John Donne and Jeremy Taylor. Greer, who has trained two generations of historians and theologians in the rich thought of the early church, has succeeded in writing a volume that is both full of original scholarly insight and, by virtue of his elegant writing, accessible to laypeople and non-specialists.

Rowan Allen Greer III is Walter H. Gray Professor of Anglican Studies and Fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University Divinity School. His previous books include Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church; Theodore of Mopsuestua: Exegete and Theologian; The Captain of Our Salvation: A Study in the Patristic Exegesis of Hebrews; The Sermon on the Mount; and Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works.