WORKING EARTH OF HEART OTM C: The Messalian Controversy in History, Texts, and Language to AD 431 (Oxford Theological Monographs) - Hardcover

STEWART

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198267363 ISBN 13: 9780198267362

Verlag: Academic, 1991

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Críticas

'This is an important book for the history of the Messalian controversy and even more so for the history of Christian spirituality by the light its main chapters throw on the specialized terminology and imagery of Syrian spirituality.'ADRIS Newsletter, 1991-1992

'a major step toward exposing the origins and milieu of Messalianism in syrian christian culture'Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Vol. 28, 1993, No. 1

'In this new and brilliant study, Fr Columba Stewart attempts to get behind the stereotypes that have haunted discussion of the Macarian Homilies and make a fresh start. As befits such an important work of scholarship, the text is very nearly immaculate, with no mistakes at all that I could detect in the Greek.'Andrew Louth, Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1, April 1993

The author draws succinct conclusions that are by no means overstated. What we see with clearer traits thanks to the author's meticulous exposition is an imperial Church still in the process of endowing itself with structures, liturgical and spiritual norms, doctrinal definitions and a clear and stately role in the world ... This is an impressive work with far reaching implications which ... open up vistas for a genuine and profound ecumenism ... the publication does honour to Oxford University and its press. (Anthony Ward, S.M., Ephemerides Liturgicae 108 (1994))

Reseña del editor

This study provides a complete reassessment of the Messalian controversy of the fourth and fifth centuries AD. The Messalians were an ascetic group, their name (of Syriac derivation) meaning `praying people'. Their extraordinary claims and graphic spiritual vocabulary were considered heretical by the early Christian Church and were condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431.

Dr Stewart reconstructs the history of the controversy from its beginnings, carefully avoiding all previous suppositions and flawed methodologies. He considers in depth the spiritual vocabulary which lies at the root of the controversy and which can also be found in the Greek pseudo-Macarian writings. He proves that the pseudo-Macarian vocabulary can be traced to a Syriac milieu and demonstrates this by comparisons with such early Syriac texts as the writings of Ephrem, Aphrahat, and especially the anonymous Liber graduum. In this light, the claims of the Messalians are shown to result from the influence upon Greek Christian culture of an equally orthodox tradition, the Semitic Syriac culture of the Christian East. Christian writers of both cultures were determined to show others a way to 'work the earth of the heart', an image favoured by pseudo-Macarius for its evocation of the patient labour of asceticism. The controversy was thus not indeed a question of heresy, but of misperceived differences of culture and of spiritual idiom.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Academic
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0198267363
• ISBN 13: 9780198267362
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 354