The question of truth has never been more urgent than today, when the distortion of facts and the imposition of pseudo-realities in the service of the powerful have become the order of the day. In The Paradox of Being Poul Andersen addresses the concept of truth in Chinese Daoist philosophy and ritual. His approach is unapologetically universalist, and the book may be read as a call for a new way of studying Chinese culture, one that does not shy away from approaching “the other” in terms of an engagement with “our own” philosophical heritage.

The basic Chinese word for truth is zhen, which means both true and real, and it bypasses the separation of the two ideas insisted on in much of the Western philosophical tradition. Through wide-ranging research into Daoist ritual, both in history and as it survives in the present day, Andersen shows that the concept of true reality that informs this tradition posits being as a paradox anchored in the inexistent Way (Dao). The preferred way of life suggested by this insight consists in seeking to be an exception to ordinary norms and rules of behavior which nonetheless engages what is common to us all.

The years following the Texas Revolution held even more turbulent events as diverse droves of pioneers crossed the Sabine and Red Rivers to start new lives in Texas. Early Texas society contended with religious issues, family life in a rugged environment, and the Civil War. This cultural history was clearly reflected in the life of frontier preacher Henry C. Renfro.

Migrating to Texas in 1851, Renfro enrolled in the fledgling Baylor University and became a Baptist preacher. Eventually disillusioned with Baptist orthodoxy, Renfro was disenfranchised on charges of infidelity as he embraced the ideals of the Free Thought Movement, inspired by the writings of men such as Thomas Paine, Spinoza, and Robert Ingersoll.

Renfro's Civil War experience was no less unusual. Serving as both soldier and chaplain, Renfro left a valuable legacy of insight into the conflict, captured in a wealth of correspondence that is in itself significant.

Drawing on a vast body of letters, speeches, sermons, and oral histories that had never before been available, this chronological narrative of "The Parson's" life describes significant changes in Texas from 1850 to 1900, especially the volatile formation and growth of Baptist churches in North Central Texas. William Griggs' study yields numerous new details about the Free Thought Movement and depicts public reaction to sectarian leaders in nineteenth-century Texas.

The author also describes the developing Central Texas region known as the Cross Timbers, including the personal dynamics between a frontier family and its patriarch and encompassing such issues as property conflicts, divorce, and family reconciliation. This work unlocks an enlightening, engaging scene from Texas history.

The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi describes the journey to eternal life as going through a gate of ordinances and traveling a “straight and narrow path.” Twenty-three authors took that gospel roadmap passage as a prompt to write “a Mormon story.” They responded with a surprisingly wide range of realistic and fantastic tales. Many are human reactions to unexpected steps on the path: a lifetime of faith in a patriarchal blessing’s unfulfilled promise, a survivor of violence calling a divided community to repentance, a baptism gone very wrong, and spiritual gifts that extend far beyond the apostle Paul’s list. The characters stretch from wayward bishops and helpful home teachers to cyber-­Seventies searching for lost sheep in the metaverse, with settings from the slums of Mumbai to a heaven that turns out to be more difficult than expected. Some characters reject the path’s restrictions and expectations, while others can second the reported words of J. Golden Kimball, “I may not always walk the straight and narrow, but I sure in hell try to cross it as often as I can.”

Breaking new ground in presenting the life of Catherine McAuley (1778?-1841), the Dublin woman who founded the Sisters of Mercy, Mary C. Sullivan has written the first full-length, documented narrative of McAuley in more than fifty years.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2022

In September of 1963, Reverend Lawrence Roberts and the Angelic Choir of the First Baptist Church of Nutley, New Jersey, teamed with rising gospel star James Cleveland to record Peace Be Still. The LP and its haunting title track became a phenomenon. Robert M. Marovich draws on extensive oral interviews and archival research to chart the history of Peace Be Still and the people who created it. Emerging from an established gospel music milieu, Peace Be Still spent several years as the bestselling gospel album of all time. As such, it forged a template for live recordings of services that transformed the gospel music business and Black worship. Marovich also delves into the music's connection to fans and churchgoers, its enormous popularity then and now, and the influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the music's message and reception.

The first in-depth history of a foundational recording, Peace Be Still shines a spotlight on the people and times that created a gospel music touchstone.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities. The Pensées are made up of some 800 fragments, that have proven to be an enduring masterpiece since their initial publication in 1670. This volume is a translation of Philippe Sellier’s edition of Pascal’s Pensées, in addition to two shorter texts, the Exchange with M. de Sacy and The Life of Monsieur Pascal by Pascal’s sister, Gilberte Périer. In addition to a Preface and an Introduction, there is a comprehensive apparatus criticus. The text was originally produced by a team of international Pascal scholars, who translated individual sections and was revised by the General Editor. The introduction situates the Sellier edition in the history of Pascal scholarship and highlights the advance its reordering of the fragments and of the folders or bundles represents, both the translation itself and the notes allow for a deeper reading of the text. It not only gives English readers a version of the authoritative Sellier edition of the collection of reflections known as The Pensées, it also proposes material which help assess the philosopher’s significance and the originality of his thought. On the whole, this translation gives a comprehensive view of the progress of Pascal’s intended Apology of the Christian Religion as well as of other writings on related topics. It also provides today’s readers with a challenging set of arguments, prayer, and quotations from Scripture, and even the record of a mystical experience, known as the Memorial. It highlights all facets of Pascal’s genius, his familiarity with Scripture combined with a talent for controversy, irony mixed with fervor, and altogether the production of an intriguing and challenging writer and thinker.

The Catholic University of America Press is honored to announce the publication of the first volume of the critical English edition of The Collected Works of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II. In conjunction with an international editorial board, the English Critical Edition will comprise 20 volumes, covering all of his writings and correspondence both in the years before and during his papacy. What makes this collection so important is that access to his writings have been a significant challenge. Except for official papal addresses and documents preserved and disseminated by the Vatican, his works have been scattered and limited, or in need of a new translation. Finally, English-language audiences have faced the challenge, even in the case of published texts, of working across multiple languages and translations and of dealing with textual idiosyncrasies. The inaugural volume of this collection is Person and Act, together with related essays, which is in many respects constitutes Karol Wojtyła’s most profound and well-known philosophical work. Originally published in 1969 as Osoba I czyn, this work of metaphysics and philosophy is widely influential even though it is highly challenging intellectually and has heretofore posed difficulties for translators.

In this authoritative study Professor Wolfson’s purpose is to trace the processes of reasoning by which Philo Judaeus of Alexandria arrived at his philosophic principles. These principles later became the common foundations of Jewish, Christian, and Moslem philosophy, and in the 17th century were made the target of attack by Spinoza. This comprehensive work will be indispensable to all serious students of Philo’s thought.

In this authoritative study Professor Wolfson’s purpose is to trace the processes of reasoning by which Philo Judaeus of Alexandria arrived at his philosophic principles. These principles later became the common foundations of Jewish, Christian, and Moslem philosophy, and in the 17th century were made the target of attack by Spinoza. This comprehensive work will be indispensable to all serious students of Philo’s thought.

Philodemus was an important Epicurean philosopher active in southern Italy in the first century B.C.E. His treatise On Property Management, whose surviving part is completely translated here into English for the first time, focuses primarily on the vices or virtues involved in the acquisition and preservation of property and wealth. The extant remains of the work contain the most extensive and thorough treatment of property management found in any Hellenistic author. Philodemus criticizes rival writings by Xenophon and Theophrastus on the subject of oikonomia, or property management, and defends his own Epicurean views on the topic. More systematic and philosophical than rival approaches, the treatise clarifies many moral issues pertaining to the possession and preservation of property and wealth and provides plausible answers to a cluster of moral questions.

“God necessarily exists, since it is not possible for things to be otherwise, as Aristotle shows in the Metaphysics.” So Mehmed II, the Ottoman conqueror of both Constantinople and Trebizond, tells George Amiroutzes, the Byzantine scholar and native of Trebizond, in the beginning of a conversation reported in Amiroutzes’s dialogue The Philosopher, or On Faith.

The dialogue is a literary recreation of the conversations between Mehmed, a Muslim, and Amiroutzes, a Christian. In the course of The Philosopher, the two debate the role of logic and rationality in religious debate, the nature of God, and the fate of the body and soul in the afterlife. Surprisingly complex and subtle arguments emerge, firmly situated in their fifteenth-century context but steeped in the long Greek philosophical tradition.

Previously known only from a sixteenth-century Latin translation, The Philosopher was rediscovered in a Greek manuscript in Toledo. In this volume, John Monfasani presents both the editio princeps and the first translation from the Greek, with an introduction that discusses the life of Amiroutzes and the text, the text and translation with full apparatus and notes, and two appendixes that present documents related to the relationship between Amiroutzes and Mehmed.

Ancient biographies were more than accounts of the deeds of past heroes and guides for moral living. They were also arenas for debating pressing philosophical questions and establishing intellectual credentials, as Arthur P. Urbano argues in this study of biographies composed in Late Antiquity

Amazingly, no one ever seems to have looked at Jesus as a philosopher, or his teaching as philosophy. Yet no one in history has ever had a more radically new philosophy, or made more of a difference to philosophy, than Jesus. He divided all human history into two, into "B.C." and "A.D."; and the history of philosophy is crucial to human history, since philosophy is crucial to man; so how could He not also divide philosophy?

This book (1) looks at Jesus as a complete human being (as well as divine), therefore also as a philosopher; (2) looks at philosophy as Jesus' pre-modern contemporaries did, as a wisdom, a world-view, and a way of life rather than as a super-science (Descartes, Hegel) or as a servant-science (Hobbes, Hume); and (3) looks at philosophy in light of Jesus rather than at Jesus in light of philosophy. It explores the consequences of Etienne Gilson's point that when St. John brought Christianity and Greek philosophy into contact and identified the Messiah the Jews had most deeply sought with the logos that the Greeks had most deeply sought, nothing happened to Christ but something happened to the logos.

This book explores the most radical revolution in the history of philosophy, the differences Jesus made to metaphysics (the philosophy of being), to epistemology (the philosophy of knowing), to anthropology (the philosophy of man), and to philosophical ethics and politics.

And, besides, it has the greatest ending of any philosophy book in a century.

Contents

Introduction 1: Who Is It For?

Introduction 2: How Is Jesus a Philosopher?

Introduction 3: What Are the Four Great Questions of Philosophy?

I. Jesus’ Metaphysics (What is real?)

* Jesus’ Jewish Metaphysics

* Jesus’ New Name for God

* The Metaphysics of Love

* The Moral Consequences of Metaphysics

* Sanctity as the Key to Ontology

* The Metaphysics of “I AM”

II. Jesus’ Epistemology (How do we know what is real?)

III. Jesus’ Anthropology (Who are we who know what is real?)

IV. Jesus’ Ethics (What should we be to be more real?)

* Christian Personalism: Seeing “Jesus only”

* Jesus and Legalism

* Jesus and Relativism

* Jesus and the Secret of Moral Success

* Jesus and Sex

* Jesus and Social Ethics: Solidarity

* Jesus and Politics: Is He Left or Right?

Conclusion

Index

Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, is author of over forty books, including two from St. Augustine’s Press, Socratic Logic and The Sea Within.

In recent years, interest in John Henry Newman as a philosopher has gained momentum. This work places his philosophical insights in conversation with philosophers from the pragmatic tradition, particularly with C. S. Peirce, the classical pragmatists, and those who have followed their line, and shows several lines of concurrence. It argues that Newman overcame the modern philosophy of his time by reconnecting to the Aristotelian tradition in a very similar way to how Peirce did it fifty years later and the new pragmatists a century after. Without claiming that Newman is a pragmatist philosopher, pragmatism is used as a foil, or point of access, to delve into Newman’s philosophy and bring forth the richness of his thought while placing him in the canon of philosophy. This approach deepens the understanding of his philosophical contributions and widens their reach to circles that have previously not engaged with him. Further, this study provides a means to understand pragmatism’s resources from a seldom-used vantage point and perhaps appreciate its fruitfulness in a new way. Much emphasis is placed in Newman’s texts that refer to his search for and commitment to the truth. The particular nuances of his thought that are brought to light showcase the effective intellectual resources that his writings contain. Newman does not provide ready-made answers to today’s questions, but the way he analyzes and engages with the quandaries of his time can point us to creative and fruitful ways of engaging with those of our times.

Authoritative and accessible, this book is a concise and comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of religion. It shows how philosophers have used the tools of philosophy to examine the validity of religious ideas and values.

Distinguished North American, British, and Australian authors explain how philosophers of the past and present have approached key concepts of religious faith: Does God exist? Can God’s existence be proved? If so, what might God be like? Is there life after death? Is faith in an unseen God rationally tenable at all in a post-Enlightenment, postmodern, scientific age in which different faith traditions coexist and make claims to the ownership of eternal truths?

This book is an essential reader and reference for scholars, teachers, and students of religion and for anyone who seeks to answer key questions challenging the life of faith today.

Tian, or Heaven, had multiple meanings in early China. It had been used since the Western Zhou to indicate both the sky and the highest god, and later came to be regarded as a force driving the movement of the cosmos and as a home to deities and imaginary animals. By the Han dynasty, which saw an outpouring of visual materials depicting Heaven, the concept of Heaven encompassed an immortal realm to which humans could ascend after death.

Using excavated materials, Lillian Tseng shows how Han artisans transformed various notions of Heaven—as the mandate, the fantasy, and the sky—into pictorial entities. The Han Heaven was not indicated by what the artisans looked at, but rather was suggested by what they looked into. Artisans attained the visibility of Heaven by appropriating and modifying related knowledge of cosmology, mythology, astronomy. Thus the depiction of Heaven in Han China reflected an interface of image and knowledge.

By examining Heaven as depicted in ritual buildings, on household utensils, and in the embellishments of funerary settings, Tseng maintains that visibility can hold up a mirror to visuality; Heaven was culturally constructed and should be culturally reconstructed.

Picturing the True Form investigates the long-neglected visual culture of Daoism, China’s primary indigenous religion, from the tenth through thirteenth centuries with references to both earlier and later times. In this richly illustrated book, Shih-Shan Susan Huang provides a comprehensive mapping of Daoist images in various media, including Dunhuang manuscripts, funerary artifacts, and paintings, as well as other charts, illustrations, and talismans preserved in the fifteenth-century Daoist Canon. True form (zhenxing), the key concept behind Daoist visuality, is not static, but entails an active journey of seeing underlying and secret phenomena.

This book’s structure mirrors the two-part Daoist journey from inner to outer. Part I focuses on inner images associated with meditation and visualization practices for self-cultivation and longevity. Part II investigates the visual and material dimensions of Daoist ritual. Interwoven through these discussions is the idea that the inner and outer mirror each other and the boundary demarcating the two is fluid. Huang also reveals three central modes of Daoist symbolism—aniconic, immaterial, and ephemeral—and shows how Daoist image-making goes beyond the traditional dichotomy of text and image to incorporate writings in image design. It is these particular features that distinguish Daoist visual culture from its Buddhist counterpart.

Originally published in 1887, The Pioneer Preacher is a lively account of a Congregationalist minister's attempts to lead a sin-free existence on the American frontier. Sherlock Bristol (1815-1906) was a California gold miner, wagon train captain, Wisconsin farmer, Idaho rancher, Indian fighter, abolitionist, and Oberlin-trained clergyman. While serving a series of churches in the East, he periodically cured himself of "nervous disorders" by journeying out West. He only broke the Sabbath once---during an Indian attack!

Reflecting in his memoirs the exploits of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, Bristol delights in recounting his adventures, ecclesiastical or otherwise. He vividly recalls his redemption in the wilderness where he enjoyed having "little opportunity for reading books or mental exercise, and an abundance of calls for muscular employment." Greatly influenced by the evangelist Charles G. Finney at Oberlin, Bristol tried to teach miners and frontiersmen the principles of revivalism, postmillennialism, and perfectionism. In The Pioneer Preacher he shares his own disputatious views on abolition, American Indians, temperance, and other issues of his day.

The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato.

A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English for the first time in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance.

An exquisite new translation of Guru Nanak's verses, illuminating the sacred tenets cherished by millions of Sikhs worldwide.

Guru Nanak (1469–1539), a native of Panjab, founded the Sikh religion. His vast corpus of nearly a thousand hymns forms the core of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikhs’ sacred book of ethics, philosophy, and theology. The scripture was expanded and enriched by his nine successors, and Sikhs continue to revere it today as the embodiment of their tradition.

Poems from the Guru Granth Sahib offers a compilation of spiritual lyrics showcasing the range and depth of Guru Nanak’s literary style while conveying his pluralistic vision of the singular divine and his central values of equality, inclusivity, and civic action. This new English translation includes celebrated long hymns such as “Alphabet on the Board” and “Ballad of Hope” alongside innovative shorter poems like “The Hours.” It is presented here alongside the original text in Gurmukhi, the script developed by the Guru himself.

“A landmark volume, filled with beautiful renderings of writings from the Guru Granth Sahib.”
—Simran Jeet Singh, author of The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life

An exquisite new translation of Guru Nanak’s verses, illuminating the sacred tenets cherished by millions of Sikhs worldwide.

Guru Nanak (1469–1539), a native of Panjab, founded the Sikh religion. His vast corpus of nearly a thousand hymns forms the core of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikhs’ sacred book of ethics, philosophy, and theology. The scripture was expanded and enriched by his nine successors, and Sikhs continue to revere it today as the embodiment of their tradition.

This beautiful new translation by Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, a foremost authority on Sikhism, offers a selection of spiritual lyrics composed by Guru Nanak. Here the reader will find the range and depth of his pluralistic vision of the singular divine and discover his central values of equality, inclusivity, and civic action—values that continue to shape the lives of Sikhs worldwide.

A stunning modern translation of a Buddhist classic that is also one of the oldest literary texts in the world written by women.

The Therīgāthā is one of the oldest surviving literatures by women, composed more than two millennia ago and originally collected as part of the Pali canon of Buddhist scripture. These poems were written by some of the first Buddhist women—therīs—honored for their religious achievements. Through imaginative verses about truth and freedom, the women recount their lives before ordination and their joy at attaining liberation from samsara. Poems of the First Buddhist Women offers startling insights into the experiences of women in ancient times that continue to resonate with modern readers. With a spare and elegant style, this powerful translation introduces us to a classic of world literature.

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Poussin’s Women: Sex and Gender in the Artist’s Works examines the paintings and drawings of the well-known seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) from a gender studies perspective, focusing on a critical analysis of his representations of women. The book’s thematic chapters investigate Poussin’s women in their roles as predators, as lustful or the objects of lust, as lovers, killers, victims, heroines, or models of virtue. Poussin’s paintings reflect issues of gender within his social situation as he consciously or unconsciously articulated its conflicts and assumptions. A gender studies approach brings to light new critical insights that illuminate how the artist represented women, both positively and negatively, within the framework in his seventeenth-century culture. This book covers the artist’s works from Classical mythology, Roman history, Tasso, and the Bible. It serves as a good overview of Poussin as an artist, discussing the latest research and including new interpretations of his major works.

“Pre-modern philosophy” means the line of reflection that started with Plato andvAristotle, passed through Augustine and Boethius, and reached its acme in Aquinas, Scotus, and Suarez. The whole line was harshly judged by Descartes, then mocked by the empiricsts of the 18th Century. Why, then, did Pope Leo XII make a determined effort to revive it? And, more importantly, why was the revival a stunning success by the middle of the 20th Century?

The answers to both questions are found in a famous German book, Philosophie der Vorzeit by Josef Kleutgen, now available for the first time in English. Pre-ModernPhilosophy Defended shaped and strengthened Pope Leo’s resolve. It showed how inaccurate the harsh judgments had been and how sadly inferior the modern replacements from Descartes to Hegel had turned out to be in many respects.

Not in all. Kleutgen was no knee-jerk reactionary. He made no bones about the obsolete status of pre-Newtonian physics and cosmology. Rather, he focused on the central boast of “modern” thought, namely, that it had turned at least to the “subject” and had provided a long-needed thing called a “critique of knowledge.”

This book is must reading for intellectual historians and for philosophers working today in epistemology. But most of all, it is essential reading for laity and clergy concerned about revivals of modernism in the church. What was modernism, after all, but an attempt to make the Church revise her theology in the “light” of Kant or Hegel? This is why every Modernist knew Kleutgen’s name and hated this book.

Here is the first English translation (from the German) of the master work of Josef Kleutgen, the nineteenth century social philosopher whose thought lies at, or near, the heart of Catholic Social Thought. Kleutgen is widely and rightly seen as the shadow author of the social encyclicals of Leo XII. Leo’s Rerum Novarum remains the origin and constant reference point of all Catholic Social Teaching. And Popes since have dated their own social encyclicals from Rerum Novarum – hence, Quadragesimo anno and Centesimus annus. —Gerard V. Bradley, University of Notre Dame

Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended is must reading for intellectual historians and for philosophers working today in epistemology. And it is essential reading for laity and clergy concerned about revivals of modernism in the church. What was modernism, after all, but an attempt to make the Church revise her theology in the ‘light’ of Kant or Hegel? This is why every Modernist knew Kleutgen's name and hated Philosophie der Vorzeit (Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended).

The Princess Nun tells the story of Bunchi (1619–1697), daughter of Emperor Go-Mizunoo and founder of Enshōji. Bunchi advocated strict adherence to monastic precepts while devoting herself to the posthumous welfare of her family. As the first full-length biographical study of a premodern Japanese nun, this book incorporates issues of gender and social status into its discussion of Bunchi’s ascetic practice and religious reforms to rewrite the history of Buddhist reform and Tokugawa religion.

Gina Cogan’s approach moves beyond the dichotomy of oppression and liberation that dogs the study of non-Western and premodern women to show how Bunchi’s aristocratic status enabled her to carry out reforms despite her gender, while simultaneously acknowledging how that same status contributed to their conservative nature. Cogan’s analysis of how Bunchi used her prestigious position to further her goals places the book in conversation with other works on powerful religious women, like Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila. Through its illumination of the relationship between the court and the shogunate and its analysis of the practice of courtly Buddhism from a female perspective, this study brings historical depth and fresh theoretical insight into the role of gender and class in early Edo Buddhism.

A critical reconsideration of the repeated use of the biblical letters of Paul.
 
The letters of Paul have been used to support and condone a host of evils over the span of more than two millennia: racism, slavery, imperialism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, to name a few. Despite, or in some cases because of, this history, readers of Paul have felt compelled to reappropriate his letters to fit liberal or radical politics, seeking to set right the evils done in Paul’s name. Starting with the language of excrement, refuse, and waste in Paul’s letters, Profaning Paul looks at how Paul’s “shit” is recycled and reconfigured. It asks why readers, from liberal Christians to academic biblical scholars to political theorists and philosophers, feel compelled to make Paul into a hero, mining his words for wisdom. Following the lead of feminist, queer, and minoritized scholarship, Profaning Paul asks what would happen if we stopped recycling Paul’s writings. By profaning the status of his letters as sacred texts, we might open up new avenues for imagining political figurations to meet our current and coming political, economic, and ecological challenges.
 

In 1910 Isaiah Shembe was struggling. He had left his family and quit his job as a sanitation worker to become a Baptist evangelist, but he ended his first mission without much to show. Little did he know that he would soon establish the Nazaretha Church as he began to attract attention from people left behind by industrial capitalism in South Africa. By his death in 1935, Shembe was an internationally known prophet and healer, described by his peers as “better off than all the Black people.” In A Prophet of the People: Isaiah Shembe and the Making of a South African Church, historian Lauren V. Jarvis provides a fascinating and intimate portrait of one of South Africa’s most famous religious figures, and in turn the making of modern South Africa. Following Shembe from his birth in the 1860s across many environments and contexts, Jarvis illuminates the tight links between the spread of Christianity, strategies of evasion, and the capacious forms of community that continue to shape South Africa today.

Written for his brother Benedictine monks around 1077, Anselm’s Proslogion is perhaps the best-known partially-read book of the Middle Ages. Many readers are familiar only with Anselm’s well-known argument for God’s existence in Chapters 2–4, which is often called the “ontological argument,” a misleading appellation coined centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In this argument Anselm begins with the thought of “something than which nothing greater is able to be thought,” and subsequently he leads the reader to see that such a reality necessarily exists and cannot be thought not to be. This argument – which is, to be sure, crucial to the work constitutes – but a small portion of the whole. Preceding it is a profound but oft-overlooked opening chapter in which Anselm contemplates his all-too-human condition and disposes the reader to receive aptly his argument for God’s existence in the next three chapters. And following this argument are 20 chapters in which Anselm artfully unfolds the depth and breadth of God’s true existence as that than which nothing greater is able to be thought, showing God to be (among other things) able-to-sense, pity-hearted, just, good, and uncircumscribed. Indeed, if the reader is willing to give himself over to the work as whole, he will be compelled, under Anselm’s deft guidance, to “endeavor to straighten up his mind toward contemplating God,” which is how Anselm describes his own role in the work in his prefatory remarks.

This edition provides a faithful yet readable English rendering of the whole Proslogion, the objections raised to Anselm’s argument by his contemporary Gaunilo, and Anselm’s replies to those objections. (After responding to Gaunilo, Anselm himself requested that these objections and replies be included in subsequent editions of the Proslogion.) This edition also includes an introduction that contextualizes the Proslogion within the monastic, pre-Scholastic age in which it first made its appearance. In addition, by means of notes and commentary, this edition articulates how to contextualize Anselm’s famous argument in the Proslogion as a whole and in light of his replies to Gaunilo, how to appreciate the artistry whereby Anselm knit the Proslogion together into a coherent and concise unity, and how the work may be taught effectively to interested students. These features set this affordable English edition of the Proslogion apart from those currently available, which too often fail to capture accurately the beauty of Anselm’s prose, which often treat the work through the lens of either later Scholasticism or contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, and which take little note of the craftsmanship whereby Anselm constructed this masterfully integrated work that is remembered too often for too few of its 24 chapters.

Matthew Walz has taught in the interdisciplinary program at Thomas Aquinas College in California, and since 2008 he has been a professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Dallas.

Spirited verse.

Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens) was born in AD 348 probably at Caesaraugusta (Saragossa) and lived mostly in northeastern Spain, but visited Rome between 400 and 405. His parents, presumably Christian, had him educated in literature and rhetoric. He became a barrister and at least once later on an administrator; he afterwards received some high honor from Emperor Theodosius. Prudentius was a strong Christian who admired the old pagan literature and art, especially the great Latin poets whose forms he used. He looked on the Roman achievement in history as a preparation for the coming of Christ and the triumph of a spiritual empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the poems of Prudentius is in two volumes. Volume I presents: “Preface” (Praefatio); “The Daily Round” (Liber Cathemerinon); twelve literary and attractive hymns, parts of which have been included in the Breviary and in modern hymnals; “The Divinity of Christ” (Apotheosis), which maintains the Trinity and attacks those who denied the distinct personal being of Christ; “The Origin of Sin” (Hamartigenia) attacking the separation of the “strict” God of the Old Testament from the “good” God revealed by Christ; “Fight for Mansoul” (Psychomachia), which describes the struggle between (Christian) Virtues and (Pagan) Vices; and the first book of “Against the Address of Symmachus” (Contra Orationem Symmachi), in which pagan gods are assailed.

The second volume contains the second book of “Against the Address of Symmachus,” opposing a petition for the replacement of an altar and statue of Victory; “Crowns of Martyrdom” (Peristephanon Liber), fourteen hymns to martyrs mostly of Spain; “Lines To Be Inscribed under Scenes from History” (Tituli Historiarum), forty-nine four-line stanzas that are inscriptions for scenes from the Bible depicted on the walls of a church; and an Epilogue.

Spirited verse.

Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens) was born in AD 348 probably at Caesaraugusta (Saragossa) and lived mostly in northeastern Spain, but visited Rome between 400 and 405. His parents, presumably Christian, had him educated in literature and rhetoric. He became a barrister and at least once later on an administrator; he afterwards received some high honor from Emperor Theodosius. Prudentius was a strong Christian who admired the old pagan literature and art, especially the great Latin poets whose forms he used. He looked on the Roman achievement in history as a preparation for the coming of Christ and the triumph of a spiritual empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the poems of Prudentius is in two volumes. Volume I presents: “Preface” (Praefatio); “The Daily Round” (Liber Cathemerinon); twelve literary and attractive hymns, parts of which have been included in the Breviary and in modern hymnals; “The Divinity of Christ” (Apotheosis), which maintains the Trinity and attacks those who denied the distinct personal being of Christ; “The Origin of Sin” (Hamartigenia) attacking the separation of the “strict” God of the Old Testament from the “good” God revealed by Christ; “Fight for Mansoul” (Psychomachia), which describes the struggle between (Christian) Virtues and (Pagan) Vices; and the first book of “Against the Address of Symmachus” (Contra Orationem Symmachi), in which pagan gods are assailed.

The second volume contains the second book of “Against the Address of Symmachus,” opposing a petition for the replacement of an altar and statue of Victory; “Crowns of Martyrdom” (Peristephanon Liber), fourteen hymns to martyrs mostly of Spain; “Lines To Be Inscribed under Scenes from History” (Tituli Historiarum), forty-nine four-line stanzas that are inscriptions for scenes from the Bible depicted on the walls of a church; and an Epilogue.