Eloquent Wisdom
Rhetoric, Cosmology and Delight in the Theology of Augustine of Hippo
By (author) Augustine of Hippo By (author) Mark Clavier
In this book, Mark Clavier provides an in-depth historical and theological study of the nature and role of delight in Augustine’s theology. He contends that Augustine drew primarily from Cicero’s rhetorical theory as mediated through later Neoplatonic commentators to develop a rhetorical theology that could explain how even those une
Augustine of Hippo employed delight within his theology in ways unprecedented in Christian thought. It underpins his approach to creation, redemption, the Christian ministry and the inner conflict between desire and the will. Moreover, his understanding of delight would make an enormous impact on the shape of monastic theology in the Latin West. Yet no full-length study of Augustine’s theology of delight has ever been undertaken. In this book, Mark Clavier provides an in-depth historical and theological study of the nature and role of delight in Augustine’s theology. He contends that Augustine drew primarily from Cicero’s rhetorical theory as mediated through later Neoplatonic commentators to develop a rhetorical theology that could explain how even those unenlightened by the liberal arts could discover God. Clavier argues that delight functions within Augustine’s theology as eloquence does within Cicero’s rhetorical theory, engaging people’s hearts in order to make them receptive to a wisdom they would otherwise neglect or resist. Augustine conceived of God as an orator who persuades people to turn away from death towards salvation by pouring delight into their hearts through the reception of the Holy Spirit, presented as God’s own delight. His close identification of delight with the Holy Spirit laid the ground for the affective turn in western medieval theology and its understanding of contemplative reading as a participative process of ascent to God. Clavier’s work demonstrates that scholars need to consider the rhetorical basis for Augustine’s thought at least as seriously as they have considered the philosophical.
- By (author) Augustine of Hippo
- By (author) Mark Clavier
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The Rhetoric and Hermeneutics of Meditation in Hugh of Saint-Victor, Guigo II, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio
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Friendship as Ecclesial Binding
A Reading of St. Augustine's Theology of Friendship from his In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus
Volume 48
The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem
The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstatt (700-787 CE)
Volume 2
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era
Volume 28
‘The Letter Killeth’
Redeeming Time in Augustine's Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
Volume 51
Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland
Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba
Volume 3
Through the Bone and Marrow
Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe
Volume 45
Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood
The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity
Volume 13
The Spirit, the World and the Trinity
Origen's and Augustine's Understanding of the Gospel of John
Volume 40
‘The loss of a minute is just so much loss of life’
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith in the Holy Land
Volume 39
Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, AD 300-1200
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Science of Computus in Ireland and Europe, Galway, 14-16 July, 2006
Volume 5
Healing not Punishment. Penitentials in the Insular Church
Historical and Pastoral Networking of the Penitentials between the Sixth and the Eighth Centuries
Volume 25
The Christology of Theodore of Tarsus
The Laterculus Malalianus and the Person and Work of Christ
Volume 6
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