Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine's Thought
This item is a print on demand title and will be dispatched in 1-3 weeks.
Hardback
£107.50
QTY
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198804994
Number of Pages: 274
Published: 10/08/2017
Width: 16.8 cm
Height: 24.2 cm
Augustine's dominant image for the human life is peregrinatio, which signifies at once a journey to the homeland (a pilgrimage) and the condition of exile from the homeland. For Augustine, all human beings are, in the earthly life, exiles from their true homeland: heaven. Some, but not all, become pilgrims seeking a way back to the heavenly homeland, a return mediated by the incarnate Christ. Becoming a pilgrim begins with attraction to beauty. The return journey therefore involves formation, both moral and aesthetic, in loving rightly. This image has occasioned a lot of angst in ethical thought in the last century. Augustine's vision of Christian life as a pilgrimage, his critics allege, casts a pall of groaning and longing over this life in favor of happiness in the next. Augustine's eschatological orientation robs the world of beauty and ethics of urgency.
In Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine's Thought, Sarah Stewart-Kroeker responds to Augustine's critics by elaborating the Christological continuity between the earthly journey and the eschatological home. Through this cohesive account of pilgrimage as a journey toward the right ordering of the desire for beauty and love for God and neighbour, Stewart-Kroeker reveals the integrity of Augustine's vision of moral and aesthetic vision. From the human desire for beauty to the embodied practice of Christian sacraments, Stewart-Kroeker develops an account of the relationship between beauty and morality as the linchpin of an Augustinian moral theology.
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1: The Plotinian Heritage of Augustine's Peregrinatio Image
2: Christ-Centered Peregrinatio: The Mediated Journey
3: Moral Formation in Christ, The Beautiful Beloved
4: Beauty, Morality, and The Promise of Happiness
5: The Body of Christ: Church as the Site of Formation
6: Neighbor-love, Earthly and Eschatological
Conclusion
Bibliography
Stewart-Kroeker helps to answer the need for a more robust discussion of the eschatological direction and moral implications of Augustine's thought ... Stewart-Kroeker in this work helps advance the methodological effort of reading Augustine in a manner that is integral and holistic; this achievement is evident in her examination of the moral and aesthetic formation of the pilgrim seeking the heavenly patria. * Michael J.S. Bruno, Augustiniana * As an accessible resource for upper division undergrads, seminarians, and scholars, it resists a flat or simplistic understanding of Augustine's theological studies. * Erin Default-Hunter, Fuller Theological Seminary, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics * Steward-Kroeker's account of Augustine's christologically disciplined attraction to Platonic anagogy is an authoritative study of an essential theme in his thought. * James Lawson, Journal of Theological Studies * [I]n Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation, Stewart-Kroeker presents an artful and thought-provoking presentation of Augustine's moral theology under the aspect of beauty which does much to bring clarity to the relation of beauty and goodness and to neglected themes in the structure of Augustine's thought. * Luke Zerra, Reading Religion *