The Christian Heritage
Problems and Prospects
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Lexington Books
Published:16th Mar '10
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£137.00(9780739135976)
The Christian Heritage: Problems and Prospects delves into the history of the western Christian heritage. Challenges to the Christian heritage, a heritage nourished both by Judaism and by the western classics, have been stimulated by the very success of the way of life that is promoted, a way of life that is somehow responsible for the emergence of modern science with its revolutionary technology. The reader is encouraged to reconsider authors prominent in the religious tradition of the West. Guidance is provided for examinations of the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millenniums. The enduring texts that we in the West repeatedly encounter, especially the most challenging of them, are apt to draw upon, and to illuminate the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millenniums. Vital to Western Civilization has long been the Christian Heritage. That Heritage has been taken for granted in our general education, in something as prosaic as the everyday operations of our legal system, and perhaps even in our economic and other social arrangements.
George Anastaplo clearly knows what is "in" these parts of the Christian heritage, and he wants to teach others. But he knows he cannot succeed, even among intellectually high-powered college and post-graduate and "Great Books" readers who enliven his natural habitats, unless he gets their curiosity roused. Instead of using PowerPoint or a megaphone…he insinuates his way into the consciousness and consciences…of those who claim the Christian heritage and would push what they think are its values on others. -- Martin E. Marty, from the foreword
George Anastaplo is the master of the unexpected question that throws a new light on whatever work or topic is being discussed. The essays Anastaplo brings together in this work are certainly unexpected and surprising, but the reader will discover things that he did not notice; he will learn of a mode of reading that he will seldom if ever encounter elsewhere; and he will be led to insights that could not otherwise be evoked. The essays range from literary works (Beowulf, Dante, Chaucer), to philosophic themes (Aquinas on natural law), to reflections on such issues as publicly funded church schools, animal sacrifices, abortion laws, and the relation of the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution to reason and revelation, and much more. -- Leo Paul S. de Alvarez, University of Dallas
In essays on topics from Dante to Darwin, this work by George Anastaplo, returns to Judaism and to Greek antiquity in an attempt to understand both the roots and consequences of a Christian Heritage that the author presents as being also the American Heritage. Readers of these intriguing reflections will enjoy a rare combination of wide learning and a sportive, playful mind. -- Christopher Colmo, Dominican University
ISBN: 9780739135983
Dimensions: 232mm x 155mm x 28mm
Weight: 674g
464 pages