This volume brings together for the first time some of the world’s leading authorities on the German mystic Jacob Boehme, to illuminate his thought and its reception over four centuries for the benefit of students and advanced scholars alike. Boehme’s theosophical works have influenced Western culture in profound ways since their dissemination in the early 17th Century, and these interdisciplinary essays trace the social and cultural networks as well as the intellectual pathways involved in Boehme’s enduring impact. The chapters range from situating Boehme in the 16th Century Radical Reformation, to discussions of his significance in modern theology. They explore the major contexts for Boehme’s reception including the Pietist movement, Russian religious thought and Western esotericism, as well as focusing more closely on important readers: the religious radicals of the English Civil Wars and the later English Behmenists; literary figures such as Goethe and Blake, and great philosophers of the modern age, among them Schelling and Hegel. Together, the chapters illustrate the depth and variety of Boehme’s influence and a concluding chapter addresses directly an underlying theme of the volume – asking why Boehme matters today, and how readers in the present might be enriched by a fresh engagement with his apparently opaque and complex writings.

This is the seventh annual volume of the remarkably popular journal of biblical theology edited by Scott Hahn and his St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. This volume responds to the call of Pope Benedict XVI in his Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini for a thoughtful return to the Fathers of the Church and how they approached Sacred Scripture. This is not in any way to jettison historical-critical methods and the valuable insights that modern biblical scholarship has brought to light. It is simply to acknowledge what Pope Benedict calls for, a measured return to the interpretive methods employed by the Church Fathers as well as the theology that flowed from their exegetical labors. As he said, "The Church Fathers present a theology that still has great value today because at its heart is the study of sacred Scripture as a whole. Indeed, the Fathers are primarily and essentially commentators on sacred Scripture." Highlights include original articles by Fr. William Kurtz, SJ, Matthew Levering, Father Stephen Ryan, OP, Stephen Hildebrand, Owen Phelan, and Michael Barber, as well as an original translation of Joseph Ratzinger's (Pope Benedict XVI) foundational essay "Vicarious Representation" by Father Jared Wicks, SJ.

This book has a simple purpose: to show what a conversation with William Law (1696-1761), England's "greatest prose mystic," can do for a contemporary faith. For the half-hearted Christians most are, Law composed one of the most startling and vigorous 'wake-up' calls in the Christian tradition. He also wrote, under the influence of his beloved Jacob Boehme, a series of works that spiral around the subject of Christ, born in believers as the formative power of their lives. His accounts of creation, fall, and redemption are arresting -- if sometimes strange -- in their expression, and his working of classical topics such as atonement, wrath and judgment, spirit, Prayer, and love suggest just how much we need a "mystical" theology.

Arguing that there is a close relationship between aspects of the literature of Western spirituality and evolving ideas of the person, this book charts the interaction between literature and theology in producing certain historically-conditioned interpretations of what it means to be a person.

Agreement in action is the path to godly worldliness. Harmony is the key logic of acceptance and a cornerstone foundation of a justice filled and civil society. When there is harmony in action there is peace and stability. Harmony is the agreement and acceptance of values. When the proper values are acceptable good deal and virtue of worldliness of holy spirit begins and all is well in the world.