Ascetic Practice as a Tool for Comparative Religion?
February 23, 2010
By Nathan G. Jennings
What does asceticism have to do with the formation of religious subjectivity? Can asceticism provide a point of comparison between religions? Gavin Flood, in his excellent new volume, The Ascetic Self, answers these questions with the thesis that asceticism is “the internalization of tradition, the shaping of the narrative of a life in accordance with the narrative of tradition that might be seen as the performance of the memory of tradition” (p. ix). Flood treats the literature on asceticism that has accumulated over the past twenty years or so.
A Man of Action
February 8, 2010
By: Jonathan David Price
Coffee is all that matters to Mr. Johnson at this hour. One cup at eight. Only in the morning. He has only missed his coffee twice, the day he had to leave his wife and kids, and the day his mother died. He was bitter both days. Mr. Johnson likes his coffee bitter—two squirts of milk… Read more
The Historical Jesus cartoon
February 5, 2010
Ecclesia©
Drawn by Joseph Farris, a staff cartoonist for the New Yorker. His personal website is www.josephfarris.com.
Creaters and idea: The Brothers Price.
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Ecclesia© is an occasional theological cartoon that appears alongside other cartoons in the Clarion Review.
This cartoon may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the Clarion Review.
Our Hero Socrates
February 1, 2010
Peter Augustine Lawler
It’s my pleasure to be able to introduce Nalin Ranasinghe’s Socrates and the Underworld: On Plato’s Gorgias to you as one of the most able, eloquent, noble, profound, and loving books ever written on Socrates. Ranasinghe restores for us the example of a moral hero who inaugurated a moral revolution in opposition to his country’s post-imperial cynicism and nihilism. What Socrates discovered about the human soul remains true for us in our similarly cynical and nihilistic time. Here’s the truth:
