Ascetic Practice as a Tool for Comparative Religion?

By Nathan G. Jennings A review of Gavin Flood's The Ascetic Self. 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.

The Historical Jesus cartoon

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.… Read more

Our Hero Socrates

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: