Concepts of predestination and reprobation were central issues in the Protestant Reformation, especially within Calvinist churches, and thus have often been studied primarily in the historical context of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Versions of Election: From Langland and Aquinas to Calvin and Milton, David Aers takes a longer view of these key issues in Christian theology. With meticulous attention to the texts of medieval and early modern theologians, poets, and popular writers, this book argues that we can understand the full complexity of the history of various teachings on the doctrine of election only through a detailed diachronic study that takes account of multiple periods and disciplines. Throughout this wide-ranging study, Aers examines how various versions of predestination and reprobation emerge and re-emerge in Christian tradition from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century. Starting with incisive readings of medieval works by figures such as William Langland, Thomas Aquinas, and Robert Holcot, and continuing on to a nuanced consideration of texts by Protestant thinkers and writers, including John Calvin, Arthur Dent, William Twisse, and John Milton (among others), Aers traces the twisting and unpredictable history of prominent versions of predestination and reprobation across the divide of the Reformation and through a wide variety of genres. In so doing, Aers offers not only a detailed study of election but also important insights into how Christian tradition is made, unmade, and remade. Versions of Election is an original, cross-disciplinary study that touches upon the fields of literature, theology, ethics, and politics, and makes important contributions to the study of both medieval and early modern intellectual and literary history. It will appeal to academics in these fields, as well as clergy and other educated readers from a wide variety of denominations.
In Beyond Reformation? An Essay on William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the End of Constantinian Christianity, David Aers presents a sustained and profound close reading of the final version of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the most searching Christian poem of the Middle Ages in English. His reading, most unusually, seeks to explore the relations of Langland's poem to both medieval and early modern reformations together with the ending of Constantinian Christianity. Aers concentrates on Langland’s extraordinarily rich ecclesiastic politics and on his account of Christian virtues and the struggles of Conscience to discern how to go on in his often baffling culture. The poem’s complex allegory engages with most institutions and forms of life. In doing so, it explores moral languages and their relations to current practices and social tendencies. Langland’s vision conveys a strange sense that in his historical moment some moral concepts were being transformed and some traditions the author cherished were becoming unintelligible. Beyond Reformation? seeks to show how Langland grasped subtle shifts that were difficult to discern in the fourteenth century but were to become forces with a powerful future in shaping Western Christianity. The essay form that Aers has chosen for his book contributes to the effectiveness of the argument he develops in tandem with the structure of Langland’s poem: he sustains and tests his argument in a series of steps or “passus,” a Langlandian mode of proceeding. His essay unfolds an argument about medieval and early modern forms of Constantinian Christianity and reformation, and the way in which Langland's own vision of a secularizing, de-Christianizing late medieval church draws him toward the idea of a church of “fools,” beyond papacy, priesthood, hierarchy, and institutions. For Aers, Langland opens up serious diachronic issues concerning Christianity and culture. His essay includes a brief summary of the poem and modern translations alongside the original medieval English. It will challenge specialists on Langland's poem and supply valuable resources of thought for anyone who continues to struggle with the church of today.
First published in 1988, David Aers explores the treatment of community, gender, and individual identity in English writing between 1360 and 1430, focusing on Margery Kempe, Langland, Chaucer, and the poet of Sir Gawain. He shows how these texts deal with questions about gender, the making of individual identity, and competing versions of community in ways which still speak powerfully in contemporary analysis of gender formation, sexuality, and love. Making wide use of recent research on the English economy and communities, and informed by current debates in the theory of culture and gender, the book will be of interest to those concerned with Medieval studies, Renaissance studies, and Women’s studies.
Examination of key texts - Chaucer to Wyclif - sheds new light on medieval spirituality. The relationship between versions of the late medieval Church, faith, ethics and the lay powers, as explored in a range of late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century texts written in England, is the subject of this book. It argues that they disclose strikingly diverse models of Christian discipleship, and examines the sources and consequences of such differences. Issues investigated include whether the Church could shape modern communities and individualidentities, and how it could combine its status as a major landlord and trader without being assimilated by the various networks of earthly power and profit. The book begins with Chaucer's treatment of received versions of faith,ethics and the Church, and moves via St Thomas, Ockham, Nicholas Love, Gower, the Gawain-poet and Langland (who pursues the issues with particular intensity and focus) to Wyclif's construal of Christian discipleship in relation to his projected reform of the Church. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book will be of interest to all those studying late medieval Christianity and literature. DAVID AERS is James B. Duke Professor of English and Professor of Historical Theology at Duke University.
First published in 1980, this study of two renowned later fourteenth century English poets, Chaucer and Langland, concentrates on some major and representative aspects of their work. Aers shows that, in contrast to the mass conventional writing of the period, which was happy to accept and propagate traditional ideologies, Chaucer and Langland were preoccupied with actual conflicts, strains, and developments in received ideologies and social practices. He demonstrates that they were genuinely exploratory, and created work which actively questioned dominant ideologies, even those which they themselves revered and hoped to affirm. For Chaucer and Langland the imagination was indeed creative, involved in the active construction of meanings, and in their poetry they grasped and explored social commitments, religious developments and many perplexing contradictions which were subverting inherited paradigms.
Because of the way in which predestination and reprobation became central issues in the Protestant Reformation (especially within Calvinist churches), these themes have often been studied primarily in that historical context. In Versions of Election: From Langland and Aquinas to Calvin and Milton, David Aers takes a longer view of these key issues in Christian theology. With meticulous attention to the texts of medieval and early modern theologians, poets, and popular writers, this book argues that we can understand the full complexity of the history of various teachings on the doctrine of election only through a detailed diachronic study that takes account of multiple periods and disciplines. Throughout this wide-ranging study, Aers examines how various versions of predestination and reprobation emerge and re-emerge in Christian tradition from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century. Starting with incisive readings of medieval works by figures such as William Langland, Thomas Aquinas, and Robert Holcot, and continuing on to a nuanced consideration of texts by Protestant thinkers and writers like John Calvin, Arthur Dent, William Twisse, and John Milton (among others), Aers traces the twisting and unpredictable history of some prominent versions of predestination and reprobation across the divide of the Reformation and through a wide variety of genres. In so doing, Aers offers not only a detailed study of election but also important insights into how Christian tradition is made, unmade, and remade. Versions of Election is an original cross-disciplinary study that touches upon the fields of literature, theology, ethics, and politics, and makes important contributions to the study of both medieval and early modern intellectual and literary history. It will appeal to academics in these various fields, as well as clergy and other educated readers from across a wide variety of denominations"--
First published in 1981.The primary purpose of this book is to serve as an introduction to writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition to major Romantic poets – Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelly – the authors discuss writers such as Austen, Hazlitt and Burke, who are usually studied in a different context, and genres such as fiction and political writing, which are often cut off from the central body of poetry. An original and highly stimulated study, this book will appeal to all those who are dissatisfied with the conventional categories into which writers and literary movements are usually placed. .
Writing the Passions is a book of literary criticism, of philosophy and of the politics of modernity. It explores the arguments on the location of feeling in literature; on the fragmentation of the self under the pressure of the passions; of the place of the passions in psychoanalytic practice and theory; and on the notions of multiplicity, soul, spirit, polytheism and animism developed from their bases in psychoanalytic and Derridean theory. The relations between writing and the passions are addressed through individual texts, ranging across many centuries and from Europe to China. Writers and texts discussed include Plato, Andrew Marvell, Swinburne, Salman Rushdie, Iain Banks, Deleuze, Guattari and many others. Topics addressed include: the meaning of crime passionnel; art and the wound; passion and ceremonial; adoration and abjection; dread and disgust; the nature of the exotic; shame and irony; separation, incompletion and the cure. Written in a uniquely engaging and accessible style, Writing the Passions provides readers with a fascinating exploration of the general notion of 'the passions', together with a set of historical insights into how the passions have been considered and treated in different literatures and cultures.
In this Gold Medallion award-winner, Dr. David Jeremiah addresses the challenges to prayer that we all face and the answers to prayer we often miss. Prayer, the Great Adventure gently encourages us to take the first steps toward fostering a rewarding relationship with God. Drawing from his prayer journals and decades of work, Dr. Jeremiah shares his experiences - blessings, struggles, and insights. Inside Prayer, The Great Adventure you will: • Find answers to the questions, “How can I find time to pray when I’m so busy?” • Discover the detailed roadmap for prayer that Jesus gave us — The Lord’s Prayer • Read reflections from Dr. Jeremiah’s personal journal on his prayer journey Get ready to embark on the most satisfying of trips, the great adventure of prayer.
Most Christians sense that something vital is missing from their walk with the Lord. We are easily discouraged and bogged down in busyness, boredom, mediocrity, and routine. In this energizing new book, Dr. Jeremiah opens our eyes to how we can live a life that exudes an attitude of hope and enthusiasm . . . a life of passion . . . a life wide open!
For many people, worry, anxiety, and fear are constant companions: fear of death, fear of danger, fear of disease. And too often, these fears are crippling, keeping us from the life God has called us to live. But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Dr. David Jeremiah. As Christians, we have been given all we need in order to face down even the most frightening, unexpected, and overwhelming obstacles in life. In his new book, What Are You Afraid Of? Dr. Jeremiah explores the top ten fears that are holding so many of us back from the life God has called us to live and shares the supernatural secrets for facing down these fears with faith.
When you give up trying to control the direction of the wind...the feather of serenity will gently make its way to you. The Answer is a small booklet with profound sayings by A Course in Miracles teacher David Hoffmeister and watercolor paintings by Jenny Fagerstedt. It is Living water and a treasure for the mind!
Key Bible verses, quotes from the book, reflective readings, and questions for self-discovery accompany the reader on the most crucial pilgrimage of all.
In this updated edition of his classic book, New York Times bestselling author Dr. David Jeremiah offers biblically based, practical instruction for living a confident life in a world filled with chaos and crisis. Confidence can be hard to come by these days as millions of people experience immeasurable, unanticipated challenges. People are losing their jobs, their houses, and their life savings at an unprecedented rate. Violence, natural disasters, and moral depravity seem to be skyrocketing. In the midst of all this chaos, we need to know . . . what on earth should we do now? Bible teacher Dr. David Jeremiah brings a message of hope and confidence from the priceless counsel of the Word of God. If we rely on God's Word to advise us, calm us, and fill us with hope and trust in the One who understands what is happening, we can weather any storm. Dr. Jeremiah answers our most urgent questions, including: How can we weather this storm with a calm heart? What does it truly mean to “wait on the Lord”? What is Jesus saying to our chaotic world today? How on earth did we get into this mess? Can we take a broken world and rebuild it into something fruitful? Living with Confidence in a Chaotic World shows us all that with the power and love of Almighty God, we can live with confidence in this age of turmoil.
A tour de force of life on a journey with Jesus. By all means, take this journey if you can.—Chuck Colson, Founder, Prison Fellowship With our society’s sometimes unfavorable view of Christians, it is all the more important that believers display what Dr. David Jeremiah calls signs of life — signs that Jesus has transformed us and that we are committed to Him and His kingdom. They are signs that ought to be detected from across the street, over the fence, down the hall, throughout the office, or in the pews, for it’s not enough to just talk about Jesus. It’s also not enough to serve Him in secret with our acts of private devotion. We have to display the lifestyle of the Nazarene in the midst of a corrupt and darkened culture. In a world starved for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, honesty, relevance, and compassion, Christians should specialize in exactly those things through public expressions of private faith. It’s by our smile, our compassion in the face of misfortune, our friendliness, our simple lifestyle, our willingness to commit random acts of kindness, our social ministries, our tears, and our words that unbelievers recognize Who we represent. Signs of Life will lead you on a journey to a fuller understanding of the marks that identify you as a Christian. Signs that will advertise your faith. Personal imprints that can impact souls for eternity and help you become a person of influence who radiates relevancy, authenticity, generosity, and compassion every day — just like Jesus did.
Don't you deserve a little happiness? They are the questions that plague us: Is happiness within my reach? Why is life so frustrating? Is it too late for me? Or to put another way, "Where can I find a little heaven on earth?" History's most successful man, Solomon, wondered just that. As Dr. David Jeremiah shows us, he was a man who tested life's haunting questions head-on. And tasted life's riches full-on. And who found his answers in the last place he thought to look. Listen, then, to his voice. A voice that, if you pay attention, will speak directly to your flesh and bones and heart. A voice that admits: Maybe happiness is an empty hope. Or maybe we've simply been looking in all the wrong places. . .
Rapture' The act of seizing or carrying off as prey or plunder; the act of carrying or being carried; and the expression of ecstasy or euphoria in words. The concept of rapture in literature navigates along a specific trajectory, from rapine status through to 'being carried (away)'. This book identifies the apparent impossibility of recounting such 'rapturous states', and of fixing them in words or in time within cultural expectations, while questioning what we can do with those who are 'enrapt', and what we do inside ourselves with reading moments of rapture. Rapture: Literature, Secrecy, Addiction engages with the 'states of heightened awareness', and seeks to connect with the notion of addiction as an alternative to the moral law. Punter deals with notions of writing as itself a kind of 'seizure', writing as a 'fit', in the works of Blake, H lderlin, Novalis, Nietzsche, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Genet, and Ballard. 'Writing it down' - the process of returning from states of exaltation to find oneself writing in often bleak locations, underlines the relationship between rapture and literature. The author concludes that the very possibility of communication and interpretation is radically open to doubt. The addict-writer becomes representative of the dialectic of writing as an act of communication; an act which is tragically doomed from the outset.
In The Handwriting on the Wall, prophecy expert David Jeremiah shows how an understanding of prophecy, specifically that in the book of Daniel, opens a pathway to dynamic, faithful living today-with confidence and hope for the future.
A collection of anthologies, resource and reference books, including titles from Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, Alex Madina, Jo Phillips and Adrian Barlow.
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