by Gesner Noel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 5, 2016
An excellent single-volume introduction to Christianity’s first theologian.
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A brief but thorough account of St. Paul’s life and an analysis of its significance in the subsequent development of Christianity.
Paul presents a unique challenge to scholars, as he’s unusually difficult to fully understand. In this debut, Noel tackles this enigmatic figure, painstakingly assessing available historical and biblical evidence. Paul began his life as Saul and was a man of several significant identities: he was a traditional Jew who was apparently educated to become a Pharisee, a Roman citizen, and a resident of Tarsus, a city in eastern Turkey. Noel carefully weighs the competing significance of these influences and judiciously attempts to uncover a single coherent vision of Paul. He meticulously considers a totality of factors, including Paul’s character, his upbringing, his education, and his self-reliance despite considerable family wealth. The author also furnishes a synoptic account of the theological landscape into which Paul was born, defining the various sectarian schools of which he would have been aware. Although Noel predictably and sensibly assigns a central place to Paul’s well-known conversion, he also thoughtfully reflects on a subject that’s too often neglected: the reasons why Paul was such a committed persecutor of Christians in the first place. According to the author, his fury was a function of his devotion to Judaism and his opinion that Christianity was a heretical rejection of it: “In Paul’s view, the very existence of a religion that had faith in the crucifixion of the Messiah was blasphemy against his most sacred hope of salvation and the deliverance of Israel, which God promised to his forefathers.” Of course, Paul’s conversion transforms him from persecutor to persecuted, and Noel provides a detailed overview of Paul’s evangelical mission, which apparently focused on spreading Jesus’ message through densely populated urban centers. It’s remarkable how much ground the author covers in a relatively short monograph, which is largely attributable to concise, lucid prose that’s not always found in research-driven literature. One ends up wishing for more extended discussions of Paul’s letters and his theology, but this whetting of intellectual appetite is more a virtue than a vice.
An excellent single-volume introduction to Christianity’s first theologian.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5246-2345-6
Page Count: 168
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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