Ten Theology Books to Watch For [August 2019]

Selected Discourses of Shenoute the Great: Community, Theology, and Social Conflict in Late Antique Egypt 

David Brakke and
Andrew Crislip

Cambridge UP

Shenoute the Great (c.347–465) led one of the largest Christian monastic communities in late antique Egypt and was the greatest native writer of Coptic in history. For approximately eight decades, Shenoute led a federation of three monasteries and emerged as a Christian leader. His public sermons attracted crowds of clergy, monks, and lay people; he advised military and government officials; he worked to ensure that his followers would be faithful to orthodox Christian teaching; and he vigorously and violently opposed paganism and the oppressive treatment of the poor by the rich. This volume presents in translation a selection of his sermons and other orations. These works grant us access to the theology, rhetoric, moral teachings, spirituality, and social agenda of a powerful Christian leader during a period of great religious and social change in the later Roman Empire.

 
 

Early Franciscan Theology: Between Authority and Innovation

Lydia Schumacher

Cambridge UP

Franciscan theology before Bonaventure has long been regarded as a relatively unoriginal attempt to systematize the tradition of Augustine, which prevailed in the West for most of the earlier Middle Ages. In this book, Lydia Schumacher aims to demonstrate the innovative aspects of early Franciscan theology by examining the historical, philosophical, and religious contexts in which it was developed, and by highlighting how thinkers from this period deployed authoritative sources like Augustine as ‘proof texts’ for their own novel positions. She thereby exposes the continuity between the early and later Franciscan schools, which have normally been perceived as distinct from one another. Schumacher also emphasizes the ethos that inspired the development of medieval Franciscan thinking and distinguishes it from any modern intellectual trends with which it has been associated. Ultimately, Schumacher lays the foundation for future efforts to recover Franciscan theology in the contemporary context on its own terms.

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