Description
Genesis 16 tells of Abraham conceiving Ishmael with his wife Sarai's servant Hagar. Dominican Friar Richard Fishacre (ca. 1200-1248) used this Biblical narrative to explore the relationship of the natural and Divine sciences. Fishacre believed that the theologian must first study the world, before he could be fruitful as a theologian. How do the natural sciences, in short, help us better understand the Scriptures?
Fishacre, like his contemporaries Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) looked at ways that the newly-translated natural philosophy of Aristotle, with its empirical emphasis and a belief that knowledge begins in sense perception, could supplement the more otherworldly Neoplatonic approach to philosophy and the sciences inherited from St. Augustine. Hagar's Vocation is a collection of fifteen essays which focus on the contributions of Richard Fishacre, the first Dominican theologian at Oxford to have left a written legacy.
The questions addressed by Fishacre include his arguments for God's existence, the multi-faceted problem of the human soul, the eternity of the world, the nature of light, the free choice of the will, angels and ""spiritual matter,"" interiority and self-knowledge, undoing the past and God's absolute power, the magical arts, and the role of philosophy in a theology of creation.
R. James Long, the world's leading authority on Fishacre, in this volume promises to establish this hitherto little studied English friar as a major figure in the development of a learned or philosophically grounded theology that remains the great achievement of High Scholasticism.
Book Information
ISBN 9780813227375
Author R. James Long
Format Hardback
Page Count 296
Imprint The Catholic University of America Press
Publisher The Catholic University of America Press
Fishacre, like his contemporaries Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) looked at ways that the newly-translated natural philosophy of Aristotle, with its empirical emphasis and a belief that knowledge begins in sense perception, could supplement the more otherworldly Neoplatonic approach to philosophy and the sciences inherited from St. Augustine. Hagar's Vocation is a collection of fifteen essays which focus on the contributions of Richard Fishacre, the first Dominican theologian at Oxford to have left a written legacy.
The questions addressed by Fishacre include his arguments for God's existence, the multi-faceted problem of the human soul, the eternity of the world, the nature of light, the free choice of the will, angels and ""spiritual matter,"" interiority and self-knowledge, undoing the past and God's absolute power, the magical arts, and the role of philosophy in a theology of creation.
R. James Long, the world's leading authority on Fishacre, in this volume promises to establish this hitherto little studied English friar as a major figure in the development of a learned or philosophically grounded theology that remains the great achievement of High Scholasticism.
Book Information
ISBN 9780813227375
Author R. James Long
Format Hardback
Page Count 296
Imprint The Catholic University of America Press
Publisher The Catholic University of America Press
