The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus. By Johannes Zachuber
This astonishing book reconstructs in unprecedented detail the distinctive ontological systems of a host of Greek and Syriac patristic thinkers from Basil of Caesarea down to John of Damascus. Along with his friends Benjamin Gleede and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Zachhuber has transformed the landscape o...
| Published in: | The journal of theological studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2021
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| In: |
The journal of theological studies
Year: 2021, Volume: 72, Issue: 2, Pages: 1012-1016 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This astonishing book reconstructs in unprecedented detail the distinctive ontological systems of a host of Greek and Syriac patristic thinkers from Basil of Caesarea down to John of Damascus. Along with his friends Benjamin Gleede and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Zachhuber has transformed the landscape of patristics through penetrating conceptual analysis, at the risk of making it forbidding to those less engaged philosophically, who may have trouble keeping track of all the fine distinctions so lucidly exposed and who may feel their heads turning into sieves as one set of concepts after another is poured in only to dissolve in a half-remembered jumble. While British scholars have dismissed the later thinkers in this lineage, both Miaphysite and Chalcedonian, as ‘the triumph of formalism’ (G. L. Prestige) and even treated Gregory of Nyssa as a muddlehead (Christopher Stead), Zachhuber gives all of them a sympathetic hearing, finding philosophical coherence and integrity everywhere. His hermeneutic may err on the side of charity, lending his own conceptual lucidity to the ancient texts, as when he suggests that Chalcedonians who introduced a ‘division between the intelligible content of a being and its hypostatic existence . . . enunciated a radically altered view of reality based on the unprecedented dichotomy of essence and existence and opening up an ontology of possible worlds that could, or could not, be actualized’ (p. 217). |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4607 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of theological studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jts/flab101 |