Christian Soul Research Articles

Book Review: Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong

Book Review: Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong

BOOK REVIEWS

Journal Article BOOK REVIEWS Get access Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits A Hakka Community in Hong Kong By Nicole Constable. University of California Press, 1994 233 pages $37.00. John Berthong John Berthong Boston University School of Theology Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LXIV, Issue 2, Summer 1996, Pages 433–435, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LXIV.2.433 Published: 01 July 1996

“Drottning Margaretas gyllene kjortel"—än en gång

Summary Queen Margaret's Golden Gown—once again. The theory that the Uppsala gown can be dated to the 14th century is no longer tenable. This is clearly demonstrated by Docent Goran Possnert's Appendix to the latest work on the subject published by the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities: Geijer—Franzen—Nockert, Drottning Margaretas gyllene kjortel i Uppsala domkyrka revised by M. Nockert (Stockholm 1994, pp. 115–120, 137; subsequently referred to as G‐F‐N in this article).1 By subjecting silk and linen threads from this gown to the 14C test, the The Svedberg Laboratory at Uppsala has been able to date the material to the years 1403–1439. Nota bene that this applies only to the age of the threads, not to when the gown was made. As, however, there is no telling what future scientific discoveries may reveal, Possnert has urged me to publish the results of my research once more,2 even though they cannot be fitted into the period mentioned above but rather point to the 1460s, i.e., a few decades...

Percy Young. Elgar, Newman and The Dream of Gerontius: In The Tradition of English Catholicism. Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press, 1995. 162 pp. ISBN 0-85967-877-6 (hardcover) Stewart R. Craggs. Edward Elgar: A Source Book. Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press, 1995. 188 pp. ISBN 0-85967-920-9 (hardcover)

Percy Young. Elgar, Newman and The Dream of Gerontius: In The Tradition of English Catholicism. Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press, 1995. 162 pp. ISBN 0-85967-877-6 (hardcover) / Stewart R. Craggs. Edward Elgar: A Source Book. Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press, 1995. 188 pp. ISBN 0-85967-920-9 (hardcover). Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 17, numéro 1, 1996, p. 1-155) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong.Nicole Constable

<i>Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong.</i>Nicole Constable

Christian souls and Chinese spirits: a Hakka community in Hong Kong

Christian souls and Chinese spirits: a Hakka community in Hong Kong

H. G. Wells edited by Brian Murray, and: H. G. Wells Under Revision: Proceedings of the International H. G. Wells Symposium, London, July 1986 edited by Patrick Parrinder (review)

92Victorian Review mechanics. While individual vignettes abound, the author is content to use such potential as a vehicle for a straightforward discussion oflife in Leeds. There is no real attempt to use the sources to analyze the relationship either between the cemetery and the community, or the Uving and the dead. Furthermore, given the Beckett Street Cemetery's importance as the first municipal cemetery in the kingdom, it is disappointing to discover so little about the complex world of municipal politics. Indeed, an examination of this subject might have prompted the author to assess the decline of the cemetery, and its implications for furthering our understanding of early twentieth-century Britain, in more detail. Finally, as Roy Porter proposes in his admirable, ifshort, introduction to the book: "our forebears celebrated death as the great climax of the mortal life-span of each Christian soul" (ix). Ultimately, this study is concerned less with the implications of this important line of enquiry, than with presenting a pastiche of Ufe, albeit both colorful and pathetic, in Victorian Leeds. Chris Hosgood University ofLethbridge Brian Murray. H. G. WeUs. New York: Continuum, 1990. 190. $18.95 US (cloth). Patrick Parrinder and Christopher Rolfe, eds. H. G. WeUs Under Revision: Proceedings ofthe International H. G. Wells Symposium, London, July 1986. London and Toronto: Associated UP, 1990. 263. $35.00 US (cloth). When R G. Wells died in 1946, his obituaries paid tribute to him as the educator of the age. The Times Literary Supplement (17 August 1946) wrote that "there was a time when Wells spoke more clearly than any other man to the youth ofthe world." However, he had been without much of an audience for some years before his death, and after it his reputation virtually disappeared. A few ofwhat he called his scientific romances kept his name alive as did one or two of his social novels, but the rest of his vast output was quickly forgotten. This state of affairs has begun to change in recent years, which have seen an increasing interest in both his work and his Ufe. The two books under review are both evidence of Wells's reviving reputation. Reviews93 Brian Murray's study of Wells is part of a series entitled Literature and Life: British Writers, though it deals primarily with Wells as a novelist rather than as a writer whose work took many other forms. The most successful part of the book is its first chapter, which describes Wells's Ufe and incorporates many references to his work, not only to his novels, but to his essays, his poUtical and educational commentaries, his histories and, of course, his autobiography. For anyone looking for a brief but comprehensive biographical account of Wells, this chapter will be invaluable. It reUes heavily on Wells's own words and is none the worse for that It describes the astonishing range of Wells's work. It contains enough critical observations to keep the reader provoked. Not the least of its strengths is its reference to many of Wells's lesser known works, among them his early stories, his essays, some of his educational commentaries, such as his now largely forgotten Story ofa Great Schoolmaster, and many of his equally forgotten novels, such as The Bulpington ofBlup, God the Invisible King, and The Wonderful Visit. The rest of the book deals only with Wells's novels, with separate chapters on the scientific romances, the Edwardian social novels, the later novels, and his portrayal of, and attitudes to, women. These chapters are largely descriptive, with relatively little criticism or analysis, but they do serve the useful purpose of introducing their readers to much of Wells's work that has been unjustly forgotten. Who nowadays reads The World of William Clissold, The Croquet Player, You Can't be Too Careful? Despite their neglect, Murray makes a persuasive case that they and other of Wells's books remain worth reading. He could, in fact, have included others, such as The Camford Visitation, Babes in a Darkling Wood, and Bealby. However, although Murray successfully introduces us to much of Wells's forgotten fiction, his concentration on the novels means that he has too Uttle to say...

Book Review: Teaching for Christian Hearts, Souls and Minds: A Constructive Holistic Approach to Christian Education

Book Review: Teaching for Christian Hearts, Souls and Minds: A Constructive Holistic Approach to Christian Education

Goethe as a Critic of Literature , and: Essays on Art and Literature (review)

318 Book Reviews by Pietist models of confessional autobiography. The generic kinship is evident in Wilhelm Meister as well as in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Although Goethe discusses religion, religious sentiments, the Bible and other religious writings, Saine observes that the autobiography involves no soul-searing confrontations, no personal struggle toward redemption. Goethe acknowledges a need to "come to terms with" (as opposed to "reconcile") God and the World. His quest for understanding the two is impeiled by "his innate curiosity about the nature of things" and by his "unshaken optimism about his own nature and about human nature in general." When the autobiography takes us into moments of crisis, it is not the Christian soul grasping for faith or salvation, but rather the maturing person seeking to define goals and purpose in life. Just as there are "no confrontations with the darkness of fear and trembling," says Saine, there are "also no confrontations with material adversity." Nevertheless, there is an acute, even painful, awareness of wealth and poverty, political faction, and ideological conflict. The final book oÃ- Dichtung und Wahrheit ends the autobiographical narrative in 1775 at the time Goethe was composing Egmont. Saine adds significantly to these autobiographical volumes by translating Campagne in Frankreich 1792 and Die Belagerung von Mainz. Several critics have documented the disparity between Goethe's letters of the period and these accounts recollected thirty years later. In describing political tensions, Goethe discreetly alters or excises his actual feef ings in experiencing those events. Saine's introduction briefly reconstructs the original circumstances as well as the problems of composition after the lapse of manyyears. He has also added succinct and judicious notes to Heitner's translation and to his own which will help readers identify persons, places, historical events, and literary allusions. The critical exposition that most of us engage in, as literary scholars, is relatively ephemeral. A good translation has staying power as a major service to the profession. Those interested in the reception of Goethe in the nineteenth century will still want to consult the translations of Eastlake and Oxenford. The present three volumes, however, make Goethe's autobiography and scientific writings available to a modern audience and will provide an enduring contribution to the study of Goethe in English. University of California, Los Angeles Frederick Burwick Goethe as a Critic of Literature, ed. Karl J. Fink and Max L. Baeumer. University Press of America, 1984. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Essays on Art and Literature, ed. John Gearey and trans. Ellen von Nardroff and Ernest H. von Nardroff. Goethe's Collected Works, vol. 3. New York: Suhrkamp Pubfishers New York, Inc., 1986. Goethe Yearbook 319 The nineteenth century revered Goethe as a literary and art critic as well as the consummate artist. Sainte-Beuve termed him the "greatest critic of all ages," an accolade echoed by Matthew Arnold, who called Goethe "the supreme critic." By contrast, the twentieth century has tended to narrow its focus to Goethe the poet. Until recently, accounts of his critical output were largely limited to those of Ernst Robert Curtius, Georg Lukà cs and René Wellek and then primarily to the "Classical" Goethe of the Weimar period. At least part of the reason for this dearth of commentary , as Weilek and others observe, is that while Goethe's critical writings are extensive, they are neither extended nor systematic, appearing frequently in the context of letters, diary entries, and occasional reviews and papers. Other critical statements are embedded in "creative" works. Thus, for instance, Goethe's fullest statements on Shakespeare andHamlet are in Wilhelm Meister, and many thoughts on art are presented in the epistolary novella, Der Sammler und die Seinigen. For the non-reader of German, matters have been further complicated by the limited number of translations available. Aside from the selection of Goethe's literary criticism compiled by Joel Spingarn (1921; rpt. 1964), more recently a selection of his art criticism compiled and translated by John Gage (University of California Press, 1980), and a scattering of both in anthologies such as the Cambridge University Press series, German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism, the reader has had few sources. Now two steps toward a fuller appreciation of Goethe the critic have...

The Exemplary Griselda

The Exemplary Griselda Charlotte C. Morse Virginia Commonwealth University Ch,umi,ns hm not p,id much mention to fourtccnth-ccntmy responses to the tale of Griselda. Only Anne Middleton has directly addressed the relatively abundant evidence. 1 As editor of The Clerk's Tale for the Variorum Chaucer I have come to this evidence and Middleton's argument to find myself at once engaged by the evidence but unable to support Middleton's interpretation. Her account of Petrarch and of Chau­ cer's relationship to him and to the French seems forced by her desire to deny exemplary value to the tale of Griselda in Petrarch's and Chaucer's versions. She locates the use and value of the story in its pathos: the story tests its readers' capacity for sympathy with Griselda. To its credit, Mid­ dleton's interpretation requires no allegorical reading of Walter's and Griselda's marriage. Such readings have been commonplace in postwar classrooms; published criticism more often explores The Clerk's Tale as a conflict between allegorical or idealized fiction and realistic fiction and often concludes with charges of aesthetic failure.2 1 Anne Middleton, "The Clerk and His Tale: Some Literary Contexts," Studies in the Age ofChaucer 2(1980):121-50. 2 E.g., among the earliest postwar studies Bertrand Bronson, In Search of Chaucer (Toronto: University of Toronro Press, 1960), pp. 104-14: and Elizabeth Salter, Chaucer: "The Knight's Tale" and "The Clerk's Tale," Studies in English Literature, no. 5 (London: Edward Arnold, and Great Neck, N.Y.: Barron, 1963), pp. 39-65. Amongthose, in addition to Salter, offering allegorical (or symbolic) interpretations were John Speirs, Chaucer the Maker(London: Faber and Faber, 1951), p. 152; and Charles Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition: A Study in Style and Meaning (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), pp. 192-96.Judson Boyce Allen and Theresa Anne Moritz offer an explanationofwhy The Clerk's Tale is not allegory, despite the resonance ofits language, inA Distinction of Ston·es: The Medieval Unity of Chaucer's Fair Chain of Narratives for Canter­ bury (Columbis: Ohio State University Press, 1981), pp. 191-92. The Variorum Edition will include a full review of critical literature on The Clerk's Tale. 51 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Both Middleton's denial of exemplary value to the Griselda and the allegorizers' displacement of the tale into a study of the human soul's relationship to God result from what historians inelegantly call "present­ ism," that is, the imputation of our own concerns, attitudes, or prejudices to evidence of earlier periods. Middleton limits the power of the tale to its pathos, undeniably a major quality of the Petrarchan and Chaucerian narratives, which makes the tale safe and acceptable for modern women like us and silences undergraduateobjections to the tale. But the students who object to the tale because they reject Griselda as exemplary are, I believe, responding in the same register as the medieval audience did, but they aremaking an opposite response to the onefourteenth-centurywriters expected. The allegorizers justify Walter's tests of Griselda-he removes first her daughter, then her son from her as ifto kill them, then dismisses her only to recall her to prepare for his new bride-by reading them as God's tests of the faithful Christian soul. This strategyshifts attention away from the narrative itself and onto an abstracted pattern of divine-human relationship that holds little more than curiosity value for much of the modern audience but fits with its notion of what concerned medieval people. Thus displacing the tale from itself and from themselves, readers make it safe, acceptable, and comfortable. Those who charge Chaucer's tale with aesthetic failure struggle against its power to compel. Subtly or nai:Vely, Middleton, the allegorizers, and outraged students-and, to varying degrees, the proponents of aesthetic failure-resistthe example of Griselda's patience, her chief virtue. Doubtless our resistance to patience is culturallyconditioned. Patience is neitherhighlyregardednormuchthoughtabout,especially by notoriously impatient Americans. We do not attribute positive power to patience, unlike Thomas Dekker and his collaborators in their play Patient Grissil; there Griselda tames Walter, and her male...

"Standing in Rich Place": The Importance of Context in The Winter's Tale

"Standing in Rich Place": The Importance of Context in The Winter's Tale Maurice Hunt Baylor University When Isabel Archer surprises Madam Merle and Gilbert Osmund in a drawing room, she intuits an abruptly imposed silence.1 Considered by itself, the stillness is not remarkable. It is Madame Merle's standing by the fireplace while Osmund lounges in a deep chair that makes the silence so suggestive. This unusual tableau first causes Isabel to suspect that her husband's and friend's relationship may be more familiar than she imagined. Often in James's novels, social contexts — or more precisely, violations of them — give statements, and even silences, their special imports. Every reader has his or her favorite scenes demonstrating the importance of context for meaning; examples might be multiplied indefinitely. By identifying the different contexts which an author imposes upon his or her characters, their speeches, and episodes in general, we are obviously aided in interpreting a novel or play. This observation especially applies to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.2 The Ceres-Persephone myth, the conventions of Renaissance pastoral, the Last Judgment, the Christian soul's pilgrimage to salvation, the Art versus Nature debate — these are only a few of the topics that supply contexts for the evaluation of a 1.Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (New York: The New American Library, 1963), pp. 376-377. 2.The manner in which context creates meaning in Shakespeare's plays and poems has become a critical subject. "In the Reynaldo scene (Il.i.) and Hamlet's first talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," Stephen Booth notes, "the power of rhetoric and context to make a particular either good or bad at will is also a topic in the play" ("On the Value of Hamlet," in Reinterpretations ofElizabethan Drama, ed. Norman Rabkin [New York: Columbia University Press, 1969], p. 172). Booth systematically applies this observation about context to Hamlet, revealing how the tragedy's fluctuating values emerge from manipulated dramatic contexts. "Contextualism" has been defined as a critical principle by Murray Krieger, who has shown how the artistic contexts of Shakespeare's sonnets produce their singular meanings (A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Modern Poetics [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964], pp. 28-70). 14ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW word, statement, or scene in this late dramatic romance.3 The Parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, does provide a setting for Autolycus's fleecing of the Clown; and the viewer does become aware of the supreme virtue — charity — against which farce should be measured.4 Once critics have defined the contexts suggested by the language and dramatic action of The Winter's Tale, they most often explain how the contexts either stress a certain design in the play or provoke a particular attitude in the theater audience.5 In her study of tragicomic dramaturgy, Joan Hartwig, for instance, implicitly appeals to the viewer's contextual knowledge of The Winter's Tale.6 The play's tragicomic effects 3.The Ceres-Persephone myth has been discussed in relation to the play by F. David Hoeniger, "The Meaning of The Winter's Tale," University of Toronto Quarterly, 20 (1950), 21-23; Renaissance pastoral by Jerry H. Bryant, "The Winter's Tale and the Pastoral Tradition," Shakespeare Quarterly, 14 (1963), 387-394; and by Philip M. Weinstein, "An Interpretation of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971), 97-109; the iconography of Time by Inga-Stina Ewbank, "The Triumph of Time in The Winter's Tale," in The Winter's Tale: A Casebook, ed. Kenneth Muir (1969; rpt. Nashville: Aurora, 1970), p. 106; the Last Judgment by Charles Frey, "Interpreting The Winter's Tale," Studies in English Literature, 18 (1978), 325; The Christian soul's pilgrimage by Douglas L. Peterson, Time, Tide, and Tempest: A Study of Shakespeare's Romances (San Marino: The Huntington Library Press, 1973), pp. 160-161; the Art vs. Nature debate by Harold S. Wilson, '"Nature and Art' in Winter's Tale IV.iv.86ff.," Shakespeare Association Bulletin, 18 (1943), 114-120; by Edward William Tayler, Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 133-138; and by Peter Lindenbaum...

"Standing in Rich Place": The Importance of Context in "The Winter's Tale"

When Isabel Archer surprises Madam Merle and Gilbert Osmund in a drawing room, she intuits an abruptly imposed silence.1 Considered by itself, the stillness is not remarkable. It is Madame Merle's standing by the fireplace while Osmund lounges in a deep chair that makes the silence so suggestive. This unusual tableau first causes Isabel to suspect that her husband's and friend's relationship may be more familiar than she imagined. Often in James's novels, social contexts or more precisely, violations of them give statements, and even silences, their special imports. Every reader has his or her favorite scenes demonstrating the importance of context for meaning; examples might be multiplied indefinitely. By identifying the different contexts which an author imposes upon his or her characters, their speeches, and episodes in general, we are obviously aided in interpreting a novel or play. This observation especially applies to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.2 The Ceres-Persephone myth, the conventions of Renaissance pastoral, the Last Judgment, the Christian soul's pilgrimage to salvation, the Art versus Nature debate these are only a few of the topics that supply contexts for the evaluation of a

Intellectual Sources of Historian's Legitimization - The Case of Gregory of Tours

Intellectual Sources of Historian's Legitimization - The Case of Gregory of Tours&#x0D; The question of Gregory’s of Tours awareness of the persuasive potential of his learning he demonstrates in his works is discussed. The Touronian bishop’s high evaluation of the erudition of other men is clearly shown and juxtaposed with his opinion concerning his linguistic competence. Gregory’s ability to embellish his style, being a sign of the literary training is demonstrated. His degree of acquaintance with the classical literature is assessed and his familiarity with Latin poetry is underlined. The literal meaning of his statements concerning classical literature as detrimental to a Christian soul is contrasted with the subtle and indirect play those statements engage his readers in; their implicit meaning is shown to contradict their direct significance. Various examples of Gregory’s efforts to display his erudition in the field of literature and his high degree of learning, including a fair number of erudite digressions are brought forth. Gregory’s unambiguous statement concerning the intention with which he inserted them into his text is evoked. Finally, the Touronian Bishop’s positive judgment about his audience’s capacity of properly evaluating the erudite content of his writing is demonstrated and corroboratedwith the external evidence provided by contemporary sources.

Syncretism and Allegory in the Jerusalem Orpheus Mosaic

The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.

Psychoanalysis and Christian soul care

Psychoanalysis and Christian soul care

Poverty in Perfection According to St. Bonaventure: Part II

POVERTY IN PERFECTION ACCORDING TO ST. BONAVENTURA PART TWO V. THE POVERTY OF CHRIST 'TpHE secular master, Gerard d'Abbeville, in his attack upon the¦*¦ Mendicants at the University of Paris, assailed the Franciscan doctrine of religious perfection on that point of their Rule he judged most vulnerable and most salient: total poverty in imitation of Christ's poverty. D'Abbeville's aim was to disprove the Franciscan claim that the particular type of poverty observed by them most nearly copied the ideal poverty of Christ. D'Abbeville believed that should he succeed in his purpose, the Franciscan Rule would be shown as imperfect, and its followers would therefore be only pseudo-religious. The plan was assuredly a crafty and insidious one, but it collapsed in the face of Bonaventure's cogent reply. In a text of capital importance to the polemic, d'Abbeville addresses his blows at the center itself of Franciscan spirituality: the imitation of Christ as the means to the acquisition of perfection. In a violent pasage the secular exclaims that certain presumptuous men (the Franciscans!), loving themselves and exalting their own form of religious life, instead of preaching the justice of Christ and urging others to imitate Him, rather urge others to go astray by imitating them. These false religious follow the inventions of mere men, not of Christ, in the vital matter of poverty, for by being entirely unwilling to own in common, they fail to copy the example given by Christ, Who owned property in common with His disciples.1 St. Bonaventure's reply to this contention affords a significant indication of his doctrine on the value of religious poverty in the spiritual life. The Christ Whom the Seraphic Doctor envisions as the Model of poverty is not the Christ Who occasionally had possessions in common with His followers, but the Christ on the Cross, utterly stripICf . S. CLASEN, Tract. Ger. de Abba., in APH, 31 (1939) 284. 413 416AIDAN CARR, O.F.M. CONV. ped of all worldly goods. Such is the degree of poverty to be imitated by those who wish to copy our Lord's denial of possessions, since He taught perfect poverty not only by word, but also illustrated it by His example, when poor and nude He hung from the Cross.2 The Cross and its destitution are inseparable. Assimilation of the Christian soul to the Crucified necessarily includes the entire renunciation of temporalities when one seeks that perfection in the religious state. Everyone is obliged to practice this renunciation affectively, that is, to have such poverty of spirit that he will be prepared to forego instantly any created good that might turn him from union with God in grace. Only "the perfect," the religious, are obligated to this absolute poverty effectively.3 The possession of property in common, proclaimed by d'Abbeville as the most Christ-like kind of poverty,4 is said by Bonaventure to be less perfect than the integral poverty of the Franciscan. Communal possession is in each member of the community since each person of the community is acknowledged as a participant in the property, and thus human law enters into common ownership. The Gospel account of ownership in common is simply an example of an incomplete separation from all ownership. This example of common possession was through Christ's condescending love for "the imperfect and infirm".5 Against the secular opposition, St. Bonaventure was the protagonist in the defense of the idea that in regards to the goods of this world, that poverty is more perfect which is more extreme. With him there could be no compromise on this point. Only the simple use of necessary things was the perfect poverty of the followers of Francis. Etienne Gilson succinctly states Bonaventure's doctrine when he writes that the ideal of Christian perfection represented by a life completely stripped of possessions, appeared to Bonaventure to conserve an absolute value before the moral of the juste milieu defended by the followers of Aristotle. For if the goods of life, beyond the strictly necessary, are in themselves superfluous and vain, then to possess howsoever little is already to possess too much.6 2Cf. Apol. Paup., c...

Book Review: The Life and the Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls

Book Review: The Life and the Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls

The Life and the Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls

The Life and the Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls

Adventures of the Christian Soul. K. J. Saunders

Previous articleNext article FreeBrief MentionAdventures of the Christian Soul. K. J. Saunders Henry B. RobinsHenry B. Robins Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 22, Number 4Oct., 1918 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/479972 Views: 7 Journal History This article was published in The American Journal of Theology (1897-1920), which is continued by The Journal of Religion (1921-present). PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.