Reading the Church Fathers contains a unique collection of essays surrounding modern hermeneutic approaches to early Christian theological texts.
The book raises profound hermeneutical questions surrounding reading of the corpus of texts written by the Fathers of the Church and how they should be read and interpreted – which has always been a core area in Christian theology.
The theologians and historians who have contributed have all used contemporary post-modern approaches to illuminate the Ancien corpus of texts.
The chapters in the book discuss issues such as:
• What makes a 'good' reading of a church Father?
• Is the reading of the Fathers limited to a specialist audience?
• What can modern thinkers contribute to our reading of the Fathers?
• What constitutes a 'responsible' reading?
Contents Lists
1.Foreword: Scot Douglass, Morwenna Ludlow / Part i: reading postmodern readings of the Fathers.
- Jean-Luc Marion’s Reading of Dionysius the Areopagite. Hermeneutics and Reception History, Johannes Zachhuber .
3.Time and the Responsibilities of Reading: Revisiting Derrida and Dionysius, David Newheiser. - Seeing God in Bodies: Wolfson, Rosenzweig, Augustine, Virginia Burrus.
Part II: reading postmodern thinkers in parallel with reading the fathers. - Emmanuel Levinas and Gregory of Nyssa on Reading, Desire and Subjectivity, Tamsin Jones.
- The Combinatory Detour: The prefix Sun- in Gregory of Nyssa’s Production of Theological Knowledge, Scot Douglass / Part III: reading the fathers reading themselves.
- Text and Context: the importance of scholarly reading. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, Matthieu Cassin /
- Anatomy - investigating the body of texts in Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, Morwenna Ludlow.
- Afterword: Conversations about Reading / Bibliography