Part One: Gratitude. Prologue -- Introduction -- The good of gratitude -- A world of rights -- "Endless gratitude so burdensome". Part Two: Pride. Greatness of soul -- Givers and takers -- The eternal and divine -- The best life of all -- Friendship -- The first cosmopolitan -- Preparatio evangelica. Part Three: Salvation. Creation -- Will -- Grace -- "Not a sparrow falls" -- The contingency of the world -- The Pagan temptation -- God unchained -- Theology of the cross -- The hatred of man -- The absolute spontaneity of freedom -- Our better selves -- God becomes a postulate -- Reaction -- "Fantastic and satanic" -- The oblivion of being -- The disenchantment of the world. Part four: Joy. The worm in the blood -- The God of sufficient reason -- "Endless forms most beautiful" -- The navel of the dream -- "Man is a god to man" -- The world as an aesthetic phenomenon -- The spider in the moonlight -- The gift of transmigration -- Genius and sublimity -- Theological, not political -- Democratic vistas -- Epilogue.
Summary:
We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed ́atheistś continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the ́eternal and divine.́ For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief́the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought́from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud́Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.