Amor Dei in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
By: David C. Bellusci
Series: Value inquiry book series -- v. 265. -- Philosophy and religion; Value inquiry book series -- 265.; Value inquiry book series
Publisher: Rodopi
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Amsterdam; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 167
ISBN-13: 9789042036864; 9789401209458
Subjects: Love; Eigenschaft Gottes; God; Glaube; Liebe; Worship and love; Rezeption; Theologie; Gottesliebe; Vernunft; Philosophie; Gott; History
Description: "Amor Dei, 'love of God' raises three questions: How do we know God is love? How do we experience love of God? How free are we to love God? This book presents three kinds of love, worldly, spiritual, and divine to understand God's love. The work begins with Augustine's Confessions highlighting his Manichean and Neoplatonic periods before his conversion to Christianity. Augustine's confrontation with Pelagius anticipates the unresolved disputes concerning God's love and free will. In the sixteenth-century the Italian humanist, Gasparo Contarini introduces the notion of 'divine amplitude' to demonstrate how God's goodness is manifested in the human agent. Pierre de Bérulle, Guillaume Gibieuf, and Nicolas Malebranche show connections with Contarini in the seventeenth-century controversies relating free will and divine love. In response to the free will dispute, the Scottish philosopher, William Chalmers, offers his solution. Cornelius Jansen relentlessly asserts his anti-Pelagian interpretation of Augustine stirring up more controversy. John Norris, Malebranche's English disciple, exchanges his views with Mary Astell and Damaris Masham. In the tradition of Cambridge Platonism, Ralph Cudworth conveys a God who 'sweetly governs.' The organization of sections represents the love of God in ascending-descending movements demonstrating that, 'human love is inseparable from divine love.'"--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-158) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Augustine: The Experience of Love; title: Interpreting Love in Augustine; title: Nature and Knowledge; title: Problems with Love in Augustine; title: Truth, Conversion, and Conflict; title: Augustine's Intellectual Journey; title: Manichean Conversion; title: Plotinian Influences; title: From "Darkness" to the Free Will; title: Augustine and Pelagianism; title: Augustine on Grace; title: Augustinianism: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; title: Early Modern Philosophy; title: Gasparo Contarini; title: L'École Française and Pierre de Bérulle; title: Guillaume Gibieuf; title: William Chalmers; title: Jansen of Ypres; title: Scotus Eriugena and Dionysius the Areopagite; title: Divine Amplitude: The Agency of Love; title: Malebranche and the Love of God; title: Malebranche, Lamy, and Norris; title: "Vision in God"; title: John Norris: Malebranche's Disciple; title: God's Knowledge; title: Three Letters to Bernard Lamy; title: Vision in God and Divine Love; title: Sweetness of God; title: Ralph Cudworth and the Divine; title: Free Will; title: Cudworth's God of Love; title: Human Response to Divine Love; title: Cudworth and Augustine; title: Conclusion.