DIVINE ILLUMINATION “An important and ground-breaking study which links growing interest in Augustine and medieval philosophy with cutting-edge questions in contemporary philosophy of religion, particularly concerning epistemology and the ‘rationality’ of religion.” Janet Soskice, University of Cambridge “In this lucidly argued and solidly documented study, Schumacher uncovers the roots of problems notoriously besetting modern theories of knowledge in conflicting medieval interpretations of Augustine’s assumptions about knowledge as divine illumination: an intriguing thesis, which she handles with delicacy and flair.” Fergus Kerr, O.P. University of Edinburgh “Challenges the traditional history of theories of knowledge. A bold and provocative reading.” Olivier Boulnois, École Pratique des Hautes Études (University of Paris, Sorbonne) Divine Illumination offers an original interpretation of Augustine’s theory of knowledge, tracing its development in the work of medieval thinkers such as Anselm, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus. Although Scotus is often deemed responsible for finally pronouncing Augustine’s longstanding illumination account untenable, Schumacher shows that he only rejected a version that was the byproduct of a shift in the understanding of illumination and knowledge more generally within the thirteenth-century Franciscan school of thought. To reckon with the challenges in contemporary thought on knowledge that were partly made possible by this shift, Schumacher recommends relearning a way of thinking about knowledge that was familiar to Augustine and those who worked in continuity with him. Her book thus anticipates a new approach to dealing with debates in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of religion, and theology, even while correcting some longstanding assumptions about Augustine and his most significant medieval readers.

Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi, also known as Shaikh al-ishraq or the Master of Illumination, lived in the sixth century AH / twelfth century CE. His thoughts form a consistent and coherent philosophical system, and a close study of his writings in Persian reveals a theory of knowledge generally called 'Knowledge by Presence'. The elaborate web of myth and symbolism in Suhrawardi's philosophy articulates his theory of knowledge, an important subject in the ishraqi school of thought. Suhrawardi, who claims first to have discovered the truth and then embarked on a path to find the rational basis of his experiential wisdom, represents a thinker who tried to reconcile rational discourse and inner purification.

SIGNS ON THE HORIZONS is an enthralling contemporary memoir of one seeker's interactions with men who have transcended the ordinary and achieved stations of spirituality and enlightenment that in the modern world we only attribute to the Biblical fathers of ancient times or to myth. Michael Sugich, an American writer who was initiated into a traditional Sufi order over forty years ago and who lived for 23 years in the sacred city of Makkah Al Mukaramah, has kept company with some of the greatest Sufi saints of the age from many parts of the world. His book is a unique eye-witness narrative of a mystical tradition that today hides in plain sight, veiled by the turbulence and materialism gripping the Muslim world. It is a spellbinding personal memoir told with eloquence, empathy, self-effacing humor, insight and love.

Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi was born around 1154, probably in northwestern Iran. Spurred by a dream in which Aristotle appeared to him, he rejected the Avicennan Peripatetic philosophy of his youth and undertook the task of reviving the philosophical tradition of the "Ancients." Suhruwardi's philosophy grants an epistemological role to immediate and atemporal intuition. It is explicitly anti-Peripatetic and is identified with the pre-Aristotelian sages, particularly Plato. The subject of his hikmat al-Ishraq--now available for the first time in English--is the "science of lights," a science that Suhrawardi first learned through mystical exercises reinforced later by logical proofs and confirmed by what he saw as the parallel experiences of the Ancients. It was completed on 15 September 1186; and at sunset that evening, in the western sky, the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets came together in a magnificent conjunction in the constellation of Libra. The stars soon turned against Suhrawardi, however, who was reluctantly put to death by the son of Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, in 1191.

What makes the Book of Illumination stand out among other philosophical and or religious titles is its precision to math, definition, and it's deciphering of prophecy. There truly is no book like it, as it combines every major religion, history, prophecy, pop culture, as well as the occult, into one comprehensive record. It also, with the use of Kabbalah and sacred geometry, animates the lives of past mythological deities, and composites their lives with "stars" that are living today. The revelation given within the Book of Illumination is in direct alignment with New Age prophecy as well as the resurrection spoken of by Jesus. This resurrection is validated by Hinduism, the world's oldest religion, which is also the largest religion in the world that openly acknowledges and promotes reincarnation. Reincarnation, after reading the Book of Illumination, becomes fully realized. It is no longer a matter of theory, as again, the book proves with mathematics and sacred geometry, the existences of ancient celestial beings of folklore and mythology, who walk the earth today in the flesh.

St. Augustine is not only the bridge that links ancient philosophy and early Christian theology with the thought of the Middle Ages, but one who, in his philosophy and especially in his epistemology, anticipated some of the most important ideas of Descartes and Malbranche, Berkeley and Kant. In this study of the central aspect of St. Augustine's thought, the author analyzes the various facets of his theory of knowledge and offers a new interpretation of his idea of divine illumination. St. Augustine's views on skepticism and truth, on faith and reason, and on sense perception and cogitation are first examined in order to show their relation to this theory of divine illumination as the ultimate source of truth for man. The proper understanding of the theory of illumination, of how man apprehends the divine ideas, is the most difficult problem in St. Augustine's epistemology, for he did not formulate any systematic theory of knowledge. Any account of the Augustinian epistemology, Mr. Nash believes, must resolve three paradoxes: how the intellect is both passive and active; how the forms are distinct from - and not distinct from - the human mind; and how man's mind is and is not the light that makes knowledge possible. In explaining the nature of divine illumination, Nash discusses four interpretations that have been advanced; the Thomist (which he rejects as not faithful to St. Augustine's general philosophy), the Franciscan, the Formalist, and the Ontologist. He argues here for a modified Ontologist view. In his synthesis of Christian theology and Neoplatonic philosophy, St. Augustine held that all creation partakes of truth in varying degrees, that man as the highest part of creation, created in God's image and thus sharing to some degree the divine nature, is able to know truth through the divine light and the light of his own mind. In attempting to find an answer to the perennial problem of knowledge, St. Augustine, Nash suggests, was struggling to find a theory that would combine the benefits of conceptualism and realism, and his answer was more modern than many have given him credit for. Ronald Nash is widely regarded as one of the premier evangelical philosophers in the world. He is professor of philosophy at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He has taught at a number of other colleges and seminaries, including Western Kentucky University and Reformed Theological Seminary. The author of more than 35 books on philosophy, theology and economics, Dr. Nash is in constant demand as a speaker throughout the world.