A heretic is someone who disagrees with established wisdom. The word "dogma" is derived from the Greek word for "belief" or "opinion." And someone who is dogmatic tries to impose his opinion of "true belief" on others, labeling the other beliefs "only myth," and therefore not true. But a myth is a story to illustrate a belief. This book shows that every culture has a set of spiritual stories, each reflecting the culture of those who believe. Spiritually, we are climbing the same mountain; how we see the top depends on where we come from.

Pelagius, the first known British author, is famous for his defence of free will as the Roman Empire disintegrated. A persuasive advocate of two ideas - that human nature was inclined to goodness, and that man had free will - Pelagius was excommunicated in 418 after a campaign to vilify him for inventing a new and dangerous heresy. Setting this accusation of heresy against Pelagius in the context of recent scholarship, The Myth of Pelagianism proves that Pelagius did not teach the ideas attributed to him or propose anything new. In showing that Pelagius defended what was the mainstream understanding of Christianity, Bonner explores the notion that rather than being the leader of a separatist group, he was one of many propagandists for the ascetic movement that swept through Christianity and generated medieval monasticism. Ground-breaking in its interdisciplinarity and in its use of manuscript evidence, The Myth of Pelagianism presents a significant revision of our understanding of Pelagius and of the formation of Christian doctrine.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her stunning debut, the creator of Black Liturgies weaves stories from three generations of her family alongside contemplative reflections to discover the “necessary rituals” that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation. “This is the kind of book that makes you different when you’re done.”—Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody’s Daughter “Reaches deep beneath the surface of words unspoken, wounds unhealed, and secrets untempered to break them open in order for fresh light to break through.”—Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Caul Baby ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Root, Library Journal “From the womb, we must repeat with regularity that to love ourselves is to survive. I believe that is what my father wanted for me and knew I would so desperately need: a tool for survival, the truth of my dignity named like a mercy new each morning.” So writes Cole Arthur Riley in her unforgettable book of stories and reflections on discovering the sacred in her skin. In these deeply transporting pages, Arthur Riley reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father, and how they revealed to her an embodied, dignity-affirming spirituality, not only in what they believed but in the act of living itself. Writing memorably of her own childhood and coming to self, Arthur Riley boldly explores some of the most urgent questions of life and faith: How can spirituality not silence the body, but instead allow it to come alive? How do we honor, lament, and heal from the stories we inherit? How can we find peace in a world overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest? In this indelible work of contemplative storytelling, Arthur Riley invites us to descend into our own stories, examine our capacity to rest, wonder, joy, rage, and repair, and find that our humanity is not an enemy to faith but evidence of it. At once a compelling spiritual meditation, a powerful intergenerational account, and a tender coming-of-age narrative, This Here Flesh speaks potently to anyone who suspects that our stories might have something to say to us.

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Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, schoolman, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full.

The Pelagian controversy - whether man is saved through predestination or by his own free will - has proved one of the most enduring and fiercely contended issues of the Christian church, and has secured Pelagius a lasting place within its history. Few of Pelagius' writings, however, have been preserved, and until recently none was available in English translation. This volume presents Pelagius' commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans for the first time in English. The commentary, one of thirteen on the Pauline Epistles, dates from the time when Pelagius was active in Rome, before he became embroiled in controversy. But already there are adumbrations of the later debate and signs of different currents of thought in Italy and beyond. In his introduction Theodore de Bruyn discusses the context in which Pelagius wrote the commentary and the issues which shaped his interpretation of Romans. He also takes up questions about the edition of the commentary. The translation is annotated with references to Pelagius' contemporaries. A new recension of Pelagius' text of Romans is presented in an appendix.