The role of the Holy Spirit in the writing of Scripture and the role of the Holy Spirit in the understanding of Scripture are corollary ideas. The first one of these--usually referred to as the Inspiration of Scripture--has been extensively discussed by the Early Church Fathers, theologians, and other Bible scholars from the earliest centuries of the Church until the present. Likewise, the second of these corollary ideas--the role of the Holy Spirit in the understanding of Scripture--has been widely considered from the time of the Early Church Fathers. However, this idea, usually referred to as the Illumination of Scripture, has not been as extensively discussed as the corollary doctrine of Inspiration. Consequently, many aspects of the Holy Spirit's relationship to Biblical Hermeneutics remain open for fruitful discussion. The notion that the Holy Spirit plays some role in the interpretative process of understanding Scripture raises many issues and questions. Does the Holy Spirit even play any role at all in the interpretative process? If so, what, then, is the role of the human interpreter in relationship to that of the Holy Spirit? Can the Holy Spirit's role be conceptualized in some meaningful way? If and when the Holy Spirit plays a role in interpretation, what difference does it make in the outcome of understanding? This book intends to further the discussion of these and other issues related to the idea of the role of the Holy Spirit in Biblical Hermeneutics. It briefly surveys both past and contemporary thought on this theme. It then suggests how the Holy Spirit's role might be conceptualized. Since this conceptualization is necessarily metaphorical, various models are presented as vehicles for furthering discourse on the subject. Finally, it attempts to describe the results of the Holy Spirit's activity of illumination and suggests areas for further study on the topic.

Concepts of God presented by Greek philosophers were significantly different from the image of the divine of popular religion and indicate a fairly sophisticated theological reflection from the very inception of Greek philosophy. This book presents a comprehensive history of theological thought of Greek philosophers from the Presocratics to the early Hellenistic period. Concentrating on views concerning the attributes of God and their impact on eschatological and ethical thought, Drozdek explains that theology was of paramount importance for all Greek philosophers even in the absence of purely theological or religious language.

The first volume to examine theories of soul in Greek philosophy using an approach drawn from the history of science.

Philosophers and doctors from the period immediately after Aristotle down to the second century CE were particularly focussed on the close relationships of soul and body; such relationships are particularly intimate when the soul is understood to be a material entity, as it was by Epicureans and Stoics; but even Aristotelians and Platonists shared the conviction that body and soul interact in ways that affect the well-being of the living human being. These philosophers were interested in the nature of the soul, its structure, and its powers. They were also interested in the place of the soul within a general account of the world. This leads to important questions about the proper methods by which we should investigate the nature of the soul and the appropriate relationships among natural philosophy, medicine, and psychology. This volume, part of the Symposium Hellenisticum series, features ten scholars addressing different aspects of this topic.

This book presents a critical evaluation of the doctrine of the Trinity, tracing its development and investigating the intellectual, philosophical and theological background that shaped this influential doctrine of Christianity. Despite the centrality of Trinitarian thought to Christianity and its importance as one of the fundamental tenets that differentiates Christianity from Judaism and Islam, the doctrine is not fully formulated in the canon of Christian scriptural texts. Instead, it evolved through the conflation of selective pieces of scripture with the philosophical and religious ideas of ancient Hellenistic milieu. Marian Hillar analyzes the development of Trinitarian thought during the formative years of Christianity from its roots in ancient Greek philosophical concepts and religious thinking in the Mediterranean region. He identifies several important sources of Trinitarian thought heretofore largely ignored by scholars, including the Greek middle-Platonic philosophical writings of Numenius and Egyptian metaphysical writings and monuments representing divinity as a triune entity.

Volume one, Stoicism in classical Latin literature (09327-3), approaches its subject from the standpoint of intellectual history, examining how Stoicism was used by Roman thinkers, for what purposes, and how they correlated it with their other sources. Volume two, Stoicism in Christian Latin thought through the sixth century, (09328-1), focuses on how a particular Latin Christian author used Stoic ideas, to what ends, and how they were associated in his mind with the other doctrines he had to work with. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR