A new and age-old way of practicing the Christian faith. What does Wesleyan theology and the Methodist way of life have to do with Benedictine ideas and practices? Renowned teacher Paul W. Chilcote reveals surprising and profound similarities and overlaps in the practices and theological convictions of these two Christian streams. Chilcote is a United Methodist scholar, elder, and serves as a Benedictine oblate. He writes from his own spiritual life, offering a gift to readers who are interested in Methodism and mysticism. Chilcote teaches a remarkable approach to spiritual practice; it is a new and age-old way of practicing our faith.

John and Charles Wesley provide a vision of God that beckons to anyone interested in a spiritual life. John Wesley (1703–1791), Anglican priest, theologian and church reformer, and his brother Charles Wesley (1707–1788), one of the greatest hymn writers of all time, co-founded Methodism, a major movement of Christian renewal. Their vision of Christian discipleship included important spiritual practices that fueled the revival of the eighteenth-century Church of England. Their holistic theology/spirituality affords guidance for the contemporary spiritual seeker who yearns for greater meaning and purpose in life. This unique presentation of the writings of these two inspiring brothers brings together some of the most essential material from their large corpus of work. While John articulated his vision of Christianity through many sermons, journals and theological treatises, Charles expressed his theology in lyrical form through some nine thousand hymns and devotional poems. These excerpts from Charles and John Wesley, with probing facing-page commentary, will provide insight not only into the renewal of dynamic and vital Christianity, but into the struggles and concerns of all who seek to be faithful participants in God's vision of love in every age.

This book examines the primary biblical themes in the lyrical theology of Charles Wesley, the master hymn writer and cofounder of the Methodist movement. Methodism was born in song, and it is highly doubtful whether without the hymns of Charles Wesley there could have been a Methodist revival. Charles's hymns have exerted a monumental influence on Methodist doctrine and Methodist people through the years. They are essentially mosaics of biblical texts; in singing these hymns, Methodists have sung the grand narrative of redemption and restoration in the biblical witness. A summary list of key biblical texts drawn from the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists serves as a summa of Charles Wesley's theology and points to the doctrinal concerns that shaped his life most fully. Intended as an exploration of Wesleyan theology through the lens of "sung doctrine," this study demonstrates the world-making and life-shaping effect of hymns, and the way in which they emanate from Charles Wesley's life of prayer and evoke a life of service.

The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943), a contemporary of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, remains in every way a thinker for our times. She was an outsider, in multiple senses, defying the usual religious categories: at once atheistic and religious; mystic and realist; sceptic and believer. She speaks therefore to the complex sensibilities of a rationalist age. Yet despite her continuing relevance, and the attention she attracts from philosophy, cultural studies, feminist studies, spirituality and beyond, Weil's reflections can still be difficult to grasp, since they were expressed in often inscrutable and fragmentary form. Lissa McCullough here offers a reliable guide to the key concepts of Weil's religious philosophy: good and evil, the void, gravity, grace, beauty, suffering and waiting for God. In addressing such distinctively contemporary concerns as depression, loneliness and isolation, and in writing hauntingly of God's voluntary 'nothingness', Weil's existential paradoxes continue to challenge and provoke. This is the first introductory book to show the essential coherence of her enigmatic but remarkable ideas about religion.

Famed critic Terry Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at the meaning of life. Eagleton first examines how centuries of thinkers and writers--from Marx and Schopenhauer to Shakespeare, Sartre, and Beckett--have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests, however, that it is only in modern times that the question has become problematic. But instead of tackling it head-on, many of us cope with the feelings of meaninglessness in our lives by filling them with everything from football to fundamentalism. He argues instead that the meaning of life is a matter of living in a certain way--a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life.

Atkinson uses Qoheleth's work ethic to provide an analysis of Ecclesiastes, utilising the writings of St Bonaventure and Martin Luther. Reading Ecclesiastes within a penitential framework, Bonaventure offers a version of the contemptus mundi tradition that is rooted in his metaphysics. His commentary is ethically significant for the way he detects the vice of curiousity precipitating a perceptual rupture wherein vanity comes to signify sin and guilt. Luther, on the other hand, interprets Solomon as a wise economic-political administrator who preaches the good news of God's involvement in quotidian existence. This understanding enables Luther to read Ecclesiastes eschatologically, with labour being seen as a locus of divine activity. One may thus read Solomon's refrain as an invitation to labour with the expectation of receiving God's gifts in the present. Finally, Atkinson suggests that Ecclesiastes enhances current conversations regarding the theology and ethics of work by working the doctrinal foci of protology and eschatology through Christology. The presence of the Word, then, can be found now only in the preaching and sacraments of the church, but also in the labour of the worker.