Bøger af James Wetzel

A moralist novel of two World War II combat pilots both of Christian heritage experiencing different life influences. Dieter Mannfried, German born, was drawn into the Hitler Youth at age ten and became a dedicated Luftwaffe warrior fighting the War in the skies over Europe. Mike Mann, American born, surrendered temporarily his college life to serve in the Army Air Corps as a B-29 pilot fighting the war in the sky over Japan. Each tells his winged warrior's story. Diane Doner, who came to know Dieter and Mike intimately after the War, was led by intuition to the discovery of the matched identity of the two warriors. The story is of the diametric effects that environment, fate and the Virtues had on the lives of the two warriors.

Thousands of years ago an ancient civilization fell. Throughout the ages prophets have been hunted down and killed for predicting pieces to a puzzle that may save the world. Now a group of young adults, just trying to deal with the pressures of entering maturity and building lives for themselves, get drawn one by one into a complex web of prophecy and destiny. Only they have a chance to stop the coming war. The invasion of the geese. Ridiculous? They thought so too. But nothing is ridiculous when you're struggling to stay alive and save mankind.

There are forms of knowing that seem either to come from a parting or to require one. Paradigmatically in Genesis, Adam parts from God in order to join in knowledge with his partner, the flesh of his flesh, and the result is a bereft but not unpromising knowledge, looking like a labor of love. Saint Augustine famously--some would say infamously--reads the Genesis paradigm of knowing as a story of original sin, where parting is both damnable and disfiguring and reuniting a matter of incomprehensible grace. Roughly half the essays in this collection engage directly with Augustine''s theological animus and follow his thinking into self-division, perversity of will, grief, conversion, and the aspiration for transcendence. The remaining ones, more concerned with grace than with sin, bring an animus more distantly Augustinian to the preemption of forgiveness and the persistence of hell, morality and its limits, sexual piety, strange beauty, and a philosophy that takes in confession. The common pull of all the essays is towards the imperfection in self-knowledge--a place of disfigurement perhaps, but also a nod to transformation.""In this collection, Wetzel gives readers the sense of being in a series of leisurely conversations with a wise and learned friend who refuses to simplify life''s joys, mysteries, and sorrows, but still manages to shed light on them.""--Jeffrey Stout, Princeton University""These are indeed ''essays after Augustine''; steeped in Augustinian scholarship, but not content with mere erudition, they remind us of the self-involving character of true philosophy and lure us into its pursuit. Wetzel loves the Augustine who is more certain of having received than of what he knows, and these pages invite us to walk with and after this Augustine.""--Jennifer A. Herdt, Yale Divinity School, Yale University""No one approaches a ''theology of heart'' with more chemistry and tact than James Wetzel. In the Catholic tradition, he discovers implacable insights that join freedom to love and wisdom to grief. This volume showcases Wetzel''s exacting yet beautiful essays on Augustine, Anselm, Wittgenstein, and Kant.""--Kathleen Roberts Skerrett, University of Richmond""In these deep and often beautiful essays, James Wetzel teaches us how to be Augustine''s student, how to become better readers of our particular griefs, how to acknowledge the good that comes as beauty. There is no better interpreter of Augustine working today.""--John Bowlin, Princeton Theological SeminaryJames Wetzel is Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and the first permanent holder of the Augustinian Chair in the Thought of St. Augustine. He is the author of Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (1992) and Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed (2010), and the editor of Augustine''s City of God: A Critical Guide.

There are forms of knowing that seem either to come from a parting or to require one. Paradigmatically in Genesis, Adam parts from God in order to join in knowledge with his partner, the flesh of his flesh, and the result is a bereft but not unpromising knowledge, looking like a labor of love. Saint Augustine famously--some would say infamously--reads the Genesis paradigm of knowing as a story of original sin, where parting is both damnable and disfiguring and reuniting a matter of incomprehensible grace. Roughly half the essays in this collection engage directly with Augustine's theological animus and follow his thinking into self-division, perversity of will, grief, conversion, and the aspiration for transcendence. The remaining ones, more concerned with grace than with sin, bring an animus more distantly Augustinian to the preemption of forgiveness and the persistence of hell, morality and its limits, sexual piety, strange beauty, and a philosophy that takes in confession. The common pull of all the essays is towards the imperfection in self-knowledge--a place of disfigurement perhaps, but also a nod to transformation.