Search results for ""author glenn w. olsen""
The Catholic University of America Press Supper at Emmaus: Great Themes in Western Culture and Intellectual History
Supper at Emmaus traces various important intellectual topics from the ancient world to the modern period. Generally, as in its treatment of the question of whether the long-standing contrast between cyclical and linear views of history is helpful, it introduces important thinkers who have considered the question. A preoccupation of the book is the appearance and reappearance across the centuries of patterns used to organize temporal and cultural experience. AŸer an opening essay on transcendental truth and cultural relativism, the second chapter traces a distinction, common in historical writings during the past two centuries, between an alleged ancient classical “cyclic” view of time and history, used to describe the claimed repetitiveness of and similaritiesbetween historical events (“nothing is new under the sun”), and a contrasting Jewish-Christian linear view, sometimes described as providential in that it moves through a series of unique events to some end intended by God. In the latter, history is “about something,” the education of the human race or the redemption of humankind. As in each of the remaining essays, the book then attempts to draw out the limitations of what the current consensus on this topic has become. It does this for such things as our current understanding of religious toleration, humanism, natural law, and teleology. Some of the essays, such as those on debate about Augustine’s understanding of marriage or the concluding illustrated essay on the baroque city of Lecce, are published for the first time. Others are based on previously published contributions to the scholarly literature, though generally each of these chapters concludes with a postscript that engages with current scholarly debate on the subject.
£70.00
The Catholic University of America Press On the Road to Emmaus: The Catholic Dialogue with America and Modernity
In distinctive voice and tone, cultural commentator Glenn W. Olsen presents his latest work on the place of Catholicism in American history. Here he clarifies the meaning of American modernity for Catholics and shows the conflicts and tensions confronting the religious person today. The essays take up such questions as the possibility of a neutral public order, the desirable relation between church and state, the spiritualities suitable to our historical situation, the form the principle of subsidiarity might take, and the range of hopeful possibilities for the future. Olsen defines the current challenge for religious persons as how to be “in” but not “of” the world. Addressing some aspects of being in the world, he traces the historical roots of the idea of Catholic incarnational humanism and analyses the problems specific to Christian faith existing within a larger society of non believers. Olsen suggests that how we address such issues affects the religious and non religious alike, especially in a country of diverse religions.
£70.00
