Bücher von Margaret R (Graduate Theological Union Berkeley) Miles

Augustine's Confessions is one of the most powerfully evocative autobiographies of the Christian West. It recounts the complex experiences through which this formative theologian came to renounce the compulsive sexual practice of his youth, reinvesting his attention and affection in a disciplined spirituality. The Confessions is explicitly about desire, longing, passion--physical and spiritual. It narrates Augustine's desperate attempt to get, and to keep, the greatest degree of pleasure. Even his conversion to Catholic Christianity is narrated as a seduction to continence, and the model of spirituality he articulated relied intimately and profoundly on his sexual experience. Desire and Delight explores the erotics of asceticism as described by Augustine, noticing the gendered foundation of his model of spiritual aspiration. Going beyond the tormented, self-conscious Augustine of conventual interpretations, one discovers in this book a man impelled by the eros that defines human beings as such: the pursuit up the scale of pleasures to the ultimate Pleasure. The pursuit is analyzed here in the text, context, and subtext, with such intellectual and emotional engagement that the Confessions becomes a text of pleasure.To say that Margaret Miles's 'New Reading of Augustine's Confessions' is 'better than the original' might seem an overstatement, but only just. It is a 'new' reading, not just a feminist reading, though that angle of course does not come through. It took me back to the Confessions (which I have not read for years) and will no doubt be used extensively by people alongside the bishop of Hippo himself as a kind of Virgil-and-Beatrice guide to that forerunner of the Divine Comedy.--Harvey CoxHarvard Divinity SchoolA gem of a book. This passionate rereading of the Confessions produces the very kind of pleasure it sets out to describe. Readers will want to return to Augustine, and to more of Margaret Miles, at the first opportunity.--Elizabeth V. SpelmanSmith CollegeMargart R. Miles was formerly Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at the Harvard University Divinity School. She is the author of Augustine on the Body, Image as Insight, and Carnal Knowing.

Men and women throughout history have learned to shape their lives around Christian ideas, attitudes, and values in many different ways. They have been helped by liturgies, sermons, visual imagery, religious drama, and hymns. But perhaps the most important sources were the classic devotional manuals, like The Imitation of Christ and The Pilgrim's Progress, many of which are still in use today.In this book, Margaret Miles subjects these devotional manuals to a detailed critique. Miles speaks as a scholar, as a Christian living in the modern world, and as a woman, and she ends by discussing the relevance of her findings to Christian life today.Dr. Miles rightly highlights the importance of manuals in the spiritual formation of lay people down the ages. Her 'active and disobedient' reading of historical texts which were written for the 'care and cultivation of an interior life' engages the reader in a serious and fascinating study. In fact she has succeeded in fulfilling every literary critic's dream. She has written a book which sends us straight back to her primary sources by providing richly documented insights into the relevance of the imagery to our contemporary search for God.--Lavinia Byrne, IBVMMargart R. Miles was formerly Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at the Harvard University Divinity School. She is the author of 'Augustine on the Body', 'Image as Insight', and 'Carnal Knowing'.

When we look at Michelangelo's David, we see a nakedness that expresses physical prowess, self-knowledge, and spiritual discipline. What do we see when we look at Hans Baldung's Eve, the Serpent, and Death or Master Francke's Martyrdom of Saint Barbara? Why should those naked female images symbolize wantonness and shame? How do ideas about nakedness formed at the dawn of Christianity continue to shape today's sexual values? What must women do to take their bodies back?This revolutionary study by Margaret R. Miles, formerly Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at the Harvard Divinity School and author of the acclaimed Images as Insight, sifts through centuries of Christian writing and religious ritual and, above all, Western art to reveal the origins of our attitudes toward women's bodies and their encoded meanings. Broad enough to encompass fourth-century descriptions of Christian baptism and contemporary theories of representation, Carnal Knowing is a brilliant, startling work of scholarship whose implications extend far beyond the academy to the way we live and see.This fascinating book is a searching analysis of the complex cultural meanings of naked male and female bodies in Christian art and literature and in contemporary society.- Emily Martin, author of The Woman in the BodyMargaret R. Miles was Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at the Harvard University Divinity School. She is the author of Augustine on the Body, Desire and Delight, Image as Insight, and Practicing Christianity.

Margaret Miles here explores Christianity's understandings of the human body in the past and presents new concepts for the future. An enlightening investigation into how the body has been perceived through the ages, Fullness of Life offers surprising conclusions that historic Christian authors from Ignatius of Antioch to Thomas Aquinas, far from viewing the body in a negative way, have been overwhelmingly affirmative. Providing the basis for a greater appreciation of the human body as the focus of life and salvation, this unique work sheds a new light on what it means to be fully alive and fully human in the Christian tradition.Margart R. Miles was formerly Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at the Harvard University Divinity School. She is the author of Augustine on the Body, Image as Insight, and Carnal Knowing.

Miles's pathbreaking work shows how art and architecture have shaped religious understanding throughout the history of Christianity.