E-Books →The Oxford Handbook of Deification

Free Download The Oxford Handbook of Deification edited by Matthew Levering, Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Andrew P. Hofer
English | September 24, 2024 | ISBN: 0198865171 | True EPUB/PDF | 752 pages | 2.3/24.8 MB
Modern theological engagements on deification have undergone two major paradigm shifts. First, the study of deification shifted from the periphery of theological discourse to its center. For Adolf von Harnack, deification was a pagan import that fatally corrupted and distorted the Gospel message of salvation. In response, the positive retrieval of the concept of deification belongs to the early years of the twentieth century. By the 1910s in Russian religious thought and by the 1930s in much Roman Catholic theology, deification had become a magnet concept attracting attention from many different viewpoints. The second important shift relates to how deification is characterized. Recent studies question the exclusively 'Eastern' character of deification and draw attention to the engagements of this theme in Latin patristic and later Western Christian sources.