In March the Church celebrates the great mysteries of Christ's Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection. These core mysteries of faith have recently been explored in a new way by a spiritual teacher and theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose monumental life's work was partly an attempt to bring mysticism back into the official theology of the Catholic Church. Saward's book concerns the heart of the Christian revelation, and at the same time serves as an introduction to Balthasar's thought. In particular, he shows Holy Saturday - the period between the Death and Resurrection of Christ - to be full of meaning for the life of faith, and the source of some of the most intriguing and controversial questions in theology today.

The Mysteries of March: Hans Urs Von Balthasar on the Incarnation and Easter

Williams, Rowan

Saward, John

Religion & Spirituality

HarperCollins, Publishers

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of "the literary" has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognized as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. This short but thought-provoking volume asks the question, "What is it that tragedy makes us know?" The focus is on tragedy as a mode of representing the experience of radical suffering, pain, or loss, a mode of narrative through which we come to know certain things about ourselves and our world--about its fragility and ours. Through a mixture of historical discussion and close reading of a number of dramatic texts--from Sophocles to Sarah Kane--the book addresses a wide range of debates: how tragedy is defined, whether there is such a thing as "absolute tragedy," various modern attempts to rework the classical heritage and the relation of comedy to tragedy. There is also a fresh discussion of whether religious--particularly Christian--discourse is inimical to the tragic and of the necessary tension between tragic narrative and certain kinds of political as well as religious rhetoric. Rowan Williams argues that tragic drama both articulates failure and frailty and, in affirming the possibility of narrating the story of traumatic loss, refuses to settle for passivity, resignation, or despair. In this sense, it still shows the trace of its ritual and religious roots. And in challenging two-dimensional models of society, power, humanity and human knowing, it remains an intrinsic part of any fully humanist culture.

The Tragic Imagination: The Literary Agenda

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offers fascinating insight into The Chronicles of Narnia, the popular series of novels by one of the most influential Christian authors of the modern era, C. S. Lewis. Lewis once referred to certain kinds of book as a "mouthwash for the imagination." This is what he attempted to provide in the Narnia stories, argues Williams: an unfamiliar world in which we could rinse out what is stale in our thinking about Christianity--"which is almost everything," says Williams--and rediscover what it might mean to meet the holy. Indeed, Lewis's great achievement in the Narnia books is just that-he enables readers to encounter the Christian story "as if for the first time." How does Lewis makes fresh and strange the familiar themes of Christian doctrine? Williams points out that, for one, Narnia itself is a strange place: a parallel universe, if you like. There is no "church" in Narnia, no religion even. The interaction between Aslan as a "divine" figure and the inhabitants of this world is something that is worked out in the routines of life itself. Moreover, we are made to see humanity in a fresh perspective, the pride or arrogance of the human spirit is chastened by the revelation that, in Narnia, you may be on precisely the same spiritual level as a badger or a mouse. It is through these imaginative dislocations that Lewis is able to communicate--to a world that thinks it knows what faith is--the character, the feel, of a real experience of surrender in the face of absolute incarnate love. This lucid, learned, humane, and beautifully written book opens a new window onto Lewis's beloved stories, revealing the moral wisdom and passionate faith beneath their perennial appeal.

The Lion's World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia

Scholar, ecclesiastic, teacher and poet of the eighth century, Alcuin can be seen as a true hidden saint of the Church, of the same stature and significance as his predecessor Bede. His love of God and his grasp of Christian theology were rendered original in their creative impact by his gifts as a teacher and poet. In his hands, the very traditional theology that he inherited, and to which he felt bound, took new wings. In that respect, he must rank as one of the most notable and influential of Anglo-Saxon Christians, uniting English and continental Christianity in a unique manner, which left a lasting legacy within the Catholic Church of Western Europe. This book is intended for the general reader as well as for those studying, teaching or researching this period of early medieval history and theology in schools and universities. Introduction by Dr Rowan Williams. Table of Contents Part One : Alcuin’s formation &amp; reputation 1. The legacy of Bede 2. Formation at York 3. Scholars at Charlemagne’s court 4. Controversy over Images Part Two : Adoptionism 5. Spanish Adoptionism 6. The Frankish Reaction 7. Felix &amp; Alcuin 8. Alcuin’s De Fide Part Three : Mission, Episcopacy &amp; Monarchy 9. Mission 10. Hagiography 11. Alcuin &amp; the Bishops 12. King Dei Gratia Part Four : The Bible 13. The Tours scriptorium 14. Alcuin &amp; the Old Testament 15. Alcuin &amp; the New Testament Part Five : Prayer 16. Cultivating prayer 17. Penitence 18. Liturgy Part Six : Education 19. The Teacher 20. Cultivating the Mind 21. Theology for the laity Part Seven : Poetry 22. The poet &amp; his friends 23. The poet at work 24. Theology of friendship

Alcuin: Theology and Thought

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

James Clarke & Co.

A collection of talks and sermons covering a wide range of issues including war, social justice, sexuality, prayer and evangelism.

Open to Judgement : Sermons and Addresses

History

Darton, Longman, and Todd

Rowan Williams explores the idea of Anglican identity through a study of major figures from Richard Hooker to Michael Ramsey. The book displays the richness of the Anglican mosaic without ducking the difficult question of how far diversity can stretch before a common tradition begins to fragment.

Anglican Identities

The old saying about being condemned to repeat the history we don't know applies to Church history as much as to anything else. But we are often at a loss to know how to approach it. Much of what passed once for Church history was propagandist; and much of the best now written is brilliantly done but apparently detached from the Church's present needs. We need a theological approach to Church history but not one that is just partisan.  In seeking to explore this need, Rowan Williams offers some reflection on how we think about the past in general - a complex issue in today's culture. Emerging from this is a sense of the importance of Church history as something that deepens our present thinking and obliges us to think with more varied and resourceful analogies about our present problems.

Why Study the Past? (new edition): The Quest for the Historical Church

GARDNERS VI BOOKS AMS006

Tennyson portrayed him, and wrote at least one poem under his name. Robert Graves was fascinated by what he saw as his work's connection to a lost world of deeply buried folkloric memory. He is a shapeshifter; a seer; a chronicler of battles fought, by sword and with magic, between the ancient kingdoms of the British Isles; a bridge between old Welsh mythologies and the new Christian theology; a 6th-century Brythonic bard; and a legendary collective project spanning the centuries up to The Book of Taliesin's compilation in 14th-century North Wales. He is, above all, no single 'he'.
The figure of Taliesin is a mystery. But of the variety and quality of the poems written under his sign, of their power as exemplars of the force of ecstatic poetic imagination, and of the fascinating window they offer us onto a strange and visionary world, there can be no question. In the first volume to gather all of the poems from The Book of Taliesin since 1915, Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams's accessible translation makes these outrageous, arrogant, stumbling and joyful poems available to a new generation of readers.

The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Heroism and Magic in Another Britain

Lewis, Gwyneth

Penguin Classics

TheLion's World A Journey into the Heart of Narnia by Williams, Rowan ( Author ) ON Aug-16-2012, Paperback

SPCK Publishing

Rowan Williams takes you to the heart of what Christianity means for those who practise it, and the hope it offers to the world at large. A book for all who wonder what the Christian faith is all about, and what difference it really makes

What is Christianity?

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