An interview with Lieven Boeve, Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium.

Fr John Nankivell answers the question of why Christians today should read the great Fathers of the Fourth Century such as SS John Chrysostom, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. Giving an overview of their lives and writings, he looks at what we can learn from their approaches and how we can apply this to our own lives.

This book is the first exploration of the remarkable odyssey of Thomas Aquinas in the Orthodox Christian world, from the Byzantine to the modern era. Aquinas was received with astonishing enthusiasm across the Byzantine theological spectrum. By contrast, modern Orthodox readings of Aquinas have been resoundingly negative, routinely presenting Aquinas as the archetype of as a specifically Western form of theology against which the Orthodox East must set its face. Basing itself primarily on a close study of the Byzantine reception of Thomas, this study rejects such hackneyed dichotomies, arguing instead for a properly catholic or universal construal of Orthodoxy – one in which Thomas might once again find a place.

The Muslim thinker al-Ghazali (d. 1111) was one of the most influential theologians and philosophers of Islam and has been considered an authority in both Western and Islamic philosophical traditions. Born in northeastern Iran, he held the most prestigious academic post in Islamic theology in Baghdad, only to renounce the position and teach at small schools in the provinces for no money. His contributions to Islamic scholarship range from responding to the challenges of Aristotelian philosophy to creating a new type of Islamic mysticism and integrating both these traditions–falsafa and Sufism–into the Sunni mainstream. This book offers a comprehensive study of al-Ghazali's life and his understanding of cosmology–how God creates things and events in the world, how human acts relate to God's power, and how the universe is structured.