This chapter lays out two key tasks in reading Scripture that Augustine identifies in the Confessions, and especially in his exegesis of Genesis: “the task of grasping meaning” and “the task of grasping truth.” The first task is that of discerning authorial intention; the second is that of “seeing for oneself that what the author is saying is in fact the case.” The task of grasping meaning is difficult in part because of the peculiar character of the Scriptures; they are both accessible to all, using ordinary language (which is open to misinterpretation), and yet full of profundities that only the wisest readers can come to appreciate. It is also difficult because we cannot really know what is in another person’s mind; any judgments about authorial intention are provisional at best, and only pride would claim to have identified the uniquely correct interpretation. The task of grasping truth is likewise difficult. When it comes to intelligible realities, Truth speaks inwardly, not through any text, even that of Scripture. When it comes to historical realities, including the central truths about the life of the Incarnate Word, we cannot have knowledge in the fullest sense.

Chapter 3 explores the role of small group dynamics and collective emotions in facilitating group theorizing, provoking unconventional scientific thought, and facilitating the rise of new scientific movements. It describes RA’s idioculture, their context of theoretical discovery, and the socio-emotional practices Holling used to spark transformative scientific creativity – a process that he called “island time.” I show how holding short, energetic meetings on remote islands with group rituals, personality selectivity, social bonding, charismatic leadership, and inductions to a secret scientific society created what I call “hot spots and hot moments.” These are brief but intense bursts of collective emotion, intersubjectivity, group creativity, and exceptional scientific performance where transformative science is conducted and faith in the group and its ideas were generated. This highlights new aspects of theory group dynamics, including the bursty nature of creative production within them, and the role of collective emotional states, relationships, and evocative locations for producing innovative scientific knowledge that can support new scientific movements.

Chapter 5 examines how intergenerational dynamics affected sociality and group theorizing in RA. The Resilience Alliance Young Scholars (RAYS) were recruited to help test and refine resilience theory after the founding generation had established its core tenets. Additionally, RA and resilience theory began facing external criticisms as their ideas gained traction. The RAYS’s distance from the high-intensity ritual interactions of early days, combined with growing doubt from outside RA, led them to approach the theory with more skepticism. I use data from interviews, articles, books, and observations of a two-day mock court in which the RAYS literally put first-generation ideas on trial to illustrate their crucial role in testing resilience theory, determining key theoretical scoping conditions, and developing initial metrics and measurements of core RA concepts. In all of this, the RAYS made contributions that went far beyond the “normal science” anticipated from second-generation theory group members.

Chapter 1 reviews previous research on theory groups and argues that the social network methods that have been the dominant means of investigating them cannot adequately capture the significance of small-group interactions or the emergent generation of novel ideas from within theory groups. Understanding theory groups instead requires conceptualizing them from a microsociological, localistic perspective that considers the importance of group dynamics, group cultures, collective emotions, collective identity, and collective ideation. This allows for drawing direct connections between specific social interactions and the social construction and transformation of scientific theories, fields, and movements. I reconceptualize theory groups as small groups, as engines of collective action, and as faith-based collectives. The chapter closes by relating my analytic approach, research questions, and outlining the plan of the book.

This chapter examines early scholastic discussions of the ontology of grace and how grace is related to the theological virtues and other spiritual gifts conferred on the soul.

Religious beliefs are a profound source of motivation and purpose for many people. This is especially true of fundamentalists of different faiths, who strive to strictly adhere to what they believe to be scriptural guidance for how to live their lives. However, given the high rates of religious illiteracy across American citizens, belief in a religion does not necessarily indicate knowledge of the contents of one’s religious teachings. Perhaps as a consequence, people belonging to the same religion, and the clergy who guide them, have used different aspects of the scriptures to express divergent viewpoints (for and against slavery, homophobia, violence, etc.). The complexity of religious scriptures and interpretations across history has meant that members of religions who have sought to follow the righteous path have, at times, been taught that expressing bias against certain groups is the virtuous thing to do. As such, religion has been used to justify strategic beliefs (based on power and political motives) which then become fused with religious identity in private beliefs and public discourse. This chapter addresses how the noble purpose associated with being a virtuous person can be reclaimed from the forces that exploit the power of religion to create division and discord. We call on people to educate themselves about the content and context of various religious scriptures, to value diversity and avoid bias, and to cultivate spiritual and intellectual humility.

In Kierkegaard, a three-part dialectical structure is set, first, by the two elements that comprise parts I and II of Either/Or, the “esthetic” and then the “ethical life.” A subsequent, third stage comes with a “teleological suspension of the ethical” (by which Kierkegaard means “suspension of the moral” in the modern sense) and a committing “leap” of faith. Unlike Marx’s version, Kierkegaard’s dialectic takes place not at the social level, but within an individual’s life in a way that can bring about an essentially individual authenticity and what Kierkegaard called “existential inwardness.” But if Kierkegaard’s dialectic, unlike Hegel’s and Marx’s, is decidedly not world historical, thus different from Hegel’s and Marx’s, the notions of individuality and authenticity that Kierkegaard develops are nonetheless themselves distinctively modern ethical ideas, more modern, indeed, than any idea of individuality that is in place in early modern moral philosophy. Kierkegaard’s concept of the “single individual” is more closely related to Nietzsche’s “sovereign individual,” to “individuality” in John Stuart Mill, and to the radically free subject of the twentieth-century existentialists, than it is to the “forensic” notion of the individual person or moral agent as, for example, in Locke or Kant.

In two of Kierkegaard’s earliest works, The Concept of Irony and Either/Or, imaginary construction (i.e., thought experiment, or Experiment) is often characterized negatively. However, the three core features of thought experiment shared by Ørsted and Mach also begin to emerge, laying foundations for a more positive view in other works. Kierkegaard’s characterizations of thought experiment indicate that imaginary construction guides mental action. This focus contrasts with the standard emphasis in Kierkegaard scholarship on thought experiment as supplying the concreteness of (empirical) actuality. In The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard critiques irony as a retreat from reality but also shows it can be used to achieve new kinds of wholeheartedness and unity. In this chapter, I will argue that thought experiments can similarly lead the experimenter away from reality but, like irony, may also be a useful tool for self-development.

Chapter 7 offers a culminating test for competing rationalities, given how thoroughly Julian’s and Cyril’s texts are focused on re-narrating episodes from their rival. It returns to three specific arguments to consider if MacIntyre’s further claim about incommensurable forms of reasoning obtains in Julian’s and Cyril’s engagement. Three case studies in rationality, focusing on words (genētos, pronoia, and pistis) used by Julian and Cyril at crucial points in their reasoning, provide occasion to query whether non-intersecting forms of reasoning are at play in these specific arguments. Intellectual impasses on particular topics can suggest, after all, that the traditions inhabited by individuals engaged in intellectual conflict are more broadly incommensurable.

This chapter proposes new readings of the poems of Whym Chow: Flame of Love based on ideas of unconventional domesticity, alternative divinity, and queer, chosen families. The chapter explores the ways in which animal characteristics disrupt and subvert conventional poetic form and religious teachings in the volume, specifically elegy and Catholicism. It also focuses on connections between Michael Field’s writing and animal poetry found in the work of other fin-de-siècle and modernist writers. The chapter proposes that these poems can and should be celebrated for their eccentricity, oddity, and queerness rather than overlooked and marginalised within Michael Field’s oeuvre.

This chapter addresses the challenge of socially "starting from scratch" when moving into a community of approximately 150,000 older adults. It suggests that most residents integrate into overlapping place-, leisure-, and faith-based communities, and experience varying levels of psychological sense of community (PSOC). The chapter also explores the few instances where no PSOC was reported and examines the multiple tensions between different groups based on age, type of residency, and political orientation.

Minoritized groups are often portrayed as “hard to reach” by policymakers yet face myriad obstacles in undertaking – and, in particular, shaping – climate action. For many minoritized communities, the pursuit of climate justice is inherently intertwined with achieving other goals, such as economic, gender, and/or social justice. In this chapter, we examine the experiences of climate actors from Muslim communities in the UK, finding that the politicization of climate action may shape the assumptions of policymakers behind the scenes, generating more effective and inclusive policy outputs. However, this strategy faces complex power inequalities, as Muslims face structural inequalities that hinder, or even threaten, involvement. Muslim communities face a higher probability of arrest when participating in political action, alongside worse conditions following such an arrest. Our interviewees tell us that a wider pursuit of societal justice and alternative forms of politicization beyond protests are integral to achieving more representative and effective climate action for Muslim communities.

As the providers of care work, women experienced the painful losses of male bodies during the Civil War acutely. This chapter explores the way Elizabeth Stuart Phelps used her works—particularly her successful sentimental novel, The Gates Ajar (1868)—to imagine faith as a way to manage this pain. Yet, Phelps’s popularity stemmed from the way her notion of faith also complicated the orthodox Calvinist belief in a disembodied spirit: an ontology premised on the soul’s difference from, and superiority to, the body. By developing what Phelps calls “spiritual materialism,” she puts the lived experience of embodiment at the very center of belief, not drifting or working between mind-centered and body-centered paradigms, as we have seen, but operating beyond them both at the level of faith. Precisely the way this re-embodied faith moves beyond mind-centered and body-centered ontologies allows Phelps’s sentimental novel itself to move beyond the restrictive gender politics of sentimentalism, “minding the body” to tell a less repressive story of domesticity and reveal a more capacious understanding of female desire.