Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons

by Rowan Williams

Publisher:

SPCK

, 2018

Overview

What is consciousness? Is the mind a machine? What makes us persons? How can we find the path to human maturity?

These are among the fundamental questions that Rowan Williams helps us to think about in this deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be human. The book ends with a brief but profound meditation on the person of Christ, inviting us to consider how, through him, “our humanity in all its variety, in all its vulnerability, has been taken into the heart of the divine life.”

With discussion questions for personal or group use at the end of each chapter, this is a book that readers of all religious persuasions will find both challenging and highly rewarding.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Consciousness as we normally think about it has a relational dimension.” (Page 11)

“We’re trying to affirm a place, a proper place, in relation with others. We’re trying to affirm that we are embedded in relationship. I am, and I have value, because I am seen by and engaged with love—ideally, the love we experience humanly and socially, but, beyond and behind this, always and unconditionally the love of God. And the service of others’ rights or dignity is, in this perspective, simply the search to echo this permanent attitude of love, attention, respect, which the Creator gives to what is made.” (Pages 38–39)

“Behind all this lies one very basic theological assumption, which Lossky in his essay underlines and which goes back a very long way in Christian thought—at least as far as St Augustine at the beginning of the fifth century. This assumption is that, before anything or anyone is in relation with anything or anyone else, it’s in relation to God.” (Page 36)

“I would suggest that perhaps knowledge in this connection involves attention, attunement and atonement” (Pages 59–60)

“individual and the person that we need to begin with” (Page 36)

Product Details

• Title: Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons
• Author: Rowan Williams
• Publisher: SPCK
• Print Publication Date: 2018
• Logos Release Date: 2019
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Human body › Religious aspects--Christianity; Consciousness › Religious aspects--Christianity; Mind and body › Religious aspects--Christianity
• ISBNs: 9780281079759, 9780281079766, 0281079757, 0281079765
• Resource ID: LLS:BNGHMNMNDSPRSNS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:17:21Z

About Rowan Williams

Born in 1950, Rowan Williams was educated in Swansea (Wales) and Cambridge. He studied for his theology doctorate in Oxford, after which he taught theology in a seminary near Leeds. From 1977 until 1986, he was engaged in academic and parish work in Cambridge, before returning to Oxford as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. In 1990, he became a fellow of the British Academy.

In 1992, Professor Williams became Bishop of Monmouth, and in 1999 he was elected as Archbishop of Wales. He became Archbishop of Canterbury in late 2002 with 10 years’ experience as a diocesan bishop and three as a primate in the Anglican Communion. As archbishop, his main responsibilities were pastoral—whether leading his own diocese of Canterbury and the Church of England, or guiding the Anglican Communion worldwide. At the end of 2012, after 10 years as archbishop, he stepped down and moved to a new role as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Professor Williams is acknowledged internationally as an outstanding theological writer and teacher as well as an accomplished poet and translator. His interests include music, fiction, and languages.