Overview

Housing the powers? What powers? Soul powers -- powers that shape the lives of human souls. They may be housed, and exercised, by those souls or by other agents. This book is about views on that subject developed by Christian philosophical theologians in western Europe from the mid-12th to the early 14th century, with some borrowing of thoughts from their Islamic counterparts. Chapters 1 to 3 discuss in increasing breadth and depth those theologians' views about their own housing and exercise of soul powers. Chapters 4 to 8 discuss their views as to the possibility of some of our soul powers being outsourced -- that is, housed and exercised by God or a super-human emanation of God. Chapter 4 is about outsourcing the subject -- in an Islamic form that postulated an outsourcing of intellectual thinking from individual human beings to a single intellect that is eternally emanated from God and is the sole thinker of all the thoughts that humans ever think. That theory attracted the interest, though not the agreement, of European Christian philosophers. They found ideas of outsourcing the object, rather than the subject, of religious thought more congenial. The remaining four chapters of the book deal with that more congenial topic. In chapters 5 and 6 the focus is mainly on divine gifts of knowledge and understanding, and in chapters 7 and 8 on gifts of action and willing or desire.

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9780192862549

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I find most of the interpretative claims that Adams defends in Housing the Powers convincing. I am confident that her book will soon become standard reading for anyone working on Latin medieval theories of causal powers. * Can Laurens Löwe, Speculum *

Author Information

Marilyn McCord Adams was Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church from 2004-9, before returning to the USA to take up the post of Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2009-13), and then Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University (2013-15). Professor Adams' work in philosophy focused on the philosophy of religion, especially the problem of evil, philosophical theology, metaphysics, and medieval philosophy.

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