_From one of the leading historians of Christianity comes this sweeping reassessment of religious freedom, from the church fathers to John Locke_ In the ancient world Christian apologists wrote in defense of their right to practice their faith in the cities of the Roman Empire. They argued that religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and cannot be coerced by external force, laying a foundation on which later generations would build. Chronicling the history of the struggle (...) for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, Robert Louis Wilken shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how “the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day.”. (shrink)

Depuis la publication des Sources chrétiennes et les travaux d'H. de Lubac, l'herméneutique biblique a fait de grand progrès. Une lecture purement littérale ou historique doit être dépassée. La tradition chrétienne appliquait l'allégorie à l'Ancien Testament, conformément à la pratique de s. Paul, non pas au Nouveau. Certes, les textes ont un sens littéral propre, mais les conditions nouvelles d'existence en Christ imposent de les entendre de manière neuve, surtout dans la liturgie et la catéchèse. Par ailleurs, ils offrent de (...) quoi ouvrir à la compréhension du mystère chrétien. L'allégorie résiste ainsi à la tyrannie de l'historicisme, sans manquer pour autant de réalisme. (shrink)