Book details

Book description

In Divine Illumination, Schumacher offers an original approach to Augustine's theory of divine illumination, the precondition of all human knowledge. Written with great originality and clarity, she traces the idea through medieval thinkers, into early modernity, and reveals its importance in modern theories of knowledge.   

• Takes an original approach to reading Augustine's theory of divine illumination and shows how the theory was transformed and reinterpreted in medieval philosophy and theology
• Presents a groundbreaking way of thinking about the writings of Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus, and relates this to cutting edge questions in contemporary philosophy of religion, especially epistemology
• Is a significant contribution to the history of philosophy but also to contemporary debates on faith and reason
• Lays the foundation for future efforts to come to terms with the contemporary epistemological situation and its inherent problems

Lydia Schumacher is Research Fellow and a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford. She has published articles in The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition, and Universalism (2009); and in The Expository Times, Modern Theology, Lyceum, New Blackfriars and Augustinian Studies. She works as an editor on the forthcoming Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (2011).