Richly written, Jesus the Holy Fool combines diverse images from religious traditions, world literature, Jungian archetype, and Scripture. Weaving the best theology and spirituality, Jesus the Holy Fool is a fresh and inviting Christology. The Scriptures tell us that religious leaders thought Jesus was "possessed," and his own family thought he was "crazy." In his open table fellowship, choice of followers, radical passion, and his death and resurrection, Jesus was willing to appear as a fool for the sake of God's reign. His teachings--especially the parables, paradoxes, and the beatitudes--advocate a way of life that is grounded in Holy Foolishness. Through an archetypal examination of the fool motif as it applies to Jesus in the Gospels, Jesus the Holy Fool develops the connections between holiness and folly. Offering new insights into Christology and exploring its practical pastoral ramifications, Jesus the Holy Fool presents Holy Foolishness as a paradigm for the Christian journey and as a new model of what it means for us to be church.

Pastor Woodley offers a fresh view of "holy folly," an ancient spiritual approach that combines humor, irony, spiritual discipline, surprise, radical compassion, and passionate faith--many qualities that the postmodern world hungers for. (Practical Life)

This first English translation of Leontius of Neapolis's Life of Symeon the Fool brings alive one of the most colorful of early Christian saints. In this study of a major hagiographer at work, Krueger fleshes out a broad picture of the religious, intellectual, and social environment in which the Life was created and opens a window onto the Christian religious imagination at the end of Late Antiquity. He explores the concept of holy folly by relating Symeon's life to the gospels, to earlier hagiography, and to anecdotes about Diogenes the Cynic. The Life is one of the strangest works of the Late Antique hagiography. Symeon seemed a bizarre choice for sanctification, since it was through very peculiar antics that he converted heretics and reformed sinners. Symeon acted like a fool, walked about naked, ate enormous quantities of beans, and defecated in the streets. When he arrived in Emesa, Symeon tied a dead dog he found on a dunghill to his belt and entered the city gate, dragging the dog behind him. Krueger presents a provocative interpretation of how these bizarre antics came to be instructive examples to everyday Christians. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

"One who is strengthened by God professes himself to be an utter fool by human standards, because he despises the wisdom men strive for."--Thomas Aquinas "Go and do likewise. . . ."--Luke 10:37 Missiologist Michael Frost is looking for the real Jesus--the man who didn't care what people thought, worked on the Sabbath, touched the unclean, ate with sinners, and generally contradicted what was acceptable to the leadership of his day. He's searching for the Jesus who embodies all the characteristics of the ancient tradition of the holy foolish paradigm as described and commended by Paul, the church fathers, and the medieval saints. And he finds him. . . . Saintly fools prefer life out in the open in the secular world, intentionally make themselves conspicuous, and consistently defy rules set by society. Frost directs our minds and hearts to the greater story of Jesus. He reminds us that following the Savior is rarely safe--and that Christ will continue to redraw our blueprint of what's right and what's righteous; and will persist in calling us to take the alternative, dangerous, ridiculous road walked by wise fools down through the centuries of the church. A much-needed and longed-for challenge to emergent, contemporary, and traditional gatherings and churches alike.

The Holy is too great and too terrible when encountered directly for men of normal sanity to be able to contemplate it comfortably. Only those who cannot care for the consequences run the risk of the direct confrontation of the Holy. This book is a study of six men who ran this risk. Balancing the negative and positive points of view throughout these six essays, Jaroslav Pelikan has written a brilliant examination of the three questions: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. With Kierkegaard and Paul, Dr. Pelikan looks into the relationship between the True and the Holy. With Dostoevsky and Luther, it is the Good and the Holy and with Nietzche and Bach, it is the Beautiful and the Holy. In the first two he draws on the whole history of Western thought. In the second two, he looks into the background of Christian morality, and in the last two, he reaches all the way back to the Greeks in his penetrating study of Western aesthetics. Philosophy, theology, ethics, and aesthetics - they are all here. Beyond them all, Dr. Pelikan shows how the Holy cannot be captured and held by any of them, although the attempt is frequently made. Rather the Holy must remain unqualified, transfiguring within itself the experience of the True, the Good, or the Beautiful.

This book, explains the many spiritual benefits of praying with the Agpia. It also discusses the numerous evidence for the use of the psalms throughout the day and its use in the apostolic era.