The result is a full and wide-ranging narrative account of St. Augustine's thinking on the human condition, justice, the State, slavery, private property and war. This comprehensive sourcebook will be of value to students of St. Augustine at all levels."--Jacket.

In this book Miles Hollingworth investigates how Augustine's understanding of discipleship causes him to resist the normal tendencies of Western political thinkers. On the one hand, he does not attempt to delineate an ideal state in the classical fashion: to his mind, the Garden of Eden can be an archetype for nothing on earth. And on the other hand, he does not seek to achieve an ideological perspective on the proper relations between Church and State. In fact his Pilgrim City is shown to lie beyond utopianism, realism and the normal terms of political discourse. It stands, instead, as a singular challenge to the aspirations of politics in the West; and so standing it calls for a reassessment of his position in the history of political thought. This book will be of interest to theologians as well as historians of political thought. It will also appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of ideas.

It's a long, strange journey to paradise, and often hilarious one, if you bravely follow the road less traveled--wherever it leads. John D. Spalding certainly has. In this smart and insightful collection, Spalding, Beliefnet.com's popular offbeat humorist, wanders America as a modern-day "pilgrim" seeking the Celestial City. Loosely organizing his comic misadventures according to John Bunyan's classic The Pilgrim's Progress, Spalding describes how he spent three days as a street preacher in Times Square ("Excuse me, sir, did you know you're going to hell?"); went to the mat (conversationally) with Omega and Apocalypse, two mainstays of the Christian Wrestling Federation; and visited a man who, practicing the art of trepanation, drilled a hole in his head to make himself permanently happy. He also experienced his own funeral, courtesy of the Dying-to-Get-In Company. Like Christian, Bunyan's beleaguered pilgrim, Spalding never knows who is waiting around the next bend. On his journey, he finds himself at the mercy of rebirthing therapists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormon missionaries, and in the company of a psychic "ghost counselor," America's luckiest (and perhaps divinely blessed) lottery winner, and a mysterious, barefoot holy man named Whatsyourname. Finally, he makes an ancient, five-hundred-mile pilgrimage across Spain, during which he learns what it truly means to be a pilgrim. Funny, wry, and revealing, the stories in A Pilgrim's Digress describe Spalding's satirical quest for the righteous path and what he discovers about the spiritual zeitgeist along the way.

“Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, was a man whose life was the expression of a richly textured and multidimensional soul. The many layers of that soul took on their first, mature form in Kraków.” – George Weigel In this beautifully illustrated spiritual travelogue, New York Times bestselling author George Weigel leads readers through the historic streets of Kraków, Poland, introducing one of the world’s great cities through the life of one of the most influential Catholic leaders of all time. “To follow Karol Wojtyła through Kraków is to follow an itinerary of sanctity while learning the story of a city.” Weigel writes. “Thus, in what follows, the story of Karol Wojtyła, St. John Paul II, and the story of Kraków are interwoven in a chronological pilgrimage through the life of a saint that reveals, at the same time, the dramatic history and majestic culture of a city where a boy grew into a man, priest, a bishop—and an apostle to the world.” With stunning photographs by Stephen Weigel and notes on the city’s remarkable fabric by Carrie Gress, City of Saints offers an in-depth look at a man and a city that made an indelible impression on the life and thought of the Catholic Church and the 21st century world.