About The Book

In the Vol. 4, No. 1 issue of Renovatio, our writers — from Muslim theologians, to Christian philosophers (past and present), to liberal artists — seek to explore and understand the link between suffering and submission to the reality of God’s existence.

Table of Contents

A Dangerous Schooling 

Only when a person suffers and wills to learn from what he suffers does he come to know something about himself and about his relationship to God.

Søren Kierkegaard

 

On Migrating To Lands of Melancholy

Those who migrate for worldly gain are likely to be miserably assimilated and crushed, while those whose intention is noble, who are willing to see and understand and heal, can serve a redemptive purpose.

Abdal Hakim Murad

 

King Lear and the Beatitudes

Does the eternal horizon of reward help us more fully understand Lear's suffering and subsequent transformation in Shakespeare's tragedy?

Scott F. Crider

 

How to Climb The Seven - Story Mountain

Classics by Marcus Aurelius and Farid al-Din Attar, a thousand years apart, illustrate the spiritual journey.

John Walbridge

 

The Freedom of Self-Sacrifice

Can we rediscover the ancient roots of moral action in the late-modern twilight of free will?

Mark Damien Delp

 

Myths Versus Novels

If myths and novels belong to different categories, do the fictional beings that reside in each have essential natures that make different demands of us, the consumers of imaginative works? 

Eva Brann

 

Suffering As Surrender

If we are righteous, pious servants of the Merciful and steward well our lives but still are stricken with calamities, then these are trials from God and we must surrender to Him. 

Hamza Yusuf

 

The Only Real Solitude 

Solitude calls to mind experiences that differ widely, from the pain of isolation to the freedom of self-reliance. How then should we understand the nature of being alone?

Stephen A. Gregg

 

From Humanistic to Mechanistic Economics—and Back? 

Implementing moral ideals in corporate settings necessarily requires us to dismiss the materialist pretensions of economics. 

Claus Dierksmeier

 

Conversing with One’s Self 

As individuals, we must all face and absorb pain, but could a regular habit of personal writing help nullify or transmute our experience of suffering?

Sarah Barnette