The connections between senses and morality are located in politics, religion, music, food, and other practices and metaphors of consumption. Such associations point to desired or positive values that are demonstrated through particular sensory behaviour. These together form social structures that reflect propriety and moral decorum. The governance of good behaviour and subscription to moral codes similarly extend to the metaphysical world of spirits through a variety of corporeal and cognitive modalities. Building upon the phenomenological anthropology of morality, I show how the senses serve as intermediaries of moral binaries. Cases are drawn from myths, legends, folktales, poetry, and ethnographies. Overall, varying sociocultural associations of the different senses with morality, virtue, and disposition present a type of sensory attunement to apprehend moral economies and social structures. I argue that sensory moral economies are, in effect, the product of specific sensory action. Social actors are expected to perform particular ways of being that actualise alignment with ideal, righteous states or dispositions mediated through the senses. The outcome of such sense acts is a combination of immaterial interests and moral sentiments. As sociocultural arbiters, the senses bring to light the moral organisation of society.

The conclusion reemphasizes some of the main points of the book: that sectarian identities are not fixed, but remain fluid and adaptable to different situations. As such, they present grand narratives that human beings can emplot themselves within, and orient themselves accordingly. The chapter also notes how sect and school narratives seem to encompass notions of salvation. Similarly, human beings might adapt and develop the grand narratives to fit their own situations, thereby contributing to the history and accumulating tradition of any given sect or school. The medieval figure of al-Ghazālī is given as an example of such a reformer.

This chapter charts the ultimate triumph of the emotional regime of scientific modernity in the form of antisepsis, Joseph Lister’s application of germ theory to surgical practice. It begins by exploring the ways in which antisepsis eliminated the patient as an emotional agent in surgery. The 1860s saw profound concern within surgery about the devastating impact of sepsis on post-operative mortality. Many of the explanations provided for this phenomenon rested on long-standing ideas about the role of the patient’s constitution and emotional state in regulating their post-operative health. However, by focusing purely on the condition of the wound, and the need to keep it free of ‘germs’, Lister’s antisepsis effectively overwrote these explanations, rendering patient subjectivity largely meaningless. At the same time, however, if emotions no longer possessed any ontological significance in surgery, the second part of this chapter demonstrates that they nonetheless played a powerful rhetorical function, as this ‘new world of surgery’ was configured in highly sentimentalised terms. This sentimentality not only served to counter widespread popular anxieties about surgery’s moral character, but also constructed Lister, the ultimate scientific surgeon and the emotional template for surgical modernity, as a quasi-divine saviour.

The reason the debate over divine providence has such a powerful resonance in the lives of ordinary people is that it touches deeply on their relationship with God, and in particular on the attitudes they have toward God: their trust in God, their love for God, their hope in God’s promises, and more. One way to approach the debate over divine providence is to start with an account of appropriate religious attitudes and reason about which accounts of divine providence can make sense of those attitudes. I focus on the religious attitude of trust in God. R. Zachary Manis has argued that theological determinism cannot make sense of certain types of trust in God that religious believers often do and should have: trusting God with their own salvation and the salvation of others whom they love. I argue that theological determinism can in fact make sense of these types of trust in God, drawing heavily on Kierkegaard’s idea that we ought to love others with God as the “middle term.” I go on to argue that views other than theological determinism also struggle to make sense of believers trusting God with their own salvation and the salvation of those whom they love.

This chapter discusses the commitment to biblical authority in American Protestantism, including the ongoing debate over how to read and interpret the Bible; and the doctrines most common to American Protestant churches and denominations, including doctrines about God, creation, human nature and sin, the atoning work of Christ on the cross, the work of the Holy Spirit, salvation, the church and sacraments, and the future of the world. In each case, the Bible is often the source of disagreement and debate.

This chapter examines the theology of St. Anselm of Canterbury, with specific attention to how he conceives of reason and faith, his Proslogion (and the so-called ontological proof for the existence of God), his notion of freedom and his soteriology as expounded in his major work Cur Deus Homo.

Thomas Aquinas, the most important theologian of the medieval Latin Church, receives ample treatment in this chapter. It covers his understanding of theology, God’s existence and God-talk, theology of the Trinity, the theological virtues and salvation.

After a brief survey of his life, this chapter examines the theology of St. Augustine, focusing on his views on faith and reason, theology of the Trinity and the psychological analogy, salvation, and spirituality (frui and uti).

In this chapter the profound theology and spirituality of St. Bonaventure is discussed. After a short introduction of his life, his views on emanation, exemplarity and illumination receive due attention. Bonaventure’s spirituality in light of his profound Trinitarian theology is also discussed in detail.

Chapter 5 shows that Kierkegaard does not reject prudence or self-interest as antieudaimonism tends to do. Instead, he develops a noneudaimonistic ethics and theology, in which morality overrides prudence in cases of conflict. Still, his concept of the highest good (eternal happiness) involves a synthesis of morality and prudence, in which happiness is conditioned by morality. Like Kant, Kierkegaard develops a noneudaimonistic “highest good” and rejects both predestination and Pelagianism, sketching an intermediary view that combines human agency with divine grace. However, he departs from Kant by combining a modern account of alterity, in which morality is essentially other-regarding, with the idea that morality is Christocentric, since it concerns imitating Christ and serving the neighbor. The result is an account of morality and happiness which is not only broadly Augustinian and Kantian but also highly modern.

Hildegard of Bingen’s reputation for expertise in medicine was established not during her lifetime but after her death, with the compilation of Physica and Cause et cure by her secretaries and nuns at Rupertsberg. These works arranged and supplemented materials collected and composed by Hildegard. While described by early witnesses as works on medicine, they are not entirely typical of twelfth-century medical writing. Physica is an encyclopedia of the natural world, and Cause et cure an extended meditation on the consequences and remedies for the fall of the human race. Yet both works reveal Hildegard’s familiarity with current scientific and medical theory, as well as principles of secular healing practice. As her medieval readers affirmed, her visionary message was fully compatible with, and amplified in significance by, medical teachings based on Greco-Roman sources. This chapter explores this convergence of spiritual meaning and medical erudition in both works and examines the reception of Hildegard as a ‘medical writer’ in the later Middle Ages and early modern periods, and the ways in which this identity has been used by humanistic and alternative medical movements.

Spinoza developed a method of biblical interpretation which has guided most scholars ever since. It requires an understanding of the scriptural languages, a comparison of different discussions of the same topic (not assuming that Scripture, as the word of God, must be consistent), and an account of the authorship, date, circumstances, and transmission of each book. Renaissance humanists like Erasmus had anticipated some of his method, but Spinoza was more systematic and bolder: not only did Moses not write the Pentateuch, many of the traditional assumptions about the authorship of biblical books were mistaken. A late editor, working on now lost mss. of earlier histories, had compiled them. Spinoza writes mainly about the Hebrew Bible, but also draws challenging conclusions about the New Testament: the apostles didn’t write with prophetic authority; James was right (against Paul) to emphasize works over faith. He also suggests that the apostles probably wrote in Aramaic, so that the Greek text is a translation of a lost original. Like Erasmus, he emphasizes the moral teachings of Scripture and avoids philosophical speculations, of which the doctrine of original sin is probably the most important example. His advocacy of theological minimalism furthered the cause of religious liberty.

Beatrice’s salutation in the streets of Florence communicates salvation in a religious and even in an eschatological register to Dante as her lover. Dante translates his experience of “beatitude” in relation to this lady into the lyrical language of his poems. He thereby endeavors, furthermore, in an evangelical mode, to communicate this experience to others who can be transformed in their own existence by means of the revelation of his witness. Beatrice is a Christ-like figure for Dante, even a mediation to him personally of Christian salvation. The lyrical quality of this experience is in excess of all objectively communicable facts and content. Hence the dynamic interplay between autobiographical prose, testifying to concrete aspects of Dante’s existence, and the poetry that manifests what these contextual facts can never encompass or exhaust. Ineffable aspects of existence are translated into the ecstatic language of lyric testifying to irreducibly personal experience. The experience of Beatrice, as interpreted in this poetry, is for Dante a transcendent revelation of divinity. The Vita nuova understands this experience in light of the Gospels and, in its turn, illuminates how the Gospels, through literary and lyrical means, become a revelation of the divinity of Jesus.

In considering the uses of the lectionary by readers, this chapter focuses on the effect that the sound and acoustics of the readings’ chanting had in the space of a church like Hagia Sophia. By looking not only at ritual but also the architecture and decoration of the church, the chapter argues that the decoration of churches and the uses of the Gospel lectionaries responded to one another. Focusing on the plaque above the Imperial Doorway, for example, we see a place where an abridged lectionary is depicted, citing Gospel readings and also omitting key words, which the manuscripts show us were to be given sonic emphasis by chanters. Therefore, the argument is that architectural decorations in the church played with the impact and delivery of the chanted Gospels in order to reflect on the salvation that the readings conveyed and guaranteed to the faithful.