A beautiful, larger-sized book that provides fascinating insights into the inspiration of the artists and sponsors responsible for bringing this incredible Public Arts Project & fund raising art exhibit to the City of Angels

Milton's Paradise Lost, the most eloquent, most intellectually daring, most learned, and most sublime poem in the English language, is a poem about angels. It is told by and of angels; it relies upon their conflicts, communications, and miscommunications. They are the creatures of Milton's narrative, through which he sets the Fall of humankind against a cosmic background. Milton's angels are real beings, and the stories he tells about them rely on his understanding of what they were and how they acted. While he was unique in the sublimity of his imaginative rendering of angels, he was not alone in writing about them. Several early-modern English poets wrote epics that explore the actions of and grounds of knowledge about angels. Angels were intimately linked to theories of representation, and theology could be a creative force. Natural philosophers and theologians too found it interesting or necessary to explore angel doctrine. Angels did not disappear in Reformation theology: though centuries of Catholic traditions were stripped away, Protestants used them in inventive ways, adapting tradition to new doctrines and to shifting perceptions of the world. Angels continued to inhabit all kinds of writing, and shape the experience and understanding of the world. Milton's Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination explores the fate of angels in Reformation Britain, and shows how and why Paradise Lost is a poem about angels that is both shockingly literal and sublimely imaginative.

Annotation. From the Angel of Love to the Angel of Confidence this book enables one to embody and experience fifty spiritual qualities.

Angels occupy a significant space in contemporary popular spirituality. Yet, today more than ever, the belief in the existence of intermediary spirits between the human and divine realms needs to be evangelized and Christianized. Angels and Demons offers a detailed synthesis of the givens of the Christian tradition concerning the angels and demons, as systematized in its essential principles by St. Thomas Aquinas. Certainly, the doctrine of angels and demons is not at the heart of Christian faith, but its place is far from negligible. On the one hand, as part of faith seeking understanding, angelology has been and can continue to be a source of enrichment for philosophy. Thus, reflection on the ontological constitution of the angel, on the modes of angelic knowledge, and on the nature of the sin of Satan can engage and shed light on the most fundamental areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. On the other hand, angelology, insofar as it is inseparable from the ensemble of the Christian mystery (from the doctrine of creation to the Christian understanding of the spiritual life), can be envisioned from an original and fruitful perspective.

Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body and mind to further the progress of individual Christians. Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety, Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels. The book begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the first, developed by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions and Christian culture in late antiquity.

This monograph explores the relationship between angels and humans during the late Second Temple and early Christian period (200BCE-100CE). The issue of the similarity of appearance between humans and angels is considered in the first part of the book. In the second part three topics are covered: humans and angels living together in communities, angels as recipients of human hospitality, and the possibility of human-angel hybrid offspring. This study provides insight into how the ancient Jews and Christians defined "angel", and it argues that a clear distinction was maintained between angels and humans. These analyses have implications for our understanding of nascent Christology as well as soteriology, and also for our understanding of early Jewish Mysticism.

From the co-author of the viral New York Times bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War. Max Gladstone returns with The Ruin of Angels, the sixth novel in the Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence, which The Washington Post calls "the best kind of urban fantasy" and NPR calls "sharp, original, and passionate" The God Wars destroyed the city of Alikand. Now, a century and a half and a great many construction contracts later, Agdel Lex rises in its place. Dead deities litter the surrounding desert, streets shift when people aren’t looking, a squidlike tower dominates the skyline, and the foreign Iskari Rectification Authority keeps strict order in this once-independent city—while treasure seekers, criminals, combat librarians, nightmare artists, angels, demons, dispossessed knights, grad students, and other fools gather in its ever-changing alleys, hungry for the next big score. Priestess/investment banker Kai Pohala (last seen in Full Fathom Five) hits town to corner Agdel Lex’s burgeoning nightmare startup scene, and to visit her estranged sister Lei. But Kai finds Lei desperate at the center of a shadowy, and rapidly unravelling, business deal. When Lei ends up on the run, wanted for a crime she most definitely committed, Kai races to track her sister down before the Authority finds her first. But Lei has her own plans, involving her ex-girlfriend, a daring heist into the god-haunted desert, and, perhaps, freedom for an occupied city. Because Alikand might not be completely dead—and some people want to finish the job. Also Available by Max Gladstone: The Craft Sequence 1. Three Parts Dead 2. Two Serpents Rise 3. Full Fathom Five 4. Last First Snow 5. Four Roads Cross 6. Ruin of Angels The Craft Wars 1. Dead Country 2. Wicked Problems Last Exit Empress of Forever This is How You Lose the Time War (with Amal El-Mohtar) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.