Does humility have a place in contemporary life? Were Enlightenment
thinkers wrong to reject humility as a "monkish virtue" (Hume) arising
from a "slave morality" (Nietzsche)? Australian theologian Jane
Foulcher recovers the countercultural reading of humility that marked
early Christianity and examines its trajectory at key junctures in the
development of Western monasticism. Humility emerges not as a
moral virtue achieved by human effort but as a way opened by
grace-as a divine "climate" (Christian de Chergé) that we are invited
to inhabit.
From fourth-century Egypt to twentieth-century Algeria, via Saint
Benedict and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Dr. Foulcher's compelling
analysis of theology and practice challenges the church to reclaim
Christian humility as essential to its life and witness today.