Reclaiming Humility

Does humility have a place in contemporary life? Were Enlightenmentthinkers wrong to reject humility as a monkish virtue (Hume) arisingfrom a slave morality (Nietzsche)? Australian theologian JaneFoulcher recovers the countercultural reading of humility that markedearly Christianity and examines its trajectory at key junctures in thedevelopment of Western monasticism. Humility emerges not as amoral virtue achieved by human effort but as a way opened bygrace-as a divine climate (Christian de Chergé) that we are invitedto inhabit.From fourth-century Egypt to twentieth-century Algeria via SaintBenedict and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Dr. Foulcher's compellinganalysis of theology and practice challenges the church to reclaimChristian humility as essential to its life and witness today.