This chapter traces the complex and tense relationship between Tolstoy and the Russian Orthodox Church. It provides basic background information on the role of the Church in Russian history and in Tolstoy’s time. It reveals that even as Tolstoy rebelled fiercely against the Church, it was the rebellion of a man who was deeply immersed in Orthodox thought and practice; as such, his rebellion itself was colored by the Church. Similarly, representatives of the Orthodox Church found it necessary to publicly respond to Tolstoy’s challenges to Orthodoxy in order to demonstrate the importance of the Church in modern times. Thus, Tolstoy and Church representatives shaped their systems of thought in discussion (and conflict) with each other.

This chapter aims to examine how Augustine appropriated Cicero’s philosophical thought. The first section studies the role of the Ciceronian protreptic Hortensius – the eudaimonism and the post-mortem destiny of the soul – in Augustine's philosophical project. The second analyzes the imprint of the philosophical dialogues of Cicero on Augustine’s early “Dialogues of Cassiciacum” (Contra academicos, De beata vita, De ordine, 386 ce); this influence is obvious in their literary genre and in the major philosophical topics they deal with (epistemology, ethics, providence). In his late masterpiece the City of God, Augustine discusses several Ciceronian notions (fate and foreknowledge; populus and respublica; passions) and translates them into a Christian framework: this is the focus of the third section. The last section outlines the evolution of Augustine’s judgment on Cicero, whom he considered a defender of the Neo-Academic position on the one hand, and, on the other, as a spokesman for Platonic philosophy.

Alexis Torrance considers early Church Fathers’ many treatments of the origins and roles of conscience in patristic literature. Contemporary commentators are especially prone to speak of conscience to affirm private judgments about personal feelings. Early Church Fathers, however, stressed that conscience is a communal gift presupposing shared convictions. They also stressed that conscience may become impaired under a variety of influences. The idea of conscience existed in Greek and Roman culture. Christians’ reflections, especially St. Paul, were crucial to the deliberations of Church Fathers. New Testament letters speak of conscience as a human faculty. Though not God’s voice, conscience does bring God’s voice to bear in our lives. Christian innovation connected conscience with the idea of a divine law, and some patristic authors identify conscience with a natural law. Human knowledge of right and wrong will be clouded by sin, thus conscience needs cleansing, by baptism, by following the commandments, and by continual examination of conscience and confession. It continually requires the grace of the Holy Spirit to govern one’s moral action in a way that might lead to God.

This chapter looks at the ‘slippery figure’ of Boethius, whose religious and literary affiliations resist easy categorization, as a touchstone of discipline formation. It shows the ways in which Boethius repeatedly transgresses the generic boundaries imposed upon him by twentieth-century grand narratives of Latinity, focusing particularly on the narratives of E. R. Curtius, C. S. Lewis, and Northrop Frye. Boethius refuses to be corralled or co-opted in the service of either philology or theology: the effort required to construct and maintain a tradition can never fully conceal its own excesses or gaps. Finally, it looks at the way in which the myth of the western classic is dependent above all not on the text but on the codex, the material spine-hinged book.

Under the title of 'participation', theologians and philosophers have explored what it means for the reality that we observe, and in which we dwell, to have its origin in a divine or transcendent source. This introductory chapter surveys what is to come in this book on the theme of participation. It considers the principal sources that are to be used, especially the Christian Bible and the writings of Thomas Aquinas. It also considers the relation between philosophy and theology, and between conceptual studies and their application within the practical details of a life lived with an eye to participation.