Charles M. Stang

Profile

Charles Stang joined the Faculty of Divinity in 2008. His research and teaching focus on the history and theology of Christianity in late antiquity, especially Eastern varieties of Christianity. More specifically, he is interested in the development of ascetical, monastic, and mystical traditions in Eastern Christianity. In his first book, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: 'No Longer I' (Oxford University Press, 2012), Stang argues that the apostolic pseudonym and the influence of Paul together constitute the best interpretive lens for understanding this author's so-called negative mystical theology. Stang is also editor of The Waking Dream of T.E. Lawrence: Essays on His Life, Literature, and Legacy (Palgrave, 2002); with Sarah Coakley, Rethinking Dionysius the Areopagite (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); and with Zachary Guiliano, The Open Body: Essays in Anglican Ecclesiology (Peter Lang, 2012).

Stang's current projects include a second book, "The Divine Double," which traces a tradition from antiquity according to which each individual has a divine double, counterpart, or twin, whom one can meet and with whom one then forms a sort of "bi-unity." While the early Christian witness to this tradition is at the center of the book, other chapters deal with Plato, Manichaeism, Plotinus, and later Antiochene Christology. While this book is principally historical in nature, it will also consider whether and how this tradition of the divine double can be a resource for contemporary philosophical and theological retrieval. The second project is a team endeavor: a new edition and translation of Evagrius of Pontus's Gnostic Trilogy (Praktikos, Gnostikos, Kephalaia Gnostika), which survives in part in Greek and in its entirety in Syriac and Armenian, and which will eventually be published by Oxford University Press.

Other interests include ancient philosophy, especially Neoplatonism; the Syriac Christian tradition, especially the spread of the East Syrian tradition along the Silk Road; religions of the late antique Mediterranean; and modern continental philosophy and theology, especially as they intersect with the study of religion.