What does it mean to love? What are the traits of character that support love’s activity? How does the economy of grace—the mission of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit—elevate and transform human love, virtue, and the desire for happiness? In On Love and Virtue: Theological Essays, the eminent Dominican theologian Michael Sherwin considers how the Catholic tradition has addressed these questions. Fr. Sherwin places this tradition in dialogue with contemporary questions. Taking St. Thomas Aquinas as his primary guide, Fr. Sherwin reads St. Thomas in light of his biblical and patristic sources (especially St. Augustine) and engages contemporary developments in philosophy in order to deepen our understanding of how grace both heals and elevates human nature. Along the way, Fr. Sherwin considers the vocation of the theologian and the biblical and patristic understanding of the Christian call to moral apprenticeship and friendship with God.
By Knowledge and By Love represents a major contribution to Thomistic moral theology and philosophy by providing a thoughtful examination of Aquinas' psychology of action and his theology of charity.
Faith, hope, and love, traditionally called theological virtues, are central to Christianity. This book renews faith, hope, and love in the context of the many contemporary challenges in many unique ways. It is an ecumenical collection of papers, equally divided between Catholic and Protestant positions, that seek to radically renew the classical doctrine of faith, hope, and love, and argues for their essential connection to the praxis of justice. It contains eight different approaches, each represented by a distinguished theologian and addressing different aspects of the issues and followed by insightful and critical responses. It does not merely seek to renew the theological virtues but to also reconstruct them in the demanding context of justice and the contemporary world, nor is it simply a treatise on justice but a theoretical and practical reflection on justice as vital expressions of faith in God, hope in God, and love of God. A non-dogmatic and non-ideological approach, it accommodates both conservative and liberal positions, and avoids the separation of the theological virtues from the demands of the contemporary world as well as the separation of justice talk from the theological context of faith, hope, and love. It seeks above all to renew, not merely repeat, the classical doctrine of faith, hope, and love in the contemporary context of the urgency of justice, and to do so ecumenically, comprehensively, and from a variety of perspectives and aspects.
This volume, three separate books in one edition, is a collection of Josef Pieper's famous treatises on the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. Each of these treatises was originally published as a separate work over a period of thirty-seven years, and here they are brought together in English for the first time. The first of the three that he wrote, On Hope, was written in 1934 in response to the general feeling of despair of those times. His "philosophical treatise" on Faith was derived from a series of lectures he gave in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His most difficult work, one that he struggled with for years - and almost abandoned - was his work On Love. Pieper now feels that this is the most important book he has written. He discusses not only the theological virtue of caritas-agape, but also of eros, sexuality, and even "love" of music and wine.
Introduction David Cloutier and Robert Koerpel “But from the begining it was not so”: The Jewish Apocalyptic Context of Jesus’s Teaching on Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage John W. Martens Historical Theology and the Problem of Divorce and Remarriage Today David G. Hunter Saint John Henry Newman, Development of Doctrine, and Sensus Fidelium: His Enduring Legacy in Roman Catholic Theological Discourse Kenneth Parker The Risk of Tradition: With de Certeau toward a Postmodern Catholic Theory Philipp W. Rosemann Tradition as Given: Eucharist, Theological Pugilism, and Eschatological Patience Jonathan Martin Ciraulo Interpreting Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia in Light of the Incarnation Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. Beyond the Law-Conscience Binary in Catholic Moral Thought David Cloutier and Robert Koerpel Inculturating through the Lens of Liberation: John Mary Waliggo and the Renewal of Catholic Tradition in Africa J.J. Carney Gnoseological Concupiscence, Intersectionality, and Living Truthfully: Insights into How and Why Moral Theology Develops Kathryn Lilla Cox The Challenge of Technology to Moral Theology Paul Scherz Book Reviews Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister, Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy Kent J. Lasnoski Marie Dennis, ed., Choosing Peace. The Catholic Church Returns to Gospel Nonviolence Margaret R. Pfeil Kevin Flannery, Action and Character According to Aristotle: The Logic of the Moral Life Michael Bolin Richard Grigg, Science Fiction and the Imitation of the Sacred Kim Paffenroth Elizabeth T. Groppe, ed., Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart: Cultivating a Sacramental Imagination in an Age of Pornography Matthew Sherman Matthew Hanley, Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: Current Practices and Ethics Gina Maria Noia Theodora Hawksley, Peacebuilding and Catholic Social Teaching Caesar A. Montevecchio Albert de Mingo Kaminouchi, Brother John of Taizé, trans., An Introduction to Christian Ethics: A New Testament Perspective Thomas P. Scheck Han-Luen Kantzer Komline, Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account J. M. Stewart Matthew Levering, Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance Steven J. Jensen Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage: Human Marriage as the Image and Sacrament of the Marriage of God and Creation Timothy P. O’Malley Marcus Mescher, The Ethics of Encounter: Christian Neighbor Love as a Practice of Solidarity Jessica Wrobleski Kelley Nikondeha, Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach us About Freedom Patricia Sharbaugh Michael S. Sherwin, OP, On Love and Virtue: Theological Essays James W. Stroud Janet E. Smith, Self-Gift: Essays on Humanae Vitae and the Thought of John Paul II John Sikorski
The essays in this collection all concern the interpretation of Scripture in relation to the Catholic Ressourcement. A theological renewal movement that began in the early twentieth century, the Ressourcement movement centered on a “return to the sources” such as Scripture, the Church Fathers, and liturgy. The point of such a return was to discover in these sources the wisdom, truth, and spiritual insight which could speak meaningfully to contemporary challenges. William M. Wright first focuses on three major Ressourcement figures—Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and Joseph Ratzinger—and considers aspects of their theological thinking about Scripture or how Scripture is employed as a theological resource. Next, Wright examines Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth books, showing how they put into practice (for a general readership) many of the theological insights characteristic of the Ressourcement movement. Last, Wright considers how the theological insights of the Ressourcement movement can be used to as a resource for the interpretation of Scripture. He uses characteristic Ressourcement concerns, such as the relationship between the testaments, the theology of history, and liturgy, to help illumine the biblical text. Wright not only provides substantive examination of the place of the Bible in this important theological movement, but also shows how the insights of the Ressourcement can be helpful for the interpretation of Scripture today.
In this collection of essays, distinguished Australian theologian Tracey Rowland takes up the relationship of Christ and culture, broadly understood. She contrasts the principles undergirding what St. John Paul II called a “culture of death” with those required for the flourishing of a humanism that flows from the grace of the Incarnation. Rowland returns frequently to the theological insights of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, to whose thought she is deeply indebted. Drawing upon the Augustinian and Thomist traditions of political theology, she offers a trenchant theological critique of liberalism in all its forms, with attention to our modern attraction to false utopias and accommodationist impulses. The nine essays in this volume engage such perennial topics as the place of natural law, the theological status of the “world,” and the nature of true humanism, along with timely topics such as the retrieval of the sources of Catholic resistance to Communism and what is now commonly called cultural Marxism. Rowland’s inimitable voice, keen wit, and penetrating insight into the distinctiveness of Catholic truth make this book a landmark volume as the Church today revisits anew its relationship to the world.
The Prologue of the Gospel of John identifies Jesus Christ as the eternal Word or Logos of the Father, who became flesh for the salvation of the world. Yet the world that Christ saves is his world from the beginning, for he is also the Logos of creation, the one “through whom all things were made” (John 1:3). This divinely revealed claim has profound implications not only for theology but also for metaphysics, whose relation to Christian doctrine was undermined over the course of the twentieth century, such that the Christian faith has become an increasingly private affair rather than a credible account of reality and an invitation to participate more fully in it. With Christ, the Logos of Creation, John Betz seeks to recover a Christ-centered, analogical metaphysics and to establish the indispensability of such metaphysics for Christian theology and the Christian vision of reality. In Part I, he dispels the fog of confusion about analogical metaphysics and addresses the ecumenical issues posed by Karl Barth’s famous rejection of the analogia entis. Part II demonstrates how analogical metaphysics helps to explain Christian doctrine and sheds new light on the interrelationship between individual doctrines, including Trinitarian theology, Christology and soteriology, and theological anthropology. In Part III, Betz explores how this analogical perspective can aid in resolving a number of theological disputes, including the metaphysical relationship between nature and grace and the issue of divine humility. Finally, Part IV outlines further directions toward a fully Christological metaphysics that is proportionate both to the challenges of modern theology and the reality of our life in Christ the Logos.
In Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, Matthew Levering argues that Catholic ethics make sense only in light of the biblical worldview that Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom of God by pouring out his spirit. Jesus has made it possible for us to know and obey God’s law for human flourishing as individuals and communities. He has reoriented our lives toward the goal of beatific communion with him in charity, which affects the exercise of the moral virtues that pertain to human flourishing. Without the context of the inaugurated kingdom, Catholic ethics as traditionally conceived will seem like an effort to find a middle ground between legalistic rigorism and relativistic laxism, which is especially the case with the virtue of temperance, the focus of Levering’s book. After an opening chapter on the eschatological/biblical character of Catholic ethics, the ensuing chapters engage Aquinas’s theology of temperance in the Summa theologiae, which identifies and examines a number of virtues associated with temperance. Levering demonstrates that the theology of temperance is profoundly biblical, and that Aquinas’s theology of temperance relies for its intelligibility upon Christ’s inauguration of the kingdom of God as the graced fulfillment of our created nature. The book develops new vistas for scholars and students interested in moral theology.
Despite the fact that John Chrysostom wrote more on the Eucharist than any other Greek Church Father, there has never been a full treatment of his doctrine in English. In this book, Kenneth Howell brings together a wide array of sources from which he develops a many-sided portrait of Chrysostom's eucharistic thought. While the Antiochene preacher assumed the real presence and the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, he focused more on the moral and spiritual implications of communion. At the root of his theology lies the conviction that the Eucharist with its home in the liturgy is the extension of Christ's incarnate life through space and time. All that Christ accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection is present and available to the communing Christian who stands in union with the angelic hosts in the liturgy of the church. John's preaching at times reaches encomiastic proportions as he never tires of praising the benefits and power of the Eucharist and he deftly applies the sacrament to the struggle of virtue and vice as he explores both the invitation and the obstacles to communion. Among the moral implications of the Eucharist, John seems to distinguish well between sins arising from human weakness versus malicious dispositions freely chosen. He is especially keen to exhort his hearers to lay aside the remembrance of evil (mnesikakia) done to them in their past lives. Humility and forbearance are two essential virtues in arriving at forgiveness of past injuries. And lack of forgiveness is like greed in that both constitute a turn in on oneself. The Eucharist demands love of neighbor and active ministry to the less fortunate of the world. For John, God is interested in golden souls more than golden chalices.
