Aquinas's Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance


Book Description

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.




Journal of Moral Theology, Volume 10, Issue 2


Book Description

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




Journal of Moral Theology, Volume 8, Special Issue 2


Book Description

Introduction A Peek at Renewal in Contemporary Moral Theology: The Pinckaers Symposium William C. Mattison, III and Matthew Levering Moral Theology in Service of the Work of the Spirit: Synthesizing Pinckaers and Pope Francis Against Moralities of Obligation David Cloutier Irregular Unions and Moral Growth in Amoris Laetitia David Elliot Instinctus and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Explaining the Development in St. Thomas’s Teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit James W. Stroud Aquinas on the Fruits of the Holy Spirit as the Delight of the Christian Life Fr. Anton ten Klooster A New Look at the Last End: Noun and Verb, Determinate Yet Capable of Growth William C. Mattison III The Virtue of Equity and the Contemporary World Elisabeth Rain Kincaid Pinckaers and Häring on Conscience Matthew Levering Quaestiones Disputatae de Pinckaers Tom Angier




The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas provides a comprehensive survey of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant philosophical and theological reception of Thomas Aquinas over the past 750 years.This Handbook will serve as a necessary primer for everyone who wishes to study Aquinas's thought and/or the history of theology and philosophy since Aquinas's day. Part I considers the late-medieval receptions of Aquinas among Catholics and Orthodox. Part II examines sixteenth-century Western receptions of Aquinas (Protestant and Catholic), followed by a chapter on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Orthodox reception. Part III discusses seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic receptions, and Part IV surveys eighteenth- and nineteenth-century receptions (Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic). Part V focuses on the twentieth century and takes into account the diversity of theological movements in the past century as well as extensive philosophical treatment. The final section unpicks contemporary systematic approaches to Aquinas, covering the main philosophical and theological themes for which he is best known. With chapters written by a wide range of experts in their respective fields, this volume provides a valuable touchstone regarding the developments that have marked the past seven centuries of Christian theology.




The Indissolubility of Marriage


Book Description

This well-researched book explains why the Catholic Church continues to teach marital indissolubility and addresses the numerous contemporary challenges to that teaching. It surveys the patristic witness to marital indissolubility, along with Orthodox and Protestant views, as well as historical-critical biblical exegesis on the contested biblical passages. It also surveys the Catholic tradition from the Trent through Benedict XVI, and it examines a Catholic argument that the Catholic Church's teaching can and should change. Then it explores Amoris Laetitia, the papal exhortation from Pope Francis on marriage, and the various major responses to it, with the issue of marital indissolubility at the forefront. Finally, it retrieves Aquinas's theology of marital indissolubility as a contribution to deepening current theological discussions. The author argues that Amoris Laetitia upholds the traditional Catholic teaching that a valid and consummated Christian marriage is absolutely indissoluble, in accord with the teachings of Jesus and the Apostle Paul, as solemnly and authoritatively taught by the Council of Trent and affirmed by later popes and the Second Vatican Council. He says that Amoris Laetitia should be interpreted and implemented in light of the doctrine of marital indissolubility: implementations that undermine this doctrine should be avoided. Levering says that numerous contemporary Catholic theologians and biblical scholars are mistakenly turning the indissolubility of marriage into contingent dissolubility based upon whether the spouses continue to act in loving ways toward each other. The sacrament's gift of objective indissolubility is thereby undermined. Fortunately, the main interpreters of Amoris Laetitia, whose views have been approved by Pope Francis, insist that the Apostolic Exhortation does not change the doctrine of marital indissolubility in any way.




Lying and Truthfulness


Book Description

In this book, Stewart Clem develops an account of truthfulness that is grounded in the Thomistic virtue of veracitas. Unlike most contemporary Christian ethicists, who narrowly focus on the permissibility of lying, he turns to the virtue of truthfulness and illuminates its close relationship to the virtue of justice. This approach generates a more precise taxonomy of speech acts and shows how they are grounded in specific virtues and vices. Clem's study also contributes to the contemporary literature on Aquinas, who is often classified alongside Augustine and Kant as holding a rigorist position on lying. Meticulously researched, this volume clarifies what set Aquinas's view apart in his own day and how it is relevant to our own. Clem demonstrates that Aquinas's account provides a genuine alternative to rigorist and consequentialist approaches. His analysis also reveals the perennial relevance of Aquinas's thought by bringing it to bear on contemporary social and ethical issues.




The Abuse of Conscience


Book Description

How important is conscience for the Christian moral life? In this book, Matthew Levering surveys twentieth-century Catholic moral theology to construct an argument against centering ethics on conscience. He instead argues that conscience must be formed by the revealed truths of Scripture as interpreted and applied in the church. Levering shows how conscience-centered ethics came to be—both prior to and following the Second Vatican Council—and how important voices from both the Catholic and Protestant communities criticized the primacy of conscience in favor of an approach that considers conscience within the broader framework of the Christian moral organism. Rather than engaging with current hot-button issues, Levering presents and deconstructs the work of twenty-six noteworthy theologians from the recent past in order to work through core matters. He begins by examining the place of conscience in Scripture and in the Catholic “moral manuals” of the twentieth century. He then explores the rebuttals to conscience-centered ethics offered by pre- and post-conciliar Thomists and the emergence of a new, even more problematic conscience-centered ethics in German thought. Amid this wide-ranging introduction to various strands of Catholic moral theology, Levering crafts an incisive intervention of his own against the abuse of conscience that besets the church today as it did in the last century.




Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage


Book Description

This book is the next volume in Levering's Engaging Doctrine series. The prior volume of the series examined the doctrine of creation. The present volume examines the purpose of creation: the marriage of God and humans. God created the cosmos for the purpose of the marriage of God and his people--and through his people, the marriage of God and the entire creation. Given that the central meaning or "prime analogate" of marriage is the marriage of God and humankind, the study of human marriage needs to be shaped by this eschatological goal and foregrounded as a dogmatic theme. After a first chapter defending and explaining the biblical witness to the marriage of God and his people, the book explores various themes: marriage as an image of God, original sin as the fall of the primordial marriage, the cross of Jesus Christ and marital self-sacrificial love, the procreative and unitive ends of marriage, marriage as a sacrament, and marriage's importance for social justice and for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God. Along the way, the book provides an introduction to the key biblical, patristic, medieval, modern, and contemporary thinkers and controversies regarding the doctrine of marriage.




Reconfiguring Thomistic Christology


Book Description

Unites eschatologically charged biblical Christology with metaphysical and dogmatic Thomistic Christology, by highlighting shared typological Christologies.




Mary's Bodily Assumption


Book Description

In Mary’s Bodily Assumption, Matthew Levering presents a contemporary explanation and defense of the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption. He asks: How does the Church justify a doctrine that does not have explicit biblical or first-century historical evidence to support it? With the goal of exploring this question more deeply, he divides his discussion into two sections, one historical and the other systematic. Levering’s historical section aims to retrieve the rich Mariological doctrine of the mid-twentieth century. He introduces the development of Mariology in Catholic Magisterial documents, focusing on Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Munificentissimus Deus of 1950, in which the bodily Assumption of Mary was dogmatically defined, and two later Magisterial documents, Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium and Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Mater. Levering addresses the work of the neo-scholastic theologians Joseph Duhr, Aloïs Janssens, and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange before turning to the great theologians of the nouvelle théologie—Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Joseph Ratzinger—and their emphasis on biblical typology. Using John Henry Newman as a guide, Levering organizes his systematic section by the three pillars of the doctrine on which Mary’s Assumption rests: biblical typology, the Church as authoritative interpreter of divine revelation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the fittingness of Mary’s Assumption in relation to the other mysteries of faith. Levering’s ecumenical contribution is a significant engagement with Protestant biblical scholars and theologians; it is also a reclamation of Mariology as a central topic in Catholic theology.