Nova Et Vetera


Book Description

This collection of patristic studies is dedicated to Halton in recognition of his services to the field as editor, bibliographer and interpreter. The contributors represent a range of approaches and offer insights into the practice of research in the fields of Patristic and Late Antique Studies.




Divine Scripture in Human Understanding


Book Description

In six closely-reasoned chapters, Joseph Gordon presents a detailed account of a Christian doctrine of Scripture in the fullest context of systematic theology. Divine Scripture in Human Understanding addresses the confusing plurality of contemporary approaches to Christian Scripture—both within and outside the academy—by articulating a traditionally grounded, constructive systematic theology of Christian Scripture. Utilizing primarily the methodological resources of Bernard Lonergan and traditional Christian doctrines of Scripture recovered by Henri de Lubac, it draws upon achievements in historical-critical study of Scripture, studies of the material history of Christian Scripture, reflection on philosophical hermeneutics and philosophical and theological anthropology, and other resources to articulate a unified but open horizon for understanding Christian Scripture today. Following an overview of the contemporary situation of Christian Scripture, Joseph Gordon identifies intellectual precedents for the work in the writings of Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine, who all locate Scripture in the economic work of the God to whom it bears witness by interpreting it through the Rule of Faith. Subsequent chapters draw on Scripture itself; classical sources such as Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas; the fruit of recent studies on the history of Scripture; and the work of recent scholars and theologians to provide a contemporary Christian articulation of the divine and human locations of Christian Scripture and the material history and intelligibility and purpose of Scripture in those locations. The resulting constructive position can serve as a heuristic for affirming the achievements of traditional, historical-critical, and contextual readings of Scripture and provides a basis for addressing issues relatively underemphasized by those respective approaches.




Instrumentum Laboris


Book Description

Instrumentum Laboris is the (working document) for the 3rd Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (to be held October 5-19) which focuses on “pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelization”.The Instrumentum Laboris consists of three parts. The first part focuses on the biblical and magisterial understanding of marriage, and features a heavy focus on the “natural law.” It also reflects on the role of the family today, the “fundamental cell of society, where we learn to live with others despite our differences and to belong to one another.”The second part concerns many pressing challenges to marriage and the family. These include cohabitation, remarried divorcees, teen motherhood, mixed-religion marriages, and same-sex unions.The final part deals with openness to life and parental responsibility. It explores how to transmit the faith to younger generations and how to form children in difficult or irregular family situations.This document will set the tone for October's anticipated Synod on the Family, and it deals with some of the most important issues today.




Polyphony and the Modern


Book Description

Polyphony and the Modern asks one fundamental question: what does it mean to be modern in one’s own time? To answer that question, this volume focuses on polyphony as an index of modernity. In The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch showed that each moment in time is potentially fractured: people living in the same country can effectively live in different centuries – some making their alliances with the past and others betting on the future – but all of them, at least technically, enclosed in the temporal moment. But can a claim of modernity also mean something more ambitious? Can an artist, by accident or design, escape the limits of his or her own time, and somehow precociously embody the outlook of a subsequent age? This book sees polyphony as a bridge providing a terminology and a stylistic practice by which the period barrier between Medieval and Early Modern can be breached. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003129837




On Divine Revelation: The Teaching of the Catholic Faith Vol. One


Book Description

In On Divine Revelation—one of Garrigou-Lagrange’s most significant works, here available in English for the very first time—he offers a classic treatment of this foundational topic. It is an organized and thorough defense of both the rationality and supernaturality of divine revelation. He presents a careful yet stimulating account of the scientific character of theology, the nature of revelation itself, mystery, dogma, the grace of faith, the powers of human reason, false interpretations thereof (rationalism, naturalism, agnosticism, and pantheism), the motives of credibility, and much more. Though written a century ago, On Divine Revelation will restore confidence in theology as a distinct and unified science and return focus to the fundamental questions of the doctrine of revelation. It also serves as a salutary corrective to contemporary theology’s anthropocentrism and concern with what is relative in revelation and religious experience by reorienting our theological attention to what is most certain, central, and sure in our knowledge of divine revelation: the Triune God who has revealed his inner life and salvific will. Readers will see the great splendor of the gift of divine revelation: radiant with credibility before the gaze of reason and drawing our supernatural assent to the mysteries through the gift of faith. As Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. observes, “On Divine Revelation . . . is a stunning work of inestimable value. No other subsequent work on this topic has come close to meeting it (much less surpassing it).”




Through the Heart of St. Joseph


Book Description

Though he speaks no words in Scripture, St. Joseph’s message to us is resounding: he wants to lead us to Jesus. In Through the Heart of St. Joseph, Fr. Boniface Hicks reveals the path St. Joseph has laid. Discover how St. Joseph’s vulnerability, littleness, silence, and hiddenness can transform and heal us. Fr. Hicks also looks to the saints who lived the “Joseph Option” to show how we too can embrace a life of humble trust and steadfast courage. Through the Heart of St. Joseph proves with quiet conviction that if we entrust ourselves to the foster father of Our Lord, he will give us his love and protection—just as he gave it to Jesus.




From Shadows to Reality; Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers


Book Description

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.




Precautionary Rights and Duties of States


Book Description

Concluding that the precautionary principle embodies customary international law is one thing. Determining what this means is quite another. That challenge is met by this work, which resolves a number of crucial questions concerning the scope of this principle of international environmental law; the conditions triggering a right or duty to take precautionary action; the measures to be taken; the allocation of the burden of proof; and the role of socio-economic factors. These questions are dealt with one at a time through the charting and analysis of patterns and common denominators in the extensive (inter)national practice of states regarding the precautionary principle. The hard legal core of the principle is thus gradually exposed. In the process, a realistic and accessible account is given of how and to what extent this general principle can and does direct the actions of states in concrete instances. Ultimately, this work sets out what it takes to act in conformity with the precautionary principle under general international law, and will be of interest to anyone involved with international law and environmental protection.




The Light of Christ


Book Description

The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Iranaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer. At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, do historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and does history confirm the antiquity of Catholic claims. This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context. As Fr. White states in the book’s introduction: “This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.”




Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church


Book Description

The legacy of Augustine of Hippo (354-430) continues to shape Western Christian language about both the Trinity and the Church, yet scholars rarely treat these two topics as related in his work. In Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church, Adam Ployd argues that Augustine's ecclesiology drew upon his Trinitarian theology to a surprising degree; this connection appears most clearly in a series of sermons Augustine preached in 406-407 against the Donatists, the rival Christian communion in North Africa. As he preached, Augustine deployed scriptural interpretations derived from his Latin pro-Nicene predecessors - but he adapted these Trinitarian arguments to construct a vision of the charitable unity of the Catholic Church against the Donatists. To condemn the Donatists for separating from the body of Christ, for example, Augustine appropriated a pro-Nicene Christology that viewed Christ's body as the means for ascent to his divinity. Augustine also further identified the love that unites Christians to each other and to Christ in his body as the Holy Spirit, who gives to us what he eternally is as the mutual love of Father and Son. On the central issue of baptism, Augustine made the sacrament a Trinitarian act as Christ gives the Spirit to his own body. The book ultimately shows that, for Augustine, the unity and integrity of the Church depended not upon the purity of the bishops or the guarded boundaries of the community, but upon the work of the triune God who unites us to Christ through the love of the Spirit, whom Christ himself gives in baptism.