Download or read book A Forest of Symbols written by Abbé Claude Barthe and published by Angelico Press. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Christian liturgy-and the Roman liturgy in particular-developed and thrived within a tradition of commentary and meditation that was fundamental for its understanding, running parallel with the same way of approaching Scripture. The rationalist influences that led to the decline and eventual rejection of the mystical or spiritual senses of Scripture in favor of a narrowly-conceived literal sense led to a narrowing of liturgy as well, which was reduced to its material parts and their various functions. While in recent decades the importance of the spiritual sense of Scripture has been reclaimed, its liturgical equivalent remains in shadow. The present book addresses this lacuna with an easy-to-understand summary of the traditional approach to the "forest of symbols" contained in the Roman Mass.

Download or read book Divine Speech in Human Words written by Durand Op Emmanuel and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2022-06-10 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the portrait of God revealed in Scripture fundamentally intelligible? The biblical accounts of God reveal seemingly contradictory themes: God's holiness and narratives telling of his anger; the Divine Omnipotence faced with the Impossible; the suffering Christ upon the Cross and the transcendent Trinity of Persons in God; the unique Savior and the universality of God's salvific will; and so forth. How are we to hold together all of this data without denying any aspect of the mystery of God? Must we give into our ambient culture's sense that the biblical God cannot be taken seriously by truly discerning and rational minds when they try to understand "the Divine"? Or, in the midst of this apparent contradiction, can we find the lines of harmony in the revealed mysteries? In Divine Speech in Human Words, Fr. Emmanuel Durand unties some of the knots that face us when we reflect on the God of biblical Revelation. In each of the essays gathered here, Fr. Durand sympathetically articulates the tensions and apparent contradictions experienced by contemporary minds as they strive to understand the revealed truth of God. A whole host of topics are covered in this volume: the Cross and the revelation of the Trinity; God's holiness and transcendence; divine immutability and the sorrow of a loving God; Divine Providence and human prayer; the fatherhood of God and eschatology; Christ's way of life; and many others. Drawing philosophical insights from the Thomistic tradition as his intellectual tools, Fr. Durand nonetheless emphasizes the importance of a properly theological mode of reflection, allowing these issues to be illuminated by the revealed truth of Sacred Scripture. Thus, for each of these difficult topics, he shows that a vital theological response must not limit itself to mere logical rigor but, rather, requires metaphysical insight and, above all, sapiential appreciation of God's revealed word. With such instruments in hand, each essay approaches the tensions of biblical revelation with an eager readiness to show how a thoughtful Thomistic practice of biblical theology can guide faith as it seeks an understanding of both contemporary and perennial theological problems.

Download or read book An Aristocratic Compatibilist s Providence written by Petr Dvorský and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-09-26 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph discusses different philosophical and theological components of Aquinas’s view regarding the relation between human agency and divine providence. Against many contemporary scholars it argues that this view includes a plausible form of strong compatibilism whose philosophical premises are largely independent of Aquinas’s theological positions. Its original contributions to the understanding of Aquinas’s thought include an extensive analysis of Aquinas’s complex conception of modalities, his multileveled understanding of freedom, and his aristocratic perception of values.

Download or read book Freedom from Fatalism written by Robert C. Sturdy and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2021-08-09 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel Rutherford's (1600-1661) scholastic theology has been criticized as overly deterministic and even fatalistic, a charge common to Reformed Orthodox theologians of the era. This project applies the new scholarship on Reformed Orthodoxy to Rutherford's doctrine of divine providence. The doctrine of divine providence touches upon many of the disputed points in the older scholarship, including the relationship between divine sovereignty and creaturely freedom, necessity and contingency, predetermination, and the problem of evil. Through a close examination of Rutherford's Latin works of scholastic theology, as well as many of his English works, a portrait emerges of the absolutely free and independent Creator, who does not utilize his sovereignty to dominate his subordinate creatures, but rather to guarantee their freedom. This analysis challenges the older scholarship while making useful contributions to the lively conversation concerning Reformed thought on freedom.

Download or read book Collected Articles on the Existence of God written by Gaven Kerr and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2022-10-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth century witnessed an explosion of scholarly interest in the philosophical thought of St Thomas Aquinas. One of the fruits of that Thomistic revival was an uncovering of St Thomas’s original contributions to many areas of philosophy, not least metaphysics. In the twenty first century, there has been renewed interest in Aquinas’s argumentation for the existence of God. This interest flows from an engagement with the work of the twentieth century scholars in presenting Aquinas’s own characteristic metaphysics. What we have seen is an interpretation and presentation of Aquinas’s proofs for God’s existence in terms of Thomas’s unique insights into the nature of being and the metaphysical structure of reality. Gaven Kerr has been one such author who has contributed in numerous ways to the revival of interest in Aquinas’s argumentation for the existence of God and its metaphysical buttressing. Over the last ten years Kerr has published articles on Aquinas’s various proofs for God’s existence and the metaphysics standing behind those proofs; this volume draws together those articles. Herein are included Kerr’s articles on per se ordered series, existential inertia, the proof in De Ente et Essentia, the argument from motion in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and the five ways themselves. Kerr has also written two new articles for this volume: one on the possibility of demonstrating God’s existence, and the other on how to move from God’s existence to God’s nature. This volume offers an overview of Kerr’s thinking over the last decade on Aquinas’s thought on the existence of God.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas written by Matthew Levering and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant philosophical and theological reception of Thomas Aquinas over the past 750 years.

Download or read book Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act written by Can Laurens Löwe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a novel account of Aquinas's theory of the human act. It argues that Aquinas takes a human act to be a composite of two power-exercises, where one relates to the other as form to matter. The formal component is an act of the will, and the material component is a power-exercise caused by the will, which Aquinas refers to as the 'commanded act.' The book also argues that Aquinas conceptualizes the act of free choice as a hylomorphic composite: it is, materially, an act of the will, but it inherits a form from reason. As the book aims to show, the core idea of Aquinas's hylomorphic action theory is that the exercise of one power can structure the exercise of another power, and this provides a helpful way to think of the presence of cognition in conation and of intention in bodily movement.

Download or read book Bread from Heaven written by Bernhard Blankenhorn and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2021-08-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bread from Heaven offers a contemporary theological synthesis on the Eucharist that brings together classical and critical biblical exegesis, debates on the early history of the Christian liturgy, patristic doctrine, the teachings offered by the Councils of Florence, Trent and Vatican II, and the Church’s lex orandi, all within a framework provided by the Eucharistic theology of Thomas Aquinas. The volume begins with Christ’s Bread of Life discourse in John 6, in light of the Old Testament theme of the manna, and the Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper. These biblical texts offer solid foundation for a theology of Eucharistic sacrifice, presence and Communion. It then continues with a historical and systematic study of the institution of the Eucharist by Christ, with special attention given to the emergence of the first Eucharistic prayers. Then follows a survey of key Christological and ecclesiological themes which undergird Eucharistic theology. The chapters on Eucharistic sacrifice and presence form the heart of the work. Here, the focus moves to key conciliar, patristic and Thomistic insights on these themes. Bread from Heaven clarifies misunderstandings of Eucharistic sacrifice and renders transubstantiation accessible to beginners. Blankenhorn concludes with a study of the consecration, the minister of the Eucharist and the fruits of communion. The chapter on the debate over the words of institution and the epiclesis gives a fresh perspective that integrates both eastern and western tradition. The study of the Eucharistic celebrant strikes a balance between a spirituality of the priest as acting in persona Christi and of the priest as praying in persona ecclesiae. The concluding chapter centers on the Eucharist’s unitive, mystical fruits in the Church. This textbook is ideal for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course on Eucharistic theology. It also seeks to advance the debate on several controversial historical and speculative issues in sacramental theology.

Download or read book Simon Magus in Patristic Medieval and Early Modern Traditions written by Alberto Ferreiro and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of the post-New Testament figure of Simon Magus spanning the patristic era, Middle Ages, and the early modern period as found in art, vernacular literatures, heresiologies, theological texts, hagiographies and homilies.

Download or read book The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Theologie written by Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Makes available new translations from French of works by the leading Thomists in the mid-20th-century debate surrounding ressourcement theologians in the Catholic Church. The articles were authored by Dominican Fathers Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Michel Labourdette, Marie-Joseph Nicolas, and Raymond Bruckberger. The volume contains sixteen articles, thirteen of which have never appeared in English. All the major critical responses of the Dominican Thomists to the nouvelle théologie are here presented chronologically according to the primary debates carried on, respectively, in the journals Revue Thomiste and Angelicum. A lengthy introduction describes the unfolding of the entire debate, article by article, and explains and references the ressourcement interventions"--

Download or read book Vessel of Honor The Virgin Birth and the Ecclesiology of Vatican II written by Brian A. Graebe and published by Emmaus Academic. This book was released on 2021-08-18 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional claim that Mary remained a virgin during the very act of giving birth to Jesus is one of the least known and least understood aspects of Marian doctrine today. Has the contemporary Church retreated from this claim? In Vessel of Honor, Fr. Brian Graebe provides a solid introduction to the historical development of the doctrine and its reception in modern Catholic theology. He shows that, far from being responsible for its contemporary occlusion, the Second Vatican Council did much to reaffirm the traditional understanding of Mary’s perpetual virginity against its radical reinterpretation in the mid-twentieth century. Fr. Graebe demonstrates that the Council’s underappreciated work on Mary’s perpetual virginity must be seen as part of the legacy of Vatican II. Perhaps the most significant and timely contribution of this book is its illumination of the Council’s revival of the patristic association of Mary with the Church. At a time when many claim Vatican II weakened the Church’s commitment to Sacred Tradition, Vessel of Honor amplifies the Council’s clarion call to the Church to receive and preserve God’s revelation with virginal fidelity. Mary’s physical intactness is an icon of the deposit of faith. Vessel of Honor is an important book both for modern Mariology and for the proper reception of the Second Vatican Council.

Download or read book Engaging the Doctrine of Israel written by Matthew Levering and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the dogmatic sequel to Levering’s Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage, in which he argued that God’s purpose in creating the cosmos is the eschatological marriage of God and his people.. God sets this marriage into motion through his covenantal election of a particular people, the people of Israel. Central to this people’s relationship with the Creator God are their Scriptures, exodus, Torah, Temple, land, and Davidic kingship. As a Christian Israelology, this book devotes a chapter to each of these topics, investigating their theological significance both in light of ongoing Judaism and in light of Christian Scripture (Old and New Testaments) and Christian theology. The book makes a significant contribution to charting a path forward for Jewish-Christian dialogue from the perspective of post-Vatican II Catholicism.

Download or read book Pseudo Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas written by O'Rourke and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Aquinas' encounter with Pseudo-Dionysius can be discovered an integral philosophy of reality — a comprehensive vision of existence, depicting the universe in its procession from and return to the Absolute, according to each grade of reality, including man, its place in the hierarchy of being. The point of divergence is the primacy attributed, in turn, by the authors to the Good or to Being as a universal principle. Against this background the present work investigates the influence of Dionysius with respect to the central themes of Aquinas' metaphysics: knowledge of the Absolute, and its nature as transcendent; Being as primary and universal perfection; the diffusion of creation; the hierarchy of creatures and return of all to God as the final end. This is one of the few studies to date which considers in a comprehensive way the relation between these remarkable thinkers. By concrete example and continual reference it illustrates both the pervasive influence of Pseudo-Dionysius and the profound originality of Aquinas.

Download or read book Trinitarian Ecclesiology written by John F. O'Neill and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Venerable Fulton Sheen once famously said that "There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be ? which is, of course, quite a different thing." What is the true understanding of the mystery of the Church? In Lumen Gentium, the Church famously identifies herself as the sacrament of salvation, and various attempts have been made at developing an ecclesiology rooted in this idea. Another approach, nevertheless, prominent in the opening chapter of Lumen Gentium, is the relation of the Church to the Trinity in light of the divine missions, especially those of the Incarnation and Pentecost. Trinitarian Ecclesiology is an example of this approach to the mystery of the Church that places the divine missions at the head and the heart of the work. The order of Charles Journet's work is based on the four causes of the Church. Journet situates the treatise on the hierarchy in its proper place as belonging to the efficient cause of the Church in order to treat the more central mystery of the Church in her formal and material causes, namely the sanctifying gift of fully Christic charity and its visible manifestation. While Journet's magisterial work may already be identified as a Trinitarian Ecclesiology, recent research into the Trinitarian theology of St. Thomas Aquinas has deepened our understanding of his teaching, particularly in the way that creatures can relate to the divine persons in the divine missions. With a clearer understanding of the relation of creatures to the divine persons rooted in grace and its effects, a deeper vision of the mystery of the Church emerges, one that sees the Church as the visible mission of the Holy Spirit, inseparably joined with the visible mission of the Son in the Incarnation. The Great Mystery of Christ and the Church is the unity of the visible missions of the Son and the Spirit who have been sent into the world for our salvation.

Download or read book Introduction to Sacramental Theology written by Jose Granados and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2021-06-18 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction to Sacramental Theology presents a complete overview of sacramental theology from the viewpoint of the body. This viewpoint is supported, in the first place, by Revelation, for which the sacraments are the place where we enter into contact with the body of the risen Jesus. It is a viewpoint, secondly, which is firmly rooted in our concrete human bodily experience, thus allowing for a strong connection between faith and life, creation and redemption. From this point of view, the treatise on the sacraments occupies a strategic role. For the sacraments appear, not as the last of a series of topics (after dealing with Creation, Christ, the Church), but as the original place in which to stand in order to contemplate the entire Christian mystery. This point of view of the body, which resonates with contemporary philosophy, sheds fruitful light on classical themes, such as the relationship of the sacraments with creation, the composition of the sacramental sign, the efficacy of the sacraments, the sacramental character, the role of the minister, or the relationship of the sacrament with the Church as a sacrament. As a result of this approach, the Eucharist takes on a central role, since this is the sacrament where the body of Jesus is made present. The rest of the sacraments are seen as prolongations of the eucharistic body, so as to fill all the time and space of the faithful. This foundation of the theology of the sacraments in eucharistic theology is supported by an analysis of the patristic and medieval tradition. In order to support its conclusions, Introduction to Sacramental Theology examines the doctrine of Scripture (especially St. John and St. Paul), the main patristic and medieval authors (St. Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas), the response of Trent to the protestant challenges, up to modern authors such as Scheeben, Rahner, Ratzinger, or Chauvet, including the teaching of Vatican II about the Church as a kind of sacrament.

Download or read book The Renewal of Medieval Metaphysics written by Dragos Calma and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-08-30 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume exclusively devoted to the Expositio by Berthold of Moosburg (c.1295-c.1361) on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. The breadth of its vision surpasses every other known commentary on the Elements of Theology, for it seeks to present a coherent account of the Platonic tradition as such (unified through the concord of Proclus and Dionysius) and at the same time to consolidate and transform a legacy of metaphysics developed in the German-speaking lands by Peripatetic authors (like Albert the Great, Ulrich of Strassburg, and Dietrich of Freiberg). This volume aims to provide a basis for further research and discussion of this unduly overlooked commentary, whose historical-philosophical importance as an attempt to refound Western metaphysics is beginning to be recognized. The publication of this volume has received the generous support of the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the ERC Consolidator Grant NeoplAT: A Comparative Analysis of the Middle East, Byzantium and the Latin West (9th-16th Centuries), grant agreement No 771640 (www.neoplat.eu). “[...] the volume displays various aspects of the richness hidden in this Commentary on Proclus: the contributions mentioned here are merely representative of such richness. Nonetheless, a desideratum of the research on Berthold remains a closer analysis of his polemical relations with his still unknown adversaries.” -Giuseppe Thomas Vitale, Thomas-Institut der Universität zu Köln, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 89.2

Download or read book A Brief Systematic Theology of the Symbol written by Joshua Mobley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do Christians understand the Trinity? How does this understanding relate to other Christian teachings? In conversation with key thinkers in contemporary and classical theology, particularly Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, this book argues that a theology of symbols can help us glimpse the mystery of the Trinity and see how this central Christian teaching corresponds to Christian understandings of creation, humanity and the church. A symbol is not here understood as an arbitrary sign, but as a sign that mediates the presence of the symbolized. Joshua Mobley examines the understanding of the Father as “symbolized” in the Son who is the “symbol” of the Father by the “symbolism” of the Spirit, the personal agent of unity between Father and Son. These trinitarian relations then structure creaturely relations to God: God is symbolized in creation, which is a symbol of God by participation in the Son, and the church is symbolism, the union of creation with God by the power of the Spirit. Mobley thus argues that a theology of symbol helps coordinate trinitarian theology with key themes in Christian dogmatics.