Results by title

This innovative book discloses Karl Rahner's foremost achievement: discovering and delineating an ethos of Catholicism, a multi-faceted and comprehensive approach to life in Christ. Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics does so by placing the German Jesuit and his teacher, philosopher Martin Heidegger, into a richly detailed dialogue on aesthetics. The book treats classic Rahner topics such as anthropology and Christology. But it breaks new ground by exploring themes such as angels, Mary, and the apocalypse, juxtaposed with analogous philosophical topics in Heidegger.

Kindred Spirits takes us inside a remarkable network of Catholic historians, theologians, poets, and activists who pushed against both the far-right surge in interwar Europe and the secularizing tendencies of the leftist movements active in the early to mid-twentieth century. With meticulous attention to the complexity of real lives, Brenna Moore explores how this group sought a middle way anchored in “spiritual friendship”—religiously meaningful friendship understood as uniquely capable of facing social and political challenges.

For this group, spiritual friendship was inseparable from resistance to European xenophobia and nationalism, anti-racist activism in the United States, and solidarity with Muslims during the Algerian War. Friendship, they believed, was a key to both divine and human realms, a means of accessing the transcendent while also engaging with our social and political existence. Some of the figures are still well known—philosopher Jacques Maritain, Nobel Prize laureate Gabriela Mistral, influential Islamicist Louis Massignon, poet of the Harlem renaissance Claude McKay—while others have unjustly faded from memory. Much more than an idealized portrait of a remarkable group of Catholic intellectuals from the past, Kindred Spirits is a compelling exploration of both the beauty and flaws of a vibrant social network worth remembering.

Anton Štrukelj, in this English edition of his book Kneeling Theology, which was published in German, Italian, Polish, Russian and Slovenian, based his theme on the concept first developed by Hans Urs von Balthasar. This Swiss intellectual is considered one of the most important theologians of the 20th century. Štrukelj sees as his task, through a synthetic survey of questions, to seek from his subjects a holistic perspective regarding the role of the theologian, without doing a critical analysis of all their work. Kneeling Theology analyzes the process and its consequences that gave rise to the religious and cultural developments of the past and the present. It is his thesis that the essence of theology should flow from holiness. He relies for his evidence on the life and work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (which included the insights of Adrienne von Speyr, physician and mystic), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), the Slovenian theologian Anton Strle (now servant of God) and Anton Vovk, former Archbishop of Ljubljana, fearless witness of Christ and his Church, also servant of God. Štrukelj's purpose with this book is to point out that Catholic theology is best served, not only by competent research and a thorough knowledge of Church tradition, but by theologians who approach their work prayerfully and on their knees. The rich theological and pastoral heritage that has been bequeathed to us by a small group of special people in this book has come about because of their scholarship and their holiness. They have, each in their own way, demonstrated what it means to do theology on their knees, and they have shared their scholarship and insights with us.

Knowing Jesus Christ answers the call of John Paul II, at the beginning of the new millennium, to contemplate the face of Christ. It covers all the main topics of Christology, taking a broadly historical approach to the doctrine of Christ. After laying the foundation of the doctrine in Scripture with the first four of its twelve chapters, it then goes on in the middle four chapters to trace the formation of the Church's doctrine of Christ first in the patristic age and then in its medieval continuation, especially at the hand of Thomas Aquinas, which built on the patristic sources. The doctrine in its medieval form provides the vital bridge between the early Church and the modern era. The final four chapters discuss modern questions and present new approaches to Christology (for example, Rahner), beginning with the new impetus given by the Reformed tradition with its theology of the cross that gives the doctrine new relevance in an age, like our own, that has seen so much suffering through wars and oppression. The book ends with the writings of Benedict XVI, who proposed that we best discover who Christ is through his prayers as this has been recorded in the Gospels. Knowing Jesus Christ has been written in an easily accessible style, so that it may both serve academic purposes and be read as a resource for one's own meditation on the person and saving mysteries of Christ.