This is the first English translation of the last two theological works of Eusebius of Caesarea, Against Marcellus and On Ecclesiastical Theology. The first text was composed after the deposition of Marcellus of Ancyra in 336 to justify the action of the council fathers in ordering the deposition on the grounds of heresy, contending that Marcellus was “Sabellian” (or modalist) on the Trinity and a follower of Paul of Samosata (hence adoptionist) in Christology. Relying heavily upon extensive quotations from a treatise Marcellus wrote against Asterius the Sophist, this text provides important information about ecclesiastical politics in the period before and just after the Council of Nicea, and endeavors to demonstrate Marcellus’s erroneous interpretation of several key biblical passages that had been under discussion since before the council. In doing so, Eusebius criticizes Marcellus’s inadequate account of the distinction between the persons of the Trinity, eschatology, and the Church’s teaching about the divine and human identities of Christ.

On Ecclesiastical Theology, composed circa 338/339 just before Eusebius’s death, and perhaps in response to the amnesty for deposed bishops enacted by Constantius after the death of Constantine in 377 and the possibility of Marcellus’s return to his see, continues to lay out the criticisms initially put forward in Against Marcellus, again utilizing quotations from Marcellus’s book against Asterius. However, we see in this text a much more systematic explanation of Eusebius’s objections to the various elements of Marcellus’s theology and what he sees as the proper orthodox articulation of those elements.

Long overlooked for statements at odds with later orthodoxy, even written off as heretical because allegedly “semi-Arian,” recent scholarship has demonstrated the tremendous influence these texts had on the Greek theological tradition in the fourth century, especially on the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. In addition to their influence, they are some of the few complete texts that we have from Greek theologians in the immediate period following the Council of Nicea in 325, thus filling a gap in the materials available for research and teaching in this critical phase of theological development.

The translation is interweaved with a commentary to provide the reader with some guidance through the complexities of Gregory's arguments. The introduction includes an overview of the history of Apollinarianism and discusses the extent to which it is possible to reconstruct, from the fragments quoted by Gregory, the arguments of Apolinarius's Apodeixis to which he is responding. It also examines the background to and the chronology of both of Gregory's anti-Apollinarian works, and looks critically at the arguments that they deploy.

Apologist is the English translation of two of Chrysostom's treatises, written about 378 and 382, aimed at provoking the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Nothing is more central to the religious thinking of Erasmus of Rotterdam than the reality of Christ—in his eyes, that supreme revelation of divine mercy embodied in the life of Jesus of Nazareth to which Christian scriptures variously testify, but also the divine presence undergirding that life-centering ethic of love and peace, what Erasmus calls the “philosophy of Christ.” The purpose of this book is to distill the Christological elements from his vast corpus in a manner that shows the range, coherence, and value of Erasmus’ thinking on Christological questions. While Erasmus works within the broad parameters of orthodox teaching, his critical skills with languages, accent on rhetoric in theology, keen sense of irony, appreciation for the limits of human knowledge, incipient sense of history, emphasis on the welfare of humanity, and passionate defense of peace, give his work a distinctive stamp and thereby make a singular contribution to the history of Christology. What Erasmus contributes to discussions of the divinity of Christ is a counsel of restraint in metaphysical speculation, an accent on the revelatory breadth of the eternal Word of God, and an invitation to think of Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God. But the central impulse of the Christology of Erasmus is the affirmation of the full incarnation of Christ in human existence, abstaining as much as possible from docetic insulation of the divine from the struggles of human experience, in order to highlight the redemptive capacity of Christ for the transformation of human life. With that, the ethical capstone of Erasmus’ reflections on Christ centers on the responsibility to imitate Christ’s love for others, and thus for advancing the cause of peace in personal and social life. This books adds the voice of this remarkable Catholic humanist to the history of theological discussions in the early modern era, while also restoring its rightful place in the broader history of Christology.

Investigating Vatican II is a collection of Fr. Jared Wicks’ recent articles on Vatican II, and presents the Second Vatican Council as an event to which theologians contributed in major ways and from which Catholic theology can gain enormous insights. Taken as a whole, the articles take the reader into the theological dynamics of Vatican II at key moments in the Council’s historical unfolding. Wicks promotes a contemporary re-reception of Vatican II’s theologically profound documents, especially as they featured God’s incarnate and saving Word, laid down principles of Catholic ecumenical engagement, and articulated the church’s turn to the modern world with a new “face” of respect and dedication to service. From the original motivations of Pope John XXIII in convoking the Council, Investigating Vatican II goes on to highlight the profound insights offered by theologians who served behind the scenes as Council experts. In its chapters, the book moves through the Council’s working periods, drawing on the published and non-published records, with attention to the Council’s dramas, crises, and breakthroughs. It brings to light the bases of Pope Francis’s call for synodality in a listening church, while highlighting Vatican II’s mandate to all of prayerful biblical reading, for fostering a vibrant “joy in the Gospel.”

Between the years AD 519 and 523, Fulgentius engaged in correspondence with a group of Latin-speaking monks from Scythia, and that correspondence is translated into English--almost all of it for the first time--in this volume.

Ordinary people of antiquity interacted with the supernatural through a mosaic of beliefs and rituals. Exploring everyday life from 200 BCE to the end of the first century CE, Robert Knapp shows that Jews and polytheists lived with the gods in very similar ways. Traditional interactions provided stability even in times of crisis, while changing a relationship risked catastrophe for the individual, his family, and his community. However, people in both traditions did at times leave behind their long-honored rites to try something new. The Dawn of Christianity reveals why some people in Judea and then in the Roman and Greek worlds embraced a new approach to the forces and powers in their daily lives.

Knapp traces the emergence of Christianity from its stirrings in the eastern Mediterranean, where Jewish monotheism coexisted with polytheism and prayer mixed with magic. In a time receptive to prophetic messages and supernatural interventions, Jesus of Nazareth convinced people to change their beliefs by showing, through miracles, his direct connection to god-like power. The miracle of the Resurrection solidified Jesus’s supernatural credentials. After his death, followers continued to use miracles and magic to spread Jesus’s message of reward for the righteous in this life and immortality in the next.

Many Jews and polytheists strongly opposed the budding movement but despite major setbacks Christianity proved resilient and adaptable. It survived long enough to be saved by a second miracle, the conversion of Emperor Constantine. Hand in hand with empire, Christianity began its long march through history.

Six important documents for scholars of early church history

This volume includes English translations of several documents concerning the Luciferians, a group of fourth-century Christians whose name derives from the bishop Lucifer of Cagliari. Documents include a confession of faith written for Emperor Theodosius I and a theological treatise written for his wife by Luciferian clergyman Faustinus, the first English translation of a Luciferian petition to Theodosius that focuses on the persecution the community has suffered, Theodosius’s imperial law in response to the Luciferians, two letters composed by Luciferians that purport to represent correspondence from the bishop Athanasius of Alexandria to Lucifer, and the priest Jerome’s Dialogus adversus Luciferianos. These texts highlight connections between developments in Christian theology and local Christian communities in the course of the fourth century.

Features:

• The first English translation of Faustinus’s Libellus precum
• An overview of the development of late antique theology and Christianity
• An introduction to Luciferian beliefs and the translated texts

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Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 376–444) is best known for his defense of orthodoxy at the time of the Nestorian controversy over the nature of Christ. However, by far the larger part of Cyril’s literary output consisted of commentaries on books of both Old and New Testaments, written before the Christological debate was sparked off in 428. One of these works, of major proportions, was the so-called Glaphyra (“elegant comments”) on the Pentateuch. This comprises a total of thirteen separate “books,” or volumes: seven on Genesis, three on Exodus, and one each on Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The comments primarily concern the narrative portions of the Pentateuch, hence the greater space given to Genesis, though a number of the legal prescriptions are also treated. This present volume, containing all seven books on Genesis, is the first of a projected two-volume set which will offer a translation of the whole Glaphyra for the first time in English. Cyril’s aims within the commentary are both theological and pastoral. His chosen method begins with a consideration of the historia. Here the Alexandrian patriarch deals with the text at the literal level. At this stage he explains any historical, cultural, and at times even linguistic and textual issues presented within the passage, which is then followed by some theological instruction or lessons of a more practical nature based upon the literal interpretation. The exposition then moves on to the theoria. This is Cyril’s preferred term for the contemplation of the spiritual sense, that is to say, the mystery of Christ which he firmly held lay hidden beneath the surface of the Old Testament text. With great adeptness and consistency Cyril identifies elements within the ancient narratives as figures, or “types and shadows,” of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Church, and the teachings of the gospel.

The translation of the commentary of Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 376-444) on the Pentateuch, known as the Glaphyra, or “elegant comments,” is now completed by this second volume. Volume 1 contained the whole of his remarks on Genesis, and now Volume 2 presents his comments on Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, along with indices for the entire work. At this early stage in his patriarchate Cyril was an avid expositor of Scripture, on books of both Testaments, possibly undertaking this work as a model and guide for the clergy under his direction. While Cyril’s other large-scale commentaries on Old Testament books, such as Isaiah and the Minor Prophets (the latter commentary also published in translation by CUA Press), followed a verse-by-verse approach, the Glaphyra is more thematic. As Cyril works through the narrative passages of the Pentateuch, he pauses to explain those elements within the text that present possible difficulties or admit alternative interpretations, and invariably concludes each section by bringing out spiritual lessons of benefit to the congregation. Many of these latter relate to Christ, since, for Cyril, a Christological reading of the Old Testament was unavoidable. While in the Glaphyra it was not Cyril’s purpose to tackle the legal passages within the Pentateuch, a task that he wished to reserve for a separate work of an entirely different character (De adoratione et cultu in spiritu et veritate, “Concerning Worship and Service in Spirit and in Truth”), he does nevertheless here depart from his own remit on occasion and deal with some of the more prominent ceremonial passages. Cyril gives considerable space, for example, to the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and the levitical ritual for the cleansing of the leper, among others. As with Volume 1, Cyril’s treatment of these books is published here for the first time in English translation.

Essential reading for biblical studies students and scholars interested in cutting-edge critical theory

The current global ecological crisis has prompted a turn to the nonhuman in critical theory. This book breaks new ground in biblical studies as the first to bring nonhuman theory to bear on the gospels and Acts. Nonhuman theory, a confluence of several of the main theoretical streams that have issued forth since the heyday of high poststructuralism, includes affect theory, posthuman animality studies, critical plant studies, object-oriented new materialisms, and assemblage theory. Nonhuman theory dismantles and reassembles the Western concept of “the human” that coalesced during the Enlightenment and testifies to other conceptions of the human and of the nonhuman, not least those found in the canonical gospels and Acts. Stephen D. Moore’s exegetical explorations and defamiliarizations of these overly familiar texts and excavations of their incessantly erased strangeness are the central feature of this provocative book.

Features

• New paths in biblical ecotheology and ecocriticism
• A significant contribution to the analysis of emotions in biblical texts
• Class resource for courses in methods for biblical studies, the gospels, and the Bible and ecology

The Incarnate Lord, then, considers central themes in Christology from a metaphysical perspective. Particular attention is given to the hypostatic union, the two natures of Christ, the knowledge and obedience of Jesus, the passion and death of Christ, his descent into hell, and resurrection. A central concern of the book is to argue for the perennial importance of ontological principles of Christology inherited from patristic and scholastic authors. However, the book also seeks to advance an interpretation of Thomistic Christology in a modern context. The teaching Aquinas, then, is central to the study, but it is placed in conversation with various modern theologians, such as Karl Barth, Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Ultimately the goal of the work is to suggest how traditional Catholic theology might thrive under modern conditions, and also develop fruitfully from engaging in contemporary controversies.

Was Jesus a wisdom sage or an apocalyptic prophet? Did later followers view him as the Danielic "Son of Man" or did he use this expression for himself? These are familiar questions among historical Jesus scholars, and there has been much debate over Jesus' eschatological outlook since the controversial work of the Jesus Seminar. This book asks what is at stake in these debates and explores how scholarly constructions of Christian origins participate in contemporary efforts to confirm or challenge particular understandings of the essence of Christianity. Proposing that a Jesus-centered perspective has overly shaped our interpretation of the sayings source Q, Johnson-DeBaufre offers alternative readings to key Q texts, readings that place an interest in the community that shaped Jesus at the center of inquiry.

Explore the diverse character of emerging Christian narratives

This book presents essays that show how prophetic and priestly emphases in Luke and Acts, and emphasis on Jesus’s existence prior to creation in the Gospel of John, are reworked in some second- and third-century Christian literature. Early Christians interpreted and expressed the storylines of Jesus, Mary, and other important figures in ways that created new images and stories. Contributors show the effect of including rhetography, the rhetoric of a text that prompts images and pictures in the mind of a hearer or reader, in interpretation of texts.

Features:

• Readings that attempt to account for the development of richly creative and complicated early Christian traditions
• Essays bridging New Testament studies and interpretation of Early Christian literature
• Interpretations that integrate social and rhetorical interpretations

Jesus Becoming Jesus presents a theological interpretation of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Unlike many conventional biblical commentaries, Weinandy concentrates on the theological content contained within the Synoptic Gospels. He does thi

Jesus Becoming Jesus, Volume 2: A Theological Interpretation of the Gospel of John: Prologue and the Book of Signs follows upon the first volume of this series entitled Jesus Becoming Jesus. The first volume was a theological interpretation of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Unlike many conventional biblical commentaries, Weinandy concentrates on the theological content contained within John’s Gospel. He does this in the light of the Church’s doctrinal and theological tradition, particularly in keeping with the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Verbum. This is accomplished through a close reading of John’s Gospel, theologically interpreting each chapter of the Gospel sequentially. In so doing he also takes into account the Johannine corpus as a whole. He also relates John’s Gospel to relevant material found within the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Corpus and other New Testament writings. This original theological interpretation focuses primarily on the intertwining theological themes contained within John’s Gospel, specifically within the Prologue and the Book of Signs – light and darkness, the seven miracle-signs, the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, the seven “I Am” sayings, the contentious dialogues with the Jews, Jesus’ relationship to his Father as the Father’s incarnate Word and Son, etc. Within all of these interlocking themes one finds the importance of Jesus’ saving actions – the salvific works of his Father. The overarching theme of this book, as the title suggests, is that Jesus, being named Jesus, throughout his public ministry is enacting his name and so becoming who he is – YHWH-Saves. Weinandy offers a singular, vibrant, and luminous reading of John’s Gospel; one that reveals the Evangelist’s theological depth and doctrinal sophistication. In so doing, Weinandy makes manifest the particular beauty of the Gospel According to John.

Jesus Becoming Jesus, Volume 3 follows upon the previous two volumes of this series entitled Jesus Becoming Jesus. Volume 1 was a theological interpretation of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and volume 2 was a theological interpretation of the Prologue and Book of Signs of John’s Gospel (chapters 1-12). Unlike many conventional biblical commentaries, Weinandy concentrates on the theological content contained within John’s Gospel. This is accomplished through a close reading of John’s Gospel, theologically interpreting each chapter of the Gospel sequentially. In so doing he also takes into account the Johannine corpus as a whole. He also relates John’s Gospel to relevant material found within the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Corpus and other New Testament writings. In this present volume, Weinandy’s original theological interpretation focuses first on the Evangelist’s narrative of the Last Supper, which includes Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet, followed upon his lengthy farewell address and his ensuing High Priestly Prayer (chapter 13-17). Although Jesus speaks of his leaving his disciples, yet their hearts should not be troubled, for he is going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, and he will also send them another Counselor, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will not only convict the world sin, but he will also empower the disciples to profess their faith in Jesus as the Father’s Son, even in the midst of persecution. All that Jesus tells his disciple in his final discourse, he then prays that his Father will accomplish through his forthcoming death and resurrection – above all that his disciples will share in the same oneness of love that he and his Father possess. Weinandy masterfully treats John’s Passion and Resurrection Narratives. He not only theologically interprets the uniqueness of the Evangelist’s narratives, but also how his narratives insect with the Synoptic accounts. Moreover, Weinandy’s theological reading of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection weaves together John’s soteriology, ecclesiology, and sacramentality – all of which are founded upon the Incarnation, that Jesus is the Father’s Spirit-filled incarnate Son. As the title suggests, Jesus, being named Jesus, in his death and resurrection, definitively enacts his name and so becoming who he is – YHWH-Saves.

Reconstructions of Jesus occurred in Asia long before the Western search for the historical Jesus began in earnest. This enterprise sprang up in seventh-century China and seventeenth-century India, encouraged by the patronage and openness of the Chinese and Indian imperial courts. While the Western quest was largely a Protestant preoccupation, in Asia the search was marked by its diversity: participants included Hindus, Jains, Muslims, Catholics, and members of the Church of the East.

During the age of European colonialism, Jesus was first seen by many Asians as a tribal god of the farangis, or white Europeans. But as his story circulated, Asians remade Jesus, at times appreciatively and at other times critically. R. S. Sugirtharajah demonstrates how Buddhist and Taoist thought, combined with Christian insights, led to the creation of the Chinese Jesus Sutras of late antiquity, and explains the importance of a biography of Jesus composed in the sixteenth-century court of the Mughal emperor Akbar. He also brings to the fore the reconstructions of Jesus during the Chinese Taiping revolution, the Korean Minjung uprising, and the Indian and Sri Lankan anti-colonial movements.

In Jesus in Asia, Sugirtharajah situates the historical Jesus beyond the narrow confines of the West and offers an eye-opening new chapter in the story of global Christianity.

In this sequel volume to his Dark Passages of the Bible (CUA Press, 2013), author Matthew Ramage turns his attention from the Old to the New Testament, now tackling truth claims bearing directly on the heart of the Christian faith cast into doubt by contemporary New Testament scholarship: Did God become man in Jesus, or did the first Christians make Jesus into God? Was Jesus' resurrection a historical event, or rather a myth fabricated by the early Church? Will Jesus indeed return to earth on the last day, or was this merely the naïve expectation of ancient believers that reasonable people today ought to abandon?

Not a Jew marginally, but centrally

In this book, LaCocque presents the case that Jesus was totally and unquestionably a Jew. He lived as a Jew, thought as a Jew, debated as a Jew, acted as a Jew and died as a Jew. He had no intention of creating a new religion; rather, he was a reformer of the Judaism of his day. True, his critique went far beyond an intellectual subversion. In fact, Jesus progressively thought of himself as the “Son of Man” inaugurating the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Features:

• Focused attention given to the historical Jesus and not Christianity or Christology
• Addresses restricted sources, namely, the Synoptic Gospels
• Close examination of Jesus’s way of thinking, teaching, and behaving

In Jesus the Mediator, William L. Brownsberger offers an account of the human psychology assumed by the Second Person of the Trinity in light of its salvific significance

Jacopo Sannazaro (1456–1530), considered by some authorities the finest Neo-Latin poet of the Italian Renaissance, spent most of his career in Naples, where he was a member and ultimately the head of the Accademia Pontaniana. He is most famous for having written, in Italian, the first pastoral romance in European literature, the Arcadia (1504). But after this early work, Sannazaro devoted himself entirely to Latin poetry modeled on his beloved Virgil. In addition to his epic The Virgin Birth (1526), which earned him the title of “the Christian Virgil,” he also composed Piscatory Eclogues, an innovative adaption of the eclogue form, as well as elegies, epigrams, and a number of shorter works.This volume contains the first complete English translation of all of Sannazaro’s poetry in Latin, accompanied by extensive notes.

Light and Glory offers an engaging comparison of the teachings of seven thirteenth-century theologians -- three Franciscans and four Dominicans -- on the subject of the transfiguration of Christ.

The nineteenth-century Mormon prophet Joseph Smith published a new scripture dominated by the figure of Jesus Christ, dictated revelations presented as the words of the Christian savior, spoke of encountering Jesus in visions, and told his followers that their messiah and king would soon return to the earth. From the author of the definitive life of Brigham Young comes a biography of the Mormon Jesus that revises and enriches our understanding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Over the past two hundred years, Jesus has connected the Latter-day Saints to broader currents of Christianity, even while particular Mormon beliefs and practices have been points of differentiation and conflict. The Latter-day Saints came to understand Jesus Christ as the literal son of his father, the exalted brother of God’s other spirit children, who should aspire to become like him. They gave new meaning to many titles for Jesus Christ: Father, Son of God, Lord, Savior, Firstborn, Elder Brother, Bridegroom, and Jehovah.

While some early beliefs became canonized and others were discarded, Jesus Christ remains central to Latter-day Saint scripture, doctrine, and religious experience. Contemporary Mormon leaders miss no opportunity to proclaim their church’s devotion to the Christian savior, in part because evangelical Protestants denounce Mormonism as a non-Christian cult. This tension between Mormonism's distinctive claims and the church’s desire to be accepted as Christian, John G. Turner argues, continues to shape Mormon identity and attract new members to the church.

This work presents in English translation the largest collection ever assembled of the sayings and stories of Jesus in Arabic Islamic literature. In doing so, it traces a tradition of love and reverence for Jesus that has characterized Islamic thought for more than a thousand years. An invaluable resource for the history of religions, the collection documents how one culture, that of Islam, assimilated the towering religious figure of another, that of Christianity. As such, it is a work of great significance for the understanding of both, and of profound implications for modern-day intersectarian relations and ecumenical dialogue.

Tarif Khalidi's introduction and commentaries place the sayings and stories in their historical context, showing how and why this "gospel" arose and the function it served within Muslim devotion. The Jesus that emerges here is a compelling figure of deep and life-giving spirituality. The sayings and stories, some 300 in number and arranged in chronological order, show us how the image of this Jesus evolved throughout a millennium of Islamic history.

A close look at how Strauss's engagement with popular and scholarly controversies influenced his study of the Gospels

David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus Critically Examined is known as a monumental contribution to the critical, scientific study of religion and Christian origins. It was widely read and influenced literary and historical research on the Bible as well as critical philosophy between Hegel and Nietzsche. Less well-known are Strauss's writings from the same period on "the nocturnal side of nature," paranormal phenomena such as demon possession, animal magnetism, and the ghost-seeing of Frederike Hauffe, the famous "Seeress of Prevorst."

Features:

• Illuminates unfamiliar features of early nineteenth-century theology, philosophy, and medicine showing how spirituality and science blended together in these fields
• Demonstrates the importance of Western esotericism and popular religion in the history of modern biblical studies
• Sheds new light on Strauss’s study of the Gospels as myths, his critique of miracles and his account of the historical Jesus

Amazingly, no one ever seems to have looked at Jesus as a philosopher, or his teaching as philosophy. Yet no one in history has ever had a more radically new philosophy, or made more of a difference to philosophy, than Jesus. He divided all human history into two, into "B.C." and "A.D."; and the history of philosophy is crucial to human history, since philosophy is crucial to man; so how could He not also divide philosophy?

This book (1) looks at Jesus as a complete human being (as well as divine), therefore also as a philosopher; (2) looks at philosophy as Jesus' pre-modern contemporaries did, as a wisdom, a world-view, and a way of life rather than as a super-science (Descartes, Hegel) or as a servant-science (Hobbes, Hume); and (3) looks at philosophy in light of Jesus rather than at Jesus in light of philosophy. It explores the consequences of Etienne Gilson's point that when St. John brought Christianity and Greek philosophy into contact and identified the Messiah the Jews had most deeply sought with the logos that the Greeks had most deeply sought, nothing happened to Christ but something happened to the logos.

This book explores the most radical revolution in the history of philosophy, the differences Jesus made to metaphysics (the philosophy of being), to epistemology (the philosophy of knowing), to anthropology (the philosophy of man), and to philosophical ethics and politics.

And, besides, it has the greatest ending of any philosophy book in a century.

Contents

Introduction 1: Who Is It For?

Introduction 2: How Is Jesus a Philosopher?

Introduction 3: What Are the Four Great Questions of Philosophy?

I. Jesus’ Metaphysics (What is real?)

* Jesus’ Jewish Metaphysics

* Jesus’ New Name for God

* The Metaphysics of Love

* The Moral Consequences of Metaphysics

* Sanctity as the Key to Ontology

* The Metaphysics of “I AM”

II. Jesus’ Epistemology (How do we know what is real?)

III. Jesus’ Anthropology (Who are we who know what is real?)

IV. Jesus’ Ethics (What should we be to be more real?)

* Christian Personalism: Seeing “Jesus only”

* Jesus and Legalism

* Jesus and Relativism

* Jesus and the Secret of Moral Success

* Jesus and Sex

* Jesus and Social Ethics: Solidarity

* Jesus and Politics: Is He Left or Right?

Conclusion

Index

Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, is author of over forty books, including two from St. Augustine’s Press, Socratic Logic and The Sea Within.

A Catholic Quest for the Historical Christ brings together a collection of interrelated essays on the historical Jesus and primitive Christology. Sensitive to the diverse, but traditionally Protestant assumptions and perspectives of the "Quest" as well as to the widely lamented disconnect between New Testament exegesis and classical dogmatic theology, an alternative approach is proposed in these pages. Ecumenical and conciliar reference points, along with non-confessional historical methods (e.g. archeology) shape the basic project, which nevertheless assumes some distinctive and important Catholic contours. This particular synthesis injects the voice of a missing interlocutor into an established conversation that has not infrequently been both historically confused and dogmatically (and philosophically) numb. The book is divided into three sections: Historical Foundations, Theological Perspectives, and Jesus and the Scriptures. While the individual chapters represent independent probes, the cumulative argument and arc of the study drives in clear and concerted directions. After a first approach to the Gospel data, attentive at once to historiographical and historical questions, a series of interventions reorienting the present scholarly discussion are suggested. These various, foundational essays lead, finally, to a sustained mediation on the mind of Christ, considered as a unique reader of the Scriptures: a meditation having its proper reflex and reflection in the way Christians themselves, as readers of the Gospels, participate in the Lord's own encounter with the living Word.

Risen Indeed? Resurrection and Doubt in the Gospel of Mark traces the literary dynamics and explores the theological dimensions of the Gospel of Mark’s thematization of skepticism regarding resurrection. In every place where it seems to depict resurrection—Jesus's and others'—Mark evades the issue of whether resurrection actually occurs. Austin Busch argues that, despite Mark's abbreviated and ambiguous conclusion, this gospel does not downplay resurrection but rather foregrounds it, imagining Jesus’s death and restoration to life as a divine plot to overcome Satan through cunning deception. Risen Indeed? constitutes a careful literary reading of Mark's Gospel, as well as an assessment of Mark's impact on the traditions of Christian literature and theology that emerged in its wake.

This book enables one to judge Theodore's christological statements in the wider context of how he conceives of Christ's roles in salvation.

Salvation through Temptation describes the development of predominant Greek and Latin Christian conceptions of temptation and of the work of Christ to heal and restore humankind in the context of that temptation, focusing on Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas as well-developed examples of Greek and Latin thought on these matters. Maximus and Thomas represent two trajectories concerning the woundedness of human emotionality in the wake of the primordial human sin. Heidgerken argues that Maximus stands in essential continuity with earlier Greek ascetic theology, which conceives of the weakness of fallen humankind in demonological categories, so that the Pauline law of sin is bound to external demonic agents that act upon the human mind through thoughts, desires, and sensory impressions. For Thomas, on the other hand, this wound consists primarily of an internal disordering of the faculties that results from the withdrawal of original grace: concupiscence or the fomes peccati. Yet even in this framework, the devil plays a significant role in Thomas’s account of postlapsarian temptation. On the basis of these differing frameworks for human temptation, Heidgerken demonstrates the centrality of Christ’s exemplarity in the Greek account and the centrality of Christ’s moral perfections in the Latin account. As a consequence of these emphases, the Greek tradition of Maximus places distinct limits on the ability of human emotionality (even that of Christ) to be perfected in this life, whereas Thomas’s approach allows Christ to completely embody a perfected form of human emotionality in his earthly life. Reciprocally, Thomas’s account of Christ’s moral perfections and virtue places distinct limits on his affirmation of Christ’s experience of postlapsarian temptation, whereas Maximus’s account allows for Christ to experience interior forms of temptation that more closely mirror the concrete moral experiences and circumstances of fallen human beings. Salvation through Temptation recommends a retrieval of early ascetic theology and demonology as the best contemporary systematic and ecumenically-viable approach to Christ’s temptation and victory over the devil.

The discovery and publication of the Apocryphon of James from Nag Hammadi has significantly expanded the spectrum of early Christian literature about Jesus. In this informative monograph, which has been out of print until now, Ron Cameron provides a form-critical analysis which aims to clarify the ways in which the sayings of Jesus were used and transformed in early Christian communities. By recognizing the importance of this particular document, scholars will no longer be able to regard the synoptic gospels of the New Testament as unique or sufficient for understanding the trajectory of the Jesus tradition. The "synoptic problem" must now be seen as a gospels problem.

This volume presents for the first time in the Fathers of the Church series the work of an early Christian writer who did not write in either Greek or Latin. It offers new English translations of selected prose works by St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. A.D. 309-373).

Twenty-nine in all, these letters cover all but three of Cyril's years as a bishop. The first twelve were published in 2009 (Fathers of the Church 118). The present volume completes the set. Festal letters were used in Alexandria primarily to announce the beginning of Lent and the date of Easter. They also served a catechetical purpose, however, allowing the Patriarch an annual opportunity to write pastorally not just about issues facing the entire see, but also about the theological issues of the day. Thus, in these letters we catch a glimpse of Cyril the pastor writing about complex theology in an uncomplicated way. These letters also illuminate other realities of the ancient church in Alexandria, especially the relationship with the Jewish community and the rising influence of asceticism.

What does episcopal fraternity and communio look like? This central question is explored through the erudition and experience of Archbishop Anthony Fisher, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Australia. Unity in Christ, based upon a series of addresses given to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) at their Special Assembly in 2022, delves into the themes associated with episcopal unity. By surveying the Christian tradition, beginning with the scriptures and then through various periods (Apostolic generation, patristic, scholastic, Vatican II, recent post Vatican II developments such as synodality) a coherent picture of episcopal togetherness is presented. What becomes clear is that unity among Christ’s disciples and their successors is not simply an ideal but rather a constitutive element of their office. They are called to love as Christ loved, expressed above all through genuine friendship with one another. The consequences of this fraternity and communio have implications in areas such as spirituality, preaching and fraternal correction, among others. This second feature, the implications of episcopal fraternity and communio, are explored through Archbishop Fisher’s twenty years of experience as a bishop of the Catholic Church. By providing concrete examples of lived episcopal fraternity and communio, Fisher offers a glimpse into both the challenges and fruits of living out Christ’s call that "they might all be one" (Jn 17:21).

Walking with Jesus Christ: Catholic and Evangelical Visions of the Moral Life is the collected essays and consensus statements of the second round of the National Evangelical-Catholic Dialogue. In 2021 the National Evangelical-Catholic Dialogue completed its four-year round of discussion on the moral life, at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. Sessions were held each year on the following topics. In 2017, the dialogue discussed the norms governing the moral life. In 2018, the dialogue discussed sexual ethics. In 2019, the dialogue discussed social ethics. Finally, in 2021 the dialogue discussed the relationship of the moral life to eschatology. At each of the annual meetings, members presented background papers that formed the basis of that meeting’s discussion and became starting points for constructing a common statement. These common statements and background papers make up this book. The members of the dialogue hope this book will provide a fruitful starting point for future conversations between evangelicals and Catholics. The Catholic essays begin with the contributions of Catholic theologians Daniel Keating, William Stevenson and Christian Washburn, who examine the various norms for Catholic moral theology including the role of Scripture, tradition, magisterium, and natural law (2017). David Fleischacker, Daniel Keating, and Christian Washburn examine the morality of marriage, contraception, abortion, and homosexual acts (2018). Daniel Keating and William Stevenson discuss social ethics, including Catholic social teaching and socialism (2019). David Fleischacker and Christian Washburn discuss the relationship of the moral life to our final beatific end (2020). The Evangelical essays begin with the contribution of Evangelical theologians Bruce Cromwell and Dennis Jowers who explore the norms of Protestant Ethics (2017). David Van Drunen and Luke Geraty discuss sexual ethics from different ends of the Evangelical perspective (2018). Glen Menzies and Steve Hoskins evaluate approaches to evangelical social ethics from Pentecostal and Wesleyan points of view (2019). Bruce Cromwell and Steve Hoskins discuss the notions of eschatology and ethics from a Wesleyan viewpoint (2020).