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Winner of the Christianity Today Book Award in Theology/Ethics (2019) To see God is our heart's desire, our final purpose in life. But what does it mean to see God? And exactly how do we see God--with our physical eyes or with the mind's eye? In this informed study of the beatific vision, Hans Boersma focuses on "vision" as a living metaphor and shows how the vision of God is not just a future but a present reality. Seeing God is both a historical theology and a dogmatic articulation of the beatific vision--of how the invisible God becomes visible to us. In examining what Christian thinkers throughout history have written about the beatific vision, Boersma explores how God trains us to see his character by transforming our eyes and minds, highlighting continuity from this world to the next. Christ-centered, sacramental, and ecumenical, Boersma's work presents life as a never-ending journey toward seeing the face of God in Christ both here and in the world to come.
Though the doctrine of the beatific vision has woefully been forgotten in the church today, Samuel Parkison argues that the beatific vision is central for the life of the church today. Through close readings of Aquinas, Dante, Calvin, and more, Parkison reminds us of the beatific vision's historical and contemporary significance.
GOD SAID TO MOSES, YOU CANNOT SEE ME & LIVE- BUT GURU RASA VON WERDER SAW GOD & LIVED, AS GOD'S MEANING IS YOU CANNOT LIVE TO FLESH & SEE ME AS I AM, FACE TO FACE, YOU MUST GIVE UP ALL ATTACHMENT TO FLESH & THEN YOU CAN SEE ME- & SO RASA EXPLAINS IN DETAIL THE PROCESS OF PRAYER & EMPTINESS WHICH LEADS TO THIS REALIZATION -- THIS STATE IS THE MOST SUBLIME HUMAN CAN REACH AS NOT ONLY MUST ONE RISE ABOVE THE FLESH, BUT ALSO, MUST BE CLOTHED IN GLORY AS MARY OF AGREDA EXPLAINS IN THE MYSTICAL CITY OF GOD
Thomas Aquinas¿s first account of the beatific vision `face-to-face¿, as presented in his commentary on Peter Lombard¿s Sentences, integrates the theological discourse of his times with newly available philosophical reasoning of Greek and Arabic provenance. This book provides a translation of book IV, distinction 49, question 2 of Aquinas¿s commentary and, in comprehensive introductions and notes, examines how Aquinas solved the most profound conceptual dilemmas of his Latin predecessors.
This book claims that John Calvin developed “Greek” doctrines of the interim state of souls, resurrection, and beatific vision through his reading of ancient Christian sources like Irenaeus of Lyons. “Greek” had been a technical term in Western theology since at least the 12th century to denote heterodox eschatology. Thomas Aquinas had employed it in that sense, and early modern Catholics like Robert Bellarmine and Pierre Coton in turn applied it to Calvin. The book demonstrates that, in this respect at least, Calvin's opponents were correct: he was a “Greek.” However, it questions whether that fact should lead modern theologians to dismiss him as a resource for contemporary reflection. Calvin's deep respect for and continuity with early Christian voices may serve as a positive model for theologians today, particularly in the Reformed tradition. By the same token, Reformed thinkers who seek inspiration from medieval scholasticism may find their relationship to Calvin complicated by the case presented here.
Based on the 1928 Bampton Lectures, The Vision of God was the first of Kenneth E. Kirk's three major books on moral theology. Drawing inspiration from the ascetic tradition of Christianity, Kirk advocates the priority of worship in ethical thought. Beginning with the sixth beatitude, he places the visio Dei front and centre throughout, placing himself in a eudaimonistic tradition that ranges from Irenaeus to Aquinas and the Shorter Catechism. Worship, he shows, offers the opportunity to discover and acknowledge something more valuable than the self, and thus contains the key to moral instruction. Although Kirk published an expanded 'complete edition' of The Vision of God in 1931, he notes in the preface to the shorter text presented here that 'what remains approximates to, though it is not quite identical with, the actual lectures as originally delivered.' The reader therefore has in their hands the essence of Kirk's thesis, which continues to prompt debate today.
Albert (1193-1280) began teaching at the University of Paris two years after the Parisian Condemnation of 1241 had affirmed that humans could see the divine essence directly in their beatific visions. Hergan (philosophy, Saint Xavier U., Chicago) translates and analyzes five selected texts in which he discusses the nature of such visions. There is no index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer asks a basic human question: How do we overcome tyranny? His answer goes to the heart of a revolutionary way of thinking about the very end of human existence and the nature of created being. His answer, declared performatively over the course of a symbolic pilgrimage, urges the view that humanity has an intrinsic need of grace in order to be itself. In portraying this outlook, Chaucer contributes to what has been called the "palaeo-Christian" understanding of creaturely freedom. Paradoxically, genuine freedom grows out of the dependency of all things upon God. In imaginatively inhabiting this view of reality, Chaucer aligns himself with that other great poet-theologian of the Middle Ages, Dante. Both are true Christian humanists. They recognize in art a fragile opportunity: not to reduce reality to a set of dogmatic propositions but to participate in an ever-deepening mystery. Chaucer effectively calls all would-be members of the pilgrim fellowship that is the church to behave as artists, interpretively responding to God in the finitude of their existence together.
It seldom falls to the lot of a Catholic Publisher to issue from his press a book, which, while it possesses the true, substantial merit of genuine Catholic literature, is at the same time graced with the novelty, the absorbing interest which at once command the attention on the Public, and place the book in a high and permanent position before the world. Such has been our good fortune in the publication of "THE HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN." It is a book which was long wanted: a thorough, systematic treatise on a subject of the most vital importance: a book which gives us all that Catholic Theology teaches about heaven, and gives it in an authentic shape, with text, references and citations in all s...
Did Jesus enjoy the beatific vision of God on earth that Christians hope to enjoy only in heaven? This important question is related to a whole series of questions about Jesus, his knowledge and self-consciousness. Did he know he was God's Son? What did he know of his saving mission? These issues are linked to a fundamental question: Is the Saviour we need one who is altogether like us or one who is in some ways unlike us? This book argues that God gave us a Saviour with beatific knowledge, and who in this respect is very unlike us indeed. The answer commonly given by Catholic theologians to this question underwent a dramatic shift in the middle of the 20th century. Previously there had been...