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His zealous and intrepid defense of the orthodox faith and his contribution to handling the external affairs of the Eastern Church were by no means the whole service to which St. Basil the Great devoted his considerable talents. His life both exemplified and shaped the ascetical movement of his time. After renouncing a brilliant career as rhetorician, he traveled widely, studying the various forms of asceticism practiced in Eastern Christendom. On his return, he retired in the year 358 to a place near Neocaesarea to put into practice the best of what he had seen, and there disciples soon joined him. When his friend Gregory of Nazianzus visited him there in 358, he began to write his Rules and other works that have had great importance in promoting and regulating the common life of monasticism. This life, regulated and freed from excess, as an expression of the law of charity was to be the monk's path to union with God. Basil's concept of the monastic ideal, socially directed and moderate without being lax, became the fundamental concept of Greek and Slavonic monasticism, and it influenced St. Benedict in legislating for Western monasticism.The ascetical writings of St. Basil contained in this volume, addressed to both monks and laymen, are of prime importance for understanding the role their author played in the Church of the fourth century and, through his influence, still plays today.

Journalist, essayist, biographer, writer, philosopher and debater, Gilbert Keith Chesterton is regarded by many as one of the most gifted thinkers of the 20th century. In this book Father James V. Schall showcases a witty series of reflective essays prompted by the work of Chesterton.

First published in 1982, this is an introduction to St Thomas's moral philosophy. In this revised edition, the basics of Thomistic ethics and teachings are revisited.

This study of democracy goes to the heart of ethics and politics. It offers a new perspective on the American Constitution and the relationship between moral community and self-interest.

The six sermons presented here cast light on Pope Innocent III's concept of what his duties. They include: the inaugural sermon of Innocent's consecration, the opening sermon of Lateran Council IV, two Roman Synod sermons, and another on the constitution of the priesthood.

Aquino offers an alternative route to the question 'is Christian belief rationally acceptable belief?'. Moving beyond both modern and post-modern accounts of rationality, he constructs a proposal of informed judgement, blending Newman's notion of reasoning with recent work in social epistemology.

Theologians have been in a slumber about the subject of vocations. This volume represents one of the first awakenings in the theological community to this subject. The ten contributors, all theologians at Loyola University, Chicago, present original essays that explore vocations, or callings.

Augustine's long exposition of the doctrine of theTrinity was written after the Council of Constantinople (381) had settled the matter of the consubstantiality of the three Persons of the Trinity. Augustine began this work around the year 400 and completed it in 416. Taking the image of God in the human being (Genesis 1:26-27) as his starting-point, Augustine reasons that since God is triune, the image must be so, too. There ensues a laborious quest for three aspects of every individual human being that serve as a mirror of the Trinity. En route to the successful outcome of his quest, Augustine explores a variety of theological and anthropological concepts.

This text provides both the background to the imperial and ecclesiastical machinations that drove Dante Alighieri to begin penning the ""Monarchia"" in 1318, and also the subsequent history of the efforts by papal authorities to ban the book after the writer's death.

This reprinted work on political theory challenges core tenets of our political views deriving from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. It argues that we need to look to the key documents of the founding era - the Mayflower Compact and the Virginia Bill of Rights.

Philadelphia, here I come! -- The freedom of the city -- Living quarters -- Aristocrats -- Faith healer -- Translations.

Provides a much-anticipated introduction to Catholic doctrine on the Trinity. The extensive research combined with lucid prose provides readers a resource to better understand the foundations of Trinitarian reflection. It is addressed to all who wish to benefit from an initiation to Trinitarian doctrine.

WINNER OF THE 2006 CHARLES CARDINAL JOURNET PRIZE awarded by The Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria UniversityWhat is the relationship between charity and knowledge in the theology of Thomas Aquinas? Did Aquinas in his mature thought portray charity's act as antecedent to and independent of practical reasoning? Did he view charity's motion as rendering us morally good before God, apart from whether or not we do what is right in our actions? A dominant stream in contemporary Catholic ethics holds for precisely such a concept of charity, and many recent commentators on Aquinas maintain that this is his position as well. According to Michael S. Sherwin however, the contrary is in fact the case.By Knowledge and By Love represents a major contribution to Thomistic moral theology and philosophy by providing a thoughtful examination of Aquinas' psychology of action and his theology of charity. Through a comprehensive analysis of the relation between intellect and will, knowledge and love, and charity and the infused intellectual virtues, Sherwin concludes that, far from divorcing the will from reason, Aquinas in his later works integrates reason and will more closely together. Saint Augustine says, "No one can love what he does not know." According to Sherwin, Aquinas holds that God's grace respects and elevates this dynamic in the gift of charity, which depends on faith's knowledge, and on the knowledge provided by the other infused cognitive virtues and gifts. Charity is a virtue, and like any virtue its acts require some knowledge of their object. Sherwin argues that not only is this a faithful reading of Aquinas, it also has profound implications for any conception of moral development. The role of a mentoring community, the characteristics of friendship with God, and the specific actions required by love all play a part in Sherwin's analysis.ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., is Associate Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "The book is a carefully composed and detailed explication of a key aspect of St. Thomas's moral thought--the precise relation between intellect and will in human action. But it is more than that. Fr. Sherwin besides giving us an accurate and comprehensive account of St. Thomas's thought on this important subject, and doing so with admirable clarity and control, accompanies that account with commentary which is richly interlaced with revealing and cogent analysis. . . By Knowledge and By Love is a sound and substantive book. Besides being in its own right an impressive and valuable contribution to Thomistic scholarship, by devoting attention to an important and timely aspect of St. Thomas's moral theology, it performs the very important service of correcting serious misinterpretations of the Angelic Doctor's thought."--Dennis Q. McInerny, Homiletic and Pastoral Review"[An] informed, lucid and readable book."--Gabriele De Anna, The Medieval Review"By Knowledge and by Love is as readable as it is learned. Serenely and evenhandedly, Michael Sherwin leads us to see how, for St. Thomas, charity is both a matter and a mover of choice; how, being free, it must be intelligible; how, enlivening the heart, it must also steer counsel and rectify conduct. There should be no more talk of a Thomas who detaches will from reason."--Stephen L. Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross "What is it for the intellect to know God? What is it for the will to be moved by the love of God? Aquinas' answers to these questions presuppose a psychology of will and intellect, an analysis of practical reasoning, and a theology of faith and of charity. Sherwin has provided a wonderfully illuminating study of the development and structure of Aquinas' thought on thes

These four essays of Ambrose, the forceful and scholarly Bishop of Milan and the metropolitan of the churches of northern Italy in the late fourth century, expound upon both sacramental and Trinitarian theology. The two essays on "the mysteries" and on "the sacraments" provide a window into the liturgical practices of the ancient Italian church, for which Ambrose-ever the Scripture scholar par excellence-explains the biblical basis. Two other essays, one a response to Arianism and the other a refutation of the contentions of those who opposed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, together constitute a robust defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, influenced by Greek Christian theological writings and grounded on Scripture.

Orosius wrote the first Christian Universal History, "Historiarum adversus paganos libri septem." It has been thought to be a supplement to the "City of God," "Civitate Dei," especially the third book, in which St. Augustine attempts to prove that the Roman Empire suffered as many disasters before as after Christianity was received. It was a common argument among the pagans that the abandonment of the worship of their deities had led to the general break-up of the Roman Empire and all its attendant evils. St. Augustine was annoyed by the persistence of this argument and hoped that a history of all the known people of antiquity, with the fundamental idea in mind that God determines the destinies of nations, would put an end to that pagan thinking.St. Augustine called upon his young friend Orosius to do this work. Added interest is attached to Orosius' History by reason of his think link with St. Augustine. The great St. Augustine, in his declining years, requested the youthful and far less gifted Orosius to perform a most important task.From the point of view of the modern historian and his scientific method, Orosius' work does not rate very high. The work completed in 418 shows sign of haste. In addition to Holy Scripture and the chronicle of Eusebius revised by St. Jerome, Orosius used Livy, Eutropius, Caesar, Suetonius, Florus, and Justin as sources. All the calamities suffered by the various peoples are described often with annoying monotony. Yet the work is valuable as history, containing as it does contemporary information on the period after 278 A.D. It was used widely during the Middle Ages, and the existence today of nearly 200 manuscript copies is evidence of its past popularity.

Surveys Seamus Heaney's critical essays, setting forth his poetics-his concept of what poetry should be and what its uses are-and relating them to his practice as a poet.

Introductory texts on the philosophy of mind tend to presume that we

Provides a basic yet broad introduction to Bernard Lonergan's thought in particular and Catholic theology in general. Mark T. Miller's approach is a theological anthropology organised into three main categories, "progress", "decline", and "redemption", which transpose the traditional concepts of nature, sin, and grace into a contemporary social and historical context.

Origen of Alexandria's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans is the oldest extant commentary on Romans (ca. 246). This volume presents the first English translation of the commentary, covering his exegesis of Rom 1:1 to 6:11. This is the only commentary of Origen available in a coherent form from beginning to end.

Drawing on the Eastern Orthodox tradition of asceticism and integrating it with recent Western thought on liturgy, David W. Fagerberg examines the interaction between the two and presents a powerful argument that asceticism is necessary for understanding liturgy as the foundation of theology.

influential treatise, Apologie for Poetrie (c. 1582), Michael Mack also

Of the 124 tractates that St. Augustine delivered to his congregation at Hippo Regius, the first fifty-four form a distinct group. They differ in length and character from the remaining tractates, contain many chronological references, and consist of bitter attacks on the Donatists and other heresies. The remaining tractates (55-124) are brief and contain no chronological references to prior tractates. Scholars maintain that the latter were dictated for later reading to the people rather than extemporaneously delivered. This volume contains tractates 11-27. In 11-16 Augustine continues the attack, begun in tractates 1-10, on the heresies of Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. Beginning with the seventeenth tractate, however, he focuses greater attention on Arianism, a Trinitarian heresy whose major tenet was that divine being was uncreated, unbegotten, and unique and that Christ was not true God but a creature who had a beginning. Augustine also attacks lesser Christological heresies: the Apollinarists, who assert that Christ did not assume the complete human nature but only the body, and Photinus of Sirmium, who held that Christ did not except for his miraculous birth and acquired a plenitude of grace through moral perfection.In these tractates Augustine combines scriptural exegesis, the refutation of false teachings, and theological reflections with the spiritual and moral instruction of his congregation. "Look for separation in the Father and Son, you do not find it; even if you have soared high, then you do not find it; if you have touched something beyond your intellect, then you do not find it. For if you busy yourself in these things which the erring mind makes for itself, you speak with your own images, not with the Word of God; your images deceive you. Transcend the body and savor the mind. Transcend the mind also and savor God."

St. John Chrysostom delivered his Homilies on Genesis sometime between A.D. 385 and A.D. 388, while yet a priest at Antioch. In the homilies in this volume, the last of three, Chrysostom concludes his examination of the lives and virtues of the Old Testament patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as recounted in the last three chapters of Genesis. Known for his eloquent preaching, Chrysostom delivered these final twenty-two homilies after Pentecost. His motive for examining the accounts of the lives of the patriarchs is to show how the just forebears of the Israelites, in a time when both the law and the Gospel were yet unpreached, were able to live Christian lives with only simple trust in God and the balanced, almost ingenuous manners of antiquity. His interest in the events and characters of Genesis is largely moral, even moralistic; he tends to see Scripture as hagiography. His style of commentary, although not really thorough exegesis, arises out of his deep conviction of the divine inspiration of Scripture--hence the habitual attention to detail, "not idly or to no purpose" being his frequent comment on the precision of the text.As an exegete, Chrysostom may seem disappointing to those grounded in the methods of modern biblical scholarship, since he largely ignores any sense of Scripture other than the literal and is generally unaware of how to resolve difficulties and appreciate subtleties that a knowledge of the original text would provide. However, what lacks in scientific accuracy he more than compensates for with his earnest practice of pastoral care.This final volume of the homilies includes a general index and an index of biblical citations, the latter indicating the rich scriptural diet Chrysostom's congregation--who came daily for his homilies--enjoyed.

Gregory of Nyssa is widely regarded as the most substantial thinker and theologian among the three Cappadocians and is often used as the representative of Greek trinitarian theology. Through a fresh examination of Gregory's trinitarian theology in its historical context, Michel Rene Barnes reveals the special importance of the concept of "power" - dynamis.

A great revival of interest in natural law thinking has occurred across a range of disciplines and perspectives. Much of this recent work is traced to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. To explore and evaluate the current revival, this volume examines the relation between Thomistic natural law and the larger philosophical and theological tradition.