Bernard McGinn

I've been fascinated with Aquinas' book ever since I read brief extracts of it when I was in confirmation class, and then longer stretches in grad school covering some of the ethical sections (I've never read the whole thing, but considering it's 3,500 pages I bet few have either). Religion has never had much of a hold on me, so it was more of an intellectual fascination, but I'm still fairly impressed that someone could generate such a rigorously systematic framework for proving what I consider to be definitively unproven and unprovable. The quinque viae, where Aquinas tries to prove not only that God exists but must exist based on logic alone, are the equivalent of debating with both hands tied behind your back, and while I'm not convinced by them, I think Aquinas gave an impossible task as good a shot as you could ask for.

Still, whatever your personal stance towards faith and its relationship to reason, an account of who Aquinas actually was and how he came to write this massively influential tome should be of at least mild interest. The book is divided into 5 chapters:
- The World That Made Thomas Aquinas
- Creating the Summa Theologiae
- A Tour of the Summa Theologiae
- The Tides of Thomism, 1275-1850
- The Rise and Fall of Neo-Thomism

The first chapter talks about the religious environment Aquinas grew up in, and what his intellectual influences were, as a Benedictine specifically and as a Catholic more generally. The second discusses his decision to embark on the project of writing the Summa, his working style, and how he was able to write the treatise while carrying on incredible amounts of correspondence with other important figures of the day. The third is a high-level overview of the Summa, his almost lawyerly approach to argumentation, and how he organized such a gigantic work. The fourth traces the impact of the Summa on theological debates, and how it fared over such a long time period as a work that had to be either affirmed or argued against, but never ignored. The fifth introduces the 19th century Neo-Thomist/Neo-Scholasticist movement that attempted to resuscitate Aquinas' general approach to theology in a post-enlightenment world, to varying degrees of success.

At first it might seem necessary to be religious, and more specifically Catholic, to fully enjoy the book, but McGinn approaches his subject with the air of a historian and not a religious partisan, so it remains accessible to people of any persuasion. The source material retains its place as one of the most thought-provoking works of theology ever written, and this is a welcome overview for those who, like me, aren't up to summiting the whole thing.… (meer)

APOCALYPTIC SPIRITUALITY
TREATISES AND LETTERS OF LACTANTIUS,
ADDSO OF MONTIER-EN-DER,
JOACHIM OF FIORE, THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS,
SAVONAROLA

In its breadth of vision and seriousness of purpose, the series leuves little room for complaint
or cavil.... An editorial program of real vision; series like this are tubat makes religious
publishing the exciting intellectual and spiritual venture it is called to be
Theology Today

APOCALYPTIC SPIRITUALITY-TREATISES AND LETTERS OF
LACTANTIUS, ADSO OF MONTIER-EN-DER, JOACHIM OF FIORE
THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS, SAVONAROLA
translation and introduction by Bernard McGinn
preface by Marjorie Reeves.

Tust as Jesus Christ came with true signs, but cloaked and hidden because of the likeness
of sinful buman nature so that he was hardly recognized us the Christ by even a feu so too
the seventh king will come with false signs and will be bidden and cloaked because of his
appearance of spiritual justice, so that only a few will be able to recognize that be is the
Antichrist."
Joachim of Fiore, 1135-1202

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus" (Apoc. 22:20). The significance of these closing
words of the New Testament for later Christian spirituality is the subject of
this volume.

This book makes available major texts in the Christian apocalyptic literature
from the 4th to the 16th centuries. The apocalyptic tradition is that of traditional
prophecy based on revelation and concerned with the end of the world
Even an age such as ours characterized by its scientific and rationalistic
outlook has strong elements of literal apocalypticism found in fundamentalist
and charismatic groups. The popular success of Hal Lindsey's The Late
Great Planet Earth is evidence of this. Also the present hunger for apocalypse
has adopted a variety of secular disguises typified by Robert Heilbroner's
An Inquiry into the Human Prospect. Contemporary theologians like
Kasemann, Pannenberg, Rahner, Moltmann and others have devoted much
of their work to the meaning of apocalyptic thought. This is a collection
which can show the traditional roots of this contemporary phenomenon.
Dr: Bernard McGinn says in his introduction, "These treatises and letters
have been chosen because of the way in which they manifest how beliefs
about the imminent end affected the lives of their adherents.. Perhaps
the task for us today is that by seeing how the lives of Lactantius, the monk
Adso, Joachim of Fiore, The Spiritual Franciscans and Savonarola were
affected by their apocalyptic vision we can recognize how our lives are
being affected by the contemporary prophetic sense of the end of histor.y… (meer)

I bought this book ages and ages ago. I don't remember why or when. Last year one of my reading resolutions was to read more of my religion books, which I absolutely failed to do. But it explains how this ended up finally on my to-read shelf when I was looking for a new non-fiction book to read.

So, this book tracks Christianity's changing views on the Antichrist, from Jewish pre-Christ apocalyptic writings to the present day. It's a sprawling history with a narrow focus, and I just am not familiar enough with Catholic history to get as much out of the book as I could have. Great swaths of the book felt very much like reading those stretches of The Name of the Rose dealing with different sects of the Catholic church, and all the names start to blur together and I'm straining to get anything meaningful out of it at all.

Which is not to say I didn't get anything out of it. It's easy to get mired in the mythos and worldview of your own time. Seeing how the ever-evolving understanding of evil, Antichrist, and end times both shaped and was shaped by the events and forces of history was good perspective on how we got to now.

A good reminder on why I set the goal of reading more books from my religion shelf in the first place.… (meer)