What would you recommend?: A college introduction to philosophy & theology:
Burrell, Robert J Egan, Daniel C Maguire, Monika K Hellwig, David
A COLLEGE INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY What would you recommend? A LONGTIME SUBSCRIBER, William Talbot, senior editor at Samuel French, Inc., recently wrote us with an idea. Said he: "I...
...Herein lies everything that Karl Marx did not know about the social passions and the subversive economic force of biblical religion...
...Moore offers a reading of the atonement which makes the part we play in crucifying Jesus ingredient to our faith in him-so undermining both Christian triumphalism and the most virulent historical form of anti-Semitism in one fell swoop...
...This reuses for me the question: Can Catholicism survive in the U.S.A...
...a wise and beautifully written book, originally published in 1957, it is still the best introduction I know to the history of Catholic spirituality and its relation to the intellectual life...
...each insinuates a path to inner liberation...
...I SHALL DIVIDE my selections topically, listing first a philosophical work and then one or more theological treatments under each heading...
...Said he: "I suggest that as a service to your readers you publish a list of recommended works in contemporary philosophy and theology from first-through-fourth college-level years...
...My seventh book would be Rosemary Haughton's delightful The Catholic Thing (Templegate: 1980), my favorite recent book on Catholic identity, and a representative work by one of our most religiously "musical" writers...
...Also, I've limited myself to Roman Catholic writers, though obviously most important work nowadays is ecumenical...
...Some books recently touted I have judged too "academic" in tone and so likely to put off an intelligent readership who may lack the time or patience to negotiate the hidden shoals of academe...
...On the level of basic issues, I would highly recommend Robert Sokolowski's God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame, 1982) for a work showing how our faith has exploited classical philosophy at its key junctures, with Peter Hodgson and Robert King's collection Christian Theology (Fortress, 1982) for basic theological issues...
...One of them, Father Robert J. Egan, S.J., sent along with his listing of books a covering letter describing the possibilities and problems involved in making a good list...
...In fact, there is a kind of art involved in recommending books to people, but this depends on some concrete knowledge of the people who are asking...
...It will also be notable that books offering a Catholic philosophical and theological background may or may not be written by Catholics-such is one of the fringe benefits of our ecumenical age...
...My list, inspirited by this comment, follows: Stephen Charles Mott, Biblical Ethics and Social Change (Oxford University Press, paper, 1982) and, John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Eerdmans, 1972...
...Tenth, I would recommend Hans Kung's On Being a Christian (Wallaby/Pocket Books: 1978...
...Anyway, all such lists involve a fictive element, an aspect of purposeful make-believe in the service of shared understanding, like designing a curriculum, constructing a typology, or closing a canon...
...The serious student will want to go on to read the second and promised third volumes of this trilogy...
...I daresay you have many readers of my generation (thirty-five years a subscriber) who have children attending secular universities who have no knowledge of contemporary Catholic philosophy and whose colleges have no Newman Club to fall back upon...
...The sturdy of heart may proceed to Daly's Gyn Ecology (Beacon, 1978) for a furious, radico-radical, and Nietzsc-hean assault on the macho-masculine blight...
...To whom can an old neo-Scholastic appeal but to you ? And besides, I think it would be a good idea for a brush-up for me, too...
...Catholic theologians (and historians and sociologists and others) enter into dialogue with various philosophical points of view -Hegel, Marx, Whitehead, Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Haber-mas, Ricoeur and many others- but I'm certain no one could make many clear statements of wide generality about all this...
...Other topics could have been chosen, or I may have missed a splendid work as it is...
...My twelfth choice would be Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (Crossroad: 1982), a powerful statement of the basic vision of this man, who is arguably the most important and most influential Roman Catholic theologian of this century...
...Hodgson and King have gathered the work of fourteen contemporary theologians who collaborated for three years at Collegeville to present the "traditions and tasks" of theology today...
...These are amplified and completed by Diogenes Allen's recent Three Outsiders: Pascal, Kierkegaard and Simone Weil (Cowley, 1983), and complemented by the fascinating gathering in Rosemary Haughton's The Catholic Thing (Tem-plegate, 1980...
...After that I think I'd recommend William Johnston's The Inner Eye of Love: Mysticism and Religion (Harper & Row: 1982), a more recent discussion of spiritual transformation and contemplative experience, which also offers some guidance in the dialogue with non-Christian traditions (here, Buddhism) and some good advice on prayer and meditation...
...Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Beacon Press, 1973...
...But where Newman Clubs do exist, is this what goes on there...
...Jesus is Lord...
...With one exception, I've limited myself to books published since the end of Vatican II...
...Pope John Paul II, On Human Work (Laborem Exercens), with Gregory Baum's commentary, The Priority of Labor (Paulist Press, 1982...
...In the years since your reader was in college, Catholic philosophy and theology have moved very rapidly in many different directions...
...Charles E. Curran, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth-Century Approaches (University of Notre Dame Press, 1982...
...Furthermore, it could be argued that the best way of providing a solid background in Catholic thought would be through reading classic texts from the whole history of the church-the Bible, selections from the Greek and Latin Fathers, from the great medieval mystics, theologians, and poets, from representative figures in the modern and contemporary periods, along with some commentaries and general historical works-but I don't see how this could be done in a dozen or so books...
...His books include Analogy and Philosophical Language (Yale) and Aquinas: God & Action (Notre Dame...
...Nicholl incorporates non-western Christian and non-Christian traditions with disarming ease and authenticity, so preparing us to live in the multi-cultural world which we actually inhabit...
...In any case, it would no longer be possible to characterize "Catholic philosophy" at all...
...The grounds for ethical reflection are argued trenchantly and provocatively by Alasdair Maclntyre in After Virtue (Notre Dame, 1981) and given a specifically Christian orientation in Stanley Hauerwas's Community of Character (Notre Dame, 1981...
...My fifth choice would be Gregory Baum's Religion and Alienation (Paulist Press: 1976), a readable and persuasive introduction both to the "political" dimension of Catholic faith, and to the theological significance of "sociology...
...as an ethos and dynamic religious culture without finding new ways of educating its young men and women in the full richness of its tradition...
...Neither could be accused of offering us opiates...
...Doors to the Sacred, by Joseph Martos (Doubleday, 1981...
...It may be helpful to read this after Zanzig because Nolan presents in some detail a political interpretation of the role of Jesus in his own times, and the evidence on which he bases it, both of which go to the heart of some contemporary issues in the church...
...FIRST, SINCE we shouldn't presuppose a Catholic understanding of what a religion is, what its language refers to, or how its stories and symbols are to be interpreted, I would begin by recommending a good introduction to this subject, like Andrew Greeley's Religion: A Secular Theory (The Free Press: 1982...
...Mary's Press, Winona, Mn., 1982...
...Yet with the exception of my own, where my judgment must be obscured, I can recommend each of the following for breadth of vision and clear exposition...
...Or to reflect on the history of the expressions of faith in music, painting, sculpture, literature, or architecture...
...Here is the primer for the main events in liberation theology from a Christian who never fails to write with depth, passion, and style...
...More than any Kung book, this one should have jostled the plumage of paleomorphic Vaticaners with its restudy of the church from the Bible up...
...Finally, what a Catholic student at a secular university needs most is a community, some other flesh and blood Catholics living intellectual lives and practicing their faith...
...This is a very gentle introduction to the contemporary approach to Scripture, not at all iconoclastic, including bibliography, audio-visual bibliography, and glossary of terms...
...I discussed this issue with several of my friends and it proved an interesting and thought-provoking exercise...
...Reading the New Testament, by Pheme Perkins (Paulist, 1977...
...Maclntyre and Mclnerny will each help general readers recover the philosophical culture which has shaped a liberal education, while Hauerwas and McDonagh will show how that can affect the ways we view vexing questions of power, technology and violence, as well as family, sex, and abortion-each within the framework of scriptural narrative and prayer...
...Faith Meets Faith, ed...
...Daniel C. Maguire DANIEL c. MAGUIRE is a member of the theology faculty at Marquette University...
...Finally, our widespread American ignorance about Marxism, which spawns bogeymen and naivete alike, is no longer excusable in the light of Nicholas Lash's A Matter of Hope (Notre Dame, 1982) and Arthur McGovern's Marxism: An American Christian Perspective (Orbis, 1980...
...A Concise History of the Catholic Church, by Thomas Bokenkotter (Doubleday Image, 1979...
...An exemplary Catholic scholar shows how the contemporary Catholic justice and peace movement did not come from nowhere...
...Hans Kung, The Church (Doubleday, Image Book, 1976...
...Finally, if the students were still coming back for more, I'd recommend they undertake two brilliant but difficult general works by North Americans: Bernard Lonergan's pathbreaking Method in Theology (Seabury: 1979), and David Tracy's generous and erudite The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (Crossroad: 1982...
...by Gerald Anderson and Thomas Stransky (Paulist, 1981...
...Hailed by some critics as controversial, this very ambitious historical account of the sacraments and their theological explanations, although stripped of its extensive footnotes before publication, will reward the reader with a far deeper and more tolerant understanding of the sacramental activities of the churches...
...This is how I've interpreted your reader's reference to "contemporary Catholic philosophy" and to his own need for a "brush-up...
...Some kind of answer to Mr...
...by Claude Geffre and Gustavo Gutierrez, (Herder, 1974...
...Monika K. Hellwig MONIKA K. HELLWIG is a professor of theology at Georgetown University...
...I wrote this for just the sort of people for whom we are making this list, intending a non-controversial contemporary exposition of the faith, and basing it upon the doctrinal synthesis that seems to me to underlie the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius...
...But it raised questions not easy to answer...
...The Mystical and Political Dimension of the Faith, ed...
...My eleventh choice is Edward Schillebeeckx's Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (Crossroad: 1981), a wonderful book by this kind and brilliant man, which for all its astonish-ing display of scholarship manages to mediate a fresh encounter with the mystery of Jesus and what he makes possible for human life, and along the way provides good introductions to contemporary New Testament interpretation and historical research...
...Others I simply may have overlooked...
...we pass it on to the reader, therefore, and it is printed immediately below, followed by all four lists...
...Talbot's appeal seemed like a good idea, so we passed on his plea to four Commonweal authors and asked for their help in the form of a list of a dozen or so books...
...I would next recommend Jean Le-clerq's The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (Fordham University Press: 1982...
...AS THE OVERARCHING criterion for this impossible task, I seize upon this line from Gibran: "Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children...
...And even if one could decide on twelve Great Books from the last two thousand years, it would be silly to recommend these without attention to their historical contexts, their sources and presuppositions, the lives and personalities of their authors...
...Second, in order to emphasize the social and historical character of religion, the sense of living within a tradition, and because I'm convinced that students only understand what "historical consciousness" means when they begin to think historically about what is going on in their own experience, I would urge them to read James Hennesey's American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (Oxford University Press: 1981...
...by Leo O'Dono-van (Seabury, 1980...
...And it might well seem better in responding to the interests of particular students to recommend a book of poetry or biography, for instance, but this is not exactly what your reader was after...
...The topics range from basic orientations in philosophy and theology to philosophical and theological treatments of tradition, fundamental ethical perspectives, topical ethical issues, political directions-with special attention to our understanding of Marxism, and spirituality...
...Major figures who have shaped our tradition figure in my Exercises in Religious Understanding (Notre Dame, 1974...
...Readers who are puzzled or dismayed by the acrimony of debates over "liberation theology" will find a series of short, easily understood essays in which the "liberation theologians" themselves explain what they are trying to do...
...While most of the contemporary Christologies are written with the reaction of other theologians too much in mind, this one is a remarkable exception which with utmost clarity introduces the non-specialist to the current rediscovery of the historical Jesus as the Christ of faith...
...She has written, among other books, The Eucharist and the Hunger of the World, Death and Christian Hope, and Understanding Catholicism (Paulist...
...Jesus before Christianity, by Albert Nolan (Orbis Books, 1978...
...This anthology will help the reader understand what has happened to that firm Thomistic frame of reference we seem to have lost...
...But the books selected are balanced presentations that will give heart to educated believers searching for ways to take their bearings on our fragmented and fractious world...
...On the scale of personal response Sebastian Moore's Crucified Jesus is No Stranger (Seabury, 1977) is completed by Donald Nicholl's Holiness (Seabury, 1981...
...No reading list will substitute for that...
...A sensitive study in the new Christology showing that much faith in Jesus missed the faith of Jesus, making both God and Jesus the losers...
...Swallowing my modesty in a gigantic gulp, I list my The Moral Choice (Winston, 1979) as a catholic and Catholic effort to give a compleat method of moral choice in gentle idiom...
...This is a collection of reprints of significant articles explaining the wider contemporary ecumenism which may be puzzling some Christians...
...The Book of Sacramental Basics, by Tad Guzie (Paulist, 1982...
...Or even at Catholic universities...
...Anyone who missed this book when it came out will probably still find it very helpful because it uncovers in a low-key but masterful way some of the "hidden agenda" in many of the conflicts within the contemporary church, by showing the inner logic and historical justifications of the different ways different people think about the nature of the church and its task...
...A must book for all who were raised thinking masculinity to be the sacrament of encounter with God...
...His books include Death by Choice, The Moral Choice, and The New Subversives: Anti-Americanism of the Religious Right {Crossroad...
...What follows, with all these qualifications, is my current best effort in this genre...
...Denis Hickey, Home From Exile: An Approach to Post-Existentialist Philosophizing (University Press of America, 1982...
...Where and how will they gather to read lives of the saints, histories of the church, studies of the Bible...
...So what I've put down here does not really "provide a solid Catholic philosophical and theological background," as you requested, but one among many possible ways for a young Catholic to begin a more intensive and systematic reflection on the faith...
...THE EDITORS Robert J. Egan FATHER ROBERT J. EGAN, S.J., teaches spirituality and fundamental theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California...
...Catholics continue to study and teach philosophy, of course, and to do philosophy...
...My ninth choice would be Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (Orbis Books: 1973), which has become a classic work in this historic and profound religious movement, which bears in such a special way on the minds and consciences of American Catholics...
...James P. Mackey, Jesus the Man and the Myth (Paulist, 1979...
...CONTEMPORARY Religious Thinkers, introduced and edited by John Macquarrie (Harper, 1968...
...Talbot and the contributors...
...More particular ethical questions are given a traditional philosophical underpinning in Ralph McInerny's Ethica Thomistica (Catholic University, 1982) and sensitive theological treatment in Enda McDonagh's Doing the Truth (Notre Dame, 1980...
...It seemed extremely helpful, especially since all the contributors appeared to share similar reservations...
...the most impressive general apologetic by a Catholic author in the years since the Council, it represents much of what is good, but also perhaps some of what is off-kilter in presentday liberal Catholicism...
...Rosemary Radford Ruether, New Woman, New Earth, Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (Seabury Press, 1975...
...Where will these students ever go to read the sayings of the Desert Fathers, the works of Gregory of Nyssa or Augustine, the Victorines, Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Duns Scotus, Dante, Eckhart, Theresa of Av-ila, John of the Cross, and so on down to Newman, Blondel, Von Hugel, Mari-tain, Marcel, Teilhard de Chardin, or Congar...
...For penetration into the salva-tional and revolutionary depth of emerging feminist consciousness, read this - or anything else by Rosemary Ruether...
...A Basic Christology for Adults, by Thomas Zanzig (St...
...My sixth choice would be something, or several things, by Thomas Merton-or perhaps Monica Furlong's Merton: A Biography (Harper & Row: 1980)- because I think he represents an exemplary Catholic response to the truth and falsity of American culture...
...And for a subtle response to Marx which also recovers the powerful western strain of poverty of spirit, see John Dunne's recent Church of the Poor Devil (Macmillan, 1982...
...Our thanks to Mr...
...Understanding Catholicism, by Monika Hellwig (Paulist, 1980...
...The list includes Augustine, An-selm, Aquinas, and Jung...
...World of Grace, ed...
...David Burrell FATHER DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C., teaches philosophy and theology at Notre Dame...
...it can be studied alongside the excellent study-guide, A World of Grace, edited by Leo O'Donovan (Seabury: 1980...
...The author sets out the history of the church in a way that explains a good deal of the tension, conflict, change, and new focus in our own times...
...I can imagine myself making up very different lists for different people...
...While Lash argues the more basic issues against the original and continuing culture of criticism, McGovern considers how that critique has affected practice in the Americas...
...This book offers quite a fresh, experimental, family-centered approach to the sacramental life of Christians, and of Catholics in particular...
...The preponderance of Notre Dame Press books does not reflect chauvinism so much as their conscious orientation in recent years to work towards the kind of list which matches your request.ears to work towards the kind of list which matches your request...
...What is needed is some places and occasions for such pursuits...
...HERE, WITH HESITATIONS and misgivings, is the list of recommended books I promised...
...I doubt that any dozen books could provide a complete (much less impartial) picture of what's been happening...
...Models of the Church, by Avery Dulles (Doubleday, 1974...
...Hickey opens this new look at philosophy saying: "Each man must write in his own hand, inked by his own lifeblood, the unending novelty of philosophy," and he meets this standard with reverent and irreverent creativity and sprightly brightness...
...One final point: these books are, for the most part, books of theology...
...I've chosen books that in my judgment are solid and important on their own merits, but I've also tried to include representative works by some major figures across at least some part of the spectrum of possibilities...
...For a more doctrinal presentation of the tradition, one will find Richard McBrien's Catholicism (Winston, 1980) comprehensive, and Monika Hell wig's Understanding Catholicism (Paulist, 1981) admirably presented...
...Sokolowski's presentation reflects the experience of a master teacher...
...I think that the most exciting and far-reaching conversations, in these last twenty years, have been going on in explicitly theological terms...
...A touch of judicious papal socialism which critiques the inhumanities of both capitalism and Communism - an encyclical that has fallen with all too dull a thud in Catholic quarters...
...And some of my colleagues would dismiss all this with scorn since I haven't even mentioned Royce, say, or Freud, or Foucault...
...By now these students should be ready for some heavier reading, and a good place to begin is Richard McBrien's large and conscientious Catholicism (Winston Press: 1981), a thoughtful review of the whole range of contemporary Catholic thought, complete with summaries, discussion questions, and much useful bibliography...
...Robert McAfee Brown, Theology in a New Key (Westminster, 1978...
...A group of authors who have collaborated over a period of years have contributed essays to explain to the ordinary reader the thought of the most influential contemporary Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, whose original work is for the most part quite inaccessible to the non-specialist...
Vol. 110 • April 1983 • No. 7
