by Matthew Gaetano Andrew Kuiper’s reflections (here, here, and here) on the theological context for Dan Edelstein’s account of natural rights inspired me to revisit Fr. Dominic Legge’s piece for Nova et Vetera, “Do Thomists Have Rights?” He responds to Brian Tierney’s essential work, The Idea of Natural Rights. In this work, Tierney argues that… Read More Thomas Aquinas on Subjective Rights
A contributor to TRF, Andrew Kuiper, has a post at Ex Fontibus that is the beginning of a series on Emile Mersch. The series should be of interest to many of our readers; it will address modern engagements with the patristic and medieval tradition, Pierre de Bérulle, theology of history, the mystical body of Christ,… Read More Emile Mersch (1890-1940)
by Matthew Gaetano Even though I went to a school whose mascot is a Quaker and grew up near some early American Quaker meeting houses, I have to admit that I didn’t know much about Quakers. I learned about how they used the informal “thee” and “thou” and refused to tip their hats to social… Read More Quakers, Platonism, and Religious Experience
by Matthew Gaetano Joshua Shaw has been presenting Eusebius’s rich and complex polemic against paganism alongside his dialogue with Platonism. He has illuminated the reasons for the contrast between Eusebius’s approach and C. S. Lewis’s way of defending Christianity. Like many defenses of the Christian religion in the Renaissance and beyond (and in Late Antiquity… Read More The Pagans and the Atheists in C. S. Lewis and Herman Bavinck
by Matthew Gaetano Recent events have brought to mind the stories of the injustices and violence of the original encounters of Christians with native Americans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Dominicans Antonio de Montesinos (d. 1540) and Bartolomé de las Casas (d. 1566) spoke out against the unjust enslavement of these peoples, while… Read More Voices Crying in the Wilderness – Moirans, Jaca, and Silva
by Matthew Gaetano Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), a major Dutch Reformed theologian, professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, and author of the profoundly erudite Reformed Dogmatics in four volumes, gave the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1908-1909 academic year. He had already traveled to the United States to meet B. B. Warfield… Read More Resurrection and History in Herman Bavinck
by Matthew Gaetano I’m continuing the series on Contenson’s seventeenth-century Thomist meditations on Christ’s Passion. Part 1 is here. Speculation 1: The Fourfold Excess in the Passion of Christ: Of Sadness, Dejection, Pain, and Love The human race labors in a threefold disease: the lust (concupiscentia) of the eyes, that is, vain pleasure; the pride… Read More Contenson and the Passion of Christ
by Matthew Gaetano As we anticipate Holy Week, I thought that it might be of some interest to present Vincent Contenson’s (1641-1674) remarks on the Passion and Death of Christ from his Theology of the Mind and the Heart. Despite his death at the early age of 33, Contenson was a famous Dominican preacher, Thomist… Read More Baroque Thomism and the Passion of Christ
by Andrew Kuiper We are continuing Andrew Kuiper’s series on religious freedom and religious dialogue. For the previous posts, see here and here. 1.Introduction In a previous installment of this series, I suggested that Wilken’s account of the Christian origins of religious liberty becomes rather thin when treating the medieval period. Most noticeably absent are… Read More Nicholas Cusanus and Religious Peace
by Andrew Kuiper Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a series on religious freedom. See Kuiper’s previous post at TRF on a related topic here. Robert Louis Wilken’s most recent work Liberty in the Things of God sketches an outline of the origin and development of religious freedom in Christian thought. Though Wilken… Read More Review: Robert Louis Wilken’s Liberty in the Things of God