by Andrew Kuiper Any genealogy of modernity that fails to explain the development and dominance of political economy risks irrelevance. Economics is one of the master-discourses of our age and evaluating how and why it emerged has always been a site of bitter contestation. The framing of the narrative already includes certain models of human… Read More Review of Dan Edelstein’s On the Spirit of Rights (part 2)
by Matthew Gaetano In a previous post, we discussed Suarez’s view of the Church’s visibility. He offered a “Counter-Reformation” ecclesiology that put faith and the way in which faith united us to Christ’s mystical body (and thus the Church) at the center of his reflections. This position raised some concerns for other Roman Catholics who wanted an… Read More Lutheran Orthodoxy and the Visibility of the Church
Some later Catholic theologians saw Francisco Suarez’s way of defining the members of the Church as those with true faith rather than those who merely professed to have faith as compromising the visibility of the Church. If true faith was the only “qualification” for membership in the Church, then secret heretics were not members and… Read More Suarez on the Visibility of the Church
by Matthew T. Gaetano Abraham Calov (1612-1686) is arguably the most important Lutheran theologian of the second half of the seventeenth century. He received his doctorate at Rostock in 1637, then taught and was a pastor in Königsberg before becoming a rector of the Danzig gymnasium in 1643. He apparently hoped to study with the great… Read More The Holiness of the Church in Abraham Calov
Holiness It should go without saying that this post won’t even approach a comprehensive take on this topic. Nevertheless, I think that Francisco Suarez’s (d. 1617) views on this topic are of interest because they indicate that the “goalposts” are not being moved as we address recent events and commentary about the Roman Catholic Church. … Read More The Holiness and Authority of the Church in Francisco Suarez, S.J.
by Matthew Gaetano In a previous post, I discussed Henri de Lubac’s criticism of the position of Bellarmine and Suarez on the pope’s power to depose Christian kings. Though he believed that such a position was already obsolete in the context of his own day, he called this position–quite widespread from the Middle Ages through… Read More John of Paris, the Deposing Power, and the Punishment of Heretics
by Matthew Gaetano In my previous post, I discussed theologians who offered interpretations of the doctrine of the two swords before the Second Vatican Council. While some hierocrats believed that the pope’s two swords made him lord of the world, Vitoria, Bellarmine, and Suarez argued that popes had indirect power in temporal matters. Papal power… Read More Henri de Lubac’s Criticism of Indirect Power
by Matthew Gaetano In the excellent dialogue hosted at the Regensburg Forum several months ago about Vatican II, religious freedom, and political theology, Boniface VIII seems (quite understandably) to have been in the background. His 1308 bull Unam Sanctam makes several claims that remain important to contemporary theological discussion. Boniface speaks of two swords: the spiritual and the temporal. Both… Read More Boniface VIII’s Two Swords and the Theologians