Best of
Theology

1956

The Wonderful Works of God


Herman Bavinck - 1956
    Adapting the magisterial systematic theology found in his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics, this is perhaps Bavinck’s most eminently practical work – a single, accessible volume for the college classroom and the family bookshelf. Previously published in America as Our Reasonable Faith, this book has had a deep and lasting influence on the growth and development of Reformed theology. It is the publisher’s hope that in its new form, this book continues to astonish readers with the wonderful works of God, and provide a deeper knowledge of their triune God.

The Bible and the Liturgy


Jean Daniélou - 1956
    It is to remedy this situation that Father Daniélou has written this book. The Bible and the Liturgy illuminates, better than has ever before been done, the vital and meaningful bond between Bible and liturgy.   Father Daniélou aims at bringing clearly before his reader's minds the fact that the Church's liturgical rites and feasts are intended, not only to transmit the grace of the sacraments, but to instruct the faithful in their meaning as well as the meaning of the whole Christian life. It is through the sacraments in their role as signs that we learn. So that their value will be appreciated, Daniélou attempts to help us rediscover the significance of these rites so that the sacraments may once again be thought of as the prolongation of the great works of God in the Old Testament and the New.

The Heart of the Parish: A Theology of the Remnant


Martin Thornton - 1956
    Mr. Thornton argues that considerations of biblical and philosophical theology, history, and psychology alike demand that pastoral work should be based on that Remnant of faithful souls—often very few in number—to be found in any parish; and that their training and direction is of very much greater importance than devising schemes to interest the multitude. He argues forcefully against the parochial activity which aims at adding numbers of individuals to the Church by methods of recruitment; this he holds to be theologically unsound and ascetically ineffective. His faith is that God will add to the Church such as are being saved when there is at the heart of the parish this Remnant living by rule, a center of adoration and charity—the rightful heir, he contends, of medieval monastic Order. There is probably no other modern work which attempts such a serious and thorough examination of the type of spirituality to which Christians can aspire in the world today.

The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (Schweitzer Library)


Albert Schweitzer - 1956
    Teacher, preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler, and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and his purpose.In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated the early Christian communities as something more than a group of people who believed in the same faith: they were people bound together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin.In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle Albert Schweitzer goes against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians: an emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once, then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively Christian."There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores here... The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one of 'the permanent elements.'"—from the Introduction

The Growing Edge


Howard Thurman - 1956
    For Thurman, the sermon is an act of worship in which the preacher exposes his spirit and mind as they seek to reveal the spirit of the Living God upon them. Thurman presents his sermons in six sections: Concerning Enemies, Concerning Prayer, Concerning God, Concerning Peace, Concerning Festivals, and Concerning Christian Character.

The Parables And Metaphors Of Our Lord (G. Campbell Morgan Reprint)


G. Campbell Morgan - 1956
    

The Angels and Their Mission


Jean Daniélou - 1956
    Jean Danielou discusses the mission of the angels by following a historical order, looking at guardian angels, the angels and the sacraments, the spiritual life, death, and the Second Coming.

The Window in the Wall


Ronald Knox - 1956
    

The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry


H. Richard Niebuhr - 1956
    

What I Believe


François Mauriac - 1956
    Perhaps more so than any of Mauriac's other works, What I Believe offers common ground for Christians and nonbelievers alike, as his revelation of belief and doubt stands as an invitation to approach the Christian mystery with an open mind. Of particular interest, from a literary standpoint, is the chapter on “Purity,” which sheds light on much of Mauriac’s acclaimed and complicated fiction.

God and the Ways of Knowing


Jean Daniélou - 1956
    "My plan in this book," writes Father Danielou, the eminent French theologian, "is not to record what I say of God, but what God has said of Himselfà to place religions and philosophies, the Old Testament and the New, theology and mysticism, in their proper relationship with the knowledge of God." God and the Ways of Knowing is a classic work of theology and spirituality that presents a subtle and penetrating interpretation of the ways by which man comes to the knowledge of Godùeach form of knowledge carrying him both higher and deeper.

The God Question and Modern Man


Hans Urs von Balthasar - 1956
    

Beatitude: A Commentary on St. Thomas' Theological Summa, Ia IIae qq. 1-54


Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange - 1956