Avery Cardinal Dulles

The possibility of a Christian philosophy was fiercely debated in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, especially in France, where several distinguished historians of philosophy, including Émile Bréhier, vigorously denied that there had been, or could be, any such thing. It was, . . . . Continue Reading »

One of the central themes of the New Testament, if not the central theme, is the way to obtain salvation. To be on the right road is, in New Testament terminology, to be justified. The corollary is that unless we are justified we are unrighteous and are on the road to final perdition. In other . . . . Continue Reading »

Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel HarperCollins/Cliff Books, 992 pages, $36 The life of John Paul II invites superlatives, and George Weigel is not unwilling to employ them. This pope, he asserts, is “the most compelling public figure in the world, the man . . . . Continue Reading »

Mother Church: Ecclesiology and Ecumenism by Carl E. Braaten Fortress, 164 pages, $16 Carl Braaten, long a respected voice in American Lutheranism, here offers a welcome distillation of a half century of theological study and reflection. By means of this brief but wide-ranging book we can renew our . . . . Continue Reading »

In his 1994 apostolic letter “On The Coming of the Third Millennium,” Pope John Paul II said that while the great jubilee of the year 2000 is to be a time of joyful celebration, the joy should be based on forgiveness and reconciliation. It is therefore appropriate that the Church should . . . . Continue Reading »

After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity by Miroslav Volf Eerdmans, 314 pages, $28 Miroslav Volf, a Croatian Protestant, is a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. The present book, translated from the German original, is an outgrowth of his Habilitationsschrift , directed by . . . . Continue Reading »

One weekend in that tumultuous year 1968 I was on call at a parish church outside of Baltimore. At the end of my Sunday Mass I came into the body of the church to make my thanksgiving, and as I knelt in the pew I noticed that the pulpit from which I had preached had on its front a banner with the . . . . Continue Reading »

It might seem paradoxical, to say the least, to describe the Catholic Church as “evangelical”—a term that is commonly taken to be practically synonymous with “Protestant” or with a particular kind of Protestant. In Germany the word evangelisch rather than protestantisch is the preferred . . . . Continue Reading »

The rootedness of freedom in the truth has been a constant and central theme in the writings of John Paul II. Already in 1964, as a young bishop at Vatican II, Karol Wojtyla criticized the draft of the declaration on religious freedom because it did not sufficiently emphasize the connection between . . . . Continue Reading »

I The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the boldest challenge yet offered to the cultural relativism that currently threatens to erode the contents of Catholic faith. According to a widely prevalent view, religious truth consists in an ineffable encounter with the transcendent. This encounter may . . . . Continue Reading »