The Père Marquette Theology Lectures Recent Titles Continuing series of annual public lectures by distinguished theologians of international reputation. The series, growing in popularity, is acquired by beginning students, scholars, and libraries from every continent. Originally launched to celebrate the missions and explorations of Père Jacques Marquette, S.J. Hardbound in blue cloth, gold stamped titles. Some reprints with soft covers. Uniform style and price [$15]. Standing orders accepted. Regular reprinting keeps all volumes available. View complete list of the Père Marquette Series. Christopher Charles Rowland. "Wheels within Wheels": William Blake and the Ezekiel Merkabah in Text and Image. ISBN-13: 978-087462-587-5; ISBN-10: 0-87462-587-4. (2007, Lecture 38). 50 pp. Cloth. $15. Christopher Charles Rowland is Dean Ireland’s Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture and Fellow Rowland “Wheels within Wheels” of Queen’s College, in England’s prestigious Oxford University. Born 21 May 1947, he was educated at Doncaster Grammar School and Christ’s College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he earned the BA Theology Class I (Theological Tripos Part II with Hebrew Prize) in 1969, and a Class I Theological Tripos Part III (New Testament) in 1970. He was awarded the MA Degree in 1973, and in 1975 the PhD, for a dissertation entitled The Influence of the First Chapter of Ezekiel on Judaism and Early Christianity. From 1974 to 1979, Rowland was Lecturer in Religious Studies (with special responsibility for New Testament studies) at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. From 1979 to 1991, he served as Fellow and Dean of Jesus College, and University Lecturer in Divinity, both at the University of Cambridge. Since that time, he has held the Dean Ireland’s professorship at Oxford University. From 1998 to 2000, he served as chair of the Faculty Board of Theology. Rowland has published widely across the fields of New Testament and Christian origins, where he has had a special interest in apocalyptic, and liberation theology. His many books and articles testify to the broad range of his interests, including in recent years a number of important contributions to the emerging fields of the history of biblical exegesis, as well as the reception history of the Bible. The many books he has written or edited include: The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (1982); Christian Origins: An Account of the Setting and Character of the Most Important Messianic Sect of Judaism (1985; revised edition, 2002;) Radical Christianity: A Reading of Recovery (1988); Liberating Exegesis: The Challenge of Liberation Theology to Biblical Studies (1989, with Mark Corner); Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ (2004, with Judith Kovacs); Liberation Theology UK (1995, edited with John Vincent); Understanding Studying Reading: New Testament Essays in Honour of John Ashton (1998, edited with Crispin Fletcher-Louis); The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology (edited 1999); Radical Christian Writings: A Reader (2002, edited with Andrew Bradstock); and Apocalyptic in History and Tradition (2002, edited with John Barton). Not content with published contributions to the field, Rowland has also been very active both in mentoring the work of younger scholars, and in cooperation with scholars in Europe, the United States, and South America. At Oxford, he founded an interdisciplinary seminar in the history of biblical interpretation, with the express intention of examining not only texts, but also a wide range of other media, including art and music. This particular interest will be put nicely on display in today’s Père Marquette Lecture. Rowland is also an editor for the Blackwell Bible Commentaries, a new series focused on the “impact history” of biblical texts. During a sabbatical leave during the present academic year, he is at work on a book on William Blake’s biblical exegesis tentatively entitled Blake and the Bible, for Yale University. Otto Hermann Pesch. The Ecumenical Potential of the Second Vatican Council. ISBN 0-87462-586-8. (2006, Lecture 37). 66 pp. Cloth. $15 Among Catholic contributors to ecumenical theology in the period following Vatican II, perhaps none has done more work, and work of more lasting significance, than this year’s Père Marquette Lecturer, Otto Hermann Pesch. Pesch was born in Cologne, Germany in 1931 and finished his “Abitur” degree there in 1952. The same year, he became a member of the Dominican Order, and in 1953 he began work at the Dominican House of Studies in Wahlberberg, where he earned the “Lector” degree. In 1958, he was ordained a Catholic priest. In 1960 he became a student at the University of Munich, where he earned the Dr. Theol. degree in 1965. From 1965-1971, Pesch served as Professor of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology in Wahlberberg. He spent the 1971-72 academic year in residence at the Harvard Divinity School, where he served as Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies. In 1972, Pesch was laicized and married. In 1974 he took the position of Visiting Professor of Systematic Theology in the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Hamburg. In 1975 he was tenured in the same position and thus became the first Catholic theologian to serve as “ordinarius” professor in the Protestant faculty of a German university. During 1988-89, Pesch served as Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Temple University, and as Visiting Professor of Church History and Systematic Theology in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. In 1992, Pesch received the Doctor’s degree, honoris causa, from the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Mainz. In 1993, he returned for a second stay as Visiting Associate Professor at Temple University. For the academic year 2002-2003, he served as Professeur extraordinaire de théologie systematique in the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Pesch retired from his faculty position in Hamburg in 1997, but in the years since has been anything but resting. Among his numerous books the best known is Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin (1967, 2nd ed. 1985). Examining comparatively the doctrine of justification in these two theologians—whose works in so many ways epitomize the Lutheran and Catholic traditions—Pesch drew those traditions back from an armed standoff into a fraternal, persistent and theologically sensitive dialogue. Pesch has continued to publish at an astonishing pace throughout his career. His subsequent books include: Twenty Years of Catholic Luther Research (LWF, 1966); The God Question in Thomas Aquinas and Luther (1972); Das Gesetz. Kommentar zu Thomas von Aquin: Summa Theologiae I-II 90-105 (1977); Einführung in die Lehre von Gnade und Rechtfertigung [with Albrecht Peters] (1981, 3rd ed. 1994); Hinführung zu Luther (1982, 3rd rev. ed. 2004); Gerechtfertigt aus Glauben. Luthers Frage an die Kirche (1982); Frei sein aus Gnade. Theologische Anthropologie (1983); Streiten für die eine Kirche [with Heinrich Fries] (1987); Dogmatik im Fragment. Gesammelte Studien (1987); Thomas von Pesch Ecumenical Potential of Second Vatican Council Aquin. Grenze und Größe mittelalterlicher Theologie. Eine Einführung (1988, 3rd ed. 1995); Rechtfertigung im Disput. Eine freundliche Antwort an Jörg Baur [with Ulrich Kühn] (1991); Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil. Vorgeschichte, Verlauf, Ergebnisse, Nachgeschichte (1993, 5th ed. 2001); Martin Luther, Thomas von Aquin und die reformatorische Kritik an der Scholastik (1994); Die Sünde. Kommentar zu Thomas von Aquin, Summa Theologiae I-II 71-89 (2002). As the titles of these many books quite rightly indicate, Pesch’s work has continued to revolve around its ecumenical center by means of an illuminating comparative analysis of Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas. Pesch has also written frequently for a more popular audience. These “pocket books” are frequently addressed to the practical questions faced by the average Christian, e.g., Das Gebet (1980); Die Zehn Gebote (1976, 9th ed. 1995); Heute Gott erkennen (1980, 3rd ed. 1988); Kleines Katholisches Glaubensbuch (15th rev. ed. 2004); and Die Sünde (2004). Finally, as if to add good humor to such a long and impressive list of publications, mention must also be made of his Warum hast du so große Ohren? Rottkäppchen—theologisch zu Gehör gebracht (1993), ET as What Big Ears You Have! The Theologians’ Red Riding Hood (3rd rev. ed. 2000). Pesch has lectured in 11 countries, nowhere more than in the United States. In addition to frequent service as visiting professor in American universities, he has been a frequent participant and lecturer in meetings of the International Luther Congress, as well as a plenary speaker at the Aquinas-Luther Conference at Lenoir-Rhyne College. In addition, he is past President, now Vice President, of the Académie internationale des sciences religieuses (Brussels), and serves on the editorial boards of Concilium and Ökumenische Rundschau. Pesch is a member of the Advisory Board of the Institut für Europaische Geschichte—Abteilung Abendländische Religionsgeschichte (Mainz), and a member of the Joachim-Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Hamburg. He has also been for many years a member of the influential Ökumenischer Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen, a group whose work helped make possible the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999. As a Catholic university with an ecumenical faculty of theology, one with a longstanding commitment to “Luther studies in a Catholic context,” we welcome Prof. Dr. Otto Hermann Pesch to Marquette not only as a guest, but as a colleague and friend in what we hope will have already become a newfound home away from home. David Coffey. "Did You Receive the Holy Spirit When You Believed?" Some Basic Questions for Pneumatology. ISBN 0-87462-585-8. (2005, Lecture 36). 125 pp. Cloth. $15 The Reverend David Coffey has played a major role in the development and renewal of Pneumatology and Trinitarian theology in the period following the Second Vatican Council. He graduated as Dux in 1951 from St. Patrick’s College (Christian Brothers), Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia. In 1958, he received the License in Theology from the Catholic Institute of Sydney; and in the same year, he was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Sydney. He received the Doctor of Sacred Theology magna cum laude from the same institution in 1960, and was appointed to the faculty of the Catholic Institute of Sydney in 1962. During the period 1964-1966 he pursued further theological studies with Michael Schmaus and Karl Rahner at the University of Munich, Germany. Father Coffey returned to the Catholic Institute of Sydney in 1967, where he served as Dean of the Faculty from 1970-1975, and President of the Faculty from 1976-1981. In 1975, he became a founder of the Australian Catholic Theological Association, and served as the Association’s President in that year and again in 1990. In 1989, Father Coffey came to St. Louis at the invitation of the Catholic Theological Society of America, where he gave a presentation on his research in the Trinity Seminar at the Society’s annual Convention. In 1991, he returned to the United States, this time to the University of St. Louis, where he served as Visiting Professor in the Aquinas Institute. In 1995, he accepted an appointment to the Presidential Chair at Marquette University, renamed in 1999 to the William J. Kelly, S.J. Chair in Catholic Theology. Father Coffey’s areas of research and publication reflect the living concerns of the ecclesial communities within which he has practiced the theologian’s craft. Not surprisingly, his theological interests go to the very heart of the Christian faith: Pneumatology, Christology, the doctrine of the Trinity. These interests are reflected quite accurately in the titles of his four books: Grace: The Gift of the Holy Spirit (Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1979); Believer, Christian, Catholic, (Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1986); Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God, (Oxford University Press, 1999); and The Sacrament of Reconciliation, (Liturgical Press, 2001). His numerous articles range widely across these and related topics, and they have appeared in many books, as well as in such journals as: Australasian Catholic Record, Theological Studies, Irish Theological Quarterly, Faith and Culture, Colloquium, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Philosophy and Theology, and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. The occasion of this lecture also marks the end of Father Coffey’s tenure as the holder of the Kelly Chair at Marquette University. He will be sorely missed by those of us who have come to know and value him as a colleague and friend, as well as by the students who have benefited from his great learning and keen insight. In the following essay, the reader will instantly discern the tight argumentation and intellectual tenacity that have marked Coffey’s work and made him a favorite among his peers. At the same time, even as he works to illuminate the Trinitarian realities of mutual love, appropriation, common action, and the like, one will observe his profound reverence for the mystery of the Triune God. As a guide for this exploration of the agency of the Holy Spirit, we could hardly ask for one with better knowledge of the terrain or a surer step than our own David Coffey. We thank him for taking us along on the journey.
Continuing series of annual public lectures by distinguished theologians of international reputation. The series, growing in popularity, is acquired by beginning students, scholars, and libraries from every continent. Originally launched to celebrate the missions and explorations of Père Jacques Marquette, S.J. Hardbound in blue cloth, gold stamped titles. Some reprints with soft covers. Uniform style and price [$15]. Standing orders accepted. Regular reprinting keeps all volumes available. View complete list of the Père Marquette Series.
Christopher Charles Rowland. "Wheels within Wheels": William Blake and the Ezekiel Merkabah in Text and Image. ISBN-13: 978-087462-587-5; ISBN-10: 0-87462-587-4. (2007, Lecture 38). 50 pp. Cloth. $15. Christopher Charles Rowland is Dean Ireland’s Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture and Fellow Rowland “Wheels within Wheels” of Queen’s College, in England’s prestigious Oxford University. Born 21 May 1947, he was educated at Doncaster Grammar School and Christ’s College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he earned the BA Theology Class I (Theological Tripos Part II with Hebrew Prize) in 1969, and a Class I Theological Tripos Part III (New Testament) in 1970. He was awarded the MA Degree in 1973, and in 1975 the PhD, for a dissertation entitled The Influence of the First Chapter of Ezekiel on Judaism and Early Christianity. From 1974 to 1979, Rowland was Lecturer in Religious Studies (with special responsibility for New Testament studies) at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. From 1979 to 1991, he served as Fellow and Dean of Jesus College, and University Lecturer in Divinity, both at the University of Cambridge. Since that time, he has held the Dean Ireland’s professorship at Oxford University. From 1998 to 2000, he served as chair of the Faculty Board of Theology. Rowland has published widely across the fields of New Testament and Christian origins, where he has had a special interest in apocalyptic, and liberation theology. His many books and articles testify to the broad range of his interests, including in recent years a number of important contributions to the emerging fields of the history of biblical exegesis, as well as the reception history of the Bible. The many books he has written or edited include: The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (1982); Christian Origins: An Account of the Setting and Character of the Most Important Messianic Sect of Judaism (1985; revised edition, 2002;) Radical Christianity: A Reading of Recovery (1988); Liberating Exegesis: The Challenge of Liberation Theology to Biblical Studies (1989, with Mark Corner); Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ (2004, with Judith Kovacs); Liberation Theology UK (1995, edited with John Vincent); Understanding Studying Reading: New Testament Essays in Honour of John Ashton (1998, edited with Crispin Fletcher-Louis); The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology (edited 1999); Radical Christian Writings: A Reader (2002, edited with Andrew Bradstock); and Apocalyptic in History and Tradition (2002, edited with John Barton).
Not content with published contributions to the field, Rowland has also been very active both in mentoring the work of younger scholars, and in cooperation with scholars in Europe, the United States, and South America. At Oxford, he founded an interdisciplinary seminar in the history of biblical interpretation, with the express intention of examining not only texts, but also a wide range of other media, including art and music. This particular interest will be put nicely on display in today’s Père Marquette Lecture. Rowland is also an editor for the Blackwell Bible Commentaries, a new series focused on the “impact history” of biblical texts. During a sabbatical leave during the present academic year, he is at work on a book on William Blake’s biblical exegesis tentatively entitled Blake and the Bible, for Yale University.
Otto Hermann Pesch. The Ecumenical Potential of the Second Vatican Council. ISBN 0-87462-586-8. (2006, Lecture 37). 66 pp. Cloth. $15
Among Catholic contributors to ecumenical theology in the period following Vatican II, perhaps none has done more work, and work of more lasting significance, than this year’s Père Marquette Lecturer, Otto Hermann Pesch. Pesch was born in Cologne, Germany in 1931 and finished his “Abitur” degree there in 1952. The same year, he became a member of the Dominican Order, and in 1953 he began work at the Dominican House of Studies in Wahlberberg, where he earned the “Lector” degree. In 1958, he was ordained a Catholic priest. In 1960 he became a student at the University of Munich, where he earned the Dr. Theol. degree in 1965.
From 1965-1971, Pesch served as Professor of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology in Wahlberberg. He spent the 1971-72 academic year in residence at the Harvard Divinity School, where he served as Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies. In 1972, Pesch was laicized and married. In 1974 he took the position of Visiting Professor of Systematic Theology in the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Hamburg. In 1975 he was tenured in the same position and thus became the first Catholic theologian to serve as “ordinarius” professor in the Protestant faculty of a German university. During 1988-89, Pesch served as Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Temple University, and as Visiting Professor of Church History and Systematic Theology in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. In 1992, Pesch received the Doctor’s degree, honoris causa, from the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Mainz. In 1993, he returned for a second stay as Visiting Associate Professor at Temple University. For the academic year 2002-2003, he served as Professeur extraordinaire de théologie systematique in the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Pesch retired from his faculty position in Hamburg in 1997, but in the years since has been anything but resting.
Among his numerous books the best known is Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin (1967, 2nd ed. 1985). Examining comparatively the doctrine of justification in these two theologians—whose works in so many ways epitomize the Lutheran and Catholic traditions—Pesch drew those traditions back from an armed standoff into a fraternal, persistent and theologically sensitive dialogue. Pesch has continued to publish at an astonishing pace throughout his career. His subsequent books include: Twenty Years of Catholic Luther Research (LWF, 1966); The God Question in Thomas Aquinas and Luther (1972); Das Gesetz. Kommentar zu Thomas von Aquin: Summa Theologiae I-II 90-105 (1977); Einführung in die Lehre von Gnade und Rechtfertigung [with Albrecht Peters] (1981, 3rd ed. 1994); Hinführung zu Luther (1982, 3rd rev. ed. 2004); Gerechtfertigt aus Glauben. Luthers Frage an die Kirche (1982); Frei sein aus Gnade. Theologische Anthropologie (1983); Streiten für die eine Kirche [with Heinrich Fries] (1987); Dogmatik im Fragment. Gesammelte Studien (1987); Thomas von Pesch Ecumenical Potential of Second Vatican Council Aquin. Grenze und Größe mittelalterlicher Theologie. Eine Einführung (1988, 3rd ed. 1995); Rechtfertigung im Disput. Eine freundliche Antwort an Jörg Baur [with Ulrich Kühn] (1991); Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil. Vorgeschichte, Verlauf, Ergebnisse, Nachgeschichte (1993, 5th ed. 2001); Martin Luther, Thomas von Aquin und die reformatorische Kritik an der Scholastik (1994); Die Sünde. Kommentar zu Thomas von Aquin, Summa Theologiae I-II 71-89 (2002). As the titles of these many books quite rightly indicate, Pesch’s work has continued to revolve around its ecumenical center by means of an illuminating comparative analysis of Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.
Pesch has also written frequently for a more popular audience. These “pocket books” are frequently addressed to the practical questions faced by the average Christian, e.g., Das Gebet (1980); Die Zehn Gebote (1976, 9th ed. 1995); Heute Gott erkennen (1980, 3rd ed. 1988); Kleines Katholisches Glaubensbuch (15th rev. ed. 2004); and Die Sünde (2004). Finally, as if to add good humor to such a long and impressive list of publications, mention must also be made of his Warum hast du so große Ohren? Rottkäppchen—theologisch zu Gehör gebracht (1993), ET as What Big Ears You Have! The Theologians’ Red Riding Hood (3rd rev. ed. 2000). Pesch has lectured in 11 countries, nowhere more than in the United States. In addition to frequent service as visiting professor in American universities, he has been a frequent participant and lecturer in meetings of the International Luther Congress, as well as a plenary speaker at the Aquinas-Luther Conference at Lenoir-Rhyne College. In addition, he is past President, now Vice President, of the Académie internationale des sciences religieuses (Brussels), and serves on the editorial boards of Concilium and Ökumenische Rundschau. Pesch is a member of the Advisory Board of the Institut für Europaische Geschichte—Abteilung Abendländische Religionsgeschichte (Mainz), and a member of the Joachim-Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Hamburg. He has also been for many years a member of the influential Ökumenischer Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen, a group whose work helped make possible the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999.
As a Catholic university with an ecumenical faculty of theology, one with a longstanding commitment to “Luther studies in a Catholic context,” we welcome Prof. Dr. Otto Hermann Pesch to Marquette not only as a guest, but as a colleague and friend in what we hope will have already become a newfound home away from home.
David Coffey. "Did You Receive the Holy Spirit When You Believed?" Some Basic Questions for Pneumatology. ISBN 0-87462-585-8. (2005, Lecture 36). 125 pp. Cloth. $15 The Reverend David Coffey has played a major role in the development and renewal of Pneumatology and Trinitarian theology in the period following the Second Vatican Council. He graduated as Dux in 1951 from St. Patrick’s College (Christian Brothers), Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia. In 1958, he received the License in Theology from the Catholic Institute of Sydney; and in the same year, he was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Sydney. He received the Doctor of Sacred Theology magna cum laude from the same institution in 1960, and was appointed to the faculty of the Catholic Institute of Sydney in 1962. During the period 1964-1966 he pursued further theological studies with Michael Schmaus and Karl Rahner at the University of Munich, Germany. Father Coffey returned to the Catholic Institute of Sydney in 1967, where he served as Dean of the Faculty from 1970-1975, and President of the Faculty from 1976-1981. In 1975, he became a founder of the Australian Catholic Theological Association, and served as the Association’s President in that year and again in 1990. In 1989, Father Coffey came to St. Louis at the invitation of the Catholic Theological Society of America, where he gave a presentation on his research in the Trinity Seminar at the Society’s annual Convention. In 1991, he returned to the United States, this time to the University of St. Louis, where he served as Visiting Professor in the Aquinas Institute. In 1995, he accepted an appointment to the Presidential Chair at Marquette University, renamed in 1999 to the William J. Kelly, S.J. Chair in Catholic Theology. Father Coffey’s areas of research and publication reflect the living concerns of the ecclesial communities within which he has practiced the theologian’s craft. Not surprisingly, his theological interests go to the very heart of the Christian faith: Pneumatology, Christology, the doctrine of the Trinity. These interests are reflected quite accurately in the titles of his four books: Grace: The Gift of the Holy Spirit (Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1979); Believer, Christian, Catholic, (Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1986); Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God, (Oxford University Press, 1999); and The Sacrament of Reconciliation, (Liturgical Press, 2001). His numerous articles range widely across these and related topics, and they have appeared in many books, as well as in such journals as: Australasian Catholic Record, Theological Studies, Irish Theological Quarterly, Faith and Culture, Colloquium, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Philosophy and Theology, and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. The occasion of this lecture also marks the end of Father Coffey’s tenure as the holder of the Kelly Chair at Marquette University. He will be sorely missed by those of us who have come to know and value him as a colleague and friend, as well as by the students who have benefited from his great learning and keen insight. In the following essay, the reader will instantly discern the tight argumentation and intellectual tenacity that have marked Coffey’s work and made him a favorite among his peers. At the same time, even as he works to illuminate the Trinitarian realities of mutual love, appropriation, common action, and the like, one will observe his profound reverence for the mystery of the Triune God. As a guide for this exploration of the agency of the Holy Spirit, we could hardly ask for one with better knowledge of the terrain or a surer step than our own David Coffey. We thank him for taking us along on the journey.
David Coffey. "Did You Receive the Holy Spirit When You Believed?" Some Basic Questions for Pneumatology. ISBN 0-87462-585-8. (2005, Lecture 36). 125 pp. Cloth. $15
The Reverend David Coffey has played a major role in the development and renewal of Pneumatology and Trinitarian theology in the period following the Second Vatican Council. He graduated as Dux in 1951 from St. Patrick’s College (Christian Brothers), Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia. In 1958, he received the License in Theology from the Catholic Institute of Sydney; and in the same year, he was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Sydney. He received the Doctor of Sacred Theology magna cum laude from the same institution in 1960, and was appointed to the faculty of the Catholic Institute of Sydney in 1962. During the period 1964-1966 he pursued further theological studies with Michael Schmaus and Karl Rahner at the University of Munich, Germany. Father Coffey returned to the Catholic Institute of Sydney in 1967, where he served as Dean of the Faculty from 1970-1975, and President of the Faculty from 1976-1981. In 1975, he became a founder of the Australian Catholic Theological Association, and served as the Association’s President in that year and again in 1990.
In 1989, Father Coffey came to St. Louis at the invitation of the Catholic Theological Society of America, where he gave a presentation on his research in the Trinity Seminar at the Society’s annual Convention. In 1991, he returned to the United States, this time to the University of St. Louis, where he served as Visiting Professor in the Aquinas Institute. In 1995, he accepted an appointment to the Presidential Chair at Marquette University, renamed in 1999 to the William J. Kelly, S.J. Chair in Catholic Theology.
Father Coffey’s areas of research and publication reflect the living concerns of the ecclesial communities within which he has practiced the theologian’s craft. Not surprisingly, his theological interests go to the very heart of the Christian faith: Pneumatology, Christology, the doctrine of the Trinity. These interests are reflected quite accurately in the titles of his four books: Grace: The Gift of the Holy Spirit (Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1979); Believer, Christian, Catholic, (Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1986); Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God, (Oxford University Press, 1999); and The Sacrament of Reconciliation, (Liturgical Press, 2001). His numerous articles range widely across these and related topics, and they have appeared in many books, as well as in such journals as: Australasian Catholic Record, Theological Studies, Irish Theological Quarterly, Faith and Culture, Colloquium, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Philosophy and Theology, and the International Journal of Systematic Theology.
The occasion of this lecture also marks the end of Father Coffey’s tenure as the holder of the Kelly Chair at Marquette University. He will be sorely missed by those of us who have come to know and value him as a colleague and friend, as well as by the students who have benefited from his great learning and keen insight.
Lisa Sowle Cahill. Bioethics and the Common Good. ISBN 0-87462-584-X. (2004, Lecture 35). 94 pp. Cloth. $15 This year’s lecturer is Lisa Sowle Cahill, a central figure in contemporary Roman Catholic moral theology, and indeed a central figure in the broader field of Christian Ethics. Dr. Cahill received her B.A. in Theology from Santa Clara University in 1970, followed by M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where she wrote her dissertation under the supervision of James Gustafson (1976). She is J. Donald Monan, S.J., Professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College, where she has taught since 1976, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University (1986) and Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology at Yale University (l997). Dr. Cahill is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has held office in the American Academy of Religion. She has served as an editor, or on the editorial boards, of Concilium, Journal of Religious Ethics, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, Religious Studies Review, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Horizons, Journal of Law and Religion, Second Opinion, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. In addition, she has been a member of the Catholic Health Association Theology and Ethics Advisory Committee, the National Advisory Board for Ethics in Reproduction, and serves on the March of Dimes National Bioethics Committee. She has given testimony to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission on fetal tissue research and on cloning. For five years she convened a small international study group on genetics, theology, and social ethics. Special areas of interest from among her many areas of expertise areas are fundamental theological ethics, the use of Scripture in ethics, the ethics of sex and gender, bioethics, just war theory and pacifism, and history of Christian ethics. A current research focus is genetics and social ethics, including cloning, stem cell research, and the international development and marketing of genomics-based tests and therapies. Another interest is challenges to, applications of, and alternatives to, Christian just war theory today. These areas of specialization are represented in her many publications. She has written or edited eight books, with a ninth in progress: Family: A Christian Social Perspective (Fortress, 2000); Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1996); “Love Your Enemies”: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Fortress, 1994); Between the Sexes: Toward a Christian Ethics of Sexuality (Fortress and Paulist Presses, 1985); Women and Sexuality (Paulist, l992); and, with Thomas A. Shannon, Religion and Artificial Reproduction: An Inquiry into the Vatican Instruction on Human Life (Crossroad Press, l988); Embodiment, Morality and Medicine with Margaret A. Farley (Kluwer Publishers, 1995), and, with James Childress, Christian Ethics: Problems and Prospects, a collection in honor of James M. Gustafson (Pilgrim Press, l996). Currently she is preparing for publication an edited volume called Genetics, Theology, Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Conversation (Crossroad). She is the author of approximately 150 essays that have appeared in books or in journals such as Theological Studies, Journal of Religion, Journal of Religious Ethics, Hastings Center Report, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Journal of Law and Religion, Law, Medicine, and Health Care, Hofstra Law Review, Loyola Law Review, Horizons, Interpretation, Thought, and Concilium. On its own it is a great honor for Marquette’s Department of Theology to have a lecturer of the accomplishment and esteem of Lisa Sowle Cahill. But her lecturing in our series has a fittingness that goes beyond the appropriateness of having so central an individual in contemporary Catholic moral theology address us on a topic of great importance; for, as it happens, in giving the Père Marquette Lecture this year Dr. Cahill will be following in the footsteps of two previous lecturers in this series, from whom she is an intellectual descendent: James M. Gustafson (1975), who directed her dissertation, and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., (1973), who figured prominently in her dissertation, and in her work thereafter. We thank her for addressing us on “Bioethics and the Common Good,” and contributing this volume to posterity in our midst, fully expecting that it will be found on the bookshelf of some future Père Marquette Lecturer Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P. The Reception of Vatican II Liturgical Reforms in the Life of the Church. ISBN 0-87462-583-1. (2003, Lecture 34). 62 pp. Cloth. $15 Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P., is one of the most influential liturgical scholars of our time and comes to us from the Institut supérieur de liturgie in Paris, France. He was born in Paris on October 19, 1922. In 1940 he began medieval studies at the famous School of Chartes in Paris and a year later he entered the Dominican order. Ordained a priest In 1948, from 1949 to 1968 Père Gy taught sacramental theology and liturgy at the Dominican Faculty of Theology of Le Saulchoir. His own doctoral dissertation was on the history and theology of the Ritual of the Sacraments. From 1949 until 2001 he was a member of the Center of Pastoral Liturgy, which in 1964 became the official liturgical center of the French episcopate. The two scholars whose work and personal presence influenced Père Gy the most were Dom Bernard Botte, O.S.B., of Louvain, the greatest historian of the liturgy in the 20th century, and Yves Congar, O.P., especially from 1945 to 1954 and during the last years of his life when Gy was Cardinal Congar’s closest confidant. During the early part of his career, Père Gy had friendly scholarly contact with the great Anglican liturgist, Dom Gregory Dix, and—both before Vatican II and during the post-conciliar work of liturgical reform—with Fr. Joseph Andreas Jungmann, S.J., the eminent Austrian historian of the liturgy. It was due in great part to Balthasar Fischer and Père Gy’s conciliating efforts that the head liturgist among the French, Aimé-Georges Martimort, and Johannes Wagner, the chief German liturgist, were able to work together in that post-war period, thereby making possible Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium as well as the later work of liturgical reform. In 1956 Gy was named assistant director under Dom Bernard Botte of the new Institut supérieur de liturgie founded at the Institut catholique of Paris. Succeeding Botte as director in 1964, Gy continued on in that capacity until 1987 when he became director of doctoral studies and of the whole faculty of theology. His retirement from teaching came in 1990. During his tenure at the Institut supérieur de liturgie he directed a total of 50 doctorates in liturgy, a dozen of which were by Americans. Together with Johannes Wagner and Aimé-Georges Martimort, Père Gy was one of the principal architects of Sacrosanctum Concilium and of the post-conciliar liturgical reform. Over the years he has been the editor, first, of the Dominican Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, and then of the extremely influential journal on the liturgy, La Maison Dieu. From 1971 to 1973 he served as the third president of the Societas Liturgica, an ecumenical and international association of liturgical scholars. A 1990 listing of his scholarly publications includes 137 articles, 19 annual bulletins on the liturgy, and numerous book reviews. Although formally retired, Père Gy has continued his writing through the past 13 years. One example of his productivity is his latest “Bulletin de Liturgie” in the Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques (86/4). This past year’s yearly overview of recent scholarly activity in the liturgy across the world runs a total of 46 pages! Throughout his scholarly career Père Gy’s primary concern has been to help re-establish the unity between sacramental theology and the Church’s liturgy, both as historically understood and as celebrated. Marquette University, named after one outstanding French priest and explorer, is deeply honored by the presence in its midst and the shared wisdom of yet another. For generations Père Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P., has served as an outstanding example of careful historical investigation into, and profound love for, the liturgy of the Church. Liturgical scholars across the world have benefitted immeasurably from his dedicated life of learning, both those who had the privilege to study under him in Paris, and the many more who have read his work in the pages of La Maison Dieu and elsewhere. Marquette University wishes to join its voice to the all those who have recognized and expressed gratitude for his immense contribution to the Church’s liturgy and her understanding of the liturgy. May le Père Gy in this, his 81st year, continue to receive, along with our gratitude, God’s richest blessings for many more years to come. Luke Timothy Johnson. Septuagintal Midrash in the Speeches of Acts.ISBN 0-87462-582-3. (2002, Lecture 33). 77 pp. Cloth. $15 A native of Park Falls has returned to the state of his birth to give our Père Marquette Lecture for 2002. Professor Johnson has come to us from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where he is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins. He has built his distinguished career on the effort to interpret the Bible as a living resource given by God to the Church, an effort that has borne an amazingly rich and varied harvest of reflection on the New Testament and the origins of the Christian movement. In 1966, Professor Johnson earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana. He went on to earn his Masters of Divinity from Indiana’s St. Meinrad School of Theology in 1970 and, in the same year, his Masters of Arts in religious studies from Indiana University. Six years later, Yale University awarded Professor Johnson his Ph.D. in New Testament, after he had completed a now published and influential dissertation entitled The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke-Acts. In the meantime, he had already begun his teaching career, having lectured at St. Meinrad during his last year of study there, the next year at St. Joseph Seminary College, and at Gonzaga College in the summer of 1973. Upon finishing his degree at Yale Divinity, Professor Johnson became an assistant and then associate professor there. In 1982, he moved to Indiana University, where he became a full professor in 1988. Since 1992, he has occupied his current chair at Emory. Along the way, many have recognized and rewarded Professor Johnson’s scholarship and teaching. The Lilly Endowment awarded him three research grants in the mid 1980s, allowing him to pursue his work on the contemporary use of the New Testament. Phi Beta Kappa selected Professor Johnson as a visiting scholar for 1997-98, and last year he was a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology. His two-year term as Senior Fellow of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Religion at Emory will expire in 2003. Over the years, Professor Johnson has received awards for his distinguished teaching from the students and administration of Indiana University, from the National University Continuing Education Association, and twice each from the Candler School of Theology and Phi Beta Kappa’s Emory Chapter. In 1999, Marquette’s neighbors at Nashota House awarded him the Doctor of Divinity honoris causa. The word prolific hardly does justice to Professor Johnson’s scholarly output. Since 1969, he has authored twenty books (including The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation, co-authored with Marquette’s own William Kurz, S.J., and soon to be published by Eerdmans). He has written thirty-one scholarly articles and twenty-five encyclopedia articles, and reviewed 150 books. His work as editor of Teaching Religion to Undergraduates: Some Approaches and Ideas from Teachers to Teachers (1973) bore witness early on to what would prove an enduring interest in pedagogy. But the scholarly community knows Professor Johnson best for his exegetical works on the New Testament. Since 1991, he has published two commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles and one each on James, Romans, Luke, and the Acts of the Apostles. He saw the Korean translation of his preaching guide to the Pastoral Epistles come out in 1999. These works developed as the natural fruit of reflections represented by many articles and book reviews Professor Johnson has been writing on the exegesis of these parts of the New Testament since the early seventies. But because his intellect can not find complete satisfaction in the necessarily narrow focus of the commentary form, he has since the early eighties consistently produced works of New Testament exegesis with what one might call a wide-angle lens. The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation came out in American and English editions in 1986, was revised twelve years later, and came out in Korean in 2000. Professor Johnson has written articles on the authority and literary diversity of the New Testament books, as well as on the New Testament concepts of God, salvation, witness, and proselytism and on the anti-Jewish rhetoric in the New Testament. He wrote ‘Imagining the World Scripture Imagines,’ a 1998 article in Modern Theology which L. G. Jones and J. J. Buckley also included in their volume Theology and Scriptural Imagination, published that same year. Professor Johnson’s article on the status of the Jewish Bible after the Holocaust will appear in the forthcoming Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust. Since 1995, this interest in the larger issues of New Testament interpretation has led Professor Johnson to participate in the heated public controversy over the respective roles of historical inquiry and of the Church’s faith in learning who Jesus really was and what he really said and did. He has presented his positions to the literate general public in Bible Review, Commonweal, The Christian Century, and other such organs. At the same time, he has developed his scholarly case in articles and books, most notably The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (1996) and Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospels (1998). Forthcoming articles and a book will testify to his continuing interest in the way various methods of interpretation can contribute to the renewal of biblical scholarship. His hope for that renewal comes from a deep motivation visible to anyone who reviews Professor Johnson’s energetic and fruitful career. Since 1977, he has spoken to church congregations, bishops’ meetings, and academic gatherings in at least twentyeight states and the District of Columbia, in Bangkok, Winnipeg, in Windsor, Ontario, in Dublin and Oxford. His scholarship, as well as popular articles and lectures and his encyclopedia contributions, have all focused on making available to today’s readers the Bible’s spiritual power to move and guide people toward the God of Jesus Christ. Marquette University’s Department of Theology is confident that Professor Johnson’s reflections will help those who hear or read them to give greater honor and glory to that same God. Robin Darling Young. In Procession before the World: Martyrdom As Public Liturgy in Early Christianity. ISBN 0-87462-581-5. (2001, Lecture 32). 71 pp. Cloth. $15 In 1972, Dr. Young earned her a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude from Mary Washington College, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, about half way between Washington and Richmond. She went on to earn her Masters of Arts from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School in 1975. It was from the same school that Dr. Young awarded her Ph.D. in the history of Christianity in 1982, with a thesis entitled The Patri-archate of Severus of Antioch, 512-518. In the meantime, she had already begun her teaching career, working as an instructor in Church history at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., during the last two years of her doctoral work. After a year (1984-1985) as a visiting scholar in Wolfson College, Oxford, followed by two successive one-year appointments at Catholic University, Dr. Young left her Church history post at Wesley Theological for her post at Catholic University, where she has stayed ever since. Dr. Young has taught courses on the theological approaches proper to ancient Alexandria, Antioch, and Cappadocia; classes on Augustine, Christology, asceticism, biblical interpretation, and monastic traditions of the early Church; courses on the relationship of early Christianity to Judaism or to ancient philosophy; as well as the more general sorts of history of Christianity courses all the way up to the early modern period. The reader of this present lecture will not be surprised to know that she has also taught a course on martyrdom and sacrifice in early Christianity. The doctoral dissertations which Dr. Young has directed and her teaching and lecturing off the Catholic University campus reflect the diversity of interests evidenced by her classroom work. In the 1980s, grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies helped finance her field work and manuscript research in Jerusalem, Damascus, London, and Midyat, Turkey. She thus gained access to the libraries and collections of Armenian and Syrian Orthodox patriarchates and monasteries. Dr. Young’s research has extended then not just to the thought and practice of the Greek-speaking Christianity of the first few centuries of our era but to the Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, Armenian, and Coptic sources, as well. Besides presenting translations or interpretations of the works of Syrian figures like Ephrem, Jacob, Severus, Philoxenus, and Narsai, Dr. Young’s articles have also touched on Jewish-Christian relations in Antiquity, contemporary interrpetations of ancient asceticism, the role of women in the traditions of mysticism and of martyrdom, and the history of Armenia’s conversion to Christianity. She also presented the Armenian adaptation of Evagrius’s Kephalaia Gnostica in Origeniana Quinta (ed. R. Daly, 1992), as well as research on Evagrius in Edessa. Forthcoming is her contribution to the book The Heirs of Evagrius: Early Eastern Christian Spirituality (ed. B. McGinn) in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series put out by Paulist Press. She has already co-authored, with Monica J. Blanchard, a book-length English translation of a treatise on God written by the fifth-century Armenian author Eznik of Kolb (Leuven: Peeters, 1998). Dr. Young has continued to cultivate her interest in Armenian, Syriac, and Latin expressions of early Christian through the research she has presented at meetings of the American Society of Church History, the North American Patristic Society, the International Symposium Syriacum, the Oxford Patristic Conference, the Byzantine Studies Conference, and the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature. Her expertise in the life and thought of early Christianity has led those within and without the academy to solicit her opinion and advice. Dr. Young’s book reviews have appeared in Church History, Theological Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Anglican Theological Review, The Thomist, Religious Studies Review, and Byzantine Studies/Etudes byzantines. She has been on the Organizing Committee of the Syriac Studies Symposium (starting in 1989). She served as member of the Steering Committee and as editor of the Society of Biblical Literature Group on Asceticism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. She has also been on the program committees for the American Academy of Religion (History of Christianity Section, 1986-1989), American Catholic Historical Society (1987), and American Society of Church History (1984). She has worked on the Advisory Boards of Pro Ecclesia (starting in 1992) and was a grants award panelist and reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 until 1989. The Christian Churches have not gone without the benefit of her theological and historical acumen. In 1990, she became a member of the Eastern Orthodox-Roman Catholic Consultation (Official U.S. Bilateral Dialogue). In 1991, she began work on the consultation team “The Armenian Church Observed” sponsored by the North American Diocese and the Armenian Catholicosate, Etchmiadzin. She was invited to speak at the Colloquy of Bishops and Scholars in October 1992 on the theme Enculturation in the Patristic Period. And in March 1992, she took up her role on the Board of Consultors of the Syrian Orthodox Academy. Geoffrey Wainwright. Is the Reformation over? Catholics and Protestants at the Turn of the Millennia. ISBN 0-87462-580-7. (2000, Lecture 31). 92 pp. Cloth. $15 In a recent Festschrift honoring Geoffrey Wainwright on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday he received personal congratulatory greetings from the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople; the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. That a Methodist minister would be so recognized gives a hint of the wide esteem in which he is held on all sides of the ecumenical world not to mention his “crucial contributions to the World Methodist Council that have brought [it] integrity and strength” as acknowledged by its General Secretary, Joe Hale. As teacher, scholar, churchman and ecumenist, Wainwright has made his mark for more than three decades in the effort to achieve visible Christian unity. Born in 1939 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, Geoffrey Wainwright was reared in British Methodism. Although his theological interests would soon become apparent he began his studies in Modern Languages at Cambridge University, a talent that has served him well in establishing his international reputation with publications in several languages. After completing his B.A. at Cambridge in 1960 (followed by an M.A. there in 1964), he was accepted for candidacy in the British Methodist Church in 1961, studied at Wesley College, Headingly (1962-64) and served on the probationary circuit until ordained to the presbyterate in 1967. His pastoral appointment during this period was in the Liverpool suburbs (1964-66) and was a joint Methodist/Anglican one which fit well with his emerging ecumenical associations in Rome, Geneva and the World Council of Churches. He received the B.D. degree from Cambridge in 1972 (a D.D. in 1987) and the D.Théol. from the University of Geneva in 1969 with studies at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome (1966-7). Professor Wainwright’s service in the Academy began as Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculté de Théologie protestante at Yaoundé, Cameroun (1967-1973) followed by six years at Queen’s College, Birmingham (1973-1979). He then arrived in the United States when he was called to the Roosevelt Chair of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York (1979-1983). His present position beginning in 1983 as holder of the Robert Earl Cushman Chair of Christian Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University returned him to his Methodist roots (albeit the United Methodist Church in the U.S.) and introduced him to the American south. Although collegial recognition of Geoffrey Wainwright’s contribution to theological scholarship is well in evidence, it is service to the cause of Christian unity for which he is best known. In regard to the former he exercised leadership during his presidencies of the international Societas Liturgica (1983-85) and the American Theological Society (1996-97). He has also served on the editorial boards of Studia Liturgica (as editor, 1974-87), One in Christ (1975-present), Pro Ecclesia (advisory council, 1991-present), Ex Auditu (1988-present) and Studies in Historical Theology, Labyrinth Press, Oxford University Press (1984-present). Ecumenical service landed him on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches from 1977 to 1991 during which he chaired the final edition of the Lima text of 1982, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. This document has been instrumental in forging further ecumenical convergence among the churches. He also chairs the World Methodist Council’s Committee on Ecumenism and Dialogue and is presently co-chair of the international Methodist-Roman Catholic Dialogue as well as a member of the Council’s commissions with the Anglican communion and the Orthodox Churches. Geoffrey Wainwright’s legacy will long remain through his many books and articles (some 270 titles!) and among the students he has mentored and influenced. The heart of Wainwright’s theological work and perspective remains his 1980 book Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life. Preceded by his landmark study Eucharist and Eschatology and followed by collections of essays and books edited on ecumenism, liturgy and Methodist identity in the Church catholic, Wainwright had plied his original insights into the constructive theological value of the ancient axiom, “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” (the law of prayer is the law of belief). Hence more recent works such as Geoffrey Wainwright on Wesley and Calvin: Sources for Theology, Liturgy and Spirituality (1987) and For Our Salvation: Two Approaches to the Work of Christ (1997) reveals Wainwright’s ability to fruitfully engage different theological traditions and models to manifest the rich texture of Christian faith borne along in the worship of the church. It is with all this in mind that we present this lecture mindful that for Geoffrey Wainwright no end is more desired in Christian service than that proffered by his ancestor in the faith, John Wesley, who at the close of his sermon on “The New Creation” states (and quoted by Wainwright in For Our Salvation): “To crown all, there will be a deep, an intimate, an uninterrupted union with God; a constant communion with the Father and his Son, through the Spirit; a continual enjoyment of the Three-One God, and of all the creatures in him. O’Collins, Gerald, S.J. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ ISBN 0-87462-548-3. (1993, Lecture 24). 50 pp. $15 “I want to limit this evening’s lecture to four major questions. The discussion that follows can, of course, range more widely. As far as I am concerned, anything at all about the resurrection of Jesus can come in. For that matter, I am happy to respond to and learn from questions or observations about Jesus Christ that range even well beyond his resurrection from the dead. But for the lecture itself my four major questions are: What did the first Christians mean by their claim about Jesus’ resurrection? How did they come to know about and believe in him as risen from the dead? How did the resurrection of the crucified Jesus bring the definitive revelation of the tripersonal God? In what way can we legitimate Easter faith today?” — Gerald O’Collins, from the opening pages.
Lisa Sowle Cahill. Bioethics and the Common Good. ISBN 0-87462-584-X. (2004, Lecture 35). 94 pp. Cloth. $15
This year’s lecturer is Lisa Sowle Cahill, a central figure in contemporary Roman Catholic moral theology, and indeed a central figure in the broader field of Christian Ethics. Dr. Cahill received her B.A. in Theology from Santa Clara University in 1970, followed by M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where she wrote her dissertation under the supervision of James Gustafson (1976). She is J. Donald Monan, S.J., Professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College, where she has taught since 1976, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University (1986) and Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology at Yale University (l997). Dr. Cahill is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has held office in the American Academy of Religion. She has served as an editor, or on the editorial boards, of Concilium, Journal of Religious Ethics, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, Religious Studies Review, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Horizons, Journal of Law and Religion, Second Opinion, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. In addition, she has been a member of the Catholic Health Association Theology and Ethics Advisory Committee, the National Advisory Board for Ethics in Reproduction, and serves on the March of Dimes National Bioethics Committee. She has given testimony to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission on fetal tissue research and on cloning. For five years she convened a small international study group on genetics, theology, and social ethics. Special areas of interest from among her many areas of expertise areas are fundamental theological ethics, the use of Scripture in ethics, the ethics of sex and gender, bioethics, just war theory and pacifism, and history of Christian ethics. A current research focus is genetics and social ethics, including cloning, stem cell research, and the international development and marketing of genomics-based tests and therapies. Another interest is challenges to, applications of, and alternatives to, Christian just war theory today. These areas of specialization are represented in her many publications. She has written or edited eight books, with a ninth in progress: Family: A Christian Social Perspective (Fortress, 2000); Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1996); “Love Your Enemies”: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Fortress, 1994); Between the Sexes: Toward a Christian Ethics of Sexuality (Fortress and Paulist Presses, 1985); Women and Sexuality (Paulist, l992); and, with Thomas A. Shannon, Religion and Artificial Reproduction: An Inquiry into the Vatican Instruction on Human Life (Crossroad Press, l988); Embodiment, Morality and Medicine with Margaret A. Farley (Kluwer Publishers, 1995), and, with James Childress, Christian Ethics: Problems and Prospects, a collection in honor of James M. Gustafson (Pilgrim Press, l996). Currently she is preparing for publication an edited volume called Genetics, Theology, Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Conversation (Crossroad). She is the author of approximately 150 essays that have appeared in books or in journals such as Theological Studies, Journal of Religion, Journal of Religious Ethics, Hastings Center Report, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Journal of Law and Religion, Law, Medicine, and Health Care, Hofstra Law Review, Loyola Law Review, Horizons, Interpretation, Thought, and Concilium. On its own it is a great honor for Marquette’s Department of Theology to have a lecturer of the accomplishment and esteem of Lisa Sowle Cahill. But her lecturing in our series has a fittingness that goes beyond the appropriateness of having so central an individual in contemporary Catholic moral theology address us on a topic of great importance; for, as it happens, in giving the Père Marquette Lecture this year Dr. Cahill will be following in the footsteps of two previous lecturers in this series, from whom she is an intellectual descendent: James M. Gustafson (1975), who directed her dissertation, and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., (1973), who figured prominently in her dissertation, and in her work thereafter. We thank her for addressing us on “Bioethics and the Common Good,” and contributing this volume to posterity in our midst, fully expecting that it will be found on the bookshelf of some future Père Marquette Lecturer
Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P. The Reception of Vatican II Liturgical Reforms in the Life of the Church. ISBN 0-87462-583-1. (2003, Lecture 34). 62 pp. Cloth. $15
Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P., is one of the most influential liturgical scholars of our time and comes to us from the Institut supérieur de liturgie in Paris, France. He was born in Paris on October 19, 1922. In 1940 he began medieval studies at the famous School of Chartes in Paris and a year later he entered the Dominican order. Ordained a priest In 1948, from 1949 to 1968 Père Gy taught sacramental theology and liturgy at the Dominican Faculty of Theology of Le Saulchoir. His own doctoral dissertation was on the history and theology of the Ritual of the Sacraments. From 1949 until 2001 he was a member of the Center of Pastoral Liturgy, which in 1964 became the official liturgical center of the French episcopate. The two scholars whose work and personal presence influenced Père Gy the most were Dom Bernard Botte, O.S.B., of Louvain, the greatest historian of the liturgy in the 20th century, and Yves Congar, O.P., especially from 1945 to 1954 and during the last years of his life when Gy was Cardinal Congar’s closest confidant. During the early part of his career, Père Gy had friendly scholarly contact with the great Anglican liturgist, Dom Gregory Dix, and—both before Vatican II and during the post-conciliar work of liturgical reform—with Fr. Joseph Andreas Jungmann, S.J., the eminent Austrian historian of the liturgy. It was due in great part to Balthasar Fischer and Père Gy’s conciliating efforts that the head liturgist among the French, Aimé-Georges Martimort, and Johannes Wagner, the chief German liturgist, were able to work together in that post-war period, thereby making possible Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium as well as the later work of liturgical reform.
In 1956 Gy was named assistant director under Dom Bernard Botte of the new Institut supérieur de liturgie founded at the Institut catholique of Paris. Succeeding Botte as director in 1964, Gy continued on in that capacity until 1987 when he became director of doctoral studies and of the whole faculty of theology. His retirement from teaching came in 1990. During his tenure at the Institut supérieur de liturgie he directed a total of 50 doctorates in liturgy, a dozen of which were by Americans. Together with Johannes Wagner and Aimé-Georges Martimort, Père Gy was one of the principal architects of Sacrosanctum Concilium and of the post-conciliar liturgical reform. Over the years he has been the editor, first, of the Dominican Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, and then of the extremely influential journal on the liturgy, La Maison Dieu. From 1971 to 1973 he served as the third president of the Societas Liturgica, an ecumenical and international association of liturgical scholars. A 1990 listing of his scholarly publications includes 137 articles, 19 annual bulletins on the liturgy, and numerous book reviews. Although formally retired, Père Gy has continued his writing through the past 13 years. One example of his productivity is his latest “Bulletin de Liturgie” in the Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques (86/4). This past year’s yearly overview of recent scholarly activity in the liturgy across the world runs a total of 46 pages! Throughout his scholarly career Père Gy’s primary concern has been to help re-establish the unity between sacramental theology and the Church’s liturgy, both as historically understood and as celebrated. Marquette University, named after one outstanding French priest and explorer, is deeply honored by the presence in its midst and the shared wisdom of yet another. For generations Père Pierre-Marie Gy, O.P., has served as an outstanding example of careful historical investigation into, and profound love for, the liturgy of the Church. Liturgical scholars across the world have benefitted immeasurably from his dedicated life of learning, both those who had the privilege to study under him in Paris, and the many more who have read his work in the pages of La Maison Dieu and elsewhere. Marquette University wishes to join its voice to the all those who have recognized and expressed gratitude for his immense contribution to the Church’s liturgy and her understanding of the liturgy. May le Père Gy in this, his 81st year, continue to receive, along with our gratitude, God’s richest blessings for many more years to come.
Geoffrey Wainwright. Is the Reformation over? Catholics and Protestants at the Turn of the Millennia. ISBN 0-87462-580-7. (2000, Lecture 31). 92 pp. Cloth. $15 In a recent Festschrift honoring Geoffrey Wainwright on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday he received personal congratulatory greetings from the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople; the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. That a Methodist minister would be so recognized gives a hint of the wide esteem in which he is held on all sides of the ecumenical world not to mention his “crucial contributions to the World Methodist Council that have brought [it] integrity and strength” as acknowledged by its General Secretary, Joe Hale. As teacher, scholar, churchman and ecumenist, Wainwright has made his mark for more than three decades in the effort to achieve visible Christian unity. Born in 1939 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, Geoffrey Wainwright was reared in British Methodism. Although his theological interests would soon become apparent he began his studies in Modern Languages at Cambridge University, a talent that has served him well in establishing his international reputation with publications in several languages. After completing his B.A. at Cambridge in 1960 (followed by an M.A. there in 1964), he was accepted for candidacy in the British Methodist Church in 1961, studied at Wesley College, Headingly (1962-64) and served on the probationary circuit until ordained to the presbyterate in 1967. His pastoral appointment during this period was in the Liverpool suburbs (1964-66) and was a joint Methodist/Anglican one which fit well with his emerging ecumenical associations in Rome, Geneva and the World Council of Churches. He received the B.D. degree from Cambridge in 1972 (a D.D. in 1987) and the D.Théol. from the University of Geneva in 1969 with studies at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome (1966-7). Professor Wainwright’s service in the Academy began as Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculté de Théologie protestante at Yaoundé, Cameroun (1967-1973) followed by six years at Queen’s College, Birmingham (1973-1979). He then arrived in the United States when he was called to the Roosevelt Chair of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York (1979-1983). His present position beginning in 1983 as holder of the Robert Earl Cushman Chair of Christian Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University returned him to his Methodist roots (albeit the United Methodist Church in the U.S.) and introduced him to the American south. Although collegial recognition of Geoffrey Wainwright’s contribution to theological scholarship is well in evidence, it is service to the cause of Christian unity for which he is best known. In regard to the former he exercised leadership during his presidencies of the international Societas Liturgica (1983-85) and the American Theological Society (1996-97). He has also served on the editorial boards of Studia Liturgica (as editor, 1974-87), One in Christ (1975-present), Pro Ecclesia (advisory council, 1991-present), Ex Auditu (1988-present) and Studies in Historical Theology, Labyrinth Press, Oxford University Press (1984-present). Ecumenical service landed him on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches from 1977 to 1991 during which he chaired the final edition of the Lima text of 1982, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. This document has been instrumental in forging further ecumenical convergence among the churches. He also chairs the World Methodist Council’s Committee on Ecumenism and Dialogue and is presently co-chair of the international Methodist-Roman Catholic Dialogue as well as a member of the Council’s commissions with the Anglican communion and the Orthodox Churches. Geoffrey Wainwright’s legacy will long remain through his many books and articles (some 270 titles!) and among the students he has mentored and influenced. The heart of Wainwright’s theological work and perspective remains his 1980 book Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life. Preceded by his landmark study Eucharist and Eschatology and followed by collections of essays and books edited on ecumenism, liturgy and Methodist identity in the Church catholic, Wainwright had plied his original insights into the constructive theological value of the ancient axiom, “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” (the law of prayer is the law of belief). Hence more recent works such as Geoffrey Wainwright on Wesley and Calvin: Sources for Theology, Liturgy and Spirituality (1987) and For Our Salvation: Two Approaches to the Work of Christ (1997) reveals Wainwright’s ability to fruitfully engage different theological traditions and models to manifest the rich texture of Christian faith borne along in the worship of the church. It is with all this in mind that we present this lecture mindful that for Geoffrey Wainwright no end is more desired in Christian service than that proffered by his ancestor in the faith, John Wesley, who at the close of his sermon on “The New Creation” states (and quoted by Wainwright in For Our Salvation): “To crown all, there will be a deep, an intimate, an uninterrupted union with God; a constant communion with the Father and his Son, through the Spirit; a continual enjoyment of the Three-One God, and of all the creatures in him.
In a recent Festschrift honoring Geoffrey Wainwright on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday he received personal congratulatory greetings from the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople; the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. That a Methodist minister would be so recognized gives a hint of the wide esteem in which he is held on all sides of the ecumenical world not to mention his “crucial contributions to the World Methodist Council that have brought [it] integrity and strength” as acknowledged by its General Secretary, Joe Hale. As teacher, scholar, churchman and ecumenist, Wainwright has made his mark for more than three decades in the effort to achieve visible Christian unity.
Born in 1939 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, Geoffrey Wainwright was reared in British Methodism. Although his theological interests would soon become apparent he began his studies in Modern Languages at Cambridge University, a talent that has served him well in establishing his international reputation with publications in several languages. After completing his B.A. at Cambridge in 1960 (followed by an M.A. there in 1964), he was accepted for candidacy in the British Methodist Church in 1961, studied at Wesley College, Headingly (1962-64) and served on the probationary circuit until ordained to the presbyterate in 1967. His pastoral appointment during this period was in the Liverpool suburbs (1964-66) and was a joint Methodist/Anglican one which fit well with his emerging ecumenical associations in Rome, Geneva and the World Council of Churches. He received the B.D. degree from Cambridge in 1972 (a D.D. in 1987) and the D.Théol. from the University of Geneva in 1969 with studies at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome (1966-7).
Professor Wainwright’s service in the Academy began as Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculté de Théologie protestante at Yaoundé, Cameroun (1967-1973) followed by six years at Queen’s College, Birmingham (1973-1979). He then arrived in the United States when he was called to the Roosevelt Chair of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York (1979-1983). His present position beginning in 1983 as holder of the Robert Earl Cushman Chair of Christian Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University returned him to his Methodist roots (albeit the United Methodist Church in the U.S.) and introduced him to the American south.
Although collegial recognition of Geoffrey Wainwright’s contribution to theological scholarship is well in evidence, it is service to the cause of Christian unity for which he is best known. In regard to the former he exercised leadership during his presidencies of the international Societas Liturgica (1983-85) and the American Theological Society (1996-97). He has also served on the editorial boards of Studia Liturgica (as editor, 1974-87), One in Christ (1975-present), Pro Ecclesia (advisory council, 1991-present), Ex Auditu (1988-present) and Studies in Historical Theology, Labyrinth Press, Oxford University Press (1984-present). Ecumenical service landed him on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches from 1977 to 1991 during which he chaired the final edition of the Lima text of 1982, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. This document has been instrumental in forging further ecumenical convergence among the churches. He also chairs the World Methodist Council’s Committee on Ecumenism and Dialogue and is presently co-chair of the international Methodist-Roman Catholic Dialogue as well as a member of the Council’s commissions with the Anglican communion and the Orthodox Churches.
Geoffrey Wainwright’s legacy will long remain through his many books and articles (some 270 titles!) and among the students he has mentored and influenced. The heart of Wainwright’s theological work and perspective remains his 1980 book Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life. Preceded by his landmark study Eucharist and Eschatology and followed by collections of essays and books edited on ecumenism, liturgy and Methodist identity in the Church catholic, Wainwright had plied his original insights into the constructive theological value of the ancient axiom, “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” (the law of prayer is the law of belief). Hence more recent works such as Geoffrey Wainwright on Wesley and Calvin: Sources for Theology, Liturgy and Spirituality (1987) and For Our Salvation: Two Approaches to the Work of Christ (1997) reveals Wainwright’s ability to fruitfully engage different theological traditions and models to manifest the rich texture of Christian faith borne along in the worship of the church.
It is with all this in mind that we present this lecture mindful that for Geoffrey Wainwright no end is more desired in Christian service than that proffered by his ancestor in the faith, John Wesley, who at the close of his sermon on “The New Creation” states (and quoted by Wainwright in For Our Salvation): “To crown all, there will be a deep, an intimate, an uninterrupted union with God; a constant communion with the Father and his Son, through the Spirit; a continual enjoyment of the Three-One God, and of all the creatures in him.
“I want to limit this evening’s lecture to four major questions. The discussion that follows can, of course, range more widely. As far as I am concerned, anything at all about the resurrection of Jesus can come in. For that matter, I am happy to respond to and learn from questions or observations about Jesus Christ that range even well beyond his resurrection from the dead. But for the lecture itself my four major questions are: What did the first Christians mean by their claim about Jesus’ resurrection? How did they come to know about and believe in him as risen from the dead? How did the resurrection of the crucified Jesus bring the definitive revelation of the tripersonal God? In what way can we legitimate Easter faith today?” — Gerald O’Collins, from the opening pages.
Weakland, Rembert G., O.S.B. Seeking God in Contemporary Culture ISBN 0-87462-549-1 (1994, Lecture 25). 45 pp. $15 “Benedict, in his Rule for Monks, gives various criteria for judging if a novice has the correct motivation. The first of these criteria reads as follows: ’the concern must be whether the novice truly seeks God’ (si revera Deum quaeret, chapter 58). It is important to note that Benedict does not say that the novice must find God, but only that the novice must be truly searching for God. In fact, it would probably be a negative sign if the novice were content that he had found God. It is to be presupposed that, when many people seek God in our culture and give a deeper spiritual meaning to the reality in which they live and the culture that surrounds it, that culture itself will begin to change. One would only hope that the culture then would become a clearer vehicle for religious expression than it is at this present moment. The fault must be found, however, not in the culture but in those who have failed to express their deep religious sentiments in and through the better aspects of the culture that are able to carry a sense of the transcendent. The quest will continue only if we put all of our strength and energy into it. True merit, though, does not come from finding, but from seeking.” — From pages 1 and 39 of the text.
“Benedict, in his Rule for Monks, gives various criteria for judging if a novice has the correct motivation. The first of these criteria reads as follows: ’the concern must be whether the novice truly seeks God’ (si revera Deum quaeret, chapter 58). It is important to note that Benedict does not say that the novice must find God, but only that the novice must be truly searching for God. In fact, it would probably be a negative sign if the novice were content that he had found God. It is to be presupposed that, when many people seek God in our culture and give a deeper spiritual meaning to the reality in which they live and the culture that surrounds it, that culture itself will begin to change. One would only hope that the culture then would become a clearer vehicle for religious expression than it is at this present moment. The fault must be found, however, not in the culture but in those who have failed to express their deep religious sentiments in and through the better aspects of the culture that are able to carry a sense of the transcendent. The quest will continue only if we put all of our strength and energy into it. True merit, though, does not come from finding, but from seeking.” — From pages 1 and 39 of the text.
Richard J. Clifford, S.J. The Book of Proverbs and Our Search for Wisdom ISBN 0-87462-575-0 (1995, Lecture 26). $15 “It is safe to say that the Book of Proverbs is not widely regarded today as a vital part of the Bible and a great resource in living one’s life, at least by contemporary North Americans and Europeans. It is not ranked among the top ten, not even among the top forty, of biblical books. Its lack of popularity in North America is particularly striking, given that many of its concerns are those of perennial best sellers by F. Scott Peck, Parker J. Palmer, and others books on finding meaning in life. Themes of contemporary spirituality are everywhere in Proverbs: for example, discernment, making difficult choices, and finding God in all things. Many themes of moral philosophy or theology also appear: Are there any moral absolutes? What is the right thing to do? Will I be punished for bad actions and rewarded for good actions? What do I tell my children about the blessed life? Interest in these questions runs high in our culture.” — Richard Clifford, from the Introduction
“It is safe to say that the Book of Proverbs is not widely regarded today as a vital part of the Bible and a great resource in living one’s life, at least by contemporary North Americans and Europeans. It is not ranked among the top ten, not even among the top forty, of biblical books. Its lack of popularity in North America is particularly striking, given that many of its concerns are those of perennial best sellers by F. Scott Peck, Parker J. Palmer, and others books on finding meaning in life. Themes of contemporary spirituality are everywhere in Proverbs: for example, discernment, making difficult choices, and finding God in all things. Many themes of moral philosophy or theology also appear: Are there any moral absolutes? What is the right thing to do? Will I be punished for bad actions and rewarded for good actions? What do I tell my children about the blessed life? Interest in these questions runs high in our culture.” — Richard Clifford, from the Introduction
Fahey, Michael, S.J. Orthodox and Catholic Sister Churches ISBN 0-87462-576-9 (1996, Lecture 27). $15 “How will the Catholic churches remain faithful to their deepest religious heritage and at the same time enrich the church of Rome and other Western Christian communities? This will be done by their helping believers understand better Eastern church life. This will stress the importance of the local church where the faithful come together as church in one place. The bishop will be seen as acting to represent the local church and to govern more widely in synodal fashion. A typical Eastern perspective is that the eucharistic assembly under the presidency of the bishop is completely church in all its fullness, a complete church even if not the total church. The church that dwells in Milwaukee or Stamford has the same fullness as the church in Rome, Melbourne, or Buenos Aires. This implies the basic unity and equality of all local churches and of all bishops which does not mean uniformity, just as the unity of essence in the triune God does not exclude plurality among the unique persons.” — Michael Fahey, from the Conclusion
“How will the Catholic churches remain faithful to their deepest religious heritage and at the same time enrich the church of Rome and other Western Christian communities? This will be done by their helping believers understand better Eastern church life. This will stress the importance of the local church where the faithful come together as church in one place. The bishop will be seen as acting to represent the local church and to govern more widely in synodal fashion. A typical Eastern perspective is that the eucharistic assembly under the presidency of the bishop is completely church in all its fullness, a complete church even if not the total church. The church that dwells in Milwaukee or Stamford has the same fullness as the church in Rome, Melbourne, or Buenos Aires. This implies the basic unity and equality of all local churches and of all bishops which does not mean uniformity, just as the unity of essence in the triune God does not exclude plurality among the unique persons.” — Michael Fahey, from the Conclusion
Griffith, Sidney H. Faith Adoring the Mystery: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian ISBN 0-87462-577-7 (1997, Lecture 28). $15 The lecture for 1997 is given by Sidney H. Griffith, S.T. Fr. Griffith was born in 1938 in Gaithersburg, Maryland. After attending the Holy Trinity Mission Seminary, in Winchester, Virginia, he was ordained a priest (Missionary Servant of the Most Holy Trinity) in 1965. Fr. Griffith went on to receive his Licentiate in Theology from The Catholic University of America (CUA), in 1967; he received his Ph.D., in the area of Syriac and Mediæval Arabic, from CUA’s Department of Semitic and Oriental Languages and Literatures in 1977. Fr. Griffith has taught at CUA since 1977; since 1984, he has been the director of CUA’s Graduate Program in Early Christian Studies. Fr. Griffith has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. He has been president of both the Byzantine Studies Conference and the North American Patristic Society. Since 1986, Fr. Griffith has served as a member of the Catholic Delegation to the Eastern Orthodox/Roman Catholic Consultation. Fr. Griffith has published numerous works in the areas of Syriac Christianity and Christian Arabic. Fr. Griffith 1997 Père Marquette Lecture is entitled ‘Faith Adoring the Mystery’: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian and represents the recent work by scholars in the new project of the recovery of Syriac Christianity. Scholarly interest in the Syriac-speaking Christianity of early Byzantine Syria and Sassanid Persia, aside from Biblical studies and the occasional intrepid explorer, is a relatively new phenomenon. There is the pioneering work of Arthur Voeoebus and Dom Edmund Beck in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, but it is really with people such as Robert Murray and Sebastian Brock from the 1970s onward that excitement and interest began steadily to mount. Today the area is well on its way toward becoming the major field of patristic research, alongside of, and increasingly equal to the long-plowed acreage of the Greek and Latin Fathers. Why this excitement? Three reasons should suffice. First, Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, and Syriac Christianity thus represents a continuous Christian tradition whose idiom was governed by essentially the same language as was spoken by those fishermen, peasants, and tax collectors who gathered to hear the Lord Jesus preach in Roman Palestine, and who then went on to spread the new faith of the Messiah along the great trade routes of the Roman Orient. As a result, second, in the writings of an Ephrem Syrus (=373) or of an Aphrahat the Persian (fl. 340s), to name but two, readers discover themselves in touch with currents of Christian and pre-Christian, Jewish though that extend back into the Palestine of the first century AD and before. These currents, third, serve not only to shed light from new angles on Christian origins, including the books of the New Testament, but also on well known Greek and Latin Christian writers of the early centuries, and so on the formation of classic Christian doctrine, spirituality, and liturgy. It is, for example, now rightly felt to be impossible to account for Byzantine hymnology and monastic literature without recourse to Syrian Christian poetry and ascetic writings. To be sure, Syriac Christianity has an intrinsic value and appeal, a lyrical, poetic approach to theology which can appeal directly to the directly to the modern reader, but these ancient kinfolk of the better known world of the Western churches, Greek and Latin, also tell us valuable things about ourselves, about our own tradition(s), and the continuity of Christian experience. They reveal new facets, new ways of looking at ideas and customs that we had long thought perfectly familiar and thoroughly explained.
Griffith, Sidney H. Faith Adoring the Mystery: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian ISBN 0-87462-577-7 (1997, Lecture 28). $15
The lecture for 1997 is given by Sidney H. Griffith, S.T. Fr. Griffith was born in 1938 in Gaithersburg, Maryland. After attending the Holy Trinity Mission Seminary, in Winchester, Virginia, he was ordained a priest (Missionary Servant of the Most Holy Trinity) in 1965. Fr. Griffith went on to receive his Licentiate in Theology from The Catholic University of America (CUA), in 1967; he received his Ph.D., in the area of Syriac and Mediæval Arabic, from CUA’s Department of Semitic and Oriental Languages and Literatures in 1977. Fr. Griffith has taught at CUA since 1977; since 1984, he has been the director of CUA’s Graduate Program in Early Christian Studies. Fr. Griffith has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. He has been president of both the Byzantine Studies Conference and the North American Patristic Society. Since 1986, Fr. Griffith has served as a member of the Catholic Delegation to the Eastern Orthodox/Roman Catholic Consultation. Fr. Griffith has published numerous works in the areas of Syriac Christianity and Christian Arabic. Fr. Griffith 1997 Père Marquette Lecture is entitled ‘Faith Adoring the Mystery’: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian and represents the recent work by scholars in the new project of the recovery of Syriac Christianity.
Scholarly interest in the Syriac-speaking Christianity of early Byzantine Syria and Sassanid Persia, aside from Biblical studies and the occasional intrepid explorer, is a relatively new phenomenon. There is the pioneering work of Arthur Voeoebus and Dom Edmund Beck in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, but it is really with people such as Robert Murray and Sebastian Brock from the 1970s onward that excitement and interest began steadily to mount. Today the area is well on its way toward becoming the major field of patristic research, alongside of, and increasingly equal to the long-plowed acreage of the Greek and Latin Fathers. Why this excitement? Three reasons should suffice. First, Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, and Syriac Christianity thus represents a continuous Christian tradition whose idiom was governed by essentially the same language as was spoken by those fishermen, peasants, and tax collectors who gathered to hear the Lord Jesus preach in Roman Palestine, and who then went on to spread the new faith of the Messiah along the great trade routes of the Roman Orient. As a result, second, in the writings of an Ephrem Syrus (=373) or of an Aphrahat the Persian (fl. 340s), to name but two, readers discover themselves in touch with currents of Christian and pre-Christian, Jewish though that extend back into the Palestine of the first century AD and before. These currents, third, serve not only to shed light from new angles on Christian origins, including the books of the New Testament, but also on well known Greek and Latin Christian writers of the early centuries, and so on the formation of classic Christian doctrine, spirituality, and liturgy. It is, for example, now rightly felt to be impossible to account for Byzantine hymnology and monastic literature without recourse to Syrian Christian poetry and ascetic writings. To be sure, Syriac Christianity has an intrinsic value and appeal, a lyrical, poetic approach to theology which can appeal directly to the directly to the modern reader, but these ancient kinfolk of the better known world of the Western churches, Greek and Latin, also tell us valuable things about ourselves, about our own tradition(s), and the continuity of Christian experience. They reveal new facets, new ways of looking at ideas and customs that we had long thought perfectly familiar and thoroughly explained.
Moltmann, Jürgen. Is There Life after Death? ISBN 0-87462-578-5 (1997, Lecture 29). $15. 66 pp.
Jürgen Moltmann is perhaps the most important Protestant theologian of the second half of the twentieth century. His influence on the theological discussions of the last thirty-five years has been correspondingly broad and pervasive. He is a Reformed theologian whose work is marked by a deep commitment to biblical theology, to the Reformation heritage, to ecumenical dialogue, and to the task of bringing contemporary Christianity to a clearer awareness of and a more active engagement with the social implications of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The theme that runs through all his thought, from his earliest turn to Christianity to his latest major publication, is eschatological hope. A matter of existential discovery in the POW camps, this theme became the central concern of his theology in the post-war years, as a now ostensibly ’Christian’ Germany settled into a self-satisfied affirmation of the status quo. In conversation with neo-Marxism, Moltmann fashioned a thoroughly eschatological theology, structured as a dialectic of the cross, i.e., of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and calling for a Christian praxis of social transformation. This self-described ’political theology’ has subsequently had a profound impact on all the forms of liberation theology which have arisen in the past generation around the world. For theologians throughout Latin America and Asia, as well as North America and Europe have found in his work conceptual tools that they have been able to turn to good purpose in their own contexts of suffering and oppression that would crush hope. In addition, from the perspective of his eschatological concern, Moltmann has made profound contributions to such classical issues as the doctrines of God, Trinity, Creation, Christology, Anthropology, Pneumatology and Ecclesiology, as well as to such contemporary questions as that of history, ecology, the practice of ecumenical theology, and social ethics. It is in light of that body of work, that this lecture on life after death should be read.
Curran, Charles E. Moral Theology at the End of the Century ISBN 0-87462-579-3 (1999, Lecture 30). 66 pp. $15
For close to forty years Charles E. Curran has played a pivotal role in the teaching, mediation, and development of Roman Catholic moral theology, both in North America, throughout the Catholic Church, and, increasingly, among Christian ethicists of differing traditions. His accomplishments within moral theology appear similarly boundless, for his teaching and writing covers the areas of fundamental moral theology, social, economic, historical, medical and sexual moral theology. And he has been a key participant in the important discussions about academic freedom in the ecclesiastical context, particularly in the American university setting. Born in March of 1934, Fr. Curran was ordained as a priest in the Roman Catholic diocese of Rochester, New York. Although he expected to work in parish-ministry, after the completion of his seminary education at St. Bernard’s College in 1955, his bishop sent him to Rome for further studies, which he undertook both at the Pontifical Gregorian University and Academia Alfonsiana, where he earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from each institution in 1961. That year Fr. Curran returned to teach at the seminary where he had studied. He has taught moral theology ever since: St. Bernard’s Seminary (1961-65), The Catholic University of America (1965-89), visiting professorships at Cornell University (1987-88), University of Southern California (1988-90), Auburn University, Alabama (1990-91). Since 1991 he has been the Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. He is past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America (1969-70), the Society for Christian Ethics (1971-72), and the American Theological Society (1989-90), and serves on the editorial boards of several theological journals (Église et théologie, Horizons, Journal of Religious Ethics, Annual of Society of Christian Ethics). Since 1966 he has regularly published books and collections of his essays through Fides Publishers - then, later, the University of Notre Dame Press - on major aspects of contemporary moral theology. These include: Christian Morality Today (1966), Ongoing Revision: Studies in Moral Theology (1975), Issues in Sexual and Medical Ethics (1978), Directions in Catholic Social Ethics (1985), The Living Tradition of Catholic Moral Theology (1992). 1986 saw the publication of his important Faithful Dissent (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward), and in recent years he has published on the history of moral theology (History and Contemporary Issues: Studies in Moral Theology [New York: Continuum, 1996], and The origins of Moral Theology in the United States: Three Different Approaches [Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1997]). The present year sees the publication of his co-authored work, The Catholic Moral Tradition Today: A Synthesis (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1999). Among his many editorial contributions is the Paulist Press series, Readings in Moral Theology, begun in 1979 with his long-time colleague, Richard A. McCormick, S.J. Topics in this series have covered timely areas of contemporary moral theology, ranging from moral norms (1979) to the use of Scripture in moral theology (1984) to natural law (1991) and to Pope John Paul II’s relationship to contemporary moral theology (1998). He has been honored in the New York Times, by ABC News, by the Catholic Theological Society of America with the John Courtney Murray award (1972), and by the University of Charleston, West Virginia, and Concordia College, Oregon, with honorary doctorates. In this thirtieth Père Marquette Lecture in Theology Fr. Curran brings to bear his wide learning and experience to speak on “Moral Theology at the End of the Century,” where he addresses the past, present, and possible future for Roman Catholic moral theology in the coming century, the third millennium.
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