Some Recent New Testament Works

MEDIAEVAL theology allowed itself, by the misuse of dogmatic authority, to obscure the real meaning of our Lord's humanity. The truth came to us in such a book as Ecce Homo, and from countless other teachers, with a fresh thrill of delight. The Gospels and the New Testament have come to live again. One of the most vital districts of Christian truth has been restored to us. But it has been restored to us wholly, or almost wholly, by writers alien to the Roman Church, and often alien to the Christian Creed.' These foolish words of Bishop Gore (Catholicism and, Roman Catholicism, p. 35) proclaim his ignorance both of mediaeval theology and of Catholic exegesis. It seems incredible that anyone should consider himself entitled to pass judgment on mediaeval theology without having read the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas : yet that Bishop Gore has not read the Tertia Pars, at least intelligently, is patent; no one who had done so could have brought the above charge against that theology of which it is the finest fruit. From the Tertia Pars, not from the often false sentimentalism of Ecce Homo, comes to us the truth about the human nature of Jesus Christ; how poignantly sometimes, a reading, say, of the eighteenth question on the two wills will show. It was not perhaps St. Thomas's primary concern to bring into relief what we might call certain particular accidental realities which accompanied that humanity in its earthly life. Therein lies one of the differences between the theologian and an evangelist such as St. Mark, a difference well expressed by Pere Lagrange several of whose recent works have, unfortunately, as yet received no notice in these pages

Citation · New Testament · Theology · World Wide Web · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Christian Theology and Mission · Computer Science · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies · Philosophy