Want to Read. Buy on Amazon. Rate this book. Richard P. A new study edition of the classic that has sold over , copies. Theology Reference Catholic Religion Paperback First published January 1, More details. McBrien 30 books 7 followers. Search review text. A very thorough synthesis of Catholic beliefs placed within wider theological debates-particularly from theologians of the 20th century. McBrien explicitly states that he is mainly inspired by Rahner and Lonergan's Transcendental Thomism, so that is the major bias.
This is all to say, that it is not going to be a book that is simply about doctrine; rather, it places Church teachings and documents within a larger conversation with Catholic and non-Catholic theologians and sometimes McBrien does not give Church pronouncements the weight they deserve.
But, as an entry point into understanding how different concepts and ideas fit together within Christian theology, it is an excellent starting point. I personally felt a renewed excitement for studying theology after reading it. I would highly recommend it to any reader who wants to begin to delve deeper into Christian theology. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory VIB Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory Q Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Book is in NEW condition. Seller Inventory Fast Customer Service!!. Seller Inventory PSN McBrien, Richard P. Publisher: HarperOne , This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. View all copies of this ISBN edition:. This descriptive approach, with its successive summaries of various positions, does not provide the beginner with enough information to assess the place of these positions within the Catholic theological tradition as a whole.
One of the schools of thought presented is that of feminism. The label feminism connotes a broad range of concerns and opinions. While feminist theology has made an important contribution to Catholic thought, some of the positions taken by feminist theologians are in fact quite far from mainstream Catholic theology, if not actually inconsistent with orthodox belief.
The problem is that Catholicism embraces feminist theology as a category in toto , without making any distinctions, and gives no hint as to the extent to which some forms of feminist theology are in tension with the Catholic theological tradition.
The book portrays feminist theology as part of the established consensus of contemporary theology and adopts its language, speaking in terms of "patriarchy" and "androcentricism" pp. In the Preface, the book presents the emergence of feminist theology as the foremost example of positive change in the church since p. One of the essential criteria offered for Catholic Christology is a congruence with a feminist interpretation of Christ: "Christological explanations which interpret the maleness of Christ in an androcentric way or the headship of Christ in a patriarchal way effectively deny the proclamation and praxis of Jesus regarding the universality of God's love and the openness of the kingdom to all, women and men alike" p.
Catholicism offers no explanation of the meaning of the terms patriarchy and androcentrism , however, and fails to give the reader a sense of the degree to which aspects of feminist methodology are in tension with the tradition. Particularly troubling are the discussions of the "fatherhood of God" and 'God language" pp.
It seems to be implied that the practice of speaking of God as Father or Son and of Christ as bridegroom is "patriarchal" and "androcentric.
The biblical and traditional language, even in cases where it is figurative, cannot be reduced to freely chosen metaphors for which we may substitute others at will. Titles such as Father, Son and bridegroom are indelibly inscribed in the Christian consciousness and have authentically theological reasons behind them. The admittedly demanding but nonetheless crucial questions of revelatory language and of the "analogy of faith" at issue here do not receive adequate treatment.
By presenting the range of views, the text is obviously intended to reflect the fact that there is serious debate over certain questions in the contemporary church. The problem is not that the book describes positions in opposition to those of the magisterium, but rather that its presentation often lends them more weight than the magisterium itself. The method in several controversial questions is to present the official teaching and then to follow it with a rebuttal by Catholics who disagree.
The impression is thus given that the "official" teaching is only one among a number of opinions, in no way binding on the faithful. For example, the presentations of the questions of contraception, homosexuality and women's ordination all take for granted that these are open questions; the official church teaching appears as merely one of the options for the reader.
For this and other reasons, Catholics who reject this teaching would be invited to reconsider their positions. The treatment of contraception in Catholicism , however, does not encourage such Catholics to undertake a reconsideration of their views on the matter, but rather confirms them in their lack of acceptance of magisterial teaching.
Likewise, the question of women's ordination is another problematic aspect of the book cited in the statement that has not been corrected. Again, the issue is handled simply as a "disputed question" in theology. The official teaching of the church is inserted in a section headed "arguments against," thus giving the impression that whatever doctrine the church may have on the question is not binding. A further weakness is that the arguments on each side are presented so succinctly that they are hardly intelligible unless one consults the documents to which the book refers.
In particular, Catholicism gives an oversimplified summary of the report of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. The book maintains that the commission "reported that it could find no support for the exclusion of women from the ordained priesthood on the basis of the biblical evidence alone" p.
It does not report the commission's statement that "the masculine character of the hierarchical order which has structured the church since its beginning thus seems attested to by Scripture in an undeniable way. In the absence of further explanation, such statements could serve to cast doubt on the reliability of church teaching.
Catholicism gives insufficient clarification on such issues. In part, this is the result of the aforementioned inclusion of a range of widely divergent and sometimes contradictory positions in the theological discussion, an inclusion that implies that there is very little that these positions hold in common. At the same time, a tendency toward minimalism also arises from what appears to be the book's concern to accommodate those who may have difficulty accepting some part of the Catholic faith as it has traditionally been understood.
At times, the text seems to make every effort to provide Catholics a way out of accepting church teachings or beliefs that are controversial or difficult to understand in terms of contemporary ways of thinking. For example, the book seems to go out of its way to allow someone to remove the doctrine of the virgin birth from any connection with history by asserting that "whether the Holy Spirit's involvement positively excluded the cooperation of Joseph is not explicitly defined" p.
The implied conclusion of the discussion of the belief in the virgin birth is that as long as one affirmed that in some way Jesus shared an intimate communion with God from birth, then the virginity of Mary is not essential p.
Similarly, the text often implies that the most intellectually respectable position is the minimalist position, the one that makes the least demands upon the believer in terms of reconciling belief with current attitudes of thought, as in the argument for positing ignorance in Jesus, where the book asserts that "there is no incontrovertible proof that [Jesus] claimed a unique sonship not open to other persons" p.
It is against this backdrop that the brief section on the binding force" of the Marian dogmas pp. It seems to fit into a pattern of setting minimum requirements for belief.
Overemphasis on Change and Development. The problem is that this embrace of modernity is so enthusiastic as to imply a certain naive denigration of premodern thought and thus of all forms of thought that do not embrace modernity. The text is at times quite harsh in its criticism of patristic and medieval thought pp. Significant scientific, philosophical and theological advances in our understanding of human existence did not occur until the 18th and especially the 19th centuries, with the discoveries of Darwin and Freud, the new social analysis of Marx and the new focus on the human person as subject in the philosophy of Kant, in idealism and in modern psychology.
The medieval view of human existence could not, and did not, do justice to the special character of the person" p. In this view, only with the Enlightenment do we have the basis for an adequate anthropology and thus for an adequate theology. For Catholicism , modern thought becomes the prism through which the tradition must be viewed and judged.
This is the basis for the book's emphasis on change in the tradition. After the Enlightenment, everything is now subject to revision because of the attainment of this higher vantage point.
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