Monday, March 19, 2007

Your recommendations?

By the way, my son Benjamin visited me over the weekend and expressed his gratitude for the titles all of you recommended for him for the prospective class he will be teaching on the theology of the Church. In fact, the harvest of wonderful titles we garnered on the subject of "Ecclesiology" recently so impressed someone else, that he is also interested in soliciting the opinions of this blog audience. I'm sure you will enjoy helping him. This time the subject is "Catholic systematic theology."

A year or two ago, I remember looking into this topic briefly for a friend and not coming up with much, which led me to wonder why the list of available Catholic titles seems short, especially compared to the Protestant production of systematic theologies -- both single volumes and whole sets -- which nearly strikes one as a growth industry. I do suspect, however, that there are many treatments out there about which I know nothing. So I am interested in what some of our readers may have to suggest.

So far we have:
  • St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
  • Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma
  • Michael Schmaus, Dogma (6 vols)
  • Cardinal Ratzinger and Johann Auer, Dogmatic Theology (8 vols?)
  • Matthias J. Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity (Die Mysterien des Christentums, 1865)
  • Emile Mersch, The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition (1938)
  • Aidan Nichols, The Shape of Catholic Theology: An Introduction to Its Sources, Principles, and History
Your suggestions?

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