Aidan Nichols

In Engaging Theologians, Aidan Nichols explores the work of a number of major writers who have inspired him at different points over the last forty years. They are theologians who engage with a wide range of doctrinal topics and do so in a way that is both robust and persuasive, which makes them, he believes, engaging in a rather different sense of that word. Each chapter begins with a short autobiographical preface, explaining why each writer (or pair of writers) was chosen. The selection reflects the ecumenical breadth of the authors life. While his family were Anglicans, his conversion to a consciously held dogmatic Christianity came via Eastern Orthodoxy, but was lived out in a Catholic setting, in the United Kingdom or beyond. Hence there are chapters on the Anglo-Catholic systematician Eric Mascall and the Orthodox spiritual theologian Olivier Clément as well as on a trio of Jesuits Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, and Avery Dulles, the first two of whom are giants of the movement of ressourcement common to all three Christian traditions (Rome, Canterbury, Constantinople) as this is. Aidan Nichols considers that Hans Urs von Balthasar (here studied in his dialogue with Martin Heidegger) has accompanied him throughout his theological studies and writing, as indeed has Thomas Aquinas, whose school is represented by the English Dominican Victor White and the Neo-Thomist master Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange.

This is a daily prayer book for the Ordinariate – those former Anglicans who have become a distinct part of the Roman Catholic Church. In creating the Ordinariate, Pope Benedict recognised the treasures that Anglicans brought with them from their own tradition and this book is replete with the riches of Anglican patrimony. It contains material from the Anglican tradition, adapted according to the Roman rite including: • an order for morning, evening and night prayer throughout the year • spiritual readings for the Christian year • the minor offices • calendar and lectionary tables For use throughout the English speaking world, this unique volume will fill an immediate need.

Over the course of a distinguished theological career, Aidan Nichols has produced an array of masterful contributions to the fields of systematic theology, ecclesiology, theological aesthetics, ecumenism, liturgy, and Scripture. Now, inChalice of God, he attempts to synthesize a lifetime of research, teaching, and scholarly reflection in a book that is both rigorously academic and intensely personal. This is Nichols' theological manifesto for the twenty-first century. Drawing together the insights of high scholasticism, the mid-twentieth-century ressourcement movement, a holistic reading of Scripture typical of the best patristic exegesis, and the liturgical tradition and iconography of both East and West, he presents a sound architecture for contemporary Catholic theology. Chalice of God promises to enrich and challenge those who engage in the enterprise of theology for years to come.

An insightful biography of the Roman Catholic priest, scholar and traveller Adrian Fortescue, showing the breadth of his interests and achievements. Based on diaries and his published works, Nichols presents an account of Adrian Fortescue's developing personality with an interpretative overview of his writing. Beginning with Fortescue's family background, it looks at his reactions to clerical training, and the wider scene, in Rome and Austria-Hungry at the end of the nineteenth century and the attempts of a widely read and imaginative man to adjust to the limits of priestly life in the East End of London, and the home counties in the Edwardian epoch.

This is the first comprehensive study of the theological significance of Paul Claudel, a poet frequently cited by literary-minded theologians in Europe and theologically-minded poets (such as von Balthasar, de Lubac and Eliot). His writing combines cosmology and history, Bible and metaphysics, liturgy and the drama of human personality. His work, which continues to arouse discussion in France, was acclaimed in his lifetime as the 'summa poetica' of a new Dante. Aidan Nichols' study demonstrates how Claudel's oeuvre, which is not only poetry but theatre and prose including biblical commentaries, constitutes a rich resource for constructive doctrine, liturgical preaching, and theological reflection. As the comparable example of Geoffrey Hill, Professor of Poetry at Oxford suggests, Aidan Nichols illuminates how Claudel's synthesis of many dimensions remains an important way of practising poetry in the Christian tradition today.

The lifting of the excommunication of four bishops of the Society of St Pius X by Pope Benedict XVI in January 2000 attracted widespread media attention at the time, and the continuing conversations between the Holy See and the Society remain a controversial issue among many Catholics. It is easy to dismiss the position of the Society of St Pius X as being merely a question of Latin, birettas and a cultural attachment to a particular form of liturgical expression. But the arguments of the Society are essentially doctrinal in nature, as Pope Benedict XVI has himself acknowledged, hence the doctrinal discussions currently under way in Rome. This book, drawing its inspiration from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's famous Open Letter to Confused Catholics, shadows these discussions, exploring the key issues of this dialogue in a series of letters and responses. The journalist Moyra Doorly, writing as 'a confused Catholic', presents the position of the Society of St Pius X, while the Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols responds on behalf of the post-Conciliar Church. The Society of St Pius X maintains that the Second Vatican Council has brought about a radical reorientation in the Church of which the liturgical reform is one result. Not only do the Council's Decrees on Religious Liberty and Ecumenism contain ideas condemned by the popes of the pre-Conciliar period, but with the explicitly stated aim of opening the Church to modern thought, Vatican II proposed in its documents a new, Liberal and Modernist inspired theology which is contrary to the Traditional teachings of the Church. Traditional teaching, although not in its entirety, is certainly also present in the Council documents, but has the presence of a new theology severely diminished the ability of the Conciliar Church to fulfill her divinely appointed mission? Or can fundamental changes in the Church be ascribed to the Council's Decrees being misinterpreted and wrongly implemented? Is a 'reform of the reform' possible or sufficient? In this book Aidan Nichols works to demonstrate that the Society of St Pius X can be reconciled with the Church. When the reforms of Vatican II were imposed, unexpected consequences followed, especially when leaders were na ve and optimistic, underestimating the virulence of hostile forces and overestimating Catholic vitality and influence. The crux of the discussion is whether this self harm came from illegitimate appeals to "the spirit of Vatican II" or can be sheeted home to doctrinal errors in the Council teachings. This fascinating exchange is a significant contribution to the official dialogue between Rome and Ec ne but is of wider significance in searching out the nature of genuine continuity and development across the millennia in doctrine, liturgy, and church law; and in devising pastoral strategies for handing on the faith and for re-evangelization. It is a lively reminder that none of us can take refuge in fundamentalisms and deserves to be read widely. George Cardinal PellArchbishop of SydneyMoyra Doorly is a Catholic journalist, based in London, and the author of No Place for God: The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture. Aidan Nichols OP is an English Dominican who has written on a variety of theological topics, including the theology of the present Pope and the current Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The brilliance of Chesterton explored and how Christians can rediscover their faith through his writings. Chesterton, one of the great converts of the twentieth century, draws us directly into an encounter with the Word of God, showing us the faith of the Church as most of us have never seen it before. Fr. Nichols has gathered the most powerful theological passages from the many works of Chesterton, and included his own concise explanations of the keen and sometimes surprising ways they illuminate the most profound questions ever asked by man.

The author at the centre of this study, Russian priest-theologian Nikolai Nikolaevich Afanas'ev, was perhaps the most influential thinker about the Church Russia has produced. In Aidan Nichols's careful evaluation, he emerges as a key figure in the rapprochement of Christian East and West, and most notably of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. Nichols illustrates how Afanas'ev has been influential in two key respects: first of all in his conviction that the Eucharist constitutes the foundation of the whole Church; and secondly in his contribution to an Orthodox understanding of the role of the Roman Church and bishop in the context of a united Church. Afanas'ev's achievements are seen to have continuing relevance in view of the inauguration of the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue at the monastery of St John on Patmos in 1980, and the importance of his thinking in terms of contemporary ecumenism becomes clear. It is to such a reappraisal that this book - concerned as it is with how Russian orthodoxy understands the Church - is devoted, in the hope of an eventual restoration of unity between the Orthodox of all the Russias and the see of Rome.

Aidan Nichols' timely book is the first full-scale investigation of Joseph Ratzinger's theology, from the 1950s to the present day. It presents a chronological account of the development of Ratzinger's writing that reflects a wide range of historical and theoretical interests. A comprehensive introduction to a figure who is in his own right, quite apart from his significance in the politics of the Church, a major German Catholic theologian of the twentieth century. This new edition amplifies existing chapters by reference to books by Ratzinger between 1986/1987 and his election as Pope in 2005, and includes two new chapters - Judaism, Islam and other religions, and the secularization and future of Europe.

"You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love, lovely like Jerusalem."-- Song of Songs The highly regarded spiritual writer and theologian Fr. Aidan Nichols, O. P. presents an overview of the Old Testament by showing what it is and its relationship to the New Testament. He explains that it is essential for one to be familiar with the Old Testament in order to understand properly, and in a deeper way, the richness and message of the New. In particular, Fr. Nichols shows how important it is to grasp that connection in order to understand better and to believe in the message and the person of Christ. Ignorance of the Old Testament makes it impossible to comprehend the entire divine plan that stretches between the two Testaments. Nichols maintains that we are ill-equipped to read and understand the great theologians, saints, and Scripture commentators of the Christian era without a deep familiarity with the Old Testament. Even understanding and appreciating the art of the Church remains limited if the Old Testament is a closed book for us. Nichols made use of studies by biblical experts from various Christian denominations notably Evangelicals and Anglicans in writing this widely appealing work. He also drew on the Fathers and Doctors of the Church to help illuminate the beauty of the relationship between the two Testaments.

Hans Urs von Balthasar is emerging as a colossus of twentieth-century theology. More and more of his works are being translated. But as yet he is mainly known only through his great multi-volume trilogy 'Glory', 'Theo-Drama' and Theo-Logic'. Aidan Nichols has treated each part of the trilogy and theearly worksin his widely acclaimed 'Introduction to Hans Urs von Balthasar'. In this final volume he explores all von Balthasar'slater works. Many of these works are extremely important, although several are as yet untranslated and several as yet almost unknown. Nichols ranges widely and comprehensively, from journal articles to his major works, such as 'Apokalypse der deutschen Seele', to his final short works. The result is a wholly new perspective on von Balthasar, a contextualising of his trilogy and an illumination of his whole life and work.

This book investigates Balthasar's early explorations of music and the other arts, before launching into a ramifying but controlled survey of his - often highly original - interpretations of major philosophers and literary figures in the European tradition from the early modern period until the 1930s. Balthasar seeks not only to discover elements of truth, goodness and beauty generally in a rich range of figures, where especial attention is given to the classical German philosophers (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) and Nietzsche, as well as to dramatists and novelists (notably Goethe, Schiller and Dostoevsky), as well as to intellectual giants of his own century, such as Bergson, Scheler and Barth. He also intends to prove that writers who had lost a living contact with the biblical revelation carried by Christianity were incapable of reconstituting a synthesis of ideas about the goal of man and the universe which could be taken for granted in the high Medieval epoch. At the same time, the modern writers he investigates add, in his view, crucial enhancements of human understanding - particularly in relation to history and the human subject - which must be factored into any new overall vision of the future of the human soul and indeed the human species in its cosmic environment.