Handbook Of Catholic Dogmatics 5 2

In Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book V, Soteriology Part 2 the nineteenth-century German dogmatician Matthias Joseph Schee­ben turns to an in-depth study of Christ’s redemptive deed. He begins this work with an exploration of the prerequisites for the In­carnate Word’s redemptive efficacy—his personal/capital grace and resultant perfections of intellect and will. Scheeben then examines the various states or mysteries of Christ’s life as well as the efficacy proper to his redemptive deed, by which the God-man restores and superabundantly perfects the supernatural or­der ruined by the first human sin. In this connection, Scheeben also includes his Mariology in this volume precisely insofar as Mary is the mother of the Redeemer. Located here in his Dogmatics, the figure of Mary thus serves as the point of departure for his planned treatment of the grace of Christ in its ecclesial mediation.

In Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book V, Soteriology Part 1 Matthias Joseph Scheeben delineates who and what Jesus Christ is as the Incarnate Son of God in Person. With characteristic brilliance, Scheeben sets forth in this first half-volume the essential nature and attributes proper to Christ as the hypostatic union of God and man. Beginning with the Scriptural and traditional foundations, he elucidates the Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on Christ’s unity of Person in two natures as they were developed in response to the main Christological heresies of the early Christian centuries. On this basis, he then delves into the speculative depths of the hypostatic union itself as well as the attributes of the God-man that arise from this union. “[T]he translation of the Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics by the greatest speculative theologian of the nineteenth century into the modern lingua franca is an invaluable service to the future of the Church in the secular age. With his speculative penetration of the mystery of the Incarnation in the present volume—enriched by a comprehensive knowledge of patristic, scholastic, and modern theology—Matthias Joseph Scheeben preserves the mystery of Divine Revelation from attempts to naturalize it and the Church from the tendency to reduce it to a merely functional civil religion. He proves that even on the highest level of rational reflection the believer can give to modern man an account for ‘the hope that is in him’ (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), which puts us in a position to clarify definitively our understanding of ourselves and of the world in light of the knowledge of God.” —Cardinal Gerhard Müller— Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Where and how do we encounter God’s revelation made once for-all in Christ Jesus? The answer to this urgent question is explored in Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book One: Theological Epistemology, Part One: The Objective Principles of Theological Knowledge, here translated for the first time in English by Michael J. Miller. Scheeben (1835–1888), a renowned German theologian, in this unabridged first part of a two-volume set, begins with a discussion of the nature and scope of dogmatic theology as a science. He treats divine revelation as the source of theological knowledge and as transmitted in Scripture and in the Apostolic Tradition. Included in this volume is Scheeben’s treatise, “The Objective Principles of Theological Knowledge.” Scheeben writes on faith in its source, contents, and handing on in the Church as it confronts the believer, eliciting his or her assent.

Volume 2 of Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics treats the Doctrine about God. It consists of perennially important topics such as the natural knowledge of God, analogical discourse about God, the divine perfections, and the trinitarian nature of God. Especially notable is Scheeben’s identification of God’s absolute beauty as a discrete attribute. His treatment of the divine life (intellect and will) is similarly rewarding and serves as the transition point to the Trinity of persons. Scheeben’s treatise on the Trinity begins with an overview of Magisterial definitions as well as a survey of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Ante-Nicene Patristic tradition. What follows is another noteworthy aspect of Scheeben’s theology proper. His careful treatment of the Spirit’s procession enables a fruitful attempt at reconciling the divergent Western and Eastern Patristic conceptions thereof that underlie later disputes about the Filioque.

Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s masterful Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics: Book One: Theological Epistemology, Part Two: Theological Knowledge Considered in Itself, translated by Michael J. Miller, concludes the first book of Scheeben’s magnum opus. In Book One, Part Two, readers will find Scheeben’s examination of faith, the subjective principle of theological knowledge. In exact yet beautiful prose, he moves from the study of human belief to supernatural faith, while preserving the reasonableness, freedom, and certainty that accompany faith. Maintaining theology is indeed a “sacred science,” Scheeben treats the understanding of faith by demonstrating human reason’s relationship to the deposit of faith. He concludes this work by shedding light on the subject of dogmatic theology itself, recounting its history from the Patristic era to his own time.

Building on Book 3 of the Dogmatics’s consideration of creation and grace and anticipating Book 5’s treatment of salvation, Book 4 of Scheeben’s Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics presents his theory of sin and its concrete realizations among the angelic order and humankind. Notable is his stress on the character of original sin as an offense against the supernatural order, that is, against our adoptive sonship—and so as the biblical mysterium iniquitatis. Also noteworthy is the nuanced way he handles the relation between sin as a privation of grace and the wounding of human nature, original sin’s hereditary character, and the mysterious nature of angelic sin.