Beatific Enjoyment in Medieval Scholastic Debates examines the religious concept of enjoyment as discussed by scholastic theologians in the Latin Middle Ages. Severin Kitanov argues that central to the concept of beatific enjoyment (fruitio beatifica) is the distinction between the terms enjoyment and use (frui et uti) found in Saint Augustine’s treatise On Christian Learning. Peter Lombard, a twelfth-century Italian theologian, chose the enjoyment of God to serve as an opening topic of his Sentences and thereby set in motion an enduring scholastic discourse. Kitanov examines the nature of volition and the relationship between volition and cognition. He also explores theological debates on the definition of enjoyment: whether there are different kinds and degrees of enjoyment, whether natural reason unassisted by divine revelation can demonstrate that beatific enjoyment is possible, whether beatific enjoyment is the same as pleasure, whether it has an intrinsic cognitive character, and whether the enjoyment of God in heaven is a free or un-free act. Even though the concept of beatific enjoyment is essentially religious and theological, medieval scholastic authors discussed this concept by means of Aristotle’s logical and scientific apparatus and through the lens of metaphysics, physics, psychology, and virtue ethics. Bringing together Christian theological and Aristotelian scientific and philosophical approaches to enjoyment, Kitanov exposes the intricacy of the discourse and makes it intelligible for both students and scholars.

Love Become Incarnate is a Festschrift in honor of Bruce D. Marshall, Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. Marshall is one of the most significant Catholic theologians in the English-speaking world. His work exemplifies an intentionally Catholic theology that makes fearless use of the fullness of truth—wherever it may be found—in conscious service to the Church. Marshall has made significant contributions to the doctrine of the Trinity, Christology, Pneumatology, ecclesiology, ecumenism, Jewish-Christian dialogue, and fundamental theology. St. Thomas Aquinas has been his most constant theological companion, although he has also advanced our understanding of Saints Augustine and Anselm, John Duns Scotus, Martin Luther, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Karl Barth, and other major figures. Marshall has carefully developed a unique, powerful, and wide-ranging theology of the primacy of Christ over all things. It is this same Christ who is the love of God become incarnate. This series of essays by Marcia Colish, J. Augustine Di Noia, Paul Griffiths, Reinhard Hütter, Matthew Levering, and others engage and advance Marshall’s ranging contributions to historical and systematic theology.

Nearly twenty-five years ago, John Milbank inaugurated Radical Orthodoxy, one of the most significant and influential theological movements of the last two decades. In Milbanks Theology and Social Theory, he constructed a sweeping theological genealogy of the origins of modernity and the emergence of the secular, counterposed by a robust retrieval of traditional orthodoxy as the critical philosophical and theological mode of being in the postmodern world. That genealogy turns upon a critical pointthe work of John Duns Scotus as the starting point of modernity and progenitor of a raft of philosophical and theological ills that have prevailed since. Milbanks account has been disseminated proliferously through Radical Orthodoxy and even beyond and is largely uncontested in contemporary theology. The present volume conducts a comprehensive examination and critical analysis of Radical Orthodoxys use and interpretation of John Duns Scotus. Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M. offers a substantial challenge to the narrative of Radical Orthodoxys idiosyncratic take on Scotus and his role in ushering in the philosophical age of the modern. This volume not only corrects the received account of Scotus but opens a constructive way forward toward a positive assessment and appropriation of Scotuss work for contemporary theology.

Medieval theology, in all its diversity, was radically theo-centric, Trinitarian, Scriptural and sacramental. It also operated with a profound view of human understanding (in terms of intellectus rather than mere ratio). In a post-modern climate, in which the modern views on 'autonomous reason' are increasingly being questioned, it may prove fruitful to re-engage with pre-modern thinkers who, obviously, did not share our modern and post-modern presuppositions. Their different perspective does not antiquate their thought, as some of the 'cultured despisers' of medieval thought might imagine. On the contrary, rather than rendering their views obsolete it makes them profoundly challenging and enriching for theology today. This book is more than a survey of key medieval thinkers (from Augustine to the late-medieval period); it is an invitation to think along with major theologians and explore how their thought can deeply challenge some of today's modern and post-modern key assumptions.

Life is one of our most basic concepts, and yet when examined directly it proves remarkably contradictory and elusive, encompassing both the broadest and the most specific phenomena. We can see this uncertainty about life in our habit of approaching it as something at once scientific and mystical, in the return of vitalisms of all types, and in the pervasive politicization of life. In short, life seems everywhere at stake and yet is nowhere the same. In After Life, Eugene Thacker clears the ground for a new philosophy of life by recovering the twists and turns in its philosophical history. Beginning with Aristotle’s originary formulation of a philosophy of life, Thacker examines the influence of Aristotle’s ideas in medieval and early modern thought, leading him to the work of Immanuel Kant, who notes the inherently contradictory nature of “life in itself.” Along the way, Thacker shows how early modern philosophy’s engagement with the problem of life affects thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Georges Bataille, and Alain Badiou, as well as contemporary developments in the “speculative turn” in philosophy. At a time when life is categorized, measured, and exploited in a variety of ways, After Life invites us to delve deeper into the contours and contradictions of the age-old question, “what is life?”

This volume collects essays which are thematically connected through the work of Kent Emery Jr., to whom the volume is dedicated. A main focus lies on the attempts to bridge the gap between mysticism and a systematic approach to medieval philosophical thought. The essays address a wide range of topics concerning (a) the nature of the human soul (in philosophical and theological discourse); (b) medieval theories of cognition (natural and supernatural), self-knowledge and knowledge of God; (c) the human soul’s contemplation of, and union with, God; (d) the tradition of “the modes of theology” in the Middle Ages; (e) the relation between philosophy and theology. Various articles are dedicated to major figures of the 13th and 14th century philosophy, others display new material based on critical editions. Contributors are Jan A. Aertsen, Stephen Brown, Bernardo Carlos Bazán, William J. Courtenay, Alfredo Santiago Culleton, Silvia Donati, Bernd Goehring, Guy Guldentops, Daniel Hobbins, Roberto Hofmeister Pich, Georgi Kapriev, Steven P. Marrone, Stephen M. Metzger, Timothy B. Noone, Mikolaj Olszewski, Alessandro Palazzo, Garrett R. Smith, Andreas Speer, Carlos Steel, Loris Sturlese, Chris Schabel, Christian Trottmann, and Gordon A. Wilson.