At the beginning of the new millennium, the Christian Churches are in a process of renewal. The Roman Catholic Church, since Vatican II, has been in a major stage of renewal. Contemporary globalization, multi-cultural interrelationships, and inter-religious dialogues have presented serious challenges to these renewal efforts. In this volume, I want to offer to the Catholic Renewal and from there to other denominational renewals, a view of the church from the rich tradition of Franciscan philosophy and theology. To date there are a only a few books which include small essays on this theme. This volume presents an in-depth Franciscan approach to ecclesiology.

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.

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.