What exactly does it mean to be made in the image of God? Word on Fire's Robert Mixa addresses this fascinating question in his review of Kathryn Tanner's new book, Christ the Key.
Kathryn Tanner is the Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Besides this prestige, her theology is worth much attention because of its Christ-centeredness: the Incarnation is the first principle from which everything else is derived. Recently, I have been reading her latest book,
Christ the Key, which was originally delivered as the Warfield lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary. In the preface of the book she states its central theological vision: “God wants to give us the fullness of God’s own life through the closest possible relationship with us as that comes to completion in Christ….[the hypostatic union of Christ (the Incarnation)] is the means by which the good of God’s own life is to be conveyed to us in fulfillment of God’s original intentions for us.”...
Dr. Denis McNamara, the author of
Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy and a great friend of Word on Fire, discusses the architecture of a building that has great significance for Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Watch the Virtual Pilgrimage video here, and read more about Dr. McNamara's recent awards from the Catholic Press Association!
Catholic News Agency recently featured an article recounting Archbishop Charles J. Chaput's lecture at University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. In the lecture, Archbishop Chaput spoke of our own Father Barron and his take on the Liturgy. Read the article below, or click here for the entire text.
Christian witness is intended to prepare for and to live the “cosmic liturgy” in which all mankind adores God, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput declared in a lecture on Thursday evening. Noting the cultural obstacles to liturgical understanding, he said the renewed liturgy should create Christians who would die rather than not celebrate Mass...
Today is the Feast Day of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, an early church father and apologist whose writings have been very influential in in the life of the Church and the discipline of theology. Father Barron speaks about this great Saint here.
Last year, I participated in the annual meeting of the Academy of Catholic Theology, a group of about fifty theologians dedicated to thinking according to the mind of the church. Our general topic was the Trinity, and I had been invited to give one of the papers. I chose to focus on the work of St. Irenaeus, one of the earliest and most important of the fathers of the church. Irenaeus was born around 125 in the town of Smyrna in Asia Minor. As a young man, he became a disciple of Polycarp who, in turn, had been a student of John the Evangelist. Later in life, Irenaeus journeyed to Rome and eventually to Lyons where he became bishop after the martyrdom of the previous leader. Irenaeus died around the year 200, most likely as a martyr, though the exact details of his death are lost to history...
Father Barron weighs in on the environmental crisis occurring in the Gulf, offering the Word on Fire readers a spiritual insight gleaned from the BP oil spill.
I grant, of course, that the BP oil-leak in the Gulf of Mexico has been an environmental disaster, perhaps the worst since the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. But I also think it might carry a certain spiritual value. How would I explain this gnomic remark? Well, the gusher a mile below the surface of the ocean has confounded everyone. BP executives look and sound befuddled; the crews using the most advanced technological tools to stem the tide of oil are ineffectual; our smartest scientists can’t seem to come up with any solutions; and the President who was hailed, just a few months ago, as The One, is stymied by his daughter’s plaintive question, “Daddy, have you plugged the hole yet?” I don’t point all this out in order to mock the scientists, businessmen and politicians who are, presumably, striving to solve the problem; I do so in order to draw attention to our profound vulnerability and our inescapable finitude...