The Source of All Love: Catholicity and the Trinity
by Heidi Russell (Orbis Books / Alban Books, £22.99)
This book is by a distinguished member of the faculty of the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University in Chicago. She addresses the problem of presenting the doctrine of the Trinity in a manner that reflects our modern understanding of the nature of things, rather than the classical and medieval model that still seems to serve many theologians.
She is also an authority on the theology of Karl Rahner, and uses his insights to inform her treatment of what is, in an unbelieving age, seen as a problem by many. Indeed one sometimes feels that many Chrstians are basically Unitarians. (Though the Trinity it seems to this reviewer, perhaps not as strange a notion as so many think; there is indeed a sense in which all of us have different persons within us, when we are child, spouse and parent.)
What emerges from her chapters is a pleasing sense of the wholeness of things, the interconnectedness of life at its fullest extent.
The leading notion in the book is that the true nature of God can be experienced through thinking of God as the source of Love, the Word of Love, and the Spirit of Love.
In making available this interesting exposition she will serve the needs of the ordinary reader seeking enlightenment as well as students.
It is certainly worth persevering though her chapters on the Fathers of the Church, theological developments and the ideas of modern physics, to reach her final chapter and conclusion in which Catholicity is equated with “the wholeness of love”.
The book is published as part of the publisher’s series “Catholicity in an Evolving Universe”, of which Ilia Delio, who provides a foreword to this book, is the general editor.
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Let the Word of Christ Dwell in the You: Weekday Reflections for the Liturgical Year 2017/2018
by Martin Hogan (Messenger Publications, €14.95)
Though Advent and the start of the Liturgical year is still some way off, it seems appropriate to bring to the attention of readers Fr Hogan’s new book. He is one of the priests at St John the Baptist parish in Clontarf, but for many years lectured at Mater Dei. He has already issued book reflections on the readings from Mark, Matthew and Luke. This book completes the set, which many will already have begun to purchase in previous years.
What he manages to combine in his writing is both a sense of what works at a local pastoral level, at regular Masses, with a firm sense of the present scholarship and theological thoughts that underpin our understanding of the Gospels.
The pieces are quite short, but that is all to the good, for it enables him to be focused rather than diffuse, to be concentrated rather than verbose. This approach enables a better understanding of the passages, which in any case should only be a start towards a personal exploration not only of the Gospels but of all the earlier Biblical texts from which they draw so many of their allusions and teachings.