Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism Spiritual Writers of the Early Church
Type
Book
Authors
Category
Mystical Writings
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Publication Year
1962
Publisher
Hawthorn Books, Inc., United States
Pages
124
Tags
Series Name
Description
Who were the Fathers of the Church, and how do their lives and thoughts have meaning in today's age of "specialization?"
Here, gleaned from "a period of great spiritual vitality" - the first century to the middle of the ninth - are answers to such questions, based on a scholar's long study of the rewarding testimony of the early Church's first mystics and spiritual writers. The first great apologists, controversialists and exegetes; these men of antiquity concerned themselves with the mystery of "the actions of God in humanity." While none of them lived and talked with Jesus Christ in person, and thus could not be "witnesses of the living God," they had another role to fill - they were the early witnesses of the Holy Spirit working in the Church.
"The Christian spirit," the author says, "makes itself felt with the awakening of reason, but is refined and perfected only in the years of maturity. . . . The means of strengthening and developing this spirit may have varied in the centuries. . . . This work points out those means used in Christian antiquity. The scientific culture of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance and of modern times in no way contradicts the value of the patristic period in this respect, and," he concludes, "if it has caused it to be forgotten, we must return, by a healthy reaction, to those true sources of the spiritual life in its integrity."
The author, Fulbert Cayre, an Augustinian of the Assumption, director of l'Anne Theologique and honorary professor of the Intitut Catholique of Paris, is a world authority on the branch of theology (patrology) which covers the lives, writings and doctrines of the orthodox writers of Christian antiquity. His published works include Patrologie et Histoire de la Theology, La Contemplation Augustinienne, Les Sorces de l'Amour Divin, Initiation a la Philosophie de Saint Augustin, Dieu Present dans la Vie de l'Esprit, Vers l'Action avec Saint Augustin, and Dieu Vit en l'Homme.
The translator, W Webster Wilson, who was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and then at the Sorbonne, is now Headmaster of the Colegio Colombo-Britanice at Cali, Colombia.
This is Volume 39 under section IV, The Means of Redemption.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Here, gleaned from "a period of great spiritual vitality" - the first century to the middle of the ninth - are answers to such questions, based on a scholar's long study of the rewarding testimony of the early Church's first mystics and spiritual writers. The first great apologists, controversialists and exegetes; these men of antiquity concerned themselves with the mystery of "the actions of God in humanity." While none of them lived and talked with Jesus Christ in person, and thus could not be "witnesses of the living God," they had another role to fill - they were the early witnesses of the Holy Spirit working in the Church.
"The Christian spirit," the author says, "makes itself felt with the awakening of reason, but is refined and perfected only in the years of maturity. . . . The means of strengthening and developing this spirit may have varied in the centuries. . . . This work points out those means used in Christian antiquity. The scientific culture of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance and of modern times in no way contradicts the value of the patristic period in this respect, and," he concludes, "if it has caused it to be forgotten, we must return, by a healthy reaction, to those true sources of the spiritual life in its integrity."
The author, Fulbert Cayre, an Augustinian of the Assumption, director of l'Anne Theologique and honorary professor of the Intitut Catholique of Paris, is a world authority on the branch of theology (patrology) which covers the lives, writings and doctrines of the orthodox writers of Christian antiquity. His published works include Patrologie et Histoire de la Theology, La Contemplation Augustinienne, Les Sorces de l'Amour Divin, Initiation a la Philosophie de Saint Augustin, Dieu Present dans la Vie de l'Esprit, Vers l'Action avec Saint Augustin, and Dieu Vit en l'Homme.
The translator, W Webster Wilson, who was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and then at the Sorbonne, is now Headmaster of the Colegio Colombo-Britanice at Cali, Colombia.
This is Volume 39 under section IV, The Means of Redemption.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Number of Copies
1
