Bücher von Aidan Nichols

Aidan Nichols has been contributing to theological literature since the beginning of the 1980s. Now in his seventy-fifth year, he looks back not only at his writings but at the three-quarters of a century of life from which they came. He explains how, despite a nominally Anglican background, his early sense of the transcendent was really of God in nature. Only through an experience in the Russian church in Geneva did he become a confessing Christian. Back home, where he was left a teenage orphan, he moved from Anglo-Catholicism into the Roman Catholic Church. After reading Modern History at Oxford, that led by a natural progression to becoming a Religious and a priest. In this book Nichols describes the wide variety of situations in which he has lived in Scotland, Norway, Rome, France, Ethiopia, and Jamaica, as well as England and the United States. Over the years, drawing on not only Catholic but also Orthodox and Anglican sources, he has produced a small library of books, touching on many areas of theology and culture while also seeking, at different times, to bind them together into a coherent unity, inspired by, principally, two great giants: Thomas Aquinas, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. For Aidan Nichols, the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI were a halcyon time. Things have been more difficult under the successor to these popes. He explains the problems he has encountered, both theoretical and practical, and his search for a resolution that is satisfactory both theologically and autobiographically. He ends his apologia with a raft of proposals for the stabilization and enrichment of ecclesial life in the decades to come.

The author at the centre of this study, Russian priest-theologian Nikolai Nikolaevich Afanas'ev, was perhaps the most influential thinker about the Church Russia has produced. In Aidan Nichols's careful evaluation, he emerges as a key figure in the rapprochement of Christian East and West, and most notably of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

This accessible little book is a study of spiritual theology, and so a reflection on the spiritual life as found in Christianity. Christian spirituality embodies in personal living the biblical revelation received in the Church of the Fathers and transmitted to its successors in every age. Like everything else in Christian doctrine and practice, Christian spirituality depends on Scripture and Tradition-the two intrinsically inter-related ways in which that revelation is communicated. Using a fusion of sources-Catholic and Orthodox, Latin and Byzantine-Aidan Nichols breaks open Spiritual Theology through eight essential themes: the Word of God as Source; the Liturgy as the Context; Meditation and contemplation; Principles of Asceticism; Asceticism: monastic, lay, and 'pastoral'; Purification; Illumination; Union. Christian spirituality is biblical in its source, it is liturgical in its context, it is ascetical in its development, and it is mystical in its outcome. 'Mystical' is a strong word, but the Dominican school does not accept the opinion that this final issue of spirituality is extra-ordinary-in the words of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, theologically speaking it is 'eminent, but normal'. These four adjectives-biblical, liturgical, ascetical and mystical-explain the structure of this present book and its content too.

When in 1993 Aidan Nichols revived the long-dormant idea of an Anglican Uniate Church, united with the See of Peter but not absorbed, the reaction of many was incredulity. The ideal of modern Ecumenism was, surely, the corporate reunification of entire Communions. This he roundly declared to be unrealistic, for the Protestant and Liberal elements in Anglican history (and Anglicanism's present reality) could never be digested by Roman stomachs. What was feasible was, rather, the reconciliation of a select body Catholic enough to be united, and Anglican enough not to be absorbed. Just over a dozen years later Pope Benedict XVI, responding to the petitions of various Anglican bishops, promulgated the Apostolic Constitution Apostolorum coetibus and the deed was done. The three 'Ordinariates' now established for 'Catholics of the Anglican Patrimony' in Britain, Australia and North America have been described as the first tangible fruit of Catholic Ecumenism. In this short book Nichols reflects on the historical, theological, and liturgical issues involved. He also shows the congruence of the new development with Benedict's wider thinking, and outlines a specific missionary vocation for reconciled Anglicans in England.

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the Head. So, precisely as a fruit of grace, preaching is necessarily related to ecclesial awareness. Doctrine ensures that preaching does not fall short of its true dimensions - expressing the biblical revelation, the faith of the Church. The second, third, and fourth volumes of Year of the Lord's Favour cover between them the Temporal Cycle of the Church of the Roman rite: this fourth volume furnishes texts for Weekdays through the Year; the second for the Privileged Seasons - Advent, Christmastide, Lent and Eastertide; the third for Sundays through the Year. Preaching about the lives of the saints provides the subject matter of the first volume of the Homiliary.

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the Head. So, precisely as a fruit of grace, preaching is necessarily related to ecclesial awareness. Doctrine ensures that preaching does not fall short of its true dimensions - expressing the biblical revelation, the faith of the Church. The second, third, and fourth volumes of Year of the Lord's Favour cover between them the Temporal Cycle of the Church of the Roman rite: this third volume furnishes texts for Sundays through the Year; the second for the Privileged Seasons - Advent, Christmastide, Lent and Eastertide; the fourth for Weekdays through the Year. Preaching about the lives of the saints provides the subject matter of the first volume of the Homiliary.

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the Head. So, precisely as a fruit of grace, preaching is necessarily related to ecclesial awareness. Doctrine ensures that preaching does not fall short of its true dimensions - expressing the biblical revelation, the faith of the Church. The second, third, and fourth volumes of Year of the Lord's Favour cover between them the Temporal Cycle of the Church of the Roman rite: this second volume furnishes texts for the Privileged Seasons - Advent, Christmastide, Lent and Eastertide; the third for Sundays through the Year; the fourth for Weekdays through the Year. Preaching about the lives of the saints provides the subject matter of the first volume of the Homiliary.

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the Head. So, precisely as a fruit of grace, preaching is necessarily related to ecclesial awareness. Doctrine ensures that preaching does not fall short of its true dimensions which expresses the biblical revelation, the faith of the Church. Preaching about the lives of the saints is a partial exception to these principles - every saint throws light on some aspect of the mystery of Christ and the Church - and provides the subject matter of the first volume of Year of the Lord's Favour. The second, third, and fourth volumes of the Homiliary cover between them the Temporal Cycle of the Church of the Roman rite: the second volume furnishes texts for the Privileged Seasons - Advent, Christmastide, Lent and Eastertide; the third for Sundays through the Year; the fourth for Weekdays through the Year.

Sergei Bulgakov, born in Russia in 1871, was one of the principal Eastern theologians of the twentieth century. At the age of thirty he was appointed professor of political economy at the University of Kiev. After a crisis of faith, Bulgakov declared himself an unbeliever in 1888, but in a slow process he moved from Marxism to Idealism, and then from Idealism to a rediscovered Orthodoxy. By the time of the two Revolutions of 1917, Bulgakov was one of the best known Orthodox theologians in Russia. In 1918 he was ordained priest, and fled Moscow in danger of imminent arrest. Arriving in Paris in 1925 he was to live and work there until his death in 1944, his life inextricably bound up with the Russian theological institute, Saint-Serge, of which he was a founder member and subsequent professor, rector and dean.In this timely work, Aidan Nichols introduces the life and work of Bulgakov and provides a systematic presentation of his dogmatic theology.'The present book has appeared at exactly the right moment. Alike in Russia and in the West, we are witnessing a veritable "Bulgakov renaissance" . . . this is the first comprehensive and systematic survey of his theology in English.' Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia'As research on Bulgakov by Catholics and Protestants as well as Orthodox grows in volume, it is a great help to have this authoritative, comprehensive guide. I hope it will encourage further study and assimilation of one of the most searching and moving as well as one of the most complex of modern theological minds.' Dr Rowan Williams, Archibshop of CanterburyAidan Nichols, OP, is an English Dominican of Blackfriars, Cambridge. He has written thirty books, chiefly on aspects of Catholic theology and theological history, but also on Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism.