Bücher von John M. Rist

It has for long been generally assumed that the relationship between our canonical texts of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew is to be explained in terms of direct literary dependence, either of Matthew on Mark, or of Mark on Matthew. Professor Rist questions this assumption vigourously, and argues that it leads to contradictory and paradoxical conclusions. He replaces the theory of literary dependence with the thesis that Matthew and Mark grew up independently on the basis of a common oral tradition, and supports his view by detailed examination of a large number of parallel passages. The clarity and cogency of the author's argument is in the best tradition of this important series of monographs. In the context of the current resurgence of interest in the Synoptic problem, it will be welcomed by all concerned with the study of the New Testament.

This book studies the nature, growth and prospects of Roman Catholic culture, viewed as capable of appropriating all that is noble both from internal and external sources. John Rist tests his argument via a number of avenues: man's creation in the image of God and historical difficulties about incorporating women into that vision; the relationship between God's mercy and justice; the possibility of Christian aesthetics; the early development of the see of Rome as the source of an indispensable doctrinal unity for Christian culture; the search for the proper role of the Church in politics. He also argues that such an understanding of Catholic culture is necessary if contemporary assumptions about inalienable rights and the value of the human person are to be defended. The alternatives are a value-free, individualist universe on the one hand, and a fundamentalist denial of human nature and of history on the other.

This major work provides a detailed and accurate account of the character and effects of Augustine's thought as a whole. Augustine weighed some of the major themes of classical philosophy and ancient culture against the truth he found in the Bible and Catholic tradition, and reformulated these in Christian dress.

John Rist surveys the history of ethics from Plato to the present and offers a vigorous defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism. In a wide-ranging discussion he examines well-known alternatives to Platonism, in particular Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume and Kant as well as contemporary 'practical reasoners', and argues that most post-Enlightenment theories of morality (as well as Nietzschean subversions of such theories) depend on an abandoned Christian metaphysic and are unintelligible without such grounding. He also argues that contemporary choice-based theories, whether they take a strictly ethical or more obviously political form, are ultimately arbitrary in nature. His lively and accessible 2001 study is informed by a powerful sense of philosophical history, and will be of interest to both students and scholars of ethics.