Verbum
Thoughtful and thorough Catholic scholarship is vital to the health of the Church and the edification of all believers.
But how do we measure its health, and how do we know where it’s headed?
In this month’s free book, Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation, New Testament scholars Luke Timothy Johnson and William Kurz open a conversation with the Church about biblical scholarship that maintains the freedom of critical inquiry but remains loyal to tradition.
They make the case that the apparent good health of biblical scholarship in America is deceptive. Despite its huge production of learning, Catholic scholarship has lost some of its soul because of its distance from the life and concerns of living faith communities. Looking not to criticize but to strengthen, the authors model the type of dialogue that is needed today.
You can also add An Outline of New Testament Spirituality for only $1.99. Prosper Grech, an Augustinian priest and a professor of early Christian literature, pushes back against the contemporary culture divorcing spirituality from religion and regards the two as separate, competing entities. The Christian religion, he finds, is infused with spirituality—which he defines not in a New Age sense but rather as the believer’s full response to God’s offer of salvation in Christ. Grech presents the essential spiritual themes of Christian belief for meditation by any who seek to live out a full Christian faith.
And for $2.99 more, get The Blessed Virgin Mary, a concise, non-technical historical introduction to the church’s thinking about Jesus’ mother. The first part of the book sketches the development of Marian thought from the second century to the twentieth century. The second part contains an annotated bibliography of the most important and accessible English-language works on Mary.
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Get Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation for free, or get all three commentaries for less than $7, but only during the month of August.
