Few topics in theology are as complex and multifaceted as grace: over the course of centuries, many seemingly arbitrary distinctions and arcane debates have arisen around it. Edward Oakes, however, ar
Few topics in theology are as complex and multifaceted as grace: over the course of centuries, many seemingly arbitrary distinctions and arcane debates have arisen around it. Edward Oakes, however, argues that all of these distinctions and debates are ultimately motivated by one central question: What are God’sintentions for the world?
In A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies Oakes examines issues relating to grace and points them back to that central question, illuminating and explaining what is really at stake in these debates. Maintaining that controversies clarify issues, especially those as convoluted as that of grace, Oakes works through six central debates on the topic, including sin and justification, evolution and original sin, and free will and predestination.
Horizons
“A well-written and masterful book that deserves its place in the canon of modern texts in theological anthropology.”
Marvin Lindsay in Interpretation
"Pastors and scholars who want to bring a faithful and creative doctrine of grace to bear on urgent intellectual and pastoral questions will learn much from Oakes’s critical and irenic synthesis of Scripture and tradition."
Religious Studies Review
“Oakes is careful and never dismissive in his presentations of opposing voices in each controversy. He documents his work thoroughly and leads readers to a wide array of primary sources for further reading. His own creativity shines forth especially in his suggestion that Mary’s immaculate conception may be the purest example of human justification based solely on grace.”
Matthew Levering
— author of Proofs of God: Classical Arguments from Tertullian to Barth
"Deeply cultured, brilliant, and witty, Edward Oakes was an irreplaceable theologian. Reading Oakes, I always think that this is what it would have been like had Chesterton written the works of von Balthasar. One finds here a master of Christian apologetics drawing upon the full spectrum of the Christian tradition's resources and delivering highly intellectual arguments in wonderfully accessible prose. Specialists and nonspecialists alike will relish this fitting last testament to grace from the pen of one of America's greatest Jesuits."
Aaron Riches
— author of Ecce Homo: On the Divine Unity of Christ
"Fr. Edward Oakes will be remembered as one of the finest American Catholic theologians of his generation. With A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies, he has given the church and contemporary theology a final offering — a work as daring as it is faithful, as provocative as it is irenic, as creative as it is traditional. This book promises to change the terms of the question concerning the relation of nature and grace. A must-read for anyone interested in contemporary theology."
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Edward T. Oakes, SJ (1948–2013) was associate professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake / Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois. He also wrote Infinity Dwindled to Infancy: A Catholic and Evangelical Christology.
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